All Change: Cazalet Chronicles (6 page)

‘You’re not married, are you?’

Brief scenes from her marriage slipped across her mind like a succession of dull and faded photographs. ‘Have been. Not now. What about you?’

She felt, rather than saw, a blind come down.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Married. A wife and three boys. I keep them in the country. Go down for weekends. But this is my London pad.’

They had entered the slip-road to one of the terraces and he parked. The terrace had been painted since the war and now looked pearly and festive in the dusky spring evening light – like the iced sides of a yet to be decorated wedding cake, she thought.

There were steps up to the house, and inside it a grand staircase richly dressed with a dark red carpet. Up two flights and they were in his drawing room. It was lit by a pair of lamps on low tables, which gave the impression of a mysterious twilight, in which sofas loomed, rugs glowed, and mirrors reflected themselves, making corridors of anonymous repetition; only the white marble chimneypiece shone stark and intricately beautiful. He lit another lamp, and she saw that the walls were lined with a tobacco-coloured silk. And there, on the low table in front of the deeply dark brown sofa he indicated she should sit in, was a silver platter covered with a napkin, and a bucket containing a bottle.

‘I keep my sandwiches, as Peter Sellers would say, “covered by a dazzling white clawth”.’ He wrapped the napkin round the neck of the bottle and gently eased out the cork. He was pretty used to opening champagne, she thought, as, after the magic little drift of smoke, he poured it neatly into two glasses without either of them overflowing.

‘Now: I am Joseph Waring, and you are?’

She told him. She had gone back to being called Cazalet.

‘Well. Let’s drink to us.’ He leaned towards her to bring his glass to hers, and as their hands touched, she was conscious of being very much attracted to him.

‘To Louise Cazalet – and me.’ He waited a moment. ‘Your turn.’

She felt herself blushing, which annoyed her. ‘All right. To you, then.’

‘Joseph,’ he prompted.

‘Joseph Waring.’

‘Now we can both have a swig. I must say, you sounded rather cross. Never mind. Have a sandwich.’

She took one. Smoked salmon – delicious.

But all the while they were eating them a confusion of thoughts kept her silent. He was married. No good falling in love with him. What would it be like if he kissed her? Why were the champagne and, worse, the sandwiches arranged here as if he had planned for her to join him? But he couldn’t have because they hadn’t known one another. This meant that he had planned to seduce someone – anyone – when he went to the party . . .

‘I’m not a tart.’ She said it with her mouth full so it came out rather muffled.

He made a kind of snorting noise – like the beginning of a laugh – but then she saw that he was regarding her with something like affection. ‘I never, for one instant, thought that you were.’ His eyes were brown and friendly.

She felt better, but determined to pursue this vexed subject to its end. ‘Then, how come you have all this laid out?’

‘Oh, well, you know, I like to live on the dangerous side. I was hoping I might meet someone worthy of the sandwiches, and then I found you. Finish your drink, and then I shall drive you home.’

In the car, she felt infinitely relieved, light-hearted, carefree. It was a short drive to her flat off Baker Street, and after she had told him where it was, they were both silent.

‘I’ll pick you up at eight, then,’ he said, as he saw her to her door. ‘To take you out to dinner.’ He had said it as though it was an arrangement already made.

That had been the start of it. For five nights practically every week he took her out to dinner; the remaining two he spent in the country. On the first evening, he asked if he might come back to her flat, and once there he’d kissed her. And then they’d gone to bed. It had all seemed so simple, so marvellous – and right.

‘You’ll never be able to marry him,’ Stella had said, the next morning.

‘I don’t want to marry him. I don’t want to marry anyone.’

She was in love, and she was a mistress. All that seemed fine to Louise. But her romantic situation required some strict rules, which she firmly enforced. One evening, just before his summer holiday, he took her to see a flat that he said he thought would be better for her. It was indeed desirable: a first-floor conversion in a crescent near the park. When she asked how much it would cost, he had named a sum, which, though modest for its state, was well beyond her, and she said so. If he would allow him to help her? Of course not. She was not going to be a kept woman – certainly not. He had shrugged and said it had been worth a try.

In the summer, he rented a villa on Cap Ferrat for a six-week holiday with family and friends. This was a hard time. She imagined his glamorous life going on without her, it seemed for ever, while she sat in the baking little flat from which not even a single tree could be seen. There was not even the comfort of letters. So when this year, her third with Joseph, her father had invited her to go to the south of France with him, she had accepted. But, knowing Diana’s dislike of her, Louise had had an uncomfortable meeting with her stepmother at which she had said that she didn’t think Diana would actually want her there. The result had been one of those ‘quite frankly’ times that she was protesting about to Joseph in the Étoile.

‘Well, your father clearly wants you. So go and enjoy it. Enjoy it, darling.’

He sometimes calls me ‘darling’, but he never actually says that he loves me, she later thought. Lying alone in the bed that was still warm from their lovemaking, Louise had had to accept that he would never stay the night. He always smoked one cigarette with her, dressed in an instant, and was gone.

JEMIMA, LAURA AND HUGH

‘When you’re dead, can you fly?’

Jemima had just finished explaining to Laura about the Duchy (Hugh had telephoned to tell her and said he would like it if all three of them went to Sussex, so she had thought it necessary to tell her before they went), and Laura had listened intently. She was six and Jemima thought that she was the most intelligent as well as the most beautiful child in the world – which she wrongly thought she concealed from everyone.

‘I don’t know, darling – I expect so.’

‘Cos I don’t see how she could get up there if she couldn’t.’

