No Angel

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘Oh, Jack,’ she said, telling herself that to withdraw her hand would be unkind, an unnecessary rejection when he was so unusually downhearted, ‘you’re always saying that.’

  ‘And always meaning it,’ he said, and lifted her hand and kissed it. First the back, and then, turning it over, he kissed the palm, slowly and very tenderly.

  She stood there, looking down at his head, his golden head, so like Oliver’s and felt desire shoot through her so strongly that she was startled; he met her eyes, recognised the desire, pulled her down and kissed her hard. On the mouth. Just for a second she gave in; felt her own mouth, soft, hungry, yearning for him. It had been so long, she missed Oliver so much and Jack was so – so beautiful. Just for a second, she let her mind carry her forward, let it visualise what she knew she wanted, watched herself lying with him, softening to him, taking him to herself. But then, reality returned; reality, and loving Oliver, keeping faith. She stiffened, stood up, and pulled her hand away.

  ‘Jack. No. Don’t. Please I’m hugely flattered but—’

  He smiled at her: a rueful smile.

  ‘I know. But we mustn’t. Mustn’t betray Oliver. Of course not. Not a brotherly thing to do.’

  ‘Or a wifely one,’ she said, and bent and kissed him lightly, gently on the forehead.

  ‘You’d like to though, wouldn’t you?’ he said, grinning at her.

  ‘No, Jack, of course I—’

  ‘Celia, I know you would. It’s all right. I’m not about to ravish you. I probably wouldn’t think much of you if you let me.’ He grinned. ‘I’d sure as hell like it, though.’

  ‘And I probably would, too,’ she said, smiling back. ‘Now I’m going to get your brandy, and then I’m going to bed.’

  ‘With me?’

  ‘No Jack, not with you.’

  But it was safe, the danger had passed; this was the old Jack, the teasing, flirting Jack, the young brother. Her husband’s brother, with whom anything other then friendship would be the ultimate disloyalty.

  The next night, anxious that their relationship should return to its old ease and friendship, she insisted he took her out; they went to the Savoy, and afterwards to a rather seedy nightclub he knew, where they danced. He was a wonderful dancer, much better than Oliver; they stayed for hours.

  ‘I could fall in love with you so easily,’ he said into her ear, as they stood, only halfmoving on the tiny floor.

  ‘I don’t think you could,’ she said, laughing up at him, ‘not if you really knew me. I’m terribly bossy. I drive Oliver mad.’

  ‘He needs bossing about,’ said Jack, ‘he’s a bit of an old woman.’

  ‘Of course he isn’t,’ she said.

  ‘Of course he is. And unless you admit it, I shall storm your room tonight and ravish you mercilessly.’

  She laughed, said that her room had a very strong key, and refused to admit it – of course. But she never forgot that moment; or Jack’s words. And there were many times over the years which followed when they came back to her.

  As well as looking after the horses, with only one girl groom whom she constantly denounced as useless and bone-idle, despite the fact she worked an eighteen-hour day, Lady Beckenham was working extremely hard in her convalescent home.

  ‘I have become,’ she announced to anyone who would listen, eyes gleaming with amusement, ‘a cook general.’

  This was a slight exaggeration; but she did do a fair amount of cooking for the men, her own cook having departed for the munitions factory in Beaconsfield, along with several of the other domestic staff. The kitchen maid who was actually older than cook, had stayed on, and she did her best, but she needed a great deal of direction and it was easier, Lady Beckenham said, simply to put on a pinafore and do a lot of the work herself. She even did some cleaning.

  ‘I quite like it as a matter of fact,’ she said to Celia, who stood incredulously watching her one day. ‘It’s rather satisfying. At least it’s under your control. Although I do sometimes wish I’d done something a bit more adventurous. My friend, Bunty Hadleigh, you remember her?’

  Celia did: the terrifying Duchess of Dorset, almost six feet tall with a booming voice, and a courage on the hunting field which even men envied.

  ‘Well, she’s gone out to drive an ambulance at the front. Got a letter from her this morning. It sounds terrific. She’s living in a cellar with another woman, actually drives men from the front line to the field station. Marvellous. Says I wouldn’t believe what she’s seen. Tough though; apparently they have to sleep in their clothes, can’t wash much and sometimes have to scrape the lice off themselves with a blunt knife. I can tell you I was very tempted to go out and join her. God, just look at that girl,’ she added, pointing out a particularly pretty young nurse, who was patiently feeding a man without arms. ‘Thank God Beckenham isn’t here. It would be a complete nightmare.’

