CLARY

Winter – Spring, 1941

28 March. It was Polly’s birthday yesterday and rather a flop, but as I pointed out, sixteen is better than fifteen – at least it’s another year of this awful in-between no man’s land that we both feel we are in. Polly says that the war makes it worse, and I started by disagreeing with her, but when I think about – well – everything, Dad and everything, I have to agree with her. My point really is that it would have been a no man’s land anyway and, as I told Polly, you can perfectly well have two reasons for something when one would have been quite enough. Uncle Edward says that morale is high, but that doesn’t necessarily have much to do with what happens. Miss Milliment disagreed with me about this, and when I said look at the Charge of the Light Brigade, she immediately pointed out that however mad and silly it was to make the charge, it did succeed in spiking the Russian batteries. My morale isn’t high, but that’s another thing you can’t mention unless it is. Anyway – Polly’s birthday: Mrs Cripps made her a cake – coffee which is my favourite, but she likes lemon and you can’t get them and Zoë made her a lovely bright blue jumper, and Lydia gave her a lavender bag she made, but she used last year’s lavender so it is rather prickly and doesn’t smell much. She got a pound from the Brig, and the Duchy gave her a little silver chain, and Miss Milliment gave her Great Expectations and I gave her an amazing glass case full of huge unlikely butterflies – extremely rare and valuable I should think – for her house – I got it in Hastings. Aunt Syb and Uncle Hugh gave her a silver wristwatch with her initials on the back. Neville tried to give her that wretched white mouse he ran away with – at least, he said it wasn’t the same mouse, it was one of its children. Mice have gone out of fashion at his school so he didn’t have to pay for it or anything. I call that a really thoughtless present and I told him. So he let it out in the garden and gave her the magnifying glass that Dad gave him for a birthday once, and I told him she would treasure it because of Dad but he said it was him she should treasure it because of. I am quoting Neville here, naturally, I know that one does not end a sentence with a preposition if one can possibly help it. Still, it was ultimately kind of Neville. Aunt Villy gave her a beautiful handbag of real leather and Louise sent her a book of poetry called New Verse which I honestly don’t think she’ll read because she said I could borrow it for as long as I liked. I think mine was the best present. Bully and Cracks – or perhaps in a journal I should say the great – aunts – gave her an evening purse made of brown and gold beads which I cannot see her ever using in a war, and a nightdress case embroidered with hollyhocks by them. She is hoping it will get worn out before she gets her house because it won’t go with anything else, it is so horrible. Wills gave her a bunch of colt’s foot daisies and two stones. My present cost five bob but of course I didn’t tell her; it’s easily the most expensive present I’ve ever given. After supper we played Head, Body and Legs, and Consequences. Head, Body and Legs reminds me awfully of Dad because he drew such lovely funny ones and it must have reminded the others but nobody said anything. They’ve stopped talking about him and now I have too because when I do they get all kind and embarrassed and it only makes me know that they think he is dead. But I think now that he may well be not trying to get home because he is working as a spy against the Germans in France. I told Polly this, and she said it sounded like a possible idea. Then I told the Duchy after we’d played the ninth symphony – the one with voices – and she said she thought I might be right but I wasn’t sure if she really believed me, but when I’d put the records away she said, ‘Come here, my treasure,’ and gave me a terrific hug and I said, ‘Don’t you believe me?’ and she said, I believe that you believe it and I can’t tell you how much I admire you for it.’ I must say that was rather pridening.

Teddy was very excited because there’s been a big naval battle in the Mediterranean and we sank seven Italian warships and most of the Italians lost their lives. He is rather a bloodthirsty boy and can’t wait to be eighteen and fighting the war.

