Confusion: Cazalet Chronicles Book 3 (10 page)

‘I think so, but she does seem terribly young . . .’

‘Oh, Kitty dear, you must be
so
relieved. It began to look as though she was going to be left on the shelf like yours truly, didn’t it?’

‘Dolly dear, it’s not Rachel who is getting married, it is Louise.’

‘Louise?’

‘Edward’s eldest daughter.’

‘That poor motherless child! Surely she’s too young.’

‘No, Dolly, you’re thinking of Polly. This is Villy and Edward’s child – Louise.’

‘Well – I still think she’s too young. And I shall need a hat. Flo used to be so wonderful with hats. I always said she could make a hat out of anything. “Give you a few yards of petersham and a
waste-paper basket
and you’d concoct something that would surprise me,” I used to tell her. It was a gift. I do hope the engagement will not be a
long
one. Dear Mama always said that long engagements were such a
strain.
’

‘No, it will be short.’

‘Although, myself, I’ve always thought that a long engagement would be so comfortable. One would feel that one’s future was settled, but one would not have any of the difficulties of marriage, which I am told can be
most
trying. I hope they won’t live in London – the Zeppelins are a constant anxiety these days.’

‘What on
earth
for?’

‘People just do, when they reach a certain age.’

‘Catch me!’

‘You haven’t reached the age – by any means.’

‘Weddings are just for girls.’

‘They can’t be. You have to have one of each for them. You’ll have to go to this one, as a cousin, and I shall
certainly
have to go as a sister, and quite likely a bridesmaid.’

‘Will there be cake?’

‘You won’t like it, it’ll have marzipan.’

He groaned. ‘I’ll take my penknife.’

‘People don’t take penknives to weddings, Neville. You’ll be able to wear your longs. And there’ll be champagne.’

‘I can’t
stand
champagne. Will there be ginger beer?’

‘I have not the
faintest
idea,’ Lydia answered, in her mother’s most crushing voice.

‘And then he asked you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you said yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you excited?’

‘
Excited?
I don’t know. Sort of—’

The telephone rang.

‘If it’s Kit or Freddie I want to speak to them,’ Stella called after her as she went to the telephone.

Stella heard her yelling ‘Yes?’ in her best Cockney (last night they had all played charades and she had been raucously funny as a mum whose child had got a chamber pot stuck on his head) and then her talking quite ordinarily, but too quietly to be heard. It was Saturday, and as they did not have to go to their typing school, she decided to have one more cup of coffee before tackling the ghastly sinkful of washing-up from last night.

When Louise came back she was flushed, but subdued.

‘It was
The Times
,’ she said.

‘The newspaper?’

‘Yep. Wanting to know about my being engaged to Michael Hadleigh.’

‘Gosh! I didn’t know he was as famous as that.’

‘Nor did I, really. Have you got a fag?’

‘Afraid not. We smoked the lot last night. I’ll go and get some, if you like.’

‘No – I’ll go.’

‘When are you getting married?’

‘In about four weeks. Michael gets some leave then.’

‘In four weeks you’ll be Mrs Michael Hadleigh.’

‘Yes. It
is
exciting, but it also feels—’ She stopped, because really she wasn’t sure.

‘What does it feel like?’

There was something reassuring about Stella’s familiar curiosity, which provoked in her, as it always did, her most careful honesty. ‘I’m not sure. Stupendous – and also a bit unreal. As though I was two people: one who it is happening to, and one whom it couldn’t possibly be happening to. It’s rather amazing that he should
want
to marry me, don’t you think?’

‘No.’

‘Oh. I think it is. His family’s frightfully glamorous, you know. They know hundreds of famous people – he could marry anyone.’

‘Anyone could marry anyone, you fool. I don’t think that’s how it works.’

‘No, it doesn’t. He says he loves me.’

‘Are your family pleased?’

‘I think so. When I told my mother, she simply said, didn’t I think I was too young! Of all the idiotic questions . . .’

‘And your father?’

‘I don’t care what he thinks. But, of course, he approves of Michael because his father was a hero in the last war.’

‘How simplistic.’

‘Isn’t it?’ It wasn’t a word she had ever encountered before, but she could see at once what it meant, and it seemed just right for her father. ‘I shall miss “Mon Debris” terribly, though. And being with you.’ She looked fondly round the dilapidated little hole, once part of the coal cellars, that now served as a kitchen in their basement flat. ‘Back in a minute.’

But after the front door had slammed, and in the ensuing silence, Stella, with pictures of her mother – quenched, entrapped on a velvet sofa in an overheated room from which she could only escape by nostalgia and the poetry of her youth – rubbed the unexpected angry tears from her eyes. She has already gone, she thought, and she won’t ever really be back.

