Casting Off (72 page)

‘There will be other people,’ he said.

‘That is what I knew you would say,’ she said.

‘Well, I have something to say to you that you won’t know—’ he began. He did not feel that the moment was right, but something drove him to say it.

But before he could get any further, she said, ‘There is something I have to say to you.’

He waited, but she was silent, and in the silence he began to feel his heart thudding.

‘I was going to ask you if you’d like a holiday in France,’ he said desperately: a cowardly half-measure, but he was frightened now.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t, I’m afraid.’

She must have fallen in love, he thought as he scanned her hands (clean) nails (unbitten) hair (shining with care). God! She had all the appearance – glowing, charming – of a girl who has just found the right man . . .

‘Clary, you must tell me – however difficult, you’ve bloody well got to tell me—’

‘ALL RIGHT!’ she cried, so loudly that he could see it even shocked her. She had been staring at the ground, now she looked up and straight at him.

‘You remember what happened with Polly – ages ago?’

He didn’t know what she meant.

He saw her swallow and she began to be very pale.

‘I can’t go to France with you, and I can’t go on living like we have. It’s something I found out when you went away. I had no idea of it before, but now I know.’

‘Darling, do try to tell me what the hell you are talking about.’

‘If you laugh at me, I shall really want to kill you,’ she said, in much more the old Clary way. ‘I found out that I feel like Polly used to – about you. To begin with I didn’t believe myself, because I so much wanted it not to be true. But it is. It truthfully entirely is.’ She sniffed and one very large tear shot out of an eye. ‘I couldn’t manage weekends with you being a sort of uncle or schoolmaster or whatever. It’s—’ Her eyes were full of tears now. ‘It’s really most unfortunate. For me, anyway. When I saw you at the wedding I sort of got an electric shock. You see?’

For a second he thought he was going to laugh – with an hysterical relief. Instead, he took her hands in his and when he could manage to speak said, ‘What an extraordinary coincidence. Because that is exactly what I was going to say to you.’

He thought that would be the end of it, that they would fall into each other’s arms at last; he hadn’t reckoned with her disbelief, her uncertainty that anyone would love her, her suspicion that he was merely trying to be kind, ‘buttering me up’, as she put it. He got up and pulled her to her feet.

‘I love you so much,’ he said, ‘and I’ve loved you for so long.’

Kissing her made him feel faint – light-headed: it was she who said, ‘Wouldn’t we be better lying down?’

They walked slowly, stumbling a little because they had to look at each other, and stopping at the foot of the stairs, because they were too narrow. He took her hand to lead her, then kissed her again. ‘Do you remember the evening that Pipette brought that message from your father? And you said “the second piece of love sent”?’

She nodded and he could see her eyes, clear now of distrust.

‘This is the third,’ he said, ‘the third piece of love.’

‘But as you are here,’ she said, ‘it will be given, not sent.’

Elizabeth Jane Howard is the author of thirteen highly acclaimed novels, most recently
Love All
in 2008 and
Falling
in 1999.
Falling
was dramatized by ITV in 2005, starring Penelope Wilton. The Cazalet Chronicle –
The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion
and
Casting Off-
has become established as a modern classic and was adapted for a BBC television series in 2001. In 2002 Macmillan published her autobiography,
Slipstream.
In that same year she was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

Praise for Elizabeth Jane Howard:
‘The Cazalets have earned an honoured place among the great saga families . . . rendered thrillingly three-dimensional by a master craftsman’
Sunday Telegraph
A charming, poignant and quite irresistible novel, to be cherished and shared’
The Times
‘In due course, this chronicle will be read, like Trollope, as a classic about life in England in our century’

Sybille Bedford
‘As polished, stylish and civilized as her many devotees would expect’
Julian Barnes
An intelligent and perceptive writer’
Peter Ackroyd
‘She writes brilliantly and her characters are always totally believable. She makes you laugh, she sometimes shocks, and often makes you cry’
Rosamunde Pilcher
A superb novel . . . strangely hypnotic . . . very funny’

Spectator

ALSO BY ELIZABETH JANE HOWARD

Love All

The Beautiful Visit

The Long View

The Sea Change

After Julius

Odd Girl Out

Something in Disguise

Getting It Right

Mr Wrong

Falling

The Cazalet Chronicle

The Light Years

Marking Time

Confusion

The Lover’s Companion

Green Shades

Slipstream

First published 1995 by Macmillan
This edition published in 2009 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2010 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-0-330-52697-5 PDF
ISBN 978-0-330-52696-8 EPUB

Copyright © Elizabeth Jane Howard 1995

The right of Elizabeth Jane Howard to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Table of Contents

P ART O NE

One The Brothers: July 1945

Two The Girls: August 1945

Three The Wives: October–December 1945

Four The Outsiders: January–April 1946

P ART T WO

One Archie: May–June 1946

Two Archie: July–August 1946

P ART T HREE

One Edward: 1946

Two Rupert: November 1946

Three Polly: September–December 1946

Four The Wives: December 1946–January 1947

P ART F OUR

One Louise: Spring 1947

Two Clary: 1946–47

Three The Outsiders: Summer 1947

Four Archie: 1946–47