The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (57 page)

On Saturday morning, the Duchy woke as usual when the early-morning sun streamed through her white muslin curtains and fell in a wide stripe across her narrow hard little white bed. The moment she was awake, she got up: lolling about in bed was a modern (soft) habit that she deplored, just as she considered early-morning tea unnecessary, even decadent. She put on her blue dressing gown and slippers and padded off to the bathroom where she had an uncomfortably tepid bath: hot water was another thing she was chary of, she considered it to be bad for the system and in any case spent only enough time in the bath to wash properly. Back in her room, she unwound the plait of hair that she had pinned up for her bath, and brushed it out for fifty strokes. Like her daughter, she favoured blue and her clothes, summer and winter, were much the same: a dark blue jersey skirt, a paler blue cotton or silk shirt, and a cardigan-like jacket. She wore pale grey stockings and shoes with two straps and low heels. Then she sat at her dressing-table – draped in white muslin, but with hardly anything upon it excepting her tortoiseshell brushes initialled in silver – a brush, a comb, a shoehorn and a buttonhook comprised the set – and put up her hair. She had a fine complexion, a broad brow, over which the hair was looped, and a heart-shaped face with no trace of a double chin. She had been a beauty, and at seventy-one was still an unusually good-looking woman, but seemed now, and in fact always had been, unconscious of her appearance, only looking in a glass to see whether her hair was neat. Her final touches were slipping on her gold wrist-watch, a wedding present from William, and tucking the tiny lace-trimmed handkerchief under the strap so that it concealed the small mulberry-coloured birthmark on her wrist. Then she took the mother-of-pearl and sapphire cross on its silver chain and hung it around her neck. She was ready for the day. During the half-hour of her ablutions and toilet her mind had been full of embryonic lists of things that must be done that morning. She stripped back her bed to air it – she came from the feather-bed era when the airing of beds was a serious matter – opened the windows wide so that the room should also be thoroughly aired and went down to the morning room where she breakfasted earlier than the rest of the family on Indian tea and toast, one slice spread with butter, the other with marmalade – to have put both on one slice was, in her opinion, an absurd waste. With her second cup of tea she took a used envelope from her desk, and began to write the lists under different headings. With fifteen in the house – not counting five indoor servants, who, of course, had to be counted where food was concerned – the housekeeping had become quite a large matter. She would go into Battle with Tonbridge directly she had seen Mrs Cripps and discussed the weekend menus. Hugh and Edward would be ferrying the family to and fro to collect their gas masks, but she realised now that the servants would also have to be taken to Battle by him, and when on earth could Mrs Cripps be spared for such an outing? After lunch, she decided.

Then there was Sid’s sister to be collected from the station, some time in the morning. Sid and Rachel could be put to work. Either they could get the camp beds, now cluttering up the hall, into the squash court where at least they would be out of the way, or they could put the finishing touches to Tonbridge’s ex-cottage that she had been making ready for the overflow. She had finished machining the curtains yesterday. But before deciding about this, she really must make sure that William had not actually invited twenty-four people to
sleep
in the camp beds; she so much hoped not, but on the other hand what on earth had possessed him to buy them if he hadn’t? He did not seem to have considered bedding, pillows, blankets, and the like, but he was a man and that was to be expected. Buying bedding, however, would mean going to Hastings, and even if it was ordered, it would be unlikely to get delivered before next week. And next week, they might be at war.
Again!

The Duchy was of a generation and sex whose opinions had never been sought for anything more serious than children’s ailments or other housewifely preoccupations, but this was not to say that she did not have them: they were simply part of the vast portmanteau of subjects never mentioned, let alone discussed, by women, not, as in the case of their bodily functions, because it was not seemly, but because, in the case of politics and the general administration of the human race, it was useless. Women knew that men ran the world, had the power and, corrupted by it, fought on the slightest provocation for more, while injustice permeated
their
lives like words through a stick of seaside rock. Take her unmarried sisters, for instance, educated, as she had been, only to marry, but even that career, the only one regarded by men as suitable, meant their dependence upon some man who might choose them, and in the cases of poor Dolly and Flo, nobody ever had. And then, if you
did
marry, would any woman in her right mind
choose
to have her sons go to France as Edward and Hugh had done, last time? She had never expected either of them to come back – had lived in an agony of secret tension through those four and a half years, when, it seemed, everybody else’s sons were killed or shattered. When she heard that Hugh had been wounded and was to be invalided home, she had locked herself where no one would find her in the spare room at Chester Terrace and cried with relief, with anguish for Edward still at the front, finally with rage at the horrible lunacy of it all – that she should be sobbing with relief because Hugh’s health might merely be wrecked for life. This time, surely, Edward was too old to go, but they would take Rupert and, if it went on long enough, Teddy, the eldest grandson. And she had always been supposed to be so lucky because William had been fifty-four in 1914 – deemed, in spite of his efforts, too old. His sons had called him the Brigadier as a kind of teasing recompense.

