Something Dangerous

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘Good. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. Now, are you quite sure there’s nothing else worrying you?’

  ‘Mummy, I’m absolutely sure.’

  But there was.

  Kit had been given ten days’ leave. Things had been a bit quiet since Dunkirk; there were still patrols of course, and the escort duties, but everyone seemed to be waiting for something. It was – odd. The calm before a storm. And there must be a storm soon. Especially with Paris being invaded.

  That was a nightmare; he could only hope and pray that Adele was all right. If only she’d come home when it had been possible: if only. But there’d been that stupid row with their mother over her appalling Fascist friends, and – well, it hadn’t been the same since. She must be in danger, she was English, she was the enemy. And besides, Luc was Jewish. Kit didn’t give much for his chances. Not if Hitler was taking over Paris. As he was.

  Anyway: however worried he was about everyone else, he was off to Scotland. To see Catriona. It was a glorious prospect.

  ‘Apparently he’s got some girlfriend up there,’ said Celia. Her voice was ice cold. ‘Extraordinary.’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ said Oliver mildly, ‘he’s twenty, he’s a very red-blooded young chap, I would think it extraordinary if he didn’t have a girlfriend.’

  ‘Oliver, he’s too young. Far too young. I can only trust it’s not serious. Or rather, that he doesn’t think it’s serious. I’m sure she’s quite dreadful.’

  ‘Now why should she be dreadful?’

  ‘She’s training to be a nurse. Not just for the war, but as a career. Not the sort of girl we’d want Kit to be mixed up with.’

  ‘Celia, really! Why ever not?’

  ‘Well – it’s such a worthy career. So dull. And so – second-rate. Why not fly higher, why not be a doctor?’

  ‘My dear, you really do talk the most appalling nonsense,’ said Oliver, ‘and I might remind you that you were only eighteen when we met. I hope you aren’t suggesting that was all a bit of youthful folly.’

  The family was all gathered round the lunch table at Ashingham on Saturday 15 June when the news came. Venetia, pale and tired, had insisted on going down to see her children. Sebastian said he would go with her to see Izzie and offered to drive her down. He had always been an appallingly dangerous driver; with his deteriorating eyesight, he was lethal. Venetia, who was in the process of moving into Cheyne Walk and disbanding her household, said she would get her chauffeur to drive them. ‘He’s joining up on Monday, but we might as well get our pound of flesh out of him. Then you can sleep on the way home, Sebastian. You know you always have too much of Grandpapa’s port.’

  Celia said she would join them; ‘Oliver, you can stay here. I’ll get Barty to come and sit with you. It’s Brunson’s afternoon off. You can’t be left alone, the raids might start.’

  ‘You don’t think Barty might have something better to do?’ said Oliver.

  ‘Of course not. Why ever should she?’

  But Barty said with unaccustomed selfishness that if they were all going to Ashingham she would like to join them ‘and see Billy. I haven’t set eyes on him since Christmas, and I’m longing to meet his Joan.’

  ‘You could surely go another time,’ said Celia coldly, but Barty said firmly that it seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

  So in the end, Oliver was bundled, protesting, into the car and driven down as well.

  Lunch was noisy: the Warwick children, never well disciplined, were over-excited at seeing their mother and at showing off their new country skills. ‘I can skin a rabbit,’ said Henry proudly, ‘it’ll come in jolly useful for the siege.’

  ‘And I can bake a hedgehog,’ said Roo, ‘Great-grandpa showed me. You do it in clay. They taste really delicious, he says.’

  Elspeth was proving as plucky and talented a rider as her mother: ‘Have her out with the hounds in the autumn,’ said Lady Beckenham proudly, watching her taking the fences in the paddock, her small face a study in fierce concentration. And even little Amy insisted on their going to admire her dam: a small but impenetrable barrier to the stream below the home meadow. As a result, the water had formed a deep muddy pool below it and a new tributary; she was flushed with pride.

  ‘Great-grandpa says when the Germans come, we can drown them in my pond. Or the nuns.’

  It was left to Izzie to explain about the nuns.

  As a result of all this, lunch was very late; Lord Beckenham came in looking very agitated.

  ‘Just been listening to the news. The Germans are getting to work in Paris. Already arresting people, confiscating radios and so on, and they’re bombing those poor devils on the roads down to the Loire, the injured are lining the roads apparently, and they’re blowing up bridges. I wish I was there, could show them a thing or two—’

  ‘Oh Papa, don’t,’ said Celia. She had turned very pale. ‘I’m glad you’re not there. Tell me – tell me more about Paris.’

