Something Dangerous (Spoils of Time 02) (54 page)

‘I don’t think it will do three, but – well, if we’re lucky, we should do over two.’

Publication date was 16 November – ‘A week before Thanksgiving, it’s a good time’ – and although Lyttons weren’t giving an official dinner for Geordie MacColl, Stuart and Barty took him to the King Cole Room at the St Regis on Fifteenth and Stuart ordered some Krug champagne to launch ‘what I hope will be a vintage book’.

‘I hope so too,’ said Geordie. He was very nervous; Barty found it hugely engaging.

‘I know so,’ she said, ‘and you should get your first reviews tomorrow.’

‘I’m ready for them,’ said Geordie gloomily.

Stuart Bailey smiled at him. ‘They might be good. You never know. Anyway, even if they’re bad, that’s better than no reviews at all.’

Geordie said he found that hard to believe and Barty told him it was one of the oldest tenets in publishing and one of the truest.

‘People buy it anyway then, out of curiosity. No review and they don’t even know it exists.’

It had been a very rich literary year:
Of Mice and Men
,
To Have and Have Not
, A.J. Cronin’s
The Citadel
and
The Hobbit
had all been, or were being, launched; ‘So the competition will be stiff. But there’s nothing really much like
Brilliant Twilight
,’ said Barty, raising her glass to him, ‘so we’re in with a fighting chance at least. We’ve printed two thousand five hundred you know.’

‘Oh God,’ said Geordie, ‘two thousand, four hundred and ninety-seven unsold.’

‘Who are going to buy the other three?’

‘My mother and my two sisters.’

Barty leaned over and gave him a kiss. ‘I’ll buy one. I promise. I’ll stand in the middle of Scribners and ask for it very loudly. That was one of Celia Lytton’s ploys, with every book she published. Only she did all the major bookshops. And of course she’s so beautiful and so grand everyone stared and wanted to know what the book was.’

‘Well,’ said Geordie, with one of his shy smiles, ‘you’re very beautiful too. If not quite – grand. Imposing, though.’

‘Oh Geordie. You’re very sweet, but I’m afraid it’s not true. Anyway, I shall try it for you.’

There was no review next day, in a single paper; Geordie phoned Barty in despair.

‘You see. Not even a bad one.’

‘Give them time,’ she said staunchly, ‘they were all drooling over
The Late George Apley
.’

‘I noticed. Should I fall on my sword now or tonight?’

‘Wait till after the weekend.’

She did not tell him that she had gone into both Scribners and Brentanos and asked for it, and found it poorly displayed at the back of both shops. Barnes and Noble didn’t seem to be displaying it at all. None of the bookshops were using the posters Barty had so carefully commissioned and overseen. She spent several near-sleepless nights, reflecting on the general hopelessness of her life, and wishing Celia was in New York.

In the
Sunday Post
there was a very nice, if small, review: ‘Geordie MacColl writes like the proverbial angel, with his pen dipped intermittently in acid to give his tale a sharply etched edge . . . a most promising debut.’

‘You see, you see,’ Barty sang down the phone, ‘and there’s all this week, you should get some more.’

‘I’m sure I won’t.’

On Thursday, the
New York Times
said that
Brilliant Twilight
was a ‘shimmering pearl of a novel’, and described Geordie’s talent as the ‘piece of burnished grit in the oyster that created it’.

‘Bit obscure, but nice,’ said Stuart.

Next day he rushed into Barty’s office with the
Post
. ‘Look at this, Barty. This is extraordinary.’

It was so unlike him to display any emotion other than a rather weary caution, that she was quite startled; she took the paper from him.

‘It would be wrong to describe Geordie MacColl as the new Scott Fitzgerald, for he is an entirely new and fresh talent, but in that he covers some of the same territory with much of the same panache, it would not be completely out of order. A brilliant novel.’

‘My God,’ said Barty in awed tones.

The books moved forward to the front of the shops, the posters went up, and the reorders began to come in. Barnes and Noble ordered another ten, Scribner likewise, Doubleday fifteen and Brentanos an astonishing twenty.

The
New Yorker
hailed
Brilliant Twilight
as ‘superlative’ and both the
Ladies’ Home Journal
and
Harpers Bazaar
urged their readers to put it on their Christmas lists.

