But the engagement announcement and the marriage reports were almost beyond endurance. When he phoned her, to tell her he was going to become engaged, she had thought it was simply that: the thoughtful act of a past lover, had assumed that finally he was behaving with some kind of normality. It hurt but she managed to smile into the telephone and to say she was delighted and she hoped he would be very happy.
But ‘Barty, I don’t want to do this,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to be engaged to Annabel Charlton, I certainly don’t want to marry her. You have only to say you’ll marry me, Barty, and I’ll cancel the whole thing. Gladly. Joyfully. I still love you very much.’
She had managed to put the phone down; an hour later it rang again; it was Laurence.
‘Now you’ve had time to think about it, Barty, how do you feel? Will you marry me? Or do I have to marry Annabel instead?’
‘I won’t marry you,’ she said, hearing her own voice surprisingly calm, ‘and if anything was necessary to make me sure I had done the right thing refusing you, this is it. Good morning, Laurence and congratulations to you both.’
And then she dropped her head into her arms and sobbed for quite a long time.
She had thought she was used to it; to the pain, the loneliness, the disorientation, the sheer, frightful jealousy – that last had shocked her most, the thought of Laurence with, making love to, someone else.
But the wedding, the marriage, that was unbearable.
She went through the following seven days in a dream; during which she wrote a letter to Maud, apologising to her, telling her she had been right, and how much she had missed her.
Maud telephoned her next day, a tearful, sad voice, saying she was only sorry for Barty and that there was nothing to forgive.
‘But what will you do now?’ she said.
‘Now?’ said Barty, and suddenly as she realised what she could do, and wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before, she smiled into the phone. ‘Now Maud, I’m going home.’
Part Two
1939 – 1942
CHAPTER 25
‘We must get Adele home at once,’ said Celia. ‘This is quite appalling.’
She spoke more in irritation than in terror, as if the invasion by Herr Hitler of Poland and the subsequent declaration of war upon Germany by both England and France were inconveniences rather than events of world-shaking importance.
‘I agree with you, my dear, it would be very – nice to have her here. But why should she come?’
‘Because – oh, Oliver, don’t be so ridiculous. Because we are at war with Germany. France is at war with Germany. France may be invaded—’
‘She may very well be, I am afraid.’
‘So Adele ought to be at home. With her children.’
‘Celia – ’ Oliver hesitated, looked at her in a certain amusement ‘ – Celia, Adele is at home with her children. She lives in Paris now, with the father of those children—’
‘Most unfortunately.’
‘I agree with you. But those are the facts. Her life is there, she won’t even think of rushing back here.’
‘Then we must make her think of it. Of the dangers. If Luc has any decency at all, he will agree with us—’
‘I must say, I am very afraid for her,’ said Oliver, ‘for all of them. Luc being Jewish does put them in far greater danger—’
‘Yes. I do know.’ She met his eyes; she had slowly and unwillingly changed her mind over the past two years as reports appeared in the papers of the persecution of the Jews in Poland and in Germany itself, of Austrian Jews being forced to scrub pavements while their Nazi persecutors looked on, of the looting and burning of synagogues becoming increasingly commonplace. But it had been the events of Kristallnacht – The Night of Broken Glass – the previous autumn that had finally convinced her, the wave of organised violence over twenty-four hours throughout Germany and Austria against the Jews. 20,000 men had been arrested as a result and sent to concentration camps, and stormtroopers had broken into Jewish homes to terrorize and beat women and children as well as men. Celia had sat reading the report of that in The Times, most unusually for her in tears; afterwards she had gone to her room and sat there for a long time, horribly shocked and chastened, not only that it had happened but that she and her friends could have been so wrong.
Some of them, including Bunny Arden, had clung to their support for Hitler, their belief in appeasement but: ‘I can see I was wrong,’ she said to Oliver. ‘Dreadfully wrong. I – would like to apologise to you. And to Adele and to Luc, of course.’
