No Angel

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘No,’ said Celia sharply, ‘no, I want to get this book on the right terms. For all of us. I don’t want any favours – however kindly offered. What has Collins offered?’

  Paul Davis looked at her. ‘Six hundred. I have their letter here. Just in case you want to see it—’

  ‘I’ll pay that,’ said Celia after a glance at the letter. She felt very sick. Six hundred pounds. About – she was good at mental arithmetic – thirty times the usual figure. Oliver’s figure. What was she doing?

  ‘Well – a higher figure would secure it. Collins are very keen. As you see—’

  ‘Five hundred and fifty will be quite enough,’ said Sebastian. ‘That settles the matter, Paul.’

  Paul Davis looked at him, and his eyes were very cold.

  ‘Yes, all right,’ he said finally, ‘of course. You’re the client.’ He managed to laugh. ‘It’s your book, after all.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sebastian, ‘it is. And now it’s Lady Celia’s as well.’

  They sat for the rest of the meal discussing publication dates, promotion, editing; illustration; Sebastian seemed extremely happy with all her proposals.

  ‘Good,’ said Paul Davis finally, pushing back his chair, wiping his rather blubbery mouth on his napkin. ‘I’d better get back, draw up a contract. Thank you, Lady Celia. A delightful meal. I’ll speak to you later, Sebastian.’

  He walked out of the restaurant; they sat looking after him. ‘Odious,’ said Sebastian. ‘I must find someone else.’

  ‘He’s a very good agent.’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘Oh yes. But certainly not my favourite person,’ said Celia.

  ‘I’m glad to hear that,’ he raised his glass, ‘here’s to our association.’

  ‘Our association,’ she said and smiled at him. ‘That was very good of you. Letting Lyttons have the book. When you could have made even more money.’

  ‘I would have let you have it for less,’ said Sebastian.

  ‘I know. But it never works, you know. I couldn’t have you losing out. You’d have come to resent it. Resentment sours the best working relationship.’

  ‘Hardly losing out.’

  ‘Well – we’ll get it back I’m sure. In sales. But meanwhile I’m extremely grateful.’

  Sebastian Brooke smiled at her quickly: then his expression became serious, almost intense.

  ‘I think you know why I did it,’ he said.

  ‘We’ve all got to go back to London,’ said Barty, ‘to live.’

  ‘When?’ said Adele.

  ‘Why?’ said Venetia.

  ‘What’s London?’ said Jay.

  ‘Anyway, how do you know?’ said Adele.

  ‘Your grandmother told me. After Christmas, she said.’

  ‘Why should she tell you?’

  ‘Why didn’t she tell us?’

  ‘Why didn’t Daddy tell us?’

  ‘Because I was talking to her about Billy,’ said Barty, ‘and she said I’d miss him when I went back to London. Which I will,’ she added, and burst into tears.

  The twins looked at her in silence and then at each other.

  ‘We probably don’t want to go,’ said Venetia.

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Barty, blowing her nose, ‘but we have to. The war is over, no more bombs.’

  ‘Well, we can still stay here. Daddy is here.’

  ‘He won’t be soon. He’ll be better and he’ll want to go home.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Adele.

  ‘Who told you that?’ said Venetia.

  They were fiercely jealous of Barty’s relationship with their father.

  ‘He did.’

  ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Little Jay, sensing the hostility to Barty, his heroine, slipped his hand into hers. ‘Will I like London?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Barty.

  Jay didn’t: he hated it. He was utterly miserable. From the moment the taxi cab rolled away from Paddington Station and the excitement of being on the train was over, he could think of nothing but going back. He hated the grey streets, the noise of the traffic that drowned out the birdsong, the endless rows and rows of houses, with hardly a speck of space between them, the tiny patch behind the house in Keats Grove which was called a garden, the lack of things to do, the loss of his freedom.

