The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (45 page)

‘I wouldn’t say no.’

She went to the range and topped up the brown pot from the large iron kettle that sat there. She had a fine bust, Tonbridge thought with self-pity. Mrs Tonbridge’s bust had never been a salient feature.

‘I took her for a drink up the pub the other night.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘She said that was too quiet. Course, it’s not the same as the pubs in town.’

‘It wouldn’t be.’ Mrs Cripps had been to London once or twice, but she’d never been to a pub there, and with Gordon dead, there was nobody to take her to one at home. ‘What a shame!’ she added. She wasn’t one to pass remarks about other people, but the unpassed remark hung heavy and gratifying in the air. Tonbridge took the last rock cake and watched Mrs Cripps stringing beans. Her sleeves were rolled up revealing muscular arms, as white as marble in striking contrast to her hands, which were not white at all.

‘She could go on the bus to Hastings. Look at the shops and that.’

‘She could.’ He left that suggestion in the air; he had already thought of it and discarded the notion. What he was hoping was that she would find it so quiet she’d go off home, back to town, and leave him in peace. He belched softly, and Mrs Cripps’s nose twitched, but she pretended not to have heard. She decided to change the subject to something that didn’t matter.

‘So what do you think is going on with Hitler and all that?’ she asked.

‘If you want my opinion, Mrs Cripps, I say that it’s all the newspapers and the politicians. A storm in a tea-cup; scare-mongering. There’s no cause for alarm. If Hitler did get above himself, there’s always the Maginot Line.’

‘Well, that’s something,’ she agreed. She had no idea what he was talking about. A line? What sort of line? Where? For the life of her she couldn’t see what a line had to do with anything. She fell back onto social law. ‘If you ask me, Mr Tonbridge, I think Hitler should keep himself to himself.’

‘He
should,
Mrs Cripps, but don’t forget, he’s a foreigner. Well,’ he got to his feet, ‘this won’t clean Mr Edward’s guns. That was very nice, I must say. A welcome change. Someone to talk to,’ he added, to make sure she realised that she was being compared favourably to some he could mention.

Mrs Cripps bridled and a huge kirby-grip fell onto the kitchen table.

‘Any time,’ she said shoving it back.

In the evening, a neighbour of Zoë’s mother rang up to say that she had had a heart attack and there wasn’t really anybody to cope. So the next day, Rupert drove her to the station. ‘I’m sure I shan’t have to stay,’ she said, meaning that she desperately didn’t want to.

‘You stay as long as you need. If it’s easier to look after her in our house, you could move her there.’ Since Zoë had married her mother had moved into a tiny flat. ‘Oh, no! I don’t think she would like that.’ The thought of having to deal with her mother
and
their empty house without Ellen to see to things appalled her. ‘I’m sure Mummy would far rather be in her own home.’

‘Well, give me a ring to tell me how things are going. Or I’ll ring you.’ He remembered his mother-in-law’s terror of toll calls. He got her suitcase into the ticket office and bought her ticket for her. ‘Got enough money, darling?’

‘I think so.’

He gave her another five pounds to be on the safe side. Then he kissed her: on her high cork-wedged shoes she reached higher above his shoulder than usual. They had had a row in bed the previous night about whether he should go into the firm or not. When she had found him truly undecided, she had tried to bully him and, for once, he had lost his temper and she had sulked until he apologised and then she had cried until she had got him to make it up in the usual way, but it hadn’t been as much fun as usual. Now, she said, ‘I know you’ll do whatever is right,’ and watched his stern, worn expression relax to a smile. He kissed her again and she said, ‘I know you’ll make the right decision.’ Luckily the train came in, and he did not have to reply.

But when she had gone and he had got back to the car trying to banish an awful relief, he felt more confused than ever about the whole thing.

Sharing a room with Angela was driving Louise and Nora round the
bend
: she either behaved like a film star or a schoolmistress and really they didn’t know which was worse, so they decided to emigrate. And the only place to go was one of the attics, which you reached by climbing a steep little ladder that was concealed by a cupboard door. They went up and found themselves in a long room with a steeply sloping roof so that they couldn’t stand upright except in the middle. At each end was a small lead-paned window encrusted with dirty cobwebs. The place smelled faintly of apples and the floor was thick with dead bluebottles. Louise felt that it was not very promising, but Nora was delighted by it. ‘We’ll scrub it all out, and whitewash the ceiling and walls and it will be wonderful!’ So they did, and it was. They wore their bathing suits for the whitewashing because it was fearfully hot up there until one of the Brig’s men, who were always working for him on building schemes, came and made the windows open and shut. It was while they were whitewashing together that they had a conversation that actually, she felt, changed Louise’s life. She had been holding forth about her career to Nora who was a very good listener, and seemed suitably impressed with Louise’s current ambition to play Hamlet in London.

‘Won’t you have to go into a repertory company – you know in Liverpool or Birmingham, or somewhere?’

‘Oh, I don’t think so. I think that would be boring. No, I’ll go to some drama school – the Central or RADA, and then I’ll get noticed when they do the end-of-term plays. That’s my plan.’

