The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (64 page)

One of Mr Sampson’s men arrived and opened the window, but the room being next to the roof, remained bakingly hot. ‘Try not to perspire till after the doctor,’ Bertha advised, but it was no good, she couldn’t help it, and her eyes hurt when she moved them, and it seemed a pity, what with all this nice food she couldn’t fancy, and staying in bed and not having to do anything, that she couldn’t enjoy it more. But Bertha said if wishes were horses beggars would ride, and Dottie, who could not think what that meant, said she supposed so.

Zoë spent the morning darning sheets with the great aunts.

‘It is quite like the war already,’ Flo placidly remarked, as she fitted a section of sheet over her toadstool.

‘I don’t remember us mending sheets in the last war,’ Dolly said.

‘That’s because you haven’t got a very good memory,’ Flo returned. ‘I distinctly remember that we were always mending sheets. Mending something, anyway.’

‘Something!’ Dolly sniffed.

They were seated at the gate-legged table in the breakfast room. Zoë had joined them because everybody else she had asked for something to do had looked vague and been unable to think of anything. The Duchy, however, had firmly set her to work. ‘That would be most helpful of you, Zoë dear,’ she had added, and Zoë had glowed, had even managed to ask the aunts to show her how to do it. They had not agreed about the method, of course: Aunt Dolly favoured patches, cut from hopelessly worn pillow cases; Flo insisted upon exquisitely fine darning over and round the tear. Zoë did whichever they told her and found that she was quite good at it. She had always liked fine sewing, which her mother had taught her. The aunts quarrelled gently all the morning, but Zoë did not listen much: she had new guilt to contend with, and felt so miserable that she was utterly enclosed with her circular and irresolute thoughts. She had used no birth control with Philip – had had no chance to – and the thought that he might have made her pregnant now haunted her. This was made worse by feeling that the only way she could make it up to Rupert would be to have the child she knew he had always wanted. The whole dilemma had broken upon her the first night that she had come home when she would ordinarily have taken her usual precautions. But as she reached for the little box that contained her cap, the previous night and the fact that she used nothing struck her. She was paralysed by fear and guilt: the thought of Philip’s child revolted her, but on the other hand, if she was already pregnant, Rupert must think it his. So she had used nothing that night either. And now, she reflected drearily, having hedged her bets, as it were, she would never know, if she got pregnant, whose child it was until it was born – and possibly not then. ‘Oh, why did I do it?’ she kept reiterating. ‘Why didn’t I just wait until after my next period, and then have Rupert’s baby?’ Because she had been terribly afraid that she was pregnant already was the answer. But if she had been, she could perhaps have got rid of it, and then everything would be all right. But how? The thought of asking Sybil or Villy (which, she felt,
must
entail telling them what had happened) was simply terrifying. They had never liked her much; they would think she was beyond the pale if they knew about Philip. I could say to them – or one of them – that he did rape me, she thought. The worst of it was that every time she sought some way out it involved more lying.

‘Of course, you would be too young, Zoë, to remember the zeppelins.’

‘No, she wouldn’t.’

‘Flo, she must have been a child!’

‘Children have very good memories. Far better than yours. When were you born, dear?’

‘Nineteen fifteen.’

‘There – you see?’

‘In a minute you will be saying that it is as plain as the nose on your face, which, Father used to say you remember, was very plain indeed.’

Aunt Dolly’s naturally mauve complexion deepened to dusky lavender and she clicked her teeth. Aunt Flo caught Zoë’s eye and actually winked; this and the red bandeau that was somewhat askew round her hair made her look like some old pirate, Zoë thought, relieved at being able to think something else for a change. But the morning seemed interminable. At one point it occurred to her that Philip was somebody who could actually
do
something if she turned out to be pregnant, but even as the picture of his knowing, sardonic gaze filled her mind’s eye so a small, warm anemone started to open inside her . . . She could never see him again in her life . . .

‘. . . very
hot
, dear. Would you like another window open? Dolly can always put another rug over her knees. She’s always cold, no circulation at all. And very naughty about leaving her combinations off at parties.’

Zoë, who knew nothing about combinations, smiled as she was expected to, but Aunt Dolly got really angry, levered herself to her feet, stalked stiffly to the window and flung it open. ‘I sometimes wish,’ she said, her tone implying that it was not much use her doing so, ‘that you would refrain from discussing my underclothes in public. Occasionally.’

‘I’m fully prepared to discuss anyone’s underclothes – when the subject comes up. Combinations are a fact of life. Why pretend they don’t exist? Dolly has a lot of what I can only call Victorian hypocrisy – whereas Kitty and I have always been free of it . . .’

Zoë, although she did not want any, was quite glad when it was lunch-time.

Rupert spent most of the day taking Rachel to Tunbridge Wells, where Dr Carr had recommended what he described as a rather shady little man who was very good with backs. He went there himself, he added. Rachel was in such pain that for once she agreed to being such a trouble. Sid had been going to go with them, but Evie, who had decided that the best way of protesting about being put in the cottage was to be a nuisance in it, said she had a side headache, and couldn’t possibly expect the servants to carry her meals all that way. ‘So, of course,’ Sid said, trying to be cheery about it and failing, ‘I’ll have to stay, darling – much as I should love to come with you.’

