No Angel (Spoils of Time 01) (21 page)

The financial implications were not too serious; his company was flourishing, he was a modestly rich man now in his own right. Thank God, he thought, thank God she had not loaned him the money to start Brewer Lytton; Laurence would be calling that in as well.

But to be banished from what he had come to regard as his own home, along with Maud, like some kind of disgraced servant, to have to find somewhere else to live, was insupportable. Not only for him, but for Maud. That was one of the things which made him most angry with Jeanette. Her own daughter’s future, her place in the family home set at risk. How could she have done that?

Perhaps she had loved Maud less dearly, had regarded her in some way as less important than the boys. The Elliotts. Maud was a Lytton. But could a mother really think, act like that? Maud’s family, her entire small world would crumble. It would make losing her mother far worse. She adored Jamie, who was very sweet with her, and displayed a kind of dog-like loyalty to Laurence, following him round the house whenever he was home, scurrying on her small legs, calling to him to wait for her. He never did, of course; he clearly disliked her almost as much as he did Robert. Maud was too small to notice; at least if they moved out of the house she would be spared the discovery.

But Robert had no intention of moving out. There was Jamie as well as Maud to consider; he needed a great deal of love and care, he had adored his mother, missed her dreadfully. The thought of leaving him alone in the house with the servants and his brother was inconceivable. So he would have to come too, wherever they went, and that would deprive him of his own birthright. Surely the whole thing was unsustainable in any court of law. Robert lay awake night after night thinking about it, his mind ranging frantically from legal boundary to moral frontier. He had taken preliminary advice from his own lawyer, who had expressed total astonishment at the terms of the will and at Laurence’s determination to uphold it.

‘What on earth have you done to him Robert?’ he said, laughing.

‘He’s only a boy. This is Hamlet re-enacted, or something very close to it.’

Robert said it was not a laughing matter and that what Laurence thought he had done was murder his mother.

‘Rather than his father. Just like Hamlet. All we need is a crazy sweetheart and—’

‘It’s me that’s going crazy,’ said Robert. ‘The point is, can he get away with it, does he have the law on his side?’

‘If he has a legal guardian,’ said his lawyer, ‘if he does, and that person is as determined as Laurence to get you out, then you might be in trouble.’

‘There is no one guardian as such,’ said Robert, ‘there are only the trustees. Of the Elliott estate.’

‘And they are not precisely defined as Laurence’s guardians?’

‘They are.’

‘Well then, in theory, they could ask you to leave. But only if they felt it was in the best interests of both boys. You say the younger one, Jamie, is fond of you?’

‘Very.’

‘Then you have a strong moral case. You were an excellent husband, a devoted father and stepfather, and the status quo is on your side. They might examine your management of the household, make sure you are not absconding with any funds, indulging in any great personal extravagance, but provided they are satisfied with that, they are most unlikely to go along with the propositions of a clearly disturbed boy. I should stop worrying about it, if I were you.’

‘I may be able to stop worrying,’ said Robert, ‘but I can’t stop being distressed by it.’

It was true; Laurence’s continued hostility was not pleasant to live with. He took his meals in his own room, stayed out a great deal and was altogether a seething, hostile presence in the house. If Robert went into the library or the drawing-room or even out into the garden, and found him there, Laurence would immediately leave; he never spoke to Robert, except to impart the most essential information, such as the date of his departure for Harvard, or to ask him whether or not he would be at the house at Long Island for the weekend, in case they should coincide.

It was difficult for the servants, and impossible for Jamie. ‘I hate it,’ he said, his face flushed, watching Laurence as he stalked out of the dining-room one Saturday lunchtime, having said that he had not expected Robert to be there, ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘I don’t think you can do anything,’ said Robert, adding carefully that he thought Laurence’s behaviour was largely due to grief. ‘He’ll get over it. And it will be easier when he’s gone to Harvard next month. I’m sure that by Christmas he’ll be much more himself,’ he added, mentally shrinking from the complexities, not only of Christmas, but also of Thanksgiving.

‘He won’t speak to me much either any more,’ said Jamie, sadly, ‘only to tell me things. I hate it,’ he said again, ‘it’s so miserable. It makes missing Mummy much worse.’

‘I know, Jamie, and I’m sorry,’ said Robert, ‘really I am.’

