Into Temptation (Spoils of Time 03) (77 page)

Suddenly, he couldn’t bear it any longer. He got up, walked down the corridor; the nurse was coming out of Celia’s room. He looked over her shoulder; he could see two more people bending over the bed.

‘How – how is she now?’

‘Look,’ she said, ‘please. Please leave us alone. Lady Arden isn’t very well, and we’re doing all we can for her. Please wait in the waiting room, you’re just making things worse—’

‘But I have to go in. I have to tell her something, something crucially important. I—’

Sister appeared; she looked flushed and anxious.

‘I don’t know who you are,’ she said, ‘but it’s most important you leave Lady Arden alone. She isn’t at all well. She can’t be visited at the moment. We have to—’ she stopped.

‘Have to what?’ said Sebastian.

She hesitated, then said, ‘Take her back to theatre. As soon as Mr Cadogan arrives.’

‘But why?’

‘I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid.’

‘For God’s sake,’ he said, ‘for God’s sake, why not? What do you think I’m going to do, stop you doing whatever is best for her?’

She looked uncertain; then relieved as a doctor came out of Celia’s room.

‘Dr Smythe. Could you tell this gentleman he cannot see Lady Arden at the moment? He’s being very insistent.’

Dr Smythe looked at Sebastian; and against every possible likelihood, hurried, anxious as he was, he recognised him.

‘You’re Sebastian Brooke, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, yes I am. For what it’s worth.’

‘I thought so. My son loves your books more than anything in the world, you’re his hero. Good Lord.’ He appeared transfixed, far more interested in Sebastian than in the drama going on around him. ‘Good God. What – what can I do for you?’

‘Let me in to see her,’ said Sebastian, indicating Celia. ‘Let me in quickly, before it’s too late. I have to – have to tell her something, something desperately important. It will – I promise you – it will only take a moment. And make her very happy.’

Dr Smythe hesitated. Then he said, ‘Matron would kill me for doing this. But – yes, go on. It can’t do her any harm, not now. Just for a moment. While we wait for Mr Cadogan.’

Sebastian went in, very quietly. Celia’s eyes were closed, her hands clasped together. She looked ghastly.

He took one of the hands, and kissed it.

‘Celia?’

She turned her head.

‘Sebastian?’ Her voice was very faint, very weak.

‘I want to tell you something. Something important, something wonderful. Can you hear me?’

She frowned. ‘Just. Only just. Horrible sort of noise in my head. I feel so dizzy, Sebastian. So dizzy.’

‘Hold on to me. I’ll keep you safe. And listen very carefully. Barty has given Lyttons back. She made a codicil to her will. It was in her jewellery box, Jenna found it. It’s yours again, my darling. Lyttons is yours.’

Not hers really, he could see that: not for very long. A few hours at the most. But for that moment it was: Lyttons was hers, and all was well for her again, all was as it should be. Her world had been set to rights, by Barty’s final gift to her: brought to her just in time. And as he looked at her, she opened her eyes and they were quite, quite clear and comprehending, and she looked back at him and smiled a smile of purest joy.

‘How lovely,’ she said, ‘how absolutely lovely.’

And then she closed her eyes again, and, still smiling, seemed to move away from him, into some strange other country where he could no longer be with her. Her hand in his grew limp, her head turned away and settled into her pillow and she sighed a small, light sigh: and he could see that he had done all he could for her, that all the long years of knowing her and loving her were finally over, and longing, yearning to follow her, he lost her at last.

Part Three

CHAPTER 41

It was Helena who found them. So harmless-looking, so innocently intriguing: so very, very dangerous.

It was a week after the funeral; which had been small, confined to the family, held at Chelsea Old Church, so comfortingly near to the house, to be followed in the autumn by a large memorial service. This was Kit’s suggestion and the rest of the family had agreed. It would be far easier to bear, a quiet funeral, with only one another to witness their grief. It had been simple as well as quiet; just some of Celia’s favourite music and hymns, readings by her grandchildren, and not even an address by the parish priest.

