Something Dangerous

by Penny Vincenzi

  Goodness, her head ached; she wondered if she could risk another aspirin. She looked at her watch: only an hour and a half since the last one. Maybe not: perhaps a tiny snooze would be a good idea. She would take the manuscript down to her mother’s office, lie down on one of her sofas and have forty winks. As Winston Churchill did each day, apparently. If it was good enough for him, it was certainly good enough for her. She lay down and closed her eyes. And fell asleep.

  There was nowhere she could possibly be, Celia thought, in a growing panic. Sebastian was still at Ashingham, so was Adele. Giles had come back – maybe she was with them.

  But no, their maid said, Mr and Mrs Lytton were with the Duffield Browns for the day, down in the country.

  ‘In Surrey, do you mean?’

  ‘Yes, Lady Celia.’

  ‘That is not the country,’ Celia said firmly and put the phone down. Even in her anxiety she felt she must make such an important matter clear.

  She tried phoning Lyttons; no reply. She held on for a long time, then asked the operator to try again. The phone rang on and on.

  Up to the coast of northern France, and thence across the Channel, following their now-familiar itinerary along the Thames towards London, came a vast fleet of German bombers. The Christmas peace was over.

  Venetia awoke with a jump to the siren, wailing through the still night, more alarming for the long spell of silence. And then following it, the dreadful, familiar roar. Increasing in volume; getting nearer.

  Her instinct was simply to get home; it couldn’t take long, there was always quite a delay between the first siren and the first bomb. Surely she could drive the short distance to Chelsea in that time.

  She went downstairs carefully (wouldn’t help to fall), and gingerly opened the door. And shut it again. They were everywhere, the planes; seemingly all round her, a great mass of sound. She looked at her watch; it was half past six.

  ‘Right, Venetia,’ she said aloud to herself, fighting down the panic, ‘down into the cellar. That’s the sensible thing. And take the manuscript with you.’

  There were torches down there; the raid probably wouldn’t last long, she could finish the manuscript and then leave. God, her back hurt.

  She remembered suddenly that she had left her mother’s papers in the car; damn. Should she get them? No, probably not. Her car might be – God, that was close. It had started. Keep calm, Venetia. Keep calm. The cellar is safe.

  Nothing could happen to her there; even if the building was hit. It was like a fort down there. Fort Lytton, her father had called it. Grandpa Edgar had even reinforced with steel where the huge safe was kept, beneath the stairs, so great was his fear of a fire. They had sheltered there several times over the past few months; her father had always been so calm, smiling at her, telling her this was nothing, she should have been in the trenches. It had seemed very boring at the time; she longed to have him there now, boring her.

  She went down the narrow stone steps. God it was difficult with her huge stomach. And this awful backache . . . oh, it hurt. Another aspirin would be all right now, surely. She felt her face screwing up involuntarily at the horrible taste. What she needed was something to take it away; she seemed to remember a boiled sweet in her bag. And she’d left that – damn, at the top of the steps, so she could hold the banister more firmly. She turned – and slipped. Not badly, but enough to throw her off balance. She fell forward, grabbing at the rail, and just saved herself. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself – and then looked down in horror as a rush of water appeared at her feet. And felt a harder, more purposeful stab at her back, which seemed to reach round to her stomach as well.

  ‘Oh God,’ she whispered, ‘oh dear God, no.’

  There was no doubt about it; she was in labour.

  ‘Sebastian, it’s Celia.’

  ‘Celia! Hallo!’

  ‘Have you heard from Venetia?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I’ll ask. Just wait a moment.’

  He came back. ‘Sorry. She hasn’t rung. Why, have you lost her?’

  ‘I’m very much afraid we have,’ said Celia. And she started trying to telephone the local fire wardens. Not surprisingly there was no answer.

  Afterwards, everyone was shocked at how completely they had been taken unawares. It was partly because it was Sunday of course, and a Christmas one at that; the city was silent, the exhausted ARP wardens and fireworkers still enjoying the peace. There were one thousand, five hundred fires in the City that night; there were reports that they could be seen sixty miles away.

  Certainly, even quite early in the raid, the sky was red as blood and the fires could be seen from the Chelsea Embankment, where Lady Celia Lytton was loading her cook’s bicycle into the Rolls, reasoning that it must have a little petrol and would go some of the way and when it stopped she could start cycling. She borrowed Brunson’s tin hat, which he wore for his Home Guard patrols, told him to sit with Oliver and set off to rescue her daughter.

  She had a fairly clear idea of what must have happened; for one reason or another, Venetia had stayed too long at Lyttons and was now trapped. Hopefully she was in the cellar; but she could be trapped there for the night and she was extremely pregnant. She simply couldn’t be left.

  The petrol gauge was blessedly pessimistic; Celia had reached Ludgate Hill before the car juddered to a halt. She didn’t waste any time trying to re-start it; she pulled the bike out, put on the tin hat and started pedalling furiously towards St Paul’s, the wonderfully solid shape of its dome outlined against the sky. She was overtaken constantly by fire engines; she could see the searchlights now, scouring the sky. The noise was deafening, from the planes, from the bombs, from the great guns firing; there were fires ahead of her in the City now, appearing endlessly, like monstrous kindling in a fireplace; she was desperate for breath, gasping in the awful air, hot, smoky, somehow gritty. Afterwards she said she supposed she must have been frightened, but she had no consciousness of it, her mind absolutely focused on where she was going, on finding Venetia, on doing both with the utmost speed.

