All Change: Cazalet Chronicles (48 page)

‘Oh, darling, of course it is, and you do not deserve it. You of all people.’

‘Oh, no. Think if it was any of you with children and everything. And I do deserve it. I’ve never done a hand’s turn in my life.’ She fumbled for the handkerchief that she kept – as the Duchy had – tucked into her wristwatch band.

‘That is completely untrue. You looked after our parents wonderfully, you ran your charity, the Babies’ Hotel, you made this house a place where the whole family loved to come.’

At dinner – parsnip soup and shepherd’s pie, with salsify and spinach, then a damson tart – there was a tacit agreement not to talk about the situation; instead they fell back on less painful subjects. Jemima remarked that President de Gaulle’s – she thought rather peevish -question as to how one could govern a country that produced two hundred and sixty-five cheeses was both silly and irrelevant.

‘I’m sure he simply said that to make people think he had a sense of humour,’ Hugh retorted, and Rachel wondered aloud how they could need so many cheeses. Anyway,
‘Vive la difference’
was a much better remark.

‘Think how awful it must be,’ Jemima said, ‘to have people, newspaper people especially, hanging about waiting for you to produce some pearl of wisdom.’

‘I agree with that,’ Hugh said. ‘Dropping cultured pearls before real swine.’ At least Rachel’s listening, he thought, but she’s hardly eaten a thing.

‘Where did you get that phrase from?’

He thought for a moment. ‘From Rupe, when he was teaching at that boarding school.’

And then they fell back on Laura stories. Jemima told the first. ‘She came to me one day and asked why Hugh had said he was going to a board meeting. Why? To meet the other board members. She burst out laughing. “But, Dad, if you’re bored, meeting a whole lot of other bored people, won’t make it any better. You’ll simply be more bored than ever.” She got quite sulky when Hugh tried to explain to her.’ Rachel smiled and murmured that children could be quite killing sometimes.

They had their coffee in the morning room, where it was decided that both Sid’s house and Home Place must be valued immediately. Jemima offered to arrange the one in London, and Hugh said he would go to the estate agents in Battle – he knew one of them slightly as they had played golf together at Rye.

‘I don’t want the servants to know,’ Rachel said quietly.

They were all very tired by now, and longing not to have to talk about any of it any more. Hugh and Jemima each gave Rachel a hug, which she received with patient courtesy. She had gone beyond their reach.

TEDDY AND SABRINA

‘I’m afraid you’re not enjoying yourself.’

‘Not exactly enjoying, but it is quite interesting.’ They had been left alone, at last, in ‘the library’, a room whose walls were lined with leather-bound sets of books that showed no signs of ever having been read, with leather armchairs and an immense desk on which were stacked copies of
Horse and Hound
and
Vogue
.

Everything in the mock-Georgian house was like that. The Frankensteins had said that early bed was necessary: they were going hunting in the morning. At dinner he had been subject to cross-examination by Sabrina’s mother whom he had discovered was called Pearl. Her father was Reggie. ‘Do you hunt, Mr Cazalet?’ When he said that he didn’t ride, Pearl seemed astonished. ‘Did your family not keep horses?’

He said that his grandfather had, and one of his aunts had ridden, but the rest of the family hadn’t been interested. ‘My father preferred shooting.’

‘Ah, yes, shooting,’ Reggie had said, with some relief. ‘Might do a bit of that tomorrow.’

Pearl persevered. What did his father do for a living? And what did he do? She supposed that he had met Sabrina during the Season? No? ‘We met at a party, Mummy, and as it was during the Season we met then.’

‘I fail to see, m’dear, that it matters
how
they met. They met.’

