Something Dangerous

by Penny Vincenzi

  But ‘You have a baby brother,’ she said, beaming at them, ‘born last night. Your mother is very well. So is he. And before you ask, you can’t go and see them. But your mother will be down here in a week or two.’

  Amy promptly burst into tears.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Amy, I know you’re missing her, but she can’t travel down here, with a new baby.’

  ‘I’m not crying because I miss her. I’m crying because I wanted a sister,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know what to call him,’ said Venetia, smiling at her mother over the dark head of her new baby, delivered just as the last bomber left London and headed back to Munich.

  ‘I do. I’ve just been looking it up in our names dictionary. Fergal. I like that. Fergal Warwick. Nice ring to it.’

  ‘Well – it’s all right, I suppose. But if you want it,’ she added, ‘you should have it. I think I owe you a name at least.’

  ‘I do want it. It’s Gaelic. And it means valorous man. He might or might not turn out to be valorous, but his mother and grandmother certainly are. Well done, Venetia. You were jolly brave.’

  ‘Was I?’ She sounded vague. ‘Good. God, it hurts, doesn’t it? Every time. And I’ve never had one without any gas before.’

  Dr Perring had had no such luxuries with him; and he had agreed Venetia was safer having the baby at home than trying to get to a possibly fire-bombed nursing home.

  ‘When I had Giles there was no such thing,’ said Celia, ‘and he took thirty-six hours to be born.’

  ‘How ghastly.’

  ‘Yes, it was rather. My mother got me through it. She just kept telling me it would be over. You know that’s one of her mottoes. And whenever I so much as groaned she told me it was common. She was right of course. On both counts.’

  ‘I think I sounded a bit common at times last night,’ said Venetia, and giggled.

  ‘Once or twice. Not bad, though.’ Celia looked at the baby. ‘He looks just like Boy,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I suppose he does.’

  ‘So – when are you going to tell him? Boy, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, Mummy, I don’t know. Never, probably. Let’s not think about it.’

  ‘Yes, well there’s certainly no rush,’ said Celia soberly.

  The devastation in the City next morning was dreadful; and many of the fires were still burning, it had not been possible to put them out. The reason was very simple: there had been too little water. The Thames was very low, the fireboats couldn’t manoeuvre near the site of the fires, and the pumps were out of range of the water. So they had to burn out; hour after hour. Twice, Fire Brigade control centres had to be abandoned: the staff had escaped through the cellar network under the gutted buildings.

  St Paul’s was still standing, brooding over the devastation around it; twenty-eight incendiaries had hit it, one had even lodged halfway into the outer shell of the dome and began to melt the lead; then suddenly it fell outwards on to the parapet and burned out. Yet again it seemed inviolable.

  The Bank of England survived too; and so did the Faraday building, the Cabinet’s private refuge, although the flames were so close at one point that the Army contemplated blowing up the adjoining buildings to protect it. It proved unnecessary.

  Countless other buildings did go, including eight Wren churches, the Guildhall was badly damaged and the Port of London reduced to a quarter of its capacity. Paternoster Row had become a smoking, charred ruin.

  ‘It’s gone, Oliver,’ Celia said gently, taking his hand. ‘I’m so sorry.’ He had heard of the fire, had expected the worse; just the same, he sat staring at her, clearly shocked.

  ‘Have you seen it?’

  ‘No. I tried, but the police have completely cordoned it off. But I met Hubert Wilson – you know?’

  ‘Oh, from the City bookshop?’

  ‘Yes. He’d managed to get through. God knows how. He said it was unbelievable the devastation. Not just us. Every building, reduced to – well, to shells. Gutted shells. Longmans, Nelson, Hutchinson – and Collins and Eyre & Spottiswoode, the list is endless. Apparently Paternoster Square is just rubble, the only thing recognisable is a pillar box. And even that below ground level.’

  ‘Even the basements?’

  ‘Even Grandpa Edgar’s fortress. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘So – we’ve lost everything.’