  Venetia made herself as comfortable as she could in Grandpa Edgar’s vault. She must not panic. She absolutely must not. A few contractions didn’t mean a baby. Labour took hours, endless hours; when the raid was over, she could still get herself home. Or to hospital.

  Only – oh God, that hurt. She did always forget how much. The wrenching, tugging, pulling pain. And it didn’t actually seem very long since the last one. Supposing – no, Venetia, don’t suppose. Just stay calm. And – yes, she could time the contractions. That would give her something to do at least. Something else to think about . . .

  As Celia reached Paternoster Square, a bomb dropped seemingly just behind St Paul’s; in fact it was a mile away, just north of the Bank of England, but she felt the ground shudder, watched the sky light up. She could see Paternoster Row now, see Lytton House; her heart felt quite literally as if it were bursting.

  She felt the bike vibrating, realised she had not just one but two punctures – presumably the heat and the grit – saw a bomb much much nearer, on the far side of St Paul’s. Not St Paul’s, please God, not St Paul’s, that was the safeguard, it had become London’s talisman, a great symbol, surviving with them; while it stood, they all felt in some strange way undefeated. The great dome stood steady.

  Only ten minutes since the last one. Ten minutes. That was when the doctor always said stupid things like ‘coming along nicely now’. It wasn’t just the growing speed of them, either, it was the length. These weren’t little twinges, curls of pain, they were quite strong breakers; she could feel them tugging, heaving in her. This was nasty. This really was quite a nasty situation.

  Better now. She took a deep breath, relaxed. She must try to keep calm. If the worst came to the worst, she would need all her wits about her. But – delivering her own baby. With no help. Could she really do that? Was it even possible?

  Celia started to run; as fast as she could. And yes, yes
, there was Venetia’s car, the jaunty little bright red Austin Seven that had been the twins’ eighteenth birthday present and that Venetia still drove everywhere in; she was inside, then, and safe; the building, the whole street indeed, were still standing. Celia found herself, almost to her irritation, sending a brief prayer to the Almighty, who did not seem generally to be greatly concerned with people’s safety. But Venetia was safe; she could be with her in minutes. And then she realised she did not have the key.

  It sounded like the bell: the great, pealing bell by the front door which was hardly ever rung. Venetia, seriously frightened now, so close was the noise, huddled in her corner in the cellar, in Grandpa Edgar’s vault, clutching Grace and Favour as if it in some way offered her protection against the danger, and bracing herself for the next wave of pain (due in about one minute if she was right), decided she could only ignore it. To go upstairs now, with London falling around her would be absolute folly; and besides, who could it be, who could possibly be ringing the bell? Some passing warden, checking that there was no one there, perhaps? Surely not? That happened after the bombs, in the awful, crumbling, collapsing aftermath; not while they were falling.

  It came again; and then again. Endlessly, persistently, on and on. She looked up at the steps warily; should she go? Risk leaving her fortress? No. She shouldn’t. All the advice was against it. Of course all the advice was also against driving round London in a small car at dusk during the London Blitz.

  ‘Come on, Venetia, come on.’

  What was she doing, couldn’t she hear her, was she in some way incapacitated, had she fallen? Or had she gone? Had someone rescued her already? Maybe that was the explanation, maybe she shouldn’t stay here, risking her own life, just take Venetia’s car, she had the key, and drive out of this hell. But – not just yet. Keep ringing the bell a while, Celia, just keep doing it.

  She looked behind her; the whole of London, from every side, seemed alight. It was like a great continuous wall of flame, a firestorm. She could feel the heat now, beating at her out of the air; a fire engine went past her, splashing her with the water from the puddles. That was when she discovered they were hot.

  The bell again. Someone must think she might be in there. But who? Who knew? And who would be brave enough and insane enough to try and find her? No one; no one at all. And then suddenly she did know: at once and with a rush of intense gratitude and love. She stood up quickly and another contraction hit her, so strong, so violent that she bent double with it, gasped with the pain. She couldn’t move until it was over: it was impossible. She stood there, clutching the stair rail, enduring it, willing it to pass. And praying that the ringing wouldn’t stop.

  She must have gone, thought Celia. She must. Perhaps someone from the fire service had rescued her. She had been ringing the bell for over five minutes now. There was no way, frightened and desperate as she must be, that Venetia would not have come to the door. She would just have to pray she was somewhere safe, and that she could get back before the whole of London went up. Now where was Venetia’s key? On her ring with the front door key. Which was – yes, here. Good. She looked at the little car, almost as frail a protection as Cook’s bicycle, thanked God for her tin hat and was just going to run for it, when there was another bomb, horribly close. Celia huddled into Lyttons’ doorway and, as she often did in times of great difficulty, started to recite A. A. Milne’s ‘The King’s Breakfast’. She could never remember now quite why, except that it was quite long and didn’t seem to end. But as soon as that last explosion, so horribly close, had settled, she would go.

