Something Dangerous

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘Well I think you might,’ said Kit with his dazzlingly sweet smile, ‘but I’ll try to keep quiet about it until I’ve found out a bit more for myself.’

  ‘You don’t need to find out any more for yourself, I can tell you everything you would ever want to know.’

  Kit smiled at her again and said nothing more on the subject.

  But Jay did like books: a lot. And he liked, still more, the idea of doing what Celia did: discovering talent and nurturing it, turning ideas into books, turning raw young writers into bestselling household names.

  ‘That’s what editing is about, Jay; it’s very like the gardening you enjoy so much. You pick out some interesting-looking, possibly sickly plant and care for it, nourish it, encourage it, and then see it grow tall and strong. Very satisfying. Of course it doesn’t always work out, but if you have a nose for it – or rather an eye and an ear, and I suspect you do, then there’s nothing more exciting.’

  Jay had no idea how she could suspect any such thing; and it was precisely this tendency of hers to make judgments in his favour that worried him. He liked Celia and unlike most of the family, was not in the least overawed by her, he was not daunted by her short temper or her withering tongue, and given the least excuse, he would argue with her forcefully, and had even been known to tell her that she was talking absolute nonsense. But Jay was a socialist, and a passionate believer in earned, rather than inherited, privilege, and a job for him at Lyttons did not lie easily with such beliefs. When combined with Celia’s favouritism, it was a formula for discomfort with himself.

  And then there was the problem of Giles: he had even discussed this with his mother who admitted that Giles was not doing very well, but that in her view that was all the more reason for Jay to join Lyttons.

  ‘You’re the firm’s future, you and Giles and possibly Kit, unless he becomes Lord Chief Justice—’

  ‘Or the Pope.’

  ‘Indeed yes.’ She smiled at him. ‘But if the firm is to prosper it needs all the talent available to it. To state you don’t want to join us because one person is so far not displaying very much of that talent, is ridiculous. Your non-arrival is not going to make Giles perform any better.’

  ‘But my arrival could make things worse,’ said Jay, ‘have you thought of that? Well, give me a bit longer, Mother. I need to get this right.’

  His dilemma was made worse by a proposition from Lady Beckenham who asked him if he’d like to run the Home Farm on the estate.

  ‘I think you’d do it well and I know you’d enjoy it. You don’t want to sit in some office day after day, surely. It would be a pleasure to have you down here, it’s where you grew up after all, and I like your attitude, I know you’d work hard. What my daughter, and indeed your mother, would have to say I dread to think, but there’s the offer, take it or leave it.’

  That was a serious temptation; Jay loved the countryside, loved being out of doors, loved physical work. In many ways, farming looked the perfect career to him. On the other hand, working for the ninth earl meant in due course working for the tenth and, much as he liked Lady Beckenham, he didn’t at all like James, her eldest son and the heir to Ashingham, and he knew moreover that James didn’t like him. He had an arrogance of manner that his parents entirely lacked, and no sense of style; he treated his servants inconsiderately, and he would clearly treat his farm manager in the same way. Lord Beckenham would not live for ever, his heart was not strong, and he had frequently said that it would be a close run thing whether he or King George would meet their maker first. When the old King won that particular race on a cold day in January, Lord Beckenham was visibly upset as he put on his black tie; he insisted on attending the funeral with Lady Beckenham which upset him further, not least, he said that night at dinner, because he felt the new King had no backbone.

  ‘Nothing good to be said of him at all as far as I can see. Time he pulled himself together, stopped chasing pretty women all over the place and married someone decent. I’ve written to The Times several times about it but they haven’t published any of my letters.’

  Lady Beckenham said she couldn’t imagine why not, but that he was a fine one to talk about chasing pretty women.

  Finally, albeit with some misgivings still, Jay made his decision.

  ‘Mother, I’ve decided. I’d like to join Lyttons. If they’re still keen to have me.’

