No Angel

by Penny Vincenzi

  Jay was terribly afraid the man might really have a car, and that he’d lock him in it; he began to cry harder.

  ‘Shut up,’ said the man quite quietly, but it was frightening, just the same. ‘Just shut up, you little brat,’ and then more loudly, ‘Now Jay, cheer up. Nearly home and then I’ll give you some nice sweeties.’

  And then ahead of them was a car, a big car and not even an open one, that perhaps he could have got out of, but one with a roof, and the man was fumbling in his pocket for the key, while still hanging on to his hand.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said one lady, to him.

  ‘Yes of course he’s all right, just a bit upset, his mother’s had to go into hospital this morning. Now, Jay, come on, get in the car and we’ll go and see Mummy.’

  ‘I’m not upset,’ she said for the third time. They were sitting on one of the benches in the Embankment gardens, ‘not in the least. Why should I have been? I was just surprised, that’s all. Surprised and well, I suppose – a little shocked.’

  ‘Shocked? Why shocked? Because I’m married? I am after all, thirtyseven. Older than you.’

  ‘Yes, I know that,’ she said irritably.

  ‘So—?’

  ‘Just that you didn’t tell me before. That’s all.’

  ‘I didn’t want to tell you.’

  ‘But why not?’

  He was silent.

  ‘And it’s not the nicest story. Is it? That you are married to someone who by your own admission you don’t love, but you don’t leave because you can’t afford to.’

  ‘Oh, now dear Lady Celia, that is hypocrisy of the highest order.’

  ‘Hypocrisy!’

  ‘Yes, hypocrisy. Are you really going to tell me you don’t have a single female friend in exactly my situation?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Of course you do. And you think none the worse of them for it. Even sympathise, quite possibly. So let’s have no more of that. Now, will you please climb down from that bloody high horse of yours and listen to me. I need you to understand.’

  ‘I don’t feel there is a great deal to understand,’ she said.

  ‘Another arrogant statement. Of course there is. Have you never done anything, Celia, that you’ve been not entirely proud of? That has had lasting consequences?’

  She was silent. Thinking that there were many of them: taking Barty from her family; not listening to Giles in his wretchedness at school; Sylvia’s baby, and – well, helping her with that; even, she supposed, becoming deliberately pregnant by Oliver, presuming in all the arrogance of her eighteen years that it was what he wanted too, that he would be pleased, that he would want to marry her at once, even though he was little more than a boy.

  ‘No?’ His voice and his smile were gentle. Reluctantly she smiled back.

  ‘Possibly,’ she said carefully.

  ‘Well then. I married Millicent, deeply in love. I had no money at all, I was the youngest son of a doctor who had crippled himself financially by sending me to public school. But at the age of twenty-one money doesn’t seem very important, does it? Well – I don’t suppose you know much about that. Anyway, it certainly didn’t to me. I was a teacher, I taught at a prep school and pursued my dream of being a writer. Millicent was impatient of that, never believed I was capable of it. She was ambitious herself, in her own way, wanted to make her reputation as a society hostess. Her father was minor landed gentry, she was his only child and inherited everything, the house and all his money. He adored her, never really liked me very much. All very sad. Anyway – I did my bit. Tried awfully hard, stood at her side at endless boring balls and dinners and God knows what. And I think we were – tolerably happy – until the war. Then it all went dreadfully wrong. I came home on leave the first time to find her in the throes of an affair with some ghastly man. Well he probably wasn’t ghastly at all, but he was what she should have married in the first place: upper class, fine shot, rode to hounds, all the right things. No doubt important to you as well,’ he added gloomily.

  ‘Not important,’ said Celia, thinking of her father and his early objections to Oliver. ‘Not important in the least. But I do – know about them.’

  ‘Of course. Anyway, she said she wanted to marry him, was prepared to risk the ignominy of divorce and all that. I said fine. She said she’d make me an allowance, we all shook hands and I went back to France, feeling actually rather cheerful. You might be able to guess the rest.’

  ‘He was killed?’

  ‘Exactly. And she – well she had a nervous breakdown. Absolutely couldn’t come to terms with it at all. It was terrible.’

