No Angel (Spoils of Time 01) (66 page)

‘Oliver I do wish you would let me talk to you about – about everything. Our lives together and so on. It is so very important.’

‘I’m sorry, my dear. I have a great deal to do this evening. Especially as I am going to be out of the office for much of tomorrow. I’m sure you will understand.’

Celia gave up.

The twins had gone earlier in the day, with Nanny. Barty was to go down the next day. Celia had said goodbye to them after breakfast. It was horrible. She apologised to Adele for hitting her; told her with raw honesty that she had had no right to do it, that she had been upset about something else. Adele, sensing an opportunity for drama, had started to cry again, and then threw herself into her mother’s arms and said she was sorry she had been upset and even more sorry if it had been about her bad report.

Both twins had clung to her that morning, crying, before being put into the car by Nanny, who was not impressed by the performance, having heard them discussing the night before how jolly it would be in the country, with Jay and Billy and the ponies and how much they were looking forward to seeing their dog again. But Celia, who was not to know that, stood looking at their sorrowful little faces, their dark eyes huge and brilliant with tears, remembering the glowing May day when she had brought them home to Cheyne Walk for the first time, two identical shawl-wrapped bundles, seeing Oliver’s joyful smile as he ushered them all into the house, thinking how blessed she was – and thinking that she was not saying goodbye to them for a fortnight, but to the life she had shared with them and their father for ever.

She went into her study to write the letter. It was extraordinarily difficult and very painful. She felt she was standing on a beach, watching the tide go out on her marriage, watching it moving relentlessly further and further away from her, out of touch, out of reach; she felt stranded in her misery and loneliness, utterly bereft. And wondered if what she was doing, leaving Oliver bereft as well, could possibly be the right thing. And then thought how intolerable life with him had become for both of them and told herself that in the end they would both be happier for it.

She told him how happy she had been for most of their marriage, how much she had loved him, how much she still loved him.

But I feel we have both moved on, and away from the two people we used to be. Mostly because of the war, but also through our now widely differing views of Lyttons and the direction in which it should be going. And, of course in our personal lives much has changed. I need someone who appreciates me for what I am, rather than what I should be. That is how I feel you view me these days, Oliver, as someone unsuitable in every way, to be in your life – both professionally and personally. I feel criticised at every turn, probably rightly. For a long time, I struggled to do better for you, but to no avail. You make me feel frivolous, selfish, and in no way your equal or your partner any more. This is very hard to bear, and I grow less self-confident every day and increasingly unhappy.

There is someone else in my life now, and it will come as no surprise to you to learn this, I am sure. It is Sebastian Brooke, as you may also have suspected, and as I have tried to tell you many times. I am going to live with him. He is able to accept me for what I am, and consequently I have been able to feel better and happier. If only you had allowed me to talk to you about it, Oliver, we might have been able to avert a lot of pain. Or at least a little.

I am leaving you with enormous grief and regret, for we have shared so much, survived so much. But I know it is the right thing to do. I cannot go on being dishonest with you, because you do not deserve it and I cannot bear it.

I have not yet talked to the children; I felt we should do that together. If you could find that possible, I think it would help them. But that is why I wanted them to be with my mother at this particular time.

Thank you for all the happiness you have given me; and although I do not deserve it, please, please try to forgive me.

I will always love you, very much.

Celia.

She was crying quite hard when she finished the letter; she turned out the light in the study and sat in the darkness, staring at the trees outside the window. Remembering. Just remembering when she had been young and in love with Oliver; when all they had asked was to be together, when to talk, laugh, plan their lives, make love, had been absolute happiness, when finding anyone else, or anything even remotely more important to them had been unthinkable. And wondering that such love, such closeness, such tenderness could disintegrate so hopelessly and so thoroughly, first into indifference and then into despair.

