Confusion: Cazalet Chronicles Book 3 (38 page)

‘Soon, I hope. We shall need good weather, though. And over here that seems to mean summer. Don’t worry, darling, it won’t be just yet.’

‘Worry? Why? Will
you
be going?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘To France?’

‘Darling,
yes
.’

‘For how long?’ she foolishly asked.

‘For as long as it takes,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. I’m just a reporter – only a kind of witness. I shan’t be fighting.’

‘But you might—’ Terror possessed her; she couldn’t go on.

‘I went to Italy in January. To take pictures of the landings.’

‘You never told me!’

‘No. But I came back safe and sound. It’s my job. We should never have met if I hadn’t had this job.’ He gave her shoulders a little shake. ‘That’s enough of that.’

‘But will you tell me – warn me – before you go?’

He was silent.

‘Jack!
Will
you – please?’

‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘I won’t.’

Then he said, ‘We shall have a row about this if we’re not careful. So let’s not talk about it.’

Two months passed, then three and the summer began. There were wild roses in the country, the willow-herb growing out of bombed masonry in the city started to flower. As the train crossed the river before coming into the station, it slowed down on the bridge as it often did and she watched the silver barrage balloons swinging abruptly in the sky, which was also crowded with long banks of scudding clouds casting hasty shadows on the pewter-coloured river below. The train got in at six in the evening; she had time to catch the number 9 bus to Knightsbridge and still get to the studio before him. It was Monday, not a day that she usually came up but their plans for the weekend had gone wrong: he was working longer hours and making frequent trips to the south coast – and the weekend that they had had a fortnight before had been interrupted by a call for him to report for duty. But this Monday she was coming up in order to go to an early appointment next day with the dentist, and when he spoke to her in the week they had made the plan that she should spend the previous night with him.

There was the usual queue at the bus stop, and when the bus did come and the old lady ahead of her lost her hat in a sudden gust of wind she had to get off the bus to chase it, but the conductor waited for her. ‘Can’t have you without your titfer,’ he said, and while she was wondering what on earth he meant, a fat old man sitting opposite her said, ‘Tat. Hat. Rhyming slang – very amusing, what?’ and gave her a smile that showed his glossy apricot artificial gums, and then lowered his eyes to her legs where they remained for the rest of the journey.

The studio smelt dusty. The big window would not open; she had to open the small ones in the kitchen and in the bathroom to get any air. Jack never opened them: he liked hot houses, he said, and cold drinks – he couldn’t get over the lack of ice and refrigerators. She opened the windows now to air the place. Everything was very neat, the bed made, no dirty coffee cups, although there was a half-bottle of milk that had turned in the small meatsafe that served as a larder. She made herself a cup of weak tea. Then she decided to have a bath and change before he got home. Home it had become, she thought. It had become less bare, with books that he had accumulated, the clothes she kept there, a couple of Shell posters that he had bought – a Ted McKnight Kauffer and a Barnet Friedmann.

By the time she was changed it was nearly half past seven, and she left the door ajar so that she would hear him on the stairs. There was a pile of
New Yorker
magazines that he had had sent to him, and she tried to settle down with them, but she had begun to feel anxious. She waited until eight o’clock and then tried his number where he worked. It was a direct line, she did not have to go through a switchboard, but she let it ring and ring and there was no reply. He was on his way, she told herself, but already she had begun not to believe this.

