Casting Off: Cazalet Chronicles Book 4 by Elizabeth Jane Howard Read Free Book Online Page B

just the same. The same dark green paint, the same bath with its claw feet and viridian stain from the leaking taps, the window-sill covered with toothpaste-encrusted mugs and contorted tubes of Phillips Dental Magnesia. There was a new clothes-horse covered with damp bath towels. From habit, he opened the window, now stripped of its blackout blind. The fresh, soft air revived him. Away from Zoë, even for a few minutes, he was able to consider her , and he recognised now that in her presence he was encapsulated by guilt, unable to perceive anything but his own responses. She felt shy with him, unsure of herself and uncertain of him. One would think, he thought wearily – anyone outside the situation would presume – that after this long, enforced absence their coming together again was the happy ending, containing nothing but delight and relief. He remembered the old chestnut that fellow officers had quoted on the destroyer about the rating who had written, ‘I hope you are getting plenty of fresh air because once I get back you won’t be seeing nothing but the bedroom ceiling.’ Reunions were regarded as occasion for sexual abandon and unconfined joy. He shut the window. I was in love with her, he thought. She is beautiful – that hasn’t changed; she is the mother of my daughter and she has spent five years waiting for me to come back. Somehow or other, I’ve got to make a go of it. But even as he reached his last resolution he remembered that it was not new: it had lain in him during most of the marriage, unvoiced for years before he had gone away.
    When he got back to the bedroom, she was in bed, lying on her side and turned away from him; she seemed asleep and, grateful for this deception, he kissed her cold cheek and turned out the light . . .

    He was not used to walking – and particularly not on pavements. His feet hurt: he was not used to wearing English leather – he’d lived for so long in canvas shoes. He decided to go back along Jermyn Street, down St James’s and into the park where he could find a bench to sit down.
    Clary. When Archie had said, ‘She bloody well deserves it,’ he had suddenly remembered Clary face down on her bed sobbing her heart out because he was going to take Zoë on holiday to France. He had sat on the bed and tried to comfort her – it was only for two weeks. ‘ Two weeks ! It doesn’t feel like that to me at all. You’re just saying that to make it sound bearable.’ He had turned her over so that she faced him. How often he remembered her face covered with freckles and tears and usually dirt because she was always rubbing the tears off. How often he remembered her eyes dark with defiance and grief. ‘How do I know you’ll ever come back?’ she had cried on that occasion. When he did come back she was shy, sulky, unresponsive, until somehow he could break through and make her laugh. Then she would throw herself into his arms and say, ‘Sorry I clang so much.’ And a few days later she would accuse him: ‘Dad! You should have told me not to say clang. You know perfectly well it’s clung. Sometimes you can be very treacherous and unhelpful.’ She had been jealous of Neville, jealous of Zoë. He wondered whether she was now jealous of Juliet. He had always felt protective towards her: of the three girls it was always she whose knees were permanently grazed, whose hair seemed never out of tangle, who invariably spilt things down a new dress or tore an old one, whose bitten nails were always fringed with black, who seemed always either to have comic gaps where milk teeth had fallen out, or heavy wire bars holding in the new ones. She had never had a vestige of Louise’s dramatic glamour, or Polly’s fastidious elegance. He had known also that Ellen, who had been such a tower of strength to him in every other way, had favoured Neville, had always found Clary difficult, and although she had faithfully performed the duties of nanny, had bestowed very little natural