What are my views on war by now after a year and a half of it? I feel divided between wanting to be against the whole thing, and feeling that if there has to be a war, women should be allowed to fight as well as men – I mean really fight, not just be secretarial or domestic in uniform. After all, women are getting killed by bombing when they can’t retaliate at all, so it’s no use men saying any more that war is men’s business. But on the third hand (if you can have one), there are some things in a war that I should absolutely hate to do, like be in a submarine, or stick bayonets into people – although Polly says she thinks there is less of that nowadays. And I wouldn’t at all like to be in a tank. Polly says that this is like the submarine and connected to claustrophobia, but I’ve never shown any signs of that. But then she asked me whether I’d like to be a miner, and I wouldn’t, and then she reminded me about the scene I made (when extremely young) in the caves at Hastings, felt sick and cried and nearly fainted and had to be carried out. So I must be. Of course, if you’re not in the war, it is simply boring. Nastier food, and the bath water is seldom hot and being rather stuck because of not much petrol – all petty inconveniences, I agree, but petty things are still there, they don’t go away by being small. Our room was so icy this winter, that I invented a way of dressing entirely in bed.

I’m not going to write this every day or it will get like Lydia: ‘Got up, had breakfast, went to lessons. We did geography and sums …’ Oh! it makes me yawn even to write that much.

17 April. There was a really awful raid on London last night all night. St Paul’s is still standing with rubble all round it. Uncle Hugh rang in the morning so that Aunt Syb wouldn’t be too worried, but she is – all the time. She looks ill from worry. He said that there were five hundred planes that dropped thousands and thousands of bombs. Uncle Edward is back in the RAF so Uncle Hugh has to do all the family business by himself. The Brig doesn’t go to London much now, because he can’t do anything if he does, but Aunt Rach goes up for three nights a week to help in the office and she stays with a friend, but she has dinner with Uncle Hugh one evening a week because he is rather lonely.

Aunt Jessica comes down here for weekends sometimes, but she has her mother’s house in London as poor Lady Rydal will never occupy it again. One of the worst things about being so old must be all the last times you do things. It must be sad for her to know she won’t ever go back to her own home, but Aunt Villy says she is past noticing that kind of thing. I don’t see how she can know that: I should think there must be some extremely sad, clear times, when Grania knows what is happening to her, but I think other people prefer to imagine that she is dotty all the time. It’s the same thing as not talking about anything difficult or awful. Hypocrisy is rife if you ask me.

4 May. There is something going on about Angela. Aunt Jessica came down and she and Aunt Villy had a long private talk and emerged with that face they both have when things aren’t all right. I was passing the door (I really was – like people in books) and I heard ‘a most unsuitable entanglement’. That means, I suppose, that Angela knows someone whom her mother disapproves of, but how on earth could she go through life only knowing the ones who would meet with parental approval?

Anyway, Aunt Villy is going to London with Aunt J. tomorrow, and guess what? They are bringing the famous Lorenzo and his wife down with them for the weekend! That will certainly be interesting. We do get rather short of human nature here, by which I suppose I mean people to observe whose behaviour might be unpredictable. Miss Milliment is getting more and more fussy about my writing what I mean, but at least she doesn’t seem to balk at anything I want to mean – like the rest of the family.

The Duchy is worried because now Christopher has gone home, McAlpine can’t manage the whole garden and priority has to be given to vegetables. She interviewed a girl gardener last week who wears breeches and very thick oatmeal stockings and is called Heather. If she comes, she will sleep in Tonbridge’s cottage with Miss Milliment, but it is betted that she won’t stay because McAlpine will be so horrible to her. Jules is nearly out of nappies and is trying to walk. Ellen says she is very forward for her age – not quite one – and not having to air nappies for her all the time, which stops any heat from the nursery fire reaching people, will be a mercy. I must say she is a very sweet baby – awfully pretty with curly dark hair – whereas Roly still looks a bit like Mr Churchill – an endless face and tiny features.

I asked Neville why he ran away and he said he was sick of doing the same things every day and being educated, which he says just means being told a whole lot of things that won’t be any use to him in later life. Also he is bored of Mervyn who he says is soppy and never has a single idea of anything interesting to do in their spare time, and also Neville despises him for not running away as well. In Ireland he was going to live by the sea with a donkey and fish. I said what about when Dad comes back? This was a mistake: he tried to kick me and said, ‘I hate you for going on about Dad. I really hate and loathe and dislike you for being so silly and horrible talking about him just whenever I’m not remembering him. That’s why I wanted to go to Ireland. To get away from everything.’ So then I realised how awfully he minds. I said I was sorry and I really hoped he wouldn’t go away because I’d miss him, and when I said it, I realised that it was true: I would. But both those things – being sorry and missing him – sounded feeble and I could see he thought so too. ‘Well, please don’t go yet,’ I said, ‘I might come with you if you’d wait a bit.’ Not a satisfactory talk at all: I’m actually quite afraid he will run away again, and have decided to talk to Aunt Rach about it as she is the most sensible of the aunts.

