Confusion: Cazalet Chronicles Book 3 (35 page)

Well, they still had the invaluable Eileen, and Lizzie, who had to help with the housework when she was not working for Mrs Cripps – they were a great deal better off than some. And I do my best, she thought, and could do so much more if it wasn’t for my wretched back. In fact, it would be hard to think how much more she could fit into the day, even if her back had been all right. She looked after Aunt Dolly who had reached the stage where continued mobility and almost total loss of memory had turned her into a constant anxiety and sometimes a serious risk. She had recently taken to getting up in the night and wandering about. She had rung the gong for breakfast at four in the morning because she said the servants had not come when she called and she was hungry. At this time of year she was apt to wander off down the drive: she was going to meet somebody, she said, but they had not turned up. This would make her rather weepy, but she could be comforted with a boiled sweet. Rachel and Villy took turns at getting her up in the morning, and moving her downstairs to the morning room was, as Villy said, like moving a battalion. She had to have an extra cardigan, the book she said she was reading, her writing case, her work bag, her slippers in case her shoes got too tight, a hat in case she went into the sun, her spectacles. Her embroidery scissors had to be untied from the chair in which she sat in her bedroom and moored to the appropriate chair downstairs. If you kept scissors tied up, you did not lose them, she never tired of explaining. When she had read the death columns in
The Times
she would, with luck, settle to some needlework and could be left for a while. On bad days she would wander, and for someone whose movements were slow and shaky, she always seemed to get a very long way. The children had all been told that if they found her they were to say that Kitty wanted her immediately, and they were to accompany her home.

Walking more slowly back up the hill she reflected that Dolly must be very near the end of her life, partly because, with Flo dead, she had not got much to live for. She was two years older than the Duchy and five years younger than the Brig. But in whatever order, they will all die during the next few years, she thought. Then I shall be left. Then I shall be able to go and live with Sid. She was dimly aware that this prospect had turned into a comfort rather than a goal, and put the faint apprehension down to the blues. It was a warm and very windy day – not proper June weather at all. Mondays were always rather dreary, as Edward and Hugh left early in the morning for London and work. In the drive she met Tonbridge wheeling a barrow full of empty bottles down to the spring to be filled with drinking water. He wore his leather gaiters that somehow accentuated his small, bandy legs, his grey chauffeur’s breeches and a collarless shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Once he would not have dreamed of appearing before any of the family in this disarray, and he would not now think of driving them without his full uniform but, given the things he had to do these days that were definitely not normally his place to do, he would not waste his good jacket on them. Now, after she said good morning to him, he returned the salute with the sheepish smile of one caught out in a demeaning task. ‘What should we do without you!’ she called and saw his damp, pallid forehead turn cyclamen with pleasure. His mother can’t have been very nice to him, she thought, and then that fearful wife. There were rumours of a divorce, and Lydia said that he seemed very keen on Mrs Cripps: ‘I saw him put his arm round her waist. Not
right
round, nobody could do that, but quite a bit of the way.’

When she got back, Rachel was immediately waylaid by the Brig from the strategic standpoint of his study.

‘Is that you, Rachel?’ he called. ‘Come in here a minute, would you? The very person I wanted to see.’

He was sitting at his immense desk with nothing to do.

‘Most extraordinary thing,’ he said. ‘Telephone rang. A woman called Eileen or
Isla
, it sounded like (damn silly name), said she wanted to speak to Mr Cazalet. “Diana’s had a fire in her cottage,” she said. I said I thought she must have the wrong number, but she seemed positive. Turned out to be Edward she wanted. Lives at Wadhurst. Said she was going over to rescue this Diana woman – can’t see what it’s got to do with Edward. Tried to call Villy, but she doesn’t seem to be within earshot . . .’

Rachel said, ‘It doesn’t sound as though it has anything to do with Villy. I’ll ring Edward, if you like.’

‘Well, let him know, though what on earth he’s supposed to do about a fire in some unknown woman’s house beats me. Damn cheek! Well, get on to him, then.’

