All Change: Cazalet Chronicles (42 page)

‘Here you are, sir.’

‘Thank you, McNaughton.’ It was wonderful to know that from now on, in the journey, McNaughton would not speak again unless he was spoken to. Edward relished the silence. He could read his paper in peace, fall asleep if he was so inclined, or he could try to make more sense of the pickle they were in.

Tonight he had bad news for Diana, and he needed to think of the best way to break it to her. She was going through the change – something about which he knew nothing. He realised that Villy must have gone through it, too, but she had never mentioned it.

It wasn’t something that people talked about much, if at all. Anyway, Diana was given to fits of crying, to starting unreasonable arguments, to blaming him for stupid little things, like losing the buttons that had come off his jackets or not managing to bag a brace of partridge at a Saturday shoot. In between these fits of gloom and aggression, she was full of apologies and generally abject, and he often found this worse.

But today he had had a shock. Two shocks, actually.

He seldom looked at his bank statements, but he had noticed rather a lot of red ink on the last two months’ worth, and rung the bank about it. After some delay, he had worked his way up from the chief cashier to the manager. It was explained to him that he had been drawing out more money than his salary paid in. ‘That is why I gave you instructions, years ago, to top up that account from my savings account.’

‘Yes, Mr Cazalet, but there is no more left there either – hasn’t been for at least six months. As a matter of fact I’ve just dictated a letter about the matter asking you to come and see me about it.’

There was a pause while Edward tried to digest this shock. ‘I don’t see what I can do about it.’

‘I think we might be able to find a way round it. You could, for instance, take out a mortgage on your country house.’

‘I don’t want to do that!’

‘Well, there may be other options, but we must certainly discuss them. The present situation cannot continue. Would three o’clock this afternoon suit you?’

The meeting had not cheered him at all. The options turned to asking the firm for a bonus – an unfortunately large one that he knew the company could not afford – but otherwise a mortgage on Park House seemed the only alternative.

Edward then broached his scheme for the firm going public; his brother had finally agreed that it might be the best thing to do.

Ian Mallinson shook his head. ‘It takes about two years to effect such a change, and I’m afraid you have left it far too late for that. For that you need a business that is thriving with a good track record of profit, which I am sorry to say your firm no longer has.’

‘We have large assets in terms of property. If we sold some of them off?’

‘You would simply be left with an even less inviting proposition for potential shareholders.’

He ended by suggesting that Edward should go away and think about it and have further discussions with Mr Hugh.

That had been the second shock. Edward had spent all his capital on Diana: the house had been expensive and she had used a lot of money doing it up. Not to mention holidays, like the French one, where he had been expected to pay for everyone, including her relations. She had the idea that he was far richer than he was, and he, out of some sort of silly pride, had never disabused her of the notion. It wasn’t really her fault, but he knew she would not enjoy the change. If they were to live on his salary, there would have to be many economies. Blast Hugh. If he hadn’t been so obstinate, they might all be rich by now, the whole family, since all the shares were owned by them.

Thank God he wouldn’t have to worry about Villy. Apart from a few shares, her alimony was tied up so safely that even if the firm was bankrupt they couldn’t touch it. It was the first time he had said that word to himself, and it made him feel sick. What on earth would he do? What would any of them do?

Well, he would have to face Diana first of all. Warn her that things were pretty bad – that the skiing holiday in Switzerland was out of the question for a start . . .

‘You’re so late I was beginning to worry.’

‘Traffic’s never good on a Friday.’ He said this as he did on most Fridays.

She kissed the side of his face, and then, taking him by the hand, led him into the drawing room. ‘I’m afraid the Martinis may be a bit watery, as the ice will have melted by now.’

‘Add a bit more gin, and perhaps a bit more ice.’ Edward closed his eyes. The room, with its low lamps, yellow damask curtains and tactfully burning log fire, smelt strongly of freesias. Although she was a great gardener, Diana insisted upon buying flowers from the local shop, where she had an account.

