No Angel

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘Yes of course it is. In spite of all the hideous propaganda, the Germans are pretty good about their prisoners, I believe. He’s probably much safer there than in the front line.’

  ‘I think he probably is,’ said Gill. There was a silence; then she said, ‘Lady Celia, I have to give in my notice.’

  ‘What? But Gill why? You’re happy here, you told me that only the other day, and you’re doing such wonderful work and we appreciate you so much—’

  ‘I know. I mean – well the thing is, I’ve been offered a job at Macmillan.’

  ‘At Macmillan! Oh, Gill, you can’t. No, that’s a stupid thing to say. Tell me why you want to go. They’re a wonderful house, of course. It’s a great feather in your cap. More money, I suppose?’

  ‘A bit. But – well, it’s a more senior position. That’s the most important thing. And I’d have more people working for me. I just feel it’s a great opportunity.’

  Celia looked at her. She simply could not afford to lose Gill. She was so clever, and she worked so hard.

  ‘How much are they paying you?’

  ‘Lady Celia, that really isn’t the main thing.’

  ‘I know, but it’s still important. I’d like to know anyway, in case one of our other people gets approached. If we’re underpaying everyone—’

  ‘You’re not! Your salaries are perfectly generous. They’ve only offered me another five shillings a week.’

  ‘So you’ll get . . . what? Sorry, I ought to know, but I don’t have the files here.’

  ‘Three pounds ten shillings.’

  ‘I can give you that,’ said Celia promptly.

  ‘Lady Celia, it really isn’t the most important thing. As I said. I’m quite well off.’

  ‘It’s the position. All right, what are they offering you?’

  ‘Well—’ Gill looked increasingly uncomfortable. It had taken her all day to screw up her courage for this interview; she had hoped so much Celia would just accept her resignation, shake her hand and say goodbye.

  ‘What will your job be there?’

  ‘Senior Art Editor.’

  ‘Yes, I see. Well – that is very impressive. But—’ she paused, thinking fast. ‘Gill, how would you like to be Art Director of Lyttons? With complete authority over the art department?’

  Gill was silent; the offer far exceeded anything she might have hoped for. At the beginning of the war she had been a junior illustrator at Blackie’s; now she could be in charge of the entire visual side of Lyttons, one of the major, most admired publishing houses in London. She felt slightly dizzy. The offer from Macmillan faded into insignificance.

  ‘Look,’ said Celia, ‘you don’t have to decide now. Think about it. Let me know tomorrow. Only—’ her lips twitched, ‘I would advise you for your own personal safety, to accept. I might just come and put a bomb under Macmillan’s building if you go there.’

  ‘I – no I don’t want time to think about it,’ said Gill after a moment. ‘That would look as if I was simply trying to get the best offer.’

  ‘Very sensible of you,’ said Celia. ‘I would. In your position.’

  Gill looked at her. ‘I don’t think you would,’ she said, ‘I’d say loyalty was one of your outstanding characteristics, Lady Celia. Both to your staff and to the house of Lytton.’

  ‘Well, I’m married to the house of Lytton,’ said Celia briskly, ‘So I don’t have much choice. As for my staff, I value them totally. Simple as that. Now then, Gill, come on, put me out of my misery. What’s your answer?’

  ‘My answer is yes please,’ said Gill. ‘I accept with great pleasure. And I really do appreciate your trust in me.’

  ‘Gill, we wouldn’t be where we are today without you,’ said Celia. ‘Of course I trust you. Now then, somewhere I’ve got the best part of a bottle of sherry. I think that’s more appropriate to the occasion than tea. And we must get Miss Lytton in. I know she’ll be pleased.’

  LM did appear to be pleased, and toasted Gill’s future success with enthusiasm and the rather musty sherry. But when Gill had left, she looked at Celia, unsmiling.

  ‘I don’t think that was very wise,’ she said.

  ‘Why on earth not? LM, we couldn’t manage without her. I really couldn’t bear to let Macmillans enjoy the benefit of her talents. I’m sorry if you feel I should have consulted you, and of course I should, I got a bit carried away, LM, I’m so sorry—’

  ‘Yes, you should, I think,’ said LM, ‘for such a senior appointment. In Oliver’s absence.’ She paused. ‘But you do have overall editorial discretion, so that’s not what’s troubling me. Well not seriously.’

