Casting Off: Cazalet Chronicles Book 4 by Elizabeth Jane Howard

been doing with that, then?’
    ‘It had to go back – wasn’t sufficiently distressed.’
    The red light went off, and Gordon opened the door. ‘Right, girls, follow me.’
    They walked through the comparative gloom, over the concrete floor that was intermittently beset with thick cables, upright canvas chairs, a make-up trolley, men standing at the bottom of ladders, saying, ‘Are you all right, Bill?’ or nothing, men with earphones standing over large black machines, into the blazing light of the set which consisted of an oval pool filled with some milky liquid, a marbled surround and at one end a marble seat or throne, on which a lady with ash-blond hair, wearing a pleated pink chiffon dress bare on one shoulder, a diamanté strap on the other, was sitting while a thin man in his shirt-sleeves crouched on his haunches at her feet agreeing with everything she said.
    ‘I know you ain’t, darling. That’s the problem,’ he was saying, as they got within earshot.
    ‘I mean, she wouldn’t, would she? Not in this dress.’
    ‘You couldn’t be more right. She wouldn’t.’
    ‘ I don’t see why I have to get into the pool.’
    ‘Darling, asses’ milk!’
    ‘Sod the asses’ milk. It’ll be freezing.’
    ‘Darling, it won’t be. Brian has promised.’
    ‘It was absolutely icy just now.’
    ‘That was only a rehearsal. When we come to shoot I promise you it’ll be warm .’
    He became aware of Gordon. ‘What now?’ he said, in an entirely different voice.
    Gordon explained.
    Louise watched as his eyes swept casually over her body; he did not look at her face.
    ‘Camera won’t be close on her feet,’ he said. ‘We’re way over budget anyhow. Just paint their toenails – gold, or something.’
    So that was that. Nothing else happened that day.
    In the evening, after most of her make-up had been removed – she was given some cold cream and cotton wool, but it took her ages – she had gone home on the Underground to Notting Hill Gate and then taken a taxi back to Edwardes Square where she now lived with Michael (on leave before joining a new destroyer which he was to command in the Pacific) and Sebastian and Nannie and someone whom Mrs Lines had described as a cook-general – a Mrs Alsop – and her small boy. Mrs Alsop and Nannie did not get on: Nannie had somehow discovered that Mrs Alsop was not Mrs at all, but simply and disgracefully the mother of David, who was small, white-faced and terrified of her. The feud was kept in check by both ladies wishing to make a good impression on Michael, who was blithely unaware of any tension, but Louise dreaded the future when, for an unknown amount of time, she was going to have to cope on her own with it.
    Michael had come out of the Navy in order to stand as a Conservative candidate in the election, and he had been assigned what was thought to be a fairly safe seat in a suburb of London. Every day for three weeks Louise had accompanied him: sat beside him on platforms while he made rousing speeches about education and housing and small businesses, and then separated from him for the afternoon while the chairman of the local Conservatives’ wife took her round to meet other wives. Often she would have to have three or four elaborate teas with cakes from cake baskets with ladies in hats with gloves and handbags to match who asked her about her baby and said how relieved she must be to have her husband home. She managed by pretending she was in a play: for three weeks she threw herself into the part of devoted wife of war-hero and young mother. Zee got several high-ranking Conservatives – including two members of the Cabinet – to come and speak for Michael, and they must have been favourably impressed by her performance, as Michael told her that they had passed on to Zee how well she was doing. This pleased a small part of her, but only a part. She seemed to herself to be made up of small pieces that bore very little relation to one another – as