All Change: Cazalet Chronicles (47 page)

‘Let’s talk properly about it tomorrow.’ She’d started her period that morning – the flat iron dropping down her stomach – and had a splitting headache, and it was nearly midnight.

When they were in bed, and he had started up again about what was to become of Rachel, she asked about Sid’s house. ‘What is it like? Have you ever seen it?’

‘Only once. It’s a detached early-Victorian villa. The kind that rich men bought to install a mistress in. A pretty little house, but it looked run down when I went there. If it really has been empty for a year, I should think it will need quite a lot doing to it. In any case, she’ll have to sell it to get some income.’

‘No more now,’ she said quickly. ‘We’re going to sleep, but if you want a change of worry, worry about me. I’ve got a horrible headache and my monthly tum.’

That worked. He turned to her at once, took her in his arms, murmuring endearments, comforting her with his love and concern, repeating his private words for her until she felt small and young again.

The next morning it was agreed that he and she, with Laura, should propose themselves for the weekend at Home Place, when Hugh would break the news to Rachel about having to sell the house.

She realised, as the day wore on, that not only did she not want to live in Sid’s house, she did not want to spend a single night there. Quite apart from the extreme discomfort of the place, the idea of getting into the bed they had both slept in frightened her: she felt that she would sink under a weight of grief she would be unable to bear. She rang Home Place and arranged for Tonbridge to meet her train, then set about packing a suitcase with Sid’s most private possessions. In the desk she found that Sid had kept every single one of her letters, tied in a bundle with a piece of blue ribbon. There was also another bundle, of heartless self-absorbed postcards from Sid’s awful sister Evie, who had emigrated to America several years before in pursuit of some music conductor or other. ‘Having a wonderful time’; ‘Another 4-star hotel! This is the life!’ She never asked Sid anything about herself and never gave an address.

She would throw away that bundle. There was also a little photograph album that contained sepia pictures of Sid’s parents and her attenuated childhood. She would keep that because Sid had treasured it. She packed Sid’s jersey, which she could wear, and one or two other things – some ties, and a favourite woolly scarf that had been attacked by moths but that she had refused to discard. It was enough for one day. Downstairs, she remembered a framed picture of Sid playing a violin sonata with Myra Hess and managed to cram it into the top of the suitcase. Home. She just wanted to go home.

‘There’s nothing to do in a car.’

‘You can look out of the window.’

‘I’ve tried, Mummy, but it goes too fast for me to see anything properly.’

‘Well, have a little nap.’

‘Oh, all right.’

Jemima looked to see if Laura was lying down and she was. The car was passing Lamberhurst. Hugh said, under his breath, ‘To think Edward does this journey five days a week! I couldn’t.’

‘You don’t have to, darling. Just the trek to Ladbroke Grove.’

After a short silence, Laura said, ‘Mummy! Going away for the weekend is quite grown-up, isn’t it? Children don’t mostly go away for weekends.’

‘No, they don’t.’

‘That’s what Miss Pendleton said at school. I could see it displeased her.’

Hugh said, ‘Well, now you’re going on such a grownup venture, you must be grown-up. No Miss Ghastly for you this weekend.’

‘All right. But, Dad, I shut my eyes just now and it didn’t make me sleep at all.’

‘And promise to be especially nice to Aunt Rachel.’

‘I promised last night. I can’t keep promising about the same thing – it just makes it weaker.’

‘How about you sing us a song?’

Laura loved singing and set about one man mowing a meadow immediately. The meadow was followed by the interminable green bottles and then a medley of Christmas carols, until they reached Home Place.

‘It will do Miss Rachel a world of good to have some company,’ Eileen said, when they arrived. ‘You’re in your usual room, madam, and I’ve put Miss Laura in the dressing room next door. Miss Rachel’s in the morning room. The fire went out while she was having her rest. . .’

‘I’ll go and help her,’ Hugh said.

When he had gone, Laura took Eileen’s hand and said, ‘I want to have tea with you and Mrs Tonbridge. In the kitchen. Now?’

Eileen looked gratified. ‘What does your mother say about that?’

Jemima said it would be lovely, if they didn’t mind. ‘And, really, it’s not just tea, it should be her supper.’

‘I shall drink tea at it. I shall drink a lot of tea with my supper.’

Eileen bore her off wreathed in indulgent smiles. ‘I could give her her bath, Mrs Hugh, if you cared for me to do it.’

Her usual room. It was not Hugh’s old room – the one in which Wills had been born and, later, where Sybil had died – but a room that had been Edward’s when he had been married to Villy. Like all the bedrooms it still had the wallpaper the Duchy had chosen for it when the house was bought – a trellis entwined with honeysuckle and a few rather improbable butterflies. The floor was covered with coconut matting – coffee-coloured but interwoven with black and scarlet stripes. The paintwork, once white, had aged to a musky cream that reminded her of the twins’ cricket flannels. The bed was flanked by four posts topped with brass balls, and boasted a rather splendid patchwork quilt that had taken Villy two winters to make. The large mahogany wardrobe emitted a blast of mothball so strong that she decided not to hang her dress in it. The dressing table had its pretty Georgian mirror set at a rakish angle, plus a pincushion. ‘Darling Mummy’, it said, in shaky letters of alternate red and blue. She always looked forward to seeing it. In fact, Jemima loved the whole room, the way that things that were needed had gradually accumulated with no thought of design, no anxiety about colours clashing or periods of furniture rubbing together, no need to change anything unless it wore out, nothing new except the webs that spiders spun every year.

