Something Dangerous (Spoils of Time 02) (41 page)

‘He’s obviously very talented.’ Abbie smiled at Venetia. ‘And is that marvellous portrait you? Do forgive me asking, but it really is so impressive and—’

‘Yes. I was a bit younger then of course. It’s by an artist called Rex Whistler.’

‘I have – heard of Whistler.’ The tone was slighty cool. Venetia felt embarrassed.

‘Of course. I’m – sorry. Now Henry, come along, sit down on the stool and let Miss Clarence hear you play that tune Daddy taught you. They often—’

But at that moment, the door of the drawing room opened and Boy walked in. Walked in, saw Abigail Clarence and stopped. He stood so still, so absolutely still, and aware and wary, that it was almost a tangible thing. Venetia, looking up at him briefly, saw the expression on his face and felt something ease into her own consciousness. It was a sliver of fear: so raw and powerful a fear that she turned away from it, crushed it promptly and absolutely; and then she heard the telephone ringing and Donaldson appeared in the doorway looking quite shocked himself, to say that her father had collapsed and that she was to go to St Bartholomew’s Hospital as soon as she possibly could.

CHAPTER 17

‘Don’t go.’

‘I’m going, I’ve got to.’

‘But I want you to stay.’

‘I’m sorry, I—’

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ he said, ‘you are being absurd. Some ridiculous appointment with a bookshop, what does it matter? When you know what I want to do with the rest of the afternoon . . .’

It was the first time she had seen him close to anger with her: not just exasperated, not merely annoyed, but actually seriously cross.

She faced him steadily and stood her ground; that much she had learned. ‘Laurence, I have an appointment with Scribners. I have arranged to be there to see the manager at four o’clock. I’m sure you don’t cancel appointments with the New York Stock Exchange purely on a whim.’

‘That’s hardly comparable.’

‘I’m sorry, but it is.’

‘Oh very well.’ He glared at her. ‘Go to your absurd meeting, if it’s so important to you. I have to say I don’t find it very flattering.’

Barty had been on the point of getting up from the table; she sat down again, put her hand over his.

‘Laurence, you have to understand. About me. I have a career, it’s very important to me. I shouldn’t even have had lunch with you today. I’ve got far too much work to do.’

‘Well, I am so extremely grateful to you,’ he said, ‘but don’t let me detain you any further.’

She stood up. ‘Will I—’ She stopped.

‘Will you what?’

‘Will I meet you as arranged?’

‘You can hardly meet me as arranged. You’ll be in some damn-fool bookshop. Oh, look, for God’s sake, go. I’ll leave a message at your office. I may have to cancel the whole weekend now.’

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Thank you for lunch. I’ll wait for you to phone me.’

‘Indeed. Possibly for some time.’

She bent to kiss him; he turned his head away. She looked down at him for a moment, then walked quickly out of the restaurant.

She was learning not to be too distressed at these outbursts; they were childish tantrums, no less. Tantrums which (his psychiatrist had explained, and he had explained to her) he had never had a chance to work through as a child, work through and learn to control.

‘Because I had no proper loving discipline,’ he had said after the first one, after he had apologised, kissed her, begged her to forgive him, ‘just indulgence, pacification. I’m emotionally still about four years old, my darling. Trying to grow up. You’ll have to help me.’

Barty had thought (but didn’t say so) that at four or even five, he had had plenty of loving discipline, that his father had not died after all until he had been twelve; and then thought that he had been ill for a year before that, that Laurence would have been alternately neglected and indulged as his mother nursed his father and tried to come to terms with her own loss, and that perhaps even at twelve there was still a great deal of growing up to do.

She crushed the thought that at twelve she had had to be very grown up indeed, that there had been no room for tantrums in her life, that the twins had had a monopoly on those; Laurence was different, he was male for a start, and males were so much less resilient, and then the rest of his life had been so horrific that any growing up he might have done would have been set back dreadfully. But this was more than a tantrum; this was more serious. It had made her – what? Anxious? No. Thoughtful? Possibly.

Anyway, she had more serious things on her mind just now: her meeting at Scribners to discuss the possible promotion for a novel she was hoping to publish in the spring.

