Casting Off (57 page)

Polly had been pleased with her presents. They had talked a bit about Clary, who, Polly said, was living like a hermit in a cottage that Archie had found for her. ‘She doesn’t like being here any more,’ Polly said. ‘It reminds her of all the wrong things.’

‘Is she still very unhappy about the man she was working for?’

‘I don’t know. But you know how whole-hearted Clary is. When she loves someone, she really
loves
them.’

Unlike me, Louise thought.

Just before she left, she said, ‘Do you have to pay all the rent while Clary isn’t here?’

‘No. Uncle Rupe kindly said he’d pay Clary’s share because Neville comes here quite a lot.’

‘So what do
you
have to pay?’

‘Half. Seventy-five pounds a year. It’s quite cheap, really, because of all the poultering that goes on in the basement. It smells, rather, sometimes.’

Going home in a cab she realized that she had not the slightest idea whether seventy-five pounds (a hundred and fifty, if you counted the whole flat) was cheap or not. I would have to earn money, in any case, she thought, regularly, not just the odd broadcast, because that wouldn’t even pay any rent – let alone all the other things! That night, she tried to make a list of what the other things might be. Gas, electricity, a telephone (although she supposed that she could do without one), bus fares, having sheets and things washed by a laundry. She had enough clothes to last for ages, but there were still things like having shoes mended (she was rather proud of thinking of that), and then there were things like electric lightbulbs, lavatory paper, Lux to wash her clothes, and toothpaste and Tampax and make-up . . . She began to wish she had asked Polly what she earned; then she remembered that Uncle Hugh gave her an allowance, anyway, of a hundred a year, so whatever Polly earned
she
’d need to earn a hundred more . . .

She couldn’t go home because she no longer had one. She knew that even if her mother stopped being so angry with her for knowing about her father leaving, she would not be able to bear living in that dark, unhappy little house. But now that her father was settled with Diana, who had seemed disposed to be friendly, she might go and see them and find out what they thought she could do. He might pay for me to do a typing course, she thought. If I did that, I would be able to get some sort of work.

She rang her father at home and got Diana. ‘I’m afraid you can’t,’ she said. ‘He’s gone to bed early. He hasn’t been very well.’

‘What’s the matter with him?’

‘He had a rather bad appendix operation. He only got back from the nursing home yesterday.’

‘Poor Dad! Could I come and see him?’

‘I should leave it for a bit. He’s feeling pretty awful, and I’m not letting him have visitors.’

She said she would ring the next day, which she did. Diana still put her off. After two more days of this, she rang her uncle Rupert at the office.

‘He’s been awfully ill – he damn nearly died. A burst appendix – horrible thing – poor old boy. It happened while you were away or I suppose Diana would have told you.’

‘She doesn’t seem to want me to go to see him.’

‘Well, I suppose she’s been very worried about his getting too tired.’ Then he said, ‘I should just go, if I were you. The nurse told me he’d been asking for you. Kept saying, “Is my daughter in the house?” and the nurse didn’t even know that he had a daughter till the housekeeper told him. So perhaps you should just go.’

She went in the afternoon late enough for him to have had a rest, and took him a bunch of white lilac and yellow irises. She felt, when she was getting it, that it might well be the last bunch of flowers that she would buy for a very long time so it might as well be an expensive one.

The housekeeper said that Mr Cazalet was resting and Madam was out.

‘I’ve come to see my father.’

‘Oh! That will be nice for him!’

He was lying in a large bed propped up by pillows and awake. A book lay open on the bed, but he was not reading it. He seemed very pleased to see her.

The housekeeper suggested bringing some tea.

‘Why not!’ he said. ‘You’d like some, wouldn’t you, darling? Oh, it is good to see you!’

She sat in a chair by the bed. He had lost a lot of weight so that his eyes looked much larger in his face, which seemed otherwise to have shrunk.

‘I knew you were going to America,’ he said, ‘because you rang, Diana said, but I didn’t know when you’d be back.’

She knew that she’d told Diana it would be for four weeks, but she didn’t say this.

