No Angel

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘He is going, I’m afraid,’ Celia said to her one day when she inquired as tactfully as possible about Oliver’s plans, ‘but I just live from day to day, until he finally enlists. I think he’ll probably go into my father’s old regiment. That’s the plan anyway. Papa is raging away down there, because he’s too old to go himself. Mama says it’s given him a new lease of life, just writing endless letters and rushing up to London every other day to see this general and that. Even Kitchener has had to put up with a session with him. Well he was a brigadier, bless him. He feels dreadfully set aside. I’m sure they’ll find him some kind of desk job. Mama is praying that they will anyway.’

  LM nodded. ‘They’re all mad,’ she said, ‘these men. Wanting to go, wanting to fight.’

  ‘I know, but it’s in their genes,’ said Celia. ‘Even if women were allowed to fight, we wouldn’t. Look at the Women’s Peace Movement. We’d find some other way.’ She looked at LM. ‘But I’m sure,’ she said carefully, ‘that the war will be short-lived. Everyone says so.’

  ‘I’m sure they’re wrong,’ said LM briefly, ‘and so are you.’

  She went back to her office, locked the door and indulged in the luxury of a short weep. Misery was making her ill; she was unable to eat, her stomach was permanently acid, and quite often she was actually sick. Every time she thought of Jago in uniform, boarding one of the hideously crowded troop ships which left the ports daily, she felt a pain not just in her heart, but in her head, violent, sick pain. She had often heard of people saying they didn’t know how they would be able to bear things and felt impatient; you bore what you had to bear. Now, suddenly, and rather shame-facedly, she understood.

  The country being caught up in a fever of patriotic sentimentality didn’t help; she felt enraged by it. From every house, at every street corner, people seemed to be waving flags, and there were military bands playing constantly. Soldiers walking about in uniform inspired almost hysterical excitement. The endless posters of Lord Kitchener pointing his finger and telling her that her country needed her – or rather her man – made her want to scream. She didn’t care about her country, she didn’t care what it needed. She simply knew it was taking away the only man she had ever loved, and the only man who had ever loved her.

  ‘Of course I’ll have the children,’ said Lady Beckenham, ‘as long as you send some staff with them. I can see this war is going to cause us problems. Two of my girls are already talking about working in munitions factories.’

  ‘Of course I will. Nanny’s a country girl anyway, and Jessie’s terrified of bombs.’

  ‘The whole thing’s absolutely appalling,’ said Lady Beckenham, ‘do you know they’ve taken four of our horses. The ones that work on the farm that is. And I was reading in the paper yesterday that in some cities the trams have stopped running because so many horses have gone. Poor beasts. They’d better not try to get any of my hunters, that’s all I can say.’

  ‘I’m sure they wouldn’t dare, Mama,’ said Celia, who would have pitted her mother against the Hun any day.

  ‘I don’t know. The cavalry are after good horses. And then they’re transported in the most dreadful way, not boxed, just put into the hold tethered, swung up on cranes by slings at the docks, poor beasts. I heard of one chap, obviously decent, a groom, who stayed down in the hold with them the whole way, watering and feeding them, then had a heart attack himself and died on arrival in France. Still, saved all the horses. Jolly fine, I thought.’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Celia storing this up mentally for LM, who was fascinated by Lady Beckenham’s greater excesses.

  ‘If Beckenham doesn’t get some kind of a job, I don’t know what I’ll do,’ said her mother, ‘he’s in an absolute raging ferment, it’s had the usual effect on him, of course. I hope your nursemaid isn’t a virgin, knows how to look after herself.’

  ‘I’ll warn her,’ said Celia hastily. Poor Jessie; she was very pretty. She must warn Nanny at least to keep an eye on her. She felt that the danger from her father was infinitely greater than anything the Hun might rain on her from the skies.

  ‘Anyway, Mama, I’ll keep them all in London for a bit. Nothing’s hapening, and I don’t want to be parted from them unless I have to. And Giles is off to school. He’s so nervous about it, poor darling. I sometimes wonder—’

  ‘You shouldn’t wonder,’ said Lady Beckenham briskly, ‘he needs to go away. It’s a year late anyway. He’ll turn out soft if you’re not careful.’

