Something Dangerous (Spoils of Time 02)
Read Something Dangerous (Spoils of Time 02) Online
Authors: Penny Vincenzi
Table of Contents
ALSO BY THE SAME AUTHOR
No Angel
Into Temptation
The Dilemma
Almost A Crime
An Outrageous Affair
Sheer Abandon
An Absolute Scandal
Forbidden Places
This edition first published in the United States in 2007 by
The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.
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New York, NY 10012
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Copyright © 2001 by Penny Vincenzi
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval
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Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress
Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN : 978-1-590-20796-3
For Paul. For an unfailingly pliant ear
and an astonishingly absorbent shoulder.
With much love.
Acknowledgements
A small army of people helped me get this book settled in a moderately tidy way between its covers: led once more by my agent and informant Desmond Elliott, walking research library that he is on the subject primarily of publishing, but on other crucial matters too, most notably New York between the wars. In that area I also have to thank Edna McNabney, who provided so many delicious anecdotes, and so much inside information and breathtaking detail about the city.
Many, many thanks to Mme Nicole Delava, who held me spellbound with her reminiscences of Paris before, during and after the war, and of her journey down some of the same road followed by Adele. And to Annick Salters and Laurence de Lasnerie for putting me in touch with her and for other hugely helpful suggestions, and to Noni Holland for acting so tirelessly as interpreter, translator and guide. For further assistance in Paris I have to thank my niece Rebecca Vincenzi and her friend Mathieu Lis, and for a particularly memorable evening at the Café Flore; and much gratitude also to Nina Salter and her colleagues at Calman Levy in Paris, which was the inspiration, but in no way a model, for Constantines, and also the wonderful
archiviste
at Hachette.
Hugh Dickens was not only an inexhaustible and patient military consultant but a most creative and imaginative one; and I am also deeply grateful to Beryl Thompson for her vivid and charming reminiscences of her war in the ATS and to Joanna Lycett for hers in the WRNS. And I owe a great deal to Matthew Parker for his knowledge of the battles waged by the flying aces, and indeed his book
The Battle of Britain
.
Special mentions to Helen Pugh and other archivists at the Red Cross in London; and to Kit Sparkes, Colette Levy and Sue Stapely, all of whom gave me their time and expertise most generously; to Clare Alexander who has been such a great support to both Desmond and me; and to my daughter Claudia who also acted as translator and researcher. And Maria Rice-Jones, who gave me a crash course in French, thus enabling me to do even a little translating of my own.
Several books were of great help to me:
The Week France Fell
by Noel Barber;
Swastikas over Paris
by Jeremy Josephs,
Occupation
by Ian Ousby;
London at War
by Philip Ziegler;
The Viceroy’s Daughters
by Anne De Courcy and
The Great Crash
by J. K. Galbraith.
As always, huge thanks to Rosie de Courcy, not only for her creative, inspiring and sympathetic editing, and her now legendary capacity never to so much as mention that the deadline has passed this many a long day/ week/month, but also for her ability to stop me panicking and make me laugh.
Much gratitude to lots of people at Orion: to Susan Lamb, Geoff Duffield, Dallas Manderson, Richard Hussey, Jo Carpenter, and Lucie Stericker, who between them produced, packaged, marketed, sold and dressed the book up so prettily; Emma Draude and the team at Midas who told the world about it, and last but absolutely not least to Kirsty Fowkes who saw the whole thing through with awe-inspiring calm and good cheer.
And of course, and as always, to my family for putting up with me and the bookmaking process for yet another year.
In retrospect, it all looks quite easy…
The Main Characters
LONDON
Oliver Lytton,
head of Lyttons publishing house
Lady Celia Lytton,
his wife and senior editor
Giles,
twins
Venetia
and
Adele,
and
Kit,
their children
Margaret (LM) Lytton,
Oliver’s elder sister and business manager
Jay Lytton,
her son by her dead lover
Jago Ford
Gordon Robinson,
her husband
Jack Lytton,
Oliver’s younger brother
Lily Lytton,
his actress wife
Barty Miller,
brought up in the Lytton family by Celia
Sebastian Brooke,
bestselling children’s author published by Lyttons
Boy Warwick,
Giles’s old schoolfriend
Abigail Clarence,
a teacher, and friend of Barty
Cedric Russell,
a society photographer
COUNTRY
Lord Beckenham,
Celia’s father
Lady Beckenham,
her mother
Billy Miller,
Barty’s brother
NEW YORK
Robert Lytton,
Oliver’s older brother and successful property developer
Laurence Elliott,
his estranged stepson from his marriage to
Jeanette,
now dead
Jamie Elliott,
Laurence’s brother
Maud Lytton,
Robert and Jeanette’s daughter
John Brewer,
Robert’s business partner
Felicity Brewer,
his wife, a poet published by Lyttons
Kyle Brewer,
their son, an editor
Geordie MacColl,
an author published by Lyttons
PARIS
Guy Constantine,
head of a French publishing house
Luc Lieberman,
a senior editor
Madame André,
Adele’s landlady
Part One
1928 – 1939
CHAPTER 1
Venetia Lytton was extremely fond of telling people that the whole country had gone into mourning on the day of her birth.
