No Angel (Spoils of Time 01) (37 page)

‘I did indeed.’

‘Why on earth did you do that?’ asked Celia in genuine astonishment.

‘Oh – I entirely lack leadership qualities,’ said Sebastian lightly. ‘I thought I’d rather be told what to do. I also greatly admire the British working man, and came to admire him even more out there. I don’t think I would have enjoyed being in the officers’ dugout nearly as much.’

‘But – but it must have been so much harder,’ she said, ‘the conditions, the—’

‘In some ways, perhaps. Physically yes. But emotionally, mentally it was easier. I just literally obeyed orders.’

‘Where were you?’

‘Oh – two of the big ones. Etapes, the Somme—’

‘Oh. Well—’ she stared at him, unable to think of anything to say.

‘Then he got lucky,’ said Paul Davis, ‘got wounded. Got sent home. And had time to write this wonderful book. Let’s talk about that shall we? Now I’ve had a further offer, Lady Celia.’

‘You have?’ She felt sick. She really could not, dared not, offer any more.

‘Yes. Collins phoned me just before I left.’

‘Paul,’ said Sebastian, ‘I’m not sure that I—’

‘Sebastian, let me do this will you?’ said Paul Davis, visibly struggling to sound cheerful and firm. ‘I don’t know why I let you come to this lunch. Very irregular.’

‘It was because I insisted,’ said Sebastian lightly, ‘as you do actually very well know.’ Celia looked at him; his eyes met hers in absolute complicity. And something else. Something she pushed to the bottom of her mind.

‘OK, all right. Anyway, that’s the situation, Lady Celia. They’re very anxious to buy it. Talking about some quite large sums of money.’

‘Well,’ said Celia firmly, ‘I understood that my offer had been accepted.’ She didn’t feel very firm. She knew the five hundred and fifty was far more than Lyttons could actually afford at that time, that it was an outrageous amount of money for a new author. But she also knew she had to have
Meridian
, had wanted to put down a sum that would guarantee the book for her. If necessary she had decided to do the unthinkable, and fund the offer from her own private income.

‘It was. But I have to do my best for my client. I’m beginning to envisage some kind of an auction, as a matter of fact. Starting with your final bid, of course.’

‘I’m afraid it is my final bid.’ She felt sick; she could see
Meridian
moving away from her. She looked out of the window at the river, envisaged the book drifting down towards Greenwich, to the meridian line which was so central to its concept, taking Sebastian with it. Well, perhaps, it was for the best; she should never have made such a huge offer without Oliver’s agreement; or at least LM’s.

‘In that case,’ said Paul Davis regretfully, ‘I’m afraid you’re in danger of losing it. Because – ah, Lady Celia do you want to order?’

She nodded, picked up the menu. She felt terribly disappointed, near to tears. It was ridiculous; she’d lost books before.

‘Sebastian, I think you said the oysters. And then—’

‘No, just a moment,’ said Sebastian, ‘come back in a minute, would you?’ he said to the waiter. ‘Paul, I’m very unhappy about this. Very unhappy indeed. Lady Celia has already made a very generous offer and I am happy with it. She wants to publish the book. Provided that her ideas agree with mine, which is what I had thought this lunch was about, I want her to publish it. Can we please settle on that?’

‘No,’ said Celia sharply, ‘no, I want to get this book on the right terms. For all of us. I don’t want any favours – however kindly offered. What has Collins offered?’

Paul Davis looked at her. ‘Six hundred. I have their letter here. Just in case you want to see it—’

‘I’ll pay that,’ said Celia after a glance at the letter. She felt very sick. Six hundred pounds. About – she was good at mental arithmetic – thirty times the usual figure. Oliver’s figure. What was she doing?

‘Well – a higher figure would secure it. Collins are very keen. As you see—’

‘Five hundred and fifty will be quite enough,’ said Sebastian. ‘That settles the matter, Paul.’

Paul Davis looked at him, and his eyes were very cold.

‘Yes, all right,’ he said finally, ‘of course. You’re the client.’ He managed to laugh. ‘It’s your book, after all.’

‘Yes,’ said Sebastian, ‘it is. And now it’s Lady Celia’s as well.’