CHAPTER 25

Janet Gould was walking down the corridor when she heard a crash from Oliver’s office; startled, she turned and walked quickly back. Oliver was sitting in his chair, his face frozen in despair, staring at a letter; the crash had been his father’s heavy cut-glass and silver ink stand which he had hurled across the room and into the corner. Physical violence – or indeed any kind of violence – was so unlike him, that she was shocked. She knocked gently on the open door.

‘Is anything wrong, Mr Lytton?’

‘Yes,’ he said, holding out the letter to her, ‘yes, it is. Read this, Mrs Gould. Now, what am I to do?’

Barty woke up feeling very nervous, half wishing she had gone to Ashingham, where she would now be miles away from the concert hall in Wigmore Street where that afternoon she had to play her Chopin Etude. Miss Wetherhill, her music mistress, had told her, that at least two hundred people would be there. It would be absolutely dreadful. Two hundred people, all sitting listening to, staring at her. She felt extremely sick; she went into the bathroom and pulled her toothbrush and toothpaste out of her mug; her hands, as she did so, were shaking violently. How on earth could you play the piano with shaking hands? And there was no one to talk to, no one to distract her. She could never have believed she would miss the twins, but she would have given anything that morning to have them giggling and telling her stupid jokes and stories and saying she’d probably play so badly that everyone would walk out, so there was no need to be nervous. Or to have Nanny saying that as long as she had brushed her hair nicely and was wearing a pretty dress and her shoes were shiny, it wouldn’t matter how she played.

She wished desperately that Aunt Celia was coming. She had helped her so much with her piano-playing: perhaps not quite so much recently, but she had always been so encouraging, terribly pleased when she had got distinction for her grade three examination. It didn’t seem right that she wouldn’t be there, sharing it. She had told her she was sorry about forgetting the concert so many times, that Barty felt quite guilty herself, and had begged her to come. But she had explained that Wol didn’t want that. He wanted it to be a treat for just the two of them. That’s what they both said, but Barty felt it was because he was cross with Aunt Celia, not just for forgetting the concert, but for something else as well.

Only yesterday at breakfast, which was the last time she had seen him, he had said, ‘Our day tomorrow, Barty. How I am looking forward to it!’

And Aunt Celia had picked up the paper and started reading it very intently.

Barty had a bath, put on her old skirt and jersey, for she planned to spend the morning practising and going for a walk, and looked at the clock. Quite late. Nearly nine. Wol and Aunt Celia would have gone. The house was very quiet. She certainly didn’t want any breakfast. Although a cup of tea might be nice . . . She ran downstairs; the post had come. There was a card from Giles: ‘Good luck,’ it said. ‘You’ll be splendid. I wish I could be there.’

That was so nice of him. He really was such a thoughtful person these days. It made her feel much better. She was so looking forward to seeing him. He had been furious, the twins said, about being sent to Ashingham the minute he broke up from Eton and having to miss her concert; they had read the letter he had written to their mother, which she had left lying on the dining table. They were extremely unscrupulous, the twins, they read everyone’s letters if they felt so inclined.

She wished her mother was coming; both she and Aunt Celia had begged her to, but Sylvia had refused. She said she’d feel awkward, sitting there, with all the other parents, worrying about – well about not being one of them. Letting Barty down as she put it. Barty said she wouldn’t be letting her down, it was nonsense, but Sylvia had still refused. It seemed so unfair. She still wasn’t well; was having a lot of stomach pain. She had promised Barty to go to the doctor, but Barty knew she hadn’t been yet. If things had been different at home, she’d have asked Aunt Celia to organise something.

Barty was looking forward to going to Ashingham, to seeing Billy and Giles and LM and Jay, and Lord and Lady Beckenham; it was so wonderful there, they were allowed to do whatever they liked, take picnics off for a whole day, ride the ponies, help on the farm – only they had to help, not play around – ‘the tenants have got work to do, they’re much too busy to be held up by a lot of tiresome children’. There were scary things as well, of course, like having to dine with the Beckenhams sometimes in the great dining-room, and being made to do what Lady Beckenham called conversing.

