Something Dangerous (Spoils of Time 02) (11 page)

‘Poor Papa. Maybe we should collect his letters and publish them. Does he have copies of any of them, do you think?’

‘Oh, without doubt. He writes out each one three times, files one, gives the other to me. I just throw them away of course.’

‘Well,’ said Celia, ‘tell him to get them together and send them to me. They’re a bit of social history, I expect. They could go into the Biographica list.’

‘Well, it would give him something to do, I suppose.’

‘I should go home,’ said Celia, standing up. ‘Apparently Venetia isn’t well. Kit told me. She keeps being sick.’

‘I hope she’s not pregnant,’ said the countess, ‘most usual reason for young girls being sick that I know. Never considered anything else with the housemaids, I can tell you that.’

Celia looked at her. She felt suddenly sick herself. ‘Mama, really. I don’t think—’

‘Celia,’ said her mother. ‘You of all people are hardly in a position to be naive about such things.’

CHAPTER 5

‘A little boy!’ said Maud. ‘Well that’s wonderful. Really wonderful. How exciting. What else does it say?’

‘Um – let’s see.’ Robert looked at the cable. ‘Name of Henry. Weighs seven pounds. Mother and baby both well.’

‘Henry! That’s very – English, isn’t it?’

‘Well – yes.’ He smiled at her. ‘What would you expect?’

‘Nothing of course. Well – we were right, weren’t we? Jamie and me?’

‘About what?’

‘Daddy! Don’t play the innocent. About them having to get married. About Venetia being pregnant.’

‘We still don’t—’

‘Daddy, really. Girls like Venetia, certainly girls with mothers like Lady Celia, don’t get married at four weeks’ notice. A small family wedding! I don’t think so. Anyway, here he is, little Henry, born just under six months later.’

‘He – might be premature,’ said Robert. He found himself slightly embarrassed by this conversation.

‘Oh sure. Weighing seven pounds. Anyway, what does it matter, these days? I think it’s wonderful and I’m sure Venetia’s madly happy. I’m going to write and congratulate her this minute. And suggest we go over and see them all just as soon as we can fix it. You must want to meet this baby. He’s your very first great nephew!’

Maud ran up to her small sitting room to write to Venetia; they were at the house in Montauk, Long Island which was, she often said, her favourite place in the world. Her father had built it himself, as he had the mansion on Sutton Place; she loved that too, but Overview, standing high on the dunes above the shore, was particularly dear to her. She loved the sea, simply being near it, loved the salt and wind in the air, the sound of the waves a background to everything; she and Robert often sailed together, and rode along the shore; a weekend spent in New York, especially in the summer, seemed to her a dreadful waste.

This one was a special treat; ‘dance free’ as she put it, unusually so, with the debutante season at its peak. She sometimes wished she had put her foot down rather more firmly about the season; but all her friends had done it, and Felicity Brewer, to whom her father deferred in all such things, had pronounced it essential.

‘It will be such a drawback later in life, Robert, if she hasn’t been a debutante; I didn’t want to do it either, but I loved it once it was happening. And it did so much for me.’

Felicity had been proclaimed in the gossip columns a star debutante; the fact that she was married to John Brewer, Robert’s partner, successful to be sure, but hardly from the top layer of New York society, seemed rather to negate her argument, but Robert allowed her to persuade him.

Maud had not done as well as Felicity, she was not exactly star debutante material; she was lovely, with her pale skin, her red-gold hair and wide green eyes, but she was too serious to be a total success. Young men wanting only to flirt with her found themselves engaged in earnest arguments about social injustice and the importance of good architecture to a city’s mental and physical health. Her own dance, held at Sutton Place, had been successful and fun, although not very large; she attended those given by other girls dutifully, but she found her presentation at the Junior Assemblies silly and pointless and had even said so, quietly to Jamie Elliott, her beloved half brother; he had laughed and said he thought the whole thing silly and pointless too, ‘but if it makes your father happy, why not do it?’

Between them they worked quite hard at keeping Robert happy.

Up in her room, she decided to telephone Jamie; he had met the twins and liked them. He would like to know. He answered the phone himself.

‘James Elliott.’

