Something Dangerous

by Penny Vincenzi

  And indeed Laurence Elliott’s married mistresses did always possess large quantities of camisoles, nightdresses and peignoirs from New York’s most exclusive stores and dressmakers; it was rumoured that jealous or suspicious husbands would rummage through their wives’ closets in search of such evidence: which was, after all, hardly conclusive.

  Laurence did wonder from time to time if he was incapable of emotional commitment; and if he was, how much it mattered. Generally, he thought not at all; his only experience of love had been what he had felt for his parents, and particularly his mother, and it had failed him totally. He had only been quite a young boy when he had experienced that failure, but the hurt had never faded, indeed had increased savagely over the years. He saw no necessity and indeed had no great wish to risk his heart again. And until such time as he found the ideal woman – and he was increasingly sure that she did not exist – he was not prepared even to consider doing so.

  After Adele had gone, Venetia rang for the nurse and told her to take Henry out in his pram. ‘It’s a lovely day, it will do him good.’

  She was still very tired; tired and shocked. Shocked by the experience of childbirth, shocked by the extraordinary change in her own situation, in just a few months, shocked by the violence of her feelings for Henry, shocked perhaps most of all by the way her closeness to her sister had been affected.

  She still loved her: far more than she loved anyone else – except Henry. But that there was an exception at all was quite literally astonishing. For the whole of her life, she had felt herself to be part of Adele and Adele part of her; no one else could begin to impinge upon that closeness. Even the intimacy of her relationship with Boy did not do that. Even after their marriage, it was still Adele she thought of every day, in relation to everything that happened to her, everything she did. She had looked at Adele after the wedding, as she helped her remove her wedding dress and change for the journey to Venice, where she and Boy were to spend their honeymoon, and smiled and said, ‘I don’t feel the least bit different, you know. I’ll write every day.’ And Adele had hugged her and said she would write back every day and the minute Venetia was back in London she would be round to hear about it; and exactly that had happened, they had missed one another dreadfully and the honeymoon in Venice had been, though delightful, certainly a little odd, and she had even tried to explain it to Boy, who had been good-naturedly baffled by it.

  When she was back in London, their daily life of shopping and chatting and giggling did not seem greatly changed and very often if she and Boy were at home for dinner Adele joined them, and Venetia had to admit he was very good about it, never even implied he would rather they could be alone and besides, they got along extraordinarily well. Of course, Adele’s visits also served as a splendid excuse for his own absences from home, while he was at his clubs; and then, through the long dreadful hours of Henry’s birth, Adele had been with her almost until the end, holding her hand, comforting her, soothing her, spongeing her down.

  Venetia had refused to have her mother as companion and she and Adele had never been closer. And then, then this astonishing thing had happened and Henry was finally born and put into her arms and she had looked at him, and every other love, every other emotion had simply been cancelled out as if it had never existed. The next day, of course, she felt different, more normal, more herself, but still with this great change, this switch of love. And she had had to tell Adele; she was too important to her not to. She had watched it hurt, had felt the hurt herself, and had known there was nothing whatever she could do about it.

  The other shock had been Boy’s behaviour, his attitude towards her. She had learned quite quickly that love, as she understood it, was not what he felt for her. He was fond of her, he found her an amusing companion, a beautiful accessory, a clever hostess, he was very glad, as he frequently told her, that he had married her; but that was about as deep as his emotions ran. She often felt indeed that he regarded her rather as an agreeable pet: something he had bought (at quite a high price it had to be said) and kept in considerable style and comfort, but which he could replace with something very similar, another beautiful, socially accomplished creature, and hardly notice the difference. As her pregnancy advanced, he was kind to her, but increasingly detached; sexually considerate, affectionate, but often absent not only from the house but also her bed.

  When she had taxed him with this, he had said (sweetly and very gently) that he felt that surely she must be pleased to have plenty of opportunity to rest undisturbed, she was clearly tired, not to mention uncomfortable, and he didn’t want to burden her with his attentions. Venetia said fretfully that actual attentions might be a burden, but she still wanted physical contact and comfort from time to time and she supposed he must be finding her unattractive; he kissed her and said that of course he didn’t, he loved her very much, and just wanted to be considerate. For a little while he did spend more time with her, but it didn’t last. She feared that she bored him, for he was formidably clever – indeed, when he was engaged with some intellectual argument with her parents, she found it almost impossible to follow – and so she tried harder to be amusing and better informed, reading the newspapers with some attention for the first time in her life, but it didn’t seem to make any difference, he was still frequently out in the evenings, often until very late.

  She didn’t quite suspect him of actual infidelity, but jealousy of his friends and companions troubled her increasingly, and without Adele she would have been lonely. While she was not exactly bored, and running the large house in Berkeley Square was surprisingly time-consuming, she found it difficult, especially having to direct and discipline staff who were for the most part considerably older than she was. Boy found it necessary to criticise her in this department more than once; mortified, Venetia tried harder and actually turned to, and began to rely a great deal on her mother, who (she now realised) was a surprisingly good housekeeper. Her constant deference to Celia in the matter went a considerable way towards healing the great rift that had opened between them in the period before and immediately after she had married Boy.