They sat for the rest of the meal discussing publication dates, promotion, editing; illustration; Sebastian seemed extremely happy with all her proposals.

‘Good,’ said Paul Davis finally, pushing back his chair, wiping his rather blubbery mouth on his napkin. ‘I’d better get back, draw up a contract. Thank you, Lady Celia. A delightful meal. I’ll speak to you later, Sebastian.’

He walked out of the restaurant; they sat looking after him. ‘Odious,’ said Sebastian. ‘I must find someone else.’

‘He’s a very good agent.’

‘Is he?’

‘Oh yes. But certainly not my favourite person,’ said Celia.

‘I’m glad to hear that,’ he raised his glass, ‘here’s to our association.’

‘Our association,’ she said and smiled at him. ‘That was very good of you. Letting Lyttons have the book. When you could have made even more money.’

‘I would have let you have it for less,’ said Sebastian.

‘I know. But it never works, you know. I couldn’t have you losing out. You’d have come to resent it. Resentment sours the best working relationship.’

‘Hardly losing out.’

‘Well – we’ll get it back I’m sure. In sales. But meanwhile I’m extremely grateful.’

Sebastian Brooke smiled at her quickly: then his expression became serious, almost intense.

‘I think you know why I did it,’ he said.

‘We’ve all got to go back to London,’ said Barty, ‘to live.’

‘When?’ said Adele.

‘Why?’ said Venetia.

‘What’s London?’ said Jay.

‘Anyway, how do you know?’ said Adele.

‘Your grandmother told me. After Christmas, she said.’

‘Why should she tell you?’

‘Why didn’t she tell us?’

‘Why didn’t Daddy tell us?’

‘Because I was talking to her about Billy,’ said Barty, ‘and she said I’d miss him when I went back to London. Which I will,’ she added, and burst into tears.

The twins looked at her in silence and then at each other.

‘We probably don’t want to go,’ said Venetia.

‘Nor do I,’ said Barty, blowing her nose, ‘but we have to. The war is over, no more bombs.’

‘Well, we can still stay here. Daddy is here.’

‘He won’t be soon. He’ll be better and he’ll want to go home.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Adele.

‘Who told you that?’ said Venetia.

They were fiercely jealous of Barty’s relationship with their father.

‘He did.’

‘He didn’t.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

Little Jay, sensing the hostility to Barty, his heroine, slipped his hand into hers. ‘Will I like London?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Barty.

Jay didn’t: he hated it. He was utterly miserable. From the moment the taxi cab rolled away from Paddington Station and the excitement of being on the train was over, he could think of nothing but going back. He hated the grey streets, the noise of the traffic that drowned out the birdsong, the endless rows and rows of houses, with hardly a speck of space between them, the tiny patch behind the house in Keats Grove which was called a garden, the lack of things to do, the loss of his freedom.

At Ashingham he had run more or less wild; all day long he had followed Barty and the twins about from the house to the stables, out to the fields, back across the lawns to the house. While they had their lessons, he would go and talk to Billy, or to some of the men at the house, or he and Dorothy would go and look for eggs, or walk down to the village, or she would make him a fishing line and he would sit by the stream, waiting patiently for fish that never came. And when Giles came home for the holidays, he would follow him around instead of the girls, and Giles would give him and Barty cricket lessons and helped him to ride the old tricycle he had found in the stables which had once belonged to Aunt Celia. All the children ate their meals in the big kitchen at Ashingham; in the evenings he slept in a small room in between Barty’s and the twins’. He was never lonely, never alone.

Now suddenly, he was alone all day with Dorothy: His mother, who was, in any case, a somewhat remote figure to him, left the house early in the morning, and usually returned after he had gone to bed. He was too young to go to school, so he and Dorothy went for walks to the Heath and to the shops, and sometimes to the public library, and that was the end of the entertainment. Once or twice a week he was allowed to go to tea with the twins, but even at their house, larger admittedly and with a bigger choice of toys, there was not a lot to do. Anyway, they had changed. They had all changed, even Barty. They wore smart frocks instead of the loose smocks they had all worn at Ashingham, or something called school uniform, skirts and jerseys and funny flat hats. They all went to school together and the twins had lots of friends who were also at the house, and didn’t want to play with him, or else they weren’t there at all, which was worse. Barty had lots of what she called homework to do, and although she did still read to him and play with him, he could see she was very busy herself.