Her tea was cold and she was not getting on with things. She began another list. The shortages of all kinds of things the last time flooded her mind. She felt that hoarding was improper; nevertheless a few dozen extra Kilner jars for bottling fruit, isinglass for preserving eggs, and salt for runner beans, of which they had a bumper crop this year, was not exactly hoarding. After a pause she added ‘packet of sewing-machine needles’ to the list. Enough of that. The house was full of sounds now, children’s voices, the hall being laid for their breakfast, William’s wireless in his study, he must be back from his early-morning ride, Wills crying upstairs and, outside, McAlpine mowing the tennis court. It seemed impossible that they were on the brink of another war. She rang the bell for Eileen to bring fresh tea for William and her sisters whom she could hear coming slowly down the back stairs bickering gently with each other – a habit that drove William mad with boredom. She picked up her lists, went to the window and gazed longingly at her new rockery where she could easily spend the morning if there was not so much else to do. Rachel and Sid were walking slowly down the path beside it; she resisted the impulse to join them, but they saw her and started for the house. Rachel knew that her father could not be left to breakfast alone with her aunts, and Sid was a dear and read
The Times
to him to damp down Dolly’s and Flo’s sometimes quite frighteningly general conversation. Sid
was
a dear and she enormously enjoyed playing with her; she had been told that the sister was a bit of a wet blanket, but this wasn’t the time for picking and choosing guests. Rachel was walking as though her back hurt her – her slightly stooping, hesitant walk. It would not do at all for her to move the beds, but she could be useful in a dozen other ways, as indeed she always was. It was wonderful to have Rachel at home; of course she had not
wanted
to marry, was perfectly happy with her charity work and helping her father. She was completely free to do as she pleased, so there was no comparison with Dolly and Flo at all.

When Eileen arrived with fresh tea and toast, she realised that her sisters had mysteriously not appeared, which meant that they must have waylaid William in his study interrupting him from hearing the eight o’clock news. She went to the window and called to Rachel just as Dolly and Flo entered the room. Their progress, as always, was impeded by their gigantic work-bags filled with crochet and
petit point,
and their nearly as large battered handbags in which they kept their various patent medicines, scarves, spectacles, little white handkerchiefs reeking of lavender water and faded chiffon squares wrapped round a swansdown puff impregnated with peachy powder, frequently applied in Dolly’s case although this turned her complexion, naturally that of a mildewed strawberry, into an almost spectral mauve. They had been listening to the news, they said, but there wasn’t any really. ‘But dear William had his wireless facing the wrong way, so it was rather difficult to hear,’ Flo said. She was a little deaf and full of theories of this kind.

‘Is the dining-room breakfast in?’ the Duchy enquired of Eileen.

‘Mrs Cripps is dishing up now, m’m.’

Rachel and Sid arrived, and Dolly instantly asked Rachel to be mother, an invitation that if he had been there would have irritated William beyond measure, the Duchy knew, both the manner of it, and that it should be made at all. Naturally, in the absence of his wife, his daughter would pour out. She left them to it, gathered up her lists and went in search of Mrs Cripps.

When Hugh assembled the first batch of children for the collection of gas masks, Christopher and Teddy were nowhere to be found, but the car was full, anyway, with Sybil, Wills, Polly, Simon, Neville and Lydia. It was agreed with Edward, when Hugh collected the last two from Mill Farm, that he would bring another contingent consisting of Nora, Louise, Judy, Angela and the two missing boys. Villy said that she would take her mother, Jessica and Miss Milliment, Phyllis and Ellen with her when she went to collect the meat and other provisions. Hearing this, Edward felt he was getting off lightly.

Hugh patiently answered the barrage of questions when they were not scornfully answered for him by another child than the questioner.

‘What do they smell like?’

‘Silly. They won’t smell of anything – just air.’

‘How do you know? How would Polly know, Uncle Hugh?’

‘I know because Dad was gassed in the war and I’ve read about it.’

‘Did you have a gas mask, Uncle Hugh?’

‘Yes.’

‘How could you get gassed if you had one? They can’t be much good.’

‘Well, there was gas about for rather a long time. We had to take them off sometimes, to eat and so on.’

‘We can’t not
eat
!’

‘Yes, we could. We could choose between getting thinner and thinner or being gassed. Which would you rather, Uncle Hugh?’

‘Don’t be so
stupid,
Neville.

‘The one thing I’m not is stupid. Only a very stupid person would think I was stupid. Only a very,
very
stupid—’

‘That will do, Neville,’ Sybil said firmly, and it did.

‘In any case, you won’t have to
wear
your masks, this is just a precaution.’

‘What’s a precaution?’

‘It’s being careful before you have to,’ Neville said at once. ‘I’ve never seen the point of it, myself,’ he added rather grandly; the idea that he was stupid still rankled.

‘You’re very silent, Poll,’ her father said, but precluded from any private confidence by all the others she just said, ‘No, I’m not.’

In the back of the car she exchanged glances with Simon, also silent: he was worried about something. Once, years ago, she would have known what it was without his saying a word, but he had been away so much and for so long at boarding schools that she no longer knew and he would not now say a word.

Lydia and Neville were chattering on about poison gas – what it smelled like and whether you could see it, and her father said that one kind smelled of geraniums. ‘That’s lewisite,’ she said quickly before she could stop herself.

In the front of the car, Hugh raised his eyebrows and glanced at Sybil. Then he said, ‘I think that gas is most unlikely, you know, Polly. It wasn’t very economic last time. Weather conditions have to be right and so on. And, of course, if we all have masks, it will be less worthwhile than ever.’

‘What would be a good idea,’ said Neville, ‘would be if the Germans let down huge enormous fly papers about a quarter of a mile long, from their aeroplanes, and people would stick to them like bluebottles and they wouldn’t be able to get off it – would just be stuck waving their arms and legs until they were dead. I think that’s a
very
good idea,’ he added, as though someone else had thought of it.