Confusion: Cazalet Chronicles Book 3 (14 page)

He took her Royal Yacht Squadron burgee brooch, presented by the Admiral the previous night to celebrate Michael’s being made an honorary member. ‘I should think I’m the only naval officer who does up his pyjamas with one of these. I must fly now.’ He bent to kiss her forehead. ‘Cheer up; don’t get
too
gloomy.’ At the door, he blew her another kiss. ‘You look very cosy,’ he said.

After he had gone, and she was sure that he wouldn’t be coming back, she had wept.

When she was better he had suggested that she go to her home for a bit while he finished the trials. ‘Then, when I know where we’ll be sent, you can join me again.’

She did not demur. Homesickness – not quite, but nearly – as bad as she had had as a child had been assailing her, and she would lie in bed after he left in the mornings, longing for the familiar, shabby house that was always so full, the sounds of so many lives going on: the gasping squeak of the carpet cleaner, the wheezing grind of the nursery gramophone alternating ‘The Grasshoppers’ Dance’ with ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’; the steady rumble of the Brig dictating, the insect whirr of the Duchy’s sewing machine, the smells of coffee and ironing and reluctant log fires and damp dog and beeswax . . . She went through each room in the house furnishing them with the appropriate inmates. Everything that had either bored or irritated her about them before now seemed only to make them more charming, dearer and more necessary. Aunt Dolly’s passion for mothballs, the Duchy’s belief that hot paraffin wax was essential for burns, Polly and Clary’s determination not to be impressed by her being so much more grown up than they, Lydia’s uncanny impersonations of anyone she chose to emulate; Miss Milliment looking exactly the same, but none the less mysteriously older, her voice gentler, her chins even softer, her clothes encrusted with random pieces of ancient foods, but her small grey eyes, magnified at certain angles by her narrow, steel-rimmed spectacles, still so unexpectedly penetrating. And then, a complete contrast: Aunt Zoë, who contrived to look glamorous whatever she wore, whose years now in the country had not at all altered the impression she gave of being fashionable and pretty. And darling Aunt Rach whose uttermost word of approval was ‘sensible’ – ‘such a sensible hat’, ‘a really sensible mother’; ‘I am going to give you a really
sensible
wedding present,’ she had said. ‘Three pairs of double linen sheets.’ These were all at home with the many other presents, waiting until she and Michael had a home of their own, although God knew when that would be. Perhaps it was entirely the war that was making life seem so strange. Going away to the cooking school and then to the rep had seemed like logical excursions from home – all part of growing up and preparing for her great career on the stage. But being married had changed everything – in many ways that she had not envisaged. Leaving home was a much more final business when one married. As for her career, not only was there no sign of the war ever coming to an end, when she supposed she might resume it, but there was the problem of having children as well. Her mother had stopped dancing when she married – had never danced again. For the first time, she wondered what that had been like for her, whether her mother had minded or had
chosen
just to be married. But somehow, in her nostalgic dreaming about Home Place and her family, she could not, or did not want to, include her parents: there was something – and she did not want to find out what – that was vaguely . . . uncomfortable. All she knew was that in the weeks before the wedding, she had come to dislike being alone with her mother nearly as much as she disliked being alone with her father – although not exactly, if at all, for the same reasons. This had been confusing, because she could see that her mother was trying very hard to do everything to make the wedding a success. She had been endlessly patient about the fittings for the dress and her few other clothes, had
given
her clothes coupons, had even asked her whether she wanted her friend Stella to be a bridesmaid.
Stella
hadn’t wanted to – had been gently adamant – and it had been a question of choosing which of the girls; in the end it had been Lydia and Polly and Clary. Zoë and her mother and the Duchy had made their dresses of white curtain net that her mother had dyed in tea so that it was a warm cream colour. Pure silk ribbon was still available in London shops. Aunt Zoë had chosen the colours, pink, orange and dark red, and she had sewn the ribbons together in strips to make sashes. The dresses had been plain, high-waisted, with low round necks and a deep flounce round the bottom – ‘Like little Gainsboroughs,’ the Judge had said when he saw them outside the church. There had been an awful lot of work in the short time between the engagement and the marriage and most of it had fallen upon her mother. But besides all her organizing, the letter-writing, the arrangements and the discussions, she had sensed something about her mother that she simply could not bear: it had made her cold, sulky, irritable; she had snapped when asked perfectly ordinary questions and then felt ashamed but somehow unable to apologise. In the end she discovered what it was: the night before the wedding her mother asked her if she ‘knew about things’. She had instantly said, yes, she did. Her mother had smiled uneasily and said, well, she had supposed that Louise would have learned all about that sort of thing at that awful acting place, adding that she would not have liked her to enter upon marriage ‘unprepared’. Each allusion made the whole thing seem nauseating and the allusions, she had realised, were only the tip of the iceberg. In a fever of revulsion and anger it had seemed to her then that her mother had been thinking of nothing else all these weeks, and not only thinking but
wondering
, ruminating, imagining her in bed with Michael, employing the most disgusting curiosity about something which had absolutely
nothing
to do with her! (As though one married people simply to go to bed with them!) After that bit of the evening, her mother could say nothing that did not have some sickening double meaning. Yes, she
should
go to bed early, she needed a good night’s sleep as tomorrow was going to be such a day. ‘You must be fresh for it.’ Well, she had thought, when she had finally escaped to her room in Uncle Hugh’s house for the night, in twenty-four hours I shall be miles away from her. It will never have to be like this again.

She had managed not to be alone with her father at all until the day of the wedding when he turned up just as she had finished dressing with a half-bottle of champagne. ‘I thought we might each have a glass,’ he had said. ‘Dutch courage, don’t you know.’ He looked very dashing in his morning dress with the pale grey silk tie and white rose in his buttonhole. By now she was feeling nervous, and the champagne seemed a good idea.

