Something Dangerous (Spoils of Time 02) (71 page)

‘I hope you’re being sensible. Looking after yourself. I worry about you, you know.’

It was so unlike her to express any maternal concern, Celia was quite startled.

‘Of course. One has to spend the night in the shelter, but the cellar at Cheyne Walk is pretty solid. We’ve got sandbags round the door, and there’s a sort of reinforced bit, a Morrison, you know, but as there’s not room for all of us in it, we don’t bother. We’re a bit short of sleep, that’s the worst thing.’

‘Of course. And how’s Venetia?’

‘Oh – all right. Getting bigger by the day, but insists on working still.

So ridiculous all this, she’s absolutely forbidden me to speak to Boy about it, and I have to respect that, but – anyway, working is a godsend for her. Keeps her mind off – things.’

‘I don’t actually suppose it does,’ said Lady Beckenham.

Celia had thought she knew grief well; now she could see it had hardly entered her life. And even now it entered it slowly, insidiously, and was the uglier for it, for when she had first heard about Kit, had been told his plane had come down, but that he was not dead, not even disfigured, a sweet relief had swept her.

‘He’s all right, he’s all right,’ she had said to Sebastian, over and over again, ‘he’s alive, he’s not burned, he’s all right.’

And even as she said the words, as she saw Sebastian’s eyes on hers, doubtful, incredulous even, she heard their own stupidity and fell into the abyss.

Kit was blind: her beautiful, brilliant, courageous Kit, blind, sightless, helpless, his apparently charmed life not over but stunted, maimed hopelessly almost before it had begun. All the things that had seemed his birthright, taken most carelessly for granted, a brilliant degree, a dazzling career, social accomplishment; admiration, popularity, fun, all snatched from him in one, dark, vengeful moment.

She grieved, she wept, she raged; for the first time in her life nothing could alleviate her misery.

‘It’s so cruel, so desperately cruel,’ she said to Oliver, pacing their room, far into that first night, ‘how could that have happened to him, to Kit of all people?’

He was hers, he was at the very heart of her life, she cared about him more than anyone or anything in the world: he was so especially loved, especially precious to her. He was still all those things, but changed, dreadfully and most sadly changed, moved from his place in the sun into a dark, chill solitude that no one seemed able to enter.

She had gone straight away to visit him, had thought – absurdly – that she must look nice for him, he cared so much about such things and then, in the first of a hundred, a thousand moments, had realised there was no point. He was sitting in a chair by the window of his hospital room, staring in front of him: his head erect, his face set in the new heaviness they would all come to dread.

She had kissed him gently, had fatally wept as she did so, and he had felt her tears, and brushed them impatiently away.

He was wretched, she had expected that, she had sat with him all day, trying to break into it, into his misery, but had failed totally. He had been numbed, silenced by it, not only by his blindness but his own reaction to it; he was frightened by his own grief. He refused to talk, answered her questions in monosyllables, responded to a conversation that became increasingly banal with terse nods, indifferent shrugs. After two hours she was exhausted; expecting to be able to ease his misery with tenderness, with gentleness, with love, she felt useless, rejected and by the end of her visit, felt a despair of her own.

It would ease, the withdrawal, she told herself, he was in shock, when he was home, when he was with people he knew and loved he would feel safe, more relaxed, would start to talk, but he did not, he sat in his own room as he had in the one at the hospital, remote, silent, discouraging visitors. Later the anger began, an all-encompassing sweep of rage that spared nothing and no one; all of them, Oliver, Sebastian, Barty, the twins, Celia herself, were subjected to it, to violent outbursts, railing against the cruelty and injustice of what had befallen him and his life.

Celia talked to him, wept with him, sat silent while he shouted at her, allowed him to blame her, as he blamed everyone, not for what had happened but for being able to see.

For three weeks he stayed there, in his room; she tried everything, she read aloud until her throat hurt, played music, talked endlessly. She met nothing but rejection; she had lost him it seemed, lost him and his love as he had lost his sight.

