No Angel (Spoils of Time 01) (2 page)

‘It was wonderful, so wonderful,’ she said, lying back, breathing hard, drenched with sweat, smiling at Oliver, ‘I couldn’t believe it, it was like – like a great tangle somewhere deep inside me being – being sorted out.’

He kissed her, surprised, at her pleasure and at his power to grant it to her; then he poured them both a glass of champagne from the rather warm bottle he had smuggled up from his father’s cellar and they lay there for an hour telling each other how much they loved one another, before he had to return to the offices of the Lytton Publishing House in Paternoster Row, and she to her sister’s house in Kensington (stopping off first to collect a bagful of fabric samples from Woollands of Knightsbridge). Two days later, they had another tryst and two days after that yet another; then she returned home, her head filled with happy memories, her heart with more love than ever before.

She calculated (having studied the subject carefully) that she was quite likely to have become pregnant that week, but she was disappointed; it took two more visits to London before her third period most wonderfully failed to arrive and, even more wonderfully, she began to feel sick.

After that there was, despite her happiness, dreadful retribution. She faced her parents with great courage and determination, and had to face Oliver’s fear and shock as well. That was almost worse; he found himself confronting not only her condition, but a demonstration of her formidable will and what he was forced to recognise as her capacity for deceit. He had wanted to use contraceptives after the first time, but she had refused, saying they hurt her, that there was no need, she had taken advice on the subject, had talked convincingly of a douche (which she did not even possess). Oliver found her behaviour very difficult to come to terms with.

Nevertheless, through it all, through the rows, the raging, the threats of disinheritance, of banishment, of surgical intervention in the pregnancy, all of which she knew were not to be taken seriously, through the plans to which her parents finally agreed for a wedding (‘small, very small, the fewer people hear of it the better,’ Lady Beckenham had said) through Oliver’s distress and the doubt in his eyes that came close to mistrust, through her own increasing physical wretchedness, through all these things she was happy. For the rest of her life she was to remember those afternoons in the small uncomfortable bed, in the big rather cold room, filled from floor to ceiling with books, when she soared into orgasm, and then lay in Oliver’s arms, listening to him talk not only of his love for her and of their life together but of his hopes and plans for his own future within Lyttons. He told her of a wonderful new kingdom, a seemingly magical place where books were created; stories told or talked about, ideas mooted and discussed, then turned to pages within covers, authors commissioned, illustrators briefed. She felt an immediate understanding and something close to affinity with it all. Thus sex and work became permanently joined together in her heart; and were to remain so for the rest of her life.

Her father was very good at the wedding; she had to admit that. Having finally agreed to it, declared himself beaten, he had gone into it with whole-hearted generosity; he instructed the staff to prepare a lavish wedding breakfast, made a splendid speech, produced an enormous amount of champagne, and finally disappeared, ostensibly to sleep but probably, as Celia observed to Caroline, to rendezvous with the latest parlourmaid.

Lady Beckenham had behaved rather less well; she was icily courteous to the Lyttons, sat stony-faced through the speeches – particularly the one made by Oliver’s best man and older brother, Robert, who had recently emigrated to New York for a career on Wall Street, commenting in a hissing whisper to Caroline, that she considered both him and it rather common. She ignored Jack altogether, despite all his efforts to be charming and friendly to her, and looked coldly on as he flirted tirelessly with every pretty girl in the room. She spoke insultingly briefly to old Mr Edgar Lytton, who was struggling to cope with what he clearly regarded as a painful and difficult situation, and to Oliver hardly at all. Finally she pointedly settled herself down for a long time with her two eldest sons and their wives, making it plain that was where she felt her proper place to be.

But to most of the guests, and certainly to anyone looking at the official photographs afterwards, of Celia in the exquisite lace dress her father had been unable to deny her, with the Beckenham tiara in her gleaming dark hair, and Oliver so extremely handsome, by her side, it was hard to believe that the day had been anything but exceptionally happy.

