No Angel (Spoils of Time 01) (69 page)

‘Really?’ Keep calm, don’t look at him, have another glass of wine. How quickly, how very quickly he must have acted. Oh God. ‘Surely not?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Paul Davis telephoned me today, Macmillan have made him an offer I cannot match. Certainly not at the moment. So—’

‘How unfair,’ she said carefully, ‘after all that we’ve done for him.’

‘Yes. But – well he has done a lot for us. Made us a great deal of money.’

‘Even so—’

‘Well, that’s the name of the game. Authors do move around, don’t they? Especially when they become valuable and powerful. I feel angry and hurt, of course I do, but I cannot, in all honesty, blame him. I am considering the matter, obviously but I don’t think we can afford to keep him.’

‘I’m so sorry, Oliver.’ For it was her fault, in truth. Had she not fallen in love with Sebastian, had an affair with Sebastian, enraged and humiliated Sebastian, he would never have considered leaving Lyttons. Although they had never properly discussed what he would do if . . . Stop it, Celia. Concentrate.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

‘Well. There it is. And then—’ he looked down, fiddled with his fruit knife, ‘and then there is the matter of Jack’s list.’

‘Yes?’

‘Although the Mutiny book will do tolerably well, I believe, it has been very expensive. Too expensive.’ He hesitated, then finally met her eyes. ‘An error of judgement on my part, I fear.’

That must have required great courage. She said gently, ‘I have made a great many of those, Oliver. Besides, you don’t know yet how well it will do.’

‘I think I do. A limited sale, inevitably. And I have to say I’m unwilling to allow him to commission further books, for now, at least. A cheaply produced military book is a contradiction in terms. We need to invest in the backlist, and in authors who will sell in large quantities with any money we do have. So a decision must be taken there—’ he looked at her, looked down at his wine glass. ‘I’m actually talking about Jack’s future here, you see. At very best, I’m going to have to tell him that there can’t be any more military books for a year or so.’

‘I do see. Yes.’

‘And LM really must be consulted. Wouldn’t you agree?’

‘Yes, Oliver, of course I would agree.’ And thought that really, LM would not be over-impressed with either of them; one way and another, they had managed to bring Lyttons to a dangerously low point.

‘Lyttons have written back to say there is no question of the book, or indeed any part of it being rewritten,’ said Howard Shaw, ‘and that they intend to go ahead with publication, as planned.’

‘I see. So—’

‘So I think we should write back and say we are seeking an injunction to prevent them.’

‘And you think we’ll get it?’

‘I’m fairly confident. If we don’t, if the judge decides against us, and if they go ahead and publish, then we can certainly sue for libel. And I think we shall get considerable damages.’

There was a moment’s hesitation; then Jasper Lothian pushed back his silver hair and said, ‘Fine. Please do whatever you think best.’

‘But I must ask you again – forgive me, but the judge will – there is absolutely no question of any uncomfortable details of your private life coming out in court?’

‘Absolutely none. There was no liason with any girl, at any time.’

‘And you are prepared to swear that on oath?’

‘Of course.’

‘I feel such a wretch,’ said Guy Worsley gloomily, ‘such a stupid, useless wretch.’

Jeremy Bateson looked at him; he was quite drunk, and he looked very tired.

‘Well,’ he said, rather helplessly, ‘you didn’t mean any harm.’

‘No. Of course not. But how could I have been so foolish? I don’t know, I just thought – it was so long ago—’

‘Not so long.’

‘I suppose not. But anything before the war seems in another lifetime.’

‘Indeed it does.’

‘And – I still think – well, I know that most of the book is entirely fiction. It was only the starting point.’

Bateson was silent.

‘The girl—’

‘Yes?’

‘The one who there was talk about. I mean the particular one.’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t suppose – well, she’s still there? At Cambridge?’

‘Highly unlikely,’ said Bateson with a grin, ‘she must be twenty-four at least by now.’

‘Yes. You don’t remember her name?’

‘Briscoe asked me the same thing today. I’ve racked my brains, but I really can’t. I think her Christian name was Sarah. Or Sally. Or even Susan. Something beginning with S. But you know how it is, you always think that and then it turns out to be B or W. But I promised to look up the records. If I saw the name I’d certainly know it. I’ve got some old newspaper cuttings, details of degrees, you know I’m going to dig them out tonight.’