She waited and waited and he did not come. At half past eight she poured herself a stiff bourbon and water, found his battered packet of Lucky Strikes that he kept always in his dressing-gown pocket and smoked one because the smell of it was comforting. He must have got called away – he wasn’t going to turn up. The sky became lavender and the wind seemed to have dropped although there were still clouds. She sat by the window and watched the light drain away until it was dark. It wasn’t until she heard the – very distant – sound of Big Ben on somebody’s radio from the kitchen window when she was getting herself a second drink that the idea occurred that it might be the invasion. The thought that this might be so, that he might have gone without even saying goodbye to her, gone for an unknown amount of time to God knew what dangers – she had no illusions about that. How could thousands of men get out of boats and walk up beaches where Germans must be waiting for them without fearful loss of life? And whatever he said about just being a witness, if he was there they would shoot at him just as much as at anyone else. She knew that she couldn’t just sit alone in the studio all night not knowing. She would go to the pub at the end of the mews and buy herself a drink, and ask about the news: someone there would be sure to know. She had never been alone to a pub in her life, and ordinarily it would have been an ordeal, but now she was too desperate to care, and when every man in the small, smoke-ridden bar looked at her with that mixture of curiosity and disapproval reserved for women who came to such a place without a partner, she ignored them, went straight to the bar, ordered a small whisky and, when she had paid for it, asked the barman if there had been any news. Not what he would call
news
, he said; of course she knew that we were into Rome. King Victor Emmanuel, whoever he may be when he’s at home, has abdicated in favour of someone whose name he couldn’t remember. ‘I can’t say I care. Foreign royalty’s a closed book as far as I’m concerned.’

No news. She could have kissed him. She swallowed her drink, and left. When she got back to the studio, she undressed, wrapped herself in Jack’s dressing gown and slept.

It wasn’t until she was in the dentist’s chair with her mouth full of cotton wads that she learned that the invasion had indeed begun that morning. She shut her eyes to try to keep her tears from escaping, but in vain.

‘Now, now, Mrs Cazalet, this isn’t going to hurt, and I haven’t even begun yet. Just a little injection and you won’t feel anything at all.’

LOUISE

Winter 1944/5

‘You stay put. There’s absolutely no point in you getting up. I’ll just shave, dress and be gone.’

‘Don’t you want me to see you off?’

‘I’d rather you didn’t. There might be other people on the train.’

He disappeared and she heard water running: it was a flat that had been made out of one huge room and the partition walls were very thin. His alarm clock went off: it was half past five – he was taking no chances about catching the train. She fumbled to silence it. I will wait till he’s gone, she thought, and then I will get up, wash and put my clothes on – and go.

When he returned, half dressed – his black socks had holes at the toe and his trousers were shiny with wear – she said: ‘When shall I see you again?’

‘Not for some time, I’m afraid. I rather think it’s going to be madly war for a bit now.’ He seized his not very clean white shirt, thrust his arms into it and began buttoning it up. ‘And I suppose it depends a bit on your husband.’

‘
Does
it? Why?’

‘He’s my boss. For the next few months, anyway. There’s a certain irony in that, isn’t there? Where the hell’s my tie?’

‘On the floor.’ It was a greasy black affair, worn with being tied in the same place for too long. He scraped a bit of it with his thumbnail. ‘Damn! I seem to have got something on it. Funny, isn’t it, how it always looks like egg when there isn’t an egg in sight.’ He came over to the bed. ‘Darling! I hope you will always look at me like that – especially when there are other people present.’ They frequently used lines from the play that had been the subject of the first conversation they had had.

‘Well,’ she said, trying to respond, ‘the suspense is terrible and I hope it
won’t
last.’

He was putting on his jacket now, worn and shiny like the rest of his uniform, his left breast heavily sewn with ribbons. He had a DSC and bar, and had been five times mentioned in despatches. He opened his battered attaché case, disappeared and returned with a sponge bag, which he crammed into it with a jar of Brylcreem.

‘Your alarm clock.’

‘Well done.’ He felt in his top pocket and withdrew a broken comb which he scraped through his heavily creamed hair. She hated the smell of it, but had not liked to say so. Then he came over to the bed, sat on the edge of it to kiss her. He had cut himself shaving; she said there were little beads of blood on his cheekbone like a curved dotted line.

‘Shaving in cold water,’ he replied. ‘And my razor blade’s had it, anyway.’ He put his hands on her bare shoulders, stroking her long hair off them, and gazed at her with his beautiful, large, intelligent grey eyes.

‘It was good, wasn’t it? Look after yourself.’

‘Do you—’

‘Of course I do. I should have thought after last night you would have noticed that.’ He kissed her again. His mouth smelled now of peppermint instead of whisky. ‘I’m afraid I really must go and win the war.’