  ‘Well, the government have left, apparently. Bloody cowards. Typical. Just abandoned their people in Paris. And the army’s in full retreat. Just running away, can you believe it. De Gaulle’s in London with Churchill. God knows what’s going on. Rommel’s advancing on Cherbourg and—’

  ‘Yes, but – what else did it say about Paris?’

  ‘Not a lot. I told you. There’s talk of looting Jewish property, and a lot of Americans are being questioned but—’

  A strange sound cut through his voice: it was Venetia, her voice loud, almost a scream. ‘Stop it. Just stop it. They can’t be, not yet. It’s out of the question, how would they know where the Jewish people were, they can’t, or the Americans either. It’s obviously just rumour, stupid ill-informed rumour—’

  ‘Fraid not, Venetia, it was the BBC.’

  ‘It could still be rumour. It must be, I won’t listen to this nonsense—’

  The children all stared at her, their eyes large; Elspeth began to cry.

  ‘Venetia, do calm down,’ Celia’s voice was cold. ‘You’re upsetting the children.’

  ‘Don’t tell me to calm down!’ cried Venetia, turning on her. ‘Just don’t. If it wasn’t for you, you and your – your dreadful ideas and your ghastly friends, Adele would be home now, with us, instead of over there in danger of her life. What do you think will become of her, in Paris with the Nazis, she’ll be taken away, interned, probably has been already, we’ll never see her again. And it’s all your fault, yours, I—’

  Shepard, the Beckenhams’ extremely elderly butler, appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Not now, Shepard,’ said Lord Beckenham, clearly relieved nonetheless for the interruption, ‘not a good moment.’

  ‘But my lord—’

  ‘Shepard, what exactly is it?’ said Lady Beckenham impatiently. ‘If it’s luncheon, it can wait.’

  ‘It’s not luncheon, your ladyship. It’s a telephone message.’

  ‘Well that can wait as well. The vicar, no doubt, wanting to know how many boys will be at church tomorrow, why he can’t—’

  ‘It’s not the vicar, your ladyship. It’s Mr Brunson, telephoning from Cheyne Walk.’

  ‘Oh, how inconsiderate,’ said Celia, ‘he told me he was taking the afternoon off, now he’s bothering us with telephone messages. What was it about, this message, Shepard?’

  ‘It was about Miss Adele. Mr Brunson has had a call from France.’

  There was a very long, fierce silence; the entire room stared at him. Venetia, who had been standing up, shouting at her mother, sat down abruptly, glassy pale, put out her hand and grabbed Sebastian’s who was sitting next to her; Celia put her hands to her throat, swallowed hard.

  ‘What – what about Miss Adele?’ she said, and her voice was scarcely audible.

  ‘Is she – that is – tell me, Shepard, what—’

  ‘She’s in Bordeaux, your ladyship. She wanted to speak to you. She’s going to try to telephone here apparently, but it’s very difficult to get through. She’s all r
ight and she has the children with her, but—’ He paused, his old face moving oddly with some unreadable emotion; Venetia, assuming he was about to cry, stood up again, still gripping Sebastian’s hand.

  ‘But what, Shepard, it’s all right, you must tell us whatever it is, but what—’

  Shepard looked at her and, his face under control once more, addressed Lady Beckenham.

  ‘But she asked me to say, your ladyship, that she’s very sorry, she’s had to abandon your pram.’

  CHAPTER 30

  ‘It was like some kind of mirage,’ said Adele.

  ‘What was?’

  ‘The hotel. The one in Bordeaux. After the dreadful time on the road, being so frightened, the danger, the hardship and everything, it was bizarre. And I was filthy, absolutely filthy, you wouldn’t believe it—’

  ‘You’re not exactly in pristine condition now,’ said Venetia, smiling at her. She had driven down to Portsmouth to meet Adele and the children off the ship nine days after her extraordinary phone call.

  ‘This is nothing. I hadn’t washed, literally, for five days. Except in cold taps or village pumps. None of us had, had we Noni?’

  ‘Lucas’s bottom was disgusting,’ said Noni cheerfully. Her ordeal didn’t seem to have greatly affected her.

  ‘It was. Not too good now, terrible nappy rash.’

