Something Dangerous (Spoils of Time 02) (26 page)

‘It must have been a lot of money.’

‘Yes. Well, quite a lot. It’s not an expensive house. Not a Lytton house.’ She grinned at Barty.

‘Yes. Yes, I see.’

Barty wondered, rather bleakly, if she was lying. She did lie a lot. It was the one thing that Barty didn’t like about her. Ever since the night of the concert, she hadn’t been able to properly trust her.

She’d told her about it, of course, mentioned the phone call, knowing that Mrs Clarence was bound to: Abbie had been vague, said oh her parents were so hopeless, she’d waited in the restaurant for ages for them. It was so obvious she’d been with someone else altogether.

Barty didn’t even mention hearing her return, or seeing the big car. There didn’t seem any point.

But it had hurt. It wasn’t as if she cared what Abbie did, or what man she might or might not have been in bed with. Why couldn’t she just have told her? Abbie obviously didn’t think she was as close a friend as she had hoped. She had, on the other hand, been wonderful over the business with Giles; had listened carefully, asking only the most relevant questions, comforted Barty, told her that she had done exactly the right thing, that she was proud of her for being so brave and so honest.

‘So many girls would have just gone along with it. Tried to persuade themselves they liked him really, or let him down lightly later on with a letter or something.’

She was very keen on honesty: in other people.

She didn’t often talk about her men friends: she said rather vaguely there was someone at the school who she liked a lot, but that he was married and so it was what she called difficult, and there were a couple of men who she and Barty both knew, amongst the crowd who went to concerts and the cinema, and whom she implied she was very fond of, what she called ‘close to’ even. Barty hadn’t observed much evidence of it, but as time went by, Abbie had become more of a mystery to her rather than less. And in spite of all her talk about frankness and freedom, and not being influenced by convention, her behaviour actually demonstrated, Barty thought, rather the reverse. She remembered Celia once saying that people who talked about sex all the time never did it; maybe in Abbie’s case that was true.

‘So where are you going to live?’ she said rather sadly. ‘I shall miss you.’

‘Well – in Clapham. It’s near the new school and everything. And of course I’ll miss you too. Anyway, you must come over all the time, there’s lots of room, you can always stay.’

‘Yes,’ said Barty, ‘yes I’d like that. Thank you.’

Later that night, lying in bed, she felt unaccountably anxious. It was more than Abbie moving away; there’d been something – odd about her. Different. What was it? What?

Probably just Abbie being obtuse. Setting out to confuse her, stop her guessing the real reason she was moving. How she had really been able to buy a house. But why? Why couldn’t she just tell her the truth?

Barty sighed; she really wasn’t very happy at all at the moment. Everything was – well, not exactly going wrong. But not right. Not right at all.

She had asked, straight away, immediately after Giles’s declaration of love for her, if she might be able to go away for a while, either to Paris or New York. It had seemed such a good idea, a sensible solution: but both requests had been refused. There was no job for her, and she could not and should not be foisted on them at a whim, Oliver had said almost sternly. She had been dismayed; what she really wanted was to leave Lyttons altogether, go to another house, but she had no excuse for making a move – unless there was an approach. She had just been promoted, given a rise and more responsibility, was thinking even of moving into a more expensive flat – and in spite of putting out a few gentle feelers, no approach was forthcoming.

But continuing to see Giles every day, having to work with him, discuss things with him on a daily, almost hourly basis, meet him at family occasions, particularly as they had always been such friends and so close, was horribly difficult. She had been truly shocked by his outburst, not just surprised; and at his patent misery at her rejection, wondered if she should blame herself, if she had encouraged him, spent long hours examining her behaviour towards him, wondering if the affectionate teasing, the kisses she gave him, however sisterly, the invitations to her flat, the acceptance of all his invitations to lunch or supper, the habit she had of taking his arm as they walked along, had all wrongly encouraged him, led him to think she felt more for him than she actually did.

If that were so, then she was paying a terrible price; he could scarcely look at her, never spoke to her except in the most formal terms, and went out of his way to avoid her to such an extent that she felt everyone must notice and be wondering why.

In the event, it was only Celia and Oliver who did – and then only because they all spent so much time together at Lyttons – and assumed, wrongly, that they must have had a quarrel.

