No Angel (Spoils of Time 01) (30 page)

Barty said earnestly that she, too thought it was a very good idea. The very next day Sylvia went nervously along to the labour exchange. Within three hours she was working at a munitions factory in Lambeth; a small place with white-washed walls and a stone floor. It made fuses for shells and apart from the foreman, the staff were all female. Sylvia loved it; the work, and the camaraderie, standing with the other women working on the machines; it was hard, she stood for long hours at a machine which honed the fuses into shape, and the work was more than a little dangerous. They all had to turn their collars up to stop the hot brass hitting their necks; there had been talk of explosions at other factories and it was possible to contract a disease from the TNT they worked with, and end up with yellow skin. But it was worth it, not just for the companionship and the money – fivepence halfpenny an hour – but to feel she was contributing to the war effort. It was shift work, with three eight-hour shifts, working on a six-week cycle; the night shift suited her best, although she became terribly tired, because she could be at home for the children, and also they were all allowed to sing as they worked. Her pay worked out at eighteen shillings a week.

‘More than your dad gets in the army,’ she said to Billy, ‘fancy.’

Billy was grudgingly impressed, but said he was sure his dad wouldn’t approve.

‘Well he doesn’t need to know, Billy,’ said Sylvia firmly, ‘and if you don’t tell him, nor any of the others do, how will he? And if I don’t do it, we’ll starve, the prices they’re asking for food these days.’

Billy said nothing more about her job, but started to complain about his, at the brewery in Lambeth where he had been working now for two years.

‘It’s that disgusting, and the smell gets worse every day. I’ll be glad when I get out to France, I tell you that.’

Celia sat looking at the balance sheets LM had given her. They weren’t good. Profits had fallen; along with sales. There was a paper shortage which meant, inevitably, rising costs. Meanwhile overheads had risen: rents, food prices – one third over pre-war levels meant higher wages. There was no good news.

‘Except sales in certain areas,’ said Celia, pointing at the sales ledgers. ‘Novels, look. I suppose people are looking for escape.’

‘Yes, but only the cheaper editions. Well that’s inevitable.’

‘Of course it is. LM, if we’re feeling the pinch, what about ordinary people? Our customers? Heaven knows how this new magazine
Vogue
is going to do. Who’s going to buy it?’

‘Well you have,’ said LM.

‘I know, but there aren’t many people like me. It is wonderful, I must say. And you know Chanel—’

‘Not terribly well—’ said LM.

‘Don’t be difficult. You know about Chanel. Well, she’s started using jersey for dresses and skirts and things. Never been used except as underwear fabric before. The clothes look beautiful. What wouldn’t I give – oh well.’ She saw LM’s blank expression and laughed. ‘Back to books. The other thing that’s doing well, you know, are the war books, the poetry, speeches, the novels. We must find more of them. And funnily enough, those children’s books are succeeding. So more of them. And more of the cheap editions of the fiction.’

‘Celia, Lyttons has never gone in for cheap fiction,’ said LM. She looked anxious. ‘It’s not in the house tradition. We have such a commitment to quality and—’

‘I know that, LM. But there won’t be a house soon. Not at this rate. Popular fiction is going to save us. Well it’ll go a long way towards it. Those books we put out last year, with Gill’s new dust jackets, have made more money than anything else. We need a whole new range of those. The only trouble is, even those covers are getting terribly expensive. We may have to make them simpler still, rely on the typefaces for decoration. We want lots of fiction, with a war theme obviously; women are lapping it up. And historical romances, too. Anything to take people out of themselves. Then some more children’s books: and more poetry I’d say, the market for that’s insatiable. Lots of it. More of Francis Grieg; thank God we put him under contract. And anyone else good that we can find. A woman poet might be good. What about that one of yours?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said LM hastily. ‘We’d be lucky to sell more than the two copies she and her mother would buy.’

‘All right. But let’s see if we can find one. I’ll phone round the agents today. So how does that all sound? And we’ll just have to stop trying to preserve physical quality. Everything will have to go out on cheap paper. We don’t have any choice.’

‘I do agree with you, of course,’ said LM, ‘but I don’t—’

‘Yes?’

‘Oh it’s absurd, forget it.’

‘I know. You were going to tell me you don’t know what Oliver will say. Well he’s not here and, as you said to Sylvia, what his eyes don’t see won’t hurt him. Let’s worry about his commitment to quality after the war, when he gets home. Oh dear, I must write to him. Honestly our letters to each other would paper a wall. I suppose that applies to everyone, just reams and reams of paper and hundreds and thousands of words.’ She stopped. ‘You know what? Letters would make a marvellous theme – and form – for a novel. We could do a simple exchange from wife to husband; or father to child; or even – all those things and more. It would be brilliant, moving from story to story. It could contain everything, humour, sentiment, heartbreak. Oh, LM, it would be marvellous, we must commission it today. Do you think it would be one for Muriel Marchant?’

