Casting Off (69 page)

Which Rupert had done, clearly to much effect, because when Archie did actually meet her, she was sixteen and suffering very much from the loss of him, whom everyone, including Archie himself, thought probably dead. Not she. Her faithful love had touched him then, had transcended her childish, unkempt appearance. She had always been careless of that; had no vanity. He remembered his first sight of her, tidied up for dinner his first evening at Home Place, in a shirt with odd buttons sewn on it, and her hands, bitten nails and ink stains almost, but not quite, obliterating their shapeliness, and the ill-cut fringe just above those amazingly expressive eyes. He had observed these things with no more than a professional eye and friendly interest. This was his best friend Rupert’s daughter. And as he became embraced by the whole family – he had the Duchy to thank for that – and he had had time to know all of those children, as he thought of them, she seemed always to be the odd one out. She had none of the Cazalet good looks – the blue direct gaze, the fair to fairish hair, the clear complexion, the height, the long arms and legs; she was small and sturdy, round-faced, with her mother’s eyes and heavy brows and fine dark hair, which was always untidy and needing a wash. He had not loved her then. But when that little Frenchman had arrived with his tale and the message for her and he had seen its effect – her eyes like stars, her utter joy that had been dashed (momentarily) by Pipette saying that the message was eight months old, how after a moment she had looked up at him and said that it was ‘just a question of time – waiting till he comes back’. He had been touched by her, because by then he knew something of the intensity of her love and longing. After he had broken his leg, she would come to his room, because, he thought, he was the only person who let her talk about her father and he had been amazed – and sometimes amused – by her detailed imagination of his exploits. And then there had been the diary she wrote for Rupert. One day, she had showed him a few pages and he learned much more of her. She had a graceful mind, even though she was clumsy in everyday life, knocked things over, tore her clothes; she was passionate about quite small things. The night after Pipette had come, he had found that he actually respected her, recognized her knowledge of what it was to love, and he thought now, but could not remember, that it had been then that he had felt anxiety that it might get wrongly bestowed.

After that, he supposed wryly, he had tried to be a father of sorts to her. Little did he know how that would rebound. When the girls had come to London, he had taken them out, sometimes together, but later separately . . . Why? At the time he had told himself that it was hard on her always being with the beautiful, immaculate, charming Polly. He remembered that pathetic time when Polly had had a perm, and so she thought she should too, and how deeply unbecoming her frizzy hair had been – like the make-up that she attempted, when in no time her eyes would get ringed like a panda with mascara that always ran because she either cried or rubbed her eyes, or laughed too much, and her lipstick would be eaten off in a trice. She would still spill food on her clothes, she was still, at seventeen, unconscious of her appearance. But this was
not
true. He remembered one evening when he had taken her to Lyons Corner House and she had asked him if beauty mattered – by now she had cut off the awful perm and her hair was short and straight again, and whatever it was that he had said had upset her and he had made it worse by saying that he liked her as she was, and she had tried to be rude to him which she always did when she was afraid of crying, and then she had told him that Rupert had once said that she was beautiful and how it had made her seem less ordinary. She would have to fall back on character, she had said. And she had told a story about herself and Neville and the discovery that she just wanted to be pretty. And he had then – suddenly – because she seemed so vulnerable, been overwhelmed with affection for her, trapped by what she thought of as her unpleasing appearance, and also by her unerring honesty. He had wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her with any old nonsense that had enough truth in it to conceal the lies, and she had mercifully prevented this by saying he looked soppy. Did he love her then?

He remembered, and she must have been nearly nineteen by then, how Lydia saying she’d like to go to France with him had given him the idea that perhaps he might take Clary there – to get over Rupert’s death, if need be. At more or less the same time, it had been he who told her not to give up hope about her father. It had been a very hot night in May, and she had arrived in a linen tunic, terribly hot, but even so, when he had said how pleased he was to see her, he noticed that she blushed with pleasure. And it had been then that she had seemed to see him as somebody in his own right. ‘I feel amazed at how little I know you,’ she had said. It had felt almost like a compliment.