  At Ashingham he had run more or less wild; all day long he had followed Barty and the twins about from the house to the stables, out to the fields, back across the lawns to the house. While they had their lessons, he would go and talk to Billy, or to some of the men at the house, or he and Dorothy would go and look for eggs, or walk down to the village, or she would make him a fishing line and he would sit by the stream, waiting patiently for fish that never came. And when Giles came home for the holidays, he would follow him around instead of the girls, and Giles would give him and Barty cricket lessons and helped him to ride the old tricycle he had found in the stables which had once belonged to Aunt Celia. All the children ate their meals in the big kitchen at Ashingham; in the evenings he slept in a small room in between Barty’s and the twins’. He was never lonely, never alone.

  Now suddenly, he was alone all day with Dorothy: His mother, who was, in any case, a somewhat remote figure to him, left the house early in the morning, and usually returned after he had gone to bed. He was too young to go to school, so he and Dorothy went for walks to the Heath and to the shops, and sometimes to the public library, and that was the end of the entertainment. Once or twice a week he was allowed to go to tea with the twins, but even at their house, larger admittedly and with a bigger choice of toys, there was not a lot to do. Anyway, they had changed. They had all changed, even Barty. They wore smart frocks instead of the loose smocks they had all worn at Ashingham, or something called school uniform, skirts and jerseys and funny flat hats. They all went to school together and the twins had lots of friends who were also at the house, and didn’t want to play with him, or else they weren’t there at all, which was worse. Barty had lots of what she called homework to do, and although she did still read to him and play with him, he could see she was very busy herself.

  Aunt Celia wasn’t there either, she was at work with his mother, except at the weekends; the only person who still seemed to have time for him was the twins’ father: Wol, as he and Barty called him. He still wasn’t well enough to go to work, so he often read to Jay, and told him stories and helped him draw pictures. He didn’t seem terribly happy; he often looked at Jay very sadly and sighed, and seemed to be thinking about something quite different. Once he said, ‘We don’t quite have a proper place here, do we, old chap?’

  ‘I don’t want a place here,’ Jay said. He didn’t quite know what Wol meant, but he could see that he felt lonely too. ‘Can’t we go back to the other one?’

  And Wol had smiled rather sadly, hugged him close, and said he was afraid that wasn’t possible, and they had sat there in silence for quite a long time.

  ‘This is simply perfect,’ said Sebastian. ‘Marvellous. Exactly right. She’s a clever girl, that art editor of yours.’

  ‘Art Director. She’s very proud of that.’

  ‘Sorry. She’s very clever, whatever she’s called.’

  They were in Celia’s office, studying the design Gill had done for the dust jacket of Meridian. It was extraordinarily striking: a swirl of art nouveau-style graphics in the shape of a clock, all spelling out the word Meridian in different sizes and directions. The face of the clock was small: absolutely conventional, except that when you looked at it carefully, you saw that the numbers on it were not numbers but letters, spelling the word Meridian both backwards and forwards, with M replacing 12 and N 6. The hands of the clock were two androgynous figures, arms raised, palms together, set at six o’clock.

  ‘Or rather N o’clock. And—’ Gill had said happily, as she set it down in front of Celia the night before, ‘we’ll have colour, won’t we? So I thought a wonderful greenish blu
e, interwoven with gold.’

  ‘Marvellous,’ said Celia, ‘absolutely marvellous. And I presume the illustrations are in the same style.’

  ‘Yes, only more directly illustrative, obviously. I’ve briefed the artist already. Full colour, I hope, and roughly one for each chapter?’

  ‘Yes, and full colour, of course.’ The more Celia read Meridian, the more she loved it, fell under its spell, became convinced of its truly enormous potential. And it was not just one book: Sebastian had already told her that he had many other stories with the same setting. She still had not told Oliver, or LM for that matter, what she had paid for it; either they would agree that it was worth it, or they would not, and since it was too late, there was nothing to be done about it.

  The book was not just an enchanting story, but a brilliant fantasy, utterly original; set in a time zone which was at once parallel to, but out of reach of, our own. Everyone who read it, young and old, fell under its spell; even Jack, home at last from France, and staying temporarily at Cheyne Walk while he decided what to do with his life, said he found it impossible to put down.