Barty was shocked by the speed at which Giles’s engagement to Helena had followed his declaration of love for her; shocked and saddened that Giles should rush into a marriage with someone he didn’t properly love. She tried to tell herself he did love Helena, that he had been drunk that night, indeed she wanted to believe it, but she couldn’t. She knew he had been absolutely serious, recognised the grief and anger at her rejection in all its raw honesty: and now he was using Helena to ease his pain and lash out at her. It was terribly wrong.

But there was nothing she could do, nothing she could say, not even when he shuffled into her office, hardly looking at her, to tell her he and Helena were becoming engaged and he hoped she would be happy for them both. She had to smile, to pretend, to attend the engagement party, to kiss Helena, to say that yes, she would love to be a bridesmaid – and never suggest for an instant that she agreed with the twins about the dreadful mistake Giles was making.

Helena was all right; she was serious and unaffected and obviously loved Giles. But she was extremely self-absorbed and what could only be described as touchy, and, perhaps most importantly, particularly given the family she had married into, she lacked humour. She was also, which was the twins’ greatest complaint about her, rather dull company: a conversation with Helena was not a very diverting experience.

Barty had initially quite liked her, whether or not she was a suitable wife for Giles, and was inclined to be on her side, but as time went by, she changed her mind and not only because Helena’s attitude towards her changed. From a rather pressing affection in the early days she began to treat Barty with something close to condescension.

Frequent invitations to the house in Chelsea ceased – as much to Giles’s relief, she felt sure, as her own – and Helena’s eagerness to be her friend, to admire her and her achievements, her clear desire to co-opt Barty on to her side as a member of the Lytton opposition all faded. Moreover Giles did not seem happy; of course he would never have talked to her about his marriage, but he was often morose at work, especially in the morning, jumpy and defensive in meetings, unreceptive to ideas, and reacted with increased hostility to the slightest criticism, not just from Celia but Oliver as well.

It all made Barty’s own life rather difficult – and not much fun.

Helena was waiting impatiently for Giles to come home. To their dear little house in Walton Street. She had such wonderful news. Such very, very wonderful news. She was so terribly happy. At last . . .

At the very beginning, her joy at his proposal, at the discovery he loved her as much as she loved him and then all the wonderful rituals of engagement, choosing the ring, telling their parents, putting the announcement in the paper, receiving all the letters of congratulation – it had been too good to be true.

The family dinner at the Lyttons had been a bit nerve-wracking, she found Lady Celia terrifying, and the twins distinctly tiresome, with their endless silly telepathic talk and in-jokes, and it annoyed her too that Giles was so in awe of his mother, practically jumped every time she spoke to him: but Oliver she loved, he was so kind and gentle, and she liked Boy Warwick too, slightly against her will, for he wasn’t exactly the sort of man she approved of. And Kit was sweet and so good-looking, and of course Barty was charming. She seemed so fond of Giles too, assured Helena he had been the perfect brother to her all her life. It was a bit of a funny arrangement, Helena felt, the Barty one, and her mother had been distinctly withering about her: ‘She comes from a very poor family originally, as I understand, almost the slums. Of course she seems perfectly – all right now, quite PLU but one does wonder—’

‘PLU, Mother?’

‘People like us, darling.’

Helena, half shocked, half amused by her mother’s snobbery, felt bound to remind her at that point that her own grandfather had come from an area of London not too far removed from the slums himself: and since this was something Mrs Duffield Brown made a great effort to conceal and even to forget, along with the fact that she had married plain Leslie Brown and added her maiden name to his on their marriage, they exchanged quite heated words on the subject, culminating in Helena saying that that kind of snobbery was supposed to have completely died off after the war. She couldn’t tell Giles of course, he would have been upset, but she did make a great effort to be especially nice to Barty, and to tell her mother at every possible opportunity about her first from Oxford, and how brilliantly she did her editing job at Lyttons.

In the event the dinner party saw her mother almost completely silenced; the combination of the dazzling presence of the Lyttons en masse, and her anxiety that Leslie might let his accent or his story slip for just a moment was almost too much for her. She sat between Oliver and Giles, speaking only when spoken to and then only briefly, her appetite so adversely affected that Lady Celia was driven to enquire graciously if she was perhaps feeling unwell.

