The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (19 page)

Zoë had kept up with one friend from Elmhurst – a girl called Margaret O’Connor. Margaret lived in London and when she became engaged to a doctor, ‘quite
old,
but frightfully nice’, she invited Zoë to go dancing with them. ‘Ian will bring a friend,’ she said. The friend was Rupert. ‘He’s had an awful time. Needs cheering up, Margaret told her in the Ladies at the Gargoyle Club. Rupert thought Zoë the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen in his life. Zoë fell instantly and madly in love with Rupert. Six months later they were married.

‘ . . . Are you there?’

Zoë got out of the bath, wrapped herself in a towel and unlocked the door.

‘This place is like a Turkish bath!’

‘Better than an igloo. I suppose the dining room will be freezing, as usual?’

The closed look on his face made her regret that remark. He loathed her criticising his parents. He got into the bath and began washing his face vigorously. She bent over and kissed his streaming forehead.

‘Sorry!’

‘What about?’

‘Nothing. I’ll wear my frock with the daisies on it. Shall I?’

‘Fine.’

She left him.

I’ll take her to the flicks in Hastings next week, Rupert thought. She’s never had a proper family life, that’s why she finds it so strange. The thought that having been without it she might now be grateful occurred and went without his pursuing it.

Neville and Lydia sat each end of the bath. He was sulking with Lydia because she’d gone off without him. When she said don’t splash, and he hardly had, he smacked his heels on the water hard and really splashed her. Ellen and Nan had gone to get their suppers, so he would do what he liked. He picked up the sponge and held it threateningly, eyeing her. Then he put it on top of his head, and she laughed admiringly. ‘I can’t do that. I don’t like bath water getting in my eyes.’

‘I like bath water getting everywhere. I drink it.’ He held the sponge up to his mouth and began to suck noisily.

‘It’s all soapy – you’ll be sick.’

‘I shan’t because I’m used to it.’ He drank some more of the stuff to show her. It got less nice and he stopped. ‘I could drink the whole bath if I wanted to.’

‘I suppose you could. I saw a ferret eating a bit of a rabbit with its fur on.’

‘If it was only a bit of a rabbit, it must have been dead.’

‘It might have been a whole rabbit and that was the last bit that it was eating.’

‘I’d wish
I
’d seen it. Where was it?’

‘In the potting shed. In a cage – it belongs to Mr McAlpine. It had little red eyes. I think it was mad.’

‘How many ferrets have you seen in your life?’

‘Not many. Only a few.’

‘All ferrets eat things, you know.’ He was trying to imagine what a ferret looked like; he’d never seen an animal with red eyes.

‘I’ll come and see it with you tomorrow,’ he offered. ‘I’m used to that kind of thing.’

‘All right.’

‘What will we get for supper? I’m ‘stremely hungry.’

‘You wasted your raspberries,’ Lydia reminded him.

‘Only about the last fourteen. I ate some of them up. Mind your own business,’ he added. ‘Shut up, blast you.’

Villy came into the bathroom before Lydia could say anything back. ‘Hurry up, children. Lots of people want baths.’ She held out a towel and Lydia climbed out and into her arms. ‘What about you, Neville?’

‘Ellen will get me,’ he answered, but Villy got another towel and helped him out.

‘He swore, Mummy! Do you know what he just said?’

‘No, and I don’t want to hear. You must stop telling tales, Lydia – it’s not nice at all.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Lydia agreed. ‘In spite of the awful things he said I won’t tell you what they are. Will you read to me, Mummy? While I’m having my boring old supper?’

‘Not tonight, darling. People are coming for drinks and I haven’t changed. Tomorrow. I’ll come and say good night to you, though.’

‘I should jolly well hope you will.’

‘She jolly well hopes you will,’ said Neville, mimicking her. ‘She thinks it’s the least you can do.’ He grinned at Villy showing the pink gaps where the tips of much larger teeth were just showing.

Edward decided to go and have a whisky and soda with the Old Man while he was waiting for his bath. There was a problem at one of the wharfs that he particularly wanted to discuss without Hugh being there. And this seemed a good chance as he’d seen Hugh being taken around the garden by the Duchy. Accordingly, he put his head round the door of the study and his father, who was sitting at his desk cutting a cigar, welcomed him.

‘Help yourself to a whisky, old boy, and give me one.’

Edward did as he was told, and settled himself in one of the large chairs opposite his father. William pushed the cigar box across to his son and then handed him the cutter. ‘So. What’s on your mind?’

Wondering at the way he always knew, Edward said, ‘Well, actually, sir, Richards is rather on my mind.’