The young couple honeymooned very briefly – as befitted their income and Celia’s rather fragile physical condition. At three months, she was at the peak of her pregnant misery, constantly sick, and plagued with headaches; so wretched in fact, that she was almost unable to enjoy her wedding night. They went to Bath for a week, and while they were there she suddenly began to recover, so that by the time they reached London again she felt almost well, had lost her pallor and regained her energy. It was just as well. Again greatly to his credit, Lord Beckenham had bought the young couple a house as a wedding present; it was in Cheyne Walk – he had insisted that it was not to be in Hampstead – charming, large, but in an appalling state of repair.

For the first few months of her marriage, indeed until the birth of the baby the following March, Celia was entirely occupied with restoration and refurbishment. Rapturously happy, she transformed it into something quite gloriously original. At a time when walls were heavily coloured, hangings dark, lamps dim, Celia’s house was a brilliant statement of light, somehow a reflection of the river which she loved. They were white-painted walls, curtains in bright blues and golds, pale wooden floors, and several of the new impressionist-style paintings instead of the heavy portraits and landscapes so fashionable then.

Having worked on her house all day, she would wait impatiently for Oliver’s return, and they would often dine in the morning room on the first floor, with its lovely view of the river, while she pressed him for every detail of his day.

Oliver was only able to afford the most modest staff: a very overworked cook-general and the promise of a nursemaid when the baby came, so she often made supper and served it herself, which gave her great pleasure. Quite often she insisted he brought his father home for supper. She adored Edgar Lytton; he had Oliver’s gentle courtesy, his charm, his deep poetic voice. He had also, clearly, once had the same golden looks. He was an old man now, seventy-five years old, for Oliver and Jack had been late children, the result of a second marriage. His wife had left him a year after Jack was born. But he still worked all day at Lyttons, with Oliver and the daunting Margaret, still showing the flair and business skill which had brought the publishing house its admittedly rather modest success – and said it was there that he wished to die.

‘I hope I shall be found in my office, entirely penned in by books,’ he said to her more than once, and Celia would kiss him fondly and tell him she hoped nothing of the sort would happen for a very long time.

He took her to the Lytton building in Paternoster Row at her own insistence, and was surprised and charmed by her genuine interest in it and in his stories of how he had launched the company. Lyttons was now rising to join some of the great names in London publishing, Macmillan, Constable, Dent, John Murray, but its beginnings had been extremely humble and its success entirely due to Edgar’s talents and foresight.

He had made a marriage in 1856, which was both happy and fortunate, to a Miss Margaret Jackson. Margaret’s father, George, owned a bookbinding shop that was also a printing works, and when his ambitious young son-in-law professed an interest in printing a set of poetry books to add to the educational pamphlets he was already doing well with, George encouraged him. These were followed by a history of England and by the time George died in 1860, the publishing house of Lytton-Jackson had been launched. Its greatest success was based on Margaret’s suggestion for a series of books to be published in serial form, after the style of Mr Dickens. A new and brilliant young writer was commissioned to write fifty-two weekly instalments of
The Heatherleigh Chronicles
, the story of a small town in the West Country, not unlike Mr Trollope’s
Chronicles of Barsetshire
. These made a great deal of money. The next piece of publishing inspiration was a set of school primers and then an exquisitely printed and illustrated set of Greek and Roman legends. The first editions of those books were extremely valuable; three of the five volumes owned by Lyttons were kept in the company safe.

Margaret, however died in 1875, having borne Edgar Robert and Little Margaret. Broken-hearted and lonely, Edgar then made a disastrous second marriage to Henrietta James in 1879. She was a silly vapid woman and ran away with an actor five years later, leaving behind two sons Oliver and Jack. Her defection was almost a relief to Edgar, and this intrigued Celia considerably.

‘Such a sad story’, she said, when Oliver told her, ‘but I’m so glad he did marry her, otherwise I wouldn’t have you now.’

Little Margaret showed a great flair for publishing from her earliest years; it was considered inevitable that she should follow her father into the firm. In an age where women had no rights, apart from those granted them by their husbands, and few were educated beyond the age of fifteen or so, she was highly unusual not only in winning a place at London University to read English, an almost unimaginable achievement, but in holding a highly complex and difficult job, working alongside men as their undisputed equal. Robert, on the other hand, showed no interest in publishing at all, and became a banker, sailing for America and the heady delights of Wall Street in 1900.

