The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (49 page)

‘Evie would be impossible.’ They were on to Evie again, and after the conversation had completed a circle they gave it up and strolled back to the house.

Dinner, and Sid had played bridge with Hugh and Sybil and Rupert while Rachel sewed and watched them. She loved to see Sid getting on with her family and every now and then their eyes met fleetingly, and both were nourished by the contact.

Now they were alone for the night, and there was a faint tension in the room. Rachel had wanted Sid to have her bed while she slept on the narrow little child’s bed that had been set the other side of the room, but Sid would not let her. What Sid wanted, and in the end obtained, was several hours of lying beside her love, pretending that this was all she wanted, a torturing pleasure that she would not have missed for worlds, but the secret vistas that it opened up remained secret, and in the early hours of the morning, when Rachel was contentedly asleep, she crept to the narrow little bed and took imaginary recompense. Afterwards, when she had wanted to sleep, to sink into oblivion and wake to a new day, she could not. She lay thinking about Rachel, who had given her so much but could not give her everything; whose gentle, affectionate nature was enclosed by an impenetrable wall of innocence. She had once told Sid that she knew that she would never have children, since she could not endure what would have to happen first. ‘The idea of it revolts me,’ she had said beginning a painful blush. ‘I suppose some women manage to shut it out – when it happens, you know – but I know that I couldn’t. And the idea that – the man – actually likes it, simply makes me feel worse about them.’ Somebody, whom she had thought she was fond of, had once kissed her. ‘But it wasn’t an ordinary kiss – it was disgusting.’ She had tried to laugh then, and said, ‘I’m just no good at bodies. I think my own is bad enough, and I don’t want anything to do with other people’s.’ Sid had remained silent: the revelation then had been new to her, and Rachel had slipped her arm into Sid’s, they were walking in Regent’s Park, and said, ‘That’s why I so love being with you, Sid darling. We can be together and none of that ever comes into it.’

And it will always be like that, Sid now thought, and I could not even give her a child.
And
I love her and shall never want anyone more – or else. She wept before she slept.

On Monday, Clary was covered with spots and was pronounced by Dr Carr to have chicken pox. When Louise heard this, she called a meeting to be held at the fallen-down tree in the wood behind Home Place. She, Nora, Teddy, Polly, Simon and Christopher were asked to come, and Neville and Lydia and Judy got to hear of it and went.

‘We didn’t ask you or you or you to the meeting,’ Louise said, as these last three stood uncertainly on the outskirts.

‘You said children’s meeting, and we’re children,’ Lydia said.

‘Anyway, we’re here,’ Neville said, ‘so I would have thought that was that.’

‘Oh, let them stay,’ Nora said.

‘Promise never to tell the grown-ups anything that is said by this tree on this Monday, 20 September 1938?’

‘OK.’

‘Don’t say OK like that. Say, we solemnly promise.’

The girls repeated this, but Neville said, ‘I laughingly promise. It’s just the same,’ he said when Lydia looked shocked.

‘Right. Well, what we’re here for is Clary’s chicken pox. Hands up anybody who’s had chicken pox.’

Nobody put up their hand.

‘The thing is, if we organise it properly, we could all be in quarantine or having it for the rest of the term. Do you see?’

‘Gosh, I do!’ Teddy exclaimed. ‘We couldn’t go back to our schools.’

‘Exactly. We’d
have
to stay here until the Christmas holidays, and then there’d be them.’

‘How do we catch it?’ Polly asked. ‘I mean, how can we be sure?’

‘You’ve probably got it already, as you’re sharing a room with Clary. It’s quite infectious, it’s quite a long quarantine.’

‘We all go and hug her!’ Judy said. ‘Would that do it?’

‘No. We don’t all go. If we did, we might all get it at once and that would be hopeless. Two of us go. And one of them had better be you, Polly, as you’re the most likely next one.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Teddy said. ‘Perhaps we don’t
want
not to go back to school.’ Much as he enjoyed the holidays, he was quite looking forward to getting back into the squash team as he’d practised so much.

‘
I
don’t want chicken pox,’ Christopher said, ‘and nor do you, Simon, do you?’

Simon blushed, and squashed a fir cone with his sandshoe. ‘It depends . . . no – no, not really,’ he added. He had decided, cravenly, he knew, to go and hug Clary on the quiet, every night, to be on the safe side.

