Read The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) for Free Online

was an authority about this. Her father had a good many books about the war; he had been in it, had emerged with one hand gone, over a hundred pieces of shrapnel in his body that they couldn’t get out and he got frightful headaches – the worst in the world, her mother said. And all the people in the photograph on his dressing-table – all soldiers in yellowy baggy uniform – were dead, except for him. Polly read all his books and asked him little casual trapping questions that simply proved to her that what she read – the slaughter, the miles of mud and barbed wire, the shells and tanks and, above all, the awful poison gas that Uncle Edward had somehow managed to live through – was all of it true, a true and continuing nightmare that had lasted over four years. If there was another war it could only be worse, because people kept saying how warships and aeroplanes and guns and everything that could make it worse had been improved by scientific development. The next war would be twice as frightful and go on for twice as long. Very secretly indeed, she envied Louise for only being afraid of boarding school; after all, she was already fourteen – in another two or three years she’d be too old to go to one. But nobody was too old or too young for war.
    Louise said, ‘How much pocket money have you got?’
    ‘Don’t know.’
    ‘Look.’
    Polly obediently unzipped her little leather wallet that she wore on a string round her neck. Several coins and some rather grey sugar lumps fell onto the grass.
    ‘You shouldn’t keep your horse sugar with your money.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Those lumps are probably poisonous by now.’ She sat up. ‘We could go to Church Street and I could come back and have tea with you.’
    ‘All right.’
    They both loved Church Street, particularly the top end, near Notting Hill Gate, for different reasons. Louise haunted the pet shop that had a never-ending supply of desirable creatures: grass snakes, newts, goldfish, tortoises, huge white rabbits, and then the things that she coveted but was not allowed – all kinds of birds, mice, guinea pigs, kittens and puppies. Polly was not always very good about waiting while Louise looked at everything and when she got too bored she went next door, which was a junk shop that sprawled onto the wide pavement and contained everything from second-hand books to pieces of china, soapstone, ivory, carved wood, beads and pieces of furniture, and sometimes objects whose use was utterly mysterious. The people in this shop were not forthcoming: two men – the father spent most of the time lying on a faded red velvet chaise-longue reading a paper and the son sat on a gilt chair with his feet up on a huge case of stuffed pike, eating coconut buns and drinking tea. ‘It’s for stretching gloves,’ the father would say if asked; the son never knew anything. Today, Polly found a pair of very tall blue and white candlesticks, rather cracked and with a bit missing from the top of one, but extremely beautiful, she thought. There was also a plate – pottery, with blue and yellow flowers on it, dark delphinium blue, sun yellow and a few green leaves – about the most beautiful plate she had ever seen. The candlesticks were sixpence and the plate was fourpence: too much.
    ‘There’s a bit missing on that one,’ she said pointing to it.
    ‘That’s Delft, that is.’ He put down his paper. ‘How much have you got, then?’
    ‘Sevenpence halfpenny.’
    ‘You’ll have to choose. I can’t let them go for that.’
    ‘What would you let them go for?’
    ‘I can’t do you any better than ninepence. That plate’s Portuguese.’
    ‘I’ll ask my friend.’
    She rushed back to the pet shop where Louise was having an earnest conversation. ‘I’m buying a catfish,’ Louise announced. ‘I’ve always wanted one and the man says this is a good time of year.’
    ‘Can you lend me some money? Just till Saturday?’
    ‘How much?’
    ‘A penny