  ‘Oh, how dreadful,’ said Celia.

  ‘Yes. Anyway, I did my bit, as a gentleman should, stuck by her. By the time I was finally invalided home with my knee, she was much better. And terribly grateful to me, and said she wanted to support me while I wrote the book that I now knew I had in me. So I sat down there at Wychford, with my knee hurting like hell, and wrote Meridian. And you know the rest. Then I met you. Terrible shock that was,’ he added, picking up her hand.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Celia crossly. But she did not pull her hand away.

  ‘I mean that was how I felt that day. Violent, quite extraordinary shock. Just at the sight of you.’

  ‘Why shock?’

  ‘That you existed. Looking as you did, being what you were, everything about you. Anyway, this is not the moment to go into that.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I agree,’ thinking as she said it that she had felt the same, that her prime emotion had been exactly that, an intense shock, a bolt of sexual and emotional excitement. Now she tried not to allow herself to feel warmed and comforted by his words. Since there was nothing, after all, to be comforted for. Since she was particularly happy at the moment, her husband restored to her, and—

  ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ said Sebastian.

  ‘No,’ said Oliver, ‘Jay isn’t here. Why should he be?’

  ‘He’s lost,’ said LM, ‘I don’t know where he is. He’s run away.’

  ‘Oh LM, my dear! How dreadful – what can I do, is there anything the police, the hospitals?’

  ‘No, no good. We’ve tried. Oh Oliver, oh God, I don’t know what to do—’ A series of visions, each one more dreadful than the last, was rising in front of her eyes: Jay locked in some dark cellar, under a tram, in some squalid room, with some man, holding him down while he—She suddenly felt very sick.

  ‘Is Celia with you?’ he asked.

  ‘No. No, we can’t find her.’

  ‘You can’t find her? Why not?’

  ‘We simply can’t,’ said LM. ‘Don’t ask me why not. We thought she was at Rules with Sebastian, but—’

  ‘With Sebastian?’

  ‘Yes,’ said LM, ‘they went off to lunch and—’

  ‘Well, she can’t be at lunch much longer. It’s well after three.’

  ‘No. No, of course not,’ she said, almost humbly.

  ‘Tell her to ring me the moment she gets in.’

  ‘I’m not in the office, Oliver. I’m at home.’

  ‘I see. Yes, of course you should be. Well I’ll phone Mrs Gould. And let me know at once if there’s any news. About Jay. I mean.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course I will.’

  ‘Oh – Mrs Gould. Hallo. Sorry to have been so long. We had to wait forever to get a table, and then—’

  ‘Lady Celia, could you ring Miss Lytton at once. At home.’

  ‘At home? Why, what’s happened, is she ill?’

  ‘No. Jay is missing—’

  ‘Jay! Oh, my God how dreadful. Mrs Gould, why didn’t you—’ her voice tailed away.

  She met Janet Gould’s eyes; then looked down, fumbling at her gloves.

  ‘We tried Rules, Lady Celia, of course. But you had gone. Obviously – obviously you went somewhere else—’

  ‘Yes. Yes that’s right. We went somewhere else.’

  ‘Could you ring your husband? Straight away, he said, the
moment you came in.’

  Even in her anguish about Jay, her emotional turmoil, her tangle of sexual excitement, Celia saw with complete clarity in that moment how tortuous and anarchic her life could become. Unless she stopped it now. At once.

  Just for a moment the man loosed his grip on Jay’s hand: just a moment, but it was enough. Jay was strong: fear and determination made him stronger. He tugged very, very hard, and got free. And ran, as he had never run before, away from the man, into the safe space in front of him. Into the road. And under a car.

  CHAPTER 17

  ‘Where on earth have you been?’ Oliver’s voice was sharp, unpleasant even, calling out from his study as she walked into the house.

  ‘I’ve been at lunch.’

  ‘So I was told. With Sebastian Brooke.’

  ‘Yes.’ She fought the defensiveness in her voice. ‘He came in to see the new jacket designs. He doesn’t like them at all, Oliver, he—’

  ‘Celia, I really don’t want to discuss jackets now. Jay is missing.’