  Celia had arrived back from her mother’s house one terrible evening that Venetia would never forget, walked into her bedroom where she was lying down, struggling against a bout of prolonged nausea, without warning or even knocking, and asked her abruptly if she was pregnant. ‘And don’t lie to me, Venetia, it is absolutely pointless.’

  Having established the truth and informed Oliver of it, she had astonished both the twins by telling Venetia there was to be no question of a marriage. ‘We will have the pregnancy terminated, these things can be arranged, I know an excellent man, perfectly safe, and we can put the whole thing behind us.’

  Venetia had protested that she had no desire to put the whole thing behind her, that she would not even consider such a thing, ‘and nor would Boy if he knew about the baby. He will want to marry me, I know he will.’

  ‘Venetia,’ said Celia, ‘I very much doubt that Boy will want to marry you, and I certainly would not allow you to marry him. He doesn’t love you, and even more important, you don’t love him. You may think you do, but I can assure you that you do not. You don’t have the faintest idea yet, what love means.’

  Venetia said she would marry Boy if she wanted to and that her mother couldn’t stop her; Celia told her that unfortunately, since Venetia was only eighteen years old, she had every right to do so.

  An appalling row followed, to which Oliver was a wretchedly silent witness; at the end of it Venetia, her voice frail with misery, telephoned Boy and asked him to come to the house. ‘I’ve got something terribly important to tell you.’

  Boy, who was nobody’s fool, arrived with a very clear idea of what the important thing was and shook her dreadfully by implying (although not actually saying so) that he shared her mother’s view that it might be better if the pregnancy was terminated while they had time ‘to get to know one another better’.

  ‘Of course I love you, my
darling,’ he said, taking her hand and tenderly wiping her streaming eyes, ‘and of course it would be wonderful if we were married, I’ve thought about it a great deal, naturally, and about how happy we could be, but is a rushed wedding and a pregnancy really the best basis for beginning our life together? I’m not thinking of myself, of course it would be wonderful for me, but – well, you’re so very young, you deserve a little more time to enjoy yourself before quite so much – responsibility is settled upon you. I do agree with your mother in some ways, a little diplomacy might be the answer in the immediate future.’

  Venetia, shocked into silence by this, sent him away and spent the rest of the night sobbing in Adele’s arms; the next morning, her father came into her room again, pale and exhausted-looking and asked her what she really wanted. ‘I can’t bear to see you so unhappy, it breaks my heart.’

  Venetia said what she really wanted was to marry Boy ‘and I’m sure he wants to marry me, it was just a shock, and Mummy getting hold of him like she did before he came in to me, and telling him what he was to say, you know how she always gets her own way. I can’t have this horrible thing done, I can’t, I can’t just – kill our baby, throw it away, I shall – I shall kill myself if you try and make me.’

  Oliver was silent; sensing he was halfway persuaded, and putting to use the skills she had been practising all her life, Venetia threw herself into his arms, gazed up at him, her great dark eyes beseeching behind her tears.

  ‘Please, Daddy, I know you can put it right, I know you can make Mummy see sense, you’re the only person she ever listens to, and Boy too, please try and do what you can for me.’

  Oliver patted her head gently and said he would, told her to try and get some sleep and left her in Adele’s charge; Adele, sent to reconnoitre, reported loud shouting from behind their parents’ door, ‘But I couldn’t really hear a word and I was too frightened to stay for long.’

  Oliver failed to change Celia’s mind; two days passed; dreadful days of tears, recriminations, reproaches. Celia became more implacable by the hour; Oliver was increasingly miserable; Boy stayed away.

  Then, on the third day, Lady Beckenham arrived to visit her granddaughters.

  ‘Your mother doesn’t know I’m here,’ she said, ‘but I was concerned for you. Silly girl. We never learn, I’m afraid,’ she added rather unexpectedly.

  ‘Who?’ said Venetia, blowing her nose. She was very fond of her grandmother.

  ‘Women. We go on and on making the same mistakes, generation after generation. Men as well, I suppose, but it’s women who pay the price.’

  Venetia was too weary and too sick to enter into what seemed like a surprisingly intellectual discussion and lay back listlessly on the sofa.

  ‘What do you want do do?’ said Lady Beckenham.

  ‘I want to marry Boy, of course. And he wants to marry me. He said so,’ she added, editing the truth with a skill that half her father’s staff might have envied.

  Lady Beckenham looked at her. ‘I’m not at all sure he’d make you a very good husband,’ she said. ‘His father is a disgrace, the mother is no better, there’s no real class there, and the money’s new.’

  ‘I know all that. And I don’t care about class and new money and all that sort of thing.’

  ‘Well, you should do. It’s very important. Probably why your mother is so against this marriage.’

  ‘No,’ said Venetia, ‘she says I’m too young and I don’t know what I’m doing and she knows Boy isn’t the right husband for me.’

  Lady Beckenham looked at her, and then suddenly and most unexpectedly, burst into her rather loud laugh.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s rich, I must say. Very rich. Coming from your mother. Dear, oh dear.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Venetia.

