The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (62 page)

‘Darling, it
is
rather an emergency.’

‘If Mrs Cripps gives notice, it will certainly be one.’

‘On the other hand, it may all blow over. After all, the Prime Minister is back and nothing has happened so far, which augurs well, doesn’t it?’

‘I do not think that Mr Chamberlain is the kind of man who would discuss war on a Sunday,’ said the Duchy. It was not clear whether this was an indictment or an accolade.

There was silence while Rachel thought how extraordinarily unreal the whole situation felt. Then, wondering why they were alone, she said, ‘Where are the aunts?’

‘Having tea with Villy and her mother. She’s very good in that way, dear Villy.’

‘Villy and Sybil offered to help with the cooking. So did Zoë.’

‘My dear, none of them have cooked a meal in their lives. They’ve probably been taught to make a Victoria sponge at their schools, but that will hardly do, will it?’

And Rachel, who had also never cooked a meal in her life and had forgotten how to make a Victoria sponge, had to agree.

Sybil was both surprised and touched at how nice the other children were to Simon. During the day, practically all of them visited him although he didn’t seem particularly grateful, but he was feeling pretty rotten so she didn’t blame him. She tucked him up after lunch for a good sleep and left a notice on his door telling them to keep out, but when she went up with his tea she found Lydia and Neville seated each side of him in bed.

‘They brought me presents. I couldn’t tell them to go away,’ Simon said. He looked very flushed, she thought.

‘Didn’t you read the notice?’ she said after she had dislodged them.

‘No. I can only read when I’m trying. I don’t read naturally,’ Lydia replied, and Neville said that he only read things when he wanted to, ‘Which is hardly ever,’ he added.

‘So if you read on a gate into a field “Poisonous Snakes Keep Out” you’d get bitten to death,’ Simon said.

‘No. I’d read the word Snakes and that would put me on my guard.’

‘And, anyway,’ Lydia finished loftily, ‘a field is hardly the same as a room, is it? See you tomorrow, Simon. I expect you’ll be all spotty by then.’

That evening, Dottie, who had been clumsier than usual and given to tears since breakfast as Eileen remarked, broke out in spots, which was the pox, Mrs Cripps said, or she was a Dutchman. She seemed to regard this as a personal affront, and was being very nasty indeed to poor Dottie, who had just broken a sauce-boat and stood dithering with the dustpan and brush faced with clearing up china and sauce at the same time. ‘Well, don’t just stand there – clear it up, girl! And then change your overall and go and apologise to Mrs Cazalet.’ Rachel, alerted by Eileen, heard this as she entered the kitchen. ‘And don’t use the dustpan and brush! Get a floorcloth first! Oh – Miss Rachel! That’s a piece of Mrs Cazalet’s summer service gone! Not to mention the bread sauce, which I don’t have the time to make more! And it looks as though she’s come down with it! Dear knows how, as if we didn’t have enough to worry about.’

Rachel looked from Mrs Cripps’s luminescent face to her heaving bust, contained against the fragile breaker of her flowered overall, and mustered her uttermost charm.

‘Oh dear! Perhaps one of you’, she looked appealingly at the housemaids, who stood thankfully surveying the scene (they hadn’t done it, and you wouldn’t catch them kitchen-maiding for Mrs Cripps, not in a million years), ‘would very kindly clear it up because really I think Dottie should go to bed.’

‘That’s one place for her,’ Mrs Cripps agreed, ‘but someone will have to be found, Miss Rachel. Hitler is one thing. But I can’t run my kitchen without a maid – nobody could expect that of me.’

‘Yes. Well, we’ll discuss all that tomorrow, Mrs Cripps. I think Edie down at Mill Farm has a sister who might be able to come in. Come along, Dottie, I’m going to take you upstairs.’

Leaving Peggy and Bertha dealing with the mess, she led Dottie, who was now crying quite noisily, up to her sun-baked little attic.

While Dottie undressed, she went to fetch a thermometer. Walking hurt her, but almost everything did. She longed to be in bed herself without the tensions and argument that had so marked this day. She had hardly seen Sid at all, who had spent most of the afternoon appeasing Evie about being left in the cottage with Miss Milliment while she returned to Rachel’s room in what Evie kept calling the big house. If things were normal, she would have gone to London to see Marly, her amazing back man who always seemed to get her right. The thought of not being able to do this – either tomorrow, or any other day, was quite frightening. But it was absurd of her to mind such a petty detail when they were very likely on the brink of war. And if the Babies’ Hotel
was
evacuated, she must pull herself together and somehow organise catering and sanitary arrangements, although even the prospect of that was defeating. It might mean moving everybody out of Mill Farm and squashing nurses and babies in there somehow, and putting all the children in the squash court. It was useless to talk to either the Brig or the Duchy about this. Villy would be the most practical person, and, in any case, such a move would affect her family more than anyone else. But it wasn’t only the children, of course. There was old Lady Rydal: the thought of her on a camp bed in the squash court made her want to laugh, but laughing hurt, too.