‘It’s all right. It’s not your fault. You won’t go, will you Robert? I’d really hate it if you did.’

‘I won’t go, no,’ said Robert, ‘but if I did, I’d take you with me. Of course. But there’s no question of it. Not for a long time anyway.’

In the end, obviously having consulted the lawyers, Laurence came to see Robert one evening as he sat in his study.

‘I have decided’ he said, ‘to allow you to stay here for the next three years. But as soon as I’m twenty-one, and have full authority to do so, I shall insist you leave my house. Is that quite clear?’

‘Quite clear, thank you, Laurence. And perhaps we can now be a little more civil to one another,’ said Robert.

Laurence stared at him. ‘I never found you uncivil,’ he said finally, ‘simply unacceptable.’ And walked out of the room.

Jago had gone: for four weeks’ basic training at a base camp in Kent. He would be allowed home on leave after that for a few days, before sailing for France. LM felt utterly desolate and bereft, to her own surprise. Her usual firm disciplined optimism entirely left her; she was like another creature, frail and intimidated by fate. Worst of all, she had no one to discuss it with; after Jago had talked to Celia at the Lytton offices, he had never been mentioned again by either of them; LM because she was too embarrassed, too mortifed by the incident, Celia because of her intense respect for emotional privacy. She had not even asked LM if everything was all right; LM, surprised and grateful for this, simply greeted Celia with a large bunch of flowers which she laid on her desk on the Monday morning, and assumed, correctly, that she would understand its message.

But now she longed for a confidant, someone with whom she could not only share her misery and fear, but from whom she could seek reassurance, however hollow, someone who would say, ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be all right,’ or repeat the favourite refrain of the day, ‘It’ll all be over by Christmas.’ But there was no one. She longed for Oliver to volunteer, so that she could at least communicate with Celia about it; but the days and weeks went by and he did not.

‘He is going, I’m afraid,’ Celia said to her one day when she inquired as tactfully as possible about Oliver’s plans, ‘but I just live from day to day, until he finally enlists. I think he’ll probably go into my father’s old regiment. That’s the plan anyway. Papa is raging away down there, because he’s too old to go himself. Mama says it’s given him a new lease of life, just writing endless letters and rushing up to London every other day to see this general and that. Even Kitchener has had to put up with a session with him. Well he was a brigadier, bless him. He feels dreadfully set aside. I’m sure they’ll find him some kind of desk job. Mama is praying that they will anyway.’

LM nodded. ‘They’re all mad,’ she said, ‘these men. Wanting to go, wanting to fight.’

‘I know, but it’s in their genes,’ said Celia. ‘Even if women were allowed to fight, we wouldn’t. Look at the Women’s Peace Movement. We’d find some other way.’ She looked at LM. ‘But I’m sure,’ she said carefully, ‘that the war will be short-lived. Everyone says so.’

‘I’m sure they’re wrong,’ said LM briefly, ‘and so are you.’

She went back to her office, locked the door and indulged in the luxury of a short weep. Misery was making her ill; she was unable to eat, her stomach was permanently acid, and quite often she was actually sick. Every time she thought of Jago in uniform, boarding one of the hideously crowded troop ships which left the ports daily, she felt a pain not just in her heart, but in her head, violent, sick pain. She had often heard of people saying they didn’t know how they would be able to bear things and felt impatient; you bore what you had to bear. Now, suddenly, and rather shame-facedly, she understood.

The country being caught up in a fever of patriotic sentimentality didn’t help; she felt enraged by it. From every house, at every street corner, people seemed to be waving flags, and there were military bands playing constantly. Soldiers walking about in uniform inspired almost hysterical excitement. The endless posters of Lord Kitchener pointing his finger and telling her that her country needed her – or rather her man – made her want to scream. She didn’t care about her country, she didn’t care what it needed. She simply knew it was taking away the only man she had ever loved, and the only man who had ever loved her.

‘Of course I’ll have the children,’ said Lady Beckenham, ‘as long as you send some staff with them. I can see this war is going to cause us problems. Two of my girls are already talking about working in munitions factories.’

‘Of course I will. Nanny’s a country girl anyway, and Jessie’s terrified of bombs.’