  ‘You don’t like what she does, do you?’ said Celia, ‘You think it’s too populist. LM, she got the new fiction list off the ground, with those jackets. And she does wonders with the restrictions we have to cope with these days, no colour, no decent paper—’

  ‘Oh, I know. I don’t really admire it, of course, and I do think it’s populist. But she is superb in her field, and we need sales. I have come round to your way of thinking entirely on that one. A good publishing house should have a complete range of titles. Certainly at the moment.’

  ‘Then—’

  ‘Celia, that was a very permanent appointment. And a very senior one. One which would be virtually impossible to unscramble at the end of the war.’

  ‘But why should we want to unscramble it? She has an eye for more quality work as well; she won’t want to put populist jackets on the classics, or anything like that. In fact she was saying the other day how much she’d like to publish some folders of watercolour prints, maybe limited editions, really high quality, which people could collect and frame, together with biographies of the artists. Of course that’s out of the question at the moment. But I really don’t think you need to worry about it, LM.’

  ‘Again, that’s not my concern. But Celia, what do you think is going to happen when people like James Sharpe come back? Their jobs are after all pledged to them; they will be expecting, and rightly, to pick up where they left off. How do you think they’ll feel about finding a woman in charge? How will she feel, at having her wings clipped?’

  ‘They won’t be,’ said Celia, ‘she is young, she has ideas, she’s moved forward. James won’t have done that. He can’t expect just to come back into a position of total authority. He—’ she stopped. ‘I see what you mean. He will, won’t he?’

  ‘He will indeed, I’m afraid. He’ll have gone through years of hell defending his country and Lyttons with it, and he’ll expect a reward. Not demotion. If he comes back at all,’ she added soberly.

  ‘Oh dear. But LM, surely Lyttons is still important. As important as James Sharpe. Are we really supposed to take a great step backward and pretend nothing has changed?’

  ‘I think you’ll find that is what James, and, indeed, Oliver will expect. Demand even. With some degree of justice. And that will be terribly difficult for Gill. Given her new position.’

  ‘Well—’ Celia poured herself another glass of sherry, ‘well, LM, I do see that what you say has a great deal of truth in it. But right now, we have to keep Lyttons going, somehow. God knows it’s difficult enough, without having our hands tied by considerations which don’t even apply yet. I think I’ll worry about it all when—’she stopped, sighed, ‘when Oliver and Richard and James all come back. Meanwhile, we have to keep the home fires burning, as we are being constantly told to do by every songstress in the land. And they’ll burn a lot brighter at Lyttons if Gill stays. I’m very sorry, LM, that I didn’t consult you. It was wrong of me. It’s a senior appointment and you’re on the main board, senior rank and all that, and—’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ said LM, ‘Do stop going on about that. You’re quite right, we won’t have a main board if Lyttons doesn’t survive. And I do assure you, my position in the company is the least of my worries. I really don’t think anyone can possibly be too concerned about their position in life at the moment.’

  ‘He�
��s a corporal,’ said Sister Wright, ‘that’s all. I really don’t like it. He shouldn’t be here, and nor would he be if matron wasn’t so in awe of Lady Beckenham. He should be in an ordinary hospital somewhere.’

  ‘I absolutely agree with you,’ said Staff Nurse Price. She spent much of her time telling Sister Wright, whose bad temper was legendary, that she absolutely agreed with her. It made up for some of the inadequacies which had landed her at a private nursing home in Beaconsfield, rather than out at the front as she had hoped. She was not a good nurse, clumsy, forgetful, inefficient, even, at times, squeamish. She would never have reached the grade of staff nurse in peacetime.