It was totally exhausting; after a while she went back to work, but he would remain with her all day, a dark, painful presence. She telephoned him several times a day at first, she had had a phone installed in his room, but he discouraged her calls, saying they seemed pointless. ‘I’m perfectly all right here, and I’ve nothing to say after all.’

She would arrive home at first, with books, newspapers, flowers – ‘I thought it would be nice for you to smell them’ – but he would shrug off her offers to read, and disliked the flowers.

‘I find the smell sickly, I’d really rather not have them, if you don’t mind.’

She began to dread going up to him; entering his room was a dark, hopeless experience, comparable, she supposed, to his own life. She remained determinedly cheerful when she was with him, but alone or with Oliver she wept and raged helplessly.

Finally, exhausted and in despair, she asked her mother if she would have him at Ashingham for a few weeks: ‘He always loved it there and I think the change might help.’

‘It might help you as well,’ said Lady Beckenham, ‘you sound absolutely exhausted. Of course he can come down here, at least it will spread the load a bit. Poor chap,’ she added, a tenderness in her voice that was very seldom heard.

Kit submitted to the suggestion with a shrug of disinterest, and said it made no difference to him where he was, after all. His only expressed interest was Catriona, in those early days when he had still thought she loved him, that he had a future of sorts with her; her letters were the only things that could reach into his apathy.

Nevertheless, there was one other person who he seemed at least willing to tolerate: and that person was Izzie. She took up the role of his companion with a willingness and joy that touched everyone. She and she alone was allowed to chat to him, to tell him things that had happened that day, without being rebuffed and asked to leave his room; she and she alone was actually encouraged to read to him. Indeed Cook had reported seeing him smile one morning as they sat, the two of them, on the terrace; that this deserved mention was testimony to the absolute despair in which he lived.

But not even Izzie could ease him out of his new grief, that of losing his Catriona.

Life had settled down again: to a surprising degree. Really a very surprising degree. Paris was still Paris. It might be overrun with Germans, German signs might be on all the street corners, the swastika might be flying on the much-loved landmarks: but at least it was intact, not being bombed like so many other great cities. Two weeks after they had arrived, the city was behaving remarkably normally. Restaurants, theatres, cinemas, schools were all reopening. Especially restaurants. The Germans particularly liked French food, indeed Simone de Beauvoir herself had remarked nobody had ever seen people swallow such prodigious quantities.

They were everywhere, of course, that was to be expected: but somehow no one had expected them to become part of the city. They were on the buses, at the theatre (in the best seats), in the restaurants (at the best tables), to be found photographing one another against famous French landmarks, chatting to pretty girls, sitting at the pavement cafés, drinking wine: and they were, moreover, polite and courteous. There was the curfew, of course, which meant that theatres and cinemas all started early, at about six; and there were other regulations, such as an obligation to carry a
carte d’identité
at all times. The clocks had been moved forward an hour to coincide with the time of the Greater Reich, there was food rationing, everyone had their
carte d’alimentation
in which there was a brisk black market trade, but so far nothing terrible had occurred.

The only thing that had caused Luc a sense of serious anxiety had been the publication of the First Ordinance on 27 September 1940, stating the exact definition of a Jew: ‘all those who belong or used to belong to the Jewish religion or who have more than two grandparents that are Jewish’. And an announcement that a census of such Jews was to be taken, by 20 October.

Those who owned businesses were required to put up a sign in their premises indicating Jewish ownership. But – no more. It was not so terrible. Everyone kept saying that: it was not so terrible.

Far worse was the fact that he was unemployed. He managed to do a little freelance work for other houses, some editing, and write the occasional article for a periodical; but it didn’t amount to very much money. Suzette was very far from pleased; having regained her comparatively well-paid husband, she found herself required to keep him on the salary she earned at Balenciaga.

She was not pregnant; she had told Luc, her black eyes earnestly sad, that it had been a false alarm, that very sadly she had been wrong. Luc was not surprised.

