No Angel (Spoils of Time 01) (16 page)

‘I have the theme for our novel about the suffragettes,’ LM said to Celia next day.

She had been fascinated, inspired even, by the stories Jago had told of Sarah Parker; had felt the familiar uncurling of professional excitement as she recognised their power. He had appeared, quite late on her doorstep, said he’d felt he had to see her, had to talk to her. She’d known what he really wanted, but she was tired, and still slightly irritated by what she saw as his over-enthusiasm for the suffragette cause, had been unable – or unwilling – to match his desire with her own, had sent him home after a short while. But the information he had brought with him, imparted over a couple of bottles of beer, had been invaluable.

‘Yes?’ said Celia. ‘What is it, the theme?’

‘It’s quite unusual, I think, and very powerful. It’s about conflict within the ranks. The battle between a militant leader and her non-militant lieutenant. If you follow me.’

‘I think so.’

‘Apparently there’s quite a lot of it. The hunger strikers have a dreadful time in prison, have to endure appalling suffering, feel isolated and disillusioned. I think it would be marvellous stuff for fiction.’

‘I agree. How clever of you to think of it.’

‘Well I didn’t exactly think of it.’

‘No?’ Celia looked up at her. Her eyes were heavy and she was drawn and pale.

LM felt a rush of sympathy. ‘More night-time nursing?’

‘Yes. It’s hard being a working mother, LM. But at least they’re all better now. Our trip on the
Titanic
is quite safe. Thank goodness. I was so afraid we’d have to miss it. Imagine how dreadful.’ She smiled. ‘But I can have a couple of good nights’ sleep before we sail. Now, I like this idea for the book. How did you come across this storyline?’

‘Oh, from a – a friend of mine,’ said LM, ‘who’s been to a few meetings.’

‘And would she come in and talk to us about it, do you think?’

‘Oh, I don’t think so, this friend is very busy. A working person, you see.’ LM felt herself flush, turned away quickly to look at some papers she was holding.

‘Yes, I see,’ said Celia gently, ‘yes of course. Well, we certainly mustn’t trouble her. Perhaps you could write a few of the stories down yourself. Or even ask your friend to put us in touch with this Sarah Parker.’

‘Yes, Yes. That might be possible. I’ll certainly ask – ask about that.’

‘I’ve even found someone who might write the book. Clever woman called Muriel Marchant. She’s coming in to see me tomorrow. Any chance of speaking to your friend before then?’

‘Oh, I should think so,’ said LM, ‘we’re going to have a meal together tonight, as a matter of fact. I’ll make some notes then.’

Only when she got home, there was a note pushed through the door from Jago to say he had a bad cold and wouldn’t be able to come. That cold! It was a brute. Probably the same one the twins had had. He must be feeling wretched. Not a lot of fun, taking care of yourself under such circumstances. She decided to go down to his little house and take his favourite beef broth and some of the red wine he had taken to drinking lately; that would do him good. And she could get some notes about the Sarah Parker woman while she was there.

‘Tomorrow!’ said Giles, ‘I thought the boat went on Thursday.’

‘It does. But we have to travel to Liverpool tomorrow night. That’s where we get on it.’

‘Can’t you get on it in London?’

‘No, darling. It doesn’t come to London. That would be difficult.’

‘I don’t see why. It could come up the river. I could see you get on it then.’

‘Oh, darling!’ Celia laughed, hugged him. ‘What a wonderful idea. But I’m afraid not. It’s too big.’ They were up in the nursery; she took him over to the window, pointed at Albert Bridge. ‘It wouldn’t nearly fit under that. And even if it did, it would be late getting to New York.’

‘Oh, I see.’

He looked very dejected; Oliver picked him up, hugged him. ‘We won’t be gone very long, Giles. Promise. Only a few weeks. Back for the twins’ birthday.’

‘I don’t care about the twins’ birthday,’ said Giles. His voice was small and rather distant.

‘Darling! That’s not a very nice thing for a big brother to say.’

Giles was silent.