There were more orders, more reorders in fifties and then hundreds; when a store in Atlanta, Georgia and another in Charleston, Carolina both sent for ten copies, Stuart Bailey signed a print order for a further ten thousand.

‘New York, Washington, Boston, you expect to do pretty well there. But when those kinds of places want to read you, you’ve made it in a big way.’

But what finally sent Geordie MacColl into the literary stratosphere was a superb review in the hugely influential
Atlantic Monthly
. Its issue immediately prior to publication had carried nothing, to Barty’s secret disappointment, although she told Geordie that a review in it for such a novel was literally unthinkable; but the following month it told its readers that they would pass
Brilliant Twilight
by to their great loss.

‘Once in a decade or so is a great new writer published. There is a moment when bookshops and libraries should clear a space on their tables and shelves, when not to do so would brand them as intellectually feckless, and when to do so would be to grant immense and rare pleasure to their customers. This is that moment in this decade; for an experience of excitement, tension, insight, emotion and carefully careless humour
Brilliant Twilight
has been given to us.’

Stuart promptly increased the print run again . . . and then again.

Articles appeared in all the papers about Geordie, about his old-money charm, his boyish looks, his personal history – ‘Thank God it’s so interesting,’ said Stuart to Barty. ‘I’m very sorry his family lost all their money in the crash but it’s extremely good for us.’

Lyttons were suddenly on the map; from being a small, modestly successful publisher, which the big boys looked down on with affectionate but mild disdain, they had become a small, brilliant publisher that the big boys looked across at with alarm and envy.

And Barty, hitherto unknown in New York publishing circles, found herself fêted and quoted as well; Kyle wrote to her, congratulating her and telling her that if ever she wanted a job, Macmillans would be more than happy to offer her one.

She wrote back and thanked him, saying she was very happy where she was, but suggesting lunch; over a rather protracted one at the Colony – ‘my treat’ – she told him of the conclusion of, although not the reason for, her affair with Laurence Elliott. Kyle was very sweet: ‘I’m sorry for you, because I know you must be sad, but I’m glad for the rest of us. He just wasn’t nearly good enough for you.’

He then spent a great deal of time telling her all about his baby son, Kyle junior, known as Kip and what a wonderful mother Lucy was; somehow, Barty managed to display the requisite enthusiasm. Felicity wrote a few days later, a charming little note, saying how sorry she was about Laurence and how much she knew Barty must be hurting; ‘but I promise you it will get better, you must just live from day to day. And remember, you are always welcome here. We’ve missed you.’

Barty didn’t feel quite ready to start associating closely with Laurence’s enemies, but was touched nonetheless and rather surprised that a person who had been married for almost four decades should be able to remember what the ending of an affair must feel like.

There was still no word from Maud.

But as the year drew to a close and
Brilliant Twilight
was in every bookshop window and on every Christmas list, and she accompanied Geordie to yet another reading at yet another bookshop, Barty would frequently reflect with something approaching disbelief, that she had not thought about Laurence Elliott for at least twelve hours.

But the engagement announcement and the marriage reports were almost beyond endurance. When he phoned her, to tell her he was going to become engaged, she had thought it was simply that: the thoughtful act of a past lover, had assumed that finally he was behaving with some kind of normality. It hurt but she managed to smile into the telephone and to say she was delighted and she hoped he would be very happy.

But ‘Barty, I don’t want to do this,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to be engaged to Annabel Charlton, I certainly don’t want to marry her. You have only to say you’ll marry me, Barty, and I’ll cancel the whole thing. Gladly. Joyfully. I still love you very much.’

She had managed to put the phone down; an hour later it rang again; it was Laurence.

‘Now you’ve had time to think about it, Barty, how do you feel? Will you marry me? Or do I have to marry Annabel instead?’

‘I won’t marry you,’ she said, hearing her own voice surprisingly calm, ‘and if anything was necessary to make me sure I had done the right thing refusing you, this is it. Good morning, Laurence and congratulations to you both.’

And then she dropped her head into her arms and sobbed for quite a long time.

