Into Temptation (Spoils of Time 03) (66 page)

‘Clio seems all right, although I know she still misses Geordie dreadfully. She’s started at a new school, and is very grown up. I’ve promised to bring her out to see you and Jenna next summer. Jenna says we can all go out to South Lodge.’

Izzie had liked that idea: very much. Taking care of Clio seemed to her a modest reparation for what she still saw as her sins.

She and Nick now lived in a very nice, if modest apartment, in the Village; very similar to the one Izzie had had, very close by, only a bit bigger.

Mike had taken over the lease on Izzie’s old one. He said he needed to be near them, otherwise he didn’t know how he would get by, what with having to breathe in and out on his own and so on. It was an act of course, and anyway, he had a very nice Jewish girlfriend now, whose only ambition was to marry him and have babies. Mike, who wasn’t even sure about the marriage part, let alone the babies, was, as he put it, letting her wait a little for him.

Nick occasionally talked to Izzie about getting married, but she told him she wasn’t interested.

‘It’s perfect how it is, why change it?’

‘Most girls don’t see it like that.’

‘I’m not most girls.’

‘I know that. I thank God for it. Well – we’ll get married when there’s a little Lady Isabella on the way. How’s that?’

‘Fine.’

It was her only worry: the only cloud on her golden happiness, that the awful abortion might in some way have affected her ability to have children. Celia’s gynaecologist had assured her it shouldn’t, but you never knew . . .

Anyway, that was far in the future. Well – quite far.

Giles was still very depressed. It was not unusual for Helena to find him slumped at his desk after dinner in the evening, not working as he had said he was going to do, but staring ahead, blankly miserable, as if contemplating a future he did not want.

He felt physically ill; he had a permanent headache, he couldn’t sleep, and he felt nauseated much of the time.

Things were not going well for him at Lyttons, either; his mother, in her own grief, was particularly querulous and difficult, questioning his smallest decision, Marcus Forrest clearly thought he was a complete idiot, and ignored him as much as possible, his paperback list was failing (largely due, he knew, to lack of a promotional budget in the face of fierce competition from not only Penguin, but also from Pan and Fontana), and the purchase of their shares seemed as far away as ever.

But he had one thing which was relieving his misery: a book. It was an odd story: early that spring, just after Barty had died in fact, a woman had sent in a manuscript – some of it handwritten – about her life in the Highlands. She lived in a remote croft and was virtually a hermit; her main companions were the deer who roamed the hills.

The book was almost a diary of her life with the deer – ‘You should call it
Deer Diary
,’ Keir had remarked with a grin when he heard about it. Many of the deer were almost tame and she knew them by name.

It made surprisingly charming reading, and was not without drama. She found a seriously injured doe one day, caught up in some undergrowth, apparently shot by a stalker, and managed to get her home in her truck and nurse her back to health; another magnificent stag visited the croft every morning, ate the bundle of greenstuff she had prepared for him and then submitted himself to being stroked and talked to; a fawn, abandoned by its mother, was raised in the croft garden and grew up to be as faithful as a dog. There was a harrowing description of a fawn’s breech birth, with the author acting as midwife, and another of the death of a doe, apparently from poisoning. All the creatures had names and personalities; there were breathtaking descriptions of the surrounding countryside; and some moments that were genuinely moving.

Joanna Scott was also something of an artist, and submitted a couple of watercolours with her manuscript; Giles was very keen to buy it, suitably extended, to commission several more paintings, and sell the book as a Christmas gift.

Jay was sceptical, and so were several of the editors, and Keir was hugely amused when he heard about it, but Celia thought it was a wonderful idea from the beginning.

‘With the English love of animals, how can it fail? I’d back it, Giles, definitely. Get the woman down, make her an offer.’

Joanna Scott appeared in the offices a few weeks later; she was very tall, very thin, with a gaunt, weatherbeaten face and long, straggling grey hair, falling over the shoulders of her lumber jacket, and an accent so thick it was hard to understand her.

‘Not much use for the publicity photographs,’ said Jay.

‘Oh, we can tidy her up. And anyway, we don’t need to take a photograph,’ said Celia.

‘No – the public will want to see her, it’s that sort of book.’

‘Well, maybe they can’t,’ said Celia briskly, ‘we’ll get her to paint the croft instead. That will do.’

The book had been scheduled for the following Christmas: ‘It’s an absolute natural for a gift-book. And I’d be worried about other publishers poaching the idea if we postponed it too long.’

The whole thing amused the rest of the family: it was so unlike Giles and so unlike the sort of book he would normally want to publish.