  ‘Nanny will see to that.’

  ‘Nanny! I’d forgotten such wonderful creatures existed. Venetia, you don’t know you’re alive!’

  ‘I know. But you are, thank God. Go on, finish your story. What was so bizarre?’

  ‘Well, being in the Splendide in Bordeaux. Everyone behaving as if nothing untoward was happening, all the reception rooms full of palms, great thick carpets, waiters rushing about with silver trays. They didn’t have a room, but they let me sit in the foyer, and use the telephone—’

  ‘And you got there in an ambulance?’

  ‘Yes. Well, from Tours. I got that far on my own.’

  ‘Oh Dell. You’re so brave,’ said Venetia helplessly.

  ‘No choice. Anyway, I wasn’t being very brave then, in Tours, I mean. I was crying, we all were, pushing Grandmama’s pram through the rain, absolute chaos, you can’t imagine, all the roads jammed, planes roaring overhead, I know now Churchill was actually arriving that day. Anyway, Lucas lost his cow—’

  ‘A cow! You had a cow with you?’

  ‘A toy one. A real one would have been long since stolen, I can tell you. Anyway, it was his lifeline. And Noni ran after it, didn’t you, angel?’

  ‘Yes, and I slipped, fell down and cut my knee—’

  ‘She didn’t just slip, she totally disappeared under a car and . . .’

  Adele had screamed; and gone on screaming. Even after the driver, who had been virtually stationary, had hauled Noni and the cow out, checked her for injury, the only visible one being a gash on her knee, bleeding profusely, and handed her to Adele.

  ‘She’s perfectly all right, Madame. But it could have been much worse. You should keep your children under control.’

  Adele stopped screaming. She looked at him. And then raised her hand and slapped his face.

  ‘You bastard,’ she shouted at him in English, ‘you arrogant, bloody bastard. How dare you tell me how I should control my children, how dare you, you arrogant bloody fool—’

  ‘And the irony of it was,’ she said laughing, ‘that if I hadn’t lost my temper, forgotten to be French – and I’d been so careful, thought I’d be safer that way – the girl driving the ambulance wouldn’t have heard me. It felt like some kind of a miracle, she leaned out and just said, “Are you English?” You have no idea how wonderful it was to hear an English voice.’

  They had taken her in, heaped her into their already overloaded ambulance – overladen not with injured soldiers, but redundant English nurses from a makeshift hospital in Alsace Lorraine.

  ‘But they couldn’t take the pram, I was so worried about it for some reason, Grandmama’s precious third-generation Silver Cross, the last I saw of it was an elderly couple leaping on it, piling their own possessions into it. Poor old things.’ She was silent. ‘I’ve seen so many dreadful things, Venetia, I’ll never forget it, any of it.’

  ‘Like—’

  ‘Oh, not now. Pas devant les enfants.’

  ‘Pourquoi pas, Maman?’

  ‘Oh, Noni. Sorry, angel, how silly of me. Here, come and sit on my knee in the front. Lucas isn’t going to wake up till we get to London. Poor little boy, he’s been so terribly upset.’

  ‘More than me,’ said Noni, ‘he kept crying and crying, didn’t he, Maman?’

  ‘Well, he’s very little. You’re almost grown up. She’s been so wonderful, Venetia, I can’t tell you. So good and brave and helpful.’

  Venetia smiled at her; at this beautiful, rather solemn little person she hardly knew.

  ‘How lovely for Mummy to have you.’

  ‘What I want now is to see Daddy. Is he here yet?’

  ‘Not – yet,’ said Venetia carefully. ‘But I’m sure we’ll hear from him soon.’

  ‘Good.’

  They drove on; Noni became sleepy, sucking her thumb, curled up on her mother’s lap. Adele smiled down at her.

  ‘Poor little thing. She’s had an awful time. They both have. God knows what harm it’s done them.’

  ‘Possibly not much. They’re very resilient, children.’

  ‘I know but – well, anyway. I’ll finish the story. The ambulance was going to Bordeaux too. It seemed so amazing sitting there, travelling at what seemed like high-speed down the road. We got there in twelve hours. Twelve hours! Unbelievable. It was taking me that to travel twelve miles. Anyway, we got there and I suddenly realised I had no idea what to do next. The girls were all going home courtesy of the Navy, but I had nothing arranged at all. Obviously. I’d just focused on getting there, couldn’t think further than that. And there was this place, teeming with people, all trying to get away. It was another nightmare.