  ‘I know. Of course I know.’

  ‘Well then, why on earth are you talking about jacket designs?’

  Why indeed? Because they were uppermost in her mind. Pushing everything else aside. Even little Jay. The jackets. The book. The author of the book. What he had said to her. What she had said to him. How she had behaved . . . ‘I – I’m sorry.’ It seemed the only thing to say.

  ‘I’ve been on the phone to the police. It seems everything that could be done is being done.’

  ‘Poor LM,’ said Celia, ‘poor, poor LM. I’m going up there now, Oliver. To Hampstead. I’ll be there if you want me.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Where’s the bloody ambulance?’ said the woman. She was crouching by Jay, holding his limp hand. ‘It’s a disgrace, fifteen minutes it’s been now, he’ll be dead before it gets here. Poor little mite.’

  ‘Where’s his dad, anyway?’ said her friend. ‘Seems to have vanished into thin air.’

  ‘He has,’ said a man who had joined the group. ‘I saw him driving off. Looking pretty worried. I don’t think he was his father at all. Poor little chap,’ he added.

  The ringing of a bell announced the rather tardy ambulance; two men and a nurse jumped out, examined Jay’s horribly inert form, and loaded it gently on to a stretcher.

  ‘Is he . . . ?’ asked the woman. Her voice tailed hopelessly away.

  ‘Can’t say anything,’ said the driver, shutting the doors firmly. ‘Mind the way please.’

  ‘Well, I like that,’ said the woman, ‘after all we did. Fine thanks, that is. Wouldn’t have happened before the war, would it? Ambulances came on time then, and you got a civil word or two out of the drivers.’

  ‘Now then,’ said the policeman who had called the ambulance and supervised the operation, ‘move along there, let them through. Now I’ll be wanting statements from you madam, and you sir, if you wouldn’t mind. You say you saw what happened.’

  ‘Must be dead,’ said the first woman sadly, ‘poor little mite. So tiny, he looked, just lying there all broken. That car wasn’t half going some.’

  The car that had hit Jay had actually not been going some at all; indeed it had been proceeding at a rather stately fifteen miles an hour down the Finchley Road, and could not have been expected to avoid a small boy rocketing out in front of it with absolutely no warning. Its driver, a most kindly and considerate man, who had been on his way back from visiting his elderly mother, was sitting in Swiss Cottage police station, his head in his hands, knowing that for the rest of his life, he would see that little body tossed in the air like some kind of stuffed toy before settling, with horrible finality, on the bonnet of his car.

  ‘I would rather he was dead I think,’ said LM, ‘much rather, than abducted by some creature, tortured—’ her voice broke; she began to cry. Celia took her in her arms.

  ‘LM, you mustn’t talk like that. I’m sure he’s neither. I’m sure he’s perfectly safe somewhere, probably just—’

  ‘Just what? Walking happily along in the sunshine? Playing with some other children in a park somewhere? Arriving safely at your mother’s house? Do tell me what else he might be doing, Celia. I’d be so grateful.’

  Celia was silent. They were all in LM’s small kitchen; Dorothy, white-faced, immobile, sat at the table, staring in front of her; Mrs Bill back from a visit to her sister, was pouring out a third brew of tea, destined to grow as cold as the first two, and Celia and LM were standing at the window, staring out. It was five o’clock: nearly five hours now since Jay had disappeared. A policeman was sitting on a chair in the hall, and another stood on the front path. It looked, Celia thought with sudden clarity, like a scene from a bad play. And in spite of her brave words to LM, she couldn’t help thinking that, with half the police force of London looking out for him, if Jay was really all right, he would have been found by now.

  ‘Now then. Let’s have a look at him. Poor little chap. Let’s get that blood off his face for a start, nurse. That’s a very nasty wound on his head. Very nasty. Got a pulse yet? Let me try. And – ah. Hand me my stethoscope would you. Where are his parents?’

  ‘There aren’t any,’ said the ambulance man, ‘leastways, not with him. Seemed to be on his own. Bit of a mystery. Police were taking statements from the crowd.’