‘Anyway,’ Celia said, ‘we’re going to have to say goodbye to you tonight, at bedtime. All of you. When you wake up we’ll be gone. And then you can start ticking off the days till we’re back. Only twenty-one altogether. And you have to look after the girls, as you’re the oldest.’

‘I don’t want to look after them. They’ve got Nanny and Lettie. I don’t mind looking after Barty,’ he added. ‘I like Barty.’

‘Good,’ said Celia briskly, ‘where is Barty?’

‘Still in bed, Lady Celia. She slept badly, got a bit of a cold,’ said Nanny.

‘Oh, dear!’ said Celia, ‘not another one.’

‘Oh, no, Lady Celia, not the same thing at all. She’s just a bit snuffly that’s all.’

‘Thank heavens for that. Goodness, look at the time. We must go. So much to do today.’

After they’d gone, Lettie looked at Nanny. ‘I’d like to see her give up her trip for Barty,’ she said, ‘for all her talk about her being one of the family.’

‘LM,’ said Celia, ‘LM are you all right? You look terrible.’

LM was hunched over her desk; she appeared smaller and thinner than usual, and when she looked up at Celia, her eyes seemed enormous, etched into her white face. They looked sore too, redrimmed and swollen; her mouth looked odd too, blotchy and somehow swollen as well.

She sat staring at Celia as if she wasn’t quite sure who she was; then she said, and her voice was very slow, ‘Yes, I’m fine. Well, bit of a cold. Everyone’s got it, after all.’

‘But LM, you should be at home, you should—’

‘I’m perfectly all right.’

‘Well, you don’t look it. You don’t look it at all, you should be at home in bed.’

‘Celia,’ said LM and her voice was very hard, almost threatening, ‘Celia, I am absolutely capable of deciding whether or not I’m all right. And I have no wish whatever to go home. Now I imagine you have a great deal to do, this being your last day. And no doubt a great many things to brief me on, so can we get on with that please?’

‘Yes,’ said Celia, ‘yes, of course we can.’

‘Something dreadful’s happened to her,’ she said to Oliver, ‘I know it. She looks appalling. Someone has upset her terribly. A man if you ask me. The man, whoever he is. Anyway, don’t mention it, whatever you do.’

Oliver said he had no intention of mentioning it, had no idea what he might mention, in any case. They both went into an editorial meeting with bright, calm smiles on their faces and tried to treat the pallid, exhausted LM as if she was her normal competent self. The only clue came at the end of the meeting when she said she would like to detach herself from anything to do with the prospective novel about the suffragettes.

‘It’s a subject for which I feel very little sympathy, and really cannot make any contribution to. I’m sorry if I gave the opposite impression.’

‘But LM,’ said Richard Douglas, ‘Celia gave me to understand you had a contact who had actually been in prison, who could provide information about the force-feeding and so on. It would be of great help to Muriel Marchant if that were so.’

‘I’m afraid I was mistaken over that,’ said Celia who had noticed an increased deadening in LM’s voice, a swift and intent study of the papers on her desk as she spoke. ‘Entirely my fault, very stupid of me. I’ll try and find someone else for Muriel to talk to, as soon as I get back from America.’

She looked up and met Oliver’s eyes; he was looking puzzled. He leaned forward slightly in LM’s direction, obviously about to question her further; Celia struck out in his direction under the table, the pointed toe of her boot catching his ankle. She could tell from the slight gasp of breath that she had hurt him; she reached out and touched his arm gently.

‘Shall we go on to the next item?’ she said. ‘The print run for the new edition of the Dictionary of Names? LM, I think you have the figures?’

LM’s exhausted face, softening just slightly as she looked at her, told her she had not misread the signals.

‘It hasn’t done as well as we hoped this year,’ she said, ‘I think I’d recommend bringing it down to two hundred.’

‘Disappointing wouldn’t you say, Celia?’ said Oliver coldly. He was still clearly suffering. ‘You were so convinced that it would be a continuing bestseller.’

‘Yes, and clearly I was wrong,’ said Celia.

Sick children, wretched adults, a professional misjudgement. She would be extremely glad to escape to the luxurious tranquillity of the Atlantic Ocean and the
Titanic
.

