No Angel

by Penny Vincenzi

  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.

  ‘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 occupie
d. 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.