Marking Time (72 page)

By the time Edward and Villy had helped Archie up to his room, and he had collected his crutches and limped down the passage for a pee and back again, he felt exhausted. Apart
from the emotions involved, hours of translating and spending an evening with so many – albeit now well-known and much-loved – people had been unexpectedly tiring. And then the news
about the Japs, who would really spread this war, he thought, so that in many places the British were going to be pretty thin on the ground, or at sea, let alone the air.

Dear old Rupe! I hope you’re all right, wherever you are, he thought, as he eased himself carefully into bed. What a piece of luck it was Rupert! None of the others would have got by on
their French if this evening was anything to go by. He’d allowed himself to be infected by the family’s optimism but, alone now, and privy to far more of Pipette’s information and
views than anyone else, he recognised that Rupert’s chances, at best, were no more than even. It must have been very lonely, lying in that field with his friend going away. Pipette had said
that they had early made a pact that they would not emulate the three musketeers – the all-for-one-and-one-for-all principle. Pipette was entirely professional: it was his duty to get away so
that he could fight the Germans from England. Rupert, although he was only ‘wavy Navy’, had felt the same. So, of course, when it came to one of them going and the other staying,
neither felt they had a serious choice, although Pipette said he had felt so bad about it that he had tried to stay.

Then he thought of the whole family sitting round the dinner table; with Pipette on one side of him, he had found Rachel on the other. When toasts were being drunk, to Rupert, to Pipette, and
Pipette’s reply, ‘To the family,’ and people were turning to one another to clink glasses, he had turned to Rachel. Touching her glass with his, he had said, very quietly below
the general family jollity: ‘Here’s to you, dear Rachel – and to Sid.’ Her eyes had widened a moment as though with shock, and softened. Then she had given him a wholly
enchanting, slightly anxious smile and said, ‘Bless you, Archie.’ It was the very pleasant, very end of falling out of love.

Love: Clary immediately came into his mind’s eye. What an extraordinary, intense and changeable face she had, that was always such a mirror of her heart! He went again over the moment
after he had stopped Pipette, and she had looked down at her piece of paper for comfort and then back to him, and he had seen that resolute resumption of faith that her love had for so long and so
painfully exacted, and again felt moved, and humble and untried. She knows about love, he thought again; she knows more about it than anyone else. And beside his feelings of respect and affection
for her, he felt the stirring of jealousy – of Rupert, her father, and of any future, unknown subject that there might be of her affection.

If you enjoyed
Marking Time
, you’ll love
Confusion
, volume three in The Cazalet Chronicles

London and Sussex, 1942.

The English family in turmoil . . .

During the long, dark days of war, the divided Cazalets begin to find the battle for survival echoing the confusion in their own lives.

Headstrong, independent Louise surprises everyone by abandoning her dreams of the stage and making a society marriage. Unhappiness and loneliness quickly settle in – Michael seems more
interested in his ship and his mother, to whom he is extraordinarily close, than in his young bride. Polly and Clary, now in their late teens, finally fulfil their ambition of living in London. But
the reality is not quite as they hoped. Polly is having to come to terms with the death of her mother, as well as look after her grieving father. While clever, sharp Clary is acutely aware she is
neither beautiful like Polly nor striking like Louise – and she is also the only Cazalet who seems to believe that her father might not be dead.

‘This fine, densely written saga gets stronger with each passing page’

Sunday Telegraph

An extract follows here . . .

March 1942

The room had been shut up for a week; the calico blind over the window that faced south over the front garden had been pulled down; a parchment-coloured light suffused the
cold, stuffy air. She went to the window and pulled the cord; the blind flew up with a snap. The room lightened to a chill grey – paler than the boisterous cloudy sky. She stayed for a moment
by the window. Clumps of daffodils stood with awful gaiety under the monkey puzzle, waiting to be sodden and broken by March weather. She went to the door and bolted it. Interruption, of any kind,
would not be bearable. She would get a suitcase from the dressing room and then she would empty the wardrobe, and the drawers in the rosewood chest by the dressing table.

She collected a case – the largest she could find – and laid it on the bed. She had been told never to put suitcases on beds, but this one had been stripped of its bedclothes and
looked so flat and desolate under its counterpane that it didn’t seem to matter.

