All Change: Cazalet Chronicles (28 page)

‘I wouldn’t dream of leaving while you’re having the tests.’

‘You said you have to cope with the builders. I’d much rather you go, and I’ll join you the minute I can. As a matter of fact, I’d rather be on my own. You know I can’t bear fussing.’ She could see that this hurt Rachel, but she persisted, and Rachel eventually agreed.

‘I wouldn’t fuss,’ she said sadly, but Sid knew that this was not true.

Somehow she got through that first awful day. She said she would like to lunch at a Turkish restaurant where they picked from a large tray of mezze, which suited them both since neither of them ate very much. They collected Sid’s prescription and then Sid suggested that they see an old French film showing at the cinema in Baker Street,
he jour se live,
with Jean Gabin. Sid fell asleep, but she had taken one of Dr Plunkett’s pills, and when she woke, her back was hardly hurting at all. It was Rachel who looked exhausted, so they went home in a taxi.

Hugh rang up that evening to say that he would go down to Home Place to see what was going on with the roof, and would Rachel like a lift? He called for her the next morning.

She saw them off, promised to ring when she had her date for the hospital and watched them drive away before she shut the front door.

She was alone at last. She could think about her horrible future – whatever there might be of it – because she sensed that Dr Plunkett had known that she was almost certainly going to die. And that would mean leaving Rachel alone and grieving.

And before she died there would be awful things to endure: radiotherapy, chemotherapy, operations that would possibly only halt the disease rather than cure it. Why on earth hadn’t she been to a doctor earlier? Because she had always been afraid of what they might say. Her mother had died of cancer; so had Hugh’s first wife, Sybil. Alone now, she could admit to being terrified of severe pain. She could admit to being a fearful coward. With no Rachel present to deceive she could think of these last months, when she had been afraid that something was seriously wrong and had used what energy she possessed to conceal her wretchedness from Rachel. It had not been very difficult: Rachel suffered chronically from a painful back herself, and while she diligently applied her remedies for both of them – rubbing with arnica, stretching exercises, hot-water bottles – she had been tender and sympathetic, but not alarmed. They had been so happy. After years of secrecy and frustration they had finally been able to live more or less together, even with the Duchy alive. Rachel always said that her mother’s extreme innocence meant that she had just accepted Sid as Rachel’s best friend, but Sid had sometimes thought that the Duchy knew more about them and wisely kept her perception to herself. ‘Am I to die? When we have been so happy together!’ Charlotte Brontë’s last pathetic cry to her husband had brought tears to her eyes; now, recalling it, she broke down and sobbed – stumbling upstairs to their bedroom to cast herself upon her and Rachel’s bed. The sheets still held the Rachel scent of violets – the scent she had always worn after Sid had said she loved it so much.

She wept until she was dry of tears, mopping her face with the sheet, and then lay for a while, exhausted, but also curiously relieved – as though she had got rid of something that could not be borne.

She was woken by the telephone: it was Dr Plunkett’s secretary with an appointment for two days’ time. I have nearly two days to pull myself together, she thought. I must eat meals and rest and tidy up this shabby old house. I might even play my fiddle a bit – some unaccompanied Bach would be just the ticket. I must do things – any sensible thing I can think to do. And when Rachel rings I will sound light-hearted and casual. It would be pointless to tell her anything until I know the worst.

LOUISE AND JOSEPH

‘Are you free on Saturday morning? I want you to help me with my Christmas shopping.’

Joseph hardly ever spent a weekend away from the beautiful house he had recently bought in Berkshire. She knew what the house looked like because, just after he had bought it, he had taken her there one late-summer evening. It was a small Georgian mansion overlooking the river, with four reception rooms, six bedrooms on the first floor, attics above, and a huge basement with a Victorian kitchen, wine cellars, larders, a pantry and other anonymous quarters. It also had several cottages, a walled garden, a rock garden and quite a lot of land, and could be approached by two long, winding drives. He had shown her all over it: ‘Completely unspoiled,’ he had said. ‘The whole thing was only eight thousand.’ It clearly excited him. She sincerely thought it was beautiful and said so. She also thought, rather sadly, that this was the only time she would see it; she would only be able to imagine his wonderful weekends spent there.

So when he asked her to go shopping with him, she agreed at once. She was enough in love with him to feel that any time spent with him was better than being apart.

‘We’re going to Cameo Corner first,’ he said, when he had picked her up in his Bristol. ‘Do you know it?’

She did indeed. She had, in her more affluent times, bought earrings there, and Mosha Ovid would lend her amazing necklaces when she’d gone to grand dinner parties with Michael. She was particularly fond of Georgian paste, of which Ovid had a large collection.

Joseph clearly liked it, too, and picked out a necklace of peacock blue, large, simple stones set on a chain. ‘Do you approve?’ he asked.

What a wonderful present, she thought. I should want to wear it all the time.

‘We’ll have it,’ he said. ‘Have you a box for it?’ They had.

‘Now, which is the best material shop?’

‘Jacqmar,’ she said.

