Something Dangerous (Spoils of Time 02) (85 page)

And then there were American servicemen, many of them black, all over the city, in their neatly pressed, fine-wool khaki uniforms. Their wonderful rich accents, only ever heard before, by most people, in the cinema and a seemingly endless supply of money to spend in bars and restaurants and ballrooms gave them an automatic glamour.

There were women everywhere: driving buses, delivering milk, manning ARP stations, delivering letters, driving ambulances. And running companies, Venetia thought, as she flicked through her diary that morning, checking on the day ahead. The war had done considerable good to the female sex in general; and had also succeeded where Venetia’s mother had failed, teaching her that there was a great deal more to be got out of life than what her friend Bunty called Domestic Prostitution.

‘You sleep with them, and in return you get board, lodging and, if you’re lucky, a few nice frocks.’

Venetia could not now imagine what she would do without her job: nor why she had refused to do one for so long. She was also rather painfully aware of the vapid, aimless creature who had been married to Boy: and how extremely unsatisfactory he must have found her. She buttered herself a piece of toast and went to see if there were any letters for her. There was one: from Boy. Telling her that he was coming home on a fortnight’s leave in ‘roughly a month’ and saying that no doubt they should meet to discuss various matters, including the ongoing care and welfare of their children.

Venetia read it twice, which didn’t take her very long since it was so extremely brief, and then put it down on the table and burst into tears.

Barty was on sentry duty; she absolutely hated it. She felt such an idiot, standing outside the gate with her rifle and its bayonet; she had five rounds in her pocket but was forbidden to load the rifle in case she shot someone. The whole thing was such a nonsense. And every time she said ‘who goes there’ she felt an insane desire to giggle; in fact, the first few times she
had
giggled and had been severely reprimanded for it by her commanding officer. She was actually doomed as a sentry; she had once waved a dispatch rider through, without demanding his ID, thinking she recognised him; he was actually doing a security check. She had been put on a charge for that; she often said she would not be surprised to be confronted by the first invading German of the war, disguised as Winston Churchill, and to find herself waving him through as well.

Now it was raining, dripping steadily through the collar of her rubber raincoat, and although it was April, it was cold; she had a headache and her feet ached. And she was tired, so tired, she felt in danger of falling asleep as she stood.

Still, after this, she was off duty for forty-eight hours; she was going to go home. It was the marvellous thing about being stationed at Croydon; she could go home even for the shortest leave.

A letter had come that morning from John; she had it in her pocket, was saving it until she got home. His letters were always so long, and so amusing, as well as loving; he had a great talent for observation. It was odd; he wasn’t exactly witty but he could make a funny story out of anything.

This was very tedious; very tedious indeed. She looked at her watch; still twenty minutes to go. Her head hurt dreadfully; she thought longingly of her kitchen and a cup of strong, sweet tea. Workman’s tea, Celia called it; she drank her own tea—usually Earl Grey—very weak with lemon. And no sugar.

A car pulled up at the gates; she straightened, said, ‘Who goes there?’ and tried to ignore the icy water now dripping off the bottom of her mackintosh and running into her shoes.

She didn’t get home until after ten; she felt dreadful. Shivery and hot at the same time. Maybe she had flu. A hot bath would help. She boiled the kettle, swallowed two aspirins and made the tea; then she carried it into the bathroom, together with her letter from John, and settled into the bath. Oh for a pre-war bath, deeper than the regulation five inches. It was such a measly depth, hardly covered your legs; there was no possible opportunity for wallowing in hot water. Even the King had announced that he had had a line painted five inches from the bottom of his bath, as a discipline.

She settled into the bath, splashing herself repeatedly with the hot water to keep warm—her house was very cold—and leaned back against the bath pillow that Venetia had given her for Christmas—‘they’re heaven, you’ve no idea, for reading in the bath’—and pulled John’s letter out of its envelope. She felt warmer, happier, better, straight away.

My dearest,

I wonder what you are doing as I write this. (He would be amused, Barty thought, if he knew; the last night he had been home they had tried to share a bath as a romantic gesture, and the five inches of water had proved so inadequate they had given up, laughing; he had stayed in, and by the time it was her turn the water was cooling fast.) I am sitting in a highly uncomfortable truck, stuck in an endless line of such things, on the road to somewhere or other. A small dog has just lifted its leg against the feet of a man standing at the side of the road, watching us (this is a local sport); he has not yet realised the fact and the dog has made off, clearly feeling there might be some retribution. I like dogs; I think perhaps when we are married and have our house, garden and apple tree (last discussed on 1 / 1/43 at 0300 hours, you know how I like to be as precise as possible), a nice golden labrador might make a most welcome addition to the family. What do you think?

