Confusion: Cazalet Chronicles Book 3 (48 page)

Meanwhile, he had his problems. They were very likely to offer him the command of one of the newer destroyers to take to the Pacific, which was a pretty exciting thought. It would make a triumphant culmination of his career in the Navy. Not many Wavy Navy officers had got that far. But Mummy, who said she had given the matter a good deal of thought (and, of course, she had discussed this with the Judge), said that this was the moment for him to go into politics. There would be an election once the war was over here, and Mummy said the PM was keen on getting Conservative candidates from the Services, and obviously, with a bit of a name already, he stood a good chance of getting in. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to become a Member of Parliament, but it might be a bit of a lark to go for it and see what happened. He’d told Louise about all this over dinner, which had been rather a dreary affair as so many restaurants were closed on Sunday evenings. But they’d gone to the Savoy.

‘If you stayed in the Navy, how long would you be away?’ she had asked.

‘Darling,
I
don’t know. Until the Japanese surrender. We’re doing quite well out there now, taking Rangoon and all that, but it could be anything up to eighteen months or so, I should think.’

‘And if you went into politics?’

‘I’d come out of the Navy, we’d buy a nice house in London and, with any luck, you’d become an MP’s wife.’

‘Oh.’

‘What do you think?’

‘I thought you wanted to be a painter.’

‘Darling, I shall never stop
painting
. But, as you know, I’m a vulgar sort of chap who likes to make his mark in other ways as well.’

‘I don’t know. You’ll have to decide. After all, it’s your life.’

‘It’s both our lives,’ he said, wishing that this had already occurred to her. ‘The first thing is to get you well again.’

In the train he could minutely recall her face, although, funnily enough, he couldn’t
draw
her from memory. But he knew how the creases in her eyelids made a pretty curve over her eyes (but also how they were different from one another), how her cheekbones ran into the top of her ears so that her face was almost pointed, how her eyebrows had a sharp angle on them so that they were almost like shallow roofs over her eyes, how her hair sprang from a widow’s peak which, to her chagrin, was just off centre but, as he had pointed out, would only matter if she had happened to live in the sixteenth century, how she would bite the inside of her bottom lip when she was thinking, and, above all, what an extraordinary contrast her face presented full face, from her profile when her large, rather beaky nose predominated. Full face, one had no idea of its prominence (she hated her profile), but this made her most interesting to draw from a three-quarters angle. He loved her appearance, and although she was turning out to be a more complicated creature than he had first thought her, he was glad that he had married her.

When he had left her at the hospital, Louise had felt pretty nervous. The last time he had done that everybody had been horrible, which had been almost as bad as the pain. But the hospital was quite different. She was taken to a bare little room that contained nothing but a high bed, a washstand basin, a small table beside it, a chair and a small wardrobe for her clothes. She was invited to undress and get into bed. Thereafter a series of people came to see her: a nurse to take her temperature and blood pressure, the anaesthetist who asked her if she had any false teeth and finally the Sister, who was both formidable and reassuring. ‘Sorry we have to starve you this evening,’ she said. ‘But Mr Farquhar’s operating at eight o’clock. What I should like you to do now is to get a good night’s sleep. There’s a bell there if you want anything.’

‘Does the operation take a long time?’

‘Oh, no. It’s very quick. You will have rather a sore throat afterwards, but that will soon wear off.’

When she had gone, Louise lay listening to the distant traffic in Tottenham Court Road. She did not feel nervous any more. These nurses seemed kind and efficient, and as for the operation – she did not care about that. She would not, she felt, even care very much if she died from it. Ever since she had learned of Hugo’s death she had felt a little mad: as though it simply wasn’t possible to be responsible for herself, so if a very expensive doctor killed her by mistake she would merely be relieved of the seemingly endless efforts of pretending to be somebody who had interests, opinions and feelings. She was quite good at the pretence; it was, after all, simply acting, something that was becoming second nature to her, and it didn’t matter very much, but it was an effort and she felt tired all the time.

She had
not
forgiven Michael for destroying Hugo’s letter, but as the weeks had gone by in the Station Hotel, she had come to see that he, Michael, had absolutely no idea about how much it had mattered to her, and although he had done this awful thing, he had not at all known how awful it was, which somehow exonerated him – and made her feel that her resentment was irrational. But when she knew that she would never see him again, that there never could be another letter, then, locked in the impotence of her grief, she raged at Michael, attributing actual malice to his destruction. None of this was apparent: it was her secret life;
he
did not tell her things – he had not told her about Hugo and it transpired that he
had
seen the newspaper, though not when it came out. She had been
sickened
by his attempts to exonerate Zee, and when, one day, he had started to say he was sorry
he
hadn’t told her about Hugo, she had cut him short saying that she never wished to speak of Hugo with him again in her life. She would not go to Hatton either, she said. He had accepted these strictures with surprising meekness, but he had gone on in bed as though everything was the same.

When she knew that Hugo was dead, after the first few awful days – when both Polly and Clary had been really good to her, indeed Polly had cried that first evening almost as much as she – she came out of it heartless, as though she had literally lost her heart. This made one thing seem very like another – she could not put a value upon anything more significant than having an amusing evening, or people flirting with her. And so, when Rory turned up at her house one day on leave and made clear how much he had wanted her ever since their first meeting after her flu, she went to bed with him without a qualm. She found, also, that really not caring at all beyond the mild satisfaction of being admired and having attention paid to her, she became better at the bed side of life, as she put it. Rory had the added attraction of not knowing anything about Hugo, of not, indeed, knowing anything much at all about her. He also did not seem to notice that she was acting. For a few months she pretended to be someone who was having an exciting affair with a dashing, courageous young man who certainly amused her. They could not meet often, and usually not for long, and then, shortly after the night she had spent in his friend’s flat, she met a girl at the Arts Theatre Club who had said she believed Louise knew Rory Anderson.