‘But I’m sure a child would take her meals over,’ Rachel said, ‘and, anyway, she won’t want very much in that condition, will she?’

‘I told you it would be awful if she came!’

‘I know. But that really wasn’t the point, was it? It isn’t the moment for thinking of ourselves.’

When would it ever be? Sid grumbled to herself when she had seen Rachel lever herself painfully into Rupert’s car and watched them set off. However, the Brig claimed her to trace a large drawing he had done for the conversion of two cottages he said he might be acquiring. ‘Rachel was to have done it, and it won’t wait.’ So she spent most of the day in his study with greaseproof paper laid over the drawing. He was out all the morning but in the afternoon, she had to read
The Times
to him, breaking off to hear some of the remarkable coincidences that he had enjoyed in his life. She liked the old boy although she could see he was a bit of a tyrant.

Evie, who had eaten every scrap of a cooked breakfast, ate all of her substantial lunch, which Sid carried over for her, complained that Sid was avoiding her, and kept asking what everybody was doing. She asked twice about Rachel, as though she didn’t believe in the Tunbridge Wells journey, and, fetching her lunch tray when this happened, Sid lost her temper. ‘Get up if you want to know what people are doing. I
told
you this morning that Rachel has gone to have her back seen to. If you go on behaving like this, you’ll have to go home.’ Somehow, having her own day ruined by Evie made it quite easy to mean this. Evie started to cry, which Sid, who was soft-hearted, usually could not stand, but now she found herself quite unmoved. ‘For God’s sake, Evie! Don’t cry and don’t sulk. You’re welcome to go home if you’d rather.’

Evie started to get out of bed. ‘My place is at Waldo’s side,’ she said. ‘If I can’t be there, it doesn’t matter where I am.’

‘She told me she wished to go home. Thank you, darling. How welcome!’

‘Everybody else wishes the same, but really I feel we ought to wait and see how things turn out.’

They were talking, as they often did, of their mother about whom they were always in complete agreement. Whereas neither of them liked either Edward’s or Raymond’s comments about her, they felt free, when they were alone, to discuss her impossible nature, signs of which, when they were
not
in agreement, each could see in the other.

Now Jessica shrugged, stretched out her long thin legs and kicked off her shoes. ‘Goodness! I don’t usually drink whisky, but after such a day . . . ’

‘How
was
it – really?’ She had been treated to a highly coloured version of the funeral at supper, largely by Nora.

‘And poor Aunt Lena was propped up in the dining room in her coffin. She looked like one of those huge, expensive dolls you see in Whiteley’s at Christmas. Except she was paler, of course. The blood had left her cheeks, I suppose.’ At this point Angela, with some inaudible expostulation, had left the room. Louise had been fascinated. ‘She wasn’t wearing a party dress, though, was she?’

‘Of course not. A white nightie, with a thick frill round the neck.’ And so on – until they’d been told to leave the table which they wanted to do, anyway.

‘How was it? Pretty awful, really. All the blinds down in the house, which was stuffy beyond belief, and people stumbling over huge arm chairs in the gloom. And then it rained in the churchyard. There weren’t very many people and of course I didn’t know any of them except the vicar who made the most fulsome address. About her wonderful capacity for life – I suppose he simply meant living for so many years – you know, like people saying a view is marvellous if you can see far enough, however dull.’

‘How was Raymond?’

‘Very touching. He really minds: probably the only person who did.’

‘The other nephew wasn’t there?’

‘Oh, no. Safely in Canada. Which brings me to the Will.’

Villy sat up. ‘No! You mean it was read then and there just like a play?’

‘In the drawing room after we got back from the churchyard. Of course, I sent the children out into the garden. She left thirty thousand pounds to the other nephew,’ she paused, ‘and the rest to Raymond. The house, its contents, and really rather a lot of money.’

‘Oh, darling! How wonderful! Wasn’t Raymond rather thrilled?’

‘It was very hard to tell. He went rather red, coughed and looked straight ahead as though the whole thing had nothing to do with him. The only thing is, I do hope he won’t want to live in the house.’

‘It’s quite a pretty house, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, the house is all right. But if we stayed there, it would be full of all her possessions and I know he wouldn’t allow a single thing to be changed. All those ghastly pictures – four deep on every wall! And hideous, very old Victorian furniture everywhere.’

Villy had wanted to say, ‘Anything would be better than your present house,’ but felt this would be unkind. Instead she got up and went to the whisky bottle. ‘I think this calls for another drink.’

‘I shall be completely tipsy.’

‘Doesn’t matter. You can lie in in the morning. And I’ve had a pig of a day too as a matter of fact.’

Jessica looked up at her; she
did
look tired. ‘Darling, what?’

‘Oh—’ this would be the moment, she thought, but I don’t know what she’d think and I haven’t decided myself, and
she
wouldn’t know what to do. ‘Oh! You know. Mama at her most tragic. Trying to fit in the new schoolroom with meals; the servants got cross because they couldn’t lay the table exactly when they wanted to. And I had a bit of a
thing
with Edward on the telephone this evening. I do so absolutely loathe rows on the telephone. The other person isn’t there, and they can ring off whenever they like—’ she stopped, because her voice was shaking. Jessica got up swiftly, and put an arm round her.