Marking Time (6 page)

The atmosphere had been full of rather watery goodwill, but Clary had answered, ‘Yes, but it only counts for the person who thinks it, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s a good thing
other people don’t know a lot of one’s thoughts. I used to wish you were dead, for instance. It’s quite all right, I don’t any more. It was pretty bad for me thinking that
– just sometimes, of course – but it would have been worse for you if you’d known. I hated you for not being my mother, you see. But now I’m awfully glad you never tried to
be her. I can think of you as a friend.’

Her eyes had filled with tears – and she hadn’t cried for weeks – and Clary had sat quite still on the stool by the low table, and the silent warmth and steadiness of her gaze
were a wonderful relief. There was no need to try to stop crying, nor to explain or apologise or lie about it. When she had finished, she couldn’t find a handkerchief, and Clary slid the tray
cloth from under the tea things, spilling the milk a bit, and handed it to her. Then she said, ‘The thing is that with mothers and babies, they can go on having them, but with children and
mothers they only get one.’ She put a finger on one of the beads of milk on the table and licked it. ‘I hope you don’t think I’m trying to minimise your bereavement. All I
mean really is that one can get better from almost anything. It’s just one of those amazing things. That’s why people like Hamlet were so frightened of hell. It not stopping, and
personally, that’s why I don’t believe in it. I think everything changes while you’re alive, and simply stops when you’re dead. Of course I may change my mind in the years
to come, but there’s plenty of time. Even
you
have quite a lot of time, because if you really
are
only twenty-four, you’re only ten years older than me.’

She got called by Ellen soon after that, who told her to come and clear up the mess she’d made in the kitchen.

‘Sorry about the scones,’ she said, as she collected the tray. ‘They tasted quite nice before I cooked them. The metamorphosis was unsatisfactory, I can’t think
why.’

After Clary had gone she lay thinking about what had been said – and not said – but when she reached the point where Clary had said, ‘I can think of you as a friend,’ she
found she was crying again. She had no experience of friends.

She had made various resolutions after that: to look for a new house (they had not moved after all, partly because of her pregnancy and partly because although Rupert was paid more by the family
firm than he had earned as a schoolmaster, it was not yet enough to finance a move), to entertain for Rupert; but here she ran into the difficulty that Ellen, who had taken over the cooking since
the children were now both at school all day, was not really up to more than plain nursery food, ill-suited to the sophisticated occasions she had in mind. Somehow, nothing came of any idea or plan
and it did not seem to matter very much that it didn’t. She sometimes thought that perhaps there were other more serious or difficult resolutions to be made, but they seemed at once so
far-reaching and amorphous – intangible to her mind – that she was afraid that if she even understood them they would turn out to be possible only for someone quite different from
herself. Some things were better. She no longer resented Clary and Neville, who in any case seemed to need less of Rupert’s time and attention. Neville, who was now at a day school, kept her
at courteous, breezy arm’s length – it was Ellen he talked to or his father. With Clary it was different. She sensed that Clary did try, had good intentions, never failing to notice and
admire any new clothes that she wore. She responded by trying to help Clary with her appearance, but, except for one party dress that she made herself for her, Clary had no interest. When she took
her shopping, Clary never wanted the things she chose: ‘I just feel silly in it,’ she said when Zoë had found her a perfectly sweet serge sailor suit with brass buttons. In any
case, she tore, split, got ink on and outgrew everything. She was hard on her clothes, Ellen said, as she endlessly washed and ironed and mended them.

With Rupert, she was in limbo. All the feelings that he had had for her, she had accepted without question. He thought she was beautiful and desirable, so of course he loved her. But all last
year she had been neither of those things and, humiliated by her gross appearance and the nauseating symptoms that had gone with that, she also felt humiliated by his kindness. She wanted him to
adore her, but this – no one knew it better than she – was impossible: nobody who was pregnant could be adorable. She had not even wanted him to make love to her, and as soon as he
realised this he had desisted: ‘It does not matter in the least,’ he had said. In the least?

She had agreed to come to Sussex for the children’s holidays, had not even minded very much that Rupert, due to his new job, no longer had the same free time but, like his brothers, was
only able to take two weeks off and come down at weekends. It was easier to be alone. She read a great deal: mostly novels – G.B. Stern, Ethel Mannin, Howard Spring, Angela Thirkell, Mary
Webb, Mazo de la Roche – and some biographies chiefly, when she could find them, of kings’ mistresses. She read Agatha Christie, but could not get on with Dorothy Sayers. She read
Jane Eyre
and quite enjoyed it, tried
Wuthering Heights
but could not understand it at all. Since being in the country, the person she found it easiest to be with had surprisingly
turned out to be the Duchy, who asked her one day whether she would do the flowers. Up until then, her relationship with her mother-in-law had consisted of calm courtesy and her own slightly
over-careful politeness, but this summer she had sometimes found the Duchy’s eye upon her with a look of reflective kindness that was not in the least intrusive since it seemed to need no
response. She had recognised that the offer for her to do the flowers was a gesture; she tried very hard and found that she enjoyed doing them and was actually good at it. From there, she picked
with the Duchy and began to learn the names of different roses and so forth, and later, at her request, the Duchy taught her how to smock – another skill which she acquired. The Duchy never
mentioned the baby – Zoë had been afraid that their increased intimacy might lead to that, and that she would have to say things she did not feel or mean under that direct and honest
gaze, but this never happened – nor did the Duchy, by any remote implication, suggest that she should have another baby. Because the thought of this, which sometimes seemed her only future,
hung heavily over her, unmentioned but somehow implicit. In the Cazalet family, wives had children – several of them – it was normal and expected. Neither Sybil nor Villy appeared to
have the horror that she felt about the whole business; they seemed to her blessed with the full set of maternal feelings, disregard for their own bodies or discomfort or pain and, what was more,
they seemed invariably delighted by the results, whereas she found babies mildly disgusting, and most children, at least until they reached Clary’s age, a nuisance. It was these feelings that
held her in thrall; she was not like them, and while a year ago she had felt superior, more beautiful and therefore interesting, now she felt inferior – a coward, a freak, somebody they would
all be horrified to have in their midst if they knew. So she clung to her convalescence, her lack of energy and the attenuated relationship with Rupert, whom she was alternately afraid of loving
her too much or not at all. At least so far he had not
asked
her whether she wanted another baby.