Laura’s only experience of death had been when they had had to put Hugh’s old spaniel down. Heaven had seemed the most comforting option and had therefore been carefully explained to her. ‘I suppose he grew wings,’ she had said, as the final tears made their way. She had cross-examined Hugh about Heaven, and he had elaborated – a place full of delicious bones, walks whenever Piper wanted them and endless rabbits to chase. All this was rather backfiring now.

‘I don’t think Duchy would like bones everywhere, or rabbits cos they ate her garden. Poor Duchy!’

Jemima battled weakly with her. Heaven was different for each person. For the Duchy there would be lovely gardens with flowers everywhere and, yes, of course, if she needed wings to get there, she would have them.

‘I would like wings now. Then I could fly up and see them both.’

‘It’s so difficult,’ she said to Hugh, over supper. ‘When we go down people are bound to be talking about the funeral and being buried and the poor little thing will be utterly confused.’

‘Well, we’ll just have to do a lot more explaining.’

‘I don’t know how to do that without telling her a pack of lies.’

‘You don’t believe in Heaven?’

She shook her head. ‘I just believe in now.’

‘Sweetheart. You don’t have to come with me.’

‘I want to.’

‘And I want you to.’

His relief washed over her: he needed her and she loved him.

In bed they reassured one another; it was comforting to him that Jemima had also loved the Duchy, who had received her into the family so kindly when she was still Jemima Leaf, had been good to her twins – the Leaflets – who wrote thank-you letters that were filled with lists of what they had most enjoyed during their visits: castle puddings, making a dam at the stream in the wood, having real cider with ginger ale, hardly ever having baths, driving the Brig’s old car, now relegated to a corner of the field where it was gracefully subsiding in a bed of nettles. These had been young letters; now they were thirteen the letters had become more stilted. The Duchy had made it plain that she approved of Jemima, though the same could not be said of Edward’s new wife, Diana. And Hugh, fiercely loyal to Villy, could not bring himself to be ever more than courteous to her.

‘Do you think he’ll bring her?’ he said.

‘Darling, I don’t know, but I guess not.’

‘Why do you guess that?’ He was sifting her straight silky hair between his fingers.

‘Because she won’t want to go. And I think she usually gets what she wants.’

‘So? I want you to get what you want.’

‘I want the same things as you.’

‘But you’d tell me if you didn’t, wouldn’t you? I don’t want you saying anything simply because you think I’d like to hear it. We made a pact, don’t you remember, the day we married?’

‘Oh dear! I was just going to say that you’re a lovely husband, an excellent father, a wonderful stepfather and a very good lover. What a pity!’

He put his arms round her bony shoulders. ‘I bask in your good opinion, you know I do. Couldn’t do without it. I hope you do a bit of basking yourself.’

‘From morning till night. And it’s night time now.’

She could tell from his face when he’d got back that evening that he’d had one of his awful headaches, but had learned long ago not to mention them. He simply needed a good long sleep.

‘I just need a good long sleep,’ she said.

PART TWO

JUNE–JULY 1956

THE FAMILY

‘I’m not saying that we shouldn’t explore all the possibilities. I just don’t think we should do it behind Rachel’s back.’

‘Archie, you sound as though you think I don’t mind about her.’

They were sitting on the bench by the tennis court where they had gone for some privacy – difficult to find in the overcrowded house.

‘Of course I don’t think that. You love her. We all do. What I meant was that it would be a good idea to iron out any of the disagreements before we talk to her. She’s exhausted – she doesn’t want to have to deal with a lot of bickering relations.’

‘What on earth do you mean by that?’

‘Come off it, Rupe. You know Hugh thinks that at all costs we should keep the house, and Edward thinks we should get rid of it. And, by the way, I’m not clear what you think.’

‘That’s because I haven’t made up my mind.’ He pulled out a battered packet of Gauloises and offered it before taking one himself. ‘I mean,’ he said, after a short silence while he tried to think what he did actually want, ‘it all depends on what Rachel wants. She won’t want the Regent’s Park house, that’s for sure. The Duchy hated it – said it was far too grand for her. This was her home, and Rachel may feel that as well. I really think it’s for her to decide. And the children all love it here.’

‘I know they do. My lot look forward to it every holiday. But who is to pay for it?’

‘I suppose we could split the costs of upkeep between us.’

He had been dreading this. ‘Rupe, I have to tell you now that I’m afraid you’d have to count me out on that. I simply don’t have the dough to promise anything on a regular basis. Money has been rather tight lately.’ His voice tailed off to an apologetic smile. It was Rupert’s beloved daughter he had married, and he was hardly keeping her in a state to which she had been accustomed.

‘My dear old boy, I wasn’t expecting you to chip in. It ought to be Hugh and Edward and me and Rachel – if she wants to live here.’ Even this kindness was humiliating. ‘And we would always want you and Clary and the family to come – just as you always have done. The Duchy would have wanted that.’ Mentioning his mother made Rupert’s eyes fill with tears. ‘She always regarded you as family,’ he said, rubbing his face furiously.

‘Why do you think Edward is so keen to get rid of Home Place?’ Archie asked, to distract him.

‘Because Diana doesn’t like it?’

‘Well, I don’t think she takes much to the family as a whole.’

‘Mm. She has ugly hands,’ Rupert said absently. ‘The kind that rings only make worse. Don’t laugh, Archie – you must have noticed them. Time we got back to the fray,’ he said, as they finished their cigarettes.

‘Is there going to be a fray?’ Archie asked, as they strolled back across the tennis court to the house.

‘If marked differences of opinion surface, I think it’s likely.’