‘Anyway, you’re back,’ he said, ‘that’s the great thing.’

He put out his hand and she took it. ‘I didn’t know you were ill or I would have come the moment I got back.’

He squeezed her hand faintly: he seemed very weak. ‘You would, I know you would.’

There was a pause, then he said, ‘I nearly copped it. To tell you the truth, I thought I’d got cancer so I put off going to the doctor, although I felt bloody awful. My fault really.’

‘Poor Dad.’

‘And you know,’ he shifted himself up a bit in the bed, which clearly hurt him, ‘after the op when they were giving me some pretty fierce painkillers the night nurse – she was a real brick – said that I went on and on about having my medals cleaned because the King was coming to have tea with me! She said she had to say that she’d taken them away for a thorough cleaning because, of course, they weren’t in the hospital at all, they were here, at home. Funny what one thinks at times like that, isn’t it?’ He had a pathetic, boyish expression that she’d never seen before.

‘Yes. I suppose, somewhere inside you, you
wanted
him to have tea with you.’

‘To thank me,’ he said. ‘All those awful things that happened – all for King and country, you know. There hasn’t really been a way of making up for it.’

‘The war?’

‘Tell you something, I had to
shoot
people. Not the enemy – our own blokes. I had to go out at night and put a bullet into them. Put them out of their misery. Never talked about that to anyone – not even Hugh.’ He looked at her earnestly. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned that. Don’t want to upset you. That’s the last thing I want in the world.’

‘It doesn’t upset me,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you told me. Shall I get your medals? Would you like to see them?’

‘They’re in that drawer.’ He indicated it.

There were three boxes: two fat square ones and a long thin one.

‘Those are just for pinning on to evening dress,’ he said, discarding the long box. ‘These are the real ones.’

He clicked open one box and there, on the grubby, bruised blue velvet, lay the white enamel and gold Military Cross.

‘That’s the bar,’ he said. ‘I got it twice, you see.’

‘And you were recommended for a Victoria Cross, weren’t you?’

‘I got the bar instead.’

They were interrupted by the sound of voices, Diana’s and the housekeeper’s, on the stairs.

‘Have them,’ he said. ‘I’d really like you to have them. I won’t be able to leave you anything. Put them in your bag. Quick!’

She did as he asked. His wanting to be surreptitious about it shocked her.

The door burst open and Diana came in with a tray.

There followed an uneasy tea. During it Louise came to realize that Diana actually disliked her – was jealous? disapproved? she didn’t know. But, worse, she also sensed her father’s nervousness, his desire to please or, at least, to placate Diana. He constantly said how wonderful Diana was and had been to him; the story of his illness and going in an ambulance was told by both of them, the postponement of a summer holiday in France – much lamented by her father, on the grounds that Diana needed a well-deserved rest, and made light of by Diana, in a way that reminded her curiously of her own mother.

This did not last long: as soon as tea had been drunk, Diana said that the invalid must be given respite. ‘You have a little rest and read your book, darling, and I’ll see Louise out.’

He had looked at the book lying face downwards on the bed.
The Judge’s Story
by Charles Morgan.

‘I’m afraid it’s too highbrow for me,’ he said. ‘I can’t seem to get into it. I think I’ll just have forty winks.’

‘Come again, won’t you?’ he said as, watched by Diana, she bent to kiss his face. As she straightened up she met his beseeching eyes: he looked exhausted. ‘My two favourite women,’ he said, in a voice uneasily meant for both of them. She felt a lump in her throat. When she looked back at him from the door, he caught her eye, put his fingers to his lips and attempted to blow her a kiss.

‘Of course I’ll come,’ she said.

In the hall, Diana said, ‘He gets tired very quickly. That’s why I don’t feel that he’s quite up to visitors yet.’

‘He is all right, though, isn’t he? I mean – he is going to get well?’

‘Of course he is. It will just take time, that’s all.’ She smiled in a conclusive way. ‘How was America?’ she asked, with massive incuriosity. Before she could reply, a door burst open and a small girl said, ‘Mummy, are you going to read to me or
aren’t
you going to read to me? I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting.’