They had finished their dressed crab and were being served roast partridge; he was extremely hungry and didn’t let the questioning interfere with the delicious food. His examiner didn’t do so well, he noticed. She was very small and bony, and wore half a dozen gold bracelets, some with charms attached, that slid noisily up and down her left arm whenever she raised her fork to eat. But when she got it near her mouth, she thought of something else to ask him and the fork remained suspended in the air, and often the food dripped off it. Sabrina looked from the parent who was speaking to the person replying as though she was at a tennis match. She hardly spoke a word during the meal, which ended with chocolate mousse, followed by angels on horseback. The moment everything had been consumed, Pearl got to her feet and motioned Sabrina to follow her. Teddy got to his feet, too, but she cried, ‘No, no, Mr Cazalet, you may not join the ladies yet!’

Teddy was about to retort that he had been taught to stand whenever ladies got up to leave a room, but then he saw that Reggie had not moved, was engaged upon pouring port, and decided to say nothing. He did not wish to embarrass his host.

As it turned out, this proved to be quite a difficult thing to do. Reggie handed him a glass, and belched loudly. ‘Well, that’s better out than in. Now. Let’s see if you know what this is.’

‘It’s port. Isn’t it?’

‘Of course it’s port. Try it.’

Teddy sipped. It made him think of very dark red velvet and was intoxicatingly good. He said as much, but Reggie retorted, ‘Ah! But that’s not good enough, young man. Whose port?’

‘Cockburn?’ he hazarded.

‘Not bad. You’re right there. But what year?’

Teddy thought furiously. ‘’Twenty-nine?’

‘Got you! It’s ’twenty-seven. Although, I’ll grant you, ’twenty-nine’s not a bad choice.’ He took a huge swig. ‘My opinion of you has gone up,’ he said, and at once began an attack of hiccups.

Teddy offered water, but he waved it away. ‘Never touch the stuff.’ He leaned over, so close to Teddy that he could see the riot of hairs in his nostrils.

‘Give me a good thump on the back.’ Teddy did. ‘Harder!’ He did it again. ‘That’s better.’ He emptied his glass. ‘The port is with you.’ It wasn’t, but Teddy did an imaginary circle of the table and the decanter ended up two inches from where it had started.

‘You pour out.’ He had the kind of very bushy eyebrows that were designed either for insensate rage or overwhelming benevolence. ‘I’m coming to think quite well of you. Cockburn, and then only two years off. Drink up, boy.’ He took another large swig, which meant that he got a bit further away, which was good, because his breath was hideous. There had been three wines at dinner and Teddy began to feel that he was very nearly drunk. He suggested that perhaps they should join the others, but Reggie hadn’t finished with him.

‘I suppose you’ve come down here because you want to marry my daughter.’

‘Yes, I have. I do.’

‘Thought so. I’m never wrong. Well, young feller, you’ll have a job pulling that off. I’m a broad-minded sort of chap, and provided you’ve got a good job, with good prospects, and can afford to keep her in the circumstances to which she’s accustomed I might be open to some agreement. No – I’m by no means the nigger in the woodpile. It’s the missus. It’s Pearl. She’s set her heart on Sabrina marrying up. She keeps asking young Lord Ilchesterdown for weekends, but he’s so wet you could shoot snipe off him, and Sabrina hasn’t taken to him at all.’

‘That’s because she’s in love with me.’

Reggie, who had poured himself a glass unashamedly full to the brim, waved this assertion aside. ‘She’s threatened to cut her allowance – sanctions, you see. She won’t manage long without it.’ He now drank the contents of his glass at one go.

‘She’s trying to get a job,’ Teddy said. ‘She’s done one or two.’

‘Hasn’t kept them, though, has she?’

‘I don’t think she’s found the right one yet.’

‘She’s not made for work, boy. And she’s too young to be married without our consent.’ He reached for the decanter again, and poured its remains rather sloppily into his glass. ‘And that’s not all,’ he said thickly. ‘A little bird’s told me that all is not tickety-boo with your family’s firm. I notice you haven’t mentioned that.’

‘I haven’t, because it’s news to me. Who told you?’

Reggie laid one finger against the side of his nose. ‘Ah! That would be telling.’ He took another gulp. ‘If I want to find anything out, I can usually find the right person to tell me. Usually.’ He finished his drink. ‘Always. I’m very ’fluenshall man – the Shitty, politics, you name it.’ But Teddy didn’t have a chance to do that because, with another immense belch, Reggie collapsed, his head and arms spread upon the table.