‘One doctored Martini. Poor old boy, you look as though you’ve had a bad day. Did you go to the bank?’

‘I did. It’s bad news, I’m afraid. They’re really not going to stand for any more loans.’

‘How disgraceful, when the family has been with them all these years! Well, we’ll just have to tighten our belts, won’t we, darling? You must admit that I’m a good housekeeper. There always seems to be enough money for us, doesn’t there?’

This was it. This was when he was going to have to tell her that they had not been living on his salary but had been supplementing it with capital.

‘. . . and today I discovered that it’s all gone. In fact, I owe them thousands of pounds.’

There was a pregnant pause. Then Diana said slowly, ‘You can’t have had all that much in the first place.’

This appraisal, which felt much like a prelude to judgement, made him feel as though someone had dropped an ice cube down the back of his neck. For a moment it seemed that everything had been for nothing. With an attempt at bravado, he tried to laugh as he said, ‘I’m afraid that if you married me for my money, you were barking up the wrong tree.’

There was another, rather awful, silence. Then she burst out, ‘How can you say such a terrible thing? As if I would ever have done that! That I should ever have thought such a disgusting thing, let alone done it!’

‘Diana, I was only joking – trying to joke. I spent the money on you! This house cost more than the one we sold in London. Then you wanted to furnish it and that cost a lot, but I wanted you to have what you wanted. Then the French holiday ended up being far more expensive than I thought it would. All those things added up. But I’d no idea we’d spent so much till today. Bit of a bombshell. It’s all my fault, I know that, but if we work things out, we could live on my salary, and I could probably come to some arrangement with the bank about paying them back.’

‘Do you mean we’ll be so poor we can never have another holiday? What about Switzerland? I suppose that’s off – and Susan was so looking forward to it.’

‘Yes, I’m afraid it will be.’ He held out his glass and she refilled both of them.

‘Most of this is Hugh’s fault, isn’t it?’

‘He was a bit slow about us selling up, but he’s come round to it now. The rest of it is my fault alone. I’m awfully sorry, darling.’

‘Well – what do we do now?’

‘I think we should make a list of our expenses and then it will be clearer for us to see where we can cut down. What about dinner first?’

She drained her glass and stood up. ‘We’re having oysters and grouse, but I expect you’ll say it’s far too extravagant.’

He hauled himself out of his chair. He felt inordinately tired, had reached the anything-for-a-quiet-life stage. She had had a shock, of course she had, and needed reassurance. He put an arm round her waist and smiled at her. ‘It’s going to be all right, sweetie, you’ll see. And the dinner sounds quite delicious.’

For some reason, he then remembered the reassuring things he had said to terribly wounded men – the few they managed to collect at night on and behind the wire – the comforting but necessary lies that no one believed but most wanted to hear. Men choking in mud, stinking of their own excrement, voiceless from crying out all day for water, for help, for an end to it all. They had taken it in turns to shoot the ones who had to be put out of their hopeless misery; the very few that remained were hauled, screaming, onto stretchers where they would at least die with their friends. He had been sick frequently after these missions . . . Edward swallowed the memory, rammed it back where it belonged in the black pit of his past – so long ago now that he’d thought he had finished with it for good.

The oysters calmed them both, and by the time they had demolished the grouse, plus an exceedingly good bottle of La Tâche, ‘last one I’m afraid’, he wanted nothing more than to go to bed with her, but he knew he must get it over with.

‘Let’s have brandy in the drawing room and see if we can make a start. Sit next to me and we’ll do it together.’

