Read Online All Change: Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard - Free Book Online Page B

be honest, she had never wanted to be a mother at all, and was both bored and defeated at the prospect of Clary and Neville watching and criticizing her. And then that awful incident in London, when she had played – had overplayed – the flirt and paid the price of the disastrous sad child that had mercifully, from her point of view, died. What a heartless little bitch I was, she thought, thinking of nothing but my appearance and wanting Rupert to admire me from morning till night. But I did love him in the end.
    She remembered now how incredibly tactful and kind the Duchy had been when she had fallen in love with Jack Greenfeldt, leaving them alone for what proved to be their last meeting. The anguish she had felt about him had changed her life entirely. She had believed that Rupert was dead, and when Jack, unable to bear what he had seen in the German camps, had shot himself, there seemed nothing to live for – excepting Juliet. She had been going to the small temporary hospital that had been set up for badly wounded men who were nursed between operations to repair what could be saved of their ravaged bodies. Most of them had faced a life of dependence, and most of them were under twenty-five, but it was only after Jack’s death that she had begun to imagine what it would be like to be another person, a person infinitely less fortunate than herself, and to take a great deal less for granted.
    It had been a shaky start, as most beginnings are, but here she was now, with Rupert, whom she had come to recognise she loved, Juliet, who was as wilful and pretty and self-absorbed as she herself had been when she was that age, and the newest treasure, her zoophilic son, who had wept when, on his fourth birthday, they had given him a beautiful stuffed monkey, ‘He’s not real! I wanted a real monkey!’ and had had to make do with a guinea pig.
    When Rupert came up he found her in tears. ‘Oh, sweetheart, what is it?’
    ‘Nothing really – everything. I’m so lucky – to be here with you. I love you so much.’ She was sitting up in bed and held out her bare arms.
    ‘How lucky that I feel just the same. Lovely creamy skin you’ve got.’ He wiped her eyes on a corner of the sheet. Years ago that sort of remark would have made her sulk (her awful sulks, how had he borne them?). Now the years, with the affection of intimacy, had overlaid such nonsense. They had grown into each other.

    ‘She shouldn’t really have come, you know. She’d been in bed, on penicillin, and I’m pretty sure she has a temperature. Poor Sid!’
    ‘And poor Rachel! It really is rather the last straw for her. Nursing the Duchy for weeks and now this.’
    ‘I don’t know. It may help her. Your sister always wants to be needed. She wanted to see Sid, but she was asleep and we both thought it best not to disturb her.’
    They were talking quietly, as Laura, encased in her pirate’s tricorn hat, lay spread across their bed. Hugh picked her up very carefully to transfer her to her bed, but even so the hat fell off. Jemima retrieved it, and managed to put it on again. Laura simply gave a deep, rather irritable sigh, as one interrupted in something very important, turned onto her side and continued to sleep.
    ‘Well done.’ He looked at his wife, standing barefoot in her white cotton nightdress, with her golden bobbed hair, and felt an absolute joyous longing for her. ‘Help me out of my shirt, darling.’
    She pulled the second sleeve over his black silk stump and he put his arms round her. ‘I cannot,’ he said, after he had kissed her, ‘imagine life without you.’ And with no more words they went to bed.

    What a day! Edward thought, as he got out of his clothes. He didn’t feel too good – the usual touch of indigestion that he had suffered from for some time now, plus a general feeling of malaise. He was used to being popular, charming, and liked by people; being in a minority about anything didn’t suit him at all. If only Diana