Something Dangerous

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘I shall miss Izzie,’ he said, ‘pretty little thing she’s turning out to be, don’t you think?’

  Kit was silent; the usual pat on his knee followed.

  ‘Sorry. Anyway, she is, you can take my word for it. She’ll be breaking a few hearts in a year or two. Fancy a walk? I want to have a look at the trenches down by the barn. Come on, I need the company.’

  There was a sudden disturbance of the still morning as a herd of small boys went past them on their cross-country run; they waved and shouted at them both. Lord Beckenham waved his rifle back.

  ‘Lovely to have all these young ones about,’ he said, ‘cheers me up no end.’

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘Oh yes. I like children. Always have. So much common sense. Sometimes wonder if they wouldn’t make a better job of running the world than we do. Watch out, old chap, bit of rough ground ahead. Here, let me take your arm, just for this bit. We can steady one another. Old pins aren’t what they were. Oh, now there’s young Bill. Wedding coming up soon, isn’t it? Nice girl, very happy for him. He’s a splendid chap. Don’t know what we’d do without him.’

  ‘No,’ said Kit. And then greatly to his surprise heard himself say, ‘He asked me to make a speech at the wedding.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t really want to, of course but—’

  ‘Why not? You can still talk. And rather well, I should think.’

  ‘I – just don’t,’ said Kit, and he lapsed into silence.

  But he enjoyed the walk more than usual; and afterwards he sat down on the terrace in a spot sheltered from the wind and wondered why he felt just a very faint lifting of his depression. It wasn’t just Lord Beckenham’s company, or the pleasure, albeit limited, of sitting in the warmth of the sun: although he found the noise of the small boys shouting and laughing almost unbearable. It was something that had been said. What was it? Not about the speech – he really couldn’t face that, standing up, hearing people laughing dutifully at his jokes, unable to see their expressions, visualising the appalling sympathy and embarrassment. No, it was something else. What had it been?

  And then he remembered: this rather intriguing notion of a world run by children. For some reason that had seized his imagination. What would it actually be like? With children in charge of government, the law, education? What would they make of it, what would they do, what would they change? And how would they deal with the adults who had made such a hash of things? Banish them? Employ them? It was all rather – interesting. For some reason it stayed in his head, all day; occupying him, distracting him just occasionally from himself and his misery. It was a distinctly novel situation.

  ‘Page proofs,’ said Celia, placing them down on Oliver’s desk, ‘of Grace and Favour. They don’t look bad, in spite of that awful paper. And the tiny typeface of course.’

  ‘I don’t suppose the readers are likely to notice,’ said Oliver.

  ‘Of course they will. I don’t know why you persist in thinking that the only readers of this book will be the housemaid class, as you so charmingly call it.’

  ‘Because it’s housemaid’s stuff.’

  ‘Oh don’t be so pompous. Just thank your lucky stars that we didn’t lose the whole thing six months ago in the fire,’ said Celia. And then added, ‘You look tired. Why don’t you go home?’

  ‘I am tired. But I don’t want to go home. Where’s Mrs Gould? I’ve got a lot of letters to write. And is LM in her office?’

  ‘I think so. She looks worn out. It’ll be a very good thing when Venetia gets back. LM’s been landed with all her work, you know.’

  ‘I do find it so noisy here,’ said Oliver. He sighed. ‘It’s so – so frenetic. The street outside, I mean, not in the house.’

  ‘So you say at least once a week,’ said Celia. ‘Perhaps you’d like to find us a different office – in between commissioning books and writing letters.’

  ‘Oh don’t be absurd. I know it was very good of your parents to let us use it and at such short notice. That fact does not unfortunately make it an ideal location.’

