No Angel (Spoils of Time 01) (31 page)

‘You tell the child not to hurt something and then you hurt the child. Doesn’t really make sense, does it? What does she learn?’

Celia, taken aback by this, said briskly that she thought it made a lot of sense, and that Venetia had learned how unpleasant it was to be on the receiving end of pain, adding that if LM had four children to discipline rather than one, she might find her ideas put rather severely to the test; but thinking about it afterwards, she had to admit that there just might be something in them.

‘I expect you’re wondering what I might like to do about Lyttons,’ said Laurence.

He and Robert were having one of their rare meetings: it was Jamie’s birthday and with unusual courage and determination, he had told Laurence he wanted both Robert and Maud at the luncheon which Laurence had arranged at Elliott House. Laurence had objected briefly and then, rather surprisingly, given in. He was genuinely fond of his brother; it was the one healthy relationship in his life.

‘Not really,’ said Robert coolly. ‘The arrangement was nothing to do with me. As you very well know.’

‘Of course it was. It was an arrangement made with your brother. With my mother’s money.’

‘Exactly. It was an arrangement between your mother and my brother. I was not involved in any way.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Laurence impatiently, ‘you are splitting hairs.’

Robert looked at him, and thought – surprising himself, for he was a gentle man – how much he would like to thrash him. And then thought he would undoubtedly come off the worse for it if he tried. Laurence was extremely fit: he had taken up boxing as a hobby, and his long lean body had become more solid and powerful-looking as a result, although there was not an ounce of fat on it.

He was undeniably handsome: with his green-blue eyes, his red-gold hair, and his tanned skin, unusual in a man of his colouring. He had a valet now, who dressed him superbly, his suits were beautifully tailored, his shirts and collars perfectly cut, his ties discreet, yet interesting. His shoes, so clearly hand-made, were light brogues; and he wore a gold wristwatch, and a signet ring on the little finger of his left hand.

It had belonged to his father, that ring. He told everyone who cared to listen that Jonathan Elliott had given it to him on his deathbed, had said he must never take it off. In fact, Robert happened to know the ring had been taken into Jeanette’s keeping and Laurence had removed it from her jewellery box himself when she had died and appropriated it.

He often longed to pass this information on, but it would have sounded vindictive and petty, and like much of his other inside knowledge of the Elliotts, he kept it to himself.

‘Laurence,’ he said now, ‘if you have anything you wish to say about Lyttons New York or indeed anything else, please do so. Otherwise, I think we should give Jamie our undivided attention.’

‘I’m not sure if you would consider this anything or not,’ said Laurence, ‘but since forty-nine per cent of Lyttons has become mine, I would be surprised if you found it of no interest. I intend simply to hold on to it for the time being. I am getting no return on the money yet, nor would I expect to. But since it is a considerable sum, I would want it to work for me at least as well as it might elsewhere.’

‘That’s absolutely—’ Robert stopped. Absolutely absurd he had been going to say; but there was no point. No point whatsoever. ‘All right by me,’ he finished.

The blue-green eyes looked at him in a sort of amused derision.

‘But it’s nothing to do with you,’ he said. ‘Or so you said. You appear a little confused. Anyway, if I do decide to call in the loan, no doubt your brother will tell you about it. Such a shame that your daughter has no share in it. Her being a Lytton and so on. But – clearly my mother didn’t want that. I wonder why. Yes, Robert, you’re right. We should get back to Jamie’s celebration. I can hardly believe he’s sixteen. It seems only a very short while ago that he was born and my parents were so wonderfully happy. I wonder what on earth my father would say now, if he could see us both, alone in the world. I’m afraid he wouldn’t be very happy. What do you think, Robert, eh?’

My darling,

Well I am still alive. Battered, bruised even, with a gash running up one arm from an argument with a bit of barbed wire, but that is the worst. My luck holds. Forgive me for not writing for so long, but we have been very occupied. The great push continues. We are advancing on the German lines here, slowly but steadily, day by day. Yes, there are casualties, and the fighting is very hard, but there is no doubt that we are making progress at last. We have taken several villages and some strong German positions, and a great many prisoners, as many as 3,500 on the first day of fighting alone. The men are, rather amazingly, still in fine spirits, and many of them are saying they have never felt so well prepared for battle. There is no doubt we have finally got the Hun on the run. I love you, my darling one, so much. I will try to write again more fully soon.