She returned to Dottie now lying on her back with the sheet up to her chin snuffling quietly. The room was stifling. It had the hot-water tank in it, which left very little room for the narrow iron bed, the hard chair and a small chest of drawers. The small window was tightly closed, and when she asked Dottie if she would like it open, Dottie said that it didn’t – never. The tank was making quite loud, irregular rushing noises – it wasn’t a very nice place to be ill, she thought. Dottie’s temperature was nearly 102.. Rachel smiled reassuringly at her and said that she would get Peggy or Bertha to bring her a large jug of water and a couple of aspirin. ‘You must drink as much as you can to help your temperature down. I’ll get Dr Carr to come and see you tomorrow. And I’ll see if someone can get your window opened for you. You see if you can have a nice sleep. You’ve been a very brave girl working all day when you must have been feeling awful.’

‘I didn’t never mean to break it.’

‘What? No, of course you didn’t. I’ll tell Mrs Cazalet about it. Of course she’ll understand you weren’t feeling well.’

She left to go and find one of the maids to collect the aspirin from her. ‘And she’d better have a chamber pot up there. Her temperature’s quite high, and she should drink a lot. But I’m sure I can count on you to look after her, and to come to tell me if she wants anything. The doctor will come tomorrow.’

Bertha, who thought Miss Rachel was a very sweet lady, said she would see to everything. In any case, a visit from the doctor raised Dottie’s status, even with Mrs Cripps, who instantly said she would put a nice junket to set that evening.

Rachel went to her room and lay down on her bed, and it hurt so much getting onto her back that she wondered how on earth she would ever get up again.

After a silence, Hugh asked, ‘How’s Oscar?’

‘He’s all right.’ She did not look at him, and they walked on for a bit in more silence. It was early evening, the sun had gone, but it was hot and the same grey stillness prevailed. ‘Care for a stroll, Poll?’ he’d said to her earlier, and she’d slipped from her chair with alacrity and said that she’d just see if Oscar was all right and she’d meet him on the front lawn. But when they met she had become uncommunicative; if he did not know her so well he would have thought she was sulking. He asked her where she would like to go, and she said she didn’t mind, so they walked up through the little wood at the back of the house and out to the big meadow with the Spanish chestnuts, and she plodded along beside him almost as though he was not there.

‘I’m tired,’ he said when they reached the big trees. ‘Let’s sit down for a bit.’

They sat down with their backs against a tree and still she said nothing.

‘What’s worrying you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I feel that something is.’

‘Well, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. Extremely worried.’

‘Oh, Dad! Me too. It’s the war, isn’t it? There’s going to be another war.’ The anguish in her voice pierced him. He put his arm round her; she was tense as stretched wire.

‘We don’t know yet. There may be. It depends—’

‘On what?’

‘Well, what Hitler said to Chamberlain this week. Whether an agreement could be reached that is reasonable. Whether the Czechs can agree.’

‘They’ve got to!’

‘How do you know so much about it, Poll?’

‘I don’t. I don’t know whether they want to or not. I mean they’ve
got
to. To stop it. They ought to do anything in the world to stop it!’

‘It’s no longer up to them.’

‘Who is it up to?’

‘Us – and Hitler, of course.’

‘Well, everybody says that Mr Chamberlain is all for appeasement. That means not having it.’

‘Yes, but there’s always a limit to how much you should appease anyone. Personally, I’m afraid I think we’ve reached that limit.’

‘Personally,’ she returned stiffly, ‘I don’t.’

He looked down at her in surprise, she kept starting and stopping a frown, in the way she always did when she was struggling to think something out, or when she was trying not to cry. He was not sure which it was. He put his hand over one of hers and held it; her fingers felt for his and held them hard, but there were no tears. She made one sigh – a very sad sound, he thought.

‘What’s on your mind, Poll?’

‘I was wondering – what do you think it will be like? When it starts, I mean?’ She turned to look up at him and, faced with the candour and intensity of her gaze, he faltered.

‘I don’t know. I expect there’ll be an air raid. On London, probably.’ He did think that. ‘I don’t think they’ll use gas, Polly, in spite of our trip yesterday – that was just a sensible precaution.’ He wasn’t so sure of that. ‘I don’t think there’ll be an invasion or anything like that,’ and then he thought, what a stupid thing to say – he was far from sure of this, she might not have thought of it, and he wanted to provide some reassurance.

But she had thought of it.

‘They could put tanks into ships, couldn’t they, and land them here? Tanks will go through anything.’ She glanced at the wood behind them and instantly he saw, as he knew she did, a tank crashing and lumbering through the wall of trees – a terrible, animate monster.

‘We have a navy, you know,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be all that easy. But listen, Poll, we’re making too many assumptions. There may not be a war. What we’ve been doing today is to make contingency plans, just in case there is. And I should really like to discuss them with you. I know you’re brave and sensible and you might have some useful comments.’

She was both of those things, he reflected afterwards, remembering how she had turned his heart over as she tried to
look
them. When they had walked back to the house, she seemed a little – though not much – happier. But, good God! What a conversation to have with your thirteen-year-old daughter, he thought afterwards, when she had gone off to get Oscar’s supper and he was alone. Rage and impotence had taken over: he would give his life for her – for any of them, come to that – but it was no longer such a simple equation. Civilians were going to be in this war, the innocent, the young, the weak, the old. He could not even protect her from her fear; her expression as she looked towards the wood recurred, and he heard and saw the tank again. They were only nine miles from the coast.