‘Jamie, hallo, it’s Maud. I thought you’d be pleased to hear Venetia’s had a little boy. Name of Henry. The cable came this morning.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘Yes. Your – let me see, second cousin. Is that right? You’re my half brother . . . Goodness, our family is complicated.’

‘Certainly is. I suppose strictly speaking he’s not related to me at all.’

‘Yes he is,’ said Maud staunchly. ‘Any relative of mine is a relative of yours. I’m writing to say we’re going over to meet him. I think I’ve got Daddy to agree. Why don’t you come with us?’

‘I don’t think I could get the time off. Sadly. Not actually being self-employed like my dear brother.’

‘I never thought of owning a bank as being self-employed.’

‘Well it is.’

‘Think about it, anyway.’

‘I will. Thanks. And if you’re writing to Venetia, send her my love.’

‘I will.’

Jamie turned round in his swivel chair and looked out across the New York skyline. It never ceased to astonish him: the speed with which it grew. There was a race on now to get the already famous Empire State built; it was to be the tallest building in the world. As the Woolworth Building had been in its day, sixty storeys high, now looking almost homey, with its Gothic tower. Robert Lytton’s company had worked on many of the new skyscrapers; Jamie often wondered why he hadn’t taken the easy route and joined the firm. A desire to get away from family politics, he supposed, the ugly backdrop of his entire childhood. Life working for another real estate company as he did, concerned with the domestic market, was a great deal easier. He thought of his brother, with his fanatical drive to perform better than their father, working twelve, fourteen, sometimes sixteen hours a day at the family bank, and was grateful not to share any of those genes.

Funny to think of a new generation of Lyttons; Jamie tried to imagine himself into the position of family man and failed totally. He wondered what this Warwick guy was like; Maud had never met him, but she thought a lot of her twin cousins. ‘I’m sure he must be very nice. And he’s a lucky man, Venetia is so beautiful and such fun.’

Jamie wished briefly, as he did on all such occasions, that Laurence was a more normal person, that he could telephone him and tell him he had a new English step-cousin, and maybe they should send some flowers; but, he was so used by now to Laurence’s obsessive hatred towards the Lyttons that the thought was gone almost before he had formed it.

‘Maud says she’s coming over. Isn’t that heaven?’

Adele smiled dutifully at her sister, said it would indeed be heaven. She found it hard to think in such terms at the moment; she was in a strange mood, not quite depressed, but dull, downhearted. Her sister’s sudden propulsion into marriage and motherhood had shaken her; had left her not only jealous, but oddly bereft. She hadn’t minded so much about Boy Warwick, because she knew she was still first in Venetia’s life and heart; for both of them, there had always been other people, other relationships, siblings, friends, lovers even: and then – each other. That relationship was untouchable; an island in each of their lives that they had always inhabited quite alone, and only together. But with the arrival of Henry everything had suddenly changed. For the first time, Venetia told her, very clearly and almost cruelly, when she went to visit her the day after Henry had been born, that now she loved someone more than she loved Adele.

‘Something has changed,’ she said, lying back on her pillows, frail and shaken by her baptism of pain, ‘and you have to know about it. It’s important I tell you. I – well, I seem to care more about Henry than I do about anything in the world. Even – even—’

‘Me?’

Venetia nodded. ‘Yes. Even you.’

‘I understand. That’s quite all right,’ said Adele, almost formally polite. But it wasn’t: she went home and wept heavy tears of grief and loss and something close to fear. She felt that the centre of her life had gone, that her heart had been wrenched out of her; and that there was no one to talk to, no one who could possibly understand. And then two or three days later, she had wandered rather listlessly into the drawing room and Sebastian had been there, waiting for her father; he had kissed her and congratulated her on the baby and said, ‘It must be hard for you.’

She had looked up startled, thinking, fearing, he might mean that Venetia was a wife and a mother and she was not, but there was a great thoughtfulness in his blue eyes, and an extraordinary understanding.

‘Well – yes,’ she had said, brave enough to be honest, ‘yes, a bit. I’m – well, it’s nice that you understand.’

‘Of course. Of course I do. You’ve been moved. From your rightful place.’