They had talked about her having stopped writing and he had been hard on her about it. She’d gone off – to cry, he guessed – to the lavatory. When she came back, he’d tried to cheer her up about Rupert, and at once she’d thought he believed as she did, a trap he might have seen, but he had lumbered out of it somehow.

And then VE night. She’d arrived at the restaurant looking unexpectedly
soignee:
she was growing up, her hair was better cut, the black skirt and a man’s shirt suited her, and her hair was wet, so at least she had washed it. They’d had a good and extraordinary evening, had stayed with the crowds outside the Palace longer than he’d intended because she was enjoying it so much, and he knew his leg was going to give him gyp on the long walk home. They’d stopped and sat on a bench in Hyde Park, and it was then that he’d realized how old he must seem to her. She told him that she knew about Polly falling in love with him, and said how ridiculous it was that she should be in love with somebody of his age. When he had said he must seem incredibly ancient to her, she had given herself away by saying, not
incredibly;
he didn’t seem to have aged since she met him. Then she understood that she had upset him, and said she was sorry. She hadn’t meant that he was
old,
she’d meant he was too old for
Polly.
(Polly and she, he reflected, were the same age.)

She’d stayed the night with him because she could never have got home, and sat up in bed wearing his pyjama jacket and he had brought her cocoa. And she’d told a story about her father eating the skin off her cocoa, which showed, she said, that he loved her, and immediately, not to be outdone, he’d done the same thing. If Rupert was dead, she would need his love.

And then, without warning, she had touched him to the core. It began about Zoë trying to give her Rupert’s shirts, and how she’d only taken the worn ones, because to take the others would have been like giving in. But she thought she should make a pact with him that if Rupert didn’t return a year from now she would have to accept that he never would. And then she told him how her love had changed about her father; from missing him so much, to wanting him to be alive for his own sake. He found it very difficult to say anything back to that. But he managed, and by the time he came to say goodnight, she had become almost a child again, turning her face up to him to be kissed. ‘After all, darling Archie, I’ve always got you,’ she had said. And lying in bed that night, it occurred to him that what she had said about her father had moved him so much because a part of him wished she would say it of him. Love of a kind began, he thought now, that night. He had made a pact with himself then that if Rupert was dead, he would do everything possible to take his place. The possibility of his return, however, might mean that things could be very different. Yes, that had been the beginning or, at least, the moment when he had acknowledged that he did not want to be her father.

Rupert had returned, and he had thought then that this would radically alter his relationship with her. It did not, and he blamed Rupert for it: he was so absorbed by his own problems, which were, he thought crossly, entirely of Rupert’s own making. But then, of course, people’s problems
were
usually home-made, he had thought wryly, so why not his own?

He had gone to France, and been dissatisfied; he had not clearly known what he was missing, except that the prospect of living alone there did not seem desirable. It was when Polly sent the telegram, and he tried to speak to her, and she said that Clary was in trouble, that he realized thoroughly that he loved her.

Seeing her, when she let him in at Blandford Street, had been a fearful shock. She looked dreadful, as though she had been dealt a mortal blow. But, then, she had looked pretty ropy for months now – she had, as might have been expected, taken to being in love with exhausting intensity, and his instinctive dislike of the man she had chosen, the whole dreary squalid set-up, had filled him with ill temper. But now, something had gone wrong. For a minute he thought that it had simply come to an end, that she would need comfort and support through the stock sad time that people endure in those circumstances. He had not thought of her being pregnant – still less, that the couple would unite in abandoning her. When he had discovered that Number One did not want to have anything to do with her he felt rage as well as relief, but that left the question of her pregnancy, he felt, to him. He would not, did not, influence her. He calmed her down, and made her have a rest. She had been being so sick that she needed an evening meal, and he felt that it would be good to do something with her. Of course he didn’t want her to have this ghastly man’s child, and he soon discovered that Polly felt the same. But they agreed that she must not be influenced, must choose herself.