  She ignored him and walked out of the room, thumbing through the proofs. They did look very good. The art department had had the text set in Times Roman, so that it looked as if it had come straight out of the author’s typewriter and had made a virtue of small-font size and narrow margins – designed to save paper – by presenting each page as if it were a notebook. It read so well: sharp, acutely observed, and with a slightly staccato style. There had been much agonising over the cover, which Celia had wanted to look like a rather small, leather-bound diary; the art department and Edgar Greene had looked for something grander, more in keeping with the content. It was still under discussion.

  She went into the room that was her office and that had been her mother’s sitting room and sank down at the makeshift desk. She was tired; terribly tired. She had forgotten how tiring war was above all else: the perpetual anxiety, the broken nights, the complication of performing the most simple tasks, thanks to lack of staff, the breakdown of the usual channels of communication, the lack of transport, the restrictions of almost everything.

  And of course they were still suffering from the loss of Lytton House, and all the things that had been stored there, practical things, manuscripts, ledgers, authors’ and agents’ contracts. That had been the most appalling revelation of those first few dreadful days, that there was nothing, absolutely nothing left that they could refer to.

  Celia and LM had gone up to Paternoster Row as soon as they were permitted, hoping they would find Grandpa Edgar’s safe. But even that was a burnt-out shell. Hubert Wilson’s description of the ‘cavernous glowing holes’ which were what he called the ‘crematoria of the City’s book world’ was hideously apt.

  ‘How are we ever going to operate again?’ Celia had said to LM and then, hearing no reply, looked at her and saw she was weeping.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ LM said, trying to smile, rummaging in her pocket for a handkerchief, ‘just shock, that’s all. Being brought here by my father was my earliest memory; it seems impossible that there is simply nothing left.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Celia quietly; but after a moment, LM rallied, and said, ‘Now then, where can we start? We’ve got orders to meet, we can’t let people down.’

  ‘Well,’ said Celia who had already spent the morning desperately trying – and failing – to work out how Lyttons could physically fit into Cheyne Walk, ‘the first thing we need is an office. More space than our house can possibly offer, although I do think we could manage there for a few days. I’ve made a few phone calls and a list of where we have work in progress, manuscripts waiting to be set, galley proofs waiting to be sent to us, pages waiting to be bound, that sort of thing. And there are hundreds of our stock books of course, stored at various printers round and about the country. Mercifully Venetia had the manuscript of Grace and Favour. Paper will be our biggest problem, everyone will be after it and we’ll just have to take whatever we’re offered, a few hundred sheets at a time. But I have found one source, a printing works near Slough. Because it’s quite near Mama, I can get Venetia to – oh my God!’

  ‘Yes?’ said LM. She smiled at her; she had known Celia a long time, she recognised an idea in her voice.

  ‘Curzon Street. My parents’ house. They’re not using it. I wonder if – well no, I don’t wonder, I’m quite sure – they’d let us use it. It’s quite large enough, the large drawing room would make a general office and the dining room an art room, and we could use all the smaller rooms – yes, it’s a brilliant idea. We can even set up a small counter in the hall. Oh dear, Papa would have a fit, we must make sure he never sees it. But he doesn’t need to. Come on, LM. Let’s tell Oliver, he’ll be thrilled.’

  The Beckenhams did give their permission – albeit slightly unwillingly – and a skeleton staff moved in two days later. But three or four hundred separate works that had been in print were lost for ever, together with several manuscripts, and th
e financial cost was considerable. They had been insured, but most of the losses were incalculable, and the loss of all the records had led to months of chaos and constant argument and wrangling with authors, agents and booksellers.

  That was the day the book trade changed for ever. Lyttons was not the only house which adapted its systems to expediency, stopped the costly and cumbersome procedure of shipping books back from the printers to their own offices and then shipping them out again. The central distributor, working for all the publishing houses, was born: ‘If Hitler knew he’d actually helped us become more efficient, think how furious he’d be,’ said Celia happily to Oliver. He was unable – as usual – to share her optimism.

  As she sat looking out on to the back garden of Curzon Street – surprisingly large and lush – that lovely spring day, there was a knock on her door and Sebastian walked in.