  ‘But it’s so he can be near his little sister,’ said a junior nurse, who had come in on this conversation. ‘I think it’s nice for him. And she’s lovely. She cycles here, you know, it’s a long way, five miles, to see him and—’

  ‘I am perfectly aware how far Ashingham House is from Beaconsfield,’ said Sister coldly, ‘and nobody asked your opinion, Nurse. In fact you have no right to be listening to our conversation. You can go and empty Corporal Miller’s bedpan since you’re so enthusiastic about him; he’s been ringing that bell of his for some time. No manners at all.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘I don’t quite understand the connection with the countess anyway,’ said Staff Nurse Price when she had gone. ‘he’s surely not related in any way. Perhaps someone in her household—’

  ‘It’s her daughter,’ said sister, ‘she’s adopted the child, Corporal Miller’s sister. A very odd woman, in my view, extremely high-handed, just like her mother. Anyway, she’s paying for Corporal Miller to be here. More’s the pity. Now, Staff, you go and see to Major Fleming’s dressings, and be sure to take them to the sluice afterwards. I have paperwork to do.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘Hallo Billy. How are you? I brought you some buttercups. I picked them on the way.’

  Barty laid the large bunch of buttercups down on Billy’s bedside table. She smiled at him, leaned over and gave him a kiss. He looked back at her, his eyes dull.

  ‘Any better today? The leg?’

  ‘No. Bloody agony still. And they won’t give me enough to help with the pain. Specially not at night. Old witch that Sister is. I hate her. I hate it here, Barty, it was better at the field hospital, I tell you. Someone to talk to at least.’

  ‘Oh Billy, don’t say that. I come and talk to you nearly every day. And I’m sure the nurses talk to you, and the other patients.’

  ‘Never see the other patients,’ said Billy, ‘There’s a chap down the corridor lost an arm and a leg, I hear him groaning sometimes, apart from that it’s like a bloody morgue. I’d rather be in a morgue,’ he added.

  ‘Billy, please! It’s only till you’re better, and you’re lucky to be here. At least you’re well looked after. And it’s lovely for me to see you so much.’

  ‘They’re horrible to me,’ said Billy, ‘they don’t like me. Other day, they left me, long past my dinner time, when I wanted – well never mind what for. Then that Sister come in, told me to stop making such a fuss. I can’t help it if I need – things. Can I?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Barty. She felt dreadful; it had seemed such a good idea, having Billy here, near her, so she could help look after him. And it was true, he did still need nursing, the wound wasn’t healing properly, there was even talk of further surgery.

  ‘So I’ll have even less leg,’ Billy said bitterly. ‘Nobody thought that in the other place.’

  He complained a lot; and he was truculent and argumentative, but underneath, Barty could see, he was desperately miserable. Quite often, when she arrived, she could tell he’d been crying; his eyes would be swollen and red and his nose running. Well, she’d have cried if she’d been him. Eighteen years old, and only one leg. Stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. And however much he hated the nursing home, what was going to happen to him when he left it? Who would give work to a man with only one leg? The brewery wouldn’t take him back, they’d already said so.

  She’d asked him about life in France, but he wouldn’t talk about it. He said she wouldn’t want to hear and he was trying to forget.

  ‘It wasn’t all bad though,’ he said staring unseeingly in front of him. ‘Mostly, but not all. We had a lot of laughs. Believe it or not. You had to, really. Only way to keep sane.’

  Barty didn’t tell Celia what Billy had said about the nursing home, because it would have seemed so ungrateful. But she did tell her he was bored and that the days were very long.

  ‘Of course. Poor boy. Well, let’s see – he can read, can’t he?’ said Celia. ‘Yes, of course he can. I’ll get some books and papers together for him, Barty, send them down later in the week. I’d like to get over myself, but – not this weekend. Maybe next time we come.’

  Barty said that would be very nice, and hoped Billy wouldn’t complain to Aunt Celia about things as much as he complained to her. Everyone kept saying how grateful he must be to be there. She sometimes thought if she heard that word once more, she would scream.

  ‘I’ve had such a nice letter from Robert,’ said LM, coming in to Celia’s office. ‘He says he feels so much better now that the Americans are in the war. He’d enlist, he says, if they’d take him, in fact he tried, but he really is too old. Forty-four. Oh dear, and I can remember him going away to school and crying. Anyway, he said he rejoiced the minute he knew they fired the first shot, whenever that was, and opened a bottle of champagne.’

