All Change: Cazalet Chronicles (55 page)

‘Well, yes, I do. She’s been very difficult of late, cross and snappy, and when I ask her what’s wrong she won’t answer.’

‘Perhaps she thinks you ought to know without her telling you.’

‘Well, I don’t.’

‘Oh, Joseph! She’s in love with you and naturally that means she wishes she could spend Christmas with you. And last year you took her shopping for presents, kept asking her whether each was a good choice, and then it turned out that they were all presents for your wife!’

‘I admit that was a bit of a mistake.’

‘You didn’t give her anything!’

‘I took her to Paris for a weekend. That was her Christmas present.’

‘You know perfectly well that that’s not true. You take her to Paris, or wherever, when you have business there.’

He didn’t reply. Stella turned back to the oven. ‘You’re never going to marry her, are you?’

‘I am married. I’ve never said I would marry her.’

‘And that lets you off the hook, doesn’t it? I bet you’ve never told her that you can’t or won’t marry her.’

He did not like women in a ‘no-nonsense’ mood, and he was tired of her bets. But she went on: ‘Louise is thirty-five. When she’s about forty, chances are that you’ll drop her for someone younger, and what happens to her then?’

Stella thought about these things because – let’s face it – she was plain, heavy glasses, breasts not bad, but bum far too large: no one was going to be crazy about her. She’d probably marry the first man who asked her, if anyone ever did. Feeling sorry for herself made things easier. More gently, Joseph said, ‘Do you think that all women want to be married, then?’

‘I think that most women want children and, clearly, marriage is an obvious route to that end.’ She had finished rolling the second batch of snaps, and now pulled off her apron and sat at the kitchen table opposite him.

He said, ‘She has been married and had a child whom she abandoned.’

‘She didn’t know about love until Hugo—’

‘Who’s Hugo?’ he interrupted sharply.

‘Sorry, I thought she would have told you. Hugo was someone she fell in love with during the war. He was killed. He wrote her a letter before he died, but they never let her have it. Her husband and her mother-in-law. Between them, they nearly broke her heart.’

He offered her a cigarette and lit one for both of them. ‘I didn’t know,’ he said.

‘I assumed you did. Please don’t tell her I told you.’

‘I won’t,’ he reassured her gently. Having a secret with her softened things between them.

‘What I’ve been trying to say is, please don’t entirely break her heart.’

‘So – what do you think I should do?’

‘I think you should leave her.’

There was a pause. Then she added, ‘Of course, I see that that would be hard on her, but not as hard as spinning it out until she becomes a cast-off mistress.’

‘And what about me?’ he asked, with some bitterness. ‘What do you think I would feel? Having to lie to her about not wanting her, when I do?’

‘I think you will have a hard time. You could lie to her, of course, tell her that there’s someone else, or your wife has found out. But it might be better to tell her the truth. The truth would be cleaner.’ Her calm clearheadedness both impressed and frightened him.

‘Only don’t tell her before Christmas,’ she said. ‘They’re having a big family do and she wouldn’t be able to cope.’

He got up to go. ‘By the way, I have got her a present this time.’ He pulled a small square box out of his pocket. ‘Do you think she’ll like this?’

It was a necklace of large green stones set at intervals in a delicate gold chain. ‘It’s eighteenth-century paste,’ he said; ‘I know she likes that sort of thing. There’s a card in the box. I wondered whether you could possibly wrap it up for me.’

‘I possibly could,’ she said. He could be the most charming man.

HUGH’S FAMILY

‘Sorry we’re late, darling.’

‘We’ve had a wonderful, lovely morning. I got three presents, Mummy, but I need to put Georgie’s in the sink if we’re going to have lunch immediately.’

Henry and Tom had heard them come in, and now clattered down the stairs and into the dining room, where the table was raggedly laid.

‘What
is
for lunch?’ one of them asked.

‘Steak and kidney pudding,’ Jemima replied, as she lifted the napkin-topped bowl from the saucepan.

‘Goody goody gumdrops! One of our best things.’

‘It’s not gumdrops for me at all. I loathe kidney. Loathe it,’ Laura repeated, with relish.

Hugh proceeded to cut wedges from the bowl using a spoon to add the gravy. Jemima was frying thin strips of cabbage.

‘Mum! You know we don’t need green food. It isn’t proper food for a start, and we don’t actually like it.’

‘I loathe it.’

‘That’s enough! All of you. Mummy’s made you a lovely lunch and all you do is criticise her. Come to that, I loathe all three of you, but here I am, having lunch with you without complaining.’

‘But you don’t loathe the boys as much as me, do you?’

‘Of course not. You’re easily the most loathsome. This cabbage is delicious, Jem. What have you done to it?’

‘Fried it with butter and a spot of Marmite.’

When he was with the family, Hugh could put all his business troubles out of his mind; shopping with Laura had been physically exhausting, but he had loved the whole morning, and to come home to his family for lunch was a rare treat.

Laura picked out her kidneys and presented them to the twins, who also had second helpings.

‘What’s for pudding?’ they asked, as the last morsels of the first course disappeared.

‘Treacle tart.’

This was approved of by all. Immediately it had been eaten, the twins leaped from the table saying that they were going skating at the rink in Queensway. Laura said at once that she wanted to go, too, but Hugh pointed out to her that she must plant her aquarium. ‘Oh, yes, I have to. I’m sorry I can’t come with you.’

‘We’re sorry, too,’ they replied, but it was only politeness: having Laura simply meant that they could have no fun at all, as she kept falling down, trying to learn her edges and do her figures-of-eight, crying and wanting sweets to cheer her up.