Oh, I miss you. I miss everything about you, but particularly at this moment your—

The phone rang out shrilly; Barty frowned. She was already cold; but getting out of this shallow, tepid water was going to make her colder. Maybe she should just let it ring. It was probably only Celia. Or maybe Parfitt. And they would both phone again, thinking she was not yet home.

It stopped abruptly. Good. She settled back to her letter. John was missing her: what, especially? He was rather good at finding odd, unexpected things, like her ears, which he said he found particularly sweet, or her near-photographic memory for dates, or her capacity for laughing at his jokes: but they were all things he had told her about before and he was also very good at finding new ones . . .

The phone began again: damn. She would have to answer it. She put John’s letter on the cork stool, got out of the bath, then realised she hadn’t brought her dressing gown into the bathoom and, moreover, had left the towel in the tiny airing cupboard so that it would be warm when she wanted it. Oh well. No one could see her.

She walked across the sitting room quickly, shivering; she would have to ring whoever it was back. As she picked up the phone, she glanced up and saw herself in the mirror over the fireplace, thought how absurd she looked, stark naked, her hair falling down from where she had pinned it loosely on top of her head, her face rather flushed. Maybe she had a temperature; it certainly wasn’t the warmth, in fact, she was shivering quite violently.

‘Hallo?’ she said rather uncertainly, meeting her own eyes in the mirror. And then watched herself move into shock, saw her own face blanch, her eyes grow somehow hollow and dark, her body at once become absolutely still.

‘Barty? I presume that must be you. Yes? Hallo, Barty. How are you? This is Laurence.’

CHAPTER 39

So it had happened. All of it. As she had known of course that it would. She had said all the right things: and done all the wrong ones.

She told him not to come and see her: not to open the bottle of champagne he had with him because there was nothing to celebrate; not to touch her, certainly not to kiss her; not to so much as suggest there was anything to be discussed by either of them; not to even think of asking her to have dinner with him and certainly not to go to the Grosvenor House and dance; not to dare to propose that they met again the next night, one night might be just about acceptable, a meeting between old friends but that must be the end of it; not to ply her with stories of his failed marriage, his endless unhappiness ever since she had left; not to express his bottomless remorse at all the unarguable wrong he had ever done her; not to assure her that he was changed, reformed, a different, better and stronger person now; not to try to persuade her into bed with him; and, most of all, not to think for a single moment that she now felt anything more for him than she would for any man she had once known and been rather fond of, five long years ago.

And had let him into her house, weak, frail with shock at what she felt, just looking at him standing there, staring at her absolutely intently in the way she had never forgotten; had smiled rather feebly as he passed her the glass of ice-cold champagne—‘so difficult to get anything iced in this country of yours, how do you stand it?’ – had allowed him to kiss her, albeit briefly, a light dusting on her lips, and to hug her warmly, nicely, a brotherly hug; had changed into the only really good dress she had, a black sliver of silk, piled up her hair, and gone to dine and then to dance with him at Grosvenor House. She had stood, stock-still on the dance floor with him, her head bowed, her eyes closed as the old violent sensations invaded her and agreed to meet him the following night—‘shall we try the Savoy? I’m told it’s not too bad, and that they even have ice’—listened to, while struggling not to believe, the story of his disastrous marriage—‘I only married her because I couldn’t have you, you know that’—and tried to believe that he was changed, reformed, a better and stronger person; and finally and most inevitably of all, had allowed him home that night, to her house and into her bed, and remembered, as he took her and invaded her and moved in her and loved her, how strange and strong and perfect his love-making could be.

The next day when he was gone and she was dressing herself in her neat, proper, virtuous uniform, she reached into her drawer for a handkerchief, and pulled out with it the letter from John which she had been reading when Laurence telephoned. She had put it there in her haste, as she rushed round tidying up, finding something to wear, for he had only been five minutes away, and had simply forgotten about it. All about it. And now she sat, weak with distress and shame, staring at it, lacking the courage even to finish reading it, reading words of love from a man she had promised to marry and had betrayed with a speed and thoroughness of which she would not have believed herself capable.

Laurence was based in London; that took care of any hopes that he would be whisked off to the north of Scotland or Ireland, both established bases for the Americans, or that he would disappear from her life again. He was not strictly a soldier at all, although he had been given the honorary rank of colonel in order to simplify matters; he was on Eisenhower’s staff, working in Military Intelligence as a translator.

‘I was too old to be an ordinary Joe,’ he said to her, ‘but I got in this way. It’s fascinating work.’

He had an astonishing gift for languages; he could speak several perfectly, including Russian, and could even get by in Japanese: ‘But it’s my German and possibly my French that they’re interested in.’

Barty said she was surprised he had volunteered at all. ‘You surely didn’t have to. You must be—what?’

‘I’m forty-five,’ he said, ‘unbelievably.’