‘Five pounds of the finest flour – the dear knows where I get that, it’s all the same flour nowadays – three pounds of fresh butter – I might as well fly – five pounds of currants . . . do you hear that, Frank? Two nutmegs, mace, clove, well, at least I’ve got them, sixteen eggs, a pound of sweet almonds and one and a half pounds of candied peel. For the life of me, I do not see my way at all – I’m at my wits’ end, really I am!’

‘You could make a Utility cake, Mrs Cripps – Mabel.’ He always found it difficult to call her Mabel when she was wearing her specs, which had thick steel rims and made her look cross even when she was in a good mood, which was not, at present, the case.

‘A Utility cake? For Miss Louise’s wedding? You must be out of your mind if you think I’d entertain such a notion for a minute. For
one second
,’ she added. ‘Marge and dried eggs, when it will be known that the cake came from this house? Well-known people will be partaking of this cake, Mr Tonbridge, and I’m not having aspersions cast at it. On it. Either I shall make it of the proper ingredients, or it will not be made at all. Those are my last words on the subject,’ she added untruthfully as she continued to ruminate for the rest of the day with a ferocity that brooked no further suggestions from him or anyone else.

Life had not been easy lately. It was true that she had achieved an Understanding with Frank, whom she still called Mr Tonbridge in front of the others, but that had occurred before Christmas over eight months ago; and his divorce from That Woman, Ethyl her name was, didn’t seem to be getting on at all. This was partly because the letters – and they seemed few and far between – that Frank’s lawyer sent were never, or hardly ever, answered although a Mr Sparrowgrass had once written back to say that he had no instructions from his client and therefore was unable to instigate proceedings. ‘But you’re the one to do the proceedings,’ she had said. ‘
She
’s the one who’s gone off, she’s the one to blame.’ Then he’d started up with some nonsense about doing the gentlemanly thing by Ethyl, letting her divorce him. But supposing she didn’t want to, Mrs Cripps had thought to herself. Supposing she wanted the house
and
the man she had got off with
and
Frank to fall back on if things went wrong? She hadn’t dared to say that to him, but she had gone on worrying about it. He was ever so reserved with her – wouldn’t put his arm round her except in the dark when they were alone, and how often was that? He hadn’t any confidence, she could see that – needed building up in more ways than one, but it was rather like how he was with food; she could feed him three square meals a day and endless snacks in between them and he didn’t put on an ounce, was as scrawny as ever. Meanwhile she wasn’t getting any younger and sometimes she longed for him to throw his weight about more, be masterful like they were in films, instead of the jerky little pounces he sometimes made when he’d had a drink or two at the pub, or they were in the cinema, and once on the pier at Hastings in the evening. Of course, he knew ever such a lot about the war and history and all that; she knew he was quite clever because she couldn’t understand half of what he said sometimes: he had opinions about things and she liked a man to have them, and he’d bought a wireless that they listened to in the evenings and he told her what he thought about what they said on it. But none of this seemed to be getting them anywhere, and having been engaged once before in her life – long before she came to work for the Cazalets – and he jilting her at the last moment, something she
thought
she never thought about any more, had, none the less, made her wary and more anxious than she would otherwise have been. Mrs Fellows, the cook she had been kitchenmaid to in those days, had warned her about Norman, but she hadn’t listened – she’d done things with him when she was young and silly and knew no better, which she did now, that it made her blush to think of. No man was going to make free with
her
out of wedlock ever again, she had vowed, when she had got over the awful fright of thinking she was in the family way. Norman – he’d been a groom at the place she worked – had just gone off to sea one day without a
word
. It had been a shock, made worse when she discovered that the lodge-keeper’s daughter had the same idea about him. In the servants’ hall they said that he’d got too many girls’ fathers after him and that was why he’d gone to sea.
Her
father had been killed in the war – the one before this – so he wouldn’t do no chasing and, anyway, she was a hundred miles from home. That had been her first place – she hadn’t gone out to work until she was fourteen, because with five other children and a job cooking at the cottage hospital, her mother needed her at home. Mrs Fellows had been ever so strict but she’d given her Standards that she’d been thankful for ever since, as she always told the succession of girls she’d trained, but oh dear,
they
weren’t what they used to be. The last girl – the one before Lizzie, that Miss Rachel had got from London – had been a real little madam: no respect for her elders, painting her fingernails and hanging her knickers on the line where the men could see them; she hadn’t lasted a fortnight. Now with Lizzie – who was Edie’s youngest sister – at least she had respect: you couldn’t hardly hear a word she said and she did what she was told, although she was very slow and didn’t get through things like Edie had. ‘We have to make allowances, Mrs Cripps,’ Mrs Cazalet Senior had said, which reminded her that she would have to go and see Mrs Edward about the cake. She left Frank finishing the custard tart and buttoned up the straps on her shoes.