‘Don’t tell me you’re shy, Giles,’ she roared one night, while Giles sat scarlet and silent, ‘find something to say and say it. You can’t be that stupid. You owe it to your hostess, not to mention your own friends, to be interesting at the dinner table. You too, Barty. Now come on, think of a subject and we’ll discuss it.’

She went into the drawing-room, where the piano was, did some scales and ran through the piece twice; it went quite well, in spite of her shaking hands. Perhaps it would be all right. She decided that after all she was a bit hungry: perhaps a piece of toast would be nice. She got into the dining-room just in time; Mary, the housemaid, was clearing away.

‘You help yourself, Miss Barty,’ she said, ‘you need to keep your strength up for this afternoon. How are you feeling?’

‘Oh – sort of all right,’ said Barty, ‘thank you.’

She sat buttering toast, feeling lonely again; she really would like something to read. She had begun to like reading the newspapers; but they weren’t on the sideboard. Cleared away, she supposed, into Wol’s study. He liked to read them at length in the evening. Well – maybe she could go in and borrow one. She would put it back afterwards.

She got up, crossed the hall, went in. It was horribly neat; ‘You’re afraid to breathe in here in case you disturb something,’ Venetia had once said and it was true. The papers were lying on his desk, ranged in perfect parallel rows; she went over and picked out the
Daily Mail
. That was her favourite. And noticed that propped up against the big silver desk clock was a letter addressed to Wol. In Aunt Celia’s writing. Oliver, it said, Personal and Urgent. She must have put it there before she left; thinking he was still in the house. Barty looked at it anxiously, taking in the word Urgent. Well, it was lucky she was going to his office; she could take it with her, give it to him there.

Celia had left the house as usual that morning; she was indeed going to see Lady Annabel, and planned to come back later to collect some clothes and a few personal things, photographs of the children, a few of her favourite books, her jewellery. Not much of her jewellery, though, only what had been given to her by her mother, left to her by her grandmother. She did not feel she could take anything Oliver had given her; even her engagement ring was placed carefully with the rest in the small safe in Oliver’s dressing-room. She felt absolutely extraordinary; the sadness of the night before had gone, leaving her with a mixture of terror and huge excitement. She had promised Sebastian she would be with him by lunchtime.

‘I shall feel so odd, rather as if I was a bride, leaving the old home and coming to join you in the new. A rather elderly bride,’ she added with a sigh.

Sebastian said nonsense, lots of women got married in their thirties these days, it was an indirect result of the war, and anyway, the youngest bride could not be more beautiful than she was.

She still felt, though, not only desperately worried about Oliver, about how badly he might take the news, but about how he might behave as a result. About how wretched he would be, how he would cope with it, who he would talk to, whether he would feel himself able to talk at all. Or would he shut himself away in his study, grieving and raging silently, pretending to everyone that nothing was wrong? He had become an emotional stranger to her, absolutely changed from the rather tediously predictable creature he had once been; it seemed incredible to her that she had once known, almost to the last phrase, what he would say and how he would behave, right to the final nod of the head, in any given situation. It did in fact, define the vast distance which had formed between them, she thought, that she was totally unable now to predict his reaction, even to this, to something as momentous as the announcement that she was leaving him: it persuaded her that perhaps she was after all doing the right thing. For him as well as for her.

Lady Annabel, charming as ever, was delighted with the editing, with her dust jacket, and even with the title Celia had suggested,
Queen of Sorrows
.

‘I know it overstates the case a little,’ Celia said, slightly apologetically, ‘but it certainly describes her personal life. And her reign was hardly happy in any way, either. I think it is also a very strong title, which we need.’

They parted at eleven: ‘Do tell Mr Lytton how happy I am about everything,’ said Lady Annabel, smiling graciously from the doorway of her exquisite house, and that I would like to discuss the new book with both of you. Dear Florence; such a very irritating woman, I always think.’

Celia said she would; thinking not only how desperately sad it was that she would not be at Lyttons for what she knew would be a most triumphant publication of
Queen of Sorrows
, but that there would be no discussions between her and Oliver and any third person, with the possible exception of a solicitor, for some considerable time.