‘Only it isn’t rightful. Any more,’ Adele said and found herself crying again. ‘I never thought, I never dreamed—’

He kissed her. ‘Poor darling. But – you have only moved across. I’m sure you’ll find that. Not down. Not further away. Just to a different place in the circle. That wonderful charmed circle you and Venetia live in.’

‘Used to live in. I feel so – ashamed. For feeling like this.’

He kissed her again. ‘Don’t be. It would be extraordinary if you didn’t. Tell you what, how about coming out to lunch with me? I could do with cheering up. Pandora’s away for a few days, some ridiculous meeting in Scotland. Would you like that?’

Adele said she would; and went to get ready, wondering how on earth someone who not only had no twin, but no siblings of any kind, could even begin to understand her sense of loss. Clearly his imagination was an extremely powerful thing. She supposed it must be something to do with him being a writer.

She had felt better after that; but she was very aware of a new need for someone of her own, someone she could care for as much as herself. It was important. For a while she had dreamed of – in a foolish, almost schoolgirlish way – Luc Lieberman, had remembered his suggestion that she came to Paris, the oddly strong feelings he had evoked in her, and had almost imagined him to be in love with her; but a few months later her father mentioned a woman, clearly his mistress, whom he had brought to a literary party in Paris, and hurt and angry – very angry – she had forced him out of her head.

There had been other men, other romances of course; men she had flirted and danced with, and laughed and teased for the past year, men she had liked and enjoyed, had even tried to imagine herself in love with, but they had not been enough, had not been right. She was in need of, if not marriage, something else; status, a life of her own. And she seemed unable to find it.

The obvious solution, work, with what seemed its inevitable consequence, a life at Lyttons, had no appeal for her. She felt no interest in books or their creation; and besides, there were various disagreeable aspects of life at Paternoster Row, the ongoing confict between Giles and their mother, the inevitable comparisons of her own efforts with Barty’s – already a junior editor – which made it even less attractive. Of alternative careers, other work, she had no concept; a few of her married friends did charitable work, but that had no appeal for her and her unmarried ones were entirely occupied in their search for and pursuit of husbands. And so she moved fretfully through her days, bored, lonely, shopping and gossip the only outlet for her restless intelligence, wondering quite what was to become of her.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Venetia to her now.

‘Matter? Nothing. Don’t be silly.’

‘Dell! There is. Tell me. Come on.’

‘Oh – I don’t know. I’m a bit—’

‘Lonely?’ Venetia’s dark eyes were tender, thoughtful. ‘I’m sorry, Adele, so sorry.’

‘Don’t be silly.’ She was not to be an object of sympathy; that did not suit her at all. ‘I’m absolutely fine. But – well, bored I suppose, not having a husband and all that sort of thing to occupy me, I want something to do. And I can’t think what.’

‘Not—’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Adele firmly.

‘Good. I’d hate that. Let’s think.’ She stroked Henry’s small head, smiled down at him; then hauled her attention visibly back to Adele. ‘There must be lots of things.’

‘There aren’t,’ said Adele. ‘Really.’

‘Of course there are. Everybody’s working these days. It’s the new fun, it says in
Vogue
.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. I mean you could do up people’s houses, like—’

‘Lady Colefax. Yes, well, I suppose so . . .’

‘Such fun, she says. Or you could do flowers for people, like Catherine Mann.’

‘She’s getting married to—’

‘I know. Just think, Catherine, a marchioness.’

‘Let’s not talk about getting married,’ said Adele fretfully.

‘You started—’

‘I know. Anyway—’

‘Or look at Constance Spry, she does flowers too. You’d be awfully good at it, I think.’

Adele looked at her and smiled. ‘Mummy would be so cross. If I did something like that.’

‘I know. All the more—’

‘Wouldn’t it. Huge rash of Barty-itis. Anyway you’ve had far more ideas than I have. Thank you.’ Adele stood up and kissed her. ‘I must go. Important appointment at the hairdresser.’

‘Don’t—’

‘I won’t,’ Adele smiled, waved and left. Outside, starting the car – the car that marked the end of their childhood as she now saw it – she reflected with a flash of irritation that there really was no reason why she should not change her hair. Without telling Venetia.
She
had changed their whole lives after all. A few waves or inches here or there were hardly comparable.