  ‘And he’s only read about three books in his entire life,’ said Celia, reporting this to Sebastian.

  ‘Good. I can’t wait to meet him. An illiterate Lytton. What a contradiction in terms.’

  ‘You’d love him. Everyone does. Anyway, back to Meridian. One of its great joys, I think, is the way it assumes a certain literacy on the part of the children reading it. So the parents will approve, and the children will learn through it. And it has such humour, I love that the most. No, I think I love the small individual strands of the story the most.’

  ‘Shall I tell you what I love about it the best?’ said Sebastian, his extraordinary eyes on hers.

  ‘Yes, what?’

  ‘That you are going to publish it.’

  ‘Oh, Sebastian,’ she said, misunderstanding, for these were early days in their association, ‘I’m so glad you like everything we are doing for it, I—’

  ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘not that, although of course that is important. No, what I am most happy about is that it has led me to you.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said and stared at him, ‘oh, I see.’

  He smiled. ‘And don’t you love that about it, too, Celia?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, looking back down at the book, ‘well, of course it’s wonderful to be involved in such a work, a privilege—’

  ‘I’m not talking about work,’ he said, ‘as you very well know.’

  Flustered – a new condition for her – Celia pressed the buzzer on her telephone, and told Janet Gould to get Gill Thomas to come in.

  ‘Mr Brooke is here, and wants to discuss the jacket.’

  Sebastian’s eyes met hers as she put the phone down.

  ‘I don’t think I do,’ he said, ‘but if that is what you want—’

  She was in absolute denial about the whole thing, of course. Telling herself day after day that none of it was happening. That she was not looking forward intensely to the days when he would be at Lyttons, not becoming the kind of woman she disapproved of, watching herself as she moved and spoke and looked and laughed, concerned that she must be as graceful, as amusing, as desirable as it was possible for her to be. She did find herself thinking about him a great deal, but that was only because of his brilliance and the brilliance of the book he had brought to her. He did have an extraordinarily engaging and original mind, immense charm and exuded a most potent and impatient energy, seemed almost incapable of sitting still for more than a very short while, of keeping silent even, would constantly interrupt whoever was speaking to express a view, propose a new thought. And then of course he was extremely handsome, no one could deny that; neither could she deny his peculiarly intense sexuality. Nobody could. It was very powerful. But it didn’t actually disturb her, it didn’t divert her from whatever she was thinking or saying or doing – she just had to acknowledge that it was there. It would be foolish to do otherwise.

  No. He had provided her with a wonderful professional opportunity, and she was enjoying that, along with his admittedly rather agreeable company. Besides, she needed a certain amount of distraction from the rest of her life, just at the moment. She could even argue that she deserved it.

  ‘That was a very heavy sigh,’ said Sebastian as he pulled on his coat, and she slid the edited manuscript of Meridian into her drawer.

  ‘Oh – was it?’

  ‘Yes. Anything wrong?’

  ‘No! No not really. Well—’

  ‘Want to tell me about it? Over lunch, perhaps.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell.’

  ‘Want to tell me about nothing over lunch?’

  ‘I’m terribly busy.’

  ‘So am I. But you are my editor, as well as my publisher. There must be many things which we could discuss over a plate of that rather good beef at Simpsons. Come on. You look tired. It’ll do you good.’

  She went. He was right; they did have a lot to discuss.

  She was editing the book herself; not only because she felt no one else at Lyttons could possibly handle it, or appreciate its subtlety, but because she was afraid that no one else would realise how little editing it actually needed. The grammar was at times quirky, the construction of the plot just a little chaotic, but both suited the slightly anarchic nature of the story. She could not bear the thought of some earnest editor shortening Sebastian’s long, untidy, yet entirely coherent sentences, or hauling one sequence before another, into strict chronological order when the whole charm of the tale was its higgledy-piggledy timespan. Those were the reasons she was doing it. No other.