Years later, in his celebrated history of the battle of the Somme, Oliver Lytton told the truth about this mighty battle, the ‘great push’, the advances. He told how Haig had wasted endless ammunition shelling empty trenches: how the Germans, having observed from the air the arrival of thousands of soldiers, the building of new roads, the delivery of guns, or ammunition and supplies, hurriedly moved back their troops from the front line. He told of his rage at the propaganda film the government had released: a silent film filled with silent lies, showing a massive artillery bombardment, an awe-inspiring build-up of weapons, but not a single corpse, and told how Haig had ordered attack after attack after the first dreadful day of battle, July 1 st, when over fifty thousand Allies were killed. He told how the troops were told that artillery fire would break through the barbed wire defences, when any Tommy could have told them that shellfire would lift the wire up and drop it down again, entangling the soldiers trying to get through it.

He told how, against military advice, Haig sent in a new weapon, the tank, fifty tanks, in fact twenty-nine of which broke down before reaching the battlefield. The rest got stuck in the mud. He wrote of how men were ordered out of the trenches to certain death, how he watched whole lines of them throwing up their arms under machine-gun fire and falling to the ground, never to move again, only to be replaced by other lines, equally doomed. He told of how generals discussed tactics over fine wines in warm chateaux while their men died in the mud, and how men with trench foot literally crawled through the mud to the dressing stations, rather than take precious stretchers away from the seriously wounded; and he told how by November, when the battle was finally declared over, and a great victory won, 460,000 British soliders had been killed or wounded, and less than ten miles of territory gained.

But once home on leave, sitting in the drawing-room at Cheyne Walk, his head in his hands, gaunt and somehow colourless with exhaustion and misery, he did tell Celia something else: how one morning, finally sick with exhaustion and despair, he had been standing, after a sleepless night filled with shells and fire, ordering his men out of the trenches, out into the line of fire. The last man had gone up, and Oliver had found himself staring up into the grey air, thinking of the ghastly dead landscape out there, full of noise and horror and death, quite literally petrified, unable to move. And that last man, a difficult, sullen character called Barton, had looked back down at him, and said in a tone of absolute derision, ‘Not afraid are you sir?’ and Oliver had moved at once, dragged to his senses, had climbed out behind him.

But in the second of that hesitation, a shell had come; had ripped off the soldier’s arm, his leg and half his head, and Oliver stood there, staring at him, thinking that if his courage had not failed him, it would have caught him, that shell; he would have been lying there, screaming in agony. He had done the only thing that could be done under the circumstances, had gone on, into the grey hell, had fought bravely, had seen another of his men hesitate and run up to him urging him on, running beside him.

‘But for as long as I live I shall remember Barton, and know that it was my fear that killed him. And it should have killed me. And—’ his voice shook, he tried to meet her eyes and could only do so for a moment, ‘all I could feel for a while was gratitude that it had not. And then, do you know what I did that night? Sat down and wrote to Barton’s widow, told her how her husband had died a hero’s death, how he had died instantly, when he actually lived for hours; when I should – I should have said—’ and he started weeping helplessly.

‘No,’ said Celia, putting out an arm to hold him, drawing it back, unable to touch such misery, ‘no, you should not have said that. What good would it have done? It would have made Mrs Barton’s grief far greater, and it wouldn’t have brought him back. My God, Oliver, you’ve been so brave for so long, you’ve led your men all this time, you mustn’t crucify yourself for one break in your courage.’

But Oliver continued to crucify himself; he spent much of the leave alone, taking long walks along the river, or reading in his room, and even refused to go down to Ashingham to see the children. ‘Don’t make me Celia. I can’t face them, can’t be brave and tell them wonderful stories of valour and glory on the battlefield.’

He was home for ten days, and he did not once ask Celia any questions about Lyttons, about how she was managing with her own difficult life; nor did he make love to her or even express any desire to do so. She struggled to be patient, to leave him be; but when he went back, she sat staring at the river, on a dull, heavy February day, and wondered how her marriage, how any marriage, could survive so dreadful an onslaught.