She had another appointment before returning to Cheyne Walk: with Dr Perring.

‘That cough is really worrying me,’ Sebastian had said, ‘and you don’t look at all well. I don’t want to take on some invalid, you have to be fit and healthy if you’re going to live with me.’

She had arranged to go to Dr Perring’s consulting rooms in Harley Street, rather than call him to the house; sitting in the waiting-room, with so little standing now between her old life and the new, the enormity of what she was about to do suddenly overwhelmed her, together with a wave of such violent nausea that she thought she was actually going to vomit. Even when it passed, and she was lying back rather limply in her chair, feeling shaky and weak, she still felt utterly exhausted, could not imagine ever having the strength to get up again.

‘Lady Celia?’ It was the nurse, smiling brightly. ‘Dr Perring will see you now. Please follow me.’

In the years to come, Celia was never to forget that journey, one of the most important in her life: down the thickly carpeted corridor, with its alcoves set with urns of flowers, its pale grey walls covered with bland watercolours, the sunlight beating through a window ahead of them at the end of the corridor, and nurse in her absurdly elaborate uniform, silhouetted against it, dark and somehow slightly sinister. And Celia following her, still feeling weak and light headed . . .

‘I really need time to think about this one, Mr Lytton,’ said Peter Briscoe. He had come into the offices, in response to Oliver’s urgent summons. ‘They’re obviously very serious. Is there any way you could do as they suggest, and write out the offending episode?’

‘No,’ said Oliver, ‘it’s quite impossible. It is central to the whole book, one of the major strands; it affects everything, the daughter’s view of her father, the wife’s reaction to the affair, even the son’s attitude, a very high-minded young man, the conscientious objector, you know, he is horrified by it. No, it has to remain. There is no book without it.’

‘And – forgive me – the book is printed, you say, not merely typeset, or at proof stage?’

‘Yes, indeed. I’ve just had three thousand copies done. It will be appallingly expensive if we don’t publish now. Not to mention the loss of face.’

‘Then we must fight for it,’ said Peter Briscoe. ‘I will telephone you in a day or so, tell you what I think we should do next. Test their nerve, I suggest.’

‘And how would we do that?’

‘Write back and say the chapters cannot be removed and that publication will go ahead. There is bound to be an element of bluff on their part. No one embarks on any legal course of action without knowing they might lose. They are private individuals after all. You have the weight of a large publishing house behind you.’

‘Well – a publishing house anyway,’ said Oliver with a sigh. ‘It won’t be very large if we have to pulp
The Buchanans
.’

Peter Briscoe decided to talk again to Guy Worsley. He felt he would like to get further measure of Jasper Lothian. Find out just how tough an opponent he might prove, just how much money and power he had had behind him. Guy had no telephone in his small flat in Fulham, which was tiresome; Peter Briscoe told his secretary to send him a telegram, instructing him to come to see him as soon as possible to discuss the matter of
The Buchanans
further. Arrogant young fellow, thinking he could get away with such a thing. It was blatant folly. That was what came of the young achieving success; they lacked the wisdom and experience with which to temper it.

Meanwhile, he would start drafting a letter to Lothian, telling him that there was no question of removing anything from the text of the book. It was all becoming extremely uncomfortable; and time was running out on them. He had not yet mentioned to Oliver Lytton that if they went ahead, the damages awarded to Lothian could be very substantial, but he would have to do so soon. Pulping the book would certainly be cheaper than that.

‘Right, perhaps you’d like to put your clothes on again, and come back into the consulting room. Thank you, nurse.’

Dr Perring had examined her very carefully, questioned her closely as to her general health, listened to her chest – and indeed her heart – for a long time. He had taken some blood for analysis, checked her reflexes and her blood pressure, had looked in her ears and her eyes, and down her throat. Celia was feeling quite nervous by the time she was sitting in his chair again; beginning to think there must be something quite seriously wrong with her.