Marking Time (4 page)

Outside, the street was fuller than usual: several pregnant mothers with pasty-faced children in tow were wandering up and down, staring disconsolately into the shop windows, and then moving on
a few yards.

‘Evacuees,’ Rupert said. ‘I suppose we’re lucky not to have any of them. The Babies’ Hotel is a much easier bet. At least babies don’t have nits and lice, and
don’t complain about it being too quiet and not being able to eat the food.’

‘Is that what they do?’

‘That’s what Sybil says Mrs Cripps says that Mr York says Miss Boot says.’

‘Good Lord!’

When they got into their laden car, Hugh said, ‘What do you think about the children staying where they are?’

Slightly startled, Rupert said, ‘You mean our lot?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, where else can they go? They certainly can’t be in London.’

‘We could send them further into the country. Away from the coast. Suppose there’s an invasion?’

‘Oh, honestly, I don’t think we can look that far ahead. Light me a cigarette, would you? What does Sybil think?’ he went on when Hugh had done so.

‘She’s being a bit awkward about it all. Wants to come to London herself to look after me. I can’t have that, of course. We nearly had a row,’ he added, surprised again
by the awful, unusual fact. ‘In the end, I shut her up by saying I’d live with you. I never meant it,’ he said, ‘I knew you wouldn’t be in London anyway. But she
didn’t. She’s just a bit on edge. Much better for the family to stay together. And I can get down at weekends, after all.’

‘Will you keep your house open?’

‘Have to see. It depends whether I can get anyone to look after me. If not, I can always stay at my club.’ Visions occurred of endless dreary evenings eating with chaps he
didn’t really want to spend the evening with.

But Rupert, who knew his brother’s home-loving habits, and briefly imagined poor old Hugh on his own in a club, said, ‘You could always come up and down in the train with the Old
Man.’

Hugh shook his head. ‘Someone’s got to be in London at night. That’s when they’ll drop their bombs. Can’t leave the blokes to cope with the wharf by
themselves.’

‘You’ll miss Edward, won’t you?’

‘I’ll miss both of you. Still, old crocks can’t be choosers.’

‘Someone has to keep the home fire burning.’

‘Actually, old boy, I think people will be keener on me putting them out.’

A moment later, he added, ‘You’re the only person I’ve ever met who actually hoots when he laughs.’

‘It’s awful, isn’t it? I was called Factory at school.’

‘Never knew that.’

‘You were away most of the time.’

‘Oh, well, the position is shortly to be reversed.’

Hugh’s tone, both bitter and humble, touched Rupert, who instinctively glanced at the black stump that rested on his brother’s knee. God! Think of going through life with no left
hand because someone else had blown it off. Still it
is
his
left
hand. But I’m left-handed – it would have been worse for me. Slightly ashamed of his egocentricity,
and wanting Hugh to feel better he said, ‘Your Polly is a pearl. And she’s getting prettier every day.’

And Hugh, his face lighting up, said instantly, ‘Isn’t she just? For the Lord’s sake don’t tell her.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of doing that, but why not? I always tell Clary things like that.’

Hugh opened his mouth to say that was different, and shut it again. It was all right in his book to tell people they were beautiful when they weren’t; it was when they
were
that
you had to shut up. ‘I don’t want her getting ideas,’ he said vaguely, and Rupert, knowing this was Cazalet for getting above oneself, the only-pebble-on-the-beach syndrome with
which he too had been brought up, deemed it better, or easier, to agree.

‘Of course not,’ he said.

Raymond Castle sat with his eldest daughter in Lyons’ Corner House at Tottenham Court Road.

‘Daddy, for the hundredth time, I’m perfectly OK. Honestly.’

‘I dare say you are, but your mother and I would prefer you to be in the country, with us and the rest of the family.’

‘I do wish you would stop treating me like a child. I’m
twenty.’

I know that, he thought. If he’d been treating her as a child, he’d simply have
told
her she was bloody well packing her bags and getting into the car with him and the old
trout and the governess. Now he was reduced to
preferring . . .

‘And anyway, I couldn’t possibly come today: I’ve got a party tonight.’

There was a silence during which, in going through the familiar, and often unsuccessful, motions of not losing his temper, he recognised wearily that he had no temper to lose. She defeated him
– by her appearance, a confusing blend of Jessica when he had married her but missing the romantic innocence and sheer untried
youngness
that had so enthralled him. Angela’s
golden hair, that a year ago had hung so engagingly in a long page-boy bob, was now drawn back severely from her forehead, with a centre parting and secured by a narrow plait of her own hair (he
assumed) exposing her face with its perfectly plucked eyebrows, smooth, pale make-up and poppy-red mouth. She wore a pale grey linen fitted coat, and a wisp of amber chiffon scarf at her white
neck. She looked fashionable (he called it smart), but utterly remote. That was the other way in which she defeated him: by her manner of completely and indifferently withdrawing from any
communication with him at all beyond the meaningless, well-worn clichés in response to any questions. ‘I’m fine’, ‘Nobody
you’
d know’,
‘I’m not a child’, ‘Nothing much’, ‘What does it
matter
?’