  Lord Beckenham was enormously enjoying his war: Employed at the War Office in the recruitment department, he felt more useful and happier than he had for many years. He was a little sobered by the endless stream of young men – growing younger now, and shorter too, as the height regulations dropped – eager to go out and show the hun what they were made of, with no idea of what they were facing. But he would sit talking to them as they filled in forms, or he filled forms in for them. He told them how much he envied them, what a privilege and a thrill it was to be on the battlefield, defending their country, and they listened, their eyes shining, their courage bolstered, his words still ringing in their ears as they marched out to the troopships taking them to what was an almost certain death.

  Sylvia had been struggling since Ted went. The money she got was not nearly adequate, the rent had increased, food was in scarce supply, and she spent much of her life in queues. For a while she sent Marjorie and Frank, but they would come home after waiting for two hours, and tell her there was nothing left. She knew that if she had been there herself, she could have argued and almost certainly secured something, even if it was not what she had actually been queuing for. So there was nothing for it but return to the queuing herself. She got no letters from Ted personally, because he couldn’t write them, but, regular as clockwork, would come one of the printed cards, bearing various carefully ticked messages, such as ‘I am quite well’, ‘I have not been wounded’, ‘I have received your letter.’ And then the painfully printed TED and several crosses.

  So far, it seemed, Ted had been right; he was lucky. Not a scratch. Her new worry was Billy, who was dead set on enlisting himself. He was only seventeen and a half, but the need for men was so urgent now that ages were not always checked. Bill was a big boy, he could easily be taken for sixteen. Sylvia had forbidden it of course, but she might as well have saved her breath; he wanted only to get out to France and join his father.

  Very occasionally Sylvia would go and see Barty; Celia and LM would take her down for a weekend in their car and she would stay with LM, who she found less daunting than the others, in the Dovecot. She was terribly impressed by Barty; she was nine now and seemed so grown-up, with such a beautiful speaking voice and such good manners. She was pretty too, well not exactly pretty, not like the twins, but nice-looking, rather unusual, with her big eyes and her thick mane of curling hair. She was always delighted to see her mother, and when Sylvia was there, never left her side, dragging her from place to place to meet her friends among the men and the nursing staff, or to play with little Jay and even the twins. In the school holidays they would talk to Giles, who was, she told her mother, her special friend among the Lyttons.

  ‘He’s so nice to me,’ she said simply, ‘He doesn’t think I’m different.’

  Sylvia asked anxiously if the others were nice to her, and Barty said yes they were, really, these days, and added that she much preferred Ashingham to London.

  ‘We have lessons in the old schoolroom with Aunt Celia’s old governess, Miss Adams. She’s very nice, but she’s quite old and she has a bad limp. One of her legs is a lot shorter t
han the other, and she can’t really cope with the twins, but she sends them off with Nanny after the middle of the morning, and then she and I have really nice lessons; she likes history best and English, and so do I. We’re doing a book together about the ancient Greek and Roman legends, I’ll show it to you, if you like.’

  Sylvia said she didn’t think she’d be able to understand much of it, but she admired it anyway, awed by Barty’s beautiful handwriting, by her obvious skill with words; she often wondered what on earth would have happened to her if she had stayed at Line Street, and had to go to the Elementary. Although, of course, Frank had done well there; not so well at the Secondary, but then what school was any good these days with half the teachers gone to the war? She didn’t tell Barty about Billy’s military ambitions, knowng they would worry her, but she did reveal one night to Barty and LM, as they sat in the small circular drawing-room after supper, that she was having terrible trouble making ends meet.

  ‘Well, why don’t you get a job?’ said LM, ‘in a factory. You’d enjoy it, it’s good money and they’re crying out for people.’

  Sylvia said she couldn’t possibly do that, Ted wouldn’t like it, and LM said what Ted’s eyes didn’t see, his heart surely wouldn’t grieve over. ‘Besides, you would be doing your bit for your country, especially if you worked in a munitions factory. Wouldn’t that be a good feeling? And you’d make friends too, and don’t you think you’d worry less, with something other than your own thoughts for company?’

  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, b
ut 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.