Casting Off (30 page)

She stood for a moment in the hall: the house felt very queer with nobody in it. She couldn’t ever remember it being completely empty of the family. All through the war they’d been there; poor Mrs Hugh had had William in her room upstairs; poor Miss Barlow’s sister had died in the morning room; Mr Rupert had come walking in from the war after all those years . . . Of course,
Mrs
Rupert had had Juliet – a sweet little baby she was, always had been. She had only been with the family since the beginning of 1937, and she wouldn’t be moving now. She’d been half afraid that Mrs Senior would want her to go with them to London, which she didn’t fancy as London houses were all stairs and her legs were not up to them, but no, she’d wanted her to stay at Home Place and cook for them in the holidays.

The dining-room lunch would want clearing. A really beautiful rabbit pie she’d made for their last lunch – the rabbit in a nice white sauce with plenty of onion, and puff pastry to mark the occasion. She’d made a nice bread and butter pudding to follow. Edie had served lunch. Not so long ago she wouldn’t have allowed that girl out of the kitchen, but times had certainly changed, and so far as she was concerned, she could not say that they’d changed for the better. She only had to look at the dining-room table to see that. Poor Eileen would have had a fit. No butter knives, only one glass for drinking and the places laid anyhow. Eileen had left last year: her mother was poorly and wanted her home. She’d had the proper training; you wouldn’t get young girls nowadays who’d take the trouble to learn what was what. Dottie and Bertha had gone to London, but not into service, to work in a
shop
. That left Edie and Lizzie to help when the family came down for holidays. She had not liked to ask what Mrs Senior was doing for staff in London (because she had been afraid she might be wanted up there), but Miss Rachel saying that she was going to do the cooking was clearly some kind of joke. She’d never so much as boiled an egg, which was as it should be seeing as how she was a lady. Frank would tell her what was going on up there when he got back.

She had started clearing the plates on to a tray: no sense in leaving them until Edie came – the food would have dried on them and then they would be harder to clean. She piled them on to the trolley to wheel into the scullery.

When she had put the dishes to soak in the sink, she decided to make herself a nice cup of tea and have it with her feet up in the Servants’ Hall: the small room with a nice coal fire where she and Frank had their middle mornings and tea, and sometimes supper.

The house already felt cold, and the room was the only snug place. She put the pot of tea on the table to draw and eased off her shoes – polished by Frank until you could almost see yourself in them. He wasn’t exactly handy, but he was a good polisher. She kept her slippers, comfortingly large and shapeless, in this room, and now that she was married to him, she wore them in front of Frank.

Marriage, she reflected, had turned out to be very much what she had expected. It made some things easier, and some more difficult. On the one hand, she didn’t have to
worry
any more – about Frank’s intentions, or what would become of her when she got too old to work; on the other, there was the strain of having to keep up the position of being interested in world events and what Frank thought about them. She had thought that this sort of thing would stop when the war ended, but it hadn’t – it hadn’t at all. He went on about the League of Nations, and nationalization and someone called Cripps (he made a joke about it being one of her relations) going to India to talk to Indian leaders about India (why-ever would he want to do
that
, she wondered), and how shocking it was to have women diplomats, whatever that might mean. On top of that, there was the nightly embarrassment of getting into bed. She simply wasn’t used to taking off her clothes with another person in the room, and not merely a person, a
man
, and she had noticed that he seemed to find this difficult as well. They had evolved a method whereby they kept their backs to one another while the undressing went on, and she encouraged him – it was the only time that she did – to talk about the world as much as he liked. Last night it had been a lot about Hitler and Goering and them not knowing about the Final Solution. She knew about
them
– after all, they’d been in everyone’s lives for years now – and he had explained to her about all the nasty murdering that had gone on with the Jews. They called it all kinds of other names, but what it was was murder, she made no mistake about that. Once he was safely in his pyjamas and she in her nightgown they could get into bed and turn off the light and things became all right. They would have a cuddle that would sometimes – not as often as she would like – turn into something more. But here again, things were not straightforward – far from it. He was so worked up, all his movements were a little nervy, darting stabs at her, like a small boy trying to steal a jam tart, she had once thought, but she had learned that the slightest hint of her playing any active part simply froze him up. She had to lie there, not quite as though nothing was happening, but certainly as though it was nothing to do with her, until, emboldened by her apparent indifference, he could do it to her. When it was successful, she felt downright motherly, but she knew that that was the last thing he wanted. He wanted to be the master, like men they saw at the pictures, and letting him feel that seemed right. She
was
fond of him, and she put down her boredom and occasional baffled exasperation at his idea of a good conversation to his being a man. Her idea of a good conversation was commenting on people, what they did and why they did it, and whether it was a good or a bad thing for them to do. She had used to have really nice chats of that kind with Eileen, and missed her.