She had thought she was used to it; to the pain, the loneliness, the disorientation, the sheer, frightful jealousy – that last had shocked her most, the thought of Laurence with, making love to, someone else.

But the wedding, the marriage, that was unbearable.

She went through the following seven days in a dream; during which she wrote a letter to Maud, apologising to her, telling her she had been right, and how much she had missed her.

Maud telephoned her next day, a tearful, sad voice, saying she was only sorry for Barty and that there was nothing to forgive.

‘But what will you do now?’ she said.

‘Now?’ said Barty, and suddenly as she realised what she could do, and wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before, she smiled into the phone. ‘Now Maud, I’m going home.’

Part Two

1939 – 1942

CHAPTER 25

‘We must get Adele home at once,’ said Celia. ‘This is quite appalling.’

She spoke more in irritation than in terror, as if the invasion by Herr Hitler of Poland and the subsequent declaration of war upon Germany by both England and France were inconveniences rather than events of world-shaking importance.

‘I agree with you, my dear, it would be very – nice to have her here. But why should she come?’

‘Because – oh, Oliver, don’t be so ridiculous. Because we are at war with Germany. France is at war with Germany. France may be invaded—’

‘She may very well be, I am afraid.’

‘So Adele ought to be at home. With her children.’

‘Celia – ’ Oliver hesitated, looked at her in a certain amusement ‘ – Celia, Adele is at home with her children. She lives in Paris now, with the father of those children—’

‘Most unfortunately.’

‘I agree with you. But those are the facts. Her life is there, she won’t even think of rushing back here.’

‘Then we must make her think of it. Of the dangers. If Luc has any decency at all, he will agree with us—’

‘I must say, I am very afraid for her,’ said Oliver, ‘for all of them. Luc being Jewish does put them in far greater danger—’

‘Yes. I do know.’ She met his eyes; she had slowly and unwillingly changed her mind over the past two years as reports appeared in the papers of the persecution of the Jews in Poland and in Germany itself, of Austrian Jews being forced to scrub pavements while their Nazi persecutors looked on, of the looting and burning of synagogues becoming increasingly commonplace. But it had been the events of
Kristallnacht
– The Night of Broken Glass – the previous autumn that had finally convinced her, the wave of organised violence over twenty-four hours throughout Germany and Austria against the Jews. 20,000 men had been arrested as a result and sent to concentration camps, and stormtroopers had broken into Jewish homes to terrorize and beat women and children as well as men. Celia had sat reading the report of that in
The Times
, most unusually for her in tears; afterwards she had gone to her room and sat there for a long time, horribly shocked and chastened, not only that it had happened but that she and her friends could have been so wrong.

Some of them, including Bunny Arden, had clung to their support for Hitler, their belief in appeasement but: ‘I can see I was wrong,’ she said to Oliver. ‘Dreadfully wrong. I – would like to apologise to you. And to Adele and to Luc, of course.’

She had gone to Paris to see them and to try to make her peace; she had never lacked courage of any kind, moral or physical, but she had never needed it more than sitting in Adele and Luc’s apartment and asking for their forgiveness.

It had not been granted.

‘I was wrong,’ she said simply, ‘wrong and arrogant and extremely – offensive to you both. I’m very sorry.’

There was a silence. Adele, clearly confused over her own reaction, had looked anxiously at Luc, seeking guidance. But he, having sat ice-featured as she talked, nodded tersely and left the apartment, saying he had to meet some friends.

‘I’m sorry, Mummy,’ said Adele, looking after him, ‘he’s very distressed about it all. About what’s happening. He sees any denial of that as an affront.’

‘Of course. It is. I can understand that. Well, I hope in time he will forgive me.’

‘I – hope so. But I still don’t think you really understand how he – we – felt about your attitude. It is good of you to come, and I do appreciate it, but – well, I can see why Luc still finds it hard to accept you. Even after your apology.’

‘Oh, Adele, really. What else am I supposed to do?’ Celia felt a stab of irritation, in spite of her remorse. Nothing that had happened had changed her view of Luc Lieberman as a spoilt, self-centred, rather immature creature; she was beginning bitterly to regret her insistence that Adele do the honourable thing and involve him in the decision over her first pregnancy.