‘The whole thing’s absolutely appalling,’ said Lady Beckenham, ‘do you know they’ve taken four of our horses. The ones that work on the farm that is. And I was reading in the paper yesterday that in some cities the trams have stopped running because so many horses have gone. Poor beasts. They’d better not try to get any of my hunters, that’s all I can say.’

‘I’m sure they wouldn’t dare, Mama,’ said Celia, who would have pitted her mother against the Hun any day.

‘I don’t know. The cavalry are after good horses. And then they’re transported in the most dreadful way, not boxed, just put into the hold tethered, swung up on cranes by slings at the docks, poor beasts. I heard of one chap, obviously decent, a groom, who stayed down in the hold with them the whole way, watering and feeding them, then had a heart attack himself and died on arrival in France. Still, saved all the horses. Jolly fine, I thought.’

‘Possibly,’ said Celia storing this up mentally for LM, who was fascinated by Lady Beckenham’s greater excesses.

‘If Beckenham doesn’t get some kind of a job, I don’t know what I’ll do,’ said her mother, ‘he’s in an absolute raging ferment, it’s had the usual effect on him, of course. I hope your nursemaid isn’t a virgin, knows how to look after herself.’

‘I’ll warn her,’ said Celia hastily. Poor Jessie; she was very pretty. She must warn Nanny at least to keep an eye on her. She felt that the danger from her father was infinitely greater than anything the Hun might rain on her from the skies.

‘Anyway, Mama, I’ll keep them all in London for a bit. Nothing’s hapening, and I don’t want to be parted from them unless I have to. And Giles is off to school. He’s so nervous about it, poor darling. I sometimes wonder—’

‘You shouldn’t wonder,’ said Lady Beckenham briskly, ‘he needs to go away. It’s a year late anyway. He’ll turn out soft if you’re not careful.’

‘I know, but he’s so – so gentle.’

‘Exactly. That’s what I mean. Needs it knocked out of him. Won’t do him any good at all. Pity the twins can’t go. Get a bit of discipline.’

‘Oh, Mama, really. They’re only four.’

‘Well, Beckenham was five when he went off. His father sent him early, thought he was getting soft.’

‘There’s nothing soft about the twins,’ said Celia, ‘I thought you said that was the problem.’

‘What about Barty? Still doing well at school?’

Barty’s academic success baffled Lady Beckenham, who regarded the lower classes as intrinsically unintelligent. Fascinated by, as well as disapproving of what she called Celia’s experiment, she had expressed huge surprise at Barty being able to learn her letters or remember the simplest thing.

‘Extraordinary,’ she said, as Celia, with a mixture of pride and irritation at her prejudice, pressed Barty into reciting
Who Killed Cock Robin
one afternoon soon after her third birthday, ‘Quite extraordinary. I’d never have believed it possible.’

‘Mama, you’re ridiculous. Half the women in the suffragette movement are from the working class, hugely intelligent and articulate. Look at Annie Kenny.’

‘Yes, well they’re all completely mad,’ said Lady Beckenham with a sublime lack of logic. Any sympathy she might have had for the suffragettes had died along with Emily Davidson, who had flung herself under the king’s horse at the Derby in 1913. ‘All very well,’ she had said at the time, ‘but she might have killed that horse.’

‘Barty’s doing terribly well, yes,’ said Celia now. ‘The cleverest child in her class.’

‘Ah, but does she have any friends?’ said Lady Beckenham with piercing perspicacity.

Celia said Barty had plenty of friends and knew her mother didn’t believe her.

‘And how is this war going to affect your business?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Celia, ‘naturally we’re a little worried. But the accepted view is that it will make very little difference. Certainly the country’s mood at the moment is for business as usual; the theatres are still full and so are the picture houses, people need entertainment more at times like these, they need distraction. And we are in the entertainment business, I suppose. Also an awful lot of the soldiers are taking books out with them apparently.’

‘How extraordinary,’ said Lady Beckenham.

Even putting up with the twins must be better than this, thought Giles miserably, stuffing his mouth with his fist as he burrowed under the bedclothes, trying not to cry. He had been at school for a week now and every day had been worse than the last. He had graduated from being an object of mild interest to one of total derision; despised for a lack of prowess on the games field, teased for a (very slight) tendency to tubbiness, mocked for his slowness to grasp new subjects like science, sneered at for leaving home a year late, and tormented for being a less than satisfactory fag to the sixth former he had been assigned to.