‘Then . . .?’

‘I wanted to,’ he said. ‘I thought it would be a tremendous adventure.’

That made sense: it was part of his obsessive search for new experiences, his restlessness, his careless courage.

‘And anyway,’ he added, smiling the strange, reluctant smile she had never forgotten, ‘I wanted to come and find you. I could hardly come as a tourist, now could I? Death seemed a far smaller hazard than never seeing you again.’

She was silent; then she smiled at him and said, ‘Is it really that dangerous? What you’re doing?’

‘Not at the moment. But—it might get more so.’

‘How?’

‘Oh—interrogating prisoners. Close to the enemy lines.’

‘I see. And—how did you find me?’

‘Oh that was easy,’ he said. ‘I just phoned Lyttons. They said you were away, fighting the enemy, and they asked who I was; I said I was a longlost cousin, one of the American Lyttons, and the very nice girl I was speaking to told me where you lived and gave me your telephone number.’

‘I see,’ said Barty, resolving to speak to Vera Martin, the new receptionist, so different from the wildly discreet Janet Gould.

‘And you know the rest. Anyway, what about you? Is what you’re doing dangerous? It sounds as if it could be.’

‘Not often,’ said Barty. ‘In fact at the moment it’s quite dull.’

If only, she thought, the rest of her life was as dull.

He looked exactly the same, had hardly aged at all; his hair was still the same bright red-gold, his eyes the extraordinary blue-green, he was a little thinner, but still very muscular, radiating health and strength, perfectly dressed. He had arrived in civilian clothes, wearing a dinner jacket, and had taken her out to dinner the next night in his uniform—‘I had it made by my tailor, the one they gave me was horribly ill-fitting.’

He told her she looked just the same too, studied her, remarking on it. ‘Your hair, I like it longer, your wonderful lion’s mane of hair—it was Lady Celia who had described it like that, wasn’t it, yes, I thought so, I do look forward to meeting her now, and your eyes, those beautiful eyes, and your neck, that long graceful neck, I have dreamed of your neck, Barty, you know—well yes, you are changed, and I’ll tell you how, you’re more beautiful, far more beautiful than ever.’

He had talked a great deal abut his marriage, about the years without her: ‘They were hell. Absolute hell. An unhappy marriage is a prison cell. Worse. A prison cell shared with someone you can’t stand.’

‘You didn’t have to marry her,’ said Barty.

‘I had to marry someone.’

‘But why?’

‘To show you how desperate I was.’

‘Laurence, that is completely ridiculous.’

‘Not at all. You knew how much I loved you. How much I wanted you. It was the ultimate declaration. Designed to make you see how desperate I was, what I was prepared to do.’

‘You do talk absolute nonsense,’ she said. ‘And besides, what about your poor wife? Pretty hard on her, I’d have thought.’

‘Not at all. She wanted my money. And a fine household. And babies of course.’

‘Ah yes. The babies. How many—’

‘Two. A boy, nice little chap, called Bartholomew—’

‘Bartholomew?’

‘Yes. After you. Do you like it?’

‘You called your son, by another woman, after me?’

‘Yes. I rather enjoyed the idea. A sublime piece of perversity, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t—know,’ said Barty slowly. She felt quite shocked. ‘It’s just—extraordinary.’

‘Well, you may think so. I didn’t. Anyway, we call him Bif. And then there’s a little girl, Catherine. Kate. She looks just like her mother, behaves like her too, very spoilt.’

‘Not like her father at all, of course.’

‘Barty,’ said Laurence indignantly, ‘I have never been spoilt.’

She didn’t argue: there was no point.

‘I love you,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘I love you so absolutely. I can’t believe I’ve got you again.’

‘Laurence, you haven’t got me.’

‘Oh, but I have,’ he said, his extraordinary eyes fixed on hers, taking her hand, kissing it. ‘I’ve got you and this time I am not letting you go. There is simply nothing to be discussed. You must agree. You do agree. I can see.’

‘Laurence—’

‘Oh be quiet. Let’s not waste time. If you have to leave in an hour and a half, we have some very important things to do. Starting with both of us removing every vestige of clothing—’

‘Laurence, I don’t really want to—’

‘Of course you do. Of
course
you do. I always know when you’re prevaricating, Barty, you fiddle with your hair.’

‘Do I?’ she said, genuinely astonished.

‘Yes. And when you’re nervous, you stroke your nose. And when you’re reading you clear your throat a lot. And when you’re hungry, you get quite irritable. And when you’re late you tend to be rather clumsy and rush round knocking into things. And when you feel sexy, you get stiller and stiller. It’s very lovely, that stillness.’

‘You know me so terribly well. Better than anyone in the world.’

