Something Dangerous (Spoils of Time 02) (33 page)

‘But there is, there is. Paperback editions are not a ridiculous idea. In fact, I thought of it myself as long ago as the war, when we were so up against it.’

‘And you dragged Lyttons down by publishing cheap populist rubbish?’

‘I—’ Let that pass, Celia, don’t rise to it, don’t tell him yet again that actually you saved Lyttons. ‘But the time wasn’t right. Now it is. I think we ought to do it.’

‘And I don’t. I don’t trust Allen Lane, I’m not at all sure he’s the sort of person I want to go into business with.’

‘Well he’s the sort of person I want to go into business with, because he’s brilliant. What harm can these editions do?’

‘Immense harm to our main business. Cheapening books, underselling ourselves, we’ve got enough to worry about with this dreadful new book club, the Readers Union, or whatever they’re going to call it, selling books on an instalment plan.’

‘Oliver, please. Please just see Allen Lane. Do you really want to be the only publisher who won’t go in with his scheme?’

‘I won’t be. Don’t be absurd. Selling books for sixpence.’

‘Well Jonathan Cape is going in with him, the publisher of the moment, as
The Times
called him, if you remember.’

Oliver looked away; that had hurt. There had been a time when Lyttons had been the publisher of the moment, widely acknowledged as such, the golden early days of Meridian and the Buchanan saga; it had been a great source of pride to him.

She saw the hurt and moved in on it.

‘Do you want to be the publisher of yesterday, Oliver? Do you really?’

‘I would prefer that to being a rash, foolhardy publisher, risking the fine traditions that we have always had. Penguin! What a name for an imprint. It’s got nothing to do with books. Unless they are all to be on the subject of natural history.’

‘Oh, Oliver! You’re being deliberately dense. Look, why not just a couple of books? We don’t need to go overboard. He’s offering publishers £25 for each title, and then a farthing royalty. He’s going to be publishing ten each month for an indefinite period. It’s going to cause such a stir. And don’t you see, it will introduce people to books, it won’t alienate them.’

‘For nothing. Or next to nothing.’

‘Oh, please, Oliver. Please.’

‘I’m sorry Celia, no. And in case you think I haven’t given it my full attention, I did discuss it with Edgar Greene. And Giles, they both thought it was a very dangerous notion.’

‘Edgar Greene! He was born middle-aged. And I don’t recall you using Giles’s disapproval as a reason for not doing something.’

‘Giles has a very sound business brain. As I keep telling you. Have you spoken to LM about the paperback books?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘She said she wasn’t convinced,’ said Celia reluctantly, ‘but she said she was open to persuasion. But Jay thinks it’s a wonderful idea, she did tell me that—’

‘Jay! A boy of twenty-one.’

‘He’s the future, Oliver. And I hope he’s going to come and work for Lyttons too.’

‘Well maybe he is, but I don’t think we need take a major publishing decision on the strength of his say-so.’

‘And Venetia thought it was really clever. She suggested the Buchanans as a sort of set. I thought that was really interesting—’

‘Celia, when did Venetia display the slightest interest in or instinct for publishing?’

‘Actually,’ said Celia, ‘several times lately. In fact I’m beginning to wonder—’

‘If you mean that absurd idea of a Lyttons book club, I have never heard such nonsense. Totally impractical.’

‘Gollancz are doing one.’

‘I am aware of that, Celia. Dreadful rubbish. No, I’m sorry, I can’t agree to it. Now I have a great deal to do. If you will excuse me, my dear.’

Celia walked out of his office, slamming the door. She had been slamming that door for a great deal of her life; it seemed to sum up the vast and increasingly unbridgeable gulf between his vision of publishing and Lyttons’ place in it and her own.

Luc and Adele were walking hand in hand down the Champs-Élysées; it was autumn, and the leaves were beginning very gently to turn. The light, more tender and gentle than in the spring or summer, flattered Paris, softened it: not that it needed flattering, Adele thought, its beauty was extraordinary, the intimacy of its small and charming side streets set close to the sudden, dazzling splendour of its open spaces, the bustling pavement life lived out against the grace and elegance of its arcades and squares, and the great river winding through it, so much a part of its beauty, always present as somehow the Thames was not. She was in love with the city as much as she was with Luc, it had become her emotional home; she told Luc that as they sat down at a café, and he ordered her the grand café au lait that was still her favourite, she had been unable to convert to the small pot of blackness that was Parisian coffee.

He kissed her and said the city suited her and she suited it, they were equally beautiful; she smiled at him, rather helplessly.