  Pain easing now: thank God. Venetia took a deep breath, and hauled herself up the stairs. She got to the top, and then half ran across the tiled ground floor, heedless now of the danger of slipping. She reached the door, fell against it and was just able to open it before collapsing, confused, against her mother. Who looked at her almost crossly and said, ‘What on earth took you so long?’

  Afterwards, she could see it was the stuff farce was made of; her mother standing there, silhouetted against the flames, the over-large tin hat slipping over her grimed face, still wearing a narrow black coat from Worth and her high-heeled shoes, irritable with her for not answering the door more quickly, as if she had been arriving for a tea party. At the time she could only feel relief, happiness and the absolute childish security of being with the one person in the world who could put things right, create order out of chaos, keep danger at bay. And then the pain hit her again, so soon, too soon, and she said through it, through clenched teeth, ‘I’m in labour.’

  ‘Well come along,’ said her mother, her voice very calm, taking her elbow, supporting her, helping her out towards the steps, ‘we must be quick.’

  ‘No,’ Venetia said, even in her confusion and pain remembering, ‘we must get Grace and Favour, it’s down there still, in the vault, where I was sitting.’

  ‘Get in the car,’ Celia said. ‘I’ll get it. Only be careful, it’s dreadful out there. Even St Paul’s looks as if it might go at last.’

  Neither of them could recall a great deal of the dreadful first stage of that journey; the bombs seemed to surround them, the heat beating at the windows, the explosions of fire lighting the sky in great terrifying sheets.

  Venetia only spoke once: huddled into her seat, dreading another pain, she suddenly saw a great crater in the road, and only just in time to shout a warning at her mother who seemed somehow to have failed to see it. Even then the car lurched terrifyingly, seemed ready to tip over, but a second yank at the wheel righted it.

  ‘Close,’ was all Celia said.

  She was astonishingly calm; even when a fire in front of them and one to the side apparently barred further progress; she backed up a few yards, swerved down an alley to the left, hardly wide enough to take the car. ‘No entry that was,’ she said as they reached the end of it, and smiled at Venetia. ‘Hope we don’t get prosecuted.’

  They turned left at the bottom of Ludgate Hill; the Rolls was still there, oddly defiant.

  ‘We can’t leave it there,’ said Venetia, finding her voice again, ‘someone might steal it.’

  ‘They can’t,’ said Celia, ‘it’s out of petrol.’

  They reached the Embankment; the fires were mostly behind them now, the river on their left absurdly familiar and comforting. Then a huge explosion hit some buildings across Blackfriars Bridge; they felt the shock of it.

  ‘Christ,’ said Celia conversationally. Venetia stared at her; she had never heard her swear.

  By the time they reached Parliament Square, they were feeling safer. ‘Worst over I think,’ said Celia.

  ‘Don’t tempt providence.’

  ‘I think providence has long since yielded to temptation. You all right?’

  Venetia nodded, then, ‘Oh, God. Oh God. Another one. Can we get to the nursing home?’

  Celia looked at her. ‘In Harley Street? Through all this? I think we’re better off getting home.’

  They finally pulled up outside Cheyne Walk, looked up at its familiar shape in mild astonishment.

  ‘We made it,’ said Celia.

  ‘Yes.’ Venetia threw her head back, looked at her mother. ‘Thank you so much,’ she said simply.

  ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘Coming to get me.’

  ‘Oh don’t be absurd,’ said Celia, ‘and anyway, it was the manuscript I really wanted. Now come along, quickly, can you get inside?’

  ‘Of course. Only you’d better get Mr Bradshaw pretty damn quick. I wonder if he’s ever delivered a baby in a cellar?’

  ‘Sebastian?’

  ‘Celia! Thank God. I’ve been so desperately worried. I was about to set out for London myself.’

  ‘Extremely stupid of you,’ said Celia coolly, ‘you’d have very likely been killed.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘Well – I wasn’t. We weren’t, I should say. And the worst’s over I think. With the raids, I mean.’

  ‘What happened?�
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  She started to tell him.

  ‘You are extraordinary,’ he said, ‘really extraordinary. Cycling through all that.’

  ‘Sebastian, I had to,’ she said, sounding half surprised. ‘Venetia was in danger. You know one would do anything for one’s child.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said quietly, ‘yes, of course I do.’ And then added, ‘Kit’s been very worried. He got wind of it.’

  ‘Tell him we’re safe. And Adele and Mama. Now I must go, poor Venetia’s in labour.’

  ‘What! Is she all right? Thank God you got her.’

  ‘She’s fine. Or will be. Fairly hard going at the moment. Old Dr Perring is with her, her obstetrician’s away, wretched man. Best not tell the others yet. Adele will only fret more.’

  ‘All right. But let us know, won’t you, when you – when she—’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thank you for telephoning. And Celia – you do – know. Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do know.’

  The Warwick children were summoned to their great grandmother’s sitting room before breakfast the next morning. They stood in a line, looking at her, their eyes apprehensive. Such confrontations usually meant trouble.