No Angel (Spoils of Time 01) (27 page)

‘Very well,’ she said, ‘I will go and see if Miss Lytton is prepared to see you.’

‘I’ll just come along with you,’ said Celia, ‘If you don’t mind.’

‘Miss Lytton. Miss Lytton wake up. You’ve got a visitor.’

‘A visitor. Oh, no, it’s much too late, I’m so tired.’

It must be Lady Beckenham: dreadful woman. But at least she had understood, had been the only person who hadn’t tried to persuade her to reconsider her decision to have the baby adopted.

‘Animals do it,’ she had said, patting her hand rather awkwardly, ‘take on other animals’ young. You see it with sheep, mostly. Once a ewe takes to the new lamb, gets its smell, she accepts it just as well as the original mother. You don’t have to worry.’

LM hadn’t been quite sure she wanted to be compared with a sheep, but it had been strangely comforting. Just the same, she didn’t really want to see Lady Beckenham now. And she hadn’t even signed the forms. That really had to be done. She struggled up in bed, took a sip of water.

‘I really don’t want to see anyone now,’ she said, ‘whoever it is. Tell them I’m sorry. And if you’ll wait I’ll give you these forms.’

‘LM, hallo.’

It was Celia. She looked strange; pale and wide-eyed. She was holding something out to her, a letter.

‘LM you have to read this. Please. I wanted you to have it as quickly as possible. Sister, could you get me a glass of water please? I feel – not very well. And I’d like a chair, if you wouldn’t mind.’

Sister gave what could only be described as a snort, and went out of the room.

Celia sat down rather heavily on LM’s bed; she was clearly not well, and in considerable pain but LM was oblivious to it. She was oblivious to everything. She sat, reading the letter Celia had handed her, her lips moving as she did so. She read it several times, and when she had finished, she put it down, threw her head back on the pillows and smiled.

‘And at the same time she was crying, crying her eyes out,’ the junior nurse reported later to the others, ‘and then she said, after quite a long time, a minute or two at least, she said, “please bring me my baby, straight away”. And Sister said she couldn’t have him, he was asleep, and I told her that, and she said she didn’t care if he was asleep, she wanted him, and she’d go and get him herself if she had to, so in the end, I went and got him. Sister was furious. And she just took him and started stroking his head, a bit awkwardly to be sure, and kissing him as well, and just crying and saying she was sorry and she loved him, over and over again. It was really lovely. And then the poor other lady who’d brought the letter passed right out,’ she added soberly, ‘and Sister sent for the doctor, and apparently she’ll probably lose her own baby. So sad isn’t it?’

CHAPTER 11

‘Come along, Maud my darling. Daddy is going to show you the lovely new house he’s built for you.’

‘Just for me?’ Maud’s large eyes, pure green, not a touch of blue, looked up at her father, very wide.

‘No, I shall be there too, if you’ll have me. And Jamie sometimes, too. And Nurse of course, and some of the other servants. I think you’ll like it, it’s in a really great street called Sutton Place. Right on the East River.’

‘On the river! Can we have a boat?’

Robert laughed. ‘Maybe not for the East River. But I’m also looking out for a weekend place for us on Long Island. We can have a boat there, of course.’

‘Why do we have to leave this house?’

‘It’s too big for us, darling. For just you and me.’

‘And Jamie.’

‘Yes. Now go and see Nurse, ask her to get you ready to go out. I can’t wait for you to see it.’

Maud was four now; quite enchanting, not exactly pretty, but very attractive, and rather unusual looking, with her red-gold hair and serious little face. She and her father were absolutely devoted to one another: but while she was certainly a little precocious, she was not spoilt. Robert was too afraid she would become like her half-brother to allow it; from the very beginning he had been firm with her, had briefed her nurse to be the same.

‘I know it’s hard, when she has lost her mother. But she could so easily become a brat, as we all try to make it up to her. And that won’t do her any service in the long run.’

The most difficult time was, he believed, over for her. Jeanette was a loving and much-loved memory, which he worked to keep alive for her; but she was a fragmentary one, and Maud had lived for nearly half her small life now without her mother.

Her world was bounded very happily by Robert, by her nurse, and by Jamie, whom she adored. The Brewers formed a very satisfactory extended family, John and Felicity both doting on her, and their son, Kyle, taking Laurence’s part as big brother. Not that he could hold a candle to Jamie in her eyes; nobody could. So Robert was happy about Maud and happy about her future, especially now that he had built the house, and Laurence couldn’t hurt them any more. He only wished that she could meet the rest of the Lytton family. In the early days of the war he had still toyed with the idea of taking her over to London, but the torpedoeing of the
Lusitania
by German U-boats, and the drowning of over a thousand passengers had plainly made it impossible. People said it was only a matter of time before America joined in the war; uneasily aware of their patriotic obligations and grateful for every day that it didn’t happen, voters had re-elected Woodrow Wilson that year as the man who kept them out of the war. Robert, more torn in his attitudes to the whole thing than most, wracked with concern for his younger brothers, was guiltily grateful nevertheless, to be spared what they were going through.