  LM said rather stiffly that she imagined they would, but that she would have to discuss the final arrangements with Celia and Oliver, and then hurried out of the room and into the lavatory where she shed some sentimental tears and thought how pleased and proud Jago would have been of his son, who had proved to be not only clever and engaging, but principled as well.

  Jay’s career began as Giles’s had, as a looker out; he liked it so much, he was frequently heard to say, that if he never rose any higher in the Lytton dynasty he would be perfectly happy. He devoted a great deal of time and energy to seeking out Giles for advice and guidance, kept any ideas he had on the company and its development completely to himself and went out of his way to avoid Celia’s attention. So far it was working out very well.

  ‘I’m sorry, Barty.’ Maud’s green eyes were very steady, full of determination. ‘If you’re going to – to see Laurence, then I can’t have anything more to do with you.’

  ‘But Maud. Please, couldn’t you – just—’ Her voice tailed away.

  ‘I couldn’t just anything. It’s your decision. Me or him. Us or him, actually. Me and Daddy and Jamie. Until it’s over. Which it will be, I do promise you that.’

  Barty said nothing; she knew there was no point defending Laurence, making any kind of claim for him, saying what she knew to be true, that Laurence loved her, that it would not be over.

  ‘Barty, he’s – he’s wicked. There’s no other word for it.’

  ‘Maud, I think there is—’

  ‘No, there isn’t. He spent thousands and thousands of dollars once, bribing people, trying to wreck Daddy’s business. He’s always refused even to speak to me. He made Jamie choose between us, when Jamie was just a little boy. He tried to have Daddy turned out of his house, his own house. I don’t understand you, Barty, how you can have anything to do with him. I really don’t.’

  ‘Maud, I – well, I love him, I’m afraid. Please try to understand.’

  ‘There’s nothing to understand. Absolutely nothing. So – unless you come to your senses, stop having anything to do with him, I can’t be your friend. Any more.’

  ‘Oh Maud—’ Barty put out her hand, tried to take Maud’s; she pulled it away.

  ‘No, don’t. I really mean it. I can’t and won’t have anything more to do with you. I – well, I just couldn’t.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Barty quietly, ‘I’m afraid we have to part. But Maud, I wish you’d try to—’

  ‘To what? To see him somehow differently? To say oh, it was all because of his unhappy childhood, that he’s not really bad at all. Is that what he told you? Yes, I thought so. Well it’s just not true, I’m afraid. We all gave him the benefit of the doubt for a long time and he doesn’t deserve it. Sorry, Barty, but no.’

  Barty had been going to say that of course: to explain that anyone who had had to endure what Laurence had had to endure was bound to be – difficult. To find life difficult. He had spent hours talking about it, how dreadful it had been, watching his adored father die, in terrible pain, trying to console his mother, to look after Jamie as his father had told him: and then having to accept Robert into their lives, watching his mother growing fond of him, listening to her rather awkward explanations about how she felt, and then the announcement that she was going to marry him.

  ‘Marry him! This man who wasn’t half what my father had been, not so clever, not so wise, not so good. I’m sorry, Barty, I know he’s your uncle but—’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Barty. ‘I – I think I understand.’

  ‘And then you know, seeing her pregnant, can you think how that fel
t, to a boy of – what was I, fifteen? Recognising the implications, thinking of them making love – it was horrible. We’d been so close, the two of us, she was such a splendid, wonderful woman, and here she was – well, I found it unbearable. When she told me that she was pregnant, I was physically sick. I threw up over and over again, trying to get rid of this horrible thing in my life. Well, that’s what the shrink said—’

  ‘The shrink?’

  ‘Psychiatrist. I’ve had hours, weeks, years of analysis. It hasn’t helped much. And then she had the baby—’

  ‘Maud?’

  ‘Yes. And I looked at her, and I can’t tell you how much I hated her. And then when my mother died, I really wanted Robert to die as well. Because it was his fault. She died having another of his – his children. I spent quite a lot of time thinking how I might kill him. I suppose you think that’s terrible.’

  ‘No,’ said Barty gently, ‘not in the circumstances. I don’t think so.’