‘Possibly, yes,’ said LM. ‘I agree, it’s a wonderful idea. The only thing is that Muriel’s got rather expensive lately. With her success.’

‘Well, she owes most of that success to us,’ said Celia, ‘if we hadn’t given her the suffragette book to write and it hadn’t been such a huge seller, she’d still be an unknown. I’ll remind her of that, if necessary. Anyway, she could regard this as part of her war effort. I’m really excited about it already. I’m going to telephone her straight away. And let’s agree we won’t worry about Oliver. And certainly not tell him. Anyway, he’s lost interest in Lyttons for the moment. It’s hardly surprising, poor darling. It’s very hard,’ she added cautiously, ‘to keep on and on writing cheerful letters. When there’s hardly anything cheerful to say. And I haven’t heard from him for over two weeks now. The flow of letters has slowed right down.’

‘Have you any idea at all where he is?’ asked LM.

‘Well, yes. He told me just before he went back. He shouldn’t have, of course, but anyway, he did. He’s somewhere in the area of the River Somme.’

CHAPTER 12

30 June 1916

It is my painful duty to tell you that a report has been received from the War Office, notifying the death of—

It had to happen; it would have been impossible to think it wouldn’t, for all his bravado his boast of luck, but Sylvia took a deep breath, and read on. No 244762 Private Edward John Miller . . . the rest was a blur. A horrible senseless blur. Most senseless being the bit about the message of sympathy from their gracious majesties the king and queen. Who cared anyway, what did they care? It was an insult, a bloody insult. Gracious majesties, she’d give them gracious if she got the chance, sitting there in their castles, safe and sound. Sylvia was usually a royalist, but that phrase angered her; it shouldn’t have been there, it didn’t mean anything, they didn’t know her, they hadn’t known Ted or what his death meant to her.

But at least it was Ted. Not Billy. Just very, very slightly more bearable, better. Ted had had a life. Of sorts. A life of hardship, to be sure, but they had shared happiness, had loved each other, had seen all their children – well all except one – grow up healthy and happy. Had shared a lot of fun, of closeness, as well as heartache, in the two crowded, poky little rooms; it hadn’t all been bad. It hadn’t all been bad at all, thought Sylvia putting the letter down; she felt oddly calm now, her brief rage gone, remembering Ted. Seeing him as clearly as if he was standing in front of her, smiling at her, just come home, grimy from the day’s work, saying what’s for tea, or it’s good to be home, or turning to her in bed, taking her in his arms, when in spite of the anxiety it had been so nice he still loved her and wanted her, her being so thin and plain and pale.

There’d been the violent time of course, but it had only been the drink, and she’d forgiven him straight away for all of it, even the concussion, when he signed the pledge, and he’d never broken his word. Well, maybe when he got out there, of course. He had said he might weaken. She remembered him the day he’d enlisted, and the reason he’d given, that the children needed to be proud of him, needed to know he’d done his bit. Well they had been proud. And so had she been, in spite of everything. Bob King down the road was still not gone, making the excuse of his gammy leg. Mavis King was embarrassed, she knew that, even though she went on and on about the pain Bob was in all the time.

The children were proud of Billy too, of course, amazed by his courage, that one of them should do something as brave as going out to fight real soldiers with real guns. Sylvia wasn’t proud of Billy at all. She had hardly been able to bear it, the reckless ignorant stupidity of it, and the callous ruthlessness of an army that took children of seventeen out of their homes and into battle and let them die. It was a crime, a crime against humanity. This whole war was, all war was. Sylvia realised suddenly that she was crying, crying hard now; and she had yet to do the worst thing and tell the children. All the children. Including Barty.

‘But I didn’t even say goodbye to him.’ Barty’s voice was very quiet; she sat staring at Celia across the room, resisting Celia’s efforts to take her in her arms, to hold her, to comfort her. ‘And he didn’t even write to me. Not once.’

‘Barty, he couldn’t write to you. He – he couldn’t write very well at all, you know he couldn’t,’ said Celia, anxious even in giving the comforting explanation, that she shouldn’t denigrate Ted in Barty’s eyes.

‘He could have sent me one of those cards. One of those pretty postcards, like Billy sends. Now he’s gone, for ever and ever, and I never even said goodbye. Or good luck, or told him I loved him, all the things . . .’