He had moved back into the apartment in Passy; there seemed no point staying in the St-Sulpice apartment with its attendant expense and memories. He had moved out without a word to Mme André – and taking only a few of the favourite books and ornaments which he had brought with him from Passy. Suzette received them back with an irritating nod, clearly indicating that they were restored to their rightful place.

But he remained desperate for news of Adele. And for contact with her. He had no idea whether she was alive or dead, whether she had reached England in safety, or was marooned in some southern French town. Or something a great deal worse. It was dreadful; he was haunted by visions of her being arrested, imprisoned, killed even, and the children with her. There were dreadful stories of what had happened on that road south; he woke sweating night after night from bad dreams to worse wakefulness. He tried to tell himself he would have heard if she had not arrived; but she was not his wife, and there was nothing to show that she was. The children were on her passport, her British passport; but that was worth nothing – or a great deal worse than nothing – in a country where the British were officially the enemy.

The Lyttons would almost certainly not have known she was coming, the phone lines had been impossible – and would therefore have had no idea of her whereabouts, unless she arrived. It became an obsession; he spent hours pondering the odds, making enquiries of friends, acquaintances, colleagues. And of course his letter to her, the one he had sent through the
Style
magazine courier had never arrived.

They had said in any case that the consignment could not be sent direct to London that day, but were trying to get it there via the New York offices; months later Philippe Lelong told him there was no indication they had even arrived there. It was truly a nightmare, a living, ceaseless nightmare. Too late, far too late, Luc realised how very much he loved her; and how absolutely impossible it was for him to tell her so.

‘Nearly got him,’ said Parfitt with great satisfaction.

‘Number One! You’re not meant to hit the pilot.’

‘Aren’t I?’ Her face was carefully innocent, as she turned to face the sergeant.

‘Sorry, thought I was. Thought he was the enemy.’

‘Of course he’s not. He’s trailing that windsock. You’re meant to hit that.’

‘It’s not that bugger wot takes us for drill, is it? Because if it is—’

‘Of course it isn’t. Now for Christ’s sake concentrate next time. Number Two, you next.’

They were numbers on the gun park, not names. Barty took careful aim; hit the windsock exactly.

‘Bullseye!’

‘Not bad. Number Three.’

They had been doing it for hours; firing at the windsock, trailed by a very slow, very old plane, piloted by an extremely brave man. If anyone got the Military Cross, Barty thought, it should be that pilot.

She stepped back, winced as her shoe caught a new set of blisters. God, this drill was a pain. Literally. They’d had to learn a new form down here; artillery drill rather than infantry. The rhythm was different, you counted differently; it was very confusing. They were all taking a long time to pick it up, partly because they were all feeling bolshie about it.

‘We’ve learned to bloody march,’ Parfitt had said, after the first morning, ‘I’ll give that sergeant ruddy gunnery drill, right up his backside. As if that was going to win the war. Bleedin’ army.’

It did seem just a little unnecessary.

But they were still enjoying themselves.

They were doing proper training now; in Oswestry they’d learned to use the complex equipment, the height-finders and predictors, to use binoculars, telescopes, matching manually the information fed them by a complex mass of dials, adding in wind speed, bearing and range, all information that was relayed to the guns, telling them where to fire, how high a plane was, how fast it was travelling, what the wind direction was. And then there was the gunpowder: which was like the dye in knitting wool, she discovered, no two batches behaved exactly the same. Calculations had to be adjusted for each one.

And every gun barrel behaved differently too, changing with age; and the wind speed and bearing affected the round in flight. It was all complex and difficult but enthralling. And wonderfully therapeutic; she realised one evening she hadn’t even thought about Laurence for weeks.

Both she and Parfitt had passed out well and had been sent on to their next post – marching on their way through the town to the station. They were sent to Anglesey, to an actual gun park, based on the cliffs overlooking the sea.

They were addressed on their first day by a young and rather good-looking young officer; he gave them a terrific talk, telling them that they would be treated equally, men and women alike, that they would work together, that they had a job to do regardless of sex and that they must be prepared to die together too. There had been a silence after that; even Parfitt looked subdued.