  ‘It’s amazing how you understand these things. Nobody ever did before. Not really.’

  ‘Well,’ said Barty, ‘I had quite a difficult childhood myself. I told you.’

  ‘Yes.’ He smiled at her, his rare smile. ‘Thank God for it.’

  ‘I wonder which of us had the worse time,’ she said, her tone not entirely serious.

  ‘Oh definitely I did. No doubt.’

  ‘We – ell. I’m not so sure. I mean I was bullied at school—’

  ‘Bullied! That’s nothing.’

  ‘It most certainly isn’t nothing. And the twins persecuted me.’

  ‘Even less. Two little girls—’

  ‘And my own family rejected me. Except for my mother, and my brother Billy.’

  ‘I like the sound of Billy.’

  ‘You’d love him.’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll like him at least.’

  ‘Laurence, you are not going to meet my family.’

  ‘Of course I am. I am going to come to England and meet them.’

  Barty didn’t argue any more. She had learned not to.

  It had been an astonishing few months.

  She had said goodbye to him as quickly as she decently could at the ball, and returned to her party, feeling shocked and physically shaken. To be so – well, so taken with the wicked Laurence Elliott, about whom she had heard nothing but bad, on whom the American Lyttons had declared war. She had always imagined him ugly, disagreeable, not – well, not hugely attractive, and interesting and – well, sexy. He was without doubt the sexiest man Barty had ever had anything to do with. After one hour of his company, she could think of nothing else. He was so funny, in his rather dry way, and although he wasn’t exactly charming, he was very – intriguing, not the harsh, hostile creature Maud had described. And he was so easy to talk to, and he made her feel so interesting and – well, so sexy too.

  ‘Tell me your address,’ he called after her as she made her sudden, flustered excuses and fled from him, but she pretended not to hear, pushed into the crowd, found Maud, said she didn’t feel very well, and would it be all right if she left.

  Maud, of course, had said she would come too, wouldn’t hear of letting her go on her own; ‘and you must come and stay with us tonight, no nonsense about going back to your apartment. Come along, let’s go find the car.’

  Sitting in the car, trying to calm herself, trying to appear more or less normal, longing to be able to talk to Maud about Laurence, about the acute effect he had had on her, knowing she couldn’t, she was silent; when they got back to the house, she made an excuse and went to her room and lay on the bed, trembling, half with excitement, half with distress. Of all the people in the whole of New York, why couldn’t she have met and fallen in love with someone suitable? It was like – well it was like Romeo and Juliet. Two feuding houses. Impossible to continue with it, of course; and anyway, she thought, giving herself a shake, she was being terribly presumptuous. She’d probably never hear from him again.

  But she did.

  ‘I had a terrible time tracking you down,’ he said almost brusquely, over the telephone next day. She looked at the clock on her desk.

  ‘Really terrible,’ she said, smiling in spite of herself. ‘It’s taken you at least a morning.’

  ‘It seemed much longer. I had to phone half the organisers of the ball, ask them if they knew you, they all said no, they’d never heard of you. So then I thought of the Brewers, and I’m not on very good terms with them, for reasons which I need not trouble you with—’

  ‘I – I do know the reasons,’ she said.

  ‘You do? Surely not. Anyway, then I thought of the Bradshawes. Lucy’s people, you know. I thought they might help me. Mrs Bradshawe particularly is always trying to inveigle me on to her committees, terrible woman. So I rang her; she wasn’t very pleased when she found out what I really wanted, but she told me that you worked there at Lyttons. For the family publishing company. I want to hear about that, Barty, tonight.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Yes. I want you to have dinner with me. I’ve booked a table at the Pierre. At seven-thirty. Then I thought we might go on to the 21. Shall I send a car to pick you up from your modest little home?’

  ‘No,’ said Barty, ‘no don’t. And I can’t have dinner with you. Not tonight, not ever.’

  ‘Why on earth not?’

