Marking Time (5 page)

They did not behave in the same way about this: Angela snubbed him, made it clear that he bored her; Christopher avoided him whenever possible and was studiously polite when he could not; Nora
and Judy both had special voices for talking to him, bright accommodating voices – he suspected Judy of copying Nora, and both of them of imitating Jessica, who employed a kind of determined
serenity whenever he became at all touchy. The effect was to make him feel isolated from the family life that they had with each other, and which he seemed excluded from sharing. By now he had
changed the tyre and wedged the punctured one into the overcrowded boot and got back into the car with its silent occupants. Miss Milliment smiled at him and murmured something about being sorry
not to have been of any use, and Lady Rydal, to whom the idea of being of use to anyone had never occurred in her life, said crushingly, ‘Really, Miss Milliment! I do not think that mending
the puncture of a
car
can be said to be part of a governess’s repertory.’ After a pause, she added, ‘A puncture is nothing to what we must expect to put up with.’
All the remaining journey he wished, with savage hopelessness, that he was on his own, driving to Aunt Lena’s house in Frensham, where Jessica (and no one else) would be waiting with tea for
him on the lawn, instead of chauffeuring the old trout and a governess back to the Cazalet Holiday Camp.

By four o’clock on Saturday afternoon, Sybil and Villy had to stop their blackout activities as they had run out of material. Sybil said she was dying for a cup of tea,
and Villy said she would brave the kitchen to make some.

‘Brave was the right word,’ she said some minutes later as she brought a tray out onto the lawn where Sybil had put two deckchairs for them. ‘Louise and Nora are cooking a vast
supper for the nurses and Emily is simply sitting in her basket chair pretending they aren’t there. They’re really very courageous; I don’t think I could stand it. I’ve
already told her it was an emergency, but she simply looks at me as though I make it up.’

‘Do you think she’ll give notice?’

Villy shrugged. ‘Quite possible. She’s done it before. But she adores Edward so she’s always changed her mind. But, of course, Edward won’t be
here
, and I doubt
if a combination of the country and cooking for a whole lot of women and children will have much lasting appeal.’

‘Edward really will go?’

‘If he possibly can. That is to say if they’ll take him. They won’t take Hugh,’ she added as she saw her sister-in-law’s face. ‘I’m sure they will say
he’s needed to run the firm.’

‘He says he will be living in London, though,’ Sybil said. ‘I’ve told him I won’t let him live in that house alone. I should go mad worrying about him.’

‘But you couldn’t have Wills in London!’

‘I know. But Ellen could look after Wills and Roland, couldn’t she? And you’ll be here, won’t you? Because of Roland?’ The idea that anyone could leave a
six-month-old baby seemed out of the question to her.

Villy lit a cigarette. ‘I honestly haven’t thought,’ she said. Which was not true. She
had
thought, constantly, during the last weeks, that if only she hadn’t
saddled herself with a baby, she could now do all kinds of useful – and interesting – things. She loved him, of course she
loved
him, but he was perfectly happy with Ellen who
was delighted to have babies to look after, instead of Neville and Lydia who were becoming too much for her in some ways and nothing like enough in others. To spend the war being a grass widow and
ordering a household seemed both dreary and absurd to her. With all her Red Cross experience, she could easily nurse, or train VADs, or run a convalescent home or work in a canteen . . . It would
be far better if Sybil held the domestic fort: she had no ambitions beyond looking after her husband and her children. Villy looked across the tea table at Sybil, who sat, with the blue socks she
was knitting on her lap, twisting a small white handkerchief in her fingers.

‘I
can’t
leave Hugh in London by himself,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t like clubs and parties like Edward, and he can’t manage in the house on his own, but
when I try to talk to him about it, he just gets shirty and says I think he’s useless.’ Her rather faded blue eyes met Villy’s and then looked away as they filled with tears.
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I’m about to make a fool of myself.’ She stabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief, blew her nose, and drank some tea. ‘It’s all so
beastly
! We’ve almost never had a row about anything. He almost accused me of not minding enough about Wills!’ She shook her head violently to negate such an idea, and her
untidy hair started to fall down.

‘Darling, I’m sure there will be a solution. Let’s wait and see what happens.’

‘There’s not much else we can do, is there?’ She picked some hairpins from her lap and out of her head and began twisting the tail of her hair into a bun.

‘What makes it
worse
,’ she said, through a mouthful of hairpins, ‘is that I can perfectly well see that it’s a trivial problem compared to what most people are
going to have to endure.’

