No Angel

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘No, why do you ask?’

  ‘I think LM might have need of it.’

  ‘LM? What on earth for?’

  Celia took a deep breath. ‘To live in for a while with her baby’ she said.

  Lady Beckenham looked at her. She prided herself on never expressing surpise at anything; she considered it common.

  ‘I see,’ was all she said now ‘well, yes, tell her, any time.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Celia, ‘I will.’

  ‘You all right, Mum? Without Dad?’

  ‘Yes, dear, I’m fine. Really I am. A few headaches still, but nothing to complain about. Billy’s being very good, acting the man of the family as your dad said he should. Only problem is money. We’re very short. I’m thinking of getting a job. In a factory or whatever. There’s plenty of work. Not like at first, with all the firms closing down.’

  ‘I know, Aunt Celia told me. Up to forty-four per cent unemployment, she said. It was partly because of there being no trade with Germany any more.’

  ‘Fancy you knowing that,’ said Sylvia admiringly, ‘you’re getting so clever, Barty.’

  Barty ignored this. ‘Where’s Billy?’

  ‘Queuing. With Frank.’

  ‘Queuing?’

  ‘Yes. For food. The queues are so long, an hour’s nothing for a bit of meat. I send them to stand there instead of me. Everyone does it now. And Frank being so small, he can often wriggle towards the front and nobody notices.’

  ‘We might be going away soon,’ said Barty suddenly in a small voice.

  ‘Going away? Where to?’

  ‘The country. To Aunt Celia’s mother’s.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because there might be some bombs, Aunt Celia says.’

  ‘Yes, I’d heard that, too,’ said Sylvia. ‘They’ve started somewhere, haven’t they, not in London though.’

  ‘No. In Newcastle. The docks.’

  ‘Well, you’ll be one worry off my mind,’ said Sylvia with a sigh.

  ‘Mum, I don’t want to go. I won’t be able to see you so often.’

  ‘Barty, you must go. You can’t stay here.’

  ‘Why not? I’m older now, I can be a help to you, I want to be at home again, with you all, please, Mum, please—’

  ‘Barty, no. You’re being silly. You’re lucky, going somewhere like that, nice and safe. I wish the others could come with you.’

  Barty looked at her. ‘Perhaps they could,’ she said.

  ‘No Celia, I’m sorry. I’m perfectly happy to have your children, and Barty of course, she has very nice manners, but I shall be very busy with my convalescents soon, I really can’t take in a houseful of urchins.’

  ‘But Mama, don’t you see, it’s difficult for me. Keeping Barty safe, when her brothers and sisters are in danger in London.’

  The Countess looked at her. Then, ‘Celia’, she said, after a long pause, ‘this is precisely the sort of thing you should have taken into consideration when you decided to make that child part of the family. Now I’m afraid it’s too late, and you have to live with the consequences.’

  Celia looked at her in silence. Then, ‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ she said, and sighed. ‘I – I think I’ll go and see LM.’

  LM had submitted with surprising ease to Celia’s suggestion that she move down to Ashingham.

  ‘You can’t stay here, LM, no one has guessed yet. I know they haven’t, mostly because—’ she stopped.

  ‘I know,’ said LM with a touch of humour, ‘it’s so extremely unlikely. A pregnant old maid.’

  She was so brave, Celia thought: so uncomplaining, never railing against the cruelty of Jago Ford’s death, just accepting it. A letter had come to LM from his CO; he had died a hero’s death, he said, on a night raid, and more important, Celia thought, had died instantly from a German bullet, would have known nothing about it.

  ‘That has to comfort you, LM. Suppose he had died slowly of injuries, in hospital or something.’

  LM was more cyncial. ‘I’m surprised at you, Celia. Have you ever heard of a soldier not dying instantly, and a hero, to boot. Jago might have died that way and of course I hope so, but I have no illusions. It might have been rather different.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘well, let’s think about you. Much more positive. I think you should come down here, you would have complete privacy. Mama certainly wouldn’t bother you, she’s busy converting Ashingham into a hospital – a very aristocratic hospital naturally – and you can have your baby either there or at the local nursing home. Then you can decide what you’re going to do.’