He eased the cork out of the bottle and caught the fizz in one of the glasses. He had put them on the dressing table and now she saw him looking at her reflection in the mirror. When he saw that she saw, he looked away and filled up both the glasses.

‘Here you are, darling,’ he said. ‘You can’t possibly know how much happiness I wish you.’

There was a small silence while he handed her her glass. Then he said: ‘You look – most awfully pretty.’ He sounded humble – almost shy.

‘Oh, Dad!’ she said, and tried to smile, but her eyes pricked. Nothing more could dare to be said.

‘To my eldest unmarried daughter,’ he said as he raised his glass. They both smiled at each other; the past lay between them like a knife.

It was when she got back to Sussex that these scenes recurred – when she was alone, when she was not playing one of her parts.

‘Do you feel different being married?’ Clary had asked the first day.

‘No, not especially,’ she had answered – the lofty, older cousin.

‘Why not?’

The simplicity of the question confounded her.

‘Why should I?’

‘Well – I mean, you’re not a virgin any more to start with. I don’t suppose you’d tell me what that’s like, would you?’

‘No.’

‘I thought not. I do see how writers get circumscribed by having to rely on direct experience nearly all the time. Or
reading
about things, which is not at all the same as someone telling you.’

‘You’re far too inquisitive, in a
morbid
way. A bit disgusting to boot,’ she added.

But Clary, having suffered countless accusations about her curiosity, had become adept at defending it.

‘It isn’t like that at all. It’s simply that if you are really interested in people and how they behave you get every sort of thing to be curious about. For instance—’ But Louise had seen Zoë on her bicycle in the drive and had gone downstairs to meet her.

‘
Honestly!
I’m sick of people accusing me and then not listening to anything I say,’ Clary grumbled later to Polly as they were waiting in the day nursery for Ellen’s kettle to boil so that they could fill their hot-water bottles. ‘It isn’t just a question of whether she’s a virgin or not, I’m just as curious about prisoners, and nuns and royalty and childbirth and murder and things like that –
anything
that either hasn’t happened to me or couldn’t ever happen.’

‘Royalty’s the only one of them,’ Polly pointed out: she was used to these discussions.

‘No – what about your favourite song? “I am so fond of pleasure that I
cannot
be a nun”.’

‘I don’t know how fond of pleasure I am,’ Polly said sadly. ‘We really don’t get enough of it to find out.’

She had not wanted to announce her pregnancy at home but she felt so sick the first morning that she couldn’t get up for breakfast. Lydia was sent up to see why she hadn’t come down.

‘It’s nothing. I must have eaten something.’

‘Oh, poor you! It’s probably that horrible meat loaf we had last night for supper. Do you know what Neville thinks? He thinks Mrs Cripps puts mice and hedgehogs in it. He thinks she might be a witch because of her black hair and her face is practically luminous in the dark. Even toads, he thought she might put – squashed, you know – he thinks that might be the jellyish bit you get on the outside – toads’ ooze—’

‘Oh, shut
up
, Lydia.’

‘Sorry. I was only trying to think what it could be. Shall I bring you up some tea?’

‘Thanks, that would be lovely.’

But it was her mother who arrived with tea and toast, and she seemed to know at once without Louise saying a thing.

‘Oh, darling! How
exciting
! Does Michael know?’

‘Yes.’

‘He must be pleased.’

‘He is – very.’

‘Have you been to a doctor?’

‘No.’

‘Well, Dr Carr is awfully good. Eat the toast, even if you don’t put anything on it. Toast and water biscuits are the thing for morning sickness. How long . . . ?’

About five weeks, she thought. It seemed like for ever.

In the end she stayed nearly a month at home, by which time Dr Carr had confirmed her pregnancy. Everybody assumed that she was delighted at the prospect. The only person she came near confiding in was Zoë. She was helping to put Juliet to bed. ‘You give her her supper while I clear up,’ Zoë had said. They were alone in the nursery: Wills and Roly were being bathed by Ellen.

Juliet sat in her high chair. She wanted to feed herself, which was a messy and inconclusive business. ‘No, Jule do it,’ she repeated whenever Louise tried to take the laden spoon from her.

‘Goodness! She’ll need another bath.’

‘Oh, I’ll just sponge the worst bits off. One has to let them learn.’

‘I don’t know anything about babies.’

Zoë looked at her quickly and waited for her to say something else, but she didn’t. She often found herself trying not to cry these days.

‘Listen,’ Zoë said as she came across the room to sit at the table by Louise and the high chair, ‘neither did I. And it’s
terrifying
because everybody seems to assume that you do.’

‘And that you’re thrilled,’ Louise said in a muffled voice.

‘Yes.’

‘And
you
weren’t?’

‘Not the first time – no. And then everyone kept saying I should have another one and I didn’t want to.’

‘But you did.’

‘Not then, not immediately. Hang on, Jules. Let me clean you up a bit first.

‘But when I finally did have her – it was wonderful. It was – well, with Rupert gone, she just made all the difference. I had been dreading something happening to him so much, it seemed like the worst thing in the world that could happen, and then it happened – but at the same time, there was Jules.’

‘Chockat!’

‘No. Onto your pot first.’

But Jules did not agree with this. She lay on the floor, arched her back and set about a luxuriant tantrum.

Louise watched while Zoë dealt with this. Finally, Jules was on her pot with a small piece of chocolate. ‘It usually turns out to be a compromise.’

‘Aunt Zoë – I—’

‘I’d much rather you dropped the Aunt. Sorry! What?’

‘I just wanted to say I hadn’t realised about – what an awful time you must have had.’