This, again, had come from Kit. ‘She didn’t know him, there’s nothing she’d have hated more than a lot of bloody silly religious platitudes, and I personally would find it unbearable. I’ll say a few words if you like,’ he added, surprising everyone, for he was notoriously reluctant to expose himself to the danger of public emotion; and he did, speaking in his lovely voice of the brilliance and beauty they had lost, and the inspiration she had left behind.

Because they were alone, all together, the day was not as difficult as it could have been, everyone felt able to mourn, to weep, even to laugh at some of the more outrageous memories and stories. Venetia recounted the moment when she had opened the great door of Lytton House in Paternoster Square, ‘doubled up with my contractions, half London on fire outside, bombs everywhere, and there she was in her tin hat on cook’s bicycle, hugely irritated because I’d been so long answering the door’. And Giles, unusually forthcoming, described his mother’s behaviour after Oliver’s stroke: ‘Every doctor in the land said he would never move or speak again, and she had him doing both in weeks. Talk about bullying. Poor old Father wasn’t even allowed to have his food without saying something first.’

Celia had never recovered consciousness that night; the immediate cause of death was a massive haemorrhage in the lung cavity. ‘Not unknown after surgery of this kind, I’m afraid,’ Mr Cadogan had said, ‘but of course she was extremely ill and the prognosis was very poor.’ The family had all agreed quietly that she would have far rather died that way, than struggled on for months in increasing pain and helplessness.

Lord Arden was patently, and very touchingly, heartbroken. ‘He genuinely loved her, no doubt about it,’ said Adele, ‘and he was filled with remorse at not having been with her.’ Sebastian, thoughtful even in his own grief, assured him almost truthfully that she had died in her sleep, and knew nothing about any of it, which Lord Arden seemed to find greatly comforting. Drawing his own comfort from having been with her at her end, Sebastian withdrew entirely from everyone, even Izzie, for several days, moving from his bedroom to his study and back again, walking endlessly on Hampstead Heath, and only reappearing at the funeral, where he seemed surprisingly strong and told his own stories of Celia’s ferocity as an editor and the dreadful fear he lived in every year when he delivered his manuscript.

‘Once she made me rewrite the first two chapters at proof stage; Oliver was furious. It was very expensive but she said it would be much more expensive if they lost sales because the book was bad, which it undoubtedly was. I had twenty-four hours in which to do it; I told her I’d worked all night and she said she hoped I didn’t think that was a reason for not carrying on the following day. She was right, of course; the book was far better for it.’

Any more personal memories he kept to himself, partly out of deference to Lord Arden, partly because, as Izzie said, they were what he clung to now, all he had, and were not to be shared.

Izzie asked him – of course – to come back with her to America, to stay as long as he liked, and Jenna had said, with a most touching thoughtfulness, that he could go to South Lodge and be there on his own, if he would like that; he said he would stay in London for the time being, that he had a new book to write, which would be better therapy than anything else he could think of, but later in the year he might very well accept both invitations. ‘Only I must be here for the arrival of Clemmie’s baby. Maybe after that.’

He was rather sweetly excited about the baby; for more reasons than one. Izzie found it a little hard to bear.

Charlie did not go to the funeral; he said he would feel like an intruder and they were grateful and not a little surprised by such sensitivity. He had volunteered to be at the house afterwards, to help Mrs Hardwicke and Lord Arden’s butler ‘have things ready’. There was clearly no need for this, but again, they were so grateful that they allowed him to think there was.

He was very agreeable at the luncheon, making it his prime objective to look after Jenna, but disappeared shortly after that, saying he had an appointment with someone; no one could imagine who, but again, they sensed he was simply being thoughtful.

He left two days later; Jenna assured him she would be absolutely fine, flying back with Izzie – ‘I’ve broken my jinx, honestly, you go.’