A wonderful novel, though: she was convinced it would do well. It was her own discovery and she was fighting hard for it. She hesitated to say it was in the Fitzgerald mould, that would smack of imitation, of passing off. Which it certainly wasn’t. But it did chronicle the lives of the privileged in New York: the privileged and decadent. It was at once a saga and a thriller; a story of crime committed by a young member of a prominent New York family and the attempted concealment of that crime. It was exciting, stylish and very clever; Barty had been so excited when she had first read it that she hadn’t been able to sleep. She had passed it to Stuart Bailey, without too much hope, for he was notoriously conservative, and indeed he had handed it back to her saying it was interesting but that new authors were notoriously difficult to launch at the moment, with the Depression still only just beginning to lift.

She had fought on; had passed it to a couple of Lyttons’ professional readers and, when they delivered favourable reports, had gone back to Bailey and begged him to give it a chance. Reluctantly, he had agreed to meet the author: ‘If he seems to have more than one story in him, I’ll consider it more seriously. Solid bankable authors are what we’re looking for, not single books that won’t last.’

Barty had written to the author, a young man called George MacColl, and asked him to come in to meet her and Stuart Bailey. He was only twenty-six years old, charming, not quite good-looking, but very attractive, with floppy brown hair and grey eyes and rather girly-looking long black eyelashes; he was indisputably upper-class American himself, although clearly far from rich.

‘My father lost a lot of money in the crash, my grandfather put me through Princeton; I’m the small white hope of the family.’

Stuart Bailey had clearly liked him very much and liked him even more when a long discussion about the book led to a longer one about other ideas he had. Two days later, he told Barty to make him an offer and to prepare a publishing plan. ‘And I’d like you to edit it, it seems only fair. Of course,’ he added firmly, ‘I don’t ever see him as a really big seller, but with the right publishing, he could do quite well.’

George MacColl was so excited he literally jumped up and down in Barty’s office; ‘I just never in my wildest dreams thought this would happen. Maybe a kind letter, rather than just a rejection slip. You really think it could do well?’

Years of living with Celia had taught Barty professional caution.

‘We must hope so,’ she said carefully, ‘and of course we will only be publishing a very small number initially, let’s say fifteen hundred at the most. That’s far better, you see, than putting out thousands and running the risk of them all coming back.’

But George MacColl was not to be cast down; he begged her to let him take her to lunch and when she refused that, proposed tea. ‘After all, if we are going to work together, we need to know one another well.’

Over tea, he asked her to call him Geordie (‘not many people have nicknames longer than their real ones’) and promised to do exactly what she told him with his manuscript. ‘I’ll cut it, lengthen it, make the beginning the end, whatever you want.’

Barty told him he’d change his attitude when he was actually asked to do any of those things, but she didn’t actually think that the book – called
Brilliant Twilight
– needed any really serious editing. MacColl had a natural and deceptively easy style, economical and touched with an irony that set the book well above the standard run of popular fiction. She was extremely excited about it; and her meeting that afternoon at Scribners was to present it to one of the buyers there.

She had been there several times now, to the beautiful building on Fifth Avenue, it was her favourite of all the New York bookshops, with its book-lined galleries, rather like a very grand library, set above the well of the main store. As she walked up the grand dividing staircase that led to the galleries, she recognised, with a stab of excitement, Maxwell Perkins, the legendary editor at the house of Scribner. She smiled at him, knowing that he would not have the faintest idea who she was; he inclined his head to her gently, and walked on. Barty looked after him wondering if any young editor would ever say of her that they had passed
the
Barty Miller on the stairs at Lyttons.

James Barton of Scribners had read and liked
Brilliant Twilight
; he said yes, they would take ten and see how they went.

‘Will you be doing posters, or anything like that?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Barty. ‘Of course. Let me know how many you want and I’ll supply them.’

‘One, my dear, will be quite sufficient. Possibly two, in case of one getting damaged. I really don’t think this book is going to be a big seller, good as it is. You’ll have a lot of competition, next year, you know. There’s a new Steinbeck,
Of Mice and Men
, quite marvellous. And a Hemingway. And
Gone with the Wind
is still going to be selling very well.’