‘I want you to come and live with me here in Cheyne Walk,’ said Celia.

LM stared at her; nothing could have appealed to her less. She hated the idea of losing her independence, leaving her home; she was famously solitary, and, indeed, Jago’s refusal to move in with her had been an important factor in the success of their relationship.

‘Oh, I don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ she said quickly.

‘But why? Or rather why not? It’s only sensible, we can pool our outgoings on things like coal and food and so on, and especially when the children have gone, it will be ridiculous to have one of us in one large house and one in another.’

LM said hers was not a large house, and Celia said it was by most people’s standards, and certainly large for one person. ‘Nobody’s suggesting you sell it, you can go back the minute the war’s over. And it will be nice for Mrs Bill to have some company during the day. It can’t be much fun for her all alone, just waiting for the zeppelins to come. I won’t bother you at all, I promise, you can have all your meals in your room if you like.’

LM asked for time to think about it, but finally agreed, swayed not so much by Celia’s arguments, but by a sense that she owed her a great deal. She knew that Celia’s long, gruelling drive to Beaconsfield with the precious letter from Jago, had been, if not entirely responsible for the loss of her baby, at least partly so. She would never forget that night, she knew, as long as she lived; sitting there, holding Jay, clinging to him as if she could never let him go, while reading over and over again the wonderful words.

My beloved Meg.

I could never have believed I could feel so happy. Just to think of you carrying our child makes my eyes fill with tears; of course I am afraid for you, but I know that when I see you together, when I come home to what will be at last my own dear family, it will be worth anything either of us might have to endure. I feel so proud and so joyful, Meg. I love you more than ever and thank you from the bottom of my heart for this wonderful gift from you and from the God I feel suddenly I can believe in.

Your loving Jago.

PS I would like us to be married as soon as possible. I cannot have my son (for I’m sure he is a son) growing up a little bastard! Jago XXX

PPS. I think we should call him Jay.

Joy had filled her, poured into her, and love too, and in some strange way poured into the past few dreadful months, turning the wretchedness and despair into happiness and hope. Jago was still dead; but he was not, after all, lost to her, had not turned away from her as she had thought. He had loved her and he had wanted her to bear their child thus he was hers again. And when she thought of how nearly she had lost the small Jay, given him away without even having held him, this tiny piece of Jago, how if Celia had not arrived in time she would have done so, she felt overwhelmed with both fear and gratitude. But – and it was a dreadful but – Celia had lain in pain and grief, losing the baby which she had so wanted, which Oliver had so wanted, as a symbol of life continuing, of their life together, in spite of the war. Celia had risked that baby for her, with her usual defiant courage; and the risk had been too great.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she had said to LM the next day, as she lay, white-faced and exhausted, after the long night when the tiny girl had been born and died within an hour. ‘It would have happened anyway, I was doing all the wrong things, Dr, Perring told me weeks ago I should stay in bed. I knew when I first got up yesterday that it was inevitable. I just kept ignoring the signs; if anything did it, it was all those books we humped up last weekend. Please don’t feel responsible, LM; I’m so happy for you, at least.’

But she had not stayed so brave; later, after the necessary misery of registering the death, of the funeral, and writing to Oliver, she had cracked, had cried for days. Her mother cared for her at Ashingham. with her usual brusque sympathy, and LM had settled into the Dovecot with Jay, careful to keep him out of her way, feeling that seeing this other large, healthy baby would be more than Celia could bear.

She had been wrong there; Celia had arrived one afternoon, palely determined, and demanded to see him. ‘I want to really get to know him, he’s so important to us all. Give him to me, LM, I want to hold him, please.’

And LM had slightly tentatively handed over Jay, who was already gaining weight and doing what she personally knew was smiling at her, although everyone else said it was impossible after only three weeks.

Celia had hugged him to her and looked at LM over his small dark head and said, ‘LM, he’s very special to me. I promise you. I know I’m crying and I can’t help it, but I didn’t know Jago and this way I can. There’s no point in me not seeing this little chap, when the whole point of that day was keeping him with us. Oh, look at him, he’s so beautiful. I can’t wait for the others to see him.’

She remained outwardly brave; but LM had found her several times, even after they returned to London, weeping helplessly.

‘Don’t start sympathising,’ she said, quite fiercely, ‘it’s the last thing I need. I’ll get over it. Let’s just work and work till we drop. That’s always been my salvation. It stops me worrying about Oliver so much, as well.’

Recognising that grief, and Celia’s courage, LM finally agreed to join her in Cheyne Walk, with little Jay and Mrs Bill and Dorothy Jenkins, the cheerful, uncomplicated young woman LM had employed to care for Jay. It didn’t last for very long.

There were several raids on the coast in early 1915, but the first air attack on London was not until the early summer. Celia had seen them, had watched, awed as zeppelins hung high over London, their great cigar shapes caught in the searchlights. Their lumbering, apparently gentle movement totally belied what happened next, something hitherto unknown and unimaginable, the violence of bombs falling on to the city in a dreadful explosion of noise and fire. They did not do a great deal of harm to human life, only killing a handful of people, but a great many buildings were damaged, and clearly they would be back. Everyone was very frightened. The very next day, Barty and the twins and Jay, together with the nannies, were all dispatched to Ashingham.