‘Thinking of people worse off than oneself only makes one feel worse,’ Villy said; she was familiar with this situation. ‘I mean, you simply feel bad about feeling bad, which
doesn’t help at all.’

Louise came out of the house with a plate on which were two steaming Bath buns.

‘I thought you might like to try my buns,’ she said. ‘The first batch has just come out of the oven.’

‘I won’t, thank you, darling,’ Villy said at once. Since Roland, she had put on weight.

‘I’d
love
one,’ Sybil said: she had seen Louise’s face when her mother refused. She should have taken one, she thought.

She shouldn’t eat buns, Villy thought. Sybil had also put on weight after Wills, but she did not seem to mind – just laughed when she couldn’t get into her frocks and bought
larger ones.

‘Goodness! How delicious! Just like the shop ones, but better.’

‘You can have them both if you like. I’m making masses for the nurses. Emily wouldn’t have one either,’ she added, putting her mother firmly into Emily’s category
which she hoped would annoy her. ‘She can’t bear me being able to make them. She’s being horrible to Nora about her shepherd’s pies, but Nora has the back of a duck. I wish
I did. She doesn’t notice people being horrible to her at all.’

‘You will clear up properly, won’t you?’

‘We’ve
said
we would.’ Louise answered with the exaggerated patience that she hoped was withering and went back into the house, her long, glossy hair bouncing against
her thin shoulders.

‘She has shot up in the last year, hasn’t she?’

‘Yes, she’s outgrown practically everything. I’m afraid she’s going to be too tall. She’s dreadfully clumsy. Apparently she broke the record for smashing crockery
at the domestic science place.’

‘That’s part of shooting up so fast, isn’t it? They aren’t used to the size they have suddenly become. It’s different for you, Villy, you’ve always been so
small – and neat. Simon is just the same: accident prone.’

‘Oh, well, boys! One expects them to knock things about. Even Teddy breaks things a bit. But Louise is simply
careless
. She’s always been difficult with me, but she’s
even rude to Edward now. It was quite a relief to get her away to school, although whether that place will be much
use
to her, I don’t know.’

‘Well, the Bath buns are a triumph.’

‘Yes, darling, but when have you ever been expected to make Bath buns? At least they teach them how to interview a servant, but things like goffering a
surplice
– I mean,
really
! When could that be said to be a useful accomplishment?’

‘Invaluable if you married a clergyman.’

‘I feel that Nora is the most likely to do that.’

‘She would be wonderful, wouldn’t she? Kind and good and so
sensible
.’ They could at least be in agreement about all other virtues being accorded to plain girls.

‘But Louise would be far too selfish,’ Villy finished. ‘Where do you think those children can have got to? I told them to be back for tea.’

‘Which ones?’

‘Lydia and Neville. They seem to spend all their time at Home Place; they’re hardly here at all.’

‘Well, they were furious at being put here with the babies—’ Sybil began, but Villy interrupted, ‘Yes, I know. But I didn’t want there to be room for Zoë and
Rupert because I thought being with our babies would be so hard on Zoë.’

‘You’re quite right. Poor little Zoë. I must say having the Babies’ Hotel evacuated onto us isn’t exactly going to help, though, is it?’

‘No. But perhaps she’s—’

‘Do
you
think so?’

‘I don’t know. But Edward told Rupert that the best thing would be to get on with having another one, and Rupert seemed to agree, so it’s possible.’

‘Oh, good.’ Sybil did not say that Rupert had asked Hugh what he thought, and that Hugh had advised a six-months gap to give Zoë time to get over her loss, and that Rupert had
seemed to think that this was a capital idea.

But Villy caught her eye and said, ‘I expect he asked Hugh, who told him exactly the opposite?’

‘How did you guess?’

‘Darling old Rupe,’ said Villy as she collected the tea things.

‘All the same, I think it would be better if he simply asked Zoë,’ Sybil said.