  ‘Because – well, it’s very complicated, but I just can’t. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but you’ll have to do better than that,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to explain. Now you can do it over dinner if you like but I’m not going to accept this kind of nonsense.’

  Barty said again that she couldn’t have dinner with him, that there was no question of ever having dinner with him, and asked him please to forget all about her. An hour later an enormous bouquet of flowers arrived for her, with an accompanying note; six hours later she found herself sitting opposite him in the restaurant and informing him that she was, to a certain extent at least and certainly in terms of family loyalty, a Lytton.

  ‘It simply doesn’t matter,’ he said impatiently. ‘Not in the very least.’

  ‘Of course it matters. You hate the Lyttons. I know you do. Well, the ones here anyway. And they – well, they’re not terribly fond of you.’

  ‘That’s true. But I don’t see that it has anything to do with you. Or rather with you and me.’

  ‘Well in that case you are a great deal more stupid than you seem. The Lyttons are my family.’

  ‘Not biologically.’

  ‘That’s absurd. Irrelevant. Maud is one of my best friends. She and Robert have been incredibly kind to me, I work for Lyttons—’

  ‘Leave.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘I said leave,’ he said calmly, signalling to the waiter to refill her glass.

  ‘Laurence, of course I can’t leave. I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I love what I do.’

  ‘You could do it for another publisher.’

  ‘No I couldn’t. My career, and the whole of my professional loyalty is with Lyttons.’

  ‘Is your career that important to you?’

  Barty looked at him. ‘It’s the most important thing in my life. There’s nothing I care about half so much.’

  ‘Only, I suggest, because you haven’t yet found anything else. Suppose you were to fall in love, get married even.’

  ‘It wouldn’t make any difference.’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘Still no difference.’

  ‘You’d carry on working even if you had children, would you?’ he said.

  ‘Of course I would. Aunt – Celia Lytton, she’s worked all her life. And she had four children. Five, if you count me.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said in tones of great satisfaction, ‘and look how unhappy you all were.’

  ‘No we weren’t.’

  ‘You said you were.’

  ‘I was unhappy because of my circumstances. The others were terribly happ
y.’ Not quite true, that, but he was not to know. Anyway, it didn’t matter.

  ‘If you had my children you wouldn’t work,’ he said, his brilliant eyes moving over her.

  ‘Laurence, that is such an absurd statement.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m not going to have your children.’

  ‘And how do you know that?’ he said, leaning back, the sudden reluctant smile breaking. ‘How on earth can you know that?’

  So it began: the onslaught on her, on her common sense, her intellect, her ambition, her vision of herself and her life.

  If she had hoped that no one at Lyttons would find out about it, she was swiftly disillusioned; he telephoned her several times a day, had endless flowers and gifts delivered to her, parked his car outside Lytton House at night, waiting for her to come out. He took her all over New York: to the smart restaurants and nightclubs, to the Stork Club, El Morocco, the 21, all filled with celebrities, which he pointed out with enormous and rather proprietory pride – ‘Look, there’s the Grand Duchess Marie, she was a relative of the last Tzar, a photographer now, poor thing, and would you believe that lady, the Princess Ketto Mikeladze, what a name, buys lingerie for the Elizabeth Arden salon. Very déclassé, don’t you think? And now that’s Sophie Tucker with her, and there are the Astaires, and look, Barty, Gloria Vanderbilt, would you like to meet her – no? another time, then – and there are the Whitneys, and my God, the utterly dreadful Elsa Maxwell, how about asking her for a drink: no, perhaps not’ – and sometimes he took her to quiet, small places on the Upper East Side, where the food and wine were just as excellent and which she actually preferred. They had driven up to Harlem several times after dinner, to the Cotton Club, with its superb jazz bands, which had truly delighted her, and to the more conventional and romantic pleasures of the Rainbow Room. He had taken her to the Metropolitan Opera House and the Carnegie Hall and to the wonderful shows at Radio City, to Anything Goes and to Orson Welles’s Macbeth at the Negro People’s Theatre.