  ‘The one thing I knew was I had a lot of money: I’d hardly spent any. So I got them to drop me near the centre of the town, and then asked someone where the best hotel was. And just walked in, head held high and asked to see the manager. You know how Mummy always says breeding shows. It seems to be true. I mean, there I was in my filthy frock with these two little urchins, and it was quite easy. I showed him my passport and told him I was Lady Celia Lytton’s daughter and that my grandfather was the Earl of Beckenham and he just believed me. He spoke English, he let me use the phone, and – well, I might still have been in trouble without Mummy’s friend Lord Arden. You know, she told me to ring him after I got through again?’

  ‘Yes. I’m extremely surprised you did,’ said Venetia briskly.

  ‘Why? Because he’s a Fascist? Venetia, when you’ve been through what I had, you’ll do anything. Anything. To survive. Believe me. It’s the one thing above all this whole thing has taught me.’

  ‘But – being one of Mosley’s best friends, knowing what they all said about Hitler—’

  ‘I know. But you just have to believe me. I just didn’t even think about any of it. He was English, he could help me. That was what mattered. At that moment.’

  ‘So – what did he do? He wasn’t there, was he?’

  ‘Yes. He’s got – had – a house there. All that lot do, Somerset Maugham, Daisy Fellowes, you know, the best-dressed woman in the world, the Windsors were actually there, at La Croe, their house in Nice, entertaining Maurice Chevalier, of all people. They’d suddenly realised they were trapped, and actually asked if they could have a battleship to get them home. Can you believe that? They were told no.

  ‘Anyway, Lord Arden was quite sweet, I must say, clearly adores Mummy. He was going home the next day on a boat, and he said he’d do what he could but he knew it was already terribly overbooked. They all were. There were even some English journalists trying to buy a boat of their own. Anyway, he invited me to dinner; I said I had the children with
me and he said bring them to his house, his housekeeper would look after them. So – I decided to go. And I went to one of the shops in the Cours de l’Intendance, that’s like Bond Street, they were all open still, selling wonderful clothes, and scent and chocolate and stuff. It was like another mirage, I just couldn’t believe it. After seeing people fighting over cups of water on the road. So I spent nearly all my money on the most divine dress and some new shoes, and when I got to Lord Arden’s place, I had a bath and bathed the children, God, it was heaven, and got all dressed up and off we went. Me still thinking I was hallucinating, I must say. We went to somewhere called the Chapon Fin, the Maxims of Bordeaux, and had dinner and Lord Arden said he’d arranged for the captain of the boat he was going on to come and have a drink with us. I mean, really sweet.’

  ‘Mmm—’ said Venetia. She looked at Adele doubtfully.

  ‘He arrived, he was revolting, fearfully smarmy, kept kissing my hand and everything. And he said he was désolé, he couldn’t possibly take us. Absolutely no room.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I slept with him,’ said Adele.

  She had had to share a cabin, a third-class cabin for two, with five other people; they had taken it in turns to use the beds. Adele had slept on the floor most of the way, so that the children could have her turn in the bed. She kept them out of the cabin as much as she could: partly for their sake, partly for the sake of her fellow travellers.

  Lord Arden had paid for her ticket; she told him she would pay him back.

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of accepting it,’ he had said, flicking an imaginary piece of dust off his exquisitely tailored linen suit. Even he had to share with two others; the linen suit looked considerably less exquisite at the end of the voyage.

  Theirs was one of the last ships to leave France; it was an endless journey, lasting nine days, zig-zagging all the way up to England. At first they were all afraid of shells and mines, but after a while they settled into an entirely false sense of security. Adele and Lord Arden talked a great deal, sitting out on deck when the sun shone, and in one of the desperately crowded bars – which quickly ran out of everything – when the weather was less nice. Chatting, not touching on any serious matters, gossiping about mutual friends, Celia, the state of Paris when Adele had left it, the state of London in the early spring when Lord Arden had last seen it. He had been charming, attentive, and fun; she could see why her mother liked him so much. No mention was made of Oswald Mosley, of his incarceration in Brixton Prison, or of Lady Mosley’s in Holloway. He had appeared perfectly unsurprised that she had managed to acquire a place on the boat; she presumed he must have realised how desperate she was and guessed that she would go to any lengths to achieve what she wanted.