18 May. The Lorenzo weekend has got put off, because this evening Lady Rydal died. They rang in the middle of dinner: Aunt Rach answered the telephone, and came back and said that Matron would like to speak to Mrs Cazalet or Mrs Castle, so they both went to talk to her. When they came back, Aunt J. said she thought it was really a merciful release. I can’t see anything very merciful about it; mercy would have been her not having to go through all that miserable time in the nursing home in the first place. Anyway, they said there would be a lot to do – arranging the funeral, and putting it in The Times. Then they both wanted to ring up Lorenzo to put him off, and in the end, Aunt Jessica won (there is definitely something funny going on about all that – what a pity there isn’t going to be the chance to find out what) and she came back after rather a long time, and said he sent his love and was frightfully sorry. They are going to Tunbridge Wells tomorrow, and Aunt J. rang up Uncle Raymond, but she couldn’t get him, and Aunt Villy tried to ring Uncle Edward, but she couldn’t get him and I could see the Duchy worrying about the extravagance of all these toll calls. She was only sixty-nine, but if you’d told me she was eighty, I would have thought it more likely. I do wonder what it is like to die. Whether you know you are, or whether it just happens, like the lights fusing, and whether it is actually rather exciting. I suppose it depends very much on what you believe happens to you, if anything. Polly and I had a long talk about it. Polly thinks we may have other lives, which is what Hindus believe. Miss Milliment says that all the great religions take what happens to you after death very seriously, although, of course, they don’t agree. But I don’t have a great religion and nor does Polly. We spent a bit of time trying to think what we would like to have happen, and I thought being a sort of interested ghost might be good. Then she said that she supposed that what happened to you might be whatever you did believe. And since Lady Rydal was a very Victorian Christian, her heaven would be a harp-playing-wearing-long-white-clothes affair, we both think. And, of course, being reunited with her husband. Well, she never seemed very happy when she was alive, so perhaps being dead will be more enjoyable for her. I wished I’d been there when she died, because I’ve never seen a dead person, and I feel I need the experience. Still, at least they might let me go to the funeral.

When Lydia was told in the morning about her grandmother, she burst into racking sobs which Polly and I thought was rather affected as she never seemed to like Grania very much. When we confronted her with this, she said, ‘I know, but you ought to cry when people die – they like it.’ I said how on earth did she know that, and she said that if she died, she’d want everyone who knew her to cry like mad. ‘To show how sad they are that I’m not there,’ she said. This was at the beginning of lessons, and Miss Milliment said there was something in what she said. She’s always sticking up for Lydia and making excuses for her because of her being younger than we are. Nobody ever stuck up for me when I was Lydia’s age. Except for Dad: he did.

The funeral is to be in Tunbridge Wells. Uncle Raymond is coming, and Nora from her hospital, but Christopher can’t, and I’m not sure about Angela. Judy is coming from her boarding school where, thank God, she is all through terms. We are allowed to go as well, although it isn’t our grandmother. It is to be a cremation, but I don’t think you actually see that.

22 May. We went yesterday and it was horrible. A horrible little chapel with Grania on a kind of table at the end, and someone played an organ and the clergyman got her names wrong. She is Agatha Mary, and he called her Agartha Marie, and suddenly some curtains beyond the table opened and poor Grania simply slid away to be burned to smithereens. Then we all stood outside for a bit, and then we came home. The only person who wasn’t family was someone called Mr Tunnicliffe who was Grania’s lawyer. Apparently you go back and collect the ashes and strew them somewhere that you think the person would like. But I don’t imagine anyone asked her where she would like her ashes strewn – it isn’t an easy question to ask people, because I suppose it sounds a bit as though you might be looking forward to them being dead. But it did feel sad to think that someone who talked and was about the place is suddenly turned into ashes. I keep remembering her in the nursing home, all wild and muddled and unhappy, but still alive, and it has made me feel extremely sorry for her.