  ‘Oh I have decided,’ said LM. Her face was very hard, very set. ‘I shall have the baby adopted. I don’t want it.’

  ‘Adopted! LM, you can’t do that!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well because – because you can’t. It’s your baby, yours and Jago’s. You can’t just give it away.’

  ‘Of course I can. Jago didn’t want it, I don’t want it.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ said Celia.

  ‘He would have written and told me if he had. Of course he would. He was clearly horrified, and didn’t know what to say. And it will be far better with some nice woman who will care for it, look after it, give it a good home.’ She sounded as if she was talking about a puppy or a kitten rather than about a child.

  ‘LM, you can’t make that sort of decision now. Believe me, you’ll feel quite different when you’ve had the baby.’

  ‘I shan’t feel any different,’ said LM.

  She didn’t. The staff at the nursing home thought she was inhuman. They admired her courage during the birth, which was long and arduous, but then when they tried to give her her son to hold, she refused.

  ‘No thank you. I’m really not interested,’ she said and turned away and slept for the first time in three days.

  ‘Shock,’ said Sister, ‘she’s had a bad time. She’ll be all right tomorrow.’

  But the next day was the same. ‘I really don’t want him,’ she said, ‘I wish you could understand. Now please leave me alone.’

  A junior nurse fed the baby, changed him, cuddled him; she felt very sad for him. He was such a beautiful child, with a lot of dark hair and huge, very dark blue eyes, which would undoubtedly turn brown. He was good, too, he took his bottle so well each time and then went back to sleep.

  She took him in to LM later.

  ‘Mrs Lytton.’

  ‘I do wish you wouldn’t go on with this tiresome fiction that I am Mrs Lytton,’ said LM. ‘I’m not married, and I would like you to respect my condition and address me as Miss Lytton. Anyway, what is it?’

  ‘I just wondered – that is – Mrs – Miss Lytton – are you sure you wouldn’t like to hold your baby? He’s so beautiful.’

  LM turned as violently as it is possible to do on a pillow, and said, her face stiff with rage, ‘I wish you people would leave me alone. How many times do I have to tell you, I want nothing to do with him? I hope I shall be going home at the end of the week, and he is going to the adoption society. Now please leave me alone.’

  The nurse, who was very young, shed large tears over Baby Lytton as she changed his nappy.

  ‘I’ve been to see her,’ reported Lady Beckenham to Celia, who was unable to get down to Buckinghamshire before the weekend, ‘and she is in a very curious state. Wants nothing to do with the baby, can’t wait to have it taken away and adopted. Well, no doubt for the best, since she’s just not interested in it at all. Perfectly understandable of course, but it’s difficult for the staff. And then she insists on them calling her Miss Lytton which they naturally dislike. The matron is a dreadful woman, although she likes to regard herself as a friend of mine. I have told her to respect LM’s wishes, but I do see that she is not helping her own cause there in the least.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Celia, ‘Yes, I can see that. Oh dear. When – when is the baby going?’

  ‘Oh – next Tuesday I believe. And LM will come back here t
hen.’

  ‘Have you seen him? Is he – what does he look like?’

  ‘Like a newborn baby,’ said the Countess and put the phone down.

  They had found a good home for Baby Lytton, the lady from the adoption agency told LM when she visited her on the Friday; a very nice family from Beaconsfield, ‘An older couple, so the husband will not be going away to the war. They have a delightful house, and will be excellent parents, I’m sure. They are coming to see him, and all being well, will take him home on Tuesday.’

  ‘Good,’ said LM, ‘the sooner the better.’

  She felt very miserable; it was the third day after the birth, she was sore and uncomfortable, and her breasts were aching with undrunk milk. They had bound them up, which hurt even more.

  ‘You have to expect some discomfort,’ said Sister, who, not surprisingly, had taken a strong dislike to LM, ‘but in a day or two it will dry up. Baby certainly is doing very well without it. He doesn’t seem to need you at all.’

