All Change: Cazalet Chronicles (15 page)

‘I’m really too old for this sort of thing.’ Juliet was sitting upright in bed, trying to look bored at the prospect of a stocking.

‘Are you? Well, I love them. Haven’t had one for ages.’ Louise was also sitting up and pulled her stocking towards her. She was wearing a white nightdress trimmed with blue chiffon. She looked like a film star, Juliet thought, with her long, golden hair streaming over her shoulders.

Juliet, who had insisted on pyjamas because her best friend wore them, now wished she had opted for a nightdress, too. But even that wouldn’t have changed her hair from reddish brown to golden. Her breasts, she could see, were larger than Louise’s: she wondered whether they were too large.

Louise was well into her stocking: tablets of Morny soap, a pretty silk scarf, a red leather pocket diary, a clutch of coloured linen handkerchiefs, a Mason Pearson hairbrush and a tube of hand cream had so far come to light.

‘Come on, Jules. If you don’t open your stocking, I will.’

Enough of adult indifference. She had been waiting to be told and, actually, she was longing to start. The beginning was not promising. ‘Pond’s Cold Cream! A pot of vanishing cream! And a tablet of boring old soap. Honestly! I’m not a baby!’

‘You’re bound to get some duds. I sort mine into two piles – good and no good.’

Things got better. A long, narrow box filled with neatly coiled silk-velvet hair ribbons in lovely unusual colours. A marcasite brooch in the shape of a butterfly.

‘Aunt Zoë’s got very good taste,’ Louise said. ‘Which is more than can be said of my mother.’

‘Has she got bad taste?’ Juliet was interested: she was not at all sure what bad taste actually was.

‘She hasn’t got any taste at all. You know, cream paint everywhere and wood-veneer pictures on the wall – that sort of thing.’ She was remembering Lansdowne Road. She hadn’t minded any of that at the time, but there had been other things . . . ‘Awful clothes. She used to make me wear bottle-green silk when I was eight and everyone else had pink and blue taffeta. And bronze stockings.’

‘Goodness! Poor you.’ She was longing to ask Louise all sorts of questions about her life, which, from what she had been told, was both tragic and exciting. She had been married (she remembered that); she had had a baby that lived with its father and stepmother. She had been divorced and now lived in a rackety flat with her best friend. She was a clothes model, which, next to being a film star, was the height of glamour – Juliet had boasted about it at school. Sharing a room with her was simply wonderful, but she had been told not to bother her with questions so she tried not to ask too many. ‘What shall we do with the no-good piles?’

‘Wrap them up and give them to the au pair girls. And perhaps the soaps to Mrs Tonbridge and Eileen.’

‘That’s a wizard idea.’

They dressed, and Louise very kindly tied back Juliet’s hair with one of her Christmas velvet ribbons.

NEVILLE AND SIMON

Neville had very nearly not gone down to Sussex at all. Having escaped Christmas Day on the grounds of work, he could easily have said that he had to work on Boxing Day as well. It was Simon who had stopped him.

‘You said that if I worked on Christmas Day you’d give me a lift to Home Place today.’

‘What’s to stop you going by train like other people?’

‘I don’t have any money.’

‘What happened to the bonus I gave you?’

‘I spent it on presents. It wasn’t nearly enough. Ten pounds! Anyway, you promised. And your dad will be very sad if you don’t go. So will Clary . . . Think of the lovely free meals,’ he urged, a moment later. ‘There’s always smoked salmon on Boxing Day, and fried Christmas pudding.’

Neville thought for a moment. ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘To please you.’

Simon, who knew that Neville never did anything to please anyone but himself, avoided pointing this out. They were going; that was the thing.

It had turned much colder, with fitful sun, and when they got to Sevenoaks, it had begun to rain. By the time they reached Home Place there was a steady downpour. Most of the children were engrossed in an enormous jigsaw puzzle laid out on the hall floor. ‘It’s the Changing of the Guard. Awfully difficult, all red coats and black horses and masses of sky. Hello, Simon and Neville.’