3 June. It is exactly a year since Commander Pearson rang up and told me about Dad. Three hundred and sixty-five days, eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours, five hundred and twenty-seven thousand six hundred minutes since I have ceased to know where he is. But he is somewhere – he must be. I’d know, I feel, if he wasn’t. If he is working as a spy, someone must know it. The English might not, but I’ve suddenly thought of General de Gaulle. He’s the head of the French: I bet, even if he doesn’t actually know offhand, he could find out. So I’ve decided to write and ask him. I’ve also decided not to tell anybody, except possibly Poll, because I don’t want them trying to stop me. I feel very excited to have thought of such a good thing to do, but as it is going to be a very important letter, I’ll practise it, and only put the final version in this journal. It’s a pity I can’t write it in French, but I’m afraid I’d make too many mistakes, and General de Gaulle must have learned a good deal of English by now, and anyway, he’d have lots of secretaries and people who could translate it for him. I’ll write a very polite, business-like letter, and not at all long, because I feel that Generals probably don’t like reading much.

Clothes coupons came in yesterday. Polly is lucky, because Aunt Syb bought her a lot of clothes last year, and masses of material to make things. Luckily I don’t mind about clothes much, but I have been growing a lot, so the trouble is I soon won’t be able to wear a lot of things, although there is nothing wrong with them except for size. Oh well, I can’t see this family letting me go about naked, so there’s no need to worry.

My letter (I think).

Dear General de Gaulle,

My father, Lieutenant Rupert Cazalet, got left behind at St Valéry when he was organising troops to be evacuated onto his destroyer last June. He has not been reported as a prisoner of the foul Germans, so I think it very likely that he is working with the Free French as a spy on our side. He is a painter, and he lived in France quite a bit when he was young, so his French is so good that the Germans might easily think he was French. Possibly some kind French people are hiding him, but he is awfully patriotic, and he would be more likely to be working than just hiding. As you must have an unrivalled knowledge of the Free French, etc., I wonder whether you could find out if that is what he is doing? He might be pretending to be French, but I expect the people he is working with would know that he was secretly English and his name. If you do know, or could find out for me, I should be profoundly grateful, as naturally I have been worried. He wouldn’t be able to write letters, you see, but I just want to know that he is all right and not dead.

Yours sincerely, Clarissa Cazalet.

Of course I didn’t do what I said; when it came to the point, I wanted to practise the letter in my journal. I think I should put ‘My dear General de Gaulle’ or just ‘My dear General – like ‘My dear Manager’ when you write to the Bank, according to Aunt Villy. And perhaps I should put yours faithfully, as I should think the General must be keener on faithfulness than sincerity in his position.

Then I had to find out where to send it to, but I did, by asking a few casual questions of Miss Milliment, and there is a Free French headquarters in London. I put private and personal on the envelope and I read the letter to Polly, who thought I shouldn’t say ‘foul Germans’ but that is just Polly not wanting to be horrible to anybody so I didn’t change it. He must loathe them just as much as he loathes Field Marshal Pétain who is doing awful things – particularly to Jews in France. He handed over a thousand of them in Paris to the Germans and, according to Aunt Rach, who seems to know this kind of thing, he’s arrested many thousands more. I really do think it is filthy to go for people because of their race.

Louise’s repertory company has come to an end. They’ve run out of money, and two of the boys in the company have been called up, so they’re stuck without enough actors. Aunt Villy is very pleased, and says that perhaps now she will get down to doing some sensible war work. Polly and I don’t think she will at all. We agree with Aunt Villy about her being completely selfish, but Polly says that she thinks artists are supposed to be. Miss Milliment said it wasn’t that: it was simply that serious artists tended to put their work first and a lot of the time this was inconvenient for them, but other people only noticed when it got in their way. I must say, Miss Milliment is far broader-minded than our family, as Polly said, she’s altogether broad – we fell about laughing until Polly said how horrible it was of her to refer to Miss Milliment’s physical bulk. Then I remembered Dad talking about a charwoman he had before he was married. Whenever Dad wanted her to do anything serious, like scrubbing a floor, she said she was bulky, but frail and then he felt he couldn’t ask her to do it.

