All Change: Cazalet Chronicles (8 page)

‘Ring for Eileen to fetch the plates, Rupe.’

‘Hugh, it’s nearest to you.’

Hugh fumbled under the table where Rachel had been sitting. Edward went to the sideboard to get the port. Clary said, ‘If the ladies are meant to withdraw at this point, I think I’ll withdraw to bed. Goodnight, all.’

Zoë said, ‘I’ll wait in the drawing room until Jemima returns and then I’ll be off as well.’

Eileen, having removed the pudding plates, asked if the gentlemen would like their coffee in the dining room.

‘Anyone for coffee?’ Hugh asked, but nobody seemed to want it. Eileen was told to take the tray to the drawing room and, yes, that would be all. There was a faint, but unmistakable feeling of tension in the air.

The port went round and all four men filled their glasses.

Hugh said: ‘Before we start on things that have to be done, I suggest we all drink a toast to our dear mother and,’ looking at Archie, ‘friend.’

So they all stood and did that.

This seemed to lighten things a little. When they sat down, cigarettes were lit, in Edward’s case a cigar.

‘With Rachel’s agreement,’ Hugh began, ‘I went to see the vicar to organise a date for the funeral, and we agreed on Monday week. I asked for next Saturday, but it was not convenient, so it will be at eleven thirty on the twenty-fifth. I have also drafted announcements for
The Times
and the
Telegraph
to appear this Monday. I have included the time and place of the funeral for people who may want to attend it. That’s as far as I got.’

Rupert said, ‘Did Rachel say anything about where she wants to live?’

‘Nothing. Only that she didn’t want to keep the London house.’

‘It belongs to the firm anyway,’ Edward said. ‘That’s something we can sell, at least.’

‘I can’t understand why you’re so keen on selling anything. The Brig always said that property was the best investment of capital and, as chairman of the firm, I have every intention of following his advice.’

‘Well, perhaps you’ve forgotten that the firm also owns Home Place. Rachel surely won’t want to live here on her own, and it’s worth a hell of a lot more than when the Brig bought it. If we sold that, we could buy Rachel a nice little house or flat in London.’

‘You surely don’t want to get rid of the place where we’ve all spent so much of our lives, where our children grew up, which was our home during the last war? You cannot want to do that!’

Oh dear, Archie thought, as he looked helplessly at Rupert. I feel just like Hugh, only I can’t do anything about it.

But Rupert came to the rescue. ‘I agree with Hugh,’ he said. ‘I feel that even if Rachel doesn’t want to live here we could all chip in and keep the house, for her, for the children and, speaking for myself, for me.’

At this point they all looked at Edward.

He stirred uncomfortably in his chair. ‘For goodness’ sake, don’t think that I don’t care about the house. The fact is that Diana wants to live in the country, and that will mean my selling the lease on Ranulf Road, for which I shan’t get much as it has only ten years to run, and buying somewhere. I’m fairly strapped for cash as it is, really not in a position to pay for a second property.’

Hugh began to say that that left three of them, and almost at the same time Archie, very tentatively, suggested that perhaps they should wait until Rachel had been consulted. And also, was it possible that the Duchy had expressed some wishes about it in her will?

This seemed to lower the temperature a bit. Rupert agreed that there was not much point in pursuing the subject any further, and they fell back on reminiscing about the early days of Home Place, the Brig facing the Duchy with all manner of stray and unknown guests, and how the Duchy had comforted the young Jewish nurses from the Babies’ Hotel when it was evacuated to Home Place during the war by inviting them in the evening for tea and biscuits and Beethoven on the gramophone. Affection slowly replaced sibling differences.

Then Jemima came down to tell them that Sid had settled for the night, and had been asleep when Rachel came to see her, and they all decided to call it a day.

Zoë undressed in the familiar room with its wallpaper of peacocks and chrysanthemums, then sat in front of her dressing-table mirror, cleansing her face and remembering the first time she had come here, how nervous she had felt. Her clothes had seemed all wrong, and though she had been welcomed as Rupert’s wife, she had felt that she would never fit in, would never withstand Clary’s hostility, could never be a stepmother. Well, to be honest, she had never wanted to be a mother at all, and was both bored and defeated at the prospect of Clary and Neville watching and criticizing her. And then that awful incident in London, when she had played – had overplayed – the flirt and paid the price of the disastrous sad child that had mercifully, from her point of view, died. What a heartless little bitch I was, she thought, thinking of nothing but my appearance and wanting Rupert to admire me from morning till night. But I did love him in the end.

She remembered now how incredibly tactful and kind the Duchy had been when she had fallen in love with Jack Greenfeldt, leaving them alone for what proved to be their last meeting. The anguish she had felt about him had changed her life entirely. She had believed that Rupert was dead, and when Jack, unable to bear what he had seen in the German camps, had shot himself, there seemed nothing to live for – excepting Juliet. She had been going to the small temporary hospital that had been set up for badly wounded men who were nursed between operations to repair what could be saved of their ravaged bodies. Most of them had faced a life of dependence, and most of them were under twenty-five, but it was only after Jack’s death that she had begun to imagine what it would be like to be another person, a person infinitely less fortunate than herself, and to take a great deal less for granted.