Wishing she could get rid of him while she rang Edward, yet knowing that she hadn’t a hope of doing so, Rachel made the call. She got through to Miss Seafang who said that Mr Edward was not in his office at the moment, but that she would find him and could they ring back? ‘I trust you are all well at home,’ she added in the tone of voice that betrayed she had faint hopes that somebody wasn’t.

‘Fine, thank you, Miss Seafang,’ Rachel replied, and then, anxious that she might be giving the wrong impression, she added, ‘but I should like him to ring me back as soon as possible. Will you tell him it is rather urgent?’ Miss Seafang certainly would.

‘Brig, darling, I think it would be quite a good thing not to mention any of this to Villy at all.’

‘Would it?’ he said. ‘
Would
it!’ Then he got ponderously to his feet. ‘Give me that damn silly little stick,’ he said. ‘I think a spot of fresh air would do me good.’

When Edward rang, which he did almost at once, she heard herself telling him that it sounded like a storm in a teacup, but then she realised that it wasn’t at all. Edward was silent for a moment, then he said, ‘Has he told Villy about this? The Brig, I mean?’

‘No. I asked him not to.’

‘Good. What a balls-up! I can’t think what possessed that wretched sister-in-law – of course, Villy’s met Diana, but years ago and she probably wouldn’t remember her. Her husband was killed, poor thing, and she’s rather on her own.’

‘Edward, I think I’d rather not know anything more about this.’ She could not bear to hear him trying to cover his tracks.

‘Right. Well, thanks for telling me.’ He rang off.

Edward has always flirted with any attractive woman he met, Rachel thought, but she thought it uncomfortably. Her experience of Edward with women really went back to before his marriage, when, after he came back from the war, he was constantly going to tea dances, playing tennis, choosing trinkets and chocolates for a bevy of girls. When he married, he was regarded as having settled down, but now she knew from her immediate reaction to the Brig this morning that somewhere she had always known that he hadn’t. Of course it wouldn’t be
serious
– all the same he had clearly been anxious about Villy hearing of the telephone call . . . The fact that he did not always come home for weekends now impinged – about one in four he was unable to come. For reasons that had not been clear to her, he had stopped living with Hugh in London. At the time it had not seemed odd, because Clary and Poll had gone there, but now that they had left . . . But Villy had stayed in his flat in London; she had said it was a horrid little anonymous shoe box, but she had stayed there – once or twice . . . Although she had never found Villy a particularly
easy
person, she had become very fond of her and admired the way in which she seemed able to turn her hand to anything. She was certain that Villy would be extremely upset if she discovered that Edward was flirting with anyone else. Perhaps, she thought, it would be a good idea to get Hugh to have a word with him. As she went in search of the Duchy to see if she had survived her housekeeping with Mrs Cripps, she suddenly saw that she had not given a thought to the person called Diana whose husband had been killed and whose cottage had caught fire. The sister-in-law must have been fearfully worried or she would not have tried to ring Edward. After all, Diana, whoever she was, might be the widow of one of Edward’s fellow officers in the RAF. It would be like him to have said that he would keep an eye on her. And Edward might simply be
afraid
that Villy might be jealous, even if she had no cause . . . The idea of anyone looking after anyone else made her feel much better about the whole thing.

‘So I’ve been told.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Your sister-in-law rang Home Place this morning to inform them.’

‘She
can’t
have!’

‘I assure you she did. She got my father – luckily he told my sister rather than my wife. Rachel rang me.’

‘What can have possessed her to do such a thing?’

‘How did she
manage
to do it? You must have given her the number.’

‘Edward, of course I haven’t. She must have got it from Directory Enquiries.’

‘You must have told her about the fire.’

‘Of course I did. I had to. The place is such a mess, I had to see if she would take the children while I try to sort it out.’ There was a pause, and then she said, ‘The sitting room’s nearly a foot under water from the fire brigade.’

‘How did it happen, anyway?’ he asked; he still sounded angry.

‘It was the chimney, a large cross-beam caught fire, or rather smouldered. I went upstairs because I thought I heard Susan and found the children’s rooms full of smoke. It was incredibly lucky I went up when I did – they might have died.’