Celia was silent. Then. ‘But Barty, he did love you. Very much. I know he did.’

‘Once he did,’ said Barty and the words struck Celia like a lash, ‘when I was his, he did.’

And she got up and walked out of the room.

She was crying in the schoolroom, her head buried in her arms, when the door opened. ‘Just go away,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘We don’t want to talk either. Well, only to say we’re sorry,’ said a small voice, and she looked up and saw the twins standing there, hand in hand, their faces white and solemn, their large dark eyes filled with tears of grief and sympathy. And they walked forward very slowly, and took one of her hands each; Adele stroked her hair with infinite gentleness, and Venetia reached up and gave her a kiss. It was the first time they had ever shown affection, or any kind of tenderness towards her and it was the sweeter for being so unexpected. Barty managed to smile at them, and say thank you, then the tears rushed back, and she buried her head again; the three of them stayed there a long time, the twins’ small arms around her, and not one of them said anything at all.

‘Now, Jamie. I want you to think about this very carefully. In a few months, Maud and I will be leaving this house. With Nurse and my valet and the chauffeur.’

‘Why?’ asked Jamie. He knew the answer, but he didn’t want to hear it, wanted to postpone the terrible moment when he was forced to make a decision.

‘Well, because,’ Robert paused. He had struggled so hard not personally to threaten Jamie’s relationship with Laurence. Laurence could do what he liked, tear his young brother apart with guilt and remorse; but somewhere there had to be a safe haven for the boy. Jamie was fifteen now, and in a turmoil of emotion for every reason, not just because of the conflict between his brother and his stepfather. He was not as clever as Laurence, who was exceptional: his entire scholastic career had been blighted by comparisons with his brother. He had hit adolescence in a rush, his hormones were raging, and he could think of very little except girls and what he longed to do to them.

He had no idea whether he hated Laurence for his troublemaking and unpleasantness, or liked and admired him for his loyalty to their parents, but was forced to accept that what he probably felt was a mixture of the two, and he had no idea how to deal with it. He was plagued by spots and sweaty hands, and by a hideous tendency to blush, and was altogether physically awkward and clumsy. He was still growing, had already reached six foot and was clearly going to be taller than Laurence: all of which which made him painfully self-conscious. And at any moment now, he was going to have to make a horrible decision; in January, Laurence would be twenty-one; he had already said he was going to make sure Robert left Elliott House, and that this time he would have the law on his side.

‘And then you’ll have to stop this nonsense, Jamie, playing box and cox, cosying up to dear Uncle Robert when you think I won’t know about it, and then trying to ignore him and pretend you don’t like him when you know I will. Well it’s up to you, I really don’t care. If you want to play the traitor, that’s absolutely all right with me. There will still be one son true to our father’s memory.’

The ridiculous thing, of course, was that Jamie knew perfectly well Laurence had allowed his emotions to get out of hand. Had he been more reasonable, more sensible even, had he taken a more honest view of events, then by now he would have been, if not fond of Robert, at least perfectly able to accept him. But some evil streak, some warp of emotional energy had driven him close to madness.

‘I’m moving out,’ Robert was saying carefully now, ‘because really I think it’s high time Maud and I had our own home, instead of living in someone else’s.’

‘That’s silly,’ said Jamie with awkward honesty. ‘It’s your home. When you married Mother, it became yours.’

‘Well, not quite. It remained hers really. And now it belongs to the family – her family that is. It is, after all, called Elliott House. And while I didn’t want to rush out of it, I think I would feel more comfortable now in a house of my own. So—’ he paused. He’s going to say it, thought Jamie in a panic, he’s going to ask me what I want to do. ‘So I thought you might like to see it,’ said Robert, ‘I’m very proud of it. I built it myself. Well my company did. Doing much this afternoon?’

‘No,’ said Jamie. ‘No I’m not doing anything.’

Maud clung to his hand as they walked round the house. It really was very nice indeed. Not as grand as Elliott House of course, but large and beautifully designed, built high over the East River, with an unbelievable view of the water and the Queensbrough Bridge, a wonderfully graceful bow-windowed drawing-room, and a dining-room above that.

‘This will be my room,’ said Maud proudly, pulling him into the room over the dining-room, on the third floor of the curve, ‘look, you can see right down to the Singer Tower. Isn’t it lovely? Where will your room be, Jamie, where would you like to have it?’

‘I – well – that is – I don’t care,’ he said quickly, terrified of commitment, trying to sound casual, succeeding only in sounding ungracious; Maud looked hurt, but Robert came forward and put his arm round his shoulders.