She had gone to Paris to see them and to try to make her peace; she had never lacked courage of any kind, moral or physical, but she had never needed it more than sitting in Adele and Luc’s apartment and asking for their forgiveness.
It had not been granted.
‘I was wrong,’ she said simply, ‘wrong and arrogant and extremely – offensive to you both. I’m very sorry.’
There was a silence. Adele, clearly confused over her own reaction, had looked anxiously at Luc, seeking guidance. But he, having sat ice-featured as she talked, nodded tersely and left the apartment, saying he had to meet some friends.
‘I’m sorry, Mummy,’ said Adele, looking after him, ‘he’s very distressed about it all. About what’s happening. He sees any denial of that as an affront.’
‘Of course. It is. I can understand that. Well, I hope in time he will forgive me.’
‘I – hope so. But I still don’t think you really understand how he – we – felt about your attitude. It is good of you to come, and I do appreciate it, but – well, I can see why Luc still finds it hard to accept you. Even after your apology.’
‘Oh, Adele, really. What else am I supposed to do?’ Celia felt a stab of irritation, in spite of her remorse. Nothing that had happened had changed her view of Luc Lieberman as a spoilt, self-centred, rather immature creature; she was beginning bitterly to regret her insistence that Adele do the honourable thing and involve him in the decision over her first pregnancy.
‘I – don’t know.’
‘Well, surely you and I can be friends again.’
Adele smile at her rather tiredly. ‘I’d like us to be. I miss you.’
Celia decided to take advantage of this. ‘You’re terribly pale. And you look exhausted.’ She looked round the apartment, at the mess of baby clothes and toys, at Noni’s playpen occupying half the sitting room, at the nappies hanging on a line on the balcony. ‘This can’t be easy for you. Why don’t you come home to have this baby?’
‘No, Mummy, I can’t. Really. I have to stay here and look after Luc.’
Celia managed with a huge effort not to say that she didn’t see much evidence of Luc looking after Adele; she merely remarked that she was sure Luc would be all right for a few weeks. ‘In fact he’ll probably be relieved not to have to worry about you all.’
‘No, really. I’ll be all right. Anyway, it’s not for another month or so. I do hope he arrives before Christmas.’
‘He? Are you sure about that?’
‘If Luc has anything to do with it, yes. He is determined, convinced rather, that it’s a boy. Heaven help me if it isn’t. I don’t know why it matters so much but—’
‘Adele, he’s a man,’ said Celia. ‘They have to play their absurd games. One of those is perpetuating their own line. It’s pitiful, but there it is.’ She looked at Noni who was holding on to the bars of the playpen, smiling; she was a beautiful child, unmistakably French, dark eyed and olive skinned, with a mass of gleaming black curls. ‘She’s sweet, Adele. Personally I rather hope you have another girl. Just to annoy him.’
‘Oh, Mummy! That’s not helpful. He’s my husband—’
‘Unfortunately he is not,’ said Celia icily. That was a mistake.
Adele stood up, her face drawn and hurt. ‘Please don’t say that. It doesn’t help. Of course he’s my husband, in all but name and—’
‘And I suppose you’re going to tell me again that
it isn’t his fault.’
‘Yes. Yes I was. I think you’d better go,’ said Adele wearily. ‘We’re just going to start fighting again. I do appreciate your coming, but—’
‘But what?’
‘I can’t cope with this hostility towards Luc. It’s terribly hurtful.’
‘Oh, Adele, don’t be absurd. I’m merely stating facts.’
‘No, you’re not. Not merely stating them. As always there’s a lot of opinion contained in facts as you see them. Distortion, even. I – I love Luc. And he loves me. And whether you like it or not, we are a – a family. I’m sorry, Mummy, but you’ve got to learn to accept that. For once your views aren’t terribly important.’
They parted then. A letter came a week later from Adele, saying that she had been unable to persuade Luc to accept Celia’s apology: ‘and although of course I do, I do feel my first loyalty is to him.’