July, I think it’s about the 4th. I still haven’t had a reply to my letter. Polly says think how long it takes us to write our thank-you letters at Christmas, and General de Gaulle must get letters on a scale that we can hardly imagine. I can’t see why he would. His own friends and family in France couldn’t write to him, and I shouldn’t think there are many people in my position.

Louise is back. She has stopped wearing quite so much make-up so she looks better, but she’s remote from us somehow. She spends hours writing letters to get a job in a theatre, and also to some man in the Navy she met. She’s also writing a play that has a rather good idea. It’s about a girl who has to choose between marrying someone and going on with her career as a dancer. That’s the first act. In the second act we see what would happen if she went on with her career, and in the third act what happens when she marries the man. She’s calling it Outrageous Fortune which personally I think is rather pretentious. But I do think it’s a good idea. She reads bits of it to us, but she only wants us to say how good it is. She told me one thing of great interest. Angela has fallen in love with a married man about twenty years older than she is. He works in the BBC with her and he’s called Brian Prentice and she wants to marry him, but of course she can’t as he is already. I said how sad, but that was that, but Louise said no it wasn’t because Angela has started to have a baby and the aunts J. and V. are awfully worried about it. Louise saw her in London at poor Lady Rydal’s old house because each of the grandchildren (the girls) had to choose a piece of Grania’s jewellery. They chose in order of age, so Angela got Grania’s pearls, and Nora had the huge long crystal necklace, and as the aunts were keeping the diamond rings, there was only some gold filigree ear-rings left for Louise. I don’t know what Judy or Lydia got – they weren’t even given the chance to choose. But that was when Louise saw Angela, who she said looked awfully pale and was completely silent. What can happen I wonder? I suppose she must have gone to bed with him – obviously a bad thing to do – it must be terrifically enjoyable if that’s what happens. She might not have known that he was married, in which case it must be entirely Brian Prentice’s fault. But, as Polly says, faults don’t make things nicer for people, or change them. Louise says there is something call Volpar Gels that means you don’t have babies. And even Dutch caps help, she said, but when I asked what they were and what you do with them, she simply wouldn’t tell me. ‘You’re too young,’ she said. There must, thank God, be a diminishing number of things I’m too young for, but then, I suppose, before you can turn round there start to be an increasing number of things you are too old for. You can’t win. I’m looking forward to being thirty, which I should think would be the brief interval between those horns of dilemma.

Why doesn’t General de Gaulle answer my letter? I think it’s really thoughtless of him, and actually quite rude. The Duchy says you should answer letters by return of post.

Poor Aunt Rach has spent an awful morning cutting the great-aunts’ toe nails. I heard her saying that they were like the talons of old sea birds – all curving and frightfully tough. Apparently that’s one of the first things you can’t do when you are really old because you can’t reach them. I warned Polly about this, because it really means she’d better not live in her house entirely alone. She said what did hermits do, because they were nearly always old and had to be alone. I should think they end up with claws like parrots.

For lunch today we had rissoles from the butcher made to a new formula that means they have hardly any meat in them. Neville said they were like a field mouse after a car accident: they were actually just extremely boring to eat, but the Duchy said they were only eightpence a pound, and we should be grateful. I don’t think anyone was.

One interesting thing. A friend of Dad’s is coming to stay! He is on sick leave from the Army: he was at the Slade with Dad, and they went to France as students together. He’s called Archie Lestrange and I do vaguely remember him, but before the war he was mostly in France so Dad didn’t see him much. It will be nice having a friend of Dad’s to stay because not being family, he might talk about him a bit. I hope he really does come, unlike the Clutterworths who never seem to get here. Now I’m going to bath Jules, because it’s Zoë’s day – or one of them – at the nursing home and Ellen has a tummy upset – rissoles, I shouldn’t wonder. I bath her, and I give her her bottle and put her on her pot and then into her bed and I read to her from Peter Rabbit. She keeps interrupting but she minds if I stop.