Barty felt absolutely horrible. Her head throbbed, she ached all over, and her chest hurt dreadfully. Every time she took a deep breath, it felt as if knives were going through it. And then she started coughing, and couldn’t stop. This hurt her chest more and made her throat really sore. It had been a bit tickly when she went to bed; now it felt as if someone had been at it with a razor. And she was hot: so hot. Lettie had told her to get up and get dressed. It was a windy day and they were going for a walk after breakfast, so she must put on her bodice as well as her vest and her long combinations; each item of clothing felt like some kind of a tight, hot oven. She couldn’t really quite imagine going for a walk over the bridge to Battersea Park which Giles had told her was the plan, even though it was her favourite place. Her legs felt weak and wobbly, and every so often everything started swimming round her until she had to sit down. As always when she wasn’t well, she longed for her mother.

‘Barty do hurry. You’re holding everyone else up. Have you got a stone in your shoe or something?’

‘I just don’t feel very well,’ said Barty.

‘Oh, nonsense,’ said Lettie, ‘you look perfectly all right to me. Plenty of colour in your cheeks. Bit of fresh air, that’s all you need. We’ve been indoors too much lately, with all these coughs and colds.’ Barty knew better than to argue; she struggled to keep up with them as they crossed Albert Bridge. Standing by the pond while the twins fed the ducks, she felt as if her lungs were going to burst, they hurt so badly.

‘I really don’t want any. Please don’t make me eat it.’

‘Don’t be silly, Barty. That’s extremely good chicken. You’re a lucky girl, you should be grateful to be getting it, not having to make do with bread and water.’

Lettie loved these reminders, these digs at Barty’s background. Barty was beginning to learn at least to pretend to ignore them; but today, sick and wretched, she couldn’t. Her eyes filled with tears; the chicken on her plate blurred.

‘I don’t want it,’ she said again.

‘You eat it,’ said Lettie, ‘or else.’

‘Don’t, Lettie,’ said Giles. ‘She doesn’t have to eat it. She isn’t very well.’

‘She should eat what the Lyttons are good enough to give her,’ said Lettie. ‘Barty, you just finish what’s on that plate.’

Barty picked up her spoon, slowly filled her mouth, and managed to swallow the chicken. Halfway down her throat, it seemed to swell, to gain a horrible consistency; she retched, deposited it back on her plate.

‘You disgusting little urchin,’ said Lettie, flushed with anger. ‘What a thing to do.’

‘Gusting,’ said Adele.

‘Urchin,’ said Venetia. Neither of them had the faintest idea what the words meant, but they could tell Lettie was cross with Barty; that was enough to please them.

Something snapped inside Barty.

‘Shut up,’ she said, ‘shut up all of you. I hate you.’

Lettie stood up. ‘Barty,’ she said, ‘you go straight into the bathroom and wash your mouth out with soap. I’ll be along to make sure you’ve done it properly. And then I shall give you a dose of castor oil; it’s very good for naughty ungrateful children.’

Barty stood up; the room really was swimming now, and the floor heaved under her feet.

‘I can’t,’ she said. The next thing she knew she had crumpled on to the floor and Lettie was looking frightened and calling for Nanny.

‘Bronchitis,’ said Dr Perring, ‘quite bad I’d say. Temperature over a hundred and two. Far worse than the twins. It could turn to pneumonia. Where’s Lady Celia?’

‘At her office,’ said Nanny.

‘I think she should be told.’

‘I don’t think there’s any necessity for that.’

‘Why not?’ He sounded fierce.

‘Well, the other children got better. I just can’t see any reason why this one shouldn’t.’

‘This one is much worse. As I just said.’

‘Yes, but she’s not too bad. And Lady Celia is going away this evening. To America. I don’t want her worried.’

‘I’m sure she’d want to know that one of her children is as ill as this,’ said Dr Perring.

‘It’s not one of her children,’ said Nanny firmly. Dr Perring looked at her.

‘I don’t think that’s a very wise judgement,’ he said. ‘What’s she been doing today, this little one? Kept in the warm, I hope?’