All Change: Cazalet Chronicles Read Online Free PDF Page B

having him?) and dear Miss Milliment – who wished to be called Eleanor, but Villy had only managed that once just after they had discussed the matter.
    She must write to Rachel, who had been a wonderful daughter to both of her parents – unlike mine, she thought. Louise made duty visits if Villy was ill – prepared supper, if necessary, and made small-talk, but was utterly unforthcoming about herself, varying evasion with spasmodic efforts to shock. And her mother was shocked. When Louise had suddenly announced, ‘But I have a rich lover now, so you really don’t have to worry about me,’ there was a frozen pause before Villy had asked, as calmly as she could manage, ‘Is this wise?’ Louise had retorted that of course it wasn’t but she wasn’t to worry, she was not allowing him to keep her. All of this was in her bedroom, out of earshot of Miss Milliment. ‘Well, please don’t talk about this in front of Miss M,’ she had begged, and Louise had said she wouldn’t dream of it.
    Her theatrical career had come to nothing but she was tall and thin, with abundant reddish blonde hair and an undeniably beautiful face – high cheekbones, wide-apart hazel eyes and a mouth that reminded Villy uncomfortably of the sensual depictions so loved of the Pre-Raphaelites. She was long divorced from Michael Hadleigh, who had instantly got married again, to his former mistress. Louise had refused any alimony, and scraped along in a small maisonette over a grocer’s shop with her blue-stocking friend Stella. Villy had been there only once when she had paid a surprise visit. The place smelt of dead birds (the grocers were also poulterers) and damp. The flatmates had two small rooms each, and the third floor had been turned into a kitchen and dining room, with a very cramped bathroom and lavatory built out onto a flimsy extension. On the day that she visited, there was a plate of distinctly high mackerel lying on the dining table. ‘You’re not going to eat those – surely?’
    ‘Good Lord, no! Somebody we know is painting a still-life, and he wants us to keep them till he has finished.’
    ‘There, you’ve seen it all now.’ So why don’t you go? It was not said, but she’d felt it.
    ‘What about your rent?’
    ‘We share it. It’s quite cheap – only a hundred and fifty pounds a year.’
    Villy realised then that she had no idea what her daughter did to earn her living. But she felt miserably that she had clearly been inquisitive enough for one day. Going home on the bus she was struck afresh by her awful loneliness. If only Edward was there to discuss the matter! Perhaps he was paying her rent; it would at least be respectable. She couldn’t talk to Miss Milliment about it – with all the business of lovers and sex, it was out of the question.
    But, as it happened, it was Miss Milliment who elicited the facts.
    ‘And what are you doing these days, dear Louise?’ she had enquired when, later that month, Louise had dropped in for tea.
    ‘I’m modelling, Miss Milliment.’
    ‘How very interesting! Are you using clay? Or are you perhaps cutting stone? I always imagined the latter would be very hard work for a woman.’
    ‘No, Miss Milliment. I’m doing photographic modelling – for magazines. You know – like Vogue .’ And Miss Milliment, who thought that magazines (excepting the Royal Geographic Society’s) were generally for people who found reading difficult, murmured that it must be most interesting.
    ‘Do they pay you?’ Villy had asked then, and Louise had answered – had almost retorted – ‘Of course. Three guineas a day. But when you’re freelance you never know how much work you’re going to get. I must go, I’m afraid. Dad has asked me to go to France with them. Two weeks, and he’s paying for everything. He’s taken a villa not far from Ventimiglia and there’s a beach.’
    It was a careless parting shot. She can have no idea of how that makes me feel, Villy thought, as she lay