By lunch-time (on Saturday), Neville and Lydia had both become bored with watching the squash court roof painted and had given up being messengers. ‘They don’t give
us anything to messenge,’ Neville complained. They decided that when they went to Pear Tree Cottage for lunch, they simply wouldn’t go back. ‘That means getting well out of reach
of all of them,’ Lydia remarked as they trudged homewards for their meal, ‘they’re in a very bossy frame of mind.’

‘When aren’t they?’

‘Of course, there’ll be Ellen trying to take us for a walk with boring Wills and Roland.’

‘We’ll tell her we’re wanted at Home Place. She won’t know.’

‘What shall we actually do?’

‘I’ll tell you after lunch. As soon as we can get down, say you’ll race me to Home Place.’

Later, and full of fish pie and marmalade pudding, they went through the act, but as soon as they were out of sight, Lydia wanted to know the plan. Neville hadn’t got one which annoyed
him. ‘I was thinking of cutting your hair,’ he said.

Lydia clutched her pigtails. ‘No! I’m going to grow it to the ground.’

‘You’ll never reach
that.’

‘Why not, pray?’ said Lydia, imitating her mother at her most formidable.

‘Because every time your hair gets longer, you’ll get taller. It’ll sap your strength,’ he warned. He had heard Ellen saying that. ‘Ladies have been known to die of
having too long hair. They get weaker and weaker and on the fifth day they are dead.’

‘You didn’t make that up, I know where it comes from. It’s Augustus not eating in that frightening book.
I
know. Mr York has got evacuees. Why don’t we go and
see them?’

‘We might as well. We can’t go back past the cottage. They might see us. We can go on our stomachs through the corn in front, or through the wood and round the back.’

‘Quicker round the back.’ Lydia knew that going through corn any old way made people cross.

‘What
are
evacuees?’ she asked, as they trotted through the small copse and into the field at the back of Pear Tree Cottage.

‘Children from London.’

‘But we’re children from London.’

‘I should think children from London whose parents can’t be bothered with them in a war.’

‘Poor
them
! You mean their mothers just – let them go?’

‘
I
don’t know. I should think policemen take them away,’ he added vaguely. He knew that Lydia could be boring on the subject of mothers. ‘I manage perfectly well
without one,’ he offered. ‘I have all my life.’

There was a pause, and then Lydia said, ‘I don’t think I’d like to be looked after by Mr York. Or horrible housekeeping Miss Boot. Although they have got a sweet little outdoor
lav.’

They climbed the five-barred gate that led into the farmyard. It was very quiet excepting for two or three brown hens who were walking about eating very small things they suddenly found. A large
tortoiseshell cat was crouched upon one of the posts of the smaller gate that led into the farmhouse garden. The gate was shut; they looked over it into the garden, which was full of cabbages and
sunflowers and white butterflies and an apple tree so drooping with fruit that its branches were hunched like someone carrying heavy shopping. There was no sign of the evacuees.

‘They must be in the house.’

‘Go and knock on the door.’

‘
You
go.’ Lydia was rather frightened of Miss Boot, who always looked to her as though she might really be somebody else.

‘All right.’ Neville lifted the latch and walked softly up the narrow brick path to the white latticed porch. He knocked on the door. Nothing happened.

‘Knock louder,’ Lydia said from the other side of the gate.

He did; the door flew open and Miss Boot stood there – like a jack-in-a-box.

‘We heard you had some evacuees,’ Neville said politely, ‘and we’ve come to see them.’

‘They’re out. I told them to stay out till I call them to their tea.’

‘Do you know where they’ve gone?’

‘Gone? It won’t be far. They don’t go far. I shouldn’t go worrying after
them
. I’d go home to my mother if I was you.’

‘I don’t have one,’ Neville said gravely. He knew from experience that this always made a difference with ladies. It did: she suddenly looked much nicer, and went and fetched
him a piece of cake.

‘But I can’t eat it,’ he said to Lydia, as they walked back into the yard. ‘It’s got seeds in it. And –
she’
s got a seed growing out of her
face. It must have fallen onto her when she was making the cake.’

‘It can’t be a seed.’

‘
Yes!
It was a sort of brown blob with little sprouts. It was a seed, you bet. Want some?’

‘I’m not hungry. Let’s give it to the hens, but round the cowshed in case she sees.’

In the cowshed they found the evacuees – two boys and a girl. They sat huddled in a corner, quite silent, and apparently doing nothing at all. They stared at each other for a bit, then
Lydia said, ‘Hallo. We’ve come to see you. What are your names?’

There was a further silence. ‘Norma,’ the girl said at last; she was clearly the oldest. ‘Tommy, and Robert.’

‘I’m Lydia, and this is Neville. How old are you?’

‘Nine,’ the girl said. ‘And Robert’s seven and Tommy’s six.’

‘We’re both eight.’

‘We don’t like it here,’ Norma said. Tommy started to snuffle. She boxed his ear, and he was instantly quiet. She put a protective arm round him.

‘Nah,’ Robert said. ‘We want to go ’ome.’

‘Well, I don’t suppose you can,’ Neville said. ‘Not if there’s a war. You’d be bombed. I expect in a few years you’ll be able to go back.’