She was absolutely and passionately in love with him; she could not imagine even the possibility of a life without him at its centre. She had set aside all caution, all moral scruples, all her personal ambition, albeit modest; she did not care any more that he had a wife, a wife moreover to whom (he explained to her as gently as he could) he must remain married for the rest of his life. It having been a Catholic marriage.

She knew there was no question even of any kind of discreet formal arrangement. As long as she remained with Luc and in love with him, she was agreeing to something that she would have thought quite absurd only a few months ago, and a situation that her sister considered incomprehensible, that her parents found distressing, and that caused her friends to doubt her sanity.

‘What you don’t understand,’ she said to all of them patiently, ‘is that Luc is what I want. All I want, all I’ve ever wanted. It’s no use me demanding he divorces his wife and marries me, because he won’t. So either I live without him or carry on like this. And I don’t want to live without him.’

She was, to an extent, a victim of the French culture, and of love and she settled into making the very best of it; but when she was being most honest with herself, she also knew that Luc was taking advantage of her situation, of the unlikelihood that she would move permanently to Paris and make her home there, that an important part of her life was still based in London. She knew (and Venetia had underlined this) that she was hardly conducting her life as a modern young woman should, that she had apparently laid aside dignity, self-respect, independence even. It meant very little to her; the only thing she cared about was Luc, being with him, enjoying him, learning about him. That he was undoubtedly selfish, selfabsorbed, duplicitous, mattered very little to her either; nor even that he was inclined to complacency, a quality which in other people she had always especially disliked. He was as he was, and she loved him, able to set aside his vices entirely, and consider only his virtues. She was unable, even to Venetia, to explain quite how this had come about; she had met other men, more charming, better looking, certainly more suitable than Luc, who had not had this effect on her. She knew that from the time she had first set eyes on him, he had changed her in some strange, important way, she had become a different person, and he was essential to that person and to everything she thought and did. She supposed that might be one definition of love.

She tried not to consider the future; she had set aside the past. She was no longer Adele Lytton, famous beauty, adored daughter, social success, brilliant stylist, sought after by the finest fashion editors, the cleverest photographers, she was simply Adele Lytton who loved Luc Lieberman and all the rest was of no interest to her at all.

She did still work of course, would have found her situation harder to cope with had she not. She worked for Cedric, and for other London photographers and, quite often these days, in Paris, for the fashion and beauty editors of
French Vogue
and
Femina
. It was a fortunate time for her: the endless pages of fashion illustration so beloved of editors for the last twenty years were beginning to be replaced by photographs: Adele found herself working for freelance photographers like Horst and Durst, Hoyningen-Huene and the revolutionary Englishman Norman Parkinson. Parkinson and Durst, it was said, had taken Paris fashion on to the streets, they showed models getting in and out of cars, sitting at the pavement cafés, posed on the Parisian skyline; Parkinson had most famously photographed the American model Lisa Fonssagrives apparently dangling from a rooftop, the Eiffel Tower just behind her.

Fashion had become altogether more accessible; the great Chanel had led the movement into real life, and now even
Vogue
began to cater for the mass fashion market, talking about such unthinkables as clothes for the working girl, and dressing on a budget. It was an extremely exciting time to be in her business.

Adele had no proper base in Paris, but stayed in hotels when necessary, spending a fortune on fares; in London she still lived in Cheyne Walk.

Despite their distress, her parents tried to be supportive when she explained how she felt; her father’s reaction was sorrow rather than anger, and the sorrow reserved entirely for her. ‘I’m sure he’s very charming, darling, but what kind of future can he offer you?’

Her mother was more practical: ‘Luc Lieberman is simply using you, Adele, and he has clearly no intention of ever doing anything for you whatsoever. You are making a complete fool of yourself.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘You will care. London, the whole of England indeed, is filled with eligible young men, and while you’re spending so much time in Paris with someone who is not only married but unable to be divorced, you’re not even going to meet them, let alone find yourself in the frame of mind to marry them.’

To which Adele replied that she had met a great many of them and had no desire to marry a single one; that she loved Luc and she wanted to be with him and if he was unable to marry her, then that was unfortunate but not an insuperable obstacle to her happiness.

‘I despair of you, Adele, I really do,’ said Celia with a heavy sigh, ‘and how you can have so little self-respect is absolutely beyond me. I hope when this – this business reaches its unhappy conclusion as it inevitably will, you’ll remember what I’ve said.’

Adele, who couldn’t see what good such a memory would do her in the event of such personal catastrophe, smiled sweetly at her and said she would try. She was oddly serene these days; serene and self-confident.

‘Don’t ask me why,’ she said to Venetia. ‘I suppose at last I’ve found someone who values me for what I am, rather than who I am and what I look like.’