  ‘Hallo.’

  ‘Hallo, Sebastian. What are you doing here, you should be at home working.’

  ‘Tired. Wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘Of course. I’d offer you a cup of tea, but I think we’re completely out of milk.’

  ‘That’s all right. The last cup of tea Janet Gould made tasted more of cabbage than anything else. Celia, do you know where I could get hold of a dictating machine?’

  ‘Oh – one of the department stores, I should think. Army and Navy probably. Or a big stationers possibly. I could ask Janet, she’ll know.’

  ‘Would you? I want one.’

  ‘They’re very expensive.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Who’s it for?’

  ‘Kit,’ said Sebastian, ‘best news since his plane went down.’

  And he sat down on one of Lady Beckenham’s priceless John Adam drawing-room chairs, which Celia had sworn to her parents were stored safely in the cellar and told her about it.

  ‘Wake up, Miller. In that little world of your own again, are you? And I know who with and all, don’t I?’

  Barty jumped, and smiled rather feebly at Parfitt.

  ‘Of course not. Pass the salt.’

  ‘Of course you are. I can – oh gawd. Alarm. Here we go again.’

  If the alarm went off at mealtimes, the routine was simple; you just dropped everything and ran down to the gun park, taking your gas mask bag on your chest – also used by all the girls for transporting their make-up – and pulling on your tin hat as you ran. It happened a lot at night now – they had been posted to Crystal Palace – but lunchtime was more unusual. As they ran, the firing began; there was no way but forward. Barty fixed her eyes on the encampment in the middle of the gun park and just made for it; she had always been a very fast runner and that day it saved her life. As she looked back from the comparative safety of the encampment, banked up with sandbags and turf for camouflage she saw pits and dust all along the path where she had been running.

  ‘Phew,’ said Parfitt, grinning at her rather shakily, ‘that was close. Best get to work.’

  It could be disorienting, looking down into the instruments when a raid was in progress. With all the noise and disturbance you could somehow lose a sense of where the plane actually was. Not that it mattered; your job was to report what you saw in the instrument. But there had been occasions when Barty had actually seen a plane opening its bomb doors; it took a lot of control not to look up, see exactly where it was in relation to her.

  The raid that day was savage; the target was a huge ammunition dump for London. How did they find out these things, Barty wondered; one of the great balloons had been sent up and they were going for that. She hauled her concentration back; it was not her job to think about such things. She had to find the height of the plane and inform the guns, while Parfitt read the speed and wind direction; the information was passed on by the oldest form of communication known to man, the shout. It was fast, crucial work; oddly, she was seldom frightened. But seeing the dust on that path today had rattled her: just a bit.

  Her romance with John Munnings was troubling her deeply. She liked him more and more; he was so gentle and thoughtful, so good to talk to, and they had an enormous amount in common. Despite his rather old-fashioned air he shared her views on politics, on women’s rights to a career and a proper place in the world. And he was extremely good-looking, there was no doubt about it, with his dark brown hair and his dark eyes and what she could only describe to herself as a sweetness of expression. He was interminably good-natured, nothing panicked or irritated him, and it showed in everything he said and did; he had a calmness about him which she found immensely engaging. He had had very few girlfriends; he had told her that with commendable honesty.

  ‘The thing is, unless I really like someone, I simply can’t be bothered to spend a lot of time with them. It seems such a waste, going through all that rigmarole if there’s no point in it at the end.’

  This was so exactly in accord with Barty’s own views on relationships that she leaned over and kissed him.

  Fate also seemed to be taking a hand in their relationship; just as she had been posted to London, so had he. He would be going abroad, probably quite soon, he told her, but he was still in training with his regiment, and had a little free time.

  He was now enjoying army life: ‘Everyone said I’d hate it, but it’s such a marvellous change, so much excitement and challenge, and I really get on rather well with both my brother officers and the men. I like the spirit of the army, it’s so – uncomplicated.’