By now she had unpacked and went next door to inspect Laura’s room, where a large stuffed tiger was tucked up in her bed.

She should go down. She tried for one last time to imagine what it must be like to be Rachel – and failed.

The morning room was not warm exactly, but noticeably warmer than the rest of the house. The only lighting, apart from the fire, came from an ancient standard lamp whose parchment shade was so discoloured by smoke that it cast a mere foggy glow.

Hugh had been talking as she entered the room but he stopped when he saw her. Rachel sat bolt upright in a chair beside the fire. Jemima went at once to kiss her. ‘It’s lovely to see you.’

‘It’s so good of you to come.’ Her face was very cold. ‘I’m afraid I made rather a mess of the fire, but Hugh has revived it.’

‘I have other uses as well. Rachel and I have been drinking whisky, but you’d rather have gin, wouldn’t you, darling? You sit next to Rachel and get warm.’ She sat. Her sister-in-law’s face had become gaunt: she had dark circles under her eyes, almost the colour of the heavy dark blue jersey she was wearing. She had cut her hair very short, which might have made her look younger, but didn’t.

‘I’ve been trying to explain to Rachel what’s happening about the firm. I’m afraid it’s all rather difficult to take in.’

Jemima said, ‘I don’t think what is happening, or going to happen, is complicated. It’s more what we all do about it afterwards.’ She turned to Rachel, and said, ‘Cazalets’ owes the bank a great deal of money, and since they cannot repay it, the bank are calling in receivers before declaring the firm bankrupt. That means the end of the firm. There’s a chance that whoever takes it over may keep on some of the people who work in it now, and that includes your brothers, but it’s only a chance, and in any case we won’t know about that for some time.’ Her quiet, practical voice made everything clear.

‘Does that mean the whole family is bankrupt?’

‘No, it seems not. The extremely clever family lawyer advised us to put our houses in the wives’ names.’ Here she stopped because she didn’t know whether Hugh had yet broken the news to Rachel about Home Place. They exchanged glances. He handed her her drink and sat in the third chair.

‘Hugh, darling, I wonder if you would get me my cigarettes. On the table by the Torture Couch.’ This hard little day-bed had been the Duchy’s only concession to comfort; she had always urged Rachel to rest upon it. ‘Torture Couch’ had been Sid’s name for it. Hugh collected her smoking gear, a packet of Passing Clouds, an ashtray and her silver lighter.

‘Thank you, darling. Well, at least it’s good news about the houses. I know you all love this house as much as I do—’

Jemima interrupted: ‘We thought you might want to live in the house that Sid left you.’

‘Oh, no! I couldn’t bear to do that! No, I shall sell it. I went up to London to see it, and I knew almost at once that it was not for me. She told me to sell up if I wanted to. No. I would far rather stay here. This is my home.’ She took a sip of her whisky, and at that moment Eileen poked her head round the door to say that Miss Laura was ready for her bedtime story.

‘Oh dear! I haven’t even said hello to her.’

‘Tomorrow,’ Jemima replied, as she got up to go.

She gave Hugh a bracing look as she left the room. It was up to him now.

‘Rachel,’ he began, ‘it’s more difficult than that. Like us, you held a great many shares in the firm.’

‘Oh, yes! Far more than I needed, really, because the Duchy left me all hers. It has enabled me to buy a television set for the servants, which they simply adore, and I’m paying for Mrs Tonbridge to have her poor bunions done by a really good man in London—’

‘Have you saved any of it, darling?’

‘I suppose I have. Yes, of course I have – several thousand pounds, I should think.’

‘Because, you see, from the moment we’re declared bankrupt, all our shares will be worthless. There will be no more money coming in. You will have no income.’

He could see that this news shocked her.

There was a pause, during which she drank some more whisky.

‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘it simply means that I must learn how to economise. The Duchy taught me a great deal about that – especially in the war. I’m sure I can live on the income from selling the Abbey Road house. You mustn’t worry about me – you have far more important people to worry about.’

She looks her most grief-stricken when she tries to smile, he thought. ‘My dear, I’m afraid I have even more bad news. But I have to tell you. This house will no longer be ours. The Brig bought it after the first war, in the name of the firm. Cazalets’ owns the freehold, which means that we don’t. And even supposing the bank was prepared to sell it to us, we simply haven’t got enough money to pay for it. I know that this is worse for you than for any of us, and I promise I’ll sort something out for you—’

But here he was interrupted as she gave one small cry of anguish – then clapped her hand over her mouth to silence herself.

‘I didn’t know. I had no idea.’

He went to her, knelt before her and took both of her hands in his. The agony in her eyes became blurred by tears. ‘Bit of a shock,’ she said; she was scarcely audible.