‘Good party?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t been to it yet.’ She replied without looking at him. She picked up her cup and finished her coffee, then looked pointedly at his. She wanted them
to go – to put an end to what he felt she saw as merely idle curiosity. He called the nippie over and paid their bill.

The idea of calling on her in the flat that she shared with an unknown girl friend and taking her out to lunch had occurred to him as he drove over Waterloo Bridge on his mission to collect Lady
Rydal and the governess. ‘Your good deed for about a week, I should think, old boy,’ Edward had said that morning, but he had been quite glad to take on the task: he did not like
situations where he was not in control, and in Sussex it was the Old Man who ran the show. If he just turned up, he might find out what was going on because he could not see for the life of him why
she would be so secretive unless there was something to be secretive
about
. He’d wondered whether he’d better telephone first, but decided that that would defeat the object.
Which was . . . ? Well, he
was
her father and really she shouldn’t be left in London on her own in the circumstances. He must try to get her to come down with him.
That
was
why he was going to see her. He’d feel pretty bloody terrible if he’d come all this way, and then simply left her in town with the chance of getting blown up. Virtue succeeded the
slightly uncomfortable feelings; he was somebody for whom self-righteousness was often a boon. He’d rung the top bell of the house in Percy Street and waited an age, but nobody came. He put
his finger on the bell and kept it there. What the hell was going on? he kept asking himself as various hellish on-goings occurred to him. By the time a girl – not Angela – stuck her
head out of an upper window and shouted ‘Who is it?’ he was feeling quite angry.

‘I’ve come to see Angela,’ he shouted back, as he limped down the steps in order to see the girl.

‘Yeah, but who is it?’ she replied.

‘Tell her it’s her father.’

‘Her
father
?’ An incredulous laugh. ‘OK. Whatever you say.’ He was just about to mount the steps again – trying, because of his leg – when he heard
the girl’s voice again. ‘She’s asleep.’ She made it sound as though that was that.

‘Well, let me in and wake her up. In that order,’ he added.

‘OK.’ The voice sounded resigned now. While he waited, he looked at his watch as though he didn’t know the time. Well, he didn’t, exactly, but it was well after twelve.
In bed at noon? Good God!

The girl who opened the door to him was young with straight brown hair and small brown eyes. ‘It’s quite a long way up,’ she said as soon as she perceived his limp.

He followed her up two flights of stairs that were covered with worn linoleum and smelled faintly of cats, and finally into a room that contained, among much else, an unmade bed, a tray on the
floor in front of the gas fire that held the remnants of a meal, a small sink with a dripping tap, a sea-green carpet covered with stains and a small sagging armchair in which crouched a large
marmalade cat. ‘Get off, Orlando. Do sit down,’ she added. The gas fire, filled with broken and blackened elements, was roaring. ‘I was making toast,’ the girl said. She
looked at him doubtfully, not supposing that he would want any. ‘It’s all right. I’ve woken her. We went to a party last night and were jolly late, only I got up early because we
hadn’t any milk, and, anyway, I was starving.’

There was quite a long silence.

‘Do go on with your meal,’ he said.

At once she began hacking at the sloping loaf of bread. Then, without looking up, she said, ‘You really
are
her father, aren’t you? I recognise you now. Sorry,’ she
added. For what? he wondered. For the incredulous laugh? For Angela, having this old crock of a father who turned up without warning?

‘Do a lot of mock fathers come flocking to the door?’

‘Not exactly
flocking
—’ she began, but was interrupted by Angela, miraculously – it seemed to him – made up and with her hair elaborately done. She wore a
dressing gown and her feet were bare.

‘I’ve come to take you out to lunch,’ he said, trying to sound assured and festive about it.

She allowed him to kiss her, then, looking at the room with a certain distaste, said she would just get dressed and they could go.

In the street, he said, ‘Where shall we go?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t want any lunch. Anywhere you like.’

In the end they walked down Percy Street and along Tottenham Court Road to Lyons’ Corner House, where he worked his way through a plate of roast lamb, potatoes and carrots, while she
sipped coffee.

‘Sure you couldn’t fall for a Knickerbocker Glory?’ he asked. When she had been goodness knew how much younger, these fearful concoctions had been her greatest treat. But she
simply looked at him as though he was mad, and said no thank you. After that, he chatted feverishly, telling her about collecting her grandmother and Miss Milliment, and it was when her face
cleared at the mention of this last name that he realised how angry she had been throughout the meal. ‘I did like Miss Milliment,’ she said, and some indefinable expression crossed her
face and was gone almost before he saw it. It was then that he apologised for turning up without warning.

‘Why
did
you come, anyway?’ she said. It was some sort of faint acknowledgement of the apology, and he launched into it having been on the spur of the moment, and thence to
his wanting to get her out of London. Now they were about to go, and the whole meeting had been a wash-out. When they reached his car, parked outside her house, he said, ‘Well, perhaps
you’d ring Mummy up, would you? She’s at the new house. Watlington three four.’

‘We’re not on the phone, but I’ll try. Thanks for the coffee.’ She presented him with her cheek, turned and ran up the steps to her house, turning in the doorway only, he
felt, to be sure that he was really going to get into his car and leave. Which he did.