  ‘He’s lucky to be able to get it,’ said Celia, ‘I can hardly remember what it tastes like. October 27th, it was they came in. Oliver said in his last letter it was so marvellous to know they were there, in France, at last. God, this really has become a world war, hasn’t it? Russia, Japan, Italy, Australia and Canada, of course, where will it end? Sorry. Go on LM, Any news of that dear little Maud?’

  ‘Yes. Robert and she have moved into a different house – he wanted to have somewhere of his own, he says, and the younger boy, Jamie, spends a little time with them there. But mostly he’s at college or stays with his older brother. What an extraordinary arrangement. Here we are: “Maud is five now and starting school. She is very bright and beautiful, and looks just like her mother. As soon as the war is over, I shall bring her over to meet you all again.”’

  ‘How lovely,’ said Celia. ‘I would adore that.’

  ‘Yes. He’s sent a photograph of her, look, she does look rather sweet.’

  ‘Let me see. Oh, goodness yes, she does. What a dear little thing. Lovely eyes.’

  ‘Robert’s business is doing very well, apparently; whole streets owe their existence to him, he says. Imagine that.’

  ‘Well, whole authors owe their existence to us,’ said Celia just slightly irritably. She had always found LM’s adoration of Robert difficult to cope with. Oliver thought he was wonderful too. As, most unfairly, had Grandpa Lytton. Of course he’d made a lot of money, but it was hardly on a par with building up a publishing house that was the envy of the literary world. He was very charming and she liked him; but he lacked Oliver and LM’s fearsome intellect. Still, he was the oldest in the family, maybe that had a lot to do with it; not that her own oldest brother, Henry, impressed her very much. She saw him very clearly: as someone neither very bright or very competent. He was fifty now; he’d followed his father into the army, never managed to rise higher than the rank of major, and had left military life to run Lord Beckenham’s Scottish estate. He had a rather dull wife and several extremely plain children; it depressed her to think of him inheriting the title and Ashingham. Anyway, that was a long way off, judging by her father’s rude health and zest for life.

  ‘And then he says – this is the bad news—’ said LM with a grim smile, ‘his partner’s wife, her name is Felicity, has written some poetry and he wants to send it to us for our opinion.’

  ‘Oh heavens,’ said Celia, ‘how absolutely dreadful. Yes, I did meet her. Very pretty, but
rather – wifely. Oliver thought she was wonderful. The sort of woman he should have married, I suppose. I’m sure it will be quite awful and we shall be duty bound to write at least a page of admiring appreciation. Do tell them when you write back that we don’t publish poetry, won’t you?’

  ‘Too late. Robert read an article in one of the papers about the explosion of poetry being written at the moment in England with a list of all the poets, and who their publishers were.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Celia.

  In just a year now, Giles thought, he would be leaving St Christopher’s and going to Eton. It seemed unimaginable, and equally unimaginable that he would be quite sad to go. After the first wretched two years, he had really begun to enjoy it. And now he was house captain, he had his own study, he had a fag of his own – who he was usually very nice to – and he still won every race at every athletic meeting in which he competed. In fact he could fairly claim to have turned St Christopher’s into an athletics school. Standards at rugby had continued to fall; although Miss Prentice had turned herself, by sheer determination and a refusal to let St Christopher’s become a laughing stock, into a soccer coach.

  ‘I’ve seen photographs of women’s football teams, mostly at the factories where they work, so don’t tell me it can’t be done.’

  She had sought the help of the bigger boys in this and had formed a games committee; training was twice a week, and she ran up and down the pitch in a football jersey and a pair of shorts, blowing her whistle and shouting instructions. At first it was fairly chaotic, but old Mr Hardacre, who was over sixty, but knew the rules, had helped from the sidelines, and so did the bigger boys, and gradually the team had shaped up. The head had been most unhappy about it, particularly Miss Prentice’s shorts, and had asked her if she couldn’t possibly wear something more seemly, but she had suggested briskly that he try running up and down in the mud in a long skirt, and he backed down.