  ‘I’m afraid so. The safe may have survived. We won’t know for days, until people can really get in there. It’s still red-hot in places, you see.’

  ‘I see.’ He was silent; contemplating the end of Lytton House, the end of the building which had been the centre of their lives for so long. She could see how much it hurt him, that loss; it was agonising, deeply personal, the beautiful building which had shaped his own history, which old Edgar had bought and fashioned into something entirely special and unique and then bequeathed to him. She watched him remembering, knew what many of those memories were, his own early struggles and triumphs, her own introduction to Lyttons, his office and indeed hers where so much had been discovered and fought over and celebrated and mourned. The lovely entrance hall, the great door, the fine staircase, the precious library, the priceless first editions, the elaborate original artwork, the superb bindings – all gone, senselessly and wantonly destroyed by a madman.

  He sighed, a heavy, desperate sound, almost a choke. He looked at her, and she saw his eyes were filled with tears. And then he spoke very slowly, his voice suddenly stronger.

  ‘It doesn’t really matter so very much,’ he said, ‘I might have lost you too.’

  CHAPTER 33

  On a good day Adele looked as if she were in the throes of a serious illness; on a bad one, she looked as if she would never recover.

  The excited, triumphant girl who had arrived home had become a distraught wraith, wandering about Ashingham all day and much of the night, her eyes huge and haunted in her white face. She was frequently in tears, she didn’t eat, indeed she hardly did anything at all, she didn’t read, she didn’t talk to anyone unless she had to, and although she helped in the house when asked, it was in a dilatory, listless way, like an obedient, browbeaten child.

  She still cared, and most tenderly, for her children, and indeed she had developed such an acute anxiety over them, that if one was missing from her side even for five minutes she became dreadfully upset, crying and calling for them, tears streaming down her face. No one so much as took them out on to the terrace or up the front drive without telling her, and even then they risked her wrath: ‘They have to be with me,’ she would say fiercely, grabbing Noni’s hand, picking up Lucas, holding him to her as if he had been threatened with violence. ‘I don’t want them separated from me.’

  She felt desperately tired all the time; so exhausted, so achingly, throbbingly weary, not just physically but emotionally, that the effort each day of getting up and dressing herself and her children was so great she would often have to lie down and rest for half an hour or more afterwards, and again after giving them their lunch, and yet again after taking them out for the brief walks that were their only visit to the outside world.

  She felt at her best when she was crying; released from the struggle to be brave, to make anything but the worst of her situation. She would set aside time each day to weep, looking forward to it rather as if she were about to have a meal or a glass of wine, and would abandon herself to the luxury of the release of quiet but violent sobbing, lying on her bed, her head buried in her arms, often holding Noni and Lucas to her as she did so. Afterwards, she would feel briefly better, calm and almost cleansed; freed for a while from the thought of Luc hating her, for taking his children from him. She often wondered what he would have done if there had not been a war on, if he had been able to come after her; would he have taken them back, robbed her as she had robbed him, sought to remove her from their lives as she had removed him? And then it would start again, the churning, soaring guilt and misery and remorse that left her so absolutely confused and wretched. And terribl
y, terribly frightened at what she had done.

  Cedric Russell had been away for Christmas and the New Year at a country house party given by his latest boyfriend, the artist Bertram Cullingford. They had met at the theatre one night on a rare visit by Cullingford to London, very early in the war; he was, at forty, a little older than Cedric could have wished, but he was handsome, charming and extremely civilised and after all, Cedric told himself, if he had been younger he would have been at the front. Cedric himself had avoided the call up; to his great relief and rather illogical joy, it had been discovered he had a weak heart – almost certainly caused, the MO had told him, by a serious attack of scarlet fever in his childhood, and he was therefore not fit for active service.

  There was also the little matter of Cedric’s sexual ambivalence; despite arriving at the call-up centre wearing one of his father’s old tweed suits, his curls slicked down with brylcreem, his voice and his mannerisms made it fairly clear that he was not quite what the army was at ease with; the Conscription Sergeant was greatly relieved by the news of the weak heart.