Zoë had been given the task of picking the quantities of ripe Victoria plums of which there was a glut. ‘But they mustn’t be wasted,’ the Duchy had said
that morning. ‘So, Zoë dear, if you strip the kitchen garden trees, we can have plum tarts and bottle the rest. Do mind the wasps.’ She had found the largest trug there was in the
greenhouse, and the small ladder which she had lugged to the kitchen garden wall and methodically stripped each espaliered tree. It was better than sewing with the aunts, and better than trying to
write her weekly meaningless letter to her mother who was paying a visit of indefinite duration to her friend in the Isle of Wight. Since last year, Zoë had tried to be kinder to her mother,
to pay her more attention, but the most she seemed able to manage was not to be
unkind.
Ever since June when she had lost the baby she had been sunk in an apathy so entire that she found
it easier to be alone. Alone, she did not have to make any effort to be ‘bright’ as she called it; she did not have to contend with sympathy or kindness that either made her feel
irritable or want to cry. It seemed to her as though for the rest of her life she was going to have to endure undeserved attentions, to attempt insincere responses, to be seen continuously in the
wrong light and also, she could foresee, be expected to ‘recover’ from what everybody excepting herself perceived as a natural tragedy. Pregnancy had been quite as arduous as she had
imagined; nothing they predicted happened as they said it would. The morning sickness that was supposed to last only three months persisted throughout, and did not confine itself to the mornings.
Her back ached for the last four months so that no position was ever comfortable, and her nights were broken every two or three hours by trips to the lavatory. Her ankles swelled and her teeth
developed endless cavities, and for the first time in her life she experienced both boredom and anxiety in equal proportions. Whenever she was feeling really bored, not well enough to do anything
that interested her, the anxiety began. If it was Philip’s child, would it
look
like him? Would everybody immediately see that it was not Rupert’s child? How would she feel
about a child whom she would have to pretend was Rupert’s if she knew that it wasn’t? At those times, the desire to tell somebody, to confess and be berated, even
not
to be
forgiven, but simply to
tell
someone, became overwhelming, but she managed never to do that. She was so depressed that the notion that it could as well
be
Rupert’s child
hardly ever struck her. And Rupert had been so sweet to her! His tenderness, his patience and affection had continued throughout her sickness, her frequent tears, her withdrawals into sullen bouts
of self-pity, her irritability (how could he understand her when he knew nothing?), her reiterated apology for being so hopeless at the whole thing (this when her guilt was its most oppressive)
– he seemed willing to contain anything that she was through all those months, until at last she’d had the baby, at home with the midwife that the family always used for their births.
Hours and hours of agony, and then Rupert, who had stayed with her, had brought the bathed and wrapped bundle to lay in her arms. ‘There, my darling girl. Isn’t he beautiful?’ She
had looked down at the small head with its shock of black hair, at the tiny wizened yellow face – he was born badly jaundiced – framed by the lacy white shawl the Duchy had made. She
had stared at the high forehead, the long upper lip and
known
. She had looked up at Rupert, whose face was grey with fatigue, and unable to bear the innocence of his anxiety, and concern,
and love, had shut her eyes as scalding tears forced their way out. That had been the worst moment of all: she had not imagined having to accept his pride and joy. ‘I’m dreadfully
tired,’ she had said. It had come out like a whine. The midwife had taken the baby away and said that she must have a nice rest, and Rupert had kissed her and she was alone. She had lain
rigid, unable to sleep due to the thought that she would never now be free of this consuming lie: that little, alien creature would grow and grow, and become more and more like Philip, whom by then
she had begun to hate, and the thought that only its death would have released her had horribly occurred. Or mine, she had thought: it had felt slightly better to wish for one’s own death
rather than someone else’s. And then, in less than a week the baby
was
dead. It had always been sickly, had never thrived, either would not feed from her abundance of milk, or if it
did, threw up, hardly slept because it was always crying weakly – from colic, they said – but afterwards the midwife had said something about a twisted intestine, and that it had never
had a chance. It had been Rupert who had told her that it had died (she had refused to think of a name for it); his distress for her had been the last piercing thing before a great bleak calm
descended upon her. It was over. A terrible thirst and pain for days until the milk went, leaving her with stripes all over the beautiful breasts she had once prized so much. She had not even cared
about that; she had not cared about anything at all. Her relief was too dangerous for her to accept it – had she not wished it to die? – and so she remained in the isolation of
withholding the only things that she wanted to say to the only person who loved her. She took a long time to recover – was tired all the time, slept long nights and heavily in the afternoons,
waking exhausted by her stupor. She was surrounded by kindness from the whole family, but curiously it had only been Clary who had reached her. She had woken from a sleep on the sofa one afternoon
in their drawing room to find Clary carefully setting a tray of tea on the table beside her. She had made some scones, she said, her first scones actually; she wasn’t sure that they were much
good. They hadn’t been: rock hard and surprisingly heavy. ‘It’s the thought that counts,’ she had said mechanically.