This announcement, although historically accurate, and guaranteed to win her attention in whatever company she chose to make it, gave nonetheless a slightly erroneous picture; it was left to her twin sister Adele, naturally inclined to a slightly more prosaic view of life, to explain that their birth had coincided almost to the hour with the death of King Edward the Seventh.
‘Oh – all right,’ Venetia would say crossly, ‘but it was still a terrifically dark day, Mummy said the nurses were sobbing harder and harder each time they brought in another bouquet of flowers and when Daddy arrived, the doctor actually greeted him wearing a black tie. So of course he thought something terrible had happened.’
Whereupon someone, usually one of the twins’ two brothers if they were present, would inevitably remark that indeed it had, and that she and Adele had been launched upon an unsuspecting world, then Venetia would pretend to sulk, Adele would smile serenely, and someone else (usually another young woman in search of a little attention for herself) would endeavour to change the subject.
It was not easy to divert attention from the Lytton twins; not only were they extremely pretty (beautiful, some even claimed) and very amusing, but they really were quite extraordinarily alike. It was said that the famous Morgan twins, Thelma and Gloria (better known as Lady Furness and Mrs Reginald Vanderbilt respectively), could not be told apart unless you were close enough to detect a small scar under Thelma’s chin, the result of a roller-skating accident when she was a child; the Lytton twins offered no such helpful clue. Venetia did have a small mole on her right buttock, and the twins had also observed, from the first moment such a thing was observable, that Adele’s nipples were darker and slightly larger than her sister’s, but since these were facts extremely hard to verify, and certainly of no use at all in normal social situations, most people had no idea much of the time which of the twins they were talking to, sitting next to, dancing with. Even their closer circle found it virtually impossible to tell.
It was a state of affairs that the twins still found amusing to encourage. They had gloried in it at school, each claiming constantly to be the other, confusing and enraging their teachers beyond endurance until their mother discovered what they were doing and, being immensely – and most unusually for her class and age – concerned for their education, threatened to send them to different boarding schools, which frightened them into submission, so deep was their dread of separation.
At their coming-out dance earlier that year, dressed in identical white satin dresses, large white roses in their gleaming dark shingled hair, they had produced so strong a sense of dizzy confusion that several members of the older generation at least had felt themselves to be rather more intoxicated than they were; and it was even rumoured that when they had been presented at court, they had changed places. But those who knew them best said not even Adele (at heart more outrageous if less extrovert than Venetia) would have dared do so appallingly dreadful a thing.
They were enjoying their season hugely; their mother had chosen one of the early Easter courts deliberately, feeling it would be more memorable, more distinguished: ‘By June it’s getting so dreadfully busy, you’re in danger of being just another dance.’
Not that the occasion, held at Celia’s parents’ London house in Curzon Street, was in danger of being any such thing: had the house itself been less magnificent, the guest list less distinguished, the champagne less fine, the music less fashionable, the very fact that it was a dance for the twins, with their almost eerie identical beauty, would have made it remarkable. They were, unarguably, two of the most popular and brilliant debutantes of their year, caught up in a heady haze of dances and parties and country house weekends, with all the excitement of the actual season – the Derby, Ascot, Henley and the rest – still ahead of them. Their photographs appeared constantly in the society papers, invitations were still arriving in large numbers, and they had even been awarded the great accolade of a whole page in
Vogue
, wearing their Vionnet presentation dresses. Their mother, while complaining ceaselessly (and fairly inaccurately) that their season was absorbing too much of her time, was extremely pleased with their success. To launch one beautiful and popular daughter would have been gratifying, to be able to claim two was triumphal.
Today, their eighteenth birthday, there had been even more reference to the country-in-mourning than usual; so much so that Giles, their elder brother by five years, said at breakfast that he would withdraw from the evening’s party if he heard any more about it.
‘And then you’ll be sorry, Venetia, because I shall tell Boy Warwick not to come either.’
