The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (56 page)

‘I don’t mind,’ said Clary. ‘I like him, really.’

‘But if he won’t use his bed, do you think he’ll use his lav?’ She had made him a box, with newspaper and a pile of cinders from the greenhouse boiler, which lay in a discreet corner of the room. He hadn’t taken to that, either.

‘I’m sure he will. Cats are awfully clean.’ There was a silence while they both watched Oscar gradually settle down to sleep. Polly found Clary looking at her with a kind of embarrassed appeal. She knows something, Polly thought. If she knows
anything
, it would be fair to talk about it.

‘Are we thinking about the same thing?’ she said.

‘Why should we be? What are you thinking about?’

‘You first.’

‘Well,’ Clary began. She started to get pink. ‘It’s about lust, really. I sort of know what it is, but not entirely. I wouldn’t bother with it at all, only that it’s one of the deadly sins and I’ve done all the others except for gluttony and that’s going to be about a pig who turns into a boy – or a boy who turns into a pig, I haven’t decided yet. And that.’

‘What?’

‘What I just told you. Lust. What’s your opinion of lust?’

‘Well,’ said Polly slowly. ‘It makes me think of the Old Testament – and tigers. You know, a tiger lusting after his prey.‘

‘Really, Poll, I can’t see that a tiger simply trying to get a meal is a deadly sinner. It can’t be that. What I mean is, how do you have it? What does it feel like? Writers have to know these things. I know what all the other ones feel like—’

‘Bet you don’t!’

‘You bet wrong. I bet you know as well.’ She searched in an exercise book for her list. ‘Listen. Pride. When I wrote that story about Jesus being born from the innkeeper’s point of view I thought it was the best story that had ever been written in the world. Gluttony. I took out all the violet and rose creams from the box of chocolates I gave Zoë for Christmas last year and put nasty old coconut crunches from an old box in before I gave it to her. Course I ate the creams. Envy. I envy you and Louise having mothers. Often. Nearly all the time. Avarice. I was too mean to buy a larger box of Glitterwax for Neville for his birthday. I kept the rest of the money to buy my cactus. Sloth—’

‘OK,’ said Polly. ‘You needn’t go on, I’ve done all that sort of thing myself.’

‘But not lust?’

‘Unless one can do it without knowing. And considering how easy it is to do the others, I suppose it’s quite possible. It’s funny, isn’t it? You’d think deadly would mean more difficult.’

‘No wonder there are murders and wars and things,’ Clary said, ‘with everyone sinning away like mad in ordinary life. I think lust’s to do with bodies, and honestly I couldn’t be less interested in those.’

‘Except animals,’ said Polly fondly stroking her love. ‘Does war worry you?’ she added as casually as possible.

‘Is that why you got your dad to bring Oscar down?’

Polly stared at her cousin, confounded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I beseech you not to tell anyone, though.’

‘Oh, well! If there
was
one we’d stay here for ever – long after chicken pox. It could be quite nice!’

‘It couldn’t! You don’t understand! It will be ten times worse than the last war. You don’t know about that. You don’t know about poison gas and this time there will be far more bombs and everyone will live in trenches with barbed wire and rats – it won’t be like it all happening in France somewhere, it will be everywhere – even here! It will go on until everyone’s dead, I know it will!’ She was crying – past caring whether she frightened Clary or not, almost
wanting
to frighten her so that some of her own anguish could be shared with someone, at least. But Clary did not seem frightened at all.

‘You’re imagining,’ she said. ‘I often do that.’ She knelt up in bed and hugged Polly. ‘You’ve got me,’ she said ‘and Oscar. There’s not going to be a war. And even if there is, think of history. We always win.’

And although none of this should have been comforting, Polly felt, it actually was. She blew her nose, and it was agreed that she should look up lust in the Brig’s dictionary and/or Miss Milliment could be consulted.

‘She knows everything. She’s bound to know all about lust,’ Clary said. And Polly, as she took their supper tray down to Eileen, felt – compared to the last twenty-four hours – quite hopeful.

After dinner, when the Duchy and Sid were still playing Brahms sonatas, Hugh gave a signal to his wife that meant he would like to retire with her. Outside the drawing room, he took her hand, and they went upstairs, first to the little dressing room where Wills lay in voluptuous sleep, his covers thrown off, one leg in the air. Sybil gently put it down and tucked him up. His eyelids fluttered and he sighed. She picked up the small golliwog that lay on the floor and put it beside him.

‘Where did he get that?’

‘Lydia gave it to him. It was hers. He’s called Golly Amazement. It’s his favourite thing.’

‘A very good name for someone with that expression.’

‘Brilliant, isn’t it?’ She turned off the light and they went next door. ‘What is it, darling? Something’s on your mind?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Edward would say I’m a scaremonger, but London is quite full of them at present. They’re issuing everybody with gas masks. I’m going to take people tomorrow to get them.’

‘Oh, darling! Where?’

‘Battle probably. The Church Hall, the Brig thinks. He’s going to find out in the morning. He agrees with me.’

‘Will they have them for babies?’ She began to look frightened. ‘Because
I
won’t if—’

‘Of course they will.’

‘He won’t like it – terribly frightening for a baby.’

‘It will be all right. But we must do all the other children first. I don’t want them frightened. I think Polly is already.’

‘Why?’