She poured her tea and put her feet up on the other chair – Frank’s – and felt the ache in her legs slowly recede, as it always did if she gave it the chance.

When she awoke it was dark, and the fire was nearly out. She hadn’t even had her second cup, a wicked waste. She hoisted herself to her feet and poured the rest of the pot on to the aspidistra that Frank had given her. The house was quiet. No sounds of bath water running out, or children, or Mrs Senior playing her piano, or the master with his wireless. Nothing. She drew the curtains in the room, and made up the fire. She’d leave the remains of the rabbit pie for her and Frank tomorrow night, and have a nice poached egg on toast for her supper. She would have liked a bath, but she didn’t fancy having one when she was alone in the house. And if I was retired and on my own, she thought, had remained single, every evening would be like this. The great fear that the mere thought of this induced was succeeded at once by a warm surging relief that tomorrow there would be Frank, with his little bandy legs and his scrawny arms and his nervous eyes, gazing at her bust and telling her what a good mind she had for a woman.

PART TWO

One

May–June 1946

‘I know it’s terribly late but, Archie, I don’t know what to
do
! I feel as though I’m going out of my mind. I—’

‘Where’s Edward?’

‘It’s about Edward! He’s left me! Gone! Just like that! Without the slightest warning, he said that he was leaving me and going to – going to—’ Here, her voice failed her and he could hear nothing but her desperate and unavailing efforts not to sob. He looked at his watch: it was past two in the morning.

‘You want me to come round.’ It wasn’t even a question; he knew that she did.

In the taxi that he eventually procured he wondered why she wanted him. Why not her own sister? Pointless to ruminate. She had simply caught the Cazalet habit of depending upon him for sympathy and going through the forms of advice that people seek when they want support for what they were going to do anyway. Archie, the arch spectator, he thought, and then felt thoroughly ashamed of himself. Poor Villy! Apart from anything else, it had been clear from her voice that she’d had the most frightful shock. There had been rumours about: Rupe had mentioned it, but only as something that he didn’t think, when it came to the point, Edward would have the heart, or lack of it, to do, and he’d noticed that Hugh seldom spoke to his brother when they were
en famille
. She must have had some idea that all was not well. But to tell her on the evening of the party for Teddy and Bernadine did seem to him to be a bit much. He’d been to the party, but he’d left it fairly early as he’d felt he had a cold or something starting, and there had been so many people crowded into the sitting room of Villy’s new house that he’d had to stand, which did his leg no good at all. Most of the family had been there to greet Teddy’s bride, who was certainly spectacular. She arrived in full evening dress, clinging white creˆpe with a slit high up the skirt, gold sandals and what looked like half a gold cracker in her elaborately upswept hair. But when he was introduced to her and she said how perfectly wonderful everyone was to her, he saw that she was well over ten years older than Teddy, who stood by her side glowing with pride. She wore thick, pancake make-up as though she was on the stage, out of which her almost round, light grey eyes gleamed at him with a sexual appraisal that he felt was born of much repetitive experience. She wore long jangling earrings, a thick gold necklace and two charm bracelets, and her nails were long and painted bright red. She was ferociously animated and laughed after everything that she said. He thought all these things because he didn’t like her, and found, during the evening, that Rupe felt much the same. ‘A bit jungloid,’ Rupe said, ‘but, of course, you’d hear her coming for miles, so I suppose you could avoid the pounce.’