‘I couldn’t be less bothered,’ said Venetia airily, pulling out a compact from her pocket, dabbing more powder to her small, perfectly straight nose. ‘It was you who invited him, not me, he’s your friend—’
‘Venetia, darling, don’t do that at the table, it is so dreadfully common,’ said her mother briskly, ‘and for heaven’s sake don’t do it tonight, your grandmother will have a heart attack. Now of course Boy will be coming, I can’t have the arrangements upset at this point in time. I will check with Cook that everything is in order for dinner this evening – we’re only nineteen I think, now that Barty can’t come—’
‘Such a shame,’ murmured Venetia to Adele, and then seeing her mother’s eyes on her, smiled brightly and said, ‘I was just saying what a shame that was. Still, I suppose it is a long way. From Oxford. Just for dinner.’
‘Well, she would have stayed a couple of days,’ said Celia, ‘over the weekend in fact, she said. But her finals are looming now, and she is very anxious about them. I think we must respect that, don’t you?’
‘Of course,’ said Adele.
‘Absolutely,’ said Venetia.
Their eyes met over their coffee cups: then fixed with sweet innocence on their mother.
‘We will miss her,’ said Adele, with a careful, quick sigh. ‘She’s so clever, I’m sure she’ll get her first anyway.’
‘Absolutely bound to,’ said Venetia.
‘Absolutely nothing of the sort,’ said Celia, ‘I cannot understand how you two can still have so little grasp of the connection between hard work and success. No achievement is automatic, and especially no academic achievement. However clever the person may or may not be. Your father got a first, but he worked unimaginably hard for it, didn’t you, Oliver?’
‘What’s that, my dear?’ Oliver Lytton looked up from
The Times
, frowning gently.
‘Apparently you worked very hard to get your first, Daddy,’ said Venetia.
‘I really can’t remember much about it,’ said Oliver, ‘I suppose so.’
‘Mummy says you did.’
‘As I hadn’t met your mother then, I really think it’s a little difficult for her to say.’
‘Mummy doesn’t find anything difficult to say,’ said Adele, and giggled; Venetia echoed her.
Celia glared at them briefly. ‘I really have more important things to do than engage in extremely silly arguments. And if I’m going to be able to be home in time for your birthday dinner I shall have to leave for the office in half an hour. Giles, do you want to come with me?’
‘I – think I might go on ahead,’ said Giles quickly, ‘if you don’t mind.’
‘Mind? My dear Giles, why should I mind? I’m delighted you’re taking your work so seriously. What particular aspect of it is to occupy you this morning?’
‘Oh – just all sorts of things,’ said Giles.
‘Really? What exactly? I’d like to know; it must be very urgent, that it can’t wait thirty minutes? Nothing’s gone wrong, I hope. Because if it has, we certainly need to know.’
God, she was so unfair, thought Giles; so awkwardly, arrogantly unfair. Putting him in his place, underlining his lowly position at Lyttons even here at the family breakfast table. She knew nothing was wrong; knew too that if it was she would most assuredly have heard of it long before now.
‘Nothing’s wrong, Mother,’ he said, ‘of course it’s not. But I have pages of proofs to read and mark up on the new Buchanan book and—’
‘It’s not going to be late, I hope,’ said Celia, ‘it really is imperative it goes on sale in July. I would be very worried to think—’
‘Mother, it’s not late. It’s absolutely on schedule.’
‘Then why the rush?’
‘Celia, do leave the boy alone,’ said Oliver mildly. ‘He simply wants to get on with his job. Probably before the telephones start ringing and there are other such distractions. Proof correcting is time-consuming and painstaking work; I always liked to do it early in the day myself.’
‘I’m perfectly aware of the mechanics of proof correction,’ said Celia, ‘I’ve done a great deal of it myself. I simply wanted to—’
‘Celia—’ said Oliver quietly. His eyes met hers; she stared at him for a moment, then stood up, pushing her chair back loudly, throwing down her napkin.
‘Well, clearly I must get to Lyttons myself,’ she said, ‘since Giles is setting such an extremely good example. If you will all excuse me.’
She left the room; Giles waited a moment, looking miserably down at his plate, then hurried out after her. The twins watched him; then ‘Poor old Giles,’ said Venetia.
‘Poor old boy,’ said Adele.
‘I’m afraid,’ said Oliver, ‘I fail to see quite why Giles should be deserving of such sympathy.’
‘Daddy! Of course you can see. Mummy never loses a single opportunity to put him in his place, make it clear she’s boss, at the office as well as here.’