  Barty said that was how she felt exactly: marvelling yet again at the closeness of their views and experience.

  They were able to meet at least once a fortnight, sometimes more often; London had settled down again, with the easing of the Blitz and there was much to enjoy: the lunchtime concerts at the National Gallery, the West End plays – Blithe Spirit actually opened to an audience dressed in dinner jackets and long dresses – the Proms conducted by Henry Wood – where every single seat was sold and the ballet, with wonderful performances by Fonteyn, Helpmann and Ashton, albeit to music provided only by two grand pianos.

  Barty was so delighted by John’s liking for ballet that tears filled her eyes when he revealed it: ‘You are only the second man I have ever known who wanted to see a ballet. Oh – it doesn’t matter who,’ she added quickly, trying not to think about it. About him.

  What she was enjoying with John Munnings was a romance: and she wasn’t sure it was any more than that. Happy, sweet, intensely enjoyable. But with Laurence, Barty had experienced passion: an experience so intense, so powerful she could still absolutely recall it, both physically and emotionally and it was something she was quite unable to set aside or forget.

  She could also, of course, recall the pain in exactly the same way.

  ‘This is getting ridiculous,’ said Adele, ‘you can’t go on denying the existence of your own child to your own husband.’

  ‘I’m not denying it exactly. Just not telling him.’

  ‘That’s splitting hairs.’

  ‘Not really. We don’t exactly enjoy a close correspondence. Two letters in the last six months.’

  ‘Yes, and your letter was all about the children.’

  ‘Well, that’s what he’ll want to know about.’

  ‘Exactly. Venetia, you’re being so perverse. If you’re not careful I shall write to him myself.’

  ‘Don’t you dare. Just because you’re feeling better doesn’t mean you have a right to take over my life as well.’

  Adele was feeling better: immeasurably so. Reading Luc’s letter, absorbing the love, the remorse, the genuine grief at his loss of her, she had felt rather like some half-dead animal brought in from the frozen, threatening outside world. She had been tempted to tell Venetia to read it all over the phone, indeed had instructed her to begin, but after the first few words, ‘My beloved, my most dearly beloved Adele’, she had said she must stop, must bring it instead, knowing she could wait from this first wonderful spring of happiness for the torrent that would surely follow.

 
Venetia had arrived four days later with her new baby and the letter (the post being so extremely unreliable); it had, after all, taken six months to reach her; it could surely take another few days. Adele had paused only to admire Fergal and kiss Venetia before taking the precious envelope up to her room and reading it, over and over again. Each day she read it, at first several times a day: its generosity astounded her.

  She had expected at least some reproach, some anger even; instead she found only acceptance of what she had done, and love, and a desperate concern for her safety.

  It may be months before I know how you have fared and I can only pray, knowing of the dreadful dangers on that road, that the news will be good. I cannot telephone England, and there can be very little hope of a letter from you reaching me, at least for a while. God knows how things will settle down. But for the time being all is well. They have not yet arrived, but are certainly almost here; there are the usual rumours, but I have chosen to hear none of them. The offices of Constantine are closed; Guy is moving to Switzerland. No doubt in due course he will communicate with your father. This letter comes to you, quite quickly I hope, via a special courier service to Style. I shall wait impatiently for news of you.

  With all my love, ma chère, chère Mam’selle Adele,

  your adoring Luc

  That he had not behaved as if he adored her, that she would not indeed have left him if he had, that he had most steadfastly refused indeed to become her husband, that he had misused her dreadfully, that he had been ill-tempered and critical of her, that he had been a bad provider, that his own pride had refused to allow her to add so much as one franc of her own money to the family budget – all these things were as nothing to Adele. She only cared that he said he loved her, that he forgave her, that he prostrated himself before her with remorse at his behaviour, that he had never been so unhappy, that his only happiness indeed had come from her and their children, and then again, that he loved her, more than life itself, and that whatever became of them, she was to know and understand that and believe it for the rest of her life.