‘Wretched, arrogant, disagreeable man,’ said Celia viciously, stuffing the letter into her desk drawer. But she was very upset, not least that the estrangement from Adele had been for the most part her own fault.
Adele’s wish that the baby be another girl was not granted: Lucas Lieberman was born on Christmas Day 1938: ‘to the sound of bells ringing all over Paris,’ Luc told Adele as he came to her bedside, with a bouquet of Christmas roses. ‘Ma chère, chère Mam’selle Adele, you have now made me perfectly happy.’
Oliver was right: Adele had no intention of going back to England.
‘I’m sorry,’ she wrote to Celia, ‘but I wish I could make you understand, this is my home, this is where my children have been born and will grown up, and this is where I shall stay. Luc really doesn’t think there is very much danger. If it gets worse, then of course I’ll consider coming back, but I don’t think it will.’
Nobody was taking the war very seriously: apart from the notices all over Paris calling for mobilization ‘because of the aggressive attitude of the German government’ and the sight of a great many soldiers in uniform, life seemed almost unchanged.
‘Paris will always be Paris’ was the motto on everyone’s lips; and indeed it seemed to be. As Adele pushed Lucas and Noni around each afternoon in the huge old perambulator which Lady Beckenham had delivered to her personally when Noni was born, she saw what she had always seen: people sitting in the sunshine at pavement cafés, drinking wine and smoking, and ignoring whatever might be going on in the rest of Europe. They went to concerts and to the cinema, listened to the petits orchestres in the grands cafés and in the Luxembourg Gardens; there might be sandbags on the steps of the Opéra but people flocked to it to hear Madame Butterfly; the cinemas were full, and so were the restaurants, the couture houses continued to work on the spring collections. It was as if the whole of Paris was resolved to show Hitler it had no time for him. There was no fear – or very little – in Paris.
‘We have the Maginot Line,’ everyone said. ‘We have the shield of France. We will be safe.’
Prominent figures (including General Beaufre, Marshal Pétain and the Duke of Windsor) visited the Maginot Line, the line of armed forts along the German border, and vouchsafed its impressive strength; only a few acknowledged that it stopped short at the Belgian border. But then Belgium was an ally, so that was not so serious was it?
Sometimes, as Adele walked the streets of Paris with her children, she would catch sight of herself in a shop window, a dark thin girl, her hair grown unfashionably to her shoulders, wearing a printed silk dress, barelegged, hatless, gloveless, pushing a very large, very old perambulator, and wonder where the spoilt, chic and extremely English Adele Lytton had gone.
‘So what will happen, do you think? Will you have to enlist?’
Helena’s face as she looked at Giles was troubled; irritating and ineffectual as he was, disappointing as a husband and a provider, she was still very fond of him, and fearful at the thought of what might become of him. In this she was scarcely alone; across the length and breadth of the country, wives shared her feelings.
They had sat, Helena almost in tears, listening to the King’s broadcast, to his brave prophecy that with God’s help they should prevail; the next day, with all the banks closed and people unable to talk of anything but the war, had a strange almost surreal feel to it.
Draconian measures were immediately introduced: petrol was rationed, theatres and cinemas were closed, street lighting eradicated, and children from the cities, most notably London, were being evacuated to the country. Apart from that, not a great deal seemed to be happening.
‘Of course I shall,’ said Giles. He met Helena’s eyes and smiled at her; he was surprised to find himself excited more than anything else by the prospect. He had become so accustomed to being in what seemed a terminally unsatisfactory situation, that the prospect of making a break, doing something different and perhaps even proving successful at it, was quite heady. Danger, pain, death did not at that moment properly occur to him; he saw only the chance of a glorious bid for freedom.
‘I thought I would go into the army. They are asking for men between the ages of eighteen and forty-one. I actually don’t see how any selfrespecting chap could not go. I thought I would join Father’s old regiment. It would please him—’
‘I don’t really see that pleasing your father has a great deal to do with the conduct of war,’ said Helena.