During the rest of that arduous day – which he mismanaged in a number of stupid ways: fetching his mother-in-law
before
Miss Milliment was the first (Lady Rydal seemed to feel
that even being driven in a motor car to Stoke Newington was some kind of insult) and getting Miss Milliment, whose luggage was singularly difficult to pack into the car with Lady Rydal’s (he
had to fix up the roof rack which took ages), and then running out of petrol before he even got through the Blackwall Tunnel, and then getting a puncture on the hill just before Sevenoaks (not his
fault this, but regarded by Lady Rydal who was an authority on them, as the last straw) – during all this awful, cumbersome day, he ruminated on the miserable encounter with his eldest
daughter. In her behaviour to him he saw a reflection of himself that he could neither bear nor discountenance: a middle-aged man, irascible and disappointed, good for nothing that interested him,
bullying people in order to infect them with his discomfort – particularly, he knew, his own children. Jessica he did not bully; he lost his temper with her, but he did not bully. He loved
her – adored her. He was always contrite on those occasions, would spend the ensuing hours, or even days, paying her small, devoted attentions, castigating himself to her about his wretched
temperament and luck, and she, bless her angelic heart, would always forgive him. Always . . . How alike these occasions were to one another now struck him; there had become something ritual about
them. If either had forgotten the next line the other could have prompted. And had he not noticed, in the last year or so, that there was something mechanical about her responses to him? Did she
really care? Had he, perhaps, become something of a bore? All his life he had been afraid of not being liked: he hadn’t been brainy enough for his father, and his mother had only adored
Robert, his older brother, killed in the war. But when he had met Jessica, fallen instantly and wildly in love with her, and she had returned his love, he had not cared at all about whether other
people liked him or not: he had been entirely fulfilled and overwhelmed by this beautiful, desirable creature’s love. Dozens of people would have wanted to marry Jessica, but she had become
his. How full of dreams and ardour to succeed for her sake he had been then! What schemes he had had to make money, to give her a life of luxury and romantic ease! There was nothing he would not
have done for her but, somehow, nothing had worked out as he had planned. The guest house, the chicken farm, growing mushrooms, a crammer for dull little boys, the kennels venture: each plan had
become smaller and wilder as it succeeded the previous failure. He was no good at business – simply hadn’t been brought up to it – and, he had to admit, he was not very good with
people, with anyone, excepting Jessica. When the children had come along he had been jealous of them for the time they took away from him. When Angela was born, only a year after he was invalided
out of the army, Jessica seemed unable to think of anything else; she had been a difficult baby, never sleeping for more than an hour or two at a stretch throughout, which meant that neither of
them got a proper night’s sleep, and then when Nora arrived, Angela resented her so much that Jessica could not leave them alone together for a minute, and of course they’d never been
able to afford a nurse, or more than a bit of daily help. When Christopher was born, he thought, at least he had a son, but he’d turned out the worst of the lot – always something wrong
with him, bad eyesight, a weak stomach and he’d nearly died of a mastoid when he was five, and Jessica had spoiled him so he’d become more namby-pamby than ever, afraid of everything
– and nothing
he
did made any difference. He remembered how he’d staged a fireworks show for them when they were small, and Christopher had howled because he didn’t like
the bangs, and how he’d taken them to the zoo and for a ride on an elephant, and Christopher had refused to get on the animal, made a frightful scene –
in public
. Jessica kept
saying he was sensitive, but he was simply a milksop, which brought out the worst in Raymond. Somewhere, in the depths, he knew that he had bullied Christopher, and hated them both for it. The boy
asked
for it: his shaking hands, his clumsiness, his white-faced silences when gibed at provoked Raymond to irresistible fury that he could only temper to irritation. When
his
father had got at him, for not being brainy, he’d just gone off and done something else – damn well. He’d got his blue for rugger and for rowing; he’d been a first-class
shot, the best diver in his school, so there had been plenty of things for his pater to be proud of if he’d cared to. He never had, of course, had simply continued to make him feel a fool
about not knowing things he hadn’t cared about. The army had been a wonderful way out for him. He’d done jolly well, had become a captain by the outbreak of the war, then become a
major, got decorated, married Jessica and had a heavenly fortnight’s leave in Cornwall with her – and then Ypres, the third battle, which was when he lost his leg. That had felt like
the end of the world; it had certainly been the end of his career. He’d fought endless battles about not being sorry for himself and, on the whole, he thought he had won, although he supposed
it had made him harder on other people – all those fortunate chaps with two legs who could do what they liked; he had never felt that any of them had the slightest notion what it was like to
be
him
. They hadn’t meant to have Judy at all: he’d had to take a job in the school to bring down the school fees (schoolmasters got very reduced rates) and it had helped with
Christopher, at least. Aunt Lena had helped a bit with the girls from time to time; the only trouble about that had been that she never told him in advance what she was going to do, so he and
Jessica never knew where they were. At least now, with Aunt Lena dead, they’d got some money and a far nicer house, but it was a bit late in the day to make the difference it would once have
made. His children who, when younger he realised now, had been afraid of him, were becoming indifferent.