Hugh helped Jemima with the washing-up while Laura waited impatiently to get on with her planting.

‘I meant for those wicked boys to do the washing-up,’ Jemima said. ‘I’ll do the fish tank with Laura, and you put your feet up for a bit, darling. The bed’s warm – I put on the blanket just before you came back.’

She thinks of everything, Hugh thought gratefully, as he divested himself of jacket, tie, shoes and trousers. He had been afraid that all his miserable anxieties would loom, when he was alone, the chief one being what to do about Rachel. But the moment that thought occurred to him he remembered the Brig’s study – untouched since his death. It might contain some valuable objects that could be sold to build up some capital for her. When probate had been declared on the Brig’s estate, they had not taken more than a cursory look at the study, and although he knew that Edward had quietly removed the famous stamp collection there might still be other things. He fell - quite suddenly – into a dreamless sleep.

Jemima had a very different afternoon. She found, as she had so often found before, that it was perfectly possible to look after a lively and demanding child while continuing to worry about grown-up problems. Hugh would need to get something to do, but what? It was becoming more difficult to get any sort of job when you were over sixty. And, besides, his health was not good although he would never admit it. He had never worked for anybody else in his life – he had gone out to France in the Great War as an officer, and come back to be a director, and ultimately chairman, of the firm. A firm that had now gone bust.

‘Well, I do think you should ring Georgie.’

‘I want him to have a surprise.’

‘So you have said several times.’

‘Because I seriously do want it to be one.’

‘You’re not thinking of the poor goldfish at all. How would you like to be stuffed back in a polythene bag for a very long journey, taken out again for a few days and then stuffed back again for the journey to Georgie’s home?’

There was a long, thick silence while Laura battled with her nature. Virtue won. ‘It’s only because I don’t actually know whether goldfish get car sick.’

Jemima offered to do the telephoning.

‘Only don’t tell anyone what it is. Then at least it can be a surprise here and I can see him being surprised.’

It turned out that Archie was taking a load of stuff from their flat over to Rupert and Zoë; he would pick Laura up and bring her back.

Jemima helped her take half the water out of the fish tank and then balanced it carefully between Laura’s knees as she sat in the front of the car.

She saw them off quite thankfully; it would give her time to finish the packing. But as soon as they were gone, there were the twins back from skating, raging for tea.

‘You can have hot buttered toast and finish the ginger cake, but don’t, I implore you, eat anything else.’

‘She implores us.’ Henry turned to Tom.

‘It’s just hysteria. All right, Mum, we’ll only have what you say. What’s for supper?’

‘Cold ham, salad and baked potatoes. I’ve scrubbed them so you can put them in the oven for me now, before your tea.’

She went upstairs with some relief. There should be time to do practically everyone’s packing in peace. Hugh was still fast asleep.

TEDDY

‘I quite see that you have to go, but why can’t I come with you?’

‘I’ve told you, darling, it’s only family, and, anyway, there are so many of us there wouldn’t be room.’

‘I took you to see my family.’

‘That was different. And it wasn’t exactly a howling success, was it?’

‘How long will you be away?’

‘I don’t know. Four or five days, I should think.’

He pushed her hair away from her face. ‘Darling, do stop being difficult about it. You’ve got your family to go to. Don’t spoil our last evening together.’

‘What do you mean “our last evening”?’

‘Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. I have to be down for that.’

‘Oh,’ she said, in a very small voice. ‘I thought you meant for good.’

No, she didn’t. He had come to know all her tricks by now, and he didn’t like them. It wasn’t what she was feeling, it was what she wanted him to think she was feeling. It flashed through his mind that perhaps he would prefer it to be for good, but that was mad: he was in love with her, wasn’t he?

‘I’ll take you out for dinner.’

ARRIVALS

‘That’s all the flowers for the bedrooms – mostly berries, but the sprig of wintersweet in each vase will provide enough scent. If you take them up, I’ll start on the bedrooms.’

But the bedrooms were proving tricky. There were not enough of them for a start, but the children liked sharing. The snag was that she had forgotten how many children were now grown-up. She started to make a list.

Polly, who had not been here since her marriage, should have Hugh’s old room. And presumably Spencer would be with them in the old cot that had been kept for babies. Zoë and Rupert could have their usual room – the one with peacocks on the wallpaper. Hugh and Jemima could have Edward’s old room. Archie and Clary could have the Duchy’s room. Juliet and Louise could share the small room they’d had last year. The day nursery, which was large, could just about take Teddy, Simon, Henry and Tom. That would use up all the camp beds. Harriet, Bertie, Andrew and Polly’s twins could share the night nursery and she could put Polly’s nanny in the Brig’s old dressing room. That left Georgie and Laura. She’d had a surprising postcard that morning: ‘Plese arnt Rachel I want to sleep with Georgie, because I unnerstan him and I love him very MUCH. And I love Rivers. Love from Laura.’

She had left out Villy! And Roland. Well, he could go in with the other boys, but Villy must have a nice room. She had better have mine, she thought, and I will sleep in Sid’s. She had not been able to do this since Sid’s death, but now it was simply something that had to be faced, like so much else.

At five o’clock the house had been quiet, still, encased in the frost that had arrived with the dark. She had wandered restlessly through the rooms, drawing curtains, putting logs on the fires. But after a few minutes she’d heard a car and, wrapping a shawl round her, she went out to meet the first arrivals. It was Polly and her family. The three children scrambled out. ‘Eliza and Jane were both sick in the car, but I wasn’t,’ the boy declared. ‘I was definitely not sick at all.’