‘I – don’t know.’

‘Well, surely you and I can be friends again.’

Adele smile at her rather tiredly. ‘I’d like us to be. I miss you.’

Celia decided to take advantage of this. ‘You’re terribly pale. And you look exhausted.’ She looked round the apartment, at the mess of baby clothes and toys, at Noni’s playpen occupying half the sitting room, at the nappies hanging on a line on the balcony. ‘This can’t be easy for you. Why don’t you come home to have this baby?’

‘No, Mummy, I can’t. Really. I have to stay here and look after Luc.’

Celia managed with a huge effort not to say that she didn’t see much evidence of Luc looking after Adele; she merely remarked that she was sure Luc would be all right for a few weeks. ‘In fact he’ll probably be relieved not to have to worry about you all.’

‘No, really. I’ll be all right. Anyway, it’s not for another month or so. I do hope he arrives before Christmas.’

‘He? Are you sure about that?’

‘If Luc has anything to do with it, yes. He is determined, convinced rather, that it’s a boy. Heaven help me if it isn’t. I don’t know why it matters so much but—’

‘Adele, he’s a man,’ said Celia. ‘They have to play their absurd games. One of those is perpetuating their own line. It’s pitiful, but there it is.’ She looked at Noni who was holding on to the bars of the playpen, smiling; she was a beautiful child, unmistakably French, dark eyed and olive skinned, with a mass of gleaming black curls. ‘She’s sweet, Adele. Personally I rather hope you have another girl. Just to annoy him.’

‘Oh, Mummy! That’s not helpful. He’s my husband—’

‘Unfortunately he is not,’ said Celia icily. That was a mistake.

Adele stood up, her face drawn and hurt. ‘Please don’t say that. It doesn’t help. Of course he’s my husband, in all but name and—’

‘And I suppose you’re going to tell me again that it isn’t his fault.’

‘Yes. Yes I was. I think you’d better go,’ said Adele wearily. ‘We’re just going to start fighting again. I do appreciate your coming, but—’

‘But what?’

‘I can’t cope with this hostility towards Luc. It’s terribly hurtful.’

‘Oh, Adele, don’t be absurd. I’m merely stating facts.’

‘No, you’re not. Not merely stating them. As always there’s a lot of opinion contained in facts as you see them. Distortion, even. I – I love Luc. And he loves me. And whether you like it or not, we are a – a family. I’m sorry, Mummy, but you’ve got to learn to accept that. For once your views aren’t terribly important.’

They parted then. A letter came a week later from Adele, saying that she had been unable to persuade Luc to accept Celia’s apology: ‘and although of course I do, I do feel my first loyalty is to him.’

‘Wretched, arrogant, disagreeable man,’ said Celia viciously, stuffing the letter into her desk drawer. But she was very upset, not least that the estrangement from Adele had been for the most part her own fault.

Adele’s wish that the baby be another girl was not granted: Lucas Lieberman was born on Christmas Day 1938: ‘to the sound of bells ringing all over Paris,’ Luc told Adele as he came to her bedside, with a bouquet of Christmas roses. ‘
Ma chère, chère
Mam’selle Adele, you have now made me perfectly happy.’

Oliver was right: Adele had no intention of going back to England.

‘I’m sorry,’ she wrote to Celia, ‘but I wish I could make you understand, this is my home, this is where my children have been born and will grown up, and this is where I shall stay. Luc really doesn’t think there is very much danger. If it gets worse, then of course I’ll consider coming back, but I don’t think it will.’

Nobody was taking the war very seriously: apart from the notices all over Paris calling for mobilization ‘because of the aggressive attitude of the German government’ and the sight of a great many soldiers in uniform, life seemed almost unchanged.

‘Paris will always be Paris’ was the motto on everyone’s lips; and indeed it seemed to be. As Adele pushed Lucas and Noni around each afternoon in the huge old perambulator which Lady Beckenham had delivered to her personally when Noni was born, she saw what she had always seen: people sitting in the sunshine at pavement cafés, drinking wine and smoking, and ignoring whatever might be going on in the rest of Europe. They went to concerts and to the cinema, listened to the
petits orchestres
in the
grands cafés
and in the Luxembourg Gardens; there might be sandbags on the steps of the Opéra but people flocked to it to hear
Madame Butterfly
; the cinemas were full, and so were the restaurants, the couture houses continued to work on the spring collections. It was as if the whole of Paris was resolved to show Hitler it had no time for him. There was no fear – or very little – in Paris.