‘Whatever next, royal memoirs?’ said Elspeth with a giggle. Like most publishers, Lyttons affected to despise the huge success of the memoirs of Marion Crawford, governess to the little princesses.

‘Charlie, are you all right?’

He smiled at Jenna rather wearily.

‘Yes, I’m all right.’

‘You look awfully down. And tired.’

‘I am a bit.’

‘Why? Specially, I mean?’

‘Well – my business isn’t going too well, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh Charlie, I’m sorry. So sorry. I suppose – well, I suppose it wasn’t a very good time for you to launch it.’

‘Not very, no. It was kind of hard to concentrate.’

‘What can I do for you? Make you some tea, fix you a Martini?’

She had often heard him telling people that her mother made the best Martinis in Manhattan; Jenna was working hard at mastering the skill.

‘A Martini’d be nice. Thank you, sweetheart. You’re very good to me.’

‘You’ve been pretty good to me.’

‘The thing is,’ he said, slowly, ‘I’m going to have to sell it. The business, I mean. It’s just not paying its way. And I think – with a bit more time – it’d have been all right.’

‘Charlie, that’s terrible. You can’t do that. I’ll – I’ll speak to the trustees.’

She knew already it was fairly hopeless; but she went on trying. She was beginning to grow very tired of Jamie and Kyle. They were so – obstructive.

They were obstructive that day. ‘I’m sorry, Jenna,’ said Kyle, ‘but we can’t touch the money in your trust fund. Not at the moment. Even if we wanted to.’

‘Which you don’t.’ She glared at them. ‘Well, I’ve got an idea. I can borrow against the fund. I’ve read about that, in the papers.’

She had taken to reading the financial pages; following the progress of her stock, studying other things which she could one day put her money into.

‘Sorry, darling. You can’t.’

‘Why not? I can just go to a bank, or Charlie could ask them.’

‘You can’t, because you’re a minor. Charlie can’t, because the trust isn’t in his name.’

‘Oh – ’ She turned away, looked out of the window of Jamie’s penthouse. It was a lovely day; the trees in Central Park were just turning gold, the sky was purest blue. How could she help him: how?

‘I think you’re so mean,’ she said, ‘Charlie’s been so good to me, always. I want to help him. He’s in real trouble, his business is failing, he hasn’t been able to concentrate on it, he needs time. And he doesn’t get the money from the will for ages—’

They looked at her; their expressions were identical, embarrassed, wary, closed.

‘Look – couldn’t you lend him some money, Jamie? I really want you to. I could pay you back, you could take it out of my trust fund. Or when we get this wretched probate thing. Why is it taking so long, anyway?’

‘Because it’s so complex. Because there are so many elements involved. Because—’

‘Yeah, yeah. I heard all that. Look, isn’t that an idea, you lending Charlie some money? It would mean so much to me, I hate to see him so worried and unhappy.’

‘Jenna, we can’t. Sorry.’ It was Kyle; clearly wretched. ‘We don’t have money to pour into a failing business. Money we might not get back. Sorry, Jenna. The answer’s no. It has to be.’

‘Well, I think you’re horrible,’ she said. She was very upset, near to tears. ‘I think you should do it in memory of my mother. She loved Charlie, she’d just hate to see this sort of thing going on.’

‘She probably would,’ said Jamie gently, ‘but—’

‘Don’t say it again. That you can’t do anything about it. I’ll have to think of something myself.’

When she got home that day, Charlie was sitting watching TV. He looked very down.

‘Hi sweetheart.’

‘Hi Charlie. No good, I’m afraid. I’ve tried and tried to get Jamie and Kyle to help, but they just go on and on about the will and the trust fund. I’m so sorry.’

‘That’s all right, poppet. Thank you for trying.’

‘I’ll fix you a Martini. Where’s Cathy?’

‘Out with some boy.’

‘Nice?’

‘He seemed OK.’ He watched her while she made the Martini, smiled bravely at her when she handed it to him.

‘Thanks, sweetheart. Anyway,’ – his voice was very casual – ‘you know what I was thinking about?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘I don’t know why, but – well, your – I guess they’d be your stepbrother and sister. The Elliotts . . .’

‘Oh yes?’ She was pouring herself a Coca-Cola.

‘You never met them, did you?’

‘No, never. I’m sure they wouldn’t want to meet me. My father divorced their mother. And then married mine.’

‘Yes, but there were a few years in between. What were their names, do you remember? And how old were they?’

‘Well, the girl was called Kate. I can’t remember what the boy’s name was. She must be about – goodness, seventeen. Actually, that’s right. I saw a photograph of her in one of the papers the other day. At the Infirmary Ball, I think. Or something like that. You know about all that social rubbish?’