‘Not Teddy,’ he had said.

‘Not Teddy.’ And they both glanced across the room to Teddy, who now had a small moustache and was obviously and successfully trying to look like his father.

He noticed that Edward was charming to his new daughter-in-law and that she was charmed by him. If
he
thought her unsuitable, he did not let it show, and, as usual, he was being a very good host.

However, when Archie had felt he’d stayed a decent amount of time, he’d quietly left. He’d asked the girls if they wanted a lift home, and Polly had said yes, and Clary no. In the end, Polly changed her mind, and said she’d wait for Clary. So he’d limped out into the Abbey Road and picked up a cab, and gone home to have a hot bath and some whisky to try to ward off his cold or whatever it was. He’d just dropped off when Villy rang.

She opened the door to him as he reached it. It was dark in the hall. Without saying anything she led him into the drawing room, still littered with the remains of the party. There were piles of dirty plates and a tray of used wine glasses on the table where she had laid out the food, and overflowing ashtrays on the arms of chairs and small tables. The fire still burned – had been recently made up – and the standard lamps, with their rather murky shades, cast random pools of buttery light over the debris.

She shut the door with a finger on her lips. ‘Mustn’t wake Miss Milliment,’ she said, and then indicated that he should sit down – ‘I know you hate standing’ – and offered him first a drink and then a cigarette. When he refused both she said, ‘It was very good of you to come.’ She smiled, and he cringed. ‘Did
you
know anything about this?’ She had wandered to the table with the bottles on it and spoke over her shoulder.

‘No.’ He had decided in the taxi that from her point of view he couldn’t know; he
didn’t
know, after all. ‘Don’t you think it would be better if you sat down and told me about it?’

‘I’m just getting your drink.’

She came back with a glass of whisky and a syphon. ‘I expect you’d rather put in your own soda.’ Another awful little artificial smile. She offered him a cigarette from a rosewood box, but he refused again.

Then she sat suddenly on a chair opposite him – almost as though she’d collapsed – and stared at him with agonized eyes. ‘I can’t believe it. It’s like some ghastly bad dream – a nightmare! When everybody had gone, he said he wanted to talk to me about something. Little did I know!’ She began a bitter laugh. With her white hair and dark eyebrows, and face uncharacteristically puffy and shapeless from crying, she looked like a small furious doll. He began to feel really sad for her, when the smile again twitched across her face as she said, ‘My life in utter ruins. My marriage a farce!’ – and his pity shrank before he could stop it.

‘Why—?’ he began, but she interrupted.

‘Oh, some bloody gold-digging woman has got her claws into him and hasn’t let go. A real destroyer – that’s what I shall call her, the Destroyer! It’s all been going on behind my back for years! Our whole marriage has been nothing but lies and deceit on his part! I imagine the whole of London knew before I did. The frightful humiliation! There’s never been anyone else in my life – I’ve given everything up for him – everything! I’ve run his house and brought up his children, and now he throws me away like an old broom. He bought this house simply to leave me in it. And now I shall be alone for the rest of my life . . .’

These were only some of the things she said, many of them several times. In between, she veered from the situation being utterly hopeless, to the determination that surely Edward could be got to change his mind. She did not know how she could forgive him, but of course she would have to. If only he would see that he could not desert her in this way. Perhaps somebody could persuade this awful woman that she simply could not behave like this. Diana something, she was called. She’d met her, once: Edward had brought her back to Lansdowne Road one evening when he had not expected her to be there. It made her sick to think how they must have laughed at the narrow escape. But what would suddenly make him do
this
? Could Archie think of any reason for it – any at all?

The reasons that occurred to him seemed best left unsaid, so he simply shook his head (he was beginning to be glad of the whisky). He was at a loss: he sensed her shock, but her anger, her bitterness were so overwhelming that there was no room for his sympathy or anything so simple as her own unhappiness. For what seemed like hours she raged back and forth over the situation until she was – temporarily – exhausted.