‘Oh, Lord! What beastly bad luck! Where are you now?’

‘At the pub in the village. My telephone isn’t working. Isla came over and took the children, thank goodness.’

‘I hope you told her to stop ringing up my home.’

‘I couldn’t
tell
her not to. For one thing I didn’t know she had, and if I did now, she would suspect something.’

‘She must do that already, or she wouldn’t have tried to make trouble. You’ll
have
to tell her. She can’t
do
anything to you, after all.’

‘Edward, I didn’t get any sleep last night. I’m dead beat, the children might have died and the house is in an indescribable mess. I really do think you might be a little more—’ She was cut off. He wouldn’t have done that surely, she thought. She waited a minute to see if he would ring back, and then realised that of course he wouldn’t – he couldn’t – didn’t know the number. But somehow, pride stopped her ringing
him
– she was afraid if she did, he would say things that would make her resent him more. I couldn’t cope with that, she thought wearily, as she bicycled against the wind back to the cottage.

The cottage smelt strongly of burning wood. Some of the water had seeped away, but the filthy residue lay everywhere on the ground floor – the sitting room, the small kitchen and the downstairs lavatory. She got the mop and a bucket and set to work.

She mopped and mopped, moved furniture and staggered to and fro to empty endless pails of dirty water. Resentment at Edward fuelled her energy: she reflected that every advantage (to him – privacy, secrecy and so forth) that had made the cottage seem ideal was a disadvantage now. She had no near neighbour and could therefore expect no offers of help, nor was there anyone in the village a mile away whom she knew well enough to ask, or even to borrow the use of their telephone. The cottage, originally built for a gamekeeper, lay at the end of a cart track with a wood behind it. It had no electricity and water was pumped by a noisy dogged little engine from a well, but it was extremely cheap which was the main reason why she had agreed to take it. Even with Angus’s parents paying half of the older boys’ school fees there was still their clothes – uniform for school, sports things – and then their dentists, their pocket money, their train fares to Scotland for holidays, and all this before she began to pay for herself and Jamie and Susan. Money was very tight indeed, with no prospect that she could see of getting better. And although the war did show signs of beginning to end, she was no nearer marrying Edward than she had been the day that she met him. She was forty-four and trapped in this isolated hideout, and he, at forty-eight (quite different for a man), was virtually living apart from Villy, on his own in London and all too likely to find someone else who was younger and more available. Edward did come and see her every week on his way to Home Place, and about once a month he contrived that they spend a weekend together. But it was plain, on these occasions, that he found the cottage uncomfortable and dull, and wanted her to come to London to be with him. She could only do this if and when she could drum up someone who would look after the children: Isla occasionally if she sucked up to her enough, and once or twice an old nanny who had looked after the older ones when they were babies. But often these plans fell through, and Edward had to put up with the cottage and her cooking meals and privacy only when the children had gone to bed at night. This made her think that probably Isla had cottoned on to the situation because Jamie had talked about Edward coming to the cottage – perfectly natural, but unfortunate.

By the time she had cleared up the water, and seen that the floor would need scrubbing, it was afternoon, and she felt faint from exertion and no food. She opened all the windows and the front and back doors to try to air the place and went to the larder to find something to eat. There wasn’t anything much – she had been going to do her weekly shop that morning – simply the heel end of a loaf of bread and the remains of a packet of Grape Nuts but no milk because she had given it to Jamie and Susan for their breakfast. She made herself a cup of tea and ate the Grape Nuts with water, which was fairly horrid. She would have to go shopping if she wanted any supper, but she had become obstinately fixed upon the idea of getting the floor clean. Half-way through this, the water from the kitchen tap gave out, and when she tried to start the pump to get more, she found that it would not work. Water must have got into the battery, she thought, but that simply meant that she couldn’t finish the floor. Nor could she have a bath and she was filthy. And it was now nearly six o’clock and the shops would have closed long ago. She went to fetch the floor cloth and scrubbing brush, left in the sitting room, slipped on the remains of the bar of soap she had been using and twisted her ankle. It was too much. She collapsed on the floor and burst into tears.