‘Win it,’ she said; she felt a sudden danger of her crying, but it passed.

‘In the train I shall think of you lying there – all voluptuous, like a thin Renoir.
Very
nice.’ He straightened, ran a hand through his hair that had flopped forward, picked up the briefcase and went.

She had thought she might cry after he had left, but now found that she didn’t want to. She simply felt sad and flat. Last night after Rory had rung she had got ready to go and meet him, full of excitement: she had felt reckless, daring, stirred by the whole idea of going to meet her lover and spending the night with him in some unknown flat. In spite of trying she still didn’t
enjoy
being made love to, but she had decided that that was simply one more thing that was wrong with her to add to the mounting others: rotten mother, ungrateful wife, failed actress, undomestic altogether useless person that she seemed in the last two years to have turned into. She seemed to herself to spend all her energies acting the same old part of Mrs Michael Hadleigh, having sore throats (they seemed to get worse and worse), and generally going through the motions of being a happy, successfully married young woman. But privately, with Michael, things had been going wrong for ages.

She had begun to notice that it had all started, she supposed, quite soon after the day that the doorbell rang at home in London and she had answered it to find a very lanky, dark young man in Army uniform.

‘Excuse me. Does Michael Hadleigh live here?’

‘Well, when he’s on leave, he does.’

‘When’s he coming on leave?’

‘I’m not quite sure—’

‘Oh well, I’ll wait,’ he said, stepped into the house and put his bag on the floor. ‘You must be Louise Hadleigh. I saw a picture of you getting married in
The Times
. I was overseas when you got married, or I’d have been there like a shot.’ He smiled engagingly, as he added, ‘Rather an overworked analogy, these days, don’t you think? I say! Have you got anything to eat? I had a sort of poison pie in the train and I thought I could fancy it, but could I keep it down? I’m a kind of cousin, by the way – my name’s Hugo Wentworth.’

By now, she was delighted. She took him down to the kitchen and made him toast with Bovril on it and cups of tea. He chattered away, seeming able to have about three conversations at once, telling her about his journey from what he described as a Catholic stronghold in the north, interspersed with mock news bulletins about the war and extremely personal remarks about herself. ‘Trains are either boiling hot or icy cold these days, have you noticed? I say, you really are distractingly beautiful – I suppose if I had a larger
frame
I could have contained that poison pie,’ and here he made a hideously funny fat face, saying, ‘Goering: with just a touch of indigestion. It’s funny about Bovril, isn’t it? I mean do you think it’s the
whole
bull, or just that intensely reliable face you see on the jars? You don’t look at
all
as though you’ve had a baby, I must say, perhaps you just had a very small one . . . Is there any more toast? Although what I should really like would be a lobster. Life in Yorkshire with my dear mama was one long wartime scone and as she never cooked until the war they were like small hand grenades. You won’t mind my staying for bit, will you? I can doss down on the floor, I’m lamentably used to discomfort. I can’t tell you how glad I am that Michael has married you. I was afraid he never would marry anyone . . .’

‘He painted a portrait of you, didn’t he? I’ve just remembered.’

‘He painted several. I used to stay at Hatton a lot when I was at Oxford. The Judge was a very splendid godfather. Have you got a piano here? We could go and sing sentimental duets. It might cheer you up. You know, things like “My true love has my heart, and I have his” – pure pale treacle if you ask me.’

‘I shouldn’t think people get a chance to ask you much,’ she said.

‘Ah! That’s my Latin temperament. My mother is French, a tiny little black widow – naturally I call her
maman
. My father was English, though – some sort of cousin of the Judge. Got badly knocked up in the previous war and died when I was born, so I’ve always been a precocious only child. You aren’t one, though, are you? You come from a very large family, I’m told.’

‘Only four of us, but there are a good many cousins.’

‘Then you’ll hardly notice one more, will you? Should I go and view your baby?’

‘He’s not here. He’s in the country with my family. Because of the V-2s.’

‘Oh, well, I can’t, then. Actually, I’m not mad on babies. They’re nearly always
damp
and they
look
so depressing. It amazes me that they’re so popular with people.’