‘This is Susan. Say hello to Louise.’

‘Hello to Louise.
Now
, Mummy.’

‘Yes, I will. Just saying goodbye to Louise.’ She brushed the air an inch from Louise’s face. ‘I’ll let you know when he’s up to another visit.’

No, you won’t, she thought, as she walked down the street. She felt bewildered by Diana’s animosity, and uneasy about her father. Apart from looking far iller than she had expected, he did not seem happy. Instances of the difference between his behaviour when he had been alone with her and when he was not came back to her with uncomfortable clarity: he seemed vulnerable – something she had never thought of him being – and also somehow trapped. What right had Diana to decide whether she should see him or not? She remembered Diana’s friendly behaviour to her on the only other occasion when they had met – at her father’s club – and began to dislike her more. The way he had talked about his war, almost like a confession, had made him seem as young and vulnerable, she realized, as once he must have been. Whatever he had done, whatever had happened to him, whatever wrong moves or choices he had made, she discovered then that she still had affection for him – still loved him. It was an extraordinary relief.

But it was useless to suppose that he was, or Diana would allow him to be, in any position to help her now. She would have to fend for herself. This felt uncomfortable, but right. On the long journey home, which involved two buses and a wait for the second one, things began to take shape.

She was going. If she left Michael she would have to leave Sebastian and Nannie. She could not possibly cope with looking after them as she would have no money to start with, no job and nowhere to live. If she tried to think about all of this, she felt sick. It would be best to think about one thing at a time. The place to live seemed a good start. If she could raise the rent money for it, perhaps she could take over Clary’s half of the flat in Blandford Street. But, then, Polly would also be leaving it when she married and she couldn’t possibly afford the whole thing. Perhaps Stella would return and she would need somewhere? She might, but it couldn’t be counted on. Then she remembered that once, in a restaurant in the winter, a card had been sent over to her and Michael’s table. It had said: ‘Would you be interested in modelling for
Vogue
?’ She had lost the card, but she could ring them up and see if they would employ her. Or I could do what Neville was doing, she thought. Anyone can wash up. And I did learn a bit about cooking once. Perhaps I can be a cook.

She decided to write to Stella and tell her.

It seemed very odd to be going back to Edwardes Square – to Nannie and the end of Mrs Alsop – and a dinner party in Markham Square that night with Michael. I can go on seeing Sebastian every week on Nannie’s day out, she thought, as long as I get a job that gives me that time off. This did not seem any more difficult than getting a job. She began to have wild ideas. She might write a play; she had always meant to do that. Or she might try far harder to get work in the theatre. She was nearly home before she wondered what Michael would say or do when she told him. Whatever it was, she knew, somehow, that he would not really mind, might even be relieved, particularly as she was the one who was doing it – leaving him so that he would seem the good person. I’ve let him down so much, she thought, that really leaving him will be stopping doing it. He can divorce me and marry Rowena. She had discovered that he was seeing her just before they had gone to America and that, too, had been a relief. It made her feel less guilty about him, at least. There seemed to be nothing she could do to feel better about Sebastian – nothing. Somehow, she could not bear to think about him. She seemed to have let him down from the start – by the mere process of having him at all. She had a feeling that she was going to pay for that all of her life.

But going, otherwise, seemed to her a new air – freedom – as though she was taking the paint off her own back and starting to be what she was meant to be in the first place. An impoverished divorced woman of twenty-four (well, she would be even older before she was actually divorced), with no skills, no qualifications, it all sounded pretty frightening, but it was a challenge and she had to risk meeting it.

Two

1946–47

‘It might interest you to know what Rupert said.’

She had been so angry, she had just looked at him.

‘He said, there was no point in your turning me into your father when you had a perfectly good one already.’

That had been the beginning of the worst row she had ever had with anyone in her life.

She said she had never heard anything so stupid.

‘Well, as it seems to you equally preposterous that I might have been treating you as an adult—’

‘You mean, having an affair with me—’

‘
Yes
, that might have come into it. Of course it didn’t – but I think it was reasonable that Rupert should think so.’