  ‘There’s just one thing I thought I might suggest you changed,’ she said to him, when they were settled into a table in the corner of the restaurant, ‘and that’s—’

  ‘Are you tired?’ he asked.

  ‘What? Oh, yes. Yes, I am a bit. I think the war made us all tired.’

  ‘It did. But now it’s over, I feel very good.’

  ‘Even your leg?’

  ‘Oh no,’ he said, and smiled at her, ‘my leg is not very good.’ He had been shot in the leg while he was out in France in 1916; some rather brutal surgery had made it worse; he had developed an infection and finally been sent home to several more operations and a permanently damaged and painful knee.

  ‘What’s your knee?’ he said now.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said what’s your knee? What’s still hurting you?’

  She was silent.

  ‘Your husband?’

  ‘No,’ she said quickly. Too quickly.

  ‘Your husband.’ He smiled. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘No.’>

  ‘Why not?’

  Again, silence.

  ‘Tell me. Is he depressed?’

  ‘He – not exactly. No. He seems quite cheerful. No, not cheerful. But not miserable either. Just—’

  ‘Detached?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, that’s exactly it. He doesn’t seem interested in anything. Except himself.’

  ‘Not even you?’

  ‘Certainly not me.’

  ‘Well that sounds perfectly normal,’ said Sebastian. He sat back and looked at her. ‘I did it myself, to a degree. He’s had a hideous time, after all. He’s probably just cut himself off from everything. Retreated into himself. Defence mechanism and all that.’

  ‘I know. Of course I know. And I have been – tried to be anyway – very patient. But he doesn’t want to talk about anything. Except himself. Not Lyttons, not the children, not the house, which is in a terrible state, needs a lot of work on it, as does the Lyttons building come to that, and most certainly not me. Not even what he’s been through. It’s – well it’s difficult. Because I have to carry on doing everything, making decisions which really he should be sharing now. Very difficult.’

  Sebastian looked at her and smiled.

  ‘Dare I suggest, dear Lady Celia, that you might find it even more difficult when
he does start taking an interest in everything again.’

  ‘Hallo Marjorie.’

  Barty stood in the doorway of the house in Line Street, and smiled rather tentatively. It was Saturday; she was allowed to come on her own now, on the bus. Celia encouraged it, encouraged independence of any kind. Barty and the twins came home on the bus from school together most days, the twins sitting in the front with their friends, giggling, Barty sitting behind them, pretending not to care. It wasn’t exactly easy; she was supposed to be responsible for them, and they would never do what she said.

  ‘Don’t go on the top of the bus,’ she’d say, ‘it’s raining.’

  ‘We want to,’ they would say, running up the stairs.

  ‘This isn’t our stop,’ she’d call, another time, seeing them on the platform, waiting to get off.

  ‘We want to get off here with Susie. We can walk the rest of the way.’

  So she’d have to get off too, and walk behind them, watching their identical heads together, talking, shutting her out. They had got much worse again since they’d all been back in London.

  And then Nanny would upbraid them for getting their uniforms wet, or scuffing their boots, but she would upbraid Barty more. ‘You’re supposed to be in charge of them, Barty, you’re older than they are, do try to be more sensible.’

  Useless to say anything: quite useless.

  They all went to the same school: Helen Wolff’s School for Girls in South Audley Street. It was a good school, and quite famous. Both Violet, Mrs Keppel’s daughter and Vita Sackville West had been pupils there. Celia was less concerned with this than with the excellence of the education. She was determined that her girls should have exactly the same chances scholastically as Giles.

  Barty, benefitting from her years with Miss Adams and from her own natural abilities, went straight to the top of her class; the twins stayed comfortably near the bottom of theirs. They were clever, but very lazy, and life was too much fun to be spoiled by reading books and learning mathematical tables. Within days they had become hugely popular, sought after by all their peers; consequently they were over-confident, disobedient, cheeky to Nanny, impertinent with their teachers, and overbearing with Barty; the happy, ordered discipline at Ashingham might never have been.