But Oliver, like Margaret, seemed to have printing ink in his blood. By the time he was fifteen, he was working at Lyttons in his school holidays – his father was proud to have been able to send him to Winchester – and at the age of twenty-two, down from Oxford with a first in English, he moved into what was known as the second office, as Edgar’s undisputed heir. If LM, as Little Margaret was now called (a most unsuitable name for a girl over six feet tall, with, a resounding voice and an imposing manner) resented this, she never said so or even hinted at it; she was in any case paid exactly the same salary as Oliver, and her influence was as broad as his. It was a highly successful partnership; LM’s talents were for the business side of publishing and Oliver’s for the creative.

As for Jack, he showed little interest in anything except pretty girls and certainly in nothing remotely intellectual; the army had been suggested as a career by his housemaster at Wellington, who had said he was, if nothing else, brave and extremely popular.

Celia loved Jack; they were the same age, and like her, he was a youngest child.

‘Both of us spoilt babies, and isn’t it nice?’ he said to her once.

He was extremely charming, less serious than Oliver, amusing, irresponsible, always full of fun. Oliver doted on him, but at the same time worried about his tendency to play his way through life.

‘Oliver, he’s only nineteen,’ Celia said, ‘not an old married man like you.’

However Jack had slightly redeemed himself in the family’s eyes recently; having joined the army, he had been commissioned into the 12th Royal Lancers and seemed set for a successful career. His commanding officer told Edgar that Jack appeared to have that rare combination of qualities, so essential to good soldiering which made him popular both with his men and his fellow officers. It was a long way from the bookish world of his family, but it seemed to suit him.

Celia also invited LM frequently to the house and sought her friendship. Despite her slightly daunting personality, Celia had liked her immediately. LM was almost fearsomely clever and articulate, could demolish anyone in argument, and appeared rather serious, but she was actually very good company, had a slightly quirky sense of humour and an intensely curious and ingenious mind. No one seemed to know much about her; she lived on her own, and kept her own counsel. Although she dressed rather severely, and wore her dark hair pulled starkly back, she had style and something that came close to glamour; in a crowd, she attracted attention, and men, almost to their surprise, found her attractive and even sexually disturbing.

She was very kind to Celia, if slightly sternly so, and appeared to like her, even inviting her opinion on the latest books from time to time; it also helped Celia in those early days, intellectually in awe of the family as she was that LM clearly regarded Oliver very much as a younger brother.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Oliver,’ she would say, or, ‘Oliver I sometimes wonder if you have the slightest idea what you are talking about,’ and would even occasionally catch Celia’s eye and wink at her. She was already, Celia felt, a most valuable friend.

Giles was born in March 1905. To Celia’s total astonishment, her mother (who had refused to have anything to do either with her or the house until then), arrived two days before the birth, with a large suitcase and one of the maids from Ashingham. She not only stayed with Celia throughout her labour but then remained – an immense comfort and help to her – for a month afterwards. Although she neither explained nor apologised for her earlier behaviour, Celia recognised the gesture for what it was, and accepted it gratefully.

Celia was in fact deeply shocked by the experience of childbirth. Although she bore it with stoicism, and not a sound reached Oliver’s ears as he paced the house in an agony of anxiety, she suffered very much. It was a long labour, although straightforward. She felt the first contraction at dawn on one day and was not delivered of Giles until a brilliantly bloody sunset flooded the river the following evening. It was not even the pain which distressed her, nor the exhaustion, so much as the brutality of the whole procedure, the humiliation and what appeared to be the wrenching apart of her entire body. She lay in their bed afterwards, exhausted and exsanguinite, holding Giles in arms so weak she feared she would drop him, wondering why she felt so little for him. She had expected some sort of rapture, an echo of the flood of love which she had felt for Oliver, and found only a rather dull relief that the pain had stopped. He was an ugly baby, and a large one – eight pounds – and he continued to wail for most of the rest of the night. Celia felt he could at least have rewarded her with a smile, or a nuzzle of his surprisingly dark head. When she told her mother this, Lady Beckenham snorted and said there was nothing on God’s earth as unrewarding as the human baby.