But it proved to be far worse than he had thought. They began with wages: McNaughton, Mrs Atkinson, the cleaner, and a man who did odd jobs of maintenance. Then there were Susan’s school fees, her uniform and holiday clothes, Jamie’s allowance, plus other costs while he was at university, and the two family cars. When he got to Diana’s housekeeping allowance, Edward found that she had run up large accounts with the butcher, the fishmonger and the grocer, not to mention the florist, and some shop in London where she had had the lampshades and the curtains made for the drawing room. Then there was a personal allowance for Diana, paid monthly into her own account, which proved to have nothing in it. On top of all this, he had paid for three foreign holidays, which had included her friends and relatives, all of which had cost far more than he had planned for. Wine bills, boxes of decent cigars, subscriptions to his clubs, a couple of new suits from his tailor – it went on and on. ‘What about your clothes?’ he asked.

‘Well, obviously, I couldn’t pay for my new fur coat out of my allowance. But you said you wanted me to have it. So, naturally, I assumed you would cover it.’

‘I don’t know how I’m going to do that. I owe the bank at least six thousand pounds that I shall have to pay back out of my salary, which, incidentally, is the only money we shall have to live on. We’re going to have to scale down.’

‘Well,’ she said, making it sound like a great concession, ‘we could cut Pearl to one day a week.’

‘And what would that save?’

‘Er – two pounds, two shillings.’

‘And what about Mrs Atkinson? Do we really need her – just the two of us? She must cost a lot more than the cleaner.’

‘You mean I should do all the cooking myself – not to mention the shopping and general housekeeping too? Besides, it would only save us just under two hundred a year, plus her keep.’

‘Hugh and Rupert don’t have cooks.’

‘That’s their own affair. Anyway, it’s beside the point.’

‘It isn’t, Diana. It isn’t.’

‘I notice that all these cuts affect me the most. What about you?’

‘Well, for a start, I shall have to resign from both my clubs. That will save us at least a thousand a year.’

That silenced her for several moments. Then she said, ‘What about McNaughton? If we can’t afford a cook, surely we can’t afford a chauffeur.’

‘So far, the firm has been paying, but I don’t think they’ll be able to go on doing it. I shall be driving myself in future.’

‘But I need him here! He does the mowing, and chops wood for the fires, and all sorts of other odd jobs. We can’t possibly do without him!’

He agreed that they couldn’t. ‘We’ll have to stop all these accounts with tradesmen.’

‘What difference will that make? We have to eat.’

‘When you have an account, you always spend more because you aren’t paying cash when you buy. We have to make a budget for housekeeping, and it will be your job to keep within it.’

There was a heavy silence while he nerved himself for the next difficult thing.

‘And I’m afraid, darling, that you will have to cancel the fur coat. You haven’t worn it, have you?’

She hadn’t. The shop was sending it down next week. ‘It will be like the war,’ she said bitterly. ‘Endless housework, living on cheap food, and never having any fun.’

‘Diana! Darling! We had fun in the war, in spite of everything – you know we did.’

‘You had enough money then for us to go to restaurants and the theatre. And we didn’t have children. Now I’m tied here all day every day, and you come back so tired you don’t want to do anything except eat and sleep.’ She was crying now, but too angrily to sound pathetic.

‘If you find this house too much for you, you can always sell it. It’s in your name. We could easily find something smaller and easier to run. That’s up to you.’

‘Oh, thank you very much! After all the work I’ve put into making this a lovely comfortable home for you, you’re perfectly prepared to ditch it!’

And so it went on. Second brandies, the air thick with blame, while the fire burned out; resentment, self-pity and exasperation. Diana could not understand how he could be so uncaring of her feelings – of the shock the whole thing was for her. He became increasingly angry with her for her thoughtless selfishness – could she not, for one minute, see how awful the whole business was for him? Did she care about him at all? Briefly, he thought of Villy, how kind and practical she would have been, but then, with her, he would not have had this extravagant lifestyle and house to cope with in the first place. And the future was possibly bleaker than Diana knew. He could not face telling her that. He shut the account book, and stood up. ‘It’s very late, darling, and we aren’t getting anywhere now. Let’s have a truce and call it a day.’