  ‘I know, but he’s so – so gentle.’

  ‘Exactly. That’s what I mean. Needs it knocked out of him. Won’t do him any good at all. Pity the twins can’t go. Get a bit of discipline.’

  ‘Oh, Mama, really. They’re only four.’

  ‘Well, Beckenham was five when he went off. His father sent him early, thought he was getting soft.’

  ‘There’s nothing soft about the twins,’ said Celia, ‘I thought you said that was the problem.’

  ‘What about Barty? Still doing well at school?’

  Barty’s academic success baffled Lady Beckenham, who regarded the lower classes as intrinsically unintelligent. Fascinated by, as well as disapproving of what she called Celia’s experiment, she had expressed huge surprise at Barty being able to learn her letters or remember the simplest thing.

  ‘Extraordinary,’ she said, as Celia, with a mixture of pride and irritation at her prejudice, pressed Barty into reciting Who Killed Cock Robin one afternoon soon after her third birthday, ‘Quite extraordinary. I’d never have believed it possible.’

  ‘Mama, you’re ridiculous. Half the women in the suffragette movement are from the working class, hugely intelligent and articulate. Look at Annie Kenny.’

  ‘Yes, well they’re all completely mad,’ said Lady Beckenham with a sublime lack of logic. Any sympathy she might have had for the suffragettes had died along with Emily Davidson, who had flung herself under the king’s horse at the Derby in 1913. ‘All very well,’ she had said at the time, ‘but she might have killed that horse.’

  ‘Barty’s doing terribly well, yes,’ said Celia now. ‘The cleverest child in her class.’

  ‘Ah, but does she have any friends?’ said Lady Beckenham with piercing perspicacity.

  Celia said Barty had plenty of friends and knew her mother didn’t believe her.

  ‘And how is this war going to affect your business?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Celia, ‘naturally we’re a little worried. But the accepted view is that it will make very little difference. Certainly the country’s mood at the moment is for business as usual; the theatres are still full and so are the picture houses, people need entertainment more at times like these, they need distraction. And we are in the entertainment business, I suppose. Also an awful lot of the soldiers are taking books out with them apparently.’

  ‘How extraordinary,’ said Lady Beckenham.

  Even putting up with the twins must be better than this, thought Giles miserably, stuffing his mouth with his fist as he burrowed under the bedclothes, trying not to cry. He had been at school for a week now and every day had been worse than the last. He had graduated from being an object of mild interest to one of total derision; despised for a lack of prowess on the games field, teased for a (very slight) tendency to tubbiness, mocked for his slowness to grasp new subjects like science, sneered at for leaving home a year late, and tormented for being a less than satisfactory fag to the sixth former he had been assigned to.

  Of all these, the late arrival had been the most serious; his nickname was Baba, and one of the more unpleasant forms of teasing he had to endure was having a small towel tied round his parts each night. ‘Baba’s nappy’ was removed each morning to exclamations and mockery about the smell, the size of his penis, the shape of his testicles – indeed a second nickname ‘skew balls’ had been added to the first. He was so frightened of actually wetting the nappy that he woke constantly through the night and was becoming exhausted; He was also dreadfully homesick, miss
ed his mother and father more than he would have believed, and Barty, of course and Nanny. And even, unthinkably, the twins.

  Jago had gone: after four days’ leave, during which LM clung to her self-control with a courage and determination which had only failed her on the final morning. He dressed in his uniform, picked up his bag and bent to kiss her while she lay in bed watching him. Until then she had managed to be quite cheerful for him, listening to his stories of basic training with genuine admiration, encouraged by the sense of camaraderie that clearly existed, amused by a letter which had been issued to every enlisted soldier by Lord Kitchener.

  ‘You’ll be glad about this Meg,’ he said, as he showed it to her. After a preamble about courage, energy and patience, the pamphlet informed the men solemnly that they must guard against excesses, ‘particularly temptations both in wine and women’, urging them to remember that while they should treat all women with courtesy, they ‘should avoid intimacy’.