She wanted to spend some time with the Millers and various other members of the family; she had been hoping to see something of Lucas, but apart from his being very sweet to her at the funeral and chatting to her at the lunch, she was disappointed. He had broken a holiday with friends in France and although he was returning to spend some of the long vacation at Lyttons, it would be after her return to New York.

The solicitors had requested a copy of Celia’s marriage certificate to Lord Arden: to establish beyond all legal doubt that she had in fact married him, had become the Countess of Arden. They said that of course they could get a copy, but it would be a great help to have the original in the complex legal procedures that had to be gone through before sorting out her estate.

It was not among all the other papers in her desk, not with the certificates of her birth and her first marriage and all the other myriad things pertaining to her complex life, and Lord Arden was unable to find it, said that Celia had always kept such things filed.

‘I was pretty hopeless at organisation,’ he said apologetically. ‘Still am, of course.’ He went on to volunteer the freedom of his London house and the help of his butler to search further for the certificate. ‘I’m off to Glennings for a bit, try and get over it all.’

Adele, who had volunteered to conduct the search and an initial roundup of her mother’s things said she might take him up on it later, but she would carry on looking in Cheyne Walk for a while first.

‘There’s so much to sort out there, such a mass of stuff, I’m sure I’ll find it.’

But she did not. She found all sorts of other things: things which made her cry: four pairs of tiny first shoes, four milk teeth, locks of hair from their first haircuts, bundles of letters from Oliver at the Front in the First World War, letters from Giles and Kit at school, from Giles in Italy during the war, from Barty in New York, letters from Paris, from herself, letters from the Warwick children and Izzie at school, and – most heartbreaking of all – a fairly small collection, tied up with red ribbons and labelled simply ‘From Sebastian’ and underneath his name a kiss. She took those straight to him, watched him struggling to control himself, and then when he failed, went in search of a strong whisky for him. When she brought it back, he was sitting, staring at the letters, the ribbon still tied.

‘I’m so sorry, Sebastian,’ she said. ‘So very sorry.’

‘Oh, my darling, it’s all right. I’ll survive. We had a pretty good run, she and I. You have to learn to live off your memories when you’re as old as I am, you know.’

‘Sebastian,’ said Adele, gently, ‘I do know. I do it now.’

He looked at her, startled for a minute, then smiled.

‘I expect you do. Are you all right, Adele?’

‘I’m fine. Yes. Much, much happier. We just have to get on with everything. As she would have wanted, of course.’ She smiled. ‘Every time I find myself sitting down and crying, I think of what she’d say to me if she saw me, and that gets me going again, I can tell you.’

She was planning to move into Cheyne Walk herself in due course. Celia had told her that was what she wanted, delighting and surprising her in that last, swift, sad meeting, and it made sense; Giles and Venetia and Kit all had substantial houses and plenty of money and she did not, and the memories of Montpelier Street were not happy ones. She could fit out another studio for herself at the top of the house, the views from up there were glorious and she could sell Montpelier Street and invest the proceeds. She had not yet told the children; she felt sure Noni and Lucas would be delighted, they loved the house, and it would affect them very little. But Clio might be reluctant to move, she was six now, a sweet, charming child, but she had never quite recovered from the abrupt departure of her beloved father and his failure ever to reappear. It manifested itself in a hatred of change, a suspicion of new people in her small world.

Geordie had written to Adele to say how sorry he was to hear about her mother, and had sent an enormous bouquet of flowers for the funeral, but no more; any thought that he might attend was dashed by a further note saying he was afraid his presence would be more of an embarrassment than a help. What it actually meant, as she said to Venetia, was that he was a coward, as well as a bastard, and afraid to come. She drew considerable pleasure from the fact that she really didn’t seem to mind very much.

The certificate, however, had not materialised; it was Helena who suggested to Giles that it might be in the office.

‘Why should it be there? It was a personal thing, it would have been at home.’