‘I only asked, because the girl who shares my flat is mad about him. He’s taking her to Scotland for his leave. I have the feeling he’s a bit of a philanderer, and she’s
so
serious. What do you think?’

And that was the end of that. He never even wrote to her, but she did not really care. Her vanity was dented, but she felt it was hard to see what she had to be vain about. She had been available and he had availed himself. ‘Can’t even keep a lover,’ she said to herself in the jeering, worldly voice she now used for internal dialogue.

In the morning they gave her an injection and soon she felt wonderfully carefree and even more irresponsible. By the time she was wheeled to the theatre and put into some sort of reclining chair she felt as though she was going to a party.

Mr Farquhar leaned over her; the bottom of his face was covered, but his eyes looked full of merry bonhomie. More anaesthetic – she felt herself drifting away – could scarcely determine his face above her and then there was one terrifying instant of shrill, scorching agony – and then nothing.

When she came to she was back in bed and her throat hurt so much that she longed to pass out again. In the evening, Polly and Clary came to visit her, bringing
The Diary of a Nobody
and a bunch of grapes.

‘It’s a nice little book you can read lying on your back,’ Clary said. They said that peace had been signed. ‘Eisenhower signed it. I must say I thought it ought to have been Mr Churchill, but there you are,’ Clary said. ‘Anyway, the Germans have surrendered – unconditionally.’

‘Well, they couldn’t have any other way,’ Polly said. ‘And tomorrow there’ll be Victory celebrations. It’s making people awfully jolly and nice in the streets – as though it’s everyone’s birthday.’

‘It’s jolly bad luck to be in hospital, poor Louise.’

As she really couldn’t talk much at all, they didn’t stay, but said they’d come the day after tomorrow.

‘Oh, yes. Some people called Hammond rang and they wanted to come to see you. I told them where you were, and they said they would come tomorrow and hoped you’d be well enough to see them.’

‘Hammond?’ she whispered, and then she remembered the agent, and Myfanwy and the baby. She had almost forgotten them, because Myfanwy’s mother had taken her and the baby away with her the next day and she’d never seen them again. She wondered why they wanted to see her.

‘Well, if you feel too ropy, I’m sure they will understand.’

After they had gone, Sister came in and said that Commander Hadleigh had rung to ask how she was, and to send his love.

‘I told him you were doing very well,’ she said. ‘You can have a little jelly or ice cream for your supper.’

On her own again, and not up to reading, she felt feverish and horribly depressed. For years the end of the war had been a time to look forward to, when everything would be better and, indeed, wonderful. Now its immediate prospect seemed to her to hold the most dreary alternatives: becoming an MP’s wife (she saw this as sitting on hard chairs at meetings for hours while people talked about mining, or having endless careful teas with strange people),
or
she would have to live on her own in a house with Sebastian and a nanny, waiting for Michael to come back from the Japanese war . . . She realised now that she did not want either of these. For the first time she faced the frightening possibility of not being married to Michael . . . She was not the right wife for him – no, that was a weak way of putting it, she wasn’t up to being anybody’s wife . . . She didn’t love him; he seemed at once too old and too young for her and she found his relationship with his mother both despicable and frightening. Perhaps she was not capable of love – but this reached something so painful in her that it blocked any further thoughts. Somehow, somewhere, she seemed to have gone wrong, to have made a mess of things that could not now be unsaid or undone . . .

After lunch – ice cream – the next day, the Hammonds arrived. The nurse who brought them in said she would fetch another chair and a vase for the bunch of pink tulips that Myfanwy laid upon the bed. She looked very pretty in a brown dress with a cameo brooch on her white collar, and her hair – that Louise remembered as lying in disordered profusion on the pillows – was now piled neatly on top of her head.

‘We were in London for a couple of days and felt we must see you,’ he said. His name was Arthur, but he was so much older than Myfanwy that she thought of him as Mr Hammond.

‘Myfanwy’s never been to London,’ he said. ‘And I always promised her we’d come. We’ve certainly picked the right time for it. Awful bad luck for you being laid low on VE-Day.’

Myfanwy seemed very shy, although she smiled whenever she caught Louise’s eye.

Mr Hammond asked after Michael, and then her child. Then Myfanwy said, ‘I never knew you had a baby. No wonder you were so good with Owen.’

‘How is he? Is he with you?’

‘He’s fine. He’s with my mam – just for these few days.’

Her husband said, ‘Myfanwy was so sorry not to see you again, but her mother took her home to look after her and the baby and there was no chance. But she wanted to thank you.’ He paused and looked at his wife, who blushed and then suddenly took Louise’s hand.

‘I do indeed thank you. You were so good to me. And the doctor said he thought you may have saved Owen’s life. He told me afterwards how very poorly he was. There is no way I can thank you enough for that.’

Soon after that, they left.

‘I can see it tires you to talk,’ he said. ‘We shall never forget you.’

‘No, indeed. We are very glad to have seen you.’ She took Louise’s hand again. ‘I am so grateful,’ she said, ‘for your goodness.’

When they were gone, she lay looking at the two chairs. It was she who was grateful, because if they hadn’t come to tell her that she would have continued to feel completely worthless.

When he was sure that Clary was safely tucked up in his bed and asleep, Archie limped painfully back into the sitting room and took off his shoes. He had taken Clary to see the celebrations outside Buckingham Palace, Polly having gone with her father. ‘I can’t see why we can’t all go together,’ Clary had said, ‘but Poll didn’t want to.’