  Cedric had wanted, nonetheless, to do his bit and found work instead as a porter and ward orderly in a large East End hospital, filled mostly with casualties of the Blitz; slightly to his surprise he enjoyed it. The patients all loved him, he cheered them up, sitting on their beds and chatting away, telling them jokes, and the young nurses thought he was wonderful, giving them advice as he did on their make-up and hairstyles and their love lives; the Sisters and Matron took a rather different view, but since he was very good at his job (chatting and time-wasting apart) and undoubtedly did a lot for ward morale, they put up with him.

  ‘Just the same,’ he confided in Cullingford, ‘not quite what one has been used to. The food! Too awful. And of course one never sees anything stylish from one week to the next. Except perhaps for the nurses’ caps: rather lovely, they are, I tried one on last week, it quite suited me.’

  They had had a very good Christmas break, in Cullingford’s country house in Wiltshire, but Cedric had had to report back on duty at 6 a.m. on 3 January – ‘and besides, that dreadful raid the night before last, it will all be quite awful, so many casualties’ and he also wanted, he told Cullingford, a little bit of time on his own.

  ‘My flat is in a fearful state, I can’t get anyone to clean it, and I do find dust so grindingly depressing. And there’s such a lot of it about, with all the bombs.’

  Cullingford had a neighbour who was a major in the marines and who had some petrol; he agreed rather unwillingly to drive Cedric up to Chelsea where he lived in a studio just off Milborne Grove and belonged to the large set of actors and artists who frequented such places as the Artists’ Café in the Fulham Road and the famous cake shop there, and who continued to make visits to Soho and Sadlers Wells as if there was nothing more to worry about than getting sugar in their coffee and a good seat in the gods. Life was indeed, as Cedric often said, one long party. Perversely for one so fastidious, he also adored nights in the shelter and was to be found leading sing-songs and telling ghost stories far into the night.

  That night when he walked into his flat, a note had been pushed under the door. It was from a girl called Miranda Bennett, a fashion editor on Style magazine: ‘Tried to get you at Bertie’s to no effect. Obviously much too busy to hear the phone! Give me a ring: something a bit odd.’

  Intrigued, Cedric telephoned her. ‘The most extraordinary thing,’ she said, ‘a package arrived on Christmas Eve from Paris.’

  ‘From Paris! But how could it? Was it from Philippe, is he all right, how—’

  ‘He was all right – then. Don’t know about now. The point is, Cedric, it’s taken six months to get here, can you imagine. It went via New York, and God knows where else. Anyway, wonderful pictures of Paris in the days before the Germans arrived, one of a farmer on the Champs-Élysées with a flock of sheep. And empty streets, completely empty of cars. Just so strange.’

  ‘Well, I’d adore to see them, darling, but why are you ringing me? Unless it’s to tell me you have a love letter from Philippe or—’

  ‘No I don’t. But there’s something else. Why don’t you come round here actually, have a drink, I’ve got some horrible sherry Mummy gave me.’

  ‘What, to Redcliffe Gardens? Darling, no thank you, I’ve had the most exhausting journey up from Wiltshire, with a desperately dull man who clearly thought I was going to leap on him and start tearing off his horribly scratchy trousers. As if one would. Anyway, what is it?’

  ‘If you’ll just be quiet for one minute, Cedric,’ said Miranda Bennett, ‘I’ll tell you.’

  Cedric wondered whether he should phone Adele; she would be so thrilled, poor darling. She had been so down when he had last seen her, on a rare trip to London in October, so fearful for what might have happened to Luc, so wracked with guilt at her departure from him. He had tried to persuade her to do some work for him, but she had looked at him as if he had suggested she took to the streets of Soho and said it was absolutely out of the question. It would be wonderful to be able to give her some good news. On the other hand, he didn’t have her number at her grandmother’s; which meant ringing her dragon of a mother and asking her for it. Maybe he would wait until tomorrow; or – damn. Sirens. Air raid. Could he be bothered to go down to the shelter? He really didn’t think he could. He was so tired and he had a long day in front of him. They were still busy with the East End, they weren’t going to bother with Chelsea. No, he’d stay here, and if it got really bad he’d get into the Anderson shelter under the stairs that Bertram had insisted upon. He’d be all right. He’d be fine . . .

