Foreword

The following background is intended for those readers who have not read The Light Years and Marking Time, the two previous volumes of this Chronicle.

William and Kitty Cazalet, known to their family as the Brig and the Duchy, are spending the war in Home Place, their country house in Sussex. The Brig is now virtually blind and hardly goes to London any more to preside over the family timber firm. They have three sons and an unmarried daughter, Rachel.

The eldest son, Hugh, married to Sybil, has three children, Polly, Simon and William (Wills). Polly does lessons at home, Simon is at public school, and Wills is four. Sybil has been very ill for some months.

Edward is married to Villy and has four children. Louise is succumbing to love—with Michael Hadleigh, a successful portrait painter, older than she, now in the Navy—rather than an acting career. Teddy is about to go into the RAF. Lydia does lessons at home and Roland (Roly) is a baby.

Rupert, the third son, has been missing in France since Dunkirk in 1940. He was married to Isobel, by whom he had two children; Clary, who does lessons with her cousin, Polly, but she and Polly are eager to get to London and start grown-up life; and Neville, who goes to a prep school. Isobel died having Neville, and subsequently Rupert married Zoë, who is far younger than he. She had a daughter, Juliet, shortly after he disappeared, whom he has never seen.

Rachel lives for others, which her great friend, Margot Sidney (Sid), who is a violin teacher in London, often finds hard.

Edward’s wife Villy has a sister, Jessica Castle, who is married to Raymond. They have four children. Angela, the eldest, lives in London and is prone to unhappy love affairs; Christopher has fragile health and now lives a reclusive life in a caravan with his dog. He works on a farm. Nora is nursing and Judy is away at school. The Castles have inherited some money and a home in Surrey.

Miss Milliment is the very old family governess: she began with Villy and Jessica, and now teaches Clary, Polly and Lydia.

Diana Mackintosh, a widow, is the most serious of Edward’s affairs. She is expecting a child. Both Edward and Hugh have houses in London but Hugh’s in Ladbroke Grove is the only home being inhabited at present.

Marking Time ended with the news that Rupert was still alive, and with the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor. Confusion opens in March, 1942, just after Sybil has died.