My darling,

It amuses me now, looking back on what we were told at Colchester about trench warfare. Four days in the front line, four days in support, eight days in reserve and fourteen days resting, that was the theory. It sounded grim but bearable. Now, with the acute shortage of men, any length of time can be spent there. A battalion of the Black Watch regiment is said to have spent 48 days in the front line. We have spent, this time around, 20 so far. The men are exhausted but amazingly, morale is good. They are a splendid bunch. We are in rather terrific new trenches, which helps, we actually have a wooden floor. And a brazier which is lit at dusk in the officer’s quarters. Luxury. Also we are ten feet down at least. So we feel rather safer.

The worst danger, at night now at least, is from gas. God, that is a dreadful thing. The stuff of nightmares, as you yourself said. But, again, so far, so good. The conditions in the last trenches were so appalling, day after day waist deep in mud, no chance of dry clothes for the foreseeable future. And of course the hideous trench foot, several of my men got it, and the worst cases were invalided out. Their feet simply rotted with the permanent wet, and developed gangrene.

The squalor is in many ways the worst thing. It saps at the spirit and at courage. You simply would not believe it. Oh, my darling, those other days, when I moved about in a dry clean house, took baths, wore clean clothes every day, and had only worries about Lyttons and its new list to disturb my sleep, did they really ever happen? Only thinking of you makes me able to remember them.

I love you my darling, so very much. Write again, very soon. Tell the children to write, I love their letters, they keep my faith alive. And I loved getting the photographs of them all; wonderful to see little Jay. He certainly doesn’t look like a Lytton. But it is with a part of you, my darling, that I go into battle every day: the locket with your curl of hair and your photograph are always, always in my breast pocket, and I touch it every time I go over the top. It’s my lucky charm, and has kept me safe all this time.

I have to go now, it’s late and we start the day early here. No need for an alarm clock at least!!!

My best love,

Oliver

Celia read this letter once quickly, and once slowly, as she always did, and then kissed it, stuffed it into her leather bag and went downstairs to the morning room, where there was a tray of tea and toast set out. The memory of breakfasts in the old days, with their endless dishes of eggs, bacon, kidneys and sausages, lined up on the sideboard under their silver covers, the fruit, the coffee, the hot rolls, the piles of butter, pots of different marmalades and jams, was more unbelievable than almost anything. Food shortages had become quite severe, and prices were very high; there was constant talk of rationing as the only equitable solution. Women stood in food queues for hours.

Cook reckoned to spend most of every morning in one queue or another. She had been splendidly magnanimous over her position since the housemaids had left to work in factories; remarking cheerfully that as she really didn’t have a great deal to do in the kitichens, she might as well take over some of the cleaning. She was unusual in this: many of Celia’s friends had cooks who became mutinous at similar suggestions. Cook and Brunson did it together, and together the three of them kept the garden looking neat and cared for. It was an oddly happy arrangement; Truman was at the front, and Celia drove herself around on the occasions when public transport did not meet her needs. She had acquired a Peugeot Bebe which she loved, and which used far less petrol than the Rolls, which was stabled at Ashingham for the duration of the war.

Celia’s maid had also left, and gone to train as a nurse; Celia let her go without an argument, on condition that she kept a diary which could be published after the war. Celia looked after her own clothes, and did her own laundry. She found ironing, hitherto an almost mystical skill to her, rather soothing, and would stand for up to an hour at a time, pressing her dresses and skirts and lace-trimmed blouses; she still loved clothes and refused to adopt anything as utilitarian as LM’s uniform. She liked the new, shorter skirt length, as much for its look and the fact it showed more of her undeniably good legs, as for its practicality, and she admired the simplicity of the new coats and jackets; but on the rare occasions when she went out in the evening, she wore her long dresses trimmed and layered in lace, her velvet cloaks, her high-heeled slippers, and spent time doing up her hair.

‘You have to go on doing what matters to you,’ she said firmly, ‘as well as you can. Otherwise life becomes completely unrecognisable.’

The fact that life, for the most part, was completely unrecognisable was something she refused to dwell on; it did not suit her stubborn optimism.

School was no better: in fact it was probably worse, Giles thought. The bullying went on, he still had no friends, and he found himself as useless at cricket as he had been at soccer. The food, always bad, had become terrible, and perhaps worst of all, the teaching staff had changed. The young male teachers had nearly all departed for the front. They were replaced by much older men, or spinsterish middle-aged ladies, who not only made lessons far more boring, but appeared to be even less aware of what was going on under their noses. This led to a breakdown of formal discipline, and an increase in the power of the prefects and of the fagging system. Giles was getting desperate; his misery was exacerbated by a constant terror that his father might be killed, and that if the Germans won the war, they would bayonet all the children and eat them.