‘Eileen wants to know if you would like lunch in the garden.’
‘Would you?’
‘If you would.’
‘All right, whatever you say.’
She had been writing letters all that morning, all the week since the funeral, writing and often crying. So many people had written, she said, either saying what a lovely funeral it had been, or how sorry they were that they had not been able to come. She felt she must answer them all, but it had taken its toll, Sid thought, almost angrily. Her face was still pale and ravaged by grief and lack of sleep. Fresh air would be good for her, and after lunch she might be persuaded to rest. After tea, they might go for a walk. Sid was still feeling pretty ropey herself, but she’d finished the marvellous pills and was sure she was getting better. She must get better, if only to stop Rachel looking after her and worrying.
It was another beautiful day, the air full of lavender and bees and roses. The butterflies had come for the buddleia, which was only just starting. It could all be so idyllic if only …
Lunch was cold chicken and salad and raspberries, and each coaxed the other to eat well – to little avail. But Sid did manage to get a glass of sherry down Rachel, which had some effect. She longed to discuss their future, but Rachel was distracted, considering the desires of her brothers about Home Place, and much of their conversation was about that. Hugh definitely wanted them to keep the house, and Rupert had finally decided that he did as well. Edward was clear that he didn’t, and there had been talk about his simply passing his share to the rest of them. Rachel had been left a little money by her mother that had come to her on her marriage and been safely and dully invested in Cazalets’ to provide an income of four hundred a year. Otherwise, she had been left a large number of shares in the firm, which also produced an income. The Brig had left furniture and effects to the Duchy for her lifetime, thereafter to be divided into four parts for each child. Rachel seemed to have no idea how much money she had, and clearly did not care. Sid, on the other hand, owned the lease on her little house in St John’s Wood, and had a small pension from the school where she had taught all her life.
There was no comparison. They had been through so much, and apart when they had wanted to be together, that it seemed only fair that now they should subside into tranquillity, a safe harbour of some kind where there need be no deceit, no charade about aching desire professing mere affection. Although, in their case, affection was the breath of love. It was affection that had enabled Sid to be patient, to be gentle, to treasure those first faltering assurances that Rachel had felt able to give: ‘I’d rather be with you than anyone in the world’, said in a tea shop in Hastings on one of the few occasions when she had lured Rachel from family duties. But that had been either before the war or when it had just begun, and there had been years after that of longing and frustration, during which she had been unfaithful with that needy girl Thelma. She and Rachel had been brought up so differently: Rachel to believe in her duties as a daughter, an unmarried aunt, to think nothing of herself, never for one moment to consider herself interesting, or attractive, her opinions – when she had any – meshing completely with what she felt was expected of her, on and on like that; it had been pathetic and sometimes irritating. Sid had been brought up virtually as head of her small family: a father dead when she was still a child, a mother wanting all the time to be told what to do, and a younger sister envious of her talent as a musician, and heartless with their mother. Money had always been short; she had always had to supplement her mother’s pension, to try to find her sister jobs, to live with her and deal with her day-to-day jealousies. It was because of all this that Sid had had to renounce playing in an orchestra for a regular job teaching in a girls’ school, supplemented by private lessons. All this had lent authority of a certain kind so she had taken to wearing mannish versions of women’s clothes: the tweed skirts, the thick woollen stockings, the shirt with a tie, hair cut as short as a man’s.
Her face, which had never known any emollient, had settled to a weatherbeaten uniformity: she looked as though she had spent much of her life in a high wind, or at sea. Only her lively pale brown eyes had never changed, and when she smiled, she charmed.
‘It would be so sad for the children if we gave up the house.’ This was the kind of thing Rachel said when she wanted to stop talking about it.
They had finished lunch, and Sid had lit their cigarettes with the pretty tortoiseshell lighter that Rachel had given her for her last birthday. ‘You know what I’d like, darling.’
Rachel had been lying back in her basket chair, but now sat up. ‘What?’
‘I’d like to take you away somewhere for a quiet holiday. The Lake District, or anywhere you would like to go.’ Then she added, with some cunning, ‘I feel the need for something of the sort. To throw off this bug for good and all.’
She saw that this was having some effect. A flurry of little frowns puckered Rachel’s face; she bit her lip and looked at her anxiously. ‘How awful! Of course we must have a holiday – you need one. It really is bad to have a reputation for thinking of others and then not doing anything about it.’ She actually nearly smiled as she said that. ‘Where would you like to go, my darling?’
Sid wanted to get up and throw her arms round Rachel, but at that moment Eileen appeared with the trolley to remove the lunch.
‘That was delicious,’ Rachel said. ‘Will you tell Mrs Tonbridge?’ And Eileen said that she would. ‘I ought to find out when the children want to come before we make any plans.’
Oh, Lord! Sid thought. If I’m not careful she’ll say she can’t go because of the family. ‘They always come with parents,’ she said carefully, ‘and they know the whole place inside and out. I’m sure you could leave it to them to sort things out.’
‘Well, I’ll have to ask them.’
‘Of course you will. And now, my dearest, it’s time for you to have a snooze. Do you want it out here, or do you want to go to bed?’
‘I think out here.’
When Sid had fetched the rug and tucked her up, Rachel said, ‘We need to pick the sweet peas. You haven’t forgotten?’ Every evening, since her mother’s burial, Rachel had picked a fresh bunch of the Duchy’s favourite flowers and taken them to her grave.
‘Of course I haven’t. We’ll pick them after tea and I’ll come with you.’ She stooped to kiss Rachel’s forehead. ‘I’m for my bed. I’ll wake you at teatime.’
I’m almost back to square one, Sid thought sadly. She had spent one night in bed with Rachel during the last week, and Rachel had clung to her and wept and sobbed in her arms, until, eventually, she had cried herself out and fallen asleep. Physical contact of any other kind had been clearly out of the question.
When we go away, she thought, if we go away, things will get back to how they were before. It is simply a question of patience and love. Although why either of those things should be regarded as simple was not clear to her at all.