‘Of course you care,’ he said, ‘and even if it is only for visits – in the vacations and so on, of course you must have a room here. Two rooms, in fact, I thought, a bedroom and a sitting-room. Now, I wondered if the garden floor would be a good idea for you. Come on downstairs, we have a fine garden, and two rooms open directly on to it; you would have your own front door, in a manner of speaking, come and go with reasonable privacy, no one would bother you.’

‘I would bother him,’ said Maud firmly, ‘I would bother him a lot. He’d be lonely otherwise. Let’s go and look where Daddy means, shall we, Jamie, and you can see if you like it.’

Jamie knew he would like it, and knew he would want to come. But he still had to tell Laurence, and he wasn’t sure if he was brave enough.

Giles had had a breakthrough; he had discovered he could run. Run very fast and steadily and for a long time. The boys had been sent out on a cross-country run by one of the elderly teachers, who had had the inspiration at the end of an exhausting morning’s teaching, when faced with the prospect of twenty small boys bursting with energy.

Giles had changed into his games kit, listening to everyone grumbling, and thought it would be rather nice; nothing difficult, no balls to catch or kick or throw in the right way, just running along, following whoever was in front of him. Only there never seemed to be anyone in front of him; he found himself at the front of the field, gloriously unpuffed, after the first fifteen minutes, forced only to stop when Miss Hodgkins, who was leading them, called out to him to wait.

‘This is not a race, Lytton, slow down.’ She was very puffed, Giles noticed, and scarlet in the face. Reluctantly he waited for her, tried to stay behind her and outstripped her again in minutes; she told him, now that they were on the home track in the woods to go ahead. He got back to school ten minutes before anyone else.

The run became a twice-weekly event; after the second week, Giles was allowed to run at his own pace. It was glorious, all alone across the fields and the woods, thinking his own thoughts, nobody teasing him or shouting at him. At half term, Miss Prentice, who was a sporty, rather jolly girl, engaged to a captain in the artillery, suggested athletics training to the headmaster: she knew St Christopher’s had not gone in for this before, she said, but her fiancé had won the gold medal at Oxford for running and said it was refreshing for both body and spirit. The headmaster looked at her rather doubtfully, thinking privately that the bodies and spirits of the boys scarcely needed refreshing, but was persuaded by her second argument that the training would help to fill the sports afternoons.

‘I think it would be better than Mr Hardacre taking them for cricket yet another day; he really isn’t very – vigorous, and they’re getting bored. I’ll gladly do it; I know what’s required. I used to watch my – my brothers.’

Her voice shook at this; both her brothers had been killed, one at sea, the other in France. More to divert her from her grief, than because he thought athletics would actually do the boys or the school very much good, the head agreed.

Giles loved athletics, too; he soared over the hurdles, and was as fast over the short distances, the one hundred and three hundred yards, as he was over the long. At two end of term athletics meetings with another prep school, he won every race, and experienced the unimaginable pleasure of being cheered by his fellow pupils at the prize-givings. The worst was over; he went home to Ashingham for the holidays with an air of something close to happiness, and spent the long, golden days holding race meetings with Barty and the twins. Jay, who was now two, would stumble along after them on his plump little legs, his face scarlet with concentration, refusing to cry, even when he fell over for the tenth time in one afternoon.

Jay was a large child, full of energy; he adored Barty particularly, and followed her everywhere she went, insisting that he sat next to her at meals, often creeping into her room at night and sleeping on the sofa which stood at the end of her bed, rather like a devoted little dog. He did look, as LM was always saying, exactly like his father; he had his brown curls, his dark blue eyes, his wide jaw, his way of observing things very seriously and then breaking into a sudden, almost surprised, smile.

‘I wish one of my children looked like Oliver,’ said Celia wistfully, ‘it would really help you know, but look at them all, dark as can be: Beckenhams every one. It’s not fair.’

It amused her, watching LM with Jay; LM was rather like a woman with a lover, her eyes lingering on him in adoration, distracted the moment he appeared from whatever she might have been doing or talking about before, introducing him as a subject into whatever conversation might be going on. But she did not spoil him, she was not silly with him; in fact she was rather more strict with him than Celia was with her own children, particularly the twins. If he was naughty or disobedient he would be severely reprimanded; there were things LM would not tolerate: temper tantrums, rudeness, physical aggression.

For this reason, Jay was never smacked; Dorothy, his nanny, was forbidden to do it, and LM would have been incapable of it. But she also said that she felt that smacking was counter-productive: she watched Celia giving Venetia a slap on the hand one day when she caught her pulling one of the cats’ tails.