‘We have the Maginot Line,’ everyone said. ‘We have the shield of France. We will be safe.’

Prominent figures (including General Beaufre, Marshal Pétain and the Duke of Windsor) visited the Maginot Line, the line of armed forts along the German border, and vouchsafed its impressive strength; only a few acknowledged that it stopped short at the Belgian border. But then Belgium was an ally, so that was not so serious was it?

Sometimes, as Adele walked the streets of Paris with her children, she would catch sight of herself in a shop window, a dark thin girl, her hair grown unfashionably to her shoulders, wearing a printed silk dress, barelegged, hatless, gloveless, pushing a very large, very old perambulator, and wonder where the spoilt, chic and extremely English Adele Lytton had gone.

‘So what will happen, do you think? Will you have to enlist?’

Helena’s face as she looked at Giles was troubled; irritating and ineffectual as he was, disappointing as a husband and a provider, she was still very fond of him, and fearful at the thought of what might become of him. In this she was scarcely alone; across the length and breadth of the country, wives shared her feelings.

They had sat, Helena almost in tears, listening to the King’s broadcast, to his brave prophecy that with God’s help they should prevail; the next day, with all the banks closed and people unable to talk of anything but the war, had a strange almost surreal feel to it.

Draconian measures were immediately introduced: petrol was rationed, theatres and cinemas were closed, street lighting eradicated, and children from the cities, most notably London, were being evacuated to the country. Apart from that, not a great deal seemed to be happening.

‘Of course I shall,’ said Giles. He met Helena’s eyes and smiled at her; he was surprised to find himself excited more than anything else by the prospect. He had become so accustomed to being in what seemed a terminally unsatisfactory situation, that the prospect of making a break, doing something different and perhaps even proving successful at it, was quite heady. Danger, pain, death did not at that moment properly occur to him; he saw only the chance of a glorious bid for freedom.

‘I thought I would go into the army. They are asking for men between the ages of eighteen and forty-one. I actually don’t see how any selfrespecting chap could not go. I thought I would join Father’s old regiment. It would please him—’

‘I don’t really see that pleasing your father has a great deal to do with the conduct of war,’ said Helena.

‘Not primarily, of course. But if I can please him at the same time, that would be a bonus. God, you should hear Grandpapa talking about war. About how marvellous it is, how your blood gets up, how you can do things you could never normally do, how you forget to be afraid—’

‘I really think I’d rather not,’ said Helena.

Oliver was touched by Giles’s intention to go into his regiment. ‘Splendid,’ he said, ‘well, I’m sure they’ll be pleased to have you. I won’t say I wish I could go with you, but if I was twenty years younger—’

‘You’d be coming home from the last war,’ said Giles soberly. ‘Isn’t that a fearful thought? Only twenty years ago, we were fighting Germany. Or rather had conquered it.’

‘Yes, indeed. Not the war to end all wars after all. It’s appalling, I do agree. But what else could be done? He’s got to be stopped, this creature.’

‘Well, I shall enjoy helping to stop him,’ said Giles.

‘Try and stop me,’ said Jay. He grinned at his mother; she was white, her fists gripping the arms of her chair, her eyes huge and dark in her thin face. But she said nothing: even at this sinister, absolute repetition of Jago’s own words. It was as if Jay had heard them himself.

‘My father was off with the first wave, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes, Jay, he was. And—’ She stopped.

‘Yes, I know. And killed very early on. That’s no reason to suppose I will be, Mum. I’ll be fine. Lucky Lytton they call me, you know.’

‘I – didn’t,’ said LM faintly.

‘I don’t think I can bear this,’ said Celia. She was very pale, trembling violently; she sat down next to Oliver’s wheelchair and put her hand in his.

‘What’s that, my dear?’

‘What’s that – Oliver, how can you be so – so calm about it?’

‘Oh – you mean Kit.’