Teddy looked at him with dismay. He shook Reggie’s shoulder tentatively, but the only response was a steady, stertorous snore. After a minute or two, he left the room and escaped to the library, where he discovered Mrs F, as he privately called her, embroidering a piece of canvas that had two Christmas trees and a gnome on it. Sabrina was biting her nails.

‘Mummy, I’ve told you, I can’t bear him—’ They both stopped when they saw him.

‘I’m afraid he’s passed out. Gone to sleep,’ Teddy added, to make it sound better.

‘Sabrina, ring the bell for George.’

When George arrived he was told to get another servant and put the master to bed. ‘I simply cannot imagine why you let him drink so much.’

‘
You
can’t stop him so I don’t see why you should blame Teddy.’

Teddy, who was feeling slightly dizzy, made for a chair and collapsed into it. He felt grateful to Sabrina for standing up for him.

Pearl had got to her feet: she said she was going to bed and that Sabrina should go up, too, as she would be called at six. Then she left the room.

‘I expect you can see now why I wasn’t keen on you meeting the Frankensteins. They really are simply the end, aren’t they? No wonder Daddy drinks so much. I would if I was married to Pearl.’

‘I’m afraid she doesn’t like me.’

‘Well, she wouldn’t, would she? You haven’t got a title and you’re not in line for one.’

She looked so sad when she said this that Teddy got up to put an arm round her. ‘As long as you like me, I don’t care what she thinks.’

‘I do like you, awfully.’ She put her face up to him so that he could kiss her a little.

‘Darling, why don’t you skip hunting tomorrow and stay here with me?’

‘I can’t do that! It’s all been arranged. Mummy would be absolutely furious!’ She was silent for a moment while she extricated herself from his arms. ‘Anyway, I love hunting – and riding generally. It’s the only thing I like about being here. I’ll be back about four thirty – we’ll go for a lovely walk in the park.’

‘What park?’ Teddy asked petulantly. A stupid question because it really didn’t matter – the point was that she was abandoning him. And the worst thing about it was that she didn’t seem to realise it or, even worse, seemed not to care. He wanted to be in bed, by himself, in the comforting dark, no more challenges to deal with. ‘I’m going to bed. And I think you should, too, if you’re getting up at six.’

His bed had been turned down, his pyjamas laid out elaborately as if to remind him of what shape he was, and in the adjoining bathroom his toothbrush was already decorated with paste. The bedside table had a small lamp and a carafe of water topped with a tumbler. His mouth felt like hot fitted carpet, so he drank two glasses, got into bed and turned off the light.

In the dark, he struggled for a while with images from the evening, like stills from a film, flickering across his brain: preposterous Reggie, with all his contacts and money, who had seemed to let his vulgarity off its leash the moment the women had left the dining room, blustering, hectoring, patronising. In spite of all that, he had felt sorry for the old man, whose ghastly wife had dragged him down to such depths of gentility that, refusing to sink, he was ill-equipped to swim. What he had said about the family firm surfaced and disturbed him. Surely Uncle Hugh would have said something about it last Thursday, but he had only repeated that Teddy might very soon be needed in London. On the other hand, he did not think that Reggie had been bluffing. Then there was Sabrina, who had shown most clearly that she was both spoiled and selfish. It was strange that she could be so rude to her mother and also be so terrified of her. One might become mildly bored with one’s parents as one got older – a flash of his mother sitting in her gloomy little house came to him, with the customary shot of guilt that he didn’t make enough effort to see her – but, then, since he had moved to the country, he hardly saw his father at all, which he missed. He had loved to go shooting with Dad, to play squash and tennis with him, to have festive meals at the Thames Yacht Club; none of that had happened for a long time now, largely, of course, because of his being moved to bloody Southampton. He would make a point of seeing Dad and telling him that he wasn’t up to managing there: selling was his strong point, administration was not. This resolution cheered him – but then he thought of the day and, worse, the evening ahead.