‘Are they at your flat?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll come and help you.’

Several hours later, Jeremy Bateson looked up from his piles of papers and grinned triumphantly at Guy.

‘Got her!’

‘No! Really?’

‘Yup. Susannah! That was her. Susannah Bartlett. Graduated in 1915. Absolutely no doubt about it. God, so she’s twenty-six now.’

‘Fantastic!’ said Guy, ‘bloody fantastic. God, what a relief. Well done, Jeremy. Where does she live, how soon can we see her? Oh, I can’t wait to tell old Lytton.’

‘Hold on,’ said Jeremy. ‘That was five years ago. She could be anywhere. Anywhere at all.’

‘How do we find her then?’

‘We can write to the college authorities. Ask them if they have an address for her. That’s the only thing we can do.’

‘Well, come on,’ said Guy, ‘what are we waiting for? Give me some paper, Jem, and I’ll write straight away. They’re bound to know, aren’t they?’

‘The only thing they’re bound to know, Guy, is where she was living then. She could have moved, married, left the country—’

‘Well if we don’t write, we certainly won’t find her,’ – said Guy impatiently. ‘Don’t be so pessimistic. This is a huge break, it’s bound to help, surely to God.’ Jeremy looked at him; he was standing up now, almost jumping up and down on the spot, pushing his hands through his already wild hair, his eyes shining. He was quite literally childlike, he thought, impetuous, impatient, full of endless enthusiasm and excited by ideas and possibilities. The very qualities which made him so brilliant a storyteller; the very ones that had led him and Lyttons into this appalling mess.

‘Yes all right,’ he said, ‘I’ll get you some paper.’

Lily looked at Jack; he had an absurd smile on his face, and he was standing on his chair, doing the one-step, really rather better than usual. She checked his glass: it was still almost full. But – he had a look about him that she didn’t entirely like. Euphoric. Almost foolish. Brillianteyed. Lily knew that look. It was induced by cocaine. A lot of the girls in the show took cocaine; Lily herself had tried it, and thought it was wonderful, until a friend took too much champagne with hers, went into a coma and was rushed to hospital. Lily had never touched it since. Other people could take it if they liked; she didn’t want to risk getting into that sort of condition.

But Jack had discovered it recently and was taking rather too much, Lily thought. They had been at a party when he first tried it; it was one of the theme parties that were so much the rage. In fact, you could hardly go to, or give, a party that wasn’t a theme. Masked parties, Greek parties, circus parties, Mozart parties, swimming parties, treasure hunt parties, parties where you had to go as someone else. This particular party had been a treasure hunt and had turned into a motor chase across London, ending in a picnic breakfast on Hampstead Heath, where the final clue had been at the swimming ponds. And over breakfast, as the dawn broke, someone had offered somone else some cocaine, ‘Just so we don’t start feeling sad, now the party’s over’, and after a while everyone was taking some. Very little. Just a sprinkle in the breakfast champagne. And Jack had found himself feeling rather terrific, he said. And in no time at all was very enamoured of it indeed.

Well that was all right. He was over twenty-one, as he kept telling Lily when she fussed. And laughed at her stories of its dangers. She supposed it was all right, but it worried her a bit, and it was expensive – very expensive. Like most of his habits. And Lily, who was a sensible girl, could see he was spending a great deal more money than he actually had. He talked big, Jack did, about his important job in publishing and his army pension and his inheritance from his father. But Lily knew none of it actually added up to a row of beans. Well certainly not more than two rows.

She had seen the statement from the bank, last time it came; it had been lying on the table, in his flat. Jack was the reverse of secretive. And he had very little money in the bank indeed. He had long ago left Coutts, saying they were expensive; that wasn’t quite true, but Lily did happen to know that they required a large amount of money be kept on deposit and that Jack didn’t have a large amount of money to keep anywhere.