But when she opened the wardrobe and saw the long row of tightly packed clothes she suddenly dreaded touching them – it was as though she would be colluding in the inexorable departure,
the disappearance that had been made alone and for ever and against everyone’s wishes, that was already a week old. It was all part of her not being able to take in the for-ever bit: it was
possible to believe that someone was gone; it was their not ever coming back that was so difficult. The clothes would never be worn again and, useless to their one-time owner, they could only now
be distressing to others – or rather, one other. She was doing this for her father, so that when he came back from being with Uncle Edward he would not be reminded by the trivial, hopeless
belongings. She pulled out some hangers at random; little eddies of sandalwood assailed her – together with the faint scent that she associated with her mother’s hair. There was the
green and black and white dress she had worn when they had gone to London the summer before last, the oatmeal tweed coat and skirt that had always seemed either too big or too small for her, the
very old green silk dress that she used to wear when she had evenings alone with Dad, the stamped velvet jacket with marcasite buttons that had been what she had called her concert jacket, the
olive-green linen dress that she had worn when she was having Wills – goodness, that must be five years old. She seemed to have kept everything: clothes that no longer fitted, evening dresses
that had not been worn since the war, a winter coat with a squirrel collar that she had never
seen
before . . . She pulled everything out and put it on the bed. At one end was a tattered
green silk kimono encasing a gold lamé dress that she dimly remembered had been one of Dad’s more useless Christmas presents ages ago, worn uneasily for that one night and never again.
None of the clothes were really nice, she thought sadly – the evening ones withered from hanging so long without being worn, the day clothes worn until they were thin, or shiny or shapeless
or whatever they were supposed
not
to be. They were all simply jumble sale clothes, which Aunt Rach had said was the best thing to do with them, ‘although you should keep anything
you want, Polly darling,’ she had added. But she didn’t want anything, and even if she had, she could never have worn whatever it might have been because of Dad.

When she had packed the clothes away she realized that the wardrobe still contained hats on the top shelf and racks of shoes beneath the clothes. She would have to find another case. There was
only one other – and this time it had her mother’s initials upon it, ‘S.V.C.’ ‘Sybil Veronica’ the clergyman had said at the funeral; how odd to have a name that
had never been used except when you were christened and buried. The dreadful picture of her mother lying encased and covered with earth recurred as it had so many times this week; she found it
impossible not to think of a body as a person who needed air and light. She had stood dumb and frozen during the prayers and scattering of earth and her father dropping a red rose onto the coffin,
knowing that when they had done all that they were going to leave her there – cold and alone for ever. But she could say none of this to anyone; they had treated her as a child about the
whole thing, had continued till the end to tell her cheerful, bracing lies that had ranged from possible recovery to lack of pain and finally – and they had not even perceived the
inconsistency – to a merciful release (where was the mercy if there had been no pain?). She was
not
a child, she was nearly seventeen. So beyond this final shock – because, of
course, she had
wanted
to believe the lies – she now felt stiff with resentment, with
rage
at not being considered fit for reality. She had slid from people’s arms,
evaded kisses, ignored any consideration or gentleness all the week. Her only relief was that Uncle Edward had taken Dad away for two weeks, leaving her free to hate the rest of them.

She had announced her intention of clearing out her mother’s things when that question had been mooted, had refused absolutely any help in the matter; ‘at least I can do that,’
she had said, and Aunt Rach, who was beginning to seem marginally better than the rest of them, had said of course.

The dressing table was littered with her mother’s silver-backed brushes and a tortoiseshell comb, a cut-glass box containing hairpins that she had ceased to use after having her hair cut
off, and a small ring stand on which hung two or three rings, including the one Dad had given her when they were engaged: a cabochon emerald surrounded by small diamonds and set in platinum. She
looked at her own ring – also an emerald – that Dad had given her in the autumn last year. He does love me, she thought, he simply doesn’t realize how old I am. She didn’t
want to hate
him
. All these things on the dressing table couldn’t just go to jumble. She decided to pack them in a box and keep them for a bit. The few pots of cold cream and powder
and dry rouge had better be thrown away. She put them in the waste-paper basket.