  ‘Good,’ said LM. For some reason she felt very near to tears.

  Mrs Bill was doing the dusting on Monday morning when there was a knock on the door; it was the postman. He held out the letters to her; one of them was a large envelope, from the woman poet, Mrs Bill recognised the writing. She would never send her work to Lyttons, LM had explained, in case they lost it. Mrs Bill put the letters down on the table to sort through later and went back to her dusting.

  Celia wasn’t feeling very well. She had a throbbing backache, and felt sick and desperately tired. Hardly surprising, she supposed; she was running the household single-handed, as well as Lyttons and now Truman was talking about enlisting. She would miss him dreadfully if he went; he did so much for her. Deliveries of foodstuffs had fallen off and he collected all the grocery and meat orders, as well as ferrying everyone about, and driving her to and from work every day. She’d visited LM at the weekend which had distressed her. LM was so hostile to the baby, hostile to her as well. She knew LM blamed her to a degree – she wasn’t quite sure for what – and she knew she was terribly unhappy, although she had been dry-eyed and insisted in a harsh voice that she hadn’t even looked at the baby since his birth, and didn’t want to. That was distressing too; Celia had looked at him and held him, and thought how much she would like to take him home. But she couldn’t; she knew that. Her mother had read her mind over tea later.

  ‘You are not running a home for waifs and strays, Celia,’ she said sharply, ‘And I’d have thought you might have learned your lesson.’

  All in all it hadn’t been exactly rewarding, trundling all that way in the car, when she could have been in bed, resting. She was just embarking on her current pet project, the new children’s list, and thinking how ironic it was that something she had long proposed and had rejected, should have been indirectly brought to birth by Oliver joining the army, when her telephone rang.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There’s a Mrs Bill on the phone, Lady Celia. Says it’s urgent.’

  ‘Oh yes. Yes, of course. Put her through.’

  Mrs Bill sounded breathless. Breathless and upset.

  ‘Lady Celia, good morning. How are you?’

  ‘Very well thank you, Mrs Bill. And you?’

  ‘There’s been a letter,’ said Mrs Bill.

  ‘A letter?’

  ‘Yes. From – from Mr Ford.’

  ‘Mr Ford? But, Mrs Bill, there can’t be, he’s – he’s dead.’

  ‘I know. Must have got held up. Anyway, it is, most definitely. Postmarked France, and his writing.’

  ‘You’re sure? It’s not from his CO? They do always write, you know.’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Bill, ‘no, definitely not. I’d know his writing anywhere.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Celia, ‘well – well I – I think you’d better . . .’

  ‘Lady Celia, I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Celia, thinking hard, ‘bring it down here to me. I’ll send Truman for you. No on second thoughts, can you get a taxi? It would be quicker. I’ll pay.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Bill. ‘Yes, all right.’

  She handed the letter to Celia; Celia looked at it. She felt absolutely certain that she should open it, decide what it was best to do. The circumstances were so extreme, and if it said the wrong thing, then it was best, given LM’s mental state, that it should remain lost for ever. On the other hand, if it said the right thing—

  ‘I’m going to open it, Mrs Bill,’ she said. ‘I know it might seem wrong to you, but—’

  ‘No, Lady Celia,’ said Mrs Bill, ‘no, not for you to open it. That doesn’t seem wrong at all.’

  Celia ripped open the letter. She felt dreadful doing so, as if she were breaking into, plundering, LM’s most intimate private life: Half way through unfolding it, she stopped, an almost physical fear gripping her. But she went on, sat there reading it very slowly and carefully. At first she couldn’t take it in; quite literally, her mind as well as her eyes blurred with emotion, it was a meaningless jumble of words. Then the lines steadied, and she began to read. Mrs Bill watched her. After a few minutes Celia put it down on the desk and looked up at Mrs Bill, her eyes streaming with tears.

  ‘Is it – is it bad news, Lady Celia?’

  ‘No,’ said Celia, ‘no, it isn’t. And we’ve done absoutely the right thing. Mrs Bill, I have to go. At once. Down to Beaconsfield. I must telephone for Truman – no, is your taxi cab still there? We can go together to Cheyne Walk, that would be much more sensible. There’s really no time to lose.’