He was running up bills everywhere; at his tailors, at his bookmakers, at Berry Bros, the wine merchants, at his clubs. When he had been living at home, with Oliver and Celia, he had just about managed; now he had rent to pay and food to buy, and a servant: nothing grand, just a woman to clean the flat and do his laundry, but still her wages meant money that had to be found. He was drifting into debt with great speed. And it worried Lily a lot. She was ten years younger than Jack, but she felt ten years older. She felt responsible for him. Besides, she was terribly fond of him. It was impossible not to be fond of him, actually; he was kind and funny, insanely generous and incredibly affectionate. In fact, Lily had been heard to say, when she had enough champagne to loosen her tongue, which wasn’t often, because she knew tongues were safer kept tight, she could, given half a chance, find herself in love with Jack.

She found herself worrying rather a lot these days, and not just about Jack’s fondness for cocaine, but about where it all might lead. She had entered into the relationship because she liked and fancied him, he bought her nice presents and she had a great time with him. She had never expected anything more than that; getting so fond of him had been a bit of a shock. She wasn’t sure how fond he was of her; he had certainly never said anything very serious about it, and she was quite sure he had never considered anything remotely permanent. Or even if it would be a good idea if he did. Of course, times had changed and class wasn’t quite what it had been. Some girls had married into the aristocracy, most famously Gertie Miller who was now the Countess of Dudley and Rosie Boot of the Gaiety was Marchioness of Headfort. But it was still quite rare. And she wasn’t sure if it was a good idea anyway.

Lily was a realist; she knew that once the first flush was over, there had to be a lot more than sex to make a marriage work. Her parents had a wonderfully happy marriage and she could see quite clearly why it was: they loved each other, of course, but more importantly, they were alike, they had the same background, they shared views on things, had the same ambitions and anxieties, the same hopes and fears. She and Jack could never be like that. Struggling to define the difference between the two of them, she had finally said to Crystal one night that Jack was rather like a racehorse, all flash and show, but only able to get from A to B when he was told exactly how and when, whereas she was like one of the wild ponies she had seen on a day trip to the New Forest, extremely fond of its freedom and good at looking after itself, and sorting out life without any help from anyone, as far as she could see.

‘And I don’t see that a wild pony and a racehorse could have much of a future together. Neither of them would really like what the other had to offer.’

Crystal said she could see what Lily meant, but added, with rare insight, that if push came to shove, the racehorse might be quite grateful for the wild pony, telling it where to go and when.

Anyway, for the time being, there was no need to think beyond the present. It was all much more satisfactory these days, with the little flat in Sloane Street to go to whenever they wanted. Or rather whenever she wanted; she’d had to be quite firm about that. Jack had clearly expected her virtually to move in with him, and had been outraged when she refused to go back with him on his second night.

‘But you said I had to get a place,’ he said plaintively, ‘so we could be together and now you’re leaving me alone in it.’

‘I said you had to get a place because it was high time you did,’ Lily said briskly, ‘most men of thirty-five have their own homes, Jack, or where I come from they do. I never implied I was moving into it with you. That was not the arrangement at all, and I can’t believe you were stupid enough to think it was. I like my independence, and if you haven’t grasped that fact yet, then you don’t understand me at all. Now I’m off, it’s been a long day and I’ve got a big rehearsal tomorrow.’

She had left without so much as kissing him, and it had actually been quite hard not to laugh, looking at him staring up at her from their table in the restaurant, his mouth literally wide open. But her words clearly found their mark, because next day an enormous bunch of red roses arrived at the rehearsal rooms for her, with a card on them saying, ‘Sorry, Jack’, and a lot of kisses. He was very good at that sort of thing, Jack was. The generous gesture. But there it tended to stop. He certainly wasn’t one for flowery phrases, unlike Crystal’s boyfriend, who wrote her poetry and told her the stars shone out of her eyes, and life was empty if she wasn’t beside him. If he had been, Lily thought she would probably giggle, rather than swoon into his arms, which is what Crystal was always saying she did.

Anyway, tonight she was clearly going to have to take him home. He was in a dangerous state, and she wasn’t going to feel happy about him until he was safely tucked up in bed. With her. That would be fun. That was the other thing about cocaine of course, the thing Jack liked about it, and she liked about it, for that matter, was what it did to your sex life.