‘He’s on
all
of our minds. He’s going to have to go, you know.’

‘That’s what I wanted to talk about. I don’t think we should be too hasty.’

‘Can’t have a wharf manager who’s practically never
there
! Never there when you want him, at any rate.’

‘Richards had a rotten war, you know. Got a chest wound he’s never got over.’

‘That’s why we employed him in the first place. Wanted to give him a fair chance. But you can’t run a business by looking after crocks.’

‘I absolutely agree. But after all, Hugh—’ He had been going to say that Hugh’s health wasn’t too good and they wouldn’t dream of sacking
him,
when the Old Man interrupted.

‘Hugh agrees with me. He thinks that perhaps we needn’t get rid of him altogether but could give him some easier job – less responsibility and all that.’

‘And less pay?’

‘Well, might have to adjust his salary. Depends what we can find for him.’

There was a silence. Edward knew that if the Old Man dug his toes in nothing would move him. He felt momentarily angry with Hugh for discussing this with their father behind his, Edward’s, back, but then he reflected that that was exactly what he was doing himself. He tried again.

‘Richards is a good chap, you know. He’s intensely loyal; he cares about the firm.’

‘I should damn well hope so! I should damn well hope that everybody we employ is loyal – poor look-out if they weren’t.’ Then he relented a bit, and said, ‘We could find him something. Put him on to managing the lorries. I’ve never thought much of Lawson. Or give him a job in the office.’

‘We can’t pay him six hundred a year for a job in the office!’

‘Well – send him out to sell. Put him on commission. Then it’s up to him.’

Edward thought of Richards with his weedy frame and his apologetic brown eyes. ‘That wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all.’

‘What do you suggest?’

‘I’d like to think it over.’

William drained his whisky. ‘Married, isn’t he? With children?’

‘Three, and one on the way.’

‘We’ll find something. What you and Hugh should do is concentrate on who is to take his place. It’s vital that we get a good man.’ He looked at Edward with his piercing blue eyes. ‘You should know that by now.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Are you off?’

‘I’m going to have a bath.’

When he had gone, William thought that he had never tried to say that Richards was any
good
at his job, so Hugh had been quite right.

Rachel, in her bedroom, could see that the mystery guests had arrived. They came through the white gate from the drive in that uncertain wandering way that people employ when they approach a strange house whose front door is not immediately visible. She put Sid’s letter back into her cardigan pocket; no good to read it now, she would waste it by hurrying. All day, she had been trying to find a quiet, uninterrupted time for it, and been defeated, by her senses of kindness and duty, and by the sheer number of people everywhere. She must now go and help the Duchy find out what on earth the newcomers were called. This difficulty was overcome by her hearing her father emerge from his study, shouting his greeting, ‘Hallo, hallo, hallo. Delighted you’ve come. Clean forgotten your name, I’m afraid, but it happens to all of us sooner or later. Pickthorne! Of course! Kitty! The Pickthornes are here! Now what can I get you to drink, Mrs Pickthorne? A spot of gin? All my daughters-in-law drink gin, filthy drink, but the ladies seem to like it.’

Rachel heard the chink of the drinks trolley being wheeled out of the house, by Hugh, she saw. Perhaps she
could
just read her letter before she went down? At that moment there was a knock on her door – a timid, rather inexperienced knock.

‘Come in!’

It was Clary; she stood with one hand clutching the other, round which was tied a whitish bandage.

‘What is it, Clary?’

‘Nothing much. Only I think I might have rabies.’

‘What on earth makes you think that, my duck?’

‘I took Lydia to see Mr McAlpine’s ferret in the potting shed. And then Nan came out for her and she went, and then I went back to look at the ferret, and he’d stopped eating the rabbit because it was nearly all finished and he looked so lonely in his cage so I let him out and then he bit me – a bit – not much but he drew blood and you have to take a hot iron or something and
burn
the place, and I’m not brave enough and I don’t know where the irons are in this house, anyway. That’s what they say in a Louisa Alcott book and Dad’s in the bath and he didn’t hear me, so I thought you could take me to the vet or something—’ She gulped and added, ‘Mr McAlpine will be furious and cross so could
you
tell him?’

‘Let’s look at your hand.’

Rachel unwrapped what turned out to be one of Clary’s socks from her hot grey little hand. The bite was on her forefinger and did not look deep. While she washed it with water from her ewer, and got iodine and plaster from her medicine chest, Rachel explained that rabies had been stamped out in England so burning was not in order. Clary was brave about the iodine, but something was still worrying her.

‘Aunt Rach! Could you come with me to help get him back into his cage? So that Mr McAlpine won’t know?’