  Adele had made a decision; she was going to go away. She wasn’t sure where, but she was finding life at Ashingham more unbearable every day, all those noisy, cheerful little boys, the Warwick children with their irrepressible high spirits always trying to include Lucas and Noni in their games; and then there were so many strangers coming to the house all the time, that was dangerous for the children, not to mention Lord Beckenham’s endless drilling of his troops, which was a huge worry because it fascinated little Lucas so much and he wanted to join in.

  Christmas had been so unbearable; even Venetia didn’t seem properly to understand how she felt. She had been looking forward to her return with the new baby, but now she wasn’t so sure. Venetia was so busy with her new role at Lyttons and so obsessed with what she was going to tell Boy and when, and she kept trying to distract Adele from her own troubles, as she called them, and Adele didn’t want that, she only felt safe when she was absolutely concentrating on them.

  Quiet was what she wanted: absolute quiet. Somewhere safe, not only from the Germans but from other people. She had spent hours poring over her grandfather’s map and decided that Somerset looked like a good idea. It wasn’t too far, and the journey would thus not require a great deal of petrol – she had been saving her coupons carefully in any case – there were hardly any large towns, so bombing was not a risk, and she could settle down quietly with the children, probably rent a cottage or something, and find some peace. Of course she would leave a note, so that no one would worry about her; only without saying where she was going.

  Having formed her plan she wanted to go quickly; it had snowed over Christmas but the thaw was setting in now, the roads were perfectly safe for driving. She decided to leave on the Saturday: Saturday, 4 January. It was the busiest day, with tradesmen arriving all the time, the battalion’s major drill of the week and the little boys all over the place, especially in the afternoon when there were no lessons. If anyone noticed her leaving, which was unlikely, she could just say she was going to the village to get a few things from the shop. It would be really easy. And by Saturday evening, they would be gone, away from the noise and the chaos and the intrusion, and no one would have the faintest idea where she was . . .

  Planning the whole thing had quite cheered her up; the only thing was that surreptitiously getting together her belongings and stashing them into the little borrow
ed car in the barn in the evenings reminded her so horribly of doing exactly the same thing in Paris. Don’t think about that, Adele; just do it.

  You mustn’t move. He did know that. If you did, you risked bringing down what was left of the building on you. You just waited. As still as you could. He seemed to be all right; it was very dark, but then it was the middle of the night. And the planes had gone, the noise had stopped. So it wasn’t going to get any worse. It was just a matter of time. Of waiting for the morning; or for the sound of the wardens picking their way through the rubble, calling out ‘is anyone there?’

  He had seen that enough; as he had walked through the shattered streets on his way to work. Very often it was an animal you heard first, usually a cat; cats always got out alive. They could wriggle through anything, the tiniest crack. Alerting people to their owners buried, hopefully alive, far below them. Well, he hadn’t got a cat; but he had a loud voice. He would make himself heard, when they came looking. And in the morning, he would be got out safely. It was just a question of getting through the night. He wasn’t even hurt: as far as he could make out. The worst was definitely over. Definitely.

  And then he could ring Adele. And give her the good news. Perhaps even take her the letter himself. Only he wouldn’t have time. Well, he would persuade her to come up and get it. It would be wonderful to see her face when he handed it to her. Yes, he would take her to the Café Royal and they would have the most wonderful evening . . .

  That thought got Cedric through several very long and uncomfortable hours.

  Adele felt almost cheerful all that Friday, as she contemplated her escape. It was so very good to have something to think about, something to do. She even missed out her after-lunch crying session, and took the children down to the stables to see the horses instead. Billy greeted her cheerfully.