‘That’s true,’ he said and he leaned forward and started to unbutton her dress, ‘and all these years without you, I have recalled everything carefully and consciously each day, ticked it off like a list, so that I shouldn’t forget anything, anything at all . . .’

‘Oh dear,’ she said helplessly. She felt helpless: all the time.

She sat on the train going out to Croydon, watching the evening light on the dreary suburban houses and thinking how beautiful they looked, her body singing with remembered pleasure, her head in a turmoil that was at once joyful and dreadfully, horribly distressed.

What was she going to do? In the name of heaven—or hell—what?

It was midsummer: Izzie was home for the holidays.

‘It’s so nice to be back,’ she said to Kit as they sat on the terrace after tea. ‘I do like Cheltenham, in fact I love it, but there’s no peace there. I do like peace and quiet.’

‘I get a bit too much of it,’ he said.

‘Really? I thought you were happy here.’

‘I am happy. Of course. I couldn’t be better looked after, I love chatting to the little boys, and all the Lytton children, and Grandpapa and Grandmama are both so marvellous to me. But the fact remains I’m twenty-three, Izzie, and I’m living the life of a middle-aged man. Sometimes I do wonder what will become of me.’

‘You’ll find some lovely girl,’ she said, ‘who will fall terribly in love with you and you’ll get married and have lots of babies.’

‘Which I’ll never see.’

‘No,’ she said, meeting this with her steady courage—she was still one of the very few people he bared his heart to—‘no, that’s true. But you’ll have them, and they’ll love you, and grow up thinking how wonderful you are. And they’ll be terribly clever and terribly brilliant, just like you, and frightfully handsome, just like you.’

‘Am I?’ he said, sounding surprised, ‘am I really? Wandering round here with my stick . . .’

‘Kit, of course you are. You haven’t changed. You look exactly the same. I suppose it is hard for you to believe. You’re the most handsome man in the world. I always thought so. Except maybe for Father, of course.’

‘Yes,’ said Kit, ‘yes, I do remember him being wonderfully good-looking. The twins always said when he was younger, that he looked like a film star.’

‘That’s quite true, he did. I found some pictures of him the other day, at our house at Primrose Hill, when he was really young, I’ve brought them down to show Adele, I thought they’d interest her, they’re just snaps, but in a sort of sepia tint. Anyway, there’s one of him playing tennis and another of him sitting in a boat somewhere or other, in white trousers and a cricket sweater, a cigarette in between his teeth, laughing, really laughing. He doesn’t do much of that these days, I’m afraid.’

‘No. But he used to. I remember. I’d like to see—’ He stopped, sighed. ‘I still say things like that. So stupid, isn’t it?’

‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Not at all stupid. Your brain’s the same, just like your face is, it thinks the same, it’s bound to.’ She stopped, then said, ‘Your new book is so lovely, Kit, you must be terribly excited.’

‘It is wonderful,’ he said, ‘to have something to do, something I can succeed at, be proud of. I enjoy it enormously. And funnily enough, I can’t imagine actually writing those books. In some strange way, dictating them somehow makes them more vivid, more alive.’

‘Well there you are. Oh, hallo, Noni. How are you?’

‘Very well, thank you. GGM’—they all used this nickname for Lady Beckenham—‘said to come and tell you it was sherry time.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Kit, ‘the sherry gets worse and worse, more like cough mixture every day.’

‘Don’t drink it, then,’ said Izzie.

‘Oh, no, she’d be fearfully upset. Lead the way.’

‘I will. Just hang on a minute, I’ve got something in my eye, I’ve got a hanky somewhere in here—’ She rummaged in the leather satchel she had brought out, containing some books and magazines she had promised to read to Kit. A couple of photographs fell out.

‘Oh, now those are the ones I’ve brought to show Adele, old ones of—’

But Noni had picked them up, was looking at them.

‘These are really funny,’ she said. ‘Kit, I didn’t know you could row a boat.’

‘Kit? They’re not of Kit,’ said Izzie, smiling at her, ‘they’re of my father. You know, Sebastian. When he was young. Just about the same age as Kit is now.’

‘Well he looks like Kit,’ said Noni, ‘really exactly like him. Are you sure it’s not him?’

‘I’m absolutely sure,’ said Izzie, dabbing at her sore eye, ‘that’s better. Now put them back in my satchel, Noni, and let’s go and have this sherry that Kit’s looking forward to so much.’

Kit, listening to this conversation, waiting patiently for Izzie to take his hand, was scarcely aware of it consciously. But something deep within his mind, some blurry memory, that had meant little to him at the time, shifted, moved further forward, into focus. He wasn’t even sure what it was. But it stayed there, waiting to be examined further: when the time arrived.

‘Boy’s coming home next week,’ said Venetia. ‘I’m really dreading it. I just don’t know what to do, what to say to him, what to tell him.’