‘I’m sure you will. You’re awfully good.’ Louise had acted some bits of Shakespeare to her last year in the summer and her Ophelia had reduced Nora to tears. ‘Why particularly Hamlet?’ she asked after a silence. ‘Why not Ophelia?’

‘It’s such a tiny part. But Hamlet’s the best part in the world. So of
course
it’s my ambition.’

‘I see.’ She said it quite respectfully, did not argue or snub like most people.

‘Meanwhile, of course, instead of getting on with my career, I have to go on wasting time with Miss Milliment. And they won’t even tell me
when
they’ll let me go to drama school. It’s all very well for the others. Polly just wants to have her own house and put everything she’s collected into it, and Clary is going to be a writer, so it doesn’t matter what she does. I’ve done that bit. Let’s have a rest.’

They went and sat by the little window and shared a Crunchie. There was a peaceful silence.

‘What are you going to do?’ Louise asked idly: she did not expect a very interesting reply.

‘You promise not to tell anyone?’

‘Promise.’

‘Well – I’m not
absolutely
sure – but I think I’m going to be a nun.’

‘A
nun
?’

‘Yes, but not immediately. Mummy is sending me to a sort of cooking finishing-school place next summer, so I’ll do that first. I’ve got to because it’s Aunt Lena who is paying for it, and she gets awfully cross if people don’t do what she wants.’

‘But cooking – and whatever else you do at those places! What use will that be if you’re going to be a nun?’

‘You can do anything for the glory of God,’ Nora answered serenely. ‘It doesn’t actually matter a bit what it is. Why don’t you come too?’

At first it seemed an idiotic idea, but as Nora pointed out, Louise couldn’t be a world-famous actress if she went on being homesick and couldn’t ever leave home. ‘And if you come with me, we could share a room, and you wouldn’t feel anything like so bad. And I bet they’d let you, because domestic science is considered to be good for girls.’

‘I’ll think about it.’ She could feel her heart beginning to thud and the back of her neck getting cold, and resolved not to think about it then. She diverted Nora by asking her a lot of questions about what being a nun entailed.

On Friday morning Raymond telephoned Jessica to say that Aunt Lena had a chill and he was unable to leave her. This news, when he heard it, caused Christopher such relief that he threw up in the drive at Home Place on his way to collect Simon. It was wonderful: it meant that with luck they would have collected enough stuff to be gone before his father arrived, much easier than going under his nose. For he and Simon had decided to run away: Simon because he couldn’t face his new school, and Christopher because he could no longer bear life at home. They had spent four feverish days carting stuff to Christopher’s secret place in the woods – a small tent, since Christopher had given up the idea of trying to build a waterproof house, and any stores or equipment they could find about the place. They took things on the basis that once they were gone, they wouldn’t be costing anyone anything, so it was quite fair to collect what was needed, provided they could do so without being noticed. Mrs Cripps couldn’t think where the saucepan she used only for boiling eggs had walked to, nor the smaller kettle that was only used as a back-up to the big one. Eileen was missing cutlery – plate, thank goodness, not the silver – and two large tins that were used for biscuits and cake disappeared from the pantry. She had also noticed that however often she filled the sugar basins they were empty the next morning. Christopher made enormous lists of what they needed, and they crossed them off when they got the things. The worst blow had been the camp beds, which the Duchy kept in the gun room and which, just as they had been about to take them, had gone to Mill Farm for the girls’ blasted attic idea. They had found an old Lilo in the shed with deck-chairs, but it had holes and they had to spend a lot of time mending it. On the other hand, Simon had discovered a store cupboard in the kitchen regions crammed with jams, tins of sardines and corned beef, and every night, when Teddy was asleep – and luckily he slept like a log – he crept down and filled his new school laundry bag with these things. He got awfully tired because he had to stay awake for ages after Teddy dropped off and be sure the grown-ups had all gone to their rooms as well. The list never seemed to get any shorter, because they kept thinking of things that were or might be essential: tin opener, torch batteries, a pail – Christopher proposed milking cows in the adjoining fields very early in the morning before they were herded to the farm which Simon thought was absolutely wizard of him.

This morning they were going to get potatoes out of the shed where Mr McAlpine stored them. They both had rucksacks – admirable for the purpose, but Christopher warned that they would have to make several trips. ‘We’ll need them until we learn to make bread.’ Simon, trying to imagine life without bread, felt so hungry that they had to stop for a bit while he ate four apples. They planned to store Simon’s bicycle at the far end of the wood by the road, so that he could use it to get emergency rations if they ran out. The worst problem was money. Christopher had two pounds three and six, Simon only five bob. Taking money was stealing and Christopher was dead against it: they would have to learn to live off the land, he said, but Simon felt uneasy at the prospect. You wouldn’t get chocolate or fizzy lemonade off the land, but he knew that these were unworthy thoughts. ‘You have to be prepared to give things up,’ Christopher said, but he
wanted
to get away from his parents whereas Simon was rather dreading that he would never see his mother again, or Polly, or Dad – who, except for Wills, might easily be stricken with grief – or even Wills. ‘Supposing we have to go to the dentist?’ he asked.