  ‘That gave us a few laughs in the barrack room, I can tell you.’ LM felt sure it had, and marvelled at the stupidity and complacency of an officer class that could talk to the men as if they were virgins going off on a foreign holiday.

  And so the four days had passed in some sort of happiness, but on that last morning she cracked; felt and heard grief and loss sweeping through her on a great, noisy tide, flung herself out of bed and into his arms, crying and calling his name, begging him to stay just a little longer, telling him she could not bear it, that she would die herself if he was killed. Afterwards she was ashamed of her lack of courage; if he could face the miseries of war, then she could surely face the worst that she would be called upon to bear, loneliness and anxiety and even terror. He had been clearly baffled, unable to cope with her misery; almost embarrassed, he had pulled away from her, said he had to go, that he would be late and court-martialled before he began.

  ‘I love you Meg,’ he said, ‘remember that. Remember it always. That’s the only certainty I can offer you.’

  And then he was gone, walking down the street to Swiss Cottage railway station and thence to Victoria and the boat train to Calais. She knew a lot of the wives and sweethearts would be at Charing Cross, waving their flags and smiling bravely; he had forbidden that, had said he wanted to remember her lying in bed, their bed, smiling at him, that was all he asked of her. And she had failed him even in that, failed him already.

  LM turned her head into the pillow and wept for two hours.

  Oliver, too, was afraid. Courage was not one of his gifts; he was afraid of physical pain, of any kind of public humiliation, of conflict, and, most of all, of having to witness the pain of others. The days when Celia had borne Giles and the twins, he had been in an agony of wretchedness, dreading that he might be asked to see or even hear something that would illustrate what she was going through. She was so brave, in every way; almost nothing frightened her, and if it did, she gritted her teeth and confronted it. She was like Jack, whose courage was formidable. Oliver had fought his lack of courage as best he could, had struggled to master public speaking, had learned to ride for Celia’s sake, had even once, but only once, hunted (lying awake all night before and imagining fearsome fences, broken limbs, social disgrace after falling from a bolting horse). He submitted himself to the dentist’s drill, in order to inspire courage in his own children, and from time to time and most terrifyingly of all, confronted and even opposed Celia.

  But all these things were nothing, nothing at all compared to the horror, the bowel-melting terror, of going out to the battlefields of France. And horror there would be, he knew; he had read in the papers reports of the first big battles of Ypres and Mons, and knew that despite the triumphs, the assertion that the Germans had been routed, the appalling casualty lists told a different story. There had been heavy casualties and very little gained. He would, he knew, have to see and face things that he could scarcely begin to contemplate: death, and worse than death, mutilation, continuous pain. Moreover, he would have to inflict those things himself, would have to give orders to shoot, to kill, to destroy. He would have to conceal his terror while living with it constantly, day after day, find courage, or simulate it – somehow.

  Conversations with his father-in-law, veteran of both the Boer war and the Sudan with Kitchener, did not help.

  ‘Nothing like it,’ he said sorrow fully to Oliver, as they sat on the terrace behind Ashingham one golden October day, ‘nothing like battle. Something takes you over, some extra force, gives you the strength, the taste to do things. I couldn’t kill in cold blood; find it difficult to shoot my own horses when the time comes. But out there, my God, with the noise and the earth shaking with the guns, and your men all mobilised, obeying orders, and some enemy soldier in front of you, staring you in the face, and it’s him or you, it’s bloody wonderful. Can’t really describe it. You’ll find out. That young brother of yours, fine chap, he knows what it’s like. We were talking about it the other day. He’s gone hasn’t he? Lucky young bounder. Wish I was going with you both.’

  Oliver was leaving to do his basic army training at Colchester at the beginning of November. He had been told that it was unlikely he would go out to the front before Christmas, and that he would begin his army career as a lieutenant. The week before he left for Colchester he gave a dinner for all the staff at Lyttons; he took a private room in the Savoy Hotel, and after a lavish meal which showed very few signs of any shortages whatsoever, he stood up and made a brief speech. He said that heading Lyttons for the past ten years had been the glory of his life, and that he hoped and prayed for many more.