Aunt Celia wasn’t there either, she was at work with his mother, except at the weekends; the only person who still seemed to have time for him was the twins’ father: Wol, as he and Barty called him. He still wasn’t well enough to go to work, so he often read to Jay, and told him stories and helped him draw pictures. He didn’t seem terribly happy; he often looked at Jay very sadly and sighed, and seemed to be thinking about something quite different. Once he said, ‘We don’t quite have a proper place here, do we, old chap?’

‘I don’t want a place here,’ Jay said. He didn’t quite know what Wol meant, but he could see that he felt lonely too. ‘Can’t we go back to the other one?’

And Wol had smiled rather sadly, hugged him close, and said he was afraid that wasn’t possible, and they had sat there in silence for quite a long time.

‘This is simply perfect,’ said Sebastian. ‘Marvellous. Exactly right. She’s a clever girl, that art editor of yours.’

‘Art Director. She’s very proud of that.’

‘Sorry. She’s very clever, whatever she’s called.’

They were in Celia’s office, studying the design Gill had done for the dust jacket of
Meridian
. It was extraordinarily striking: a swirl of art nouveau-style graphics in the shape of a clock, all spelling out the word
Meridian
in different sizes and directions. The face of the clock was small: absolutely conventional, except that when you looked at it carefully, you saw that the numbers on it were not numbers but letters, spelling the word
Meridian
both backwards and forwards, with M replacing 12 and N 6. The hands of the clock were two androgynous figures, arms raised, palms together, set at six o’clock.

‘Or rather N o’clock. And—’ Gill had said happily, as she set it down in front of Celia the night before, ‘we’ll have colour, won’t we? So I thought a wonderful greenish blue, interwoven with gold.’

‘Marvellous,’ said Celia, ‘absolutely marvellous. And I presume the illustrations are in the same style.’

‘Yes, only more directly illustrative, obviously. I’ve briefed the artist already. Full colour, I hope, and roughly one for each chapter?’

‘Yes, and full colour, of course.’ The more Celia read
Meridian
, the more she loved it, fell under its spell, became convinced of its truly enormous potential. And it was not just one book: Sebastian had already told her that he had many other stories with the same setting. She still had not told Oliver, or LM for that matter, what she had paid for it; either they would agree that it was worth it, or they would not, and since it was too late, there was nothing to be done about it.

The book was not just an enchanting story, but a brilliant fantasy, utterly original; set in a time zone which was at once parallel to, but out of reach of, our own. Everyone who read it, young and old, fell under its spell; even Jack, home at last from France, and staying temporarily at Cheyne Walk while he decided what to do with his life, said he found it impossible to put down.

‘And he’s only read about three books in his entire life,’ said Celia, reporting this to Sebastian.

‘Good. I can’t wait to meet him. An illiterate Lytton. What a contradiction in terms.’

‘You’d love him. Everyone does. Anyway, back to
Meridian
. One of its great joys, I think, is the way it assumes a certain literacy on the part of the children reading it. So the parents will approve, and the children will learn through it. And it has such humour, I love that the most. No, I think I love the small individual strands of the story the most.’

‘Shall I tell you what I love about it the best?’ said Sebastian, his extraordinary eyes on hers.

‘Yes, what?’

‘That you are going to publish it.’

‘Oh, Sebastian,’ she said, misunderstanding, for these were early days in their association, ‘I’m so glad you like everything we are doing for it, I—’

‘No, no,’ he said, ‘not that, although of course that is important. No, what I am most happy about is that it has led me to you.’

‘Oh,’ she said and stared at him, ‘oh, I see.’

He smiled. ‘And don’t you love that about it, too, Celia?’

‘Well,’ she said, looking back down at the book, ‘well, of course it’s wonderful to be involved in such a work, a privilege—’

‘I’m not talking about work,’ he said, ‘as you very well know.’

Flustered – a new condition for her – Celia pressed the buzzer on her telephone, and told Janet Gould to get Gill Thomas to come in.

‘Mr Brooke is here, and wants to discuss the jacket.’

Sebastian’s eyes met hers as she put the phone down.

‘I don’t think I do,’ he said, ‘but if that is what you want—’