‘Well – ’ said Barty, ‘perhaps not as big as them. But not small either, Mr Barton. Now I have some other titles to discuss with you, if you have time.’

Oliver’s condition had stabilised somewhat; he was in a private room, now at the King Edward VII Hospital for officers, breathing with some difficulty, and looking somehow pitifully small.

But he was unconscious, and had not moved or spoken since his collapse; he had had quite a minor heart attack, Dr Carter the specialist said, followed by a rather more severe stroke: ‘Not so very unusual, but it’s impossible to say yet exactly how serious the stroke was. Time will reveal whether his speech or indeed his motor skills have been affected. He needs absolute rest and quiet. The next few days should show an improvement, but there is nothing we can do to hasten that.’

Celia was sitting by him, holding his hand; Venetia and a horribly shaken Giles stood staring at him.

‘He looks so – old,’ said Venetia, her voice hushed, ‘and as if he’s not here at all.’

‘Well – we must be grateful that he is,’ said Dr Carter, ‘and of course, at least fifty per cent of all stroke patients make a good recovery.’

‘Really?’ said Giles. ‘Is that really so?’

‘Oh yes. But – as I say, there are no certainties.’

‘Could I – could I have a word with you? Privately?’

‘Certainly Mr Lytton. Lady Celia, Mrs Warwick, please excuse us.’

The look of absolute contempt Celia gave Giles as he left the room, would have shaken a stronger personality than his. She knew what he was going to ask: and she despised him for it. She preferred to carry her own guilt and fear alone.

Dr Carter was as reassuring as he could be; the risk of strokes increased with high blood pressure and a narrowing of the arteries.

‘I have to say that your father shows no sign of either of those conditions so far as we can tell; but a third risk factor is what we call atrial fibrillation, which is an irregularity of heartbeat, most common in a heart that has been weakened, in this instance, probably by the heart attack.’

Giles took a deep breath. ‘And – could that be caused by stress?’

‘The stroke no, the heart attack possibly. But of course your father is not strong, never has been since the war. Don’t worry, Mr Lytton; he’s holding his own so far. That’s a good sign. We have to look for signs of what we call lightening, that is, his regaining consciousness, in however small a way; provided that happens quite soon, then the prognosis is good.’

Giles nodded and thanked him and went back into the room; Celia looked at him.

‘Giles, I think you should get back to Lyttons. There seems no point all of us staying here. Venetia has spoken to Adele, she’s going to fly back from Paris, so much better than that wretched boat train, and Kit is coming home from school this evening.’

‘But—’

‘There is nothing you can do here.’ She placed a slight emphasis on the word ‘you’; Giles flinched.

‘Mother, I’m so – sorry. If – that is – if my – my outburst was a cause of this in any way.’

Celia looked at him; her face unreadable.

‘Whatever the cause,’ she said, ‘it has happened. We can only hope and pray. Now do get back to Lyttons; and send a cable to Barty, please. She’ll want to know, and possibly may even come back. He’s so fond of her, she did so much for him when he got back from the war, who knows what her presence might do. Oh, and you’d better send one to Robert as well. And Jack and Lily, naturally.’

‘Yes,’ said Giles, ‘yes of course. I’ll send them immediately.’

Which he did: one to Hollywood, two to Barty, at both her home address and at Lyttons, and one to Robert at Sutton Place.

It was still quite early in New York, so Barty might not yet have left home; she should get it very quickly.

He was not to know, of course, that Barty had not slept at her Gramercy Park apartment for two nights; or that she had left Lyttons at ten o’clock New York time for an appointment; and had then gone on to meet Laurence Elliott for lunch.

They lunched at the Colony Club. Barty very seldom agreed to lunch, because she couldn’t spare the time; but today, with meetings running through the day, it suited her schedule to do so.

Laurence was very fond of the Colony partly because it was the only restaurant in New York with that great new delight, air conditioning, and because the soft-shell crabs, a passion of his, were the best anywhere. Laurence had also told Barty over their first lunch at the Colony, and it had amused her considerably, that there were very few heterosexual males there at lunchtime: ‘It’s for ladies and fairies; the men stay in their clubs.’