  ‘Oh – you’ll find out one day, no doubt. I don’t know what to think, Venetia, about all this. What would be best. I might have a word with young Warwick myself.’

  ‘Oh please don’t,’ said Venetia, alarmed.

  ‘Why ever not? I’ve known him all of his life. And his father. Dreadful man, bought his title you know. All that nonsense about services to his country is just so much poppycock. Services to the government’s coffers rather more like it. He used to play cards with Beckenham, always cheated, and then tried to get out of paying his debts. Tried to diddle old Bertie Dunraven, who really couldn’t afford it, out of two thousand pounds. Disgraceful, with all that money. Not many people know that of course. You’d regret having him as a father-in-law, Venetia, I can promise you that.’ She bent and kissed her. ‘Now you try and get some rest. You look dreadful. Adele, go and make her some hot milk.’

  When she had gone, Adele looked at Venetia. ‘What was all that about, do you think?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know, all that about it being rich coming from Mummy stuff. And women making the same mistakes down the ages, or whatever it was she said.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Venetia, wearily. ‘Oh God, I think I’m going to be sick again. Adele, could I have some water? Not milk, for heaven’s sake.’

  After she had brought in the jug of iced water, Adele went out of the room and stood for a while on the landing, looking thoughtfully at her mother’s study door. Then she took a deep breath and went in.

  Ten minutes later, she hurtled into the twins’ sitting room.

  ‘Venetia, you won’t believe – you just won’t believe this.’

  Venetia had been half asleep; she looked at her wearily. ‘What is it?’

  Adele was holding a large, parchment envelope; she started pulling out the contents. ‘Just – just look at these. And think. About what Grandmama said. Mummy and Daddy’s wedding certificate. See. And here, look, Giles’s birth certificate. Dated just six months later. What about that?’

  Venetia looked at her sister, colour in her face for the first time for days.

  ‘Well,’ was all she said. ‘Just wait till she gets home, that’s all I can say.’

  Three days later, The Times and the Telegraph had announced the forthcoming marriage of Venetia, daughter of Lady Celia and Mr Oliver Lytton and Mr Charles Henry Warwick, eldest son of Sir Reginald Warwick.

  But how awful, Venetia thought almost sadly now, sitting at her dressing table, applying vanishing cream to her face, lest it might lose some of its bloom and Boy’s attention with it, if her mother had indeed been right and she should not have married Boy at all. Which, in her most secret self, she was beginning to fear. Since Henry’s birth, his absences from home had increased; he appeared very pleased with his son, visited him and Venetia several times daily – but that was what it felt like, she realised: a visit. After which he was inclined to disappear for several hours – not only from the room but the house.

  She had tried taxing him with it, but he was infuriatingly and charmingly vague, insisting he was merely trying to give her time to recover; she felt frustrated, enraged even, but it was impossible to make any impression on his smooth, bland surface. She felt lonely and miserable much of the time, still too weak to re-enter the real world, go out, have fun, organise the life she was supposed to share with Boy; Adele was once again her main companion.

  Adele, whom she had hurt so badly, she knew, and who had forgiven her so bravely and generously. Then she thought of Henry, the new beloved, with his dark hair and dark eyes, and the wobbly, difficult smile that he was beginning to master when he gazed up from her arms and her heart turned over and she knew that whatever Boy did to her and might not feel for her, and however unhappy and lonely Adele might be also, it was worth it. Anything was worth having Henry. Anything at all.

  ‘There’s trouble on the way. I mean really on the way. Getting close.’ Dudley ‘Duke’ Carlisle sat back in his chair and looked at Laurence. They were lunching at the Yale Club, that bastion of tradition and privilege near Grand Central station; Duke was rather fond of Laurence. Twenty years his senior and with three wives to his credit, he was a stockbroker; r
icher by the day as well as being in possession of a vast, private fortune, he had met Laurence at a Wall Street function and invited him to a reception at his recently purchased Fifth Avenue mansion, only a few hundred yards from Elliott House, where Laurence lived alone and in equal splendour. His patrician air and old-money Washington accent belied a total greed and ruthlessness more suited to a friend of Mr Al Capone than a member of the East Hampton golf club. His present wife Leila, an ice-cool blonde, had been rather taken with Laurence and had gone so far as to make the fact plain, but Laurence knew which of the Carlisles was of more value to him and had made it equally plain that he was not interested.

  ‘You mean more than a recession?’ said Laurence.

  ‘I do. A crash, and a huge one. It’s inevitable, the overheating is too great. The financial press is predicting it now as well. I had dinner with the editor of the Commercial and Financial Chronicle last night. He says Wall Street has taken leave of its senses.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Not a tremor like last March, an earthquake. It won’t steady again.’

  ‘And – what would your advice be?’ said Laurence.

  ‘Sell, obviously. But quietly, day by day. Don’t want to set any panics in motion. It could be, of course,’ – he looked at Laurence – ‘a time when selling short should be considered.’

  ‘Indeed? Well, I would obviously consider it. I had thought also – perhaps you could give me your reaction to this – that one might be a little, shall we say, ahead of the financial trend. When the collapse does actually begin. Offer to buy certain stock from certain clients at a fair price. To save them from serious difficulty.’