‘She wouldn’t have asked me to bring Oscar down if she wasn’t. Has she said anything to you?’

‘No. Hugh . . . ’ she sat on the side of the bed. ‘Oh, God! Hugh, do you really think—’

‘I don’t know, but I think we’ve got to consider that it might.’

‘But nobody
wants
it! It’s ridiculous! A nightmare! Why on earth should we go to war about Czechoslovakia?’

He tried to tell her why he thought they might have to, but he could see that the reasons were meaningless to her. Eventually, having gone through the motions of accepting his argument, she said, ‘Well, if it does happen, what do you want me to do?’

‘Stay here with the children. We’ll have to see.’

‘But what will you do? I can’t let you stay in London all by yourself.’

‘Darling, I don’t know where I’ll be.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I might be wanted for something or other. Don’t worry. It would probably be a desk job.’ He looked down at his stump. ‘The days of Nelson are over. Or, if Edward goes, I may have to help the Brig run the firm. Wood is going to be needed.’

‘You talk as though you
know
its going to happen!’

‘For God’s sake! You asked me what I’d do if it did. I’m trying to tell you.’

She looked so stricken that he went to her, and lifted her to her feet. ‘I’m sorry, sweeting. I’m tired. Let’s go to bed.’

When they lay together in the dark, holding hands as they often did, she said, ‘At least Simon isn’t old enough.’

And glad that she should end the day with this comfort, he said heartily, ‘Nothing like!’

‘Nonsense, darling, she simply had a headache.’

‘It wasn’t that. She’s in love with you.’

‘For God’s sake! She’s a sort of niece!’

‘If you’ve been painting her all this time, you must have noticed!’

Rupert hooked his arm in hers. ‘Well, I didn’t. You always say that men don’t notice things like that. I’m a man.’

They were walking up the hill back to Home Place. It was dark and overcast; a thin white mist veiled the ground of the large hop field that had once belonged to Mill Farm. After what felt to him like a companionable silence, he said, ‘Anyway, she’s a child. Only nineteen.’

‘How old was I when you married me?’

He stopped. ‘Oh, Zoë, my
dear
! All right. There is no earthly reason why I should not be in love with her. She is nineteen, very lovely to look at, and you have been absent far too long. But the fact is, I’m not. Anyway, how do I know what you’ve been up to in London?’

‘I told you – I only saw a girl I was at school with.’ She began to walk ahead of him up the drive.

Oh dear, she’s going to be cross with me and sulk, he thought, and caught up with her. ‘I was only teasing you,’ he said. ‘I know you’ve had a hard time with your mother. I really admire you for being so good and staying home so long. It must have been very dull. I’m glad you saw your friend.’

They had reached the little white gate that led onto the front lawn and main door. He pulled her towards him and saw that her eyes were glistening.

‘Such a beautiful girl,’ he began – but she stared at him as though for once she did not want to hear that.

‘It’s
all
I am,’ she said. ‘I’m
nothing
else!’ and turned and ran ahead of him into the house.

As he shut the gate and followed her – slowly – he thought that she was desperately overtired with all her unaccustomed nursing. Then he remembered that she’d slept the whole afternoon. It must be the time of the month for her, he thought. But she’d had her period just before she went to London – which meant that it wasn’t due for at least a week. It couldn’t be that.

Then he wondered whether she was right about Angela; pretty dim of him not to have noticed if she was. But what could he have done about it if he had known? He hadn’t led her on or anything like that. It was – if it was anything – just a phase in her life. Then he thought – what can’t that was. It was what older people always said about inconvenient feelings or behaviour of the young; as though
they
were not subject to phases – what a word for it, anyway! But she hadn’t asked him anything about his decision as to going into the firm or not, which had been a relief because he still hadn’t made up his mind and, if the Brig and Hugh were right, it would get made up. He’d be called up, or he might even get into one of the Services first.

By now he had reached the door of Clary’s room, intending to look in on her to make sure she was all right before he went to bed. But a notice on her door said
OSCAR IS HERE
.
PLEASE DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR AT NIGHT
. Who the hell was Oscar? He didn’t know. He listened for a moment, but there was no sound from within. The whole house was quiet. If he did go away, who would look after Clary? She would stay here, and she would have Miss Milliment, who, it had become clear to him after dinner, was very fond of Clary. He went to the bathroom, had a pee, and then leant out of the open window. The white mist lay over the kitchen garden, the air smelled faintly of cold woodsmoke; an owl hooted like a spectral foghorn once, a silence, and then twice more. If he was on his own, he would have gone to look at his picture to see if he had finished it, pretty sure he had but sometimes it was difficult to know when to stop. Isobel would have come and looked at it with me, he thought, and buried her again because thoughts of her always seemed to connect with a kind of disloyalty that he could not afford. It was only when approaching their bedroom door at last and assembling excuses for her if she was sulking, or provocatively chatting and dawdling in half her clothes, that he was suddenly struck by what she had said when he had started to tell her she was beautiful. ‘I’m nothing else!’ A fearful and costly truth – was it? But he could not bear it for her. A surge of protective love encrusted his honesty: if she said anything more about that, he would deny it.

In the room, which was almost dark with only his small bedside lamp alight, she was in bed, so still and quiet that he thought she was asleep. When he got into bed and touched her shoulder, she turned and threw herself into his arms, without a word.