As Oliver returned to France, Billy Miller was brought home: not dead, at least, although he frequently wished that he was, in those first dreadful months. An enemy bullet had struck him when he was within inches of safety, returning from a night raid, and badly injured his right leg. After weeks in a field hospital, gangrene developed, and the leg was amputated just below the knee.

CHAPTER 13

‘You surely wouldn’t enlist, would you?’ Jamie’s face was anxious, frightened, almost.

‘We shall have to see,’ said Laurence, ‘I’d like to go, of course; any man would. Well any man except a coward. But there’s no question of it at the moment, they won’t take men who are at college. I may get my chance in the fall, but, in any case, they will be enlisting experienced men; I don’t imagine I shall get my chance for a while.’

This was not strictly true, but Jamie was not to know that. ‘Thank heavens,’ he said and smiled awkwardly at his brother. ‘It does all seem to be getting horribly near. Do you know I saw a whole lot of women, wearing khaki, coming out of a house in Madison Avenue today. Surely they aren’t joining the army?’

‘Oh no. But I’ve heard about it, it’s some kind of centre for women and the war effort. They’re volunteering to do some sort of work, either here or over there, driving or nursing or whatever. Very commendable. I don’t see our revered stepfather doing anything to defend the country he speaks so sentimentally about.’

‘Robert! That’s ridiculous, Laurence. How could he go? He’s far too old, surely.’

‘How naive you are, Jamie. I’m quite sure that if he volunteered, a job would be found for him. But he prefers to stay. I suppose one cannot entirely blame him. He’s safe here, after all. One must try to put oneself in his shoes – however difficult. Cowardice is a very unattractive characteristic, I always think.’

Jamie looked at him uncertainly. And then went back to his study, to do some more work. But he couldn’t concentrate. The whole conversation had upset him considerably. First Laurence – of whom, despite everything, he was very fond – talking about volunteering to go and fight in Europe, and then a new conflict set up over Robert, the idea planted of his cowardice. He wanted and needed to admire Robert, not despise him. And he was quite sure he wasn’t a coward. But Laurence did have a point. Sometimes Jamie felt he was in a maze, and every time he found the way out, Laurence was there, telling him to go in the other direction, getting him lost again. If only, if only his mother hadn’t died. Life would be so wonderfully simple.

‘Can we get him down here?’ said Barty, ‘Please, please? Mum can’t look after him, and there are lots of men here without legs, he’d feel better about it maybe. And I could help, well I do anyway.’ Her lip quivered.

‘Oh Barty,’ said Celia. She put her arms round her, hugged her tight; unusually Barty responded, clung to her. She was not physically demonstrative with Celia, rather the reverse; it was as if she knew she didn’t really belong to her, or with her. Perversely though, she had loved to sit on Wol’s knee, kissed him goodnight fondly rather than dutifully. It had annoyed Celia once; now, like so many other things, it was a distant memory.

‘Darling, I’ll see. I’ll ask – well, I’ll ask Matron. But, I do agree, it would be lovely to have Billy here.’

‘Celia, no,’ said Lady Beckenham. ‘This is a convalescent home for officers. It’s simply out of the question that a Corporal should be allowed here.’

‘But Mama, Billy is family. Surely—’

‘Celia,’ said her mother, her face very hard suddenly. ‘Billy Miller is not family. You still seem to have trouble accepting that. And we can’t make exceptions. Now you must excuse me. I have to see to the horses.’

Barty didn’t believe that there was no room for Billy at Ashingham. There seemed to her to be endless room. None of these people knew what no room meant. They should see Line Street. She was fairly sure why Billy couldn’t come. It was because he wasn’t an officer. But that was so awful, so wrong and unfair, when he was her brother, that she hardly dared even think it. And she certainly didn’t dare discuss it with Aunt Celia, simply because it was so horrible, and if that was right, she would have felt she would have to – well run away or something. Leave Ashingham. Go home. Home to London and be in danger like the rest of them, from the bombs and everything.