‘Adele! That was quite uncalled for. I think you should apologise.’
She looked at him, serious, almost shocked just for a moment, then the small, beautiful face melted, broke into a sweetly flirtatious smile.
‘Daddy, don’t be silly. I didn’t mean it. I was only joking, you know I was.’ She jumped up, went over to him, kissed him quickly. ‘Don’t be silly. Of course Mummy’s not the boss. You are, everyone knows that. You couldn’t think I was serious. Goodness, I wouldn’t have said it if I was. If you see what I mean. But – well, Giles is so nervous about his new job. And Mummy going on at him doesn’t exactly help. Does it?’
‘She wasn’t going on at him,’ said Oliver firmly, ‘merely making sure there was no problem.’
‘Yes, of course.’ She sounded contrite. ‘Sorry. Sorry, Daddy. It’s sort of hard for us to understand, I suppose. Not being part of Lyttons ourselves. How important it is that everything goes well.’
‘Adele,’ said Oliver, ‘nothing would make me happier than for you to be part of Lyttons. Or at least to think you would be one day. As you very well know.’
‘And maybe we will,’ said Venetia. ‘Let’s hope.’
‘Let’s hope,’ said Adele, echoing her, giving her father another kiss. ‘One day.’
He smiled at them both and stood up, scooping up the daily papers. ‘Well, we shall see. Meanwhile, you must enjoy yourselves as much as you can. Time for such self-indulgence is far too short. Now I, too, have work to do. What are your plans for the day? Some important shopping, no doubt.’
‘Desperately important,’ said Venetia.
‘Absolutely desperately,’ said Adele. ‘Big country house party on Saturday for a start. We need new shoes, we’ve danced all ours through. Bye, Daddy. See you later.’
Left alone at the table, they looked at one another.
‘Poor old Giles,’ said Venetia.
‘Poor old boy,’ said Adele.
Giles walked briskly along the Embankment away from Cheyne Walk, away from his parents, wishing passionately he was not going to see them again in little less than an hour’s time. He felt angry; angry and depressed. He had been working at the House of Lytton on Paternoster Row, unarguably one of London’s great publishing companies, for almost two years now, rising in its hierarchy from post boy to clerk to the trade counter to junior editor; the rise had, of course, been swift, hardly a proper apprenticeship, but he had still had to go through it.
‘It’s important you do,’ Oliver had said, ‘you have to understand what every phase in the process means, how it forms the whole.’ And of course Giles agreed with that, he had not expected to come in as Mr Lytton the Third, and start publishing his own list on day one. He had worked with a will, had enjoyed it, especially his time as a looker-out on the trade counter. He wasn’t sure why, but it seemed to him a most satisfying part of the publishing process, collecting books from the great store in the basement of Lytton House and bringing them to the counter at the front of the building for the collectors, as they were called, from the various bookshops to take away.
He had made friends, had enjoyed the others seeing for themselves that he was not stuck up, did not consider himself too good for such lowly tasks. But this new phase was much more interesting; it wasn’t difficult in itself, it was largely mechanical. Spotting the typesetters’ errors, the misspellings, the wrong placing of punctuation marks, and then copying the corrections from one master proof on to other secondary ones, was more like proper publishing, reading each new book as it came off the presses, discovering exactly what lay behind the titles in the catalogues, the endless editorial meetings, the discussions as to whether this or that cover might be more suitable, the growing excitement that accompanied a new publication.
He enjoyed it all really; and he didn’t mind working late, he didn’t mind working hard, he didn’t mind being told to do something again and again, he didn’t even mind being told he had done something wrong. Or stupid. What he did mind, almost unbearably, was his mother and her overpowering presence, her interference in everything he did. When his father pointed out mildly, or even firmly, that he had sent a second proof down with errors still on it, he felt mortified, angry with himself, apologised and put it right; but when his mother leaned over his desk, watching him as he marked up the proofs, pointing out a mistake he had missed, when she had stood in the reception area of Lyttons, studying his piles of books, checking them against the orders that lay on top of them, when she had come into the sales office and said she would like to go over some invoices with him personally, ‘just to make quite sure they’re absolutely correct’, he almost felt like crying, or even on extreme occasions, shouting at her. It did not seem to be her desire on those occasions to help him to do things right, rather to point out that he had done them wrong; or was in serious danger of doing them wrong; and to make sure that everyone in the place saw her doing it, saw her stressing her superiority over him, heard her correcting him, observed her making it clear that he was frequently, so frequently at fault, that he might be her son, but she was not prepared to tolerate his ineptitude.