  She stood up and winced; the backache hit her quite hard. Mrs Bill noticed.

  ‘Are you all right, Lady Celia?’

  ‘Oh yes. Just a bit of backache. Quite usual, under the circumstances, wouldn’t you say?’ She smiled at her. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  She walked rather slowly up the steps to the house; her back really hurt. She rang the bell: Brunson came to the door.

  ‘Are you all right, Lady Celia? You don’t look very well, If you don’t mind my saying so.’

  ‘I’m perfectly all right, Brunson. Really. But I need Truman.’

  ‘He’s not here, Lady Celia. He’s gone down to see about enlisting.’

  ‘Oh no. Oh, dear. Well – well never mind. The car’s here, I’ll just have to take it myself. I need something delivered urgently and—’

  ‘If only I could drive, Lady Celia, I would take it.’

  ‘I know you would, Brunson. Oh, dear—’

  Her back stabbed again; differently, harshly. She was terribly afraid of what it meant.

  ‘Brunson, would you go and see if Mrs Bill is still outside? In her taxi cab? I told her to wait a few minutes.’

  But Mrs Bill had gone, and the cab with her.

  There was nothing for it; she would have to drive to Beaconsfield herself. She knew the way, and she would, after all, be sitting down. Not haring round the office, as Dr Perring put it. Anyway, she must get this letter to LM, she simply must. It was more important than anything at that moment, than anything in the world. Two people’s future depended upon it; and in an odd way another person’s past. She owed it to LM. She would be all right. Of course she would.

  LM was lying down, trying to sleep, trying to put the thought of the next day out of her mind, when the junior nurse came in.

  ‘Supper, Miss Lytton? You have to eat, you know, you have to keep up your strength.’

  ‘I don’t want any supper,’ said LM. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  The nurse looked at her; then she sat down on the bed, and took her hand. She had been told by Sister not to get involved with this strange patient, but she felt so strongly that she was making a mistake, that she wanted to keep trying. She also felt very sorry for the baby; he might be going to a good home, as Sister also kept saying, but he would be much better with his mother. And if his father had been killed in the war, she needed him even more. She just didn’t realise it. And she was quite sure that if Miss Lytton only hel
d him, just once, saw how beautiful he was, she would change her mind.

  ‘Miss Lytton’ she said, gently, ‘are you quite sure you don’t want to hold your baby? He’s so lovely and—’

  LM sat up abruptly. ‘Get out,’ she shouted. ‘just get out. When will you get it into your cretinous head that I don’t want that baby. I don’t like it, I’m not interested in it, now just bloody well get out.’

  The little nurse looked at her and burst into tears. She stood up and fled to the door; Sister, who had heard the noise, intercepted her.

  ‘Miss Lytton,’ she said, ‘how dare you speak to one of my staff like that? How dare you? You have no right, no right at all. I appreciate that you are upset, but there is a limit, even to my tolerance. Now please apologise to her.’

  LM looked at her. ‘I apologise,’ she said in a stiff, harsh voice, ‘for upsetting your staff. But she upset me.’

  ‘Well fortunately for you,’ said Sister, ‘you will be going home tomorrow. So we won’t be upsetting you any longer. Nurse, run along, get on with your duties. Baby Lytton is crying. Poor little mite,’ she added severely. She handed LM some papers. ‘Mrs Burton from the adoption society brought these in. They are for you to sign. She says it will help make things go smoothly tomorrow.’

  ‘Very well,’ said LM.

  LM took out her pen and started to look at the papers. They were very straightforward; in essence resigning all claims to Baby Lytton, promising never to try to contact him or his adoptive parents for the rest of his life, or to place any restrictions on his upbringing.

  ‘I can’t tell you who the adoptive parents are, or where they live,’ Mrs Burton had explained, ‘obviously it is far better that you don’t know. And he will never know who you are, or how or where to contact you. His name will be that of his new parents, and—’