Last time Sylvia had come down, she’d brought Marjorie with her. It hadn’t been very nice, because Marjorie had been horrible and unfriendly, and rude to everyone, even to Nanny and Dorothy; but Barty had felt in a way it was understandable, listening to Marjorie’s stories about life in London now. There was hardly any food, and the queuing was worse than ever, although there was going to be something called rationing, her mother said; everyone would be allowed at least a bit of everything which would make it more fair. The bombs were awful and terribly frightening, with noise and fire in the sky and they all had to go under next door’s table, which was very strong, when there was an air raid, and say prayers, it was the only thing to do, although it wouldn’t help much if a bomb actually hit the house. Some houses a few streets away had been hit, and five people killed. Half the men in their street had been killed, or badly injured like Billy; it was awful to see them Marjorie said, sitting around, some of them blind, some of them without arms or legs. At least everyone had to go now and fight, it was the law, even Bob Carter with his bad back, and actually it had turned out there was nothing wrong with his back at all.

Aunt Celia and LM didn’t come down to Ashingham so often now: only about once a month, instead of every weekend. They couldn’t get petrol for the little car. The twins and Jay hated not seeing them, and they all cried dreadfully on Sunday evenings when LM and Celia had to leave again, and Barty worried a lot about them too; in spite of everything, she was terribly fond of them both and the thought of Cheyne Walk being bombed was dreadful. It was so big and strong, though, she somehow thought a bomb would just sort of bounce off it.

And she felt so guilty, living safely down in Ashingham, in the lovely house, in the middle of the countryside with plenty of food; she loved playing with and looking after Jay, too, and was fiercely proud that he would only go to sleep if she read him a story. And the previous summer she and Giles had had a wonderful time, helping with haymaking and the harvest, and picking beans and peas until their arms ached. Most of the farm labourers had gone off to the war, there were only a couple of the older ones left and a few boys; a lot of the work was done by landgirls, rather jolly most of them. They were as grateful for help as the nurses were in the convalescent home; even the twins were pressed into service the summer they were six, and had to help picking peas.

The twins were much nicer now; ever since her father had died they had been kinder to her, and they weren’t so spoilt either, their grandmama, as they called her, was very firm with them, sent them to their room if they showed off or were cheeky. They’d made an awful fuss at first, and said they’d tell their mother, or refuse to come out of their room again, but when they discovered that meant missing a meal because Lady Beckenham was quite happy to leave them there all day if necessary, they quite quickly started to do what she said. There had also been one dreadful occasion when she smacked them both very hard indeed: that had been when she discovered them stealing strawberries from the strawberry beds, after they had all been expressly forbidden to do so; and another time, when she found them walking behind nice old Miss Adams, mimicking her limp, Lady Beckenham had got her horse crop and made them pull down their knickers and had given each of their small bottoms a hard whack.

Barty had been quite sorry for them, it had obviously hurt a lot and they howled with pain; but she observed that they never did tell their mother as they had threatened, presumably beause they were so ashamed of themselves. When they had to apologise, as part of their punishment, to Miss Adams and Nanny and Dorothy, and Giles, who had been at home at the time, they seemed genuinely sorry and cried.

She overheard Aunt Celia saying to Lady Beckenham that they seemed very happy, and Lady Beckenham had said she had told her before, a disciplined child was a happy child. For the previous Christmas, the twins had been given a dog by their grandparents: a black labrador they called Soot. They had to look after him themselves and feed him and brush him. Barty had thought they’d try and get someone else to do most of it, but they were extremely conscientious, and when Soot was ill after eating a decomposing rabbit, they insisted on sitting up nursing him all night in the gunroom.

‘Quite right,’ said their grandmother when Nanny came to her anxiously, wondering if it should be allowed, ‘he’s theirs and they should look after him. Won’t do them any harm.’

But none of this happiness made Barty feel any better about Billy.

Dispatches
, the novel written by Muriel Marchant, at once touching, sad and patriotic, and even with flashes of humour (inserted for the most part by Lady Celia Lytton, its editor) was a huge success: despite being published on inferior paper, with a simple jacket, it had sold almost five thousand copies. Second, third and then fourth editions had been rushed out, and Celia had proposed a sequel. Muriel had written this in record time, and three months later,
Further Dispatches
reached the bookshops.

‘Wonderful,’ Celia said happily, when news of the books’ sales reached her, ‘I think we should embark on a third straight away. It’s bound to sell. Don’t look like that, LM, it’s paying the beastly rates increase. If that goes up one more time we’re going to be in genuine trouble.’

