The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) by Elizabeth Jane Howard Page B

cold in summer and icy the rest of the year. The house was heated by log and coal fires in the ground-floor rooms: some of the bedrooms had fireplaces, but the Duchy regarded them as unnecessary except for an invalid. There were two bathrooms, one for the women and children on the first floor, one for the men (and servants once a week) on the ground. The servants had their own WC; the rest of the household shared the two that adjoined the bathrooms. Hot water for bedrooms was drawn from the housemaids’ sink on the first floor and carried to rooms in steaming brass cans every morning.
    Breakfast was in the small parlour in the cottage part of the house. The Duchy was Victorian about her drawing and dining rooms, using the latter only for dinner and the former not at all, unless there was company. Rachel’s parents sat now at the gate-legged table on which the Duchy was making tea from the kettle that boiled over a spirit lamp. William Cazalet sat with a plate of eggs and bacon and the Morning Post propped up against the marmalade. He was dressed in riding clothes that included a lemon-coloured waistcoat and a wide dark silk tie with a pearl pin in it. He read his paper with a monocle screwing up the other eye so that his bushy white brow almost touched his ruddy cheekbone. The Duchy, dressed much as her daughter but with a mother-of-pearl and sapphire cross slung on a chain over her silk blouse, filled the silver teapot and received her daughter’s kiss, emanating a little draught of violets.
    ‘Good morning, darling. I’m afraid they are all going to have a very hot day for their journey.’
    Rachel dropped a kiss on the top of her father’s head and sat in her place, where she saw at once that there was a letter from S.
    ‘Ring for some more toast, would you?’
    ‘Iniquitous!’ William growled. He did not say what was iniquitous, and neither his wife nor his daughter asked him, knowing very well that if they did, he would tell them not to worry their pretty little heads about that . He treated his newspaper as a recalcitrant colleague with whom he could always (fortunately) have the last word.
    Rachel accepted her cup of tea, decided to enjoy her letter later, and put it in her pocket. When Eileen, their parlourmaid in London, arrived with the toast, the Duchy said, ‘Eileen, would you tell Tonbridge that I’ll want him at ten to go to Battle and that I’ll see Mrs Cripps in half an hour?’
    ‘Very good, m’m.’
    ‘Duchy dear, wouldn’t you like me to do Battle for you?’
    The Duchy looked up from scraping a very little butter on her toast. ‘No, thank you, darling. I want to speak to Crowhurst about his lamb. And I have to go to Till’s: I need a new trug and secateurs. I’ll leave the bedrooms to you. Did you make a plan?’
    Rachel picked up her list. ‘I thought Hugh and Sybil in the Blue Room, Edward and Villy in the Paeony Room. Zoë and Rupert in the Indian Room, Nanny and Lydia in the night nursery, the two boys in the old day nursery, Louise and Polly in the Pink Room, and Ellen and Neville in the back spare . . .’
    The Duchy thought for a moment, and then said, ‘Clarissa?’
    ‘Oh, Lord! We’ll have to put a camp bed in the Pink Room for her.’
    ‘I think she’d like that. She’ll want to be with the older girls. Will, shall I tell Tonbridge about the station?’
    ‘You tell him, Kitty m’dear. I’ve got a meeting with Sampson.’
    ‘I think we’ll have lunch early today, so that the maids will have time to clear it and lay tea in the hall. Will that suit you?’
    ‘Anything you say.’ He got to his feet and tramped off to his study to light his pipe and finish his paper.
    ‘What will he do when he’s finished all the building here?’
    The Duchy looked at her daughter and answered simply, ‘He’ll never finish. There’ll always be something. If you’ve time, you might pick the raspberries, but don’t overdo it.’
    ‘Don’t you .’
    But with seventeen people