There he chose the most expensive green satin embroidered in gold and green sequins. ‘How many yards for a long dress?’

The assistant told him. ‘I’ll take it. What do you think of my choice?’

‘It’s awfully grand – you know, for going to the opera.’

‘Yes, I thought that. Glyndebourne, that sort of thing. Now we’ll have some lunch.’

When they were back in the car, he said, ‘That’s Penelope sorted. You’ve been a great help.’

She could not think of anything to say. She knew that Penelope was his wife, hardly ever mentioned but always there. She wanted to cry. But pride forbade it, and she latched onto a gust of rage that he should have made her feel greedy and acquisitive, had probably been teasing her – not mentioning Penelope all morning. I suppose he feels guilty about her, and the presents are to make him feel better.

He took her to Bentley’s for lunch and ordered oysters and champagne, followed by poached turbot, but she couldn’t get far beyond the oysters.

‘How’s your nice father getting on with his intransigent brother?’

‘I have no idea. I haven’t seen him since that evening. I could find out, if you like.’

‘It might be worth telling him once more that time is running out. The business is trading at a loss now, and if that goes on it may be too late to sell.’

‘How do you know about trading at a loss?’

‘Oh, there are ways of finding out that sort of thing. Do you not want your fish?’

‘I’m full of oysters. I can’t eat any more.’

‘Right. I’ll take you home.’

‘Are you going to stay with me?’

‘Darling, I can’t. Penelope is in London this weekend. Togetherness begins at six.’

She said nothing. She felt confounded by his indifference to her feelings, and humiliated by her position. She was a mistress, ‘the other woman’, and she had either to stop caring about him, or put up with being a spare-time person, forced into fitting in with any casual plans he had for her.

‘Thank you for lunch,’ she said, as she got out of the car, and practically ran down the dark passage that smelt always of the grocer’s darker practices. The shop was on the ground floor, and the basement was where they plucked and dressed birds. Usually she hardly noticed the odour of singed feathers, decaying innards and overripe bacon, but today she hated the squalor. It was why the flat was cheap, and cheap was what she could afford. Perhaps Stella would be in: she would have a long talk with her about Joseph, and take comfort in her sardonic affection. They’d had these talks before. ‘He’s taking you in,’ Stella would say. ‘You want him to do that, though, don’t you?’

But Stella had left a note outside her room that said: ‘Have migraine. In bed. See you later.’

So there was nothing for it but to lie on her own bed, overcome by unhappiness and champagne, have a good cry and fall asleep.

HUGH AND JEMIMA

‘I’ve been thinking.’

It was after supper, which they had eaten alone as the boys were still at boarding school, and Laura was – at last – asleep. Jemima had made a chicken pie, which Hugh particularly liked, and they were now finishing their bottle of claret with cheese and celery. Outside it was raw and raining, but the kitchen, with the new yellow velvet curtains that Jemima had made, felt cosy from the Aga’s warmth.

She knew what he was going to say, because Polly had confided in her, but she waited to hear it from him. ‘Tell me,’ she said.

‘Polly was talking to me about Edward and Diana, and I think it would be a good thing to ask them to dinner. How do you feel?’

She pretended to consider for a moment. ‘I think it would be an excellent idea.’

‘Good. Do you think we should take them out, or should we dine here?’

‘Oh, much better to have them here.’

‘I do love your decisiveness, sweetheart. Finally, should we ask some other people?’

‘Oh, no! The whole point of the evening is for us to get to know Diana.’ Jemima did not add, ‘And for you and Edward to be better friends,’ but that was really the point. Being nice to Diana was simply a first step. And Hugh had been looking so drained and unhappy of late that she had begun to worry about him.

‘You ask him, darling. I think any Saturday would be good.’

‘Hugh and Jemima have asked us to dinner, darling.’ He had waited until their second Martini had been drunk -was nervous about it. When he thought of it, the awful evening with Rachel and Sid still made him feel angry, ashamed of Diana’s behaviour and, worse, his failure to tell her so. The truth was that he had been really shocked, seeing her in a new and most unwelcome light, but he had taken refuge – as cowardly people will do – in sulking and refusing to make love to her after Rachel and Sid had left. This had worked, up to a point. The next evening she had been full of excuses – she had tried so hard with the food and they had spurned all of it; Sid had been rude to her in her own house, and Rachel had spent nearly all the evening talking to him, until, she -Diana – had simply felt like a servant.

Seeing her blue eyes – they were more like dark hyacinths than bluebells - fill with tears was too much for him; he didn’t want to argue any more, and she had apologised, so it had been a kind of a victory. He finished by saying, ‘All I ask is that you’ll be on your best behaviour with Hugh and Jem.’

‘My best,’ she promised, dabbing her eyes with his large silk handkerchief.

And so it was that the following Saturday he picked her up from the Lansdowne Club, which she used on her shopping expeditions to London, where she had changed into the little midnight-blue velvet that he had agreed she should wear, with the amethyst necklace he had given her years ago before they were married.