‘Those books are what our father would have called below stairs stuff,’ said LM.

Celia said briskly that she was surprised at her talking like that, given her radical views on the social structure of the country, and LM said it was nothing to do with social structures, it was intellectual ones she was worried about.

‘We have never compromised on those. I can’t feel comfortable with this. Or that terrible poetry,’ she added. Celia had discovered that poetry did not have to be good to sell; whatever it was like, it seemed to reach out to women particularly, and to comfort them.

‘Well that terrible poetry is paying the wages. LM, surely you should be grateful that Lyttons is surviving. Plenty of time after the war to raise standards again. And you must be pleased with the children’s books, they’re very good, and doing well. Respectable enough for you?’

‘I suppose so,’ said LM warily.

‘My dream, you know,’ said Celia, ‘is to find a children’s writer. A really, really good one, creating classics, like Lewis Carroll and Louisa May Alcott. But I don’t hold out a lot of hope for it. God, I’m tired. Couldn’t sleep last night. The noise of those zeppelins – I’m sure they’re getting closer. Thank God we don’t have to risk our children’s lives.’

‘Indeed. Although I sometimes wonder if Jay quite realises who I am,’ said LM soberly. ‘And actually, if we shouldn’t move the whole enterprise out of London, whether it’s not just foolhardy, staying on, risking our lives, and the lives of the people working for us. They’re all so loyal and—’

‘Oh LM, so do I. But then I think of all the work involved in moving, and decide it’s not worth it. The war surely can’t go on much longer. And it would be difficult, far away from printers and the delivery vans and so on. Yes, the staff are loyal, but then you have to remember we’ve given lots of them great opportunities, jobs they’d never have got if men had been around, chances to develop their talents and skills. I do often wonder what Grandpa Lytton would say if he knew the entire editorial department and almost all the art department is staffed by woman. You know this war’s certainly done one thing. It means that women will definitely get the vote. No one would dare push them back into the home and under their men’s jurisdiction now.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ said LM.

‘Of course I’m right. You just wait and see.’ Celia looked at her. ‘LM, are you ever – well—’

‘Frightened? Terrified. Quite often,’ said LM cheerfully, ‘but it’s like not being able to sleep. You just get used to it, don’t you? Shall we go home now?’

‘Yes, let’s. Cook managed to get some beef yesterday. Tough, I’m sure, but I’ve been looking forward to it all day. It really is much better now, she says, with meat rationing. She hardly has to queue at all. I hear they’re going to persuade farmers to use more land for growing food as well. I don’t know how Mama will feel about that. Ploughing up her precious paddocks. Anyway I want to ask your advice about something. It’s really, really difficult, and please don’t give me a lecture, because it won’t help.’

‘I promise I won’t, said LM. ‘I’m much too tired.’

‘Barty darling, I have some good news,’ shouted Celia down the telephone. ‘Billy can come to the nursing home in Beaconsfield, the one where Jay was born. Next week. I’ve arranged for a private ambulance to bring him down. He really needs nursing anyway, at the moment, it seems, not just what he’d get at the convalescent home, and he’ll get it there. And you’ll be able to see lots of him, and – what, Barty? On Thursday. Ask my mother to find out what time they want him. Got to go now. Love to the twins and Jay. Bye darling. See you soon.’

‘Lady Celia, can I talk to you?’

Gill Thomas was standing in Celia’s office doorway; she looked nervous and rather flushed.

‘Of course. Come in. Would you like a cup of tea? I’m afraid we’ve long since exhausted this week’s biscuit ration.’

‘Yes, that would be very nice.’ She sat down. She was a pretty girl, with shining dark hair and rosy cheeks; she looked as if she should have been living in the country, milking cows, rather than doing her genuinely innovative design work.

‘It’s not about Barry?’

‘Oh no. No, nothing still. I suppose that’s good news really. I have to tell myself that, anyway.’

Barry, Gill’s fiancé, had been taken prisoner almost nine months earlier, and was in a German camp somewhere near Metz. That was all she knew.

‘Yes of course it is. In spite of all the hideous propaganda, the Germans are pretty good about their prisoners, I believe. He’s probably much safer there than in the front line.’