  ‘Right. Well in that case, any reports of a missing child? Mr Jackson, go and check, would you? We must try and find who he belongs to.’

  The phone rang loudly in the hall; LM picked it up.

  ‘Yes? Yes, this is Margaret Lytton – yes. Oh I see. Yes. So is he – oh, I see. Yes. No. Of course. I understand. Goodbye.’

  She put the phone down and walked very slowly into the kitchen. Celia never forgot how she looked at that moment: quite literally dead, grey-faced, somehow withered, her dark eyes sunken into their sockets. Dead. Like Jay.

  ‘LM,’ she said, ‘LM sit down, here, come along.’

  LM pushed her aside.

  ‘I can’t sit down,’ she said, and her voice was hoarse, issuing from her somehow reluctantly. ‘I have to get down to the hospital. Jay is there.’

  ‘The hospital?’ said Celia, still afraid to ask the crucial question, ‘which hospital, LM?’

  ‘St Mary’s. Paddington.’

  ‘And – and is he—?’

  LM looked at her for another long moment. Then the faintest possible shadow of a smile formed on her white mouth.

  ‘He’s alive,’ she said, and then clearly wishing to savour the fact, ‘yes, he’s alive. Shall we – shall we go in your car or in mine?’

  ‘He’s all right,’ said Celia, ‘well, he’s badly hurt. He’s got concussion, still drifting in and out of consciousness, and he has a broken leg and several broken ribs. But he’s alive.’

  ‘Thank God,’ said Oliver, ‘thank God for it. What happened?’

  ‘Nobody quite knows. But he ran away from the house this morning, about twelve o’clock, and was brought in to St Mary’s a few hours later. He’d been hit by a car. No one quite knows what happened before that. The driver was at the hospital. Poor, poor man, I felt so sorry for him.’

  ‘I wouldn’t feel sorry for him,’ said Oliver grimly. ‘What was he doing, why wasn’t he looking where he was going?’

  ‘I think he was,’ said Celia, ‘several people confirmed he’d been driving very slowly. Jay just ran out in front of the car. Came at him out of nowhere, he said.’

  ‘The traffic is getting so dangerous,’ said Oliver, ‘I really don’t think the twins should be allowed to go to school on their own. I never did like it and now—’

  ‘Barty is with them.’

  ‘Yes, and it’s a terrible responsibility for her as well. She was very upset about Jay, they all were, we must let them know he’s all right.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’ll go up now.’

  He looked at her; the expression on his face was odd.

  ‘Are you – all right?’ he said.

  �
�Yes,’ she said quickly, ‘yes of course I’m all right.’

  She wasn’t all right. She felt she would never be all right again. Sebastian had taken her apart that day; the cool, contained whole which she knew so well, which she had so perfectly under control, had splintered into fragments. Sebastian had put her together again, in a different order, a different form, so that she felt confused, shaken, distracted by thoughts of a most dangerous and carnal kind.

  ‘I’m in love with you,’ he had said suddenly, into the silence, as they walked along the Embankment, while she still struggled desperately to appear cool. ‘I’m in love with you. You do know that don’t you?’

  It was the most extraordinary moment: frozen, bleached in time, she had felt awed by it, almost afraid, afraid of what it would do to her, do to her life, and at the same time absurdly, ludicrously, joyfully happy.

  ‘Of course you’re not in love with me,’ she managed to say.

  Then he had stopped dead in front of her, halting her in her path, his face tense with anger, in a way she had never seen before, and said, ‘Don’t insult me, please, Celia. Don’t. And don’t play games either. This is very serious. Very serious indeed.’

  ‘I am not playing games,’ she said rather slowly. ‘I really am not. I’m sorry if you think I am.’

  He had become himself again, very quickly, his charming, overpowering self; ‘Good,’ he said, and took her hand, tucked it into his arm, and they walked along together in the sunshine, looking rather sober, she thought, rather – married even, not in the least like two people embarking on an illicit love affair. Which in any case, of course, they were not.

  ‘And tell me now, please, what you feel about me,’ he said after a while.

  She said carefully that she felt all kinds of things for him, friendship, admiration, affection.