‘You know I do.’ He looked put out.

‘Sorry. Well anyway, she’s very pretty. I’ll see if I can find it—’

‘Really? Yes, I’d like that. Anyway, what I was thinking of, was how odd it is that you had never met them. And they’d known your dad. It might be kind of interesting, don’t you think?’

‘Not really,’ said Jenna, ‘no.’ She did feel quite strongly about that; the father she had never known was hers, she didn’t want to share him with anyone. Especially his children, children who had actually known him, seen him, talked to him, sat on his knee.

‘They must really be rich,’ Charlie said.

‘Think so?’ She was rummaging through the pile of papers on the coffee table.

‘Well of course. They got most of the money, didn’t they? Your dad’s money?’

‘Not sure,’ she said, and then her voice was suddenly sharper. ‘It doesn’t really interest me, Charlie, you know. I hate the whole subject of money. Especially at the moment. And especially who got what. Can we change the subject, please?’

‘Of course. Sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to – upset you.’

He looked remorseful. She felt bad. It had been tactless of her, talking like that about money, when he was so worried about it. She gave him a kiss.

‘That’s OK. I guess I’m a bit touchy. Anyway, here she is. Miss Kate Elliott. All done up in white. Look at those gross gloves. Oh, and here’s the brother, Bartholomew, that’s his name. He looks all right. Not a bit like my dad, as far as I can tell from the old pictures, but . . .’ She handed him the paper.

‘Thanks, darling.’ He took it, studied the photograph; he seemed more cheerful all of a sudden. She was pleased. Although it was a funny thing to get cheered up by, the thought of some dumb girl’s coming-out party.

CHAPTER 35

Elspeth wondered if it was all right to feel so happy. With the family – well, half the family – still so shocked by Barty’s death.

Of course she hadn’t known her very well. Barty had been living in New York since 1946 and had been away for much of the war; she’d been fond of her of course, but Barty’s death had made very little difference to her life – apart from the presence of Marcus Forrest in the office from time to time and she actually rather liked that. It would have been more than her life was worth to say so, the others all hated him, but she thought he was quite a good thing. He was clearly very clever and he was also very charming and good-looking. He seemed light years younger to her than Giles and Jay, and he always made time to chat to her each time he came over. He would seek her out if she was in the office and talk to her about what she was doing, and when he called a general editorial meeting he always invited her. She had managed to persuade Keir to let her attend.

‘Please,’ she had said, smiling sweetly at him over the supper table, ‘please, Keir. We can’t afford to upset him. After all, he’s very important to you, isn’t he? What possible harm could it do to Cecilia, just one little meeting.’

Keir scowled at her, said there seemed to be a growing number of little meetings, and picked up the paper. But he didn’t say any more about it. Elspeth took that as consent.

She sometimes felt she was walking a tightrope in her life; swaying this way and that, nearly losing her balance, righting herself just in time. It seemed very difficult and very dangerous, and if she did fall off it would be deadly, but she knew it was worth it.

She worked quite a lot these days; enabled to do so, not – of course – by a nanny, but by a nice woman called Mrs Wilson, who lived in some flats further down Battersea Park Road. Mrs Wilson came in initially to babysit, when Keir and Elspeth went out in the evenings, and expressed – to Keir as well as to Elspeth – a desire to see more of Cecilia. ‘She’s a beautiful wee thing.’

Elspeth said promptly that there could be no question of that, she liked to look after Cecilia herself; but over the next two or three months, she took to asking Mrs Wilson to come in occasionally while she attended an editorial meeting – Keir had reluctantly agreed to it.

The fact that the Wilsons were Scottish, that Donald Wilson taught in a primary school in Balham and could enjoy idealistic conversations with Keir about the iniquities of the English education system, undoubtedly helped Elspeth’s cause. By that autumn, Mrs Wilson was coming in three times a week, the hours extending so gradually that Keir was scarcely aware of it, arriving after breakfast – when he had left for the office – and staying until Cecilia’s bath-time.

It was wonderful to be working again, and she had such plans: a romantic thriller – rather like a latter day
Rebecca
, she explained to Jay, ‘only more psychological, sort of Hitchcocky, really’ – a series of children’s books, ‘but not expensive – paperbacks, twenty-six of them, about a series of little people who live under the pier at the seaside, each one with a name beginning with a different letter of the alphabet. The man who brought the first two in to show me is just so sweet and clever.’ She had also commissioned a guide for women on cooking, sewing, decorating and gardening, called
Mrs Perfect
, ‘but the title’s tongue-in-cheek, it’s for women like me who can’t do anything practical, with really simple diagrams to follow’.