‘I do see that,’ said Venetia, gently, ‘but isn’t there just the slightest chance that he might ask you to – well to live with him? If he loves you so much and he can’t marry you. I mean that would be a commitment of a sort.’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Adele, ‘it’s not the sort of thing he could do. The French just don’t see things our way. Anyway, if you really want to know, I’m not entirely sure he does love me. Not as I love him.’

‘I thought you said he did.’

‘Oh, he says he does. But I don’t think it’s quite the same.’

‘Well,’ said Venetia with a sigh, ‘he is a man of course. And they do see life quite, quite differently. But—’

‘I know, I know what you’re thinking. And of course it would be nice. But it just isn’t going to happen. And so I have to accept what I’ve got. The thing is, Venetia, I would die for Luc. I’m sure he wouldn’t die for me.’

Years later those words were to come back to haunt her.

‘So Barty has been given promotion and you haven’t. That is truly absurd. The Lytton foundling. I don’t trust her anyway. If we’re not careful she’ll end up chairman of Lyttons.’

‘Helena don’t be absurd. And don’t say unpleasant things about Barty. It’s not fair. She is not a foundling as you put it, she’s part of the family—’

‘Oh, how foolish of me. I’d forgotten what socialists all you Lyttons were. All right, she’s part of the family. She just happens to have been born in a slum. And then to have been dragged out of it by her grubby bootlaces.’

‘Helena, please!’

‘Meanwhile you, the eldest son, the heir, continues to work in that poky little hole they call an office at a pittance of a salary doing a job not as good as the one she’s just been handed. As far as I can make out. It’s just not right, Giles. And if you’re too much of a coward to talk to your parents about it, then I will.’

‘Helena, please. I beg of you. Don’t do that.’

‘Someone has to look after our interests, Giles. Particularly as there is to be another child. And you are clearly not going to. So that leaves me.’

‘Just wait a few more—’

‘A few more what? Hours? Days? Years? No, sorry, Giles, I can’t.’

‘Helena,
please
– look – I will speak to my father. I swear. Tomorrow. Please don’t go and see him, it will diminish my standing there so dreadfully, to appear to be – well, to be hiding behind your skirts.’

Helena sighed. Then she said, ‘Very well, then. But you must do it tomorrow. I really insist.’ She got up and left the room.

Giles looked after her wretchedly. There was absolutely no doubt she meant what she said. And short of locking her in her bedroom, there was no way he could stop her. He would have to speak to his father next day. And – and maybe it would work. Maybe they had simply not thought of it. And he could use the news about Barty’s appointment – to senior editor, rather than junior editor – as a sort of launching board. But he was very afraid: not so much of asking, but of hearing the refusal. And then of Helena’s reaction. She really was so very strong in her views.

‘I’m appalled,’ said Celia, ‘quite simply appalled.’

‘I’m sorry?’ said Helena.

‘That you should come on your own, to see Oliver – not even, apparently, thinking to involve me, not that that is so important of course’ – she paused here, staring at Helena, making it plain that it was very important indeed – ‘about this absurd business.’ ‘It’s not an absurd business,’ said Helena staunchly. ‘It’s a matter of Giles’s future in this company.’ ‘Which he discussed with us yesterday. A conclusion was reached, which I presume he told you about, that he would receive a salary increase with immediate effect, and we would review his role here in six months’ time. I fail to see that there is anything more to be said. For the time being. Certainly not by you.’ ‘Celia, I have to tell you that I think there is more to be said. And actually, yes, by me, since Giles is too – gentle,’ – that was the most acceptable word she could find: the others, ‘cowardly’, ‘weak’, ‘spineless’ were more accurate, she felt, but scarcely diplomatic – ‘too gentle to say it for himself.’ ‘Really?’ The dark eyes were very hard. ‘Surely you must see that it puts Giles in a very poor light. Implying that he is unable to speak properly for himself.’ ‘Not really, no. I don’t. There are things that I can say that he could not, that he would be too modest or embarrassed to express.’ ‘Such as—?’ ‘Well, I think that his talents are considerable, for a start. And they deserve recognition.’ ‘Really? I had not realised that you had such a – clear understanding of the publishing business. Better than our own, in fact. Perhaps you would like to share it with us. We are clearly not entirely au fait with what we are doing—’ ‘Celia,’ Oliver put up a hand. He had hardly spoken since Celia had walked into his office and found Helena there. ‘Celia, I don’t think that is quite necessary. Helena is naturally anxious to plead Giles’s case. And impressed by his professional qualities, as a wife should be.’