She had chosen to have an abortion, and he had taken her, waited, and collected her. After it, she seemed to fall into a different despair. He had taken her away to the Scilly Isles, to a small beautiful island, and made her walk a lot, made her learn to play complicated card games, and take turns reading a novel – and, most of all, talk about Number One and his wife. But although all these things seemed in some ways to help, in others they made her feel worse. He quickly found that ridiculing Noël, although it made her less in love with him, made her feel more deeply humiliated. He dropped that, and tried to get her interested in her writing – which Number One had also virtually destroyed. She snapped at him, refused to eat properly, and often withdrew into intractable silence for hours, but eventually one day, when he snapped back, she had said: ‘What shall I do? I don’t
want
to be like this, but what shall I
do
?’

So, when they returned, he got the cottage, rented via an acquaintance who was glad to have it inhabited – ‘Hardly any mod cons and it gets fearfully damp in winter.’ The rent had been twenty-five pounds a year. He’d settled her into it and gone back to his dreary job from which he had already taken too much leave. He would spend weekends with her, he had said, but she’d confounded him by turning up on the Monday evening following the first weekend after barely a day without him. And then, the next evening, to top it all, Rupert had turned up, and there had been that awful scene when Rupert had thought him responsible for the pregnancy. What had struck him, and by God, it
had
struck him, was the way in which she seemed to think it so
absurd
that Rupert should think such a thing. And then he, Rupert, had twisted the knife when he’d said on leaving that there was no point in her turning him into a father when she had a perfectly good one already! He’d wanted to yell then that he damn well didn’t
want
to be her father, but caution had prevailed. And I am nothing, he thought bitterly, if not cautious.

It was that evening that his battle for her independence had really begun. They had had a row, and he’d said that he treated her like a child because she behaved like one. He’d told her to stop being sorry for herself and much more. The trouble was that when he was managing to do that quite sternly, she would say or do something that turned his heart over, and he would have to keep a tight hold on himself to hang on to being sensible and firm. Because that worked. He sent her back to the cottage on her own, and when he went down the following Friday, she’d cooked a proper meal and he sensed was full of her new book, although she didn’t want to tell him about it.

He told Rupert what he had done about her, and Rupe, who was having mother-in-law trouble, said, ‘Thanks awfully, old boy. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.’

All that autumn he went every weekend. He remembered now, it seemed such a long time ago, how agonized he’d been about sending her back to the cottage that first time. He’d very nearly driven down to see if she was all right, but that would obviate the point of everything. She
had
to learn to fend for herself.

Getting her to go and see Polly in London had not been a success. When he discovered the following morning that she was not at Blandford Street – or, at least, was not answering the telephone – he’d rung Poll at work in a panic. When Polly had told him she’d gone back to the cottage he’d been relieved, at first, but then he had started to worry about her, and in the end, he’d got up at six and driven down to find her in a fever. He’d woken her from a nightmare and he’d been on the point of taking her in his arms and telling her he loved her but at first she’d thought he was her father, and that had stopped him cold.

She was in no state for that: she was sick, and frightened, and when he took her in his arms it was for her to cry and tell him the jumbled fragments of the bad dream. He’d stayed and nursed her and told his office a string of lies. By now, he’d given his notice, and was working it out, and he really didn’t care a damn.

She was beginning to grow up. She had come to and realized that she had no money, and although part of him enjoyed being responsible for her in that way, at least, he recognized that it was a step for her in the right direction. If she needed money now while she was writing the book, it was her father she should ask. So he sent her off, and she came back with two hundred pounds, in a temper about something. It turned out to be about the possibility of his going back to France. He had told her he was giving up his job, and he had mentioned France then, but now she thought he’d arranged to go without telling her.