And she and Clementine were already working on a new novel about a girl who found out, at the age of nineteen, that she’d been adopted.

Like Celia, Elspeth felt brought to life by work; like Celia, she loved her family, but at the same time felt that if she wasn’t working, she was somehow not properly functioning, only marking time, playing at life.

‘I feel myself getting slower and slower, running down like a clock,’ she said to Celia one day when she was in Lytton House with a manuscript; Celia smiled at her and said she had once made exactly the same remark to Lord Arden.

‘But he doesn’t understand, I’m afraid.’

‘Keir understands, all right,’ said Elspeth, ‘he just doesn’t like it.’

She supposed she was a little tired. The baby was due in another month – although it felt like years since she had thought she was going to be sick at Kit and Clementine’s wedding – but she felt so well, so revitalised, that there was none of the drained exhaustion she had felt when Cecilia was nearly due. She looked back at the dreadful, miserable days in Glasgow with something close to disbelief: how had she endured that, why had she endured it?

Occasionally, when she had the time, she pondered on the future. Without being over-optimistic, or even arrogant, it looked rather good to her. She and Keir were, potentially at least, a great team: clever, talented and, as her grandmother often remarked, ‘you remind me of Oliver and myself when we were young, your lives and your work are intertwined. It makes for a good partnership, Elspeth, you must nurture that.’

Celia continued to adore Keir; she was fiercely proud of him, of having her faith in him justified. And Marcus Forrest also thought a lot of Keir, listening to his opinions, taking a particular interest in everything he was editing, suggesting to Jay that Keir took over certain projects and books. Elspeth could see that this had its dangers. Giles certainly resented it, Jay was irritated by it, her mother had warned her that it could be counter-productive, especially Celia’s adoration.

‘I’m delighted, darling, of course. But Granny can’t go on for ever, and he could be storing up a lot of resentment. Which will rebound on him when she does finally retire.’

‘Oh, Mummy, do you really think it’ll ever happen?’

‘What, her retirement? God knows,’ said Venetia with a sigh. ‘I half dread it, half long for it. She’s still so bloody good at her job.’

She seldom used strong language; Elspeth looked at her in surprise. She was edgy of course, they all were. Everything was difficult for them. Not just the business of the shares, but the arrival of Marcus Forrest in London every few months and the tension that created. He was increasingly exercising his editorial prerogative, vetoing purchases, promotions, even titles. It all made for an atmosphere which was the opposite of calm.

Forrest was Machiavellian in his management style; he worked with first one and then another editor, setting up with a chance remark here, a mild criticism there, a steady loss of the feeling of cohesion, of common purpose in the editorial team which Oliver and Celia had worked so hard to create. The utterly loyal editorial force that had been Lyttons was slowly becoming something more individually based and self-centred; Jay and Celia felt it was a bad thing, Elspeth and Keir, and a couple of the other younger editors, could see that it had its virtues, nurturing as it did a certain edgy creativity, a willingness to explore new ideas.

Certainly, Elspeth thought, she and Keir were the only members of the family who were secretly rather enjoying it all. They didn’t admit it, of course, not even to one another.

They were both rather pleased by Lucas’s suggestion, made to his grandmother, that perhaps he might join Lyttons, after his National Service. ‘The more youth in the company the better,’ Elspeth said, ‘on the family side, I mean. And I believe his father was a brilliant publisher, so it ought to be in his genes in a big way.’

‘What really ought to happen,’ said Keir, ‘is that it should stop being owned by the family. It should be made into a public company. When all this is over.’

She stared at him.

‘But Keir – why?’

‘Because it would bring some money in, that’s why. Enable us to do what we need to do. The family company is a thing of the past, Elspeth.’

‘Oh really?’ she said. ‘Well, that’s very interesting. You haven’t seemed to mind it yourself. Up to now.’

At which he told her she should wake up, that they all should.

‘Remember the dinosaurs, Elspeth. I’m not saying any more than that.’

She told him he’d be wise not to; but later thought about what he had said, and even began to wonder if perhaps he wasn’t right.

Celia’s main preoccupation, apart from the share valuation, was General Dugdale’s memoirs. Or rather, as she said to Sebastian, his memoir.

‘He is appallingly slow. What I’ve read is marvellous, but—’

‘And how much is that?’

She hesitated; then said, ‘One chapter.’

‘One! Celia, that’s terrible. What’s he doing?’

‘I don’t honestly know. Every time I ring up, Dorothy tells me he’s working on them. But he won’t let me go down and help. We’d hoped to publish them this summer, but I’m afraid now it’s going to have to be later. It’s the only big non-fiction book we’ve got. And you know that dreadful Marcus Forrest complained in the most unpleasant way about the advance.’