The chest of drawers had underclothes and two kinds of nightdresses: the ones Dad had given her that she never wore, and the ones she bought that she did. Dad’s ones were pure silk and
chiffon with lace and ribbons, two of green and one of a dark coffee-coloured satin. The ones she had bought were cotton or winceyette, with little flowers on them – rather Beatrix Potter
nightdresses. She ploughed on: bras, suspender belts, camisoles, camiknickers, petticoats in locknit Celonese, all a sort of dirty peachy colour, silk stockings and woollen ones, some Viyella
shirts, dozens of handkerchiefs in a case Polly had made years ago with Italian quilting on a piece of tussore silk. At the back of the underclothes drawer was a small bag, like a brush and comb
bag, in which was a tube that said Volpar Gel and a small box with a funny little round rubber thing in it. She put these back in the bag and into the waste-paper basket. Also in that drawer was a
very flat square cardboard box inside which, wrapped in discoloured tissue paper, lay a semi-circular wreath made of silver leaves and whitish flowers that crumbled when she touched them. On the
lid of the box was a date, written in her mother’s hand: ‘12 May 1920’. It must have been her wedding wreath, she thought, trying to remember the funny picture of the wedding on
her grandmother’s dressing table with her mother in an extraordinary dress like a tube with no waist. She put the box aside, it not being possible to throw away something that had been
treasured for so long.

The bottom drawer contained baby things. The christening robe that Wills was the last to have worn – an exquisite white lawn frock embroidered with clover that Aunt Villy had made –
an ivory teething ring, a clutch of tiny lace caps, a silver and coral rattle that looked as though it had come from India, a number of pale pink unworn knitted things, made, she guessed, for the
baby that died, and a large, very thin, yellowing cashmere shawl. She was at a loss; eventually she decided to put these things away until she could bring herself to ask one of the aunts what to do
with them.

Another afternoon gone. Soon it would be tea-time, and after that, she would take over Wills, play with him, bath him and put him to bed. He is going to be like Neville, she thought – only
worse, because at four he’ll remember her for a long time, and Neville never knew his mother at all. So far it had not been possible to explain to Wills. Of course they had tried –
she
had tried. ‘Gone away,’ he would repeat steadily. ‘Dead in the sky?’ he would suggest, but he still went on looking for her – under sofas and beds, in
cupboards and whenever he could escape, he made a journey to this empty room. ‘Airplane,’ he’d said to her yesterday after repeating the sky bit. Ellen had said she’d gone
to heaven, but he had confused this with Hastings and wanted to meet the bus. He did not cry about her, but he was very silent. He sat on the floor fiddling listlessly with his cars, played with
his food but did not eat it and tried to hit people if they picked him up. He put up with her, but Ellen was the only person he seemed to want at all. In the end he’ll forget her, I suppose,
she thought. He’ll hardly remember what she looked like; he’ll know he lost his mother, but he won’t know who she was. This seemed sad in a quite different way and she decided not
to think about it. Then she wondered whether not thinking about something was the next worst thing to not talking about it, because she certainly didn’t want to be like her awful family who,
it seemed to her, were doing their damnedest to go about their lives as though nothing had happened. They hadn’t talked about it before, and they didn’t now; they didn’t believe
in God, as far as she could see, since none of them went to church, but they had all – with the exception of Wills and Ellen who stayed to look after him – gone to the funeral: stood in
the church and said prayers and sung hymns and then trooped outside to the place where the deep hole had been dug and watched while two very old men had lowered the coffin into the bottom of it.
‘I am the Resurrection and Life,’ said the Lord, ‘and he who believeth in me shall not die.’ But she
hadn’t
believed, and nor, as far as she knew, had they.
So what had been the point? She had looked across the grave at Clary who stood staring downwards, the knuckles of one hand crammed into her mouth. Clary, also, was unable to talk about it, but she
certainly did not behave as though nothing had happened. That awful last evening – after Dr Carr had come, and given her mother an injection and she had been taken in to see her (‘She
is unconscious,’ they said, ‘she doesn’t feel anything now,’ announcing it as though it was some kind of
achievement
), and she had stood listening to the shallow,
stertorous breaths, waiting and waiting for her mother’s eyes to open so that something could be said, or at least there could be some mutual, silent farewell . . .