I got interrupted then and a good thing too – re-reading the above has made me yawn with boredom. Why is it that so much of ordinary life is crammed with trivial routine? Does it have to be? Is it the war that makes everything so deeply grey? What on earth will change it? Polly thinks that being grown-up will make all the difference, but I honestly think she is wrong: it seems to me that the grown-ups have, if possible, even greyer lives. I am sure if I had a more interesting mind I should be less bored, and had a talk with Miss Milliment about that, as she has been in charge of my mind for some time now, so she must be partly responsible. She did at least listen to me which is more than most people do, and then she didn’t say anything for a bit and then she said, ‘I wonder why you’ve stopped writing?’ and I said I was writing this journal, but it was pretty boring, and she said, ‘No, I mean the kind of writing you were doing a year ago. You were writing stories. Now you only do whatever homework I set you, which isn’t at all the same thing.’ I hadn’t thought about that, but it’s perfectly true. I haven’t written a single story – since Dad went away. I said I hadn’t felt like it, and she answered quite sharply that she hadn’t thought I wanted to be an amateur, but a real writer. ‘Professionals do their work whatever they are feeling,’ she said. ‘I am not surprised that you are bored if you are idle with a gift. You are boring yourself and that is a dreary state of affairs. Doing the least you can do is extremely boring.’ But her small grey eyes were quite kind when she said this. I said I didn’t see how one could write if one couldn’t think of anything to write about and she replied that I would think of something if I disposed myself to do so. She ended by saying that if I hadn’t thought of anything within a month, she would start teaching me Greek, which would at least be a new exercise for my mind.

It’s funny. The moment I began to think about writing, I didn’t feel bored at all. I simply felt how difficult it would be to find the time. I made a list of all the things I am expected to do in a day. For instance, not only are we supposed to tidy our rooms, which we’ve always been supposed to do, we have to make our own beds because there aren’t enough housemaids to do it any more. And we have to iron our clothes sometimes because Ellen gets too tired to do it all. Polly is a beautiful ironer, but then she minds about her clothes; I loathe ironing and I wouldn’t actually mind if my clothes weren’t ironed at all. Then we have to help clear the table after meals. Then we have to do some outdoor job in the afternoons – whatever Heather or McAlpine or the Duchy says, and believe me, between them they think of pretty dull things. We have to collect water in bottles from the spring at Watlington (I like that unless it’s pouring with rain). Then we have to mend our beastly clothes with Bully or Cracks or Aunt Syb or Zoë seeing that we do it properly. One of us is supposed to go round every single window in the house in the evenings making sure that the blackout is properly done. We take turns. We have to do all these things on top of lessons every morning and homework after tea. There is some time after homework and after supper, but I’ve decided to tidy up my share of our room and that’s going to take several days, because I haven’t really done that for years: I mean shelves and cupboards and things since I got my stuff from London. It might take weeks. Polly says I’ll love it when it’s done, but that sounds to me like what people say about cold baths. Starting writing again is a bit like that as well or perhaps that’s more like swimming in the sea – awful getting in and lovely when you are. Anyway, apart from doing all these things, I have to try and think what to write, but when it comes to writing I find I can’t think at all – it’s only when I’m apparently not thinking about anything, that any sliver of an idea slips into my mind, and even then I don’t seem able to think about it. It seems to be a mixture of remembering things and feeling – sometimes just remembering a feeling, and that often happens when I’m doing something quite unconnected. All the same, even not thinking about it seems to make it easier not to think about the other thing. What I do now, is have a think about Dad every morning when I wake up. I just wish him a good, safe day and send him my love, and then I stop. It is a tremendous relief arranging it like that. Of course I worry about the General not answering my letter, but that is somehow a different sized worry. Polly got very worked up about my having to face the fact that he might write something about there being no trace of Dad and that meaning that there was no hope. She doesn’t understand: it wouldn’t be that. Either the General will know something about him, or he won’t. But his not knowing only means he doesn’t know. It won’t mean that Dad is dead. It simply will not mean that.