‘I’m Uncle Neville to you. And to you, Harriet.’

‘Hello, then, Uncle Neville.’ She said it in a silly singsong voice, and the others joined in.

Just then Eileen, who had been picking her way round the puzzle on her journeys from kitchen to dining room, announced to the people in the drawing room that lunch was ready, and they filed out, locking the door behind them. They seemed both pleased and surprised to see Simon and Neville. ‘What about our presents?’ Simon said, after he had been kissed a good many times.

‘Presents are always in the drawing room.’

‘Well, I want to put mine there.’

‘I don’t need to do that because everything I’ve bought is for everyone. I thought it would be a good idea.’

Simon knew that Neville hadn’t bought anything: he’d simply wrapped all the things that rich clients had given him in newspaper – a side of smoked salmon, two boxes of extremely expensive chocolates, a bottle of champagne and another of apricot brandy, toilet waters from Floris and Penhaligon, a Smythson diary, a python-upholstered travelling clock and, finally, no fewer than six ties from Florence – he never wore a tie. All those expensive presents without his spending a penny, Simon thought enviously, as his own wretched contributions flitted through his mind: socks for Dad, a very small chiffon scarf for Jemima, a Mars Bar for Laura (then he had bought the same for each of the children), a little bottle that said ‘lavender water’ on the label but smelt of something quite different for Aunt Rachel . . . All of these things had come from Woolworths, and at that point his money had run out. Well, he would drown all these discomforts with cold turkey and all the delicious things that went with it. And when it got to New Year resolutions he would resolve to get frightfully rich and next year he would give everyone presents like fur coats and motor-cars, even the odd aeroplane or two, and they would all be amazed and he would be everyone’s favourite person. He went into lunch feeling quite cheerful. It was lovely knowing exactly how everything was going to turn out when they were reassuring things like a Christmas-time feast.

It would be the same old things – like getting the day-old drumstick of the turkey and trying to hide the chestnut stuffing and there not being enough bread sauce and the children all talking about their wretched presents and Laura crying because her Red Indian feather headdress fell into her plate (last year it had been a gold-paper crown with pretend jewels) – all that old hat.

But it wasn’t like that at all, not in the least, because on looking up from his plate, Neville saw opposite him -or, rather, he was struck by – a vision of such perfection, of such amazing beauty, that for an unknown amount of time he was paralysed; it was like being hit or stabbed to the centre of his heart.

After the unknown amount of time, he realised he hadn’t been breathing, and then became anxious that some of the others, at least, would have noticed what had happened to him. The fog, the mist, that had shrouded them, sitting each side of her, now cleared and he could see Simon and one of the twins. He looked round the table, but everyone was busy eating and talking. The only person he didn’t feel sure about was Sid, who at one moment (was it when he wasn’t breathing?) caught his eye across the table and then smiled – a small smile, as though they shared a secret.

He had always been secretive. All his life he would never forget the black despair that had taken hold of him when his father had been a virtual prisoner in France and had sent a message to Clary and not to him. From that time, he had cultivated an indifference coupled with a desire to shock. He had never known his mother, as she had died giving birth to him, and really he hadn’t missed her because he had had Ellen, his nanny, and he had quickly discovered that being motherless made people want to be kind to him. After school, he had refused to go to university, choosing boring but well-paid jobs in order to buy whatever clothes he liked. He had also bought a camera, quite a modest affair, and begun taking photographs. He had instantly found that he enjoyed that, and talked his way into employment at a magazine by pretending he had worked in the States. His expensive clothes and his easy assurance, coupled with an entirely misleading air of modesty, had got him to the point at which he could choose what work he would do. He was reliable, creative and altogether professional, never out of his depth, and skilled, when necessary, at skating over thin ice.
Country Life
was running a series on ‘How The Other Half Lives’, which he was due to start in the New Year; he was looking forward to photographing the castles and grand houses that would doubtless come his way.