‘Not primarily, of course. But if I can please him at the same time, that would be a bonus. God, you should hear Grandpapa talking about war. About how marvellous it is, how your blood gets up, how you can do things you could never normally do, how you forget to be afraid—’
‘I really think I’d rather not,’ said Helena.
Oliver was touched by Giles’s intention to go into his regiment. ‘Splendid,’ he said, ‘well, I’m sure they’ll be pleased to have you. I won’t say I wish I could go with you, but if I was twenty years younger—’
‘You’d be coming home from the last war,’ said Giles soberly. ‘Isn’t that a fearful thought? Only twenty years ago, we were fighting Germany. Or rather had conquered it.’
‘Yes, indeed. Not the war to end all wars after all. It’s appalling, I do agree. But what else could be done? He’s got to be stopped, this creature.’
‘Well, I shall enjoy helping to stop him,’ said Giles.
‘Try and stop me,’ said Jay. He grinned at his mother; she was white, her fists gripping the arms of her chair, her eyes huge and dark in her thin face. But she said nothing: even at this sinister, absolute repetition of Jago’s own words. It was as if Jay had heard them himself.
‘My father was off with the first wave, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, Jay, he was. And—’ She stopped.
‘Yes, I know. And killed very early on. That’s no reason to suppose I will be, Mum. I’ll be fine. Lucky Lytton they call me, you know.’
‘I – didn’t,’ said LM faintly.
‘I don’t think I can bear this,’ said Celia. She was very pale, trembling violently; she sat down next to Oliver’s wheelchair and put her hand in his.
‘What’s that, my dear?’
‘What’s that – Oliver, how can you be so – so calm about it?’
‘Oh – you mean Kit.’
‘Yes! I mean Kit. How can he go, how can we let him go—’
‘My darling, he’s nineteen. He’s the right age, he wants to go—’
‘The right age! He’s a child. His second year at Oxford. Why can’t he stay, finish that—’
‘Celia, you couldn’t expect that. Not really, not from Kit. Any more than from Jay. To stay out of it, safely continuing with their lives while their contemporaries risked theirs. It’s totally out of both their characters.’
‘You’re not – not pleased about it, I trust.’ Celia withdrew her hand, stood up, glaring at him.
‘In a way, yes. I am. I’m proud of him. Proud of his courage, of his desire to serve his country. Of course I’m afraid for him as well, any father would be. But I would be more afraid for h
im if he was a coward, hiding behind some academic smokescreen.’
‘But – the air force! It’s so dangerous, more than anything else.’
‘Nothing is more dangerous than anything else, my dear, in a war,’ said Oliver gently. ‘It can even be quite dangerous staying at home.’
‘Boy, hallo. What are you doing here?’
Venetia looked at him; he was standing in the doorway of her office, looking slightly sheepish.
‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything important.’
‘No, no, of course not.’
‘Good. I wondered if you’d let me buy you lunch.’
‘Well—’ She hesitated. She had a lot to do and she’d come in late anyway. ‘What’s it about?’
‘It’s about my joining the war effort. I wanted to discuss it with you.’
‘Your joining – Boy, do you mean you’re enlisting?’
‘Yes. I do. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think we all owe the old country whatever we can give it.’
‘Oh God.’ She felt sick suddenly. It was one thing divorcing Boy, telling him she didn’t want to live with him any more, another seeing him off to war and the possibility of – well, of not seeing him for a long time. ‘What did you think you might do? Which service would you go into?’
‘Well, the army obviously. It’s the only service as far as I’m concerned. I still remember my glory days in the corps at Eton. I’ll go into the Guards, I think. If they’ll have me.’
‘Oh, Boy, don’t be ridiculous, of course they’ll have you. But – are you sure about it? I mean—’
‘Yes, Venetia, I’m absolutely sure. But of course we need to discuss it, very carefully. I wanted you to be involved in my plans from the beginning.’
‘Who will look after the salesroom? And the gallery?’
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