  ‘I see my service for king and country as a brief interval between publishing cycles.’

  Everyone laughed.

  ‘But the firm must go on. And for the foreseeable future, it will be a different place. Very. Richard Douglas and William Dean have already enlisted, James Sharpe will be following them shortly. So Lyttons will be largely in the hands of women. Now I know this not an entirely satisfactory situation—’ more laughter, which Celia and LM struggled politely to join in – ‘because for some of you, the only satisfactory arrangement would be if there were no men in the house at all. That, ladies and gentelmen, is a situation I will personally never welcome. I shall be back, we shall all be back and examining closely – and critically – what has been done in our absence.’ More laughter still. ‘But I would ask those of you who remain, very seriously and from the bottom of my heart, to place your trust and your allegiance in my wife, and my sister. They are charged with the safety and the future of Lyttons and I know that with your help, they will assure it. Please be upstanding and drink a toast to them: Lady Celia Lytton and Miss Margaret Lytton.’

  The staff rose obediently to their feet, raised their glasses, dutifully said, ‘Lady Celia, Miss Lytton.’ A few were subdued, but most of them were flushed, excited, clearly caught up with the drama of the moment. A bit like battle Oliver thought suddenly, smiling at Celia whose dark eyes looked dangerously brilliant and at LM, whose thin, drawn pallor had momentarily been replaced by a rosy, flush. If only battle possessed such safe excitement, granted such easy victory...

  ‘That was very charmingly done,’ said Celia, collapsing on to their bed, holding out her arms to him. ‘Thank you my darling. I know your saying that will be the greatest help. And LM felt it too, I know.’

  ‘She doesn’t look well,’ said Oliver, ‘I worry about her.’

  ‘Me too. I think her – her friend being at the front is destroying her. She so clearly loves him very much.’

  ‘What’s she told you about him? About their plans for the future – if—’ he stopped.

  ‘Of course they have a future. We all do,’ said Celia firmly, ‘but the answer is nothing. Nothing at all. And I would never ask. But she misses him dreadfully. It’s quite clear. And is afraid for him, every moment of the day.’

  ‘Is he in France?’

  ‘Yes. Yes he is. As you will be, so very soon. Oh, darling Oliver, I simply can’t imagi
ne how I am going to bear all this.’

  ‘You will bear it,’ he said smiling at her gently, crossing over to her, taking her face in his hands, ‘as I will. Because we have to. Because there is no choice.’

  She looked at him. ‘You’re very frightened, aren’t you?’

  A long silence: then reluctantly, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes I am. To my shame.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be ashamed of it,’ she said, ‘of being frightened. Or of admitting it. To me I mean. If it helps. I don’t think any the less of you. More in fact.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked, his voice very low.

  ‘Because, my darling, the more frightened you are, the braver you are. I think you’re wonderful. I love you so much.’

  ‘I love you too,’ he said, ‘more than ever before, more than I would ever have believed possible.’

  Somewhere in France. October 19th.

  Dearest Meg,

  That’s all I am allowed to tell you; all our letters are censored, so don’t expect detailed war reports. Not that you’d want them, but still . . . I love you too, Meg. I think of you all the time and it is such a help, knowing you’re there, knowing you’re safe. It really isn’t too bad out here, and you must try not to worry. The journey here was really good. We came by train from Le Havre, in cattle trucks, and every station we passed through was ready with coffee or wine and bread and people shouted ‘Vive l’Angleterre.’ You know what they say about fortune favouring the brave. We are all very brave here! We have to be: there isn’t any choice. They’re a good group of lads, I’m with. It’s very good to be with others you know from the old days. It helps with the homesickness. The news from the front, for we are not there yet, is good. Our side is winning. Taking territory, winning battles and we’ll win the war. That’s for sure, definite. Take care of yourself, Meg. Don’t work too hard. I’ll be home very soon. For Christmas with a bit of luck.