‘Does it
hurt
?’ Lydia asked. ‘I mean, could people die from it? Can grown-ups get it?’

‘They
can,
but usually they’ve had it.’

‘Anyway, people don’t die of it, Lydia,’ Louise said kindly, remembering Lydia’s besetting anxiety.

The meeting ended with a list being arranged of the order in which they were to hang over Clary, and with instructions to do this as secretly as possible.

‘
She
’ll have to know, so it can’t be completely absolutely secret,’ Neville pointed out.

‘Of course she’ll know. But she’ll be on our side.’

On Tuesday the Brig, having measured the squash court, went to London and bought twenty-four camp beds from the Army & Navy Stores, to be transported, immediately, in one of the firm’s lorries to Sussex. He did not mention this to anyone.

On Wednesday, Sybil and Villy woke up to the fact that Clary’s chicken pox meant that all the children, excepting Christopher, were in quarantine. They rang up Teddy’s and Simon’s school to inform them of this. Villy thought it might be worth writing to Miss Milliment, who was not on the telephone, to see whether she could come down to Sussex and give lessons. The Duchy approved of the idea, although she said that Miss Milliment would have to be put in the Tonbridges’ cottage. ‘Tonbridge can sleep in the boot room quite well,’ she added tranquilly. Rachel said how sweet the children all were to Clary, always going to see if she wanted anything – it really was rather touching. ‘More a case of being rather catching,’ Rupert said, coming in on the end of this. ‘The little blighters are quite cunning.’ Villy went back to Mill Farm and told Jessica about the Milliment plan. ‘And Nora and Judy could join in,’ she said.

‘Oh, darling, you don’t want us to stay, surely?’ Jessica had spent the morning wondering what on earth she had better do. Raymond was still stuck with Aunt Lena, who now looked as though she was dying – extremely slowly and painlessly, as she had always lived. Taking the children back to Hendon and then coping with chicken pox and Angela’s future seemed, after these halcyon weeks, a hideous prospect.

‘Of course you must stay. At least until things settle down.’

‘What about Mummy?’

‘I suppose we’d better ask her what she wants.’

Lady Rydal said that it didn’t matter in the least what she wanted and they must do with her as they would. Bryant, her cook, would have returned from her holiday, and Bluitt (her house-parlourmaid) would be back next week, so possibly it might be better if she stayed until they were both back as one on their own made heavy weather of looking after one poor old woman.

‘That’s it, then.’ Villy made a face when she was alone with Jessica. ‘Edward said he didn’t think he could wear another weekend with her, but he’ll just have to.’

‘After all, he missed one by having to work,’ Jessica pointed out.

‘Yes, he did, didn’t he? Any news of Raymond?’

‘I think I’d better ring him tonight. Just to see how Aunt Lena is doing.’

On Thursday, in London, Hugh was waiting for Edward who was late for lunch. As it was Edward’s club, he had to wait for a drink, and wandered to the large round table that was strewn with newspapers and magazines. The
Daily Express
lay with headlines blaring:
WILL CZECHS ACCEPT HITLER’S ULTIMATUM? WHAT HE ASKS: EVACUATION OF SUDETENLAND BY OCTOBER 1ST
. He was bending over it to read more when Edward put a hand on his shoulder and said: ‘Don’t worry, old boy. It’s all up to the Czechs now, isn’t it? And they’ll have to give way. They’ve got no choice. Two large pink gins, please, George. I’m going to give you a very good lunch.’

But at lunch they met somebody who knew somebody who had met Colonel Lindbergh at a party and he had told them a good deal of interesting and alarming stuff about the German Air Force, which was larger and better equipped than was commonly supposed. He also informed them that trenches were being dug in the parks, a fact that seemed to unnerve Edward far more than news about the Air Force. ‘Perhaps in the end we shall have to take the buggers seriously,’ he said. ‘My God, this time I shall join the Navy.’

‘The Navy can’t do much against bombers,’ Hugh said. ‘We’re wide open to a massive air attack. It won’t be like the last war. They won’t stop at bombing civilians.’

‘Well, we’ll keep our civilians in the country,’ Edward said with the levity that Hugh recognised Edward employed when he was uneasy. For the rest of lunch, they talked about work and Rupert’s indecision.

‘I mean, if he
does
join us, he’s going to have to make up his mind about things all the time, and his track record for that isn’t extremely dynamic.’

Hugh said, ‘Well, he’ll have us to break him in.’