It had been a shaky start, as most beginnings are, but here she was now, with Rupert, whom she had come to recognise she loved, Juliet, who was as wilful and pretty and self-absorbed as she herself had been when she was that age, and the newest treasure, her zoophilic son, who had wept when, on his fourth birthday, they had given him a beautiful stuffed monkey, ‘He’s not real! I wanted a real monkey!’ and had had to make do with a guinea pig.

When Rupert came up he found her in tears. ‘Oh, sweetheart, what is it?’

‘Nothing really – everything. I’m so lucky – to be here with you. I love you so much.’ She was sitting up in bed and held out her bare arms.

‘How lucky that I feel just the same. Lovely creamy skin you’ve got.’ He wiped her eyes on a corner of the sheet. Years ago that sort of remark would have made her sulk (her awful sulks, how had he borne them?). Now the years, with the affection of intimacy, had overlaid such nonsense. They had grown into each other.

‘She shouldn’t really have come, you know. She’d been in bed, on penicillin, and I’m pretty sure she has a temperature. Poor Sid!’

‘And poor Rachel! It really is rather the last straw for her. Nursing the Duchy for weeks and now this.’

‘I don’t know. It may help her. Your sister always wants to be needed. She wanted to see Sid, but she was asleep and we both thought it best not to disturb her.’

They were talking quietly, as Laura, encased in her pirate’s tricorn hat, lay spread across their bed. Hugh picked her up very carefully to transfer her to her bed, but even so the hat fell off. Jemima retrieved it, and managed to put it on again. Laura simply gave a deep, rather irritable sigh, as one interrupted in something very important, turned onto her side and continued to sleep.

‘Well done.’ He looked at his wife, standing barefoot in her white cotton nightdress, with her golden bobbed hair, and felt an absolute joyous longing for her. ‘Help me out of my shirt, darling.’

She pulled the second sleeve over his black silk stump and he put his arms round her. ‘I cannot,’ he said, after he had kissed her, ‘imagine life without you.’ And with no more words they went to bed.

What a day! Edward thought, as he got out of his clothes. He didn’t feel too good – the usual touch of indigestion that he had suffered from for some time now, plus a general feeling of malaise. He was used to being popular, charming, and liked by people; being in a minority about anything didn’t suit him at all. If only Diana had taken more to Home Place, they could have had it and, of course, the family could have stayed whenever they liked.

But she was determined on her own house, and he couldn’t see her wanting much of the family in it. Though Louise and Teddy, and Lydia if she was ever available, must be able to come there – he would insist on that -but vaguely, in the back of his mind, it occurred to him that surely he shouldn’t be put into the position of having to insist. He had done a lot for her boys, after all, particularly the youngest, who he was now pretty sure was not his.

He shook a couple of Alka Seltzer into his tooth glass, filled it with water and knocked it back. It usually did the trick or, at any rate, half the trick. This bloody dock problem. Time was that when their men had wanted to come out on strike, he had gone down to the wharf and talked to them, and resolved it. No chance of that now. The firm had grown since those days. Before the war, if he’d felt like a day off shooting or playing golf or being with Diana, he’d simply taken it. Hugh could always be relied upon to hold the fort or, when the Old Man had been in control, to cover for him. And he and Hugh had been so close: regular games of squash, chess on winter evenings, sharing out the work. He had been the best at selling, and the Brig had taught him to buy the timber, both here and in the Far East. Hugh was meticulous about dispatches, and ran their fleet of blue lorries (an uneconomic colour since it faded so fast but which distinguished them from all other heavy transport on the road). It was simply that while he could clearly see they were over-extended in terms of property, and that eventually the bank would not wear their steadily increasing overdraft, Hugh seemed utterly oblivious to the financial dangers, and since his elevation to chairman, his obstinacy – always a key factor – had worsened.

He went to the window overlooking the front garden and opened it; immediately, the night air, gentle and warm, assailed him. It was heavily scented with all the flowers the Duchy had planted for that purpose. Moths flew at random from the dark into the light of his room. As he got into bed and turned off his bedside lamp, the Duchy filled his mind. He had gone with Hugh to her room to say goodbye. She was lying there, with white roses in her hands, her face as smooth and pale as alabaster. She looked as young as when he had been her child. ‘You were always my naughtiest son,’ he remembered her saying, when he had become engaged to Villy and had taken her to meet his parents. When Villy had pressed the Duchy to elaborate, she had looked directly at him: ‘You tried once to bite your sister. And whenever you were naughty and punished, you simply did whatever it was again. You used to spit,’ she finished, and smiled at him with frank serenity. That tranquil, direct gaze! He knew no one who was as simply direct as she. Even Rachel, who was certainly frank, was not tranquil. ‘And I shall never see her again.’ His eyes filled with unbearably hot tears. Without anyone – without Diana -he was able to mourn her.