‘I do seem to remember you saying something about it. Several times.’

Celia ignored this.

‘I can see I’ll have to go over there soon, just sit with him and try and work something up. But—’ she sighed.

Sebastian looked at her.

‘You look tired, my darling. I know you hate that, but you do.’

‘I know,’ she said, surprising him. ‘I feel tired.’

‘What does the doctor say? I suppose you haven’t seen one?’

She looked at him. ‘Actually, I have.’

‘And?’

‘And he’s sending me to some chest man.’

‘Oh,’ said Sebastian. ‘Oh, I see. Well – no doubt he’ll put you right. Give you some medicine to take. You have stopped smoking, haven’t you?’

‘Sebastian, you know I’ve stopped smoking. It’s dreadful. Hasn’t done any good, either. I told them it wouldn’t, they didn’t take any notice.’

‘Well . . .’ he looked at her and there was great concern and love in his eyes. ‘You see this chest chap. He’ll know what to do, I’m sure.’

‘I hope so,’ she said, and sighed again, then visibly hauled herself together. ‘Now let’s talk about your new book, Sebastian. I hope that’s not going to be late.’

‘Of course it is. When did I ever deliver a manuscript on time? Except for the first one, of course. The important one.’

‘The one that made you famous,’ she said.

‘No,’ he said, taking her hand and kissing it, ‘no, I mean the one that led me to you.’

Elspeth had been working on some proofs one late-September afternoon, when she was suddenly aware of a rather fierce pain in her back. She ignored it; she knew it couldn’t be the baby, there were at least four weeks to go.

Half an hour later, it had grown rather worse; she stood up to try to ease it, felt a gushing between her legs, and looked down to see a large puddle forming on the floor.

She walked rather gingerly towards the door, opened it, and called Mrs Wilson; Cecilia toddled up and looked at the puddle behind her.

‘Naughty Mummy,’ she said.

‘I know,’ said Elspeth, and giggled; then as a stab of pain caught her somewhere rather more familiar than her back, she lost all desire to laugh and said, ‘Mrs Wilson, I think – well, I’m sure – I’m in labour. Could you call the ambulance please?’

Three painful but blessedly brief hours later Robert Brown entered the world.

Keir was ecstatic. It was quite annoying how ecstatic he was, Elspeth thought. He hadn’t been nearly as moved by Cecilia’s arrival.

‘It’s because it’s a boy, darling,’ said Venetia, when Elspeth complained to her the next day. ‘They’re so utterly childish. I never could understand it. Daddy was just the same. They seem to think it proves their manhood or some such nonsense. He is a rather sweet baby, Elspeth, he looks just like you.’

‘Do you think so? Granny said the same. Well, she said he was unmistakably a Lytton.’

‘Granny says that about all the babies. Lovely to call him Robert, after Uncle Robert, I presume. He’ll be thrilled, dear old darling.’

‘I know, I thought so. Unfortunately, Keir thinks it’s after his father. And he’s already told him.’

‘Well, that’s all right. They’ll both be happy. How do you feel?’

‘Fine. It was all over so quickly. I feel as if I could get up and go straight back to work.’

‘Well don’t. Good heavens, Elspeth, who are those wonderful flowers from? That huge bouquet over there, all white? Make mine look very mean.’

‘Oh,’ said Elspeth carelessly, ‘Marcus Forrest.’

‘Goodness!’ Venetia looked at her. ‘Who’s teacher’s pet, then?’

‘Me, I hope,’ said Elspeth, with a dazzling smile.

A share price had finally been agreed: it meant that Lyttons London did indeed have to find two million pounds.

‘Well that’s fine,’ said Celia, ‘I see no problem with that. We can just send Mr Charteris off to those people, and Lyttons will soon be ours again.’

She was suddenly in high spirits, the tiredness and depression quite forgotten; Jay looked at her with a mixture of affection and incredulity. How could a woman of such sophistication, a woman who still entertained some of the greatest names in publishing at her dinner table – only last week he had dined there with Mark Longman, John Murray and Leonard Russell of the
Saturday Book
, marvelling at the way she could still charm and dazzle anyone she chose, and revel in being able to do so – a woman who had nurtured Lyttons for fifty years, virtually single-handed through two wars, be so absolutely naive about anything pertaining to business? He supposed it was one of her talents – always had been – to close her mind to anything disagreeable, to ignore difficulties, to concentrate solely on what she wanted and how she was going to get it. He wished he had the same ability.