‘Well it doesn’t seem to be, does it? I think you should look. I will if you won’t.’

And there, indeed, she did find the marriage certificate; in the bottom drawer of Celia’s desk, along with some pictures of the wedding, a sorry testimony, she thought, to a marriage entered into on a whim and regretted every day of her life since.

‘None of them were ever put on show or framed, were they?’ she said, showing them to Giles. ‘Just stuffed away, out of sight, rather like he was. Poor man. What a fate—’

‘Helena,’ said Giles, his voice almost sharp, ‘my mother only died a week ago. Please don’t speak of her in that way.’

‘Sorry,’ said Helena quickly. ‘Sorry, Giles. Well, there you are. You’d better phone the solicitors. I wonder what’s in there,’ she added, looking at the small, black safe in the corner of the room. ‘Anything else we ought to know about? Any other valuables, or secrets?’

‘I don’t know. It’s been there for ever. I think she kept manuscripts in it. It’s probably empty now.’

‘Probably. But you never know. Do you know the combination?’

‘Yes. She thought I didn’t, but I did. More than my life’s worth to open it, of course, but – well, all right. It’s 10617. Our birthdays.’

‘You don’t mind?’

‘Of course not. Look, I’m going next door to see the others. They’re all trying to do a normal day’s work. Come and find me, would you, when you’ve finished.’

But Helena had still not reappeared when an hour and a half later Giles decided he was hungry and wanted lunch; faintly intrigued, he walked back into his mother’s office. And found Helena sitting entirely motionless on the floor, surrounded by dozens of small leather-bound volumes, two or three of them in her lap, several more set neatly on Celia’s desk, above her head.

‘Look, Giles,’ she said in a voice so quiet, so awed, that it almost shook; ‘look. These are your mother’s diaries. Kept for every day of her life, ever since she was five years old. Just look at them, Giles, just read one or two, this one, here, and this. Did you have any idea she was keeping them?’

‘No,’ he said, uncomfortable at this intrusion into his mother’s most personal life. ‘I didn’t. And I would really rather not read them. They’re very – private, surely.’

‘Oh no,’ said Helena, and her eyes meeting his were brilliant, ‘well, of course they may be private. But they concern all of us. And some of what they have to say is – well, it’s absolute dynamite, Giles. I’ve only dipped into them, but every other page there’s something. About Jay’s father, and LM – and your father too, quite unbelievable. You’ve got to read them, absolutely got to.’

Giles said he would look at them when he had time and told her to put them back in the safe. Clearly reluctant and more than a little put out, she did as she was told.

Things were in turmoil at Lyttons; once the initial euphoria had passed, there was a need to put it in order, draw up new lines of management, restructure the company financially, form a new board. The most satisfying thing had been telling Marcus Forrest; Jay suggested that Giles should do it.

‘Go on. It’ll give you the most pleasure.’

And it had: he did it in writing, at the lawyers’ suggestion, informing him that under a codicil to Barty’s will, entirely and indisputably legal, drawn up by a London solicitor, signed, witnessed, and dated, the remaining 68 per cent share of Lyttons London was to revert to family control.

Forrest wrote a stiff note back, saying that he was delighted for them and they should meet as soon as possible, for what he called a debriefing; they could imagine his chagrin all too clearly. He might be the editorial director of Lyttons New York, but in London he had been – as Venetia had nicknamed him – the
oberführer
. It was a delicious thing to contemplate his demotion.

Nobody knew quite why Barty had done what she had; they could only be grateful. And not just the family, but the entire company were pleased; everyone had suffered from the American interference, from the overturning of decisions, from the odd double-think that Marcus Forrest had indulged in, from the perception of the outside world as well as within Lytton House, that they were not their own masters, not properly in control of their own publishing destiny.

Giles called a board meeting as soon as it seemed decently possible, forty-eight hours after his mother’s death. After all, he said, only slightly apologetically, neither Barty nor Celia would have wanted such an opportunity to be squandered.