‘Oh, no, perfectly well, thank you – Celia,’ she said, feeling that continuing to call her daughter’s mother-in-law Lady Celia was a trifle obsequious.

‘Did you see Mummy’s face then?’ Adele said to Venetia afterwards. ‘The icicle smile if ever there was one. Poor old Mrs DB obviously didn’t know you dropped the Lady without invitation at your peril.’

‘Well, how could she?’ said Venetia. ‘Pretty frightful altogether, though I—’

‘So did I. Didn’t mind—’

‘No, he’s a poppet. And—’

‘Mm. Still not sure. She’s changed a bit since—’

‘Hasn’t she? Not nearly so—’

‘Never mind. Giles seems—’

‘I hope he is. I do so hope he is.’

The wedding had taken place the April after the dinner, and was generally pronounced a success; it was held at the Dorchester, Celia having made it plain without actually saying so that she did not consider Dorking in any way a suitable venue for her son’s wedding – ‘It’s the way she says Dorking,’ said Adele, giggling, ‘as if it were Sodom or Gomorrah’ – and the Duffield Brown house in Kensington was far too small. Helena looked lovely in white satin, and a rather flat veil, she carried a wonderful spray of lilies, and the attendants all wore palest pink. There were six grown-up bridesmaids including Barty and Adele, and six small attendants, including Izzie Brooke and the tiny Elspeth Warwick, both of whom looked so exactly like their mothers that people never stopped remarking upon the fact all day. Which would have been worrying, as Barty remarked to Kit, if Sebastian had been there, but he had refused, as he did almost all invitations these days. Abigail Clarence, invited to the wedding as one of Barty’s guests, had expressed great disappointment.

The reception was very lavish, with the Duffield Brown coffers open extremely wide, and Grandpa Percy, Leslie’s father, was the surprise hit of the day.

‘Who’d have thought it,’ said Venetia giggling, pulling off her hat and collapsing on to a sofa, ‘charming Grandmama like that, common as muck as they say, but she kept saying how marvellous he was, backbone of Britain and all that, and how he had such wonderful stories of his life at the steel works. Mrs DB was having a fit, apparently she was hoping he wouldn’t come at all.’

‘I think Grandmama did it just to annoy her. I think she and Mummy hatched it up on purpose,’ said Adele.

‘Quite possibly,’ said Venetia.

The honeymoon was a bit of a disappointment to Helena; she was pretty sure Giles hadn’t guessed, she’d worked awfully hard at being grateful and telling him how wonderful it had all been, especially
it
, but – well, maybe she just kept telling herself it would get better. Of course she had nothing to compare it with, but from everything she had heard and read, it should have been better than
that
. Quite a bit better. At least it hadn’t hurt – or not much anyway – which her mother had implied it would, which even some of the books had said it would; that had been a relief. And of course the kissing was lovely, with no clothes on. She’d really enjoyed it. And Giles had been quite good, hadn’t just – rushed at her, had stroked her breasts and told her he loved her. But then – oh, dear, then. It had been over so quickly. So terribly quickly. A few sort of thrusts and then he had groaned and she’d felt him shudder a bit and that had been that. Of course she’d pretended like mad, said how much she’d enjoyed it, and so on; but apart from the wetness, and the soreness, she would hardly have known it had happened.

But then, they had both been totally inexperienced. Well she was, and Giles had said he was almost. Which she’d loved him for really, but – maybe a bit more would have helped. And then they had both been very tired.

So – maybe, she thought through that long first night listening to him snore – she hadn’t expected that and it was very loud snoring, not exactly romantic – maybe when they had both settled down, got used to one another, weren’t so nervous and tense, it would be better. They had lots of time, in the next few weeks, to practise. Get better at it. But still – she had hoped for a bit better. And had been almost irritated by Giles saying hadn’t it been wonderful next morning. Over and over again. Yes, she’d said, yes, of course it had; and again, ‘It really was all right for you, was it, darling? You really – well—’ And, ‘Yes,’ she’d said, ‘of course. It was very nice. Very nice indeed.’ She couldn’t quite bring herself to say it was wonderful. She just couldn’t. When it was, she would say so. And it would be: of course it would.