His social life was as full as he cared to make it. Girls were almost always attracted to him; sometimes men were, too. He had experimented with both, but had not got on with either. He hadn’t enjoyed the sex and had nothing to say about it. It was just something he felt he didn’t need.

And suddenly – out of the blue – here was Juliet. It must have been at least a year since he had seen her, and during that time she had grown from being just another gangly, round-faced schoolgirl, with unfortunate spots, he remembered, and her hair in tight pigtails, to someone altogether rich and strange: her hair was now styled so that its dark brown with reddish lights could be seen, drawn back and tied with a peacock velvet ribbon that showed her delicate ears; her face was transformed, with high cheekbones, her skin flawless, pale with a hint of rose, her long narrow eyes still water green. He used to think her eyes were her one good feature.

At this moment of his reverie, she leaned across the table and smiled at him.

The thought occurred to him then that if one was in love one could not be anything else. This frightened him. He smiled hastily back – the sort of casual smile he would give a bus conductor or a waiter when they provided him with a ticket or a menu . . .

Best to concentrate on food, although he discovered that he was not in the least hungry. Instead he heard fragments of the many conversations round the table . . . ‘Well, if the Astronomer Royal says the idea of space travel is bilge, it probably is.’ Almost certainly Uncle Hugh.

‘But we’ve planned to go into space. We’ve planned to go to the moon.’ Tom and Henry.

‘It’ll be frightfully cold and you won’t know a soul there.’ Archie.

She
wore a turquoise heart on a gold chain round her slender neck . . .

‘And I can’t help feeling very sorry for her.’ Aunt Rachel.

‘Who, darling?’

‘Princess Margaret.’

Her
dress was very dark green velvet, the bodice cut with a low square, the sleeves tight and finishing just below her elbows . . .

‘Please don’t say anything.’ It was Georgie, who was sitting next to him. Rivers had escaped from his pocket and was trying to climb onto him, his nose twitching at the delightful smells. Neville instantly leaned over him, and wiped his face with his napkin, which shrouded Rivers long enough for Georgie to cram him back.

‘That’s better, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, thank you, Uncle Neville.’ He had picked a piece of turkey off his plate and thrust it into his pocket. They exchanged glances – bland with conspiracy.

He wondered whether she had noticed, and thought that she had, since she smiled at him again.

The twins were told to collect the plates and put them on the sideboard, and Eileen appeared with the pudding plates.

He managed to eat his pudding at the same time as looking at her – unobtrusively, he thought, until his father, from across the table, asked him if he was all right. This made other people look at him, so he said he was fine, if a little drunk – on food, he added quickly. ‘You should see what Simon and I live on when we’re working. Tell them, Simon.’

‘Baked beans, the odd pork pie, rather old eggs and spongy bread. Oh, and HP sauce on pretty well everything.’

But if Simon expected sympathy for this, he was mistaken.

‘Nearly all my favourite foods,’ Harriet said. ‘But we hardly ever have them.’

‘Are the old eggs Chinese?’ Tom asked. ‘Because Henry read in a book that they wait a hundred years until they’re pitch black.’ Henry did most of the reading for Tom and himself. Tom did the remembering. ‘Because that would mean unless you lived to be a hundred and one, you’d never eat your own eggs. So your eggs can’t be very old.’

‘What’s HP? I’ve never had it. Is it something wicked if it doesn’t have a proper name?’

‘It’s a sauce. You wouldn’t like it, darling.’

Laura turned to her mother. ‘Bet I would. You said I wouldn’t like black olives and I did. You don’t know all my likes at all.’

‘Time for crackers,’ Hugh announced.

And while people were crossing their arms to take their own and a neighbour’s cracker, Neville noticed that Georgie nipped some almonds from a dish on the table, thrust them down into his pocket and shoved his napkin on top of them. ‘He might be frightened by the bangs,’ he muttered to Neville, ‘but he simply loves almonds.’