Something Dangerous

by Penny Vincenzi

  But that was not the point, she told herself severely, setting it firmly aside, that was not the point at all, indeed, if she did marry Laurence, she would refuse the shares, refuse his wedding gift, she did not want it, she would not be able to live with it or herself.

  She did not see Laurence at all for over two weeks; she told him she had to have time to think, to reflect on his proposal, away from the powerful insistent pressure he exerted upon her. He sent her flowers and presents daily, a huge beribboned box arrived, which she opened with some trepidation. Inside it was another box and inside that another and then another, until finally, her office overflowing with paper and ribbon and cards, she came to a tiny box from Cartier with a ring inside it, the diamond so big that it entirely covered her small knuckle when she tried it on.

  ‘Don’t you like it?’ he said indignantly, when she telephoned him to thank him and she said she did, very much, it was beautiful, but that it was not quite for her, too large, too ostentatious, she would be happier with something smaller.

  ‘Absolute nonsense,’ he said, ‘no wife of mine will wear a small ring,’ and she had said she was not his wife and nor would she be wearing it; next day another ring arrived, studded with several smaller diamonds, much prettier and more her style.

  Finally, she decided; over dinner at the Plaza – ‘well it is our place’ – she told him that she would like to marry him – ‘Only “like”, that seems to lack passion, Barty?’ – and ignoring that, had gone on to say, that she was not ready yet, would not be for many months, she needed time to prepare herself and her life, she didn’t even want the engagement announced yet and if he went ahead, then she would insert another announcement the following day, cancelling it.

  Sulkily at first, he had accepted the deal, then saw it as a challenge to make things more difficult for her, dropping hints to journalists, to people like Elsa Maxwell, that he might just conceivably and within the just about foreseeable future, cease to be a bachelor. Rumours began to fly about, paragraphs in the press; Barty confronted him with them, and he laughed and said he hadn’t said a single word to anyone that she could contest or even argue with.

  Finally, on New Year’s Eve, ‘our anniversary’, she said he could go ahead and make the announcement.

  ‘I love you and I want to marry you, so I don’t quite know why I’m making all this fuss,’ she said, and he said he had no idea either.

  They were spending the night at South Lodge; he wanted to be alone with her, he said, in their special place, to celebrate the happiest year of his life.

  ‘I want you to come to England, very soon now,’ said Barty, ‘to meet everyone. It’s so important to me. I want them to meet you, know what you’re really like, that you’re not the devil incarnate that they’ve heard about from Robert and Maud—’

  ‘And if they decide that I am—’

  ‘Then I shall have to work very hard to change their minds.’

  ‘But you won’t change yours?’

  ‘No, Laurence, I won’t change mine. I can’t think of anything that would do that.’

  And then it had happened.

  He had suddenly become rather pale and agitated; he said he would like to lie down.

  ‘It’s nothing, really, just one of my migraines, if you wouldn’t be too offended, my darling, I would like to be alone for a while. The effects are not always very attractive.’

  She knew what he meant, she had witnessed one before; they were rare, only coming about twice a year, but savage, the intense pain accompanied by violent vomiting.

  She had seen him up to bed, and left him obediently, slept in the guest room along the corridor; in the early morning she had got up and gone to see how he was. He was clearly in agony, and extremely ill.

  ‘I think, perhaps, you should phone the doctor, when it’s as bad as this, he gives me a shot, puts me out. I’m sorry, darling, not very romantic, oh God—’

  She left him, hurried to the telephone; the doctor came within the hour and gave Laurence an injection.

  ‘He’ll be all right now. Poor man, dreadful, these things are. But he’ll be out for a good twenty-four hours, you won’t get a cheep out of him. I should go back to bed yourself.’

  But in the morning, she decided to go home briefly; she had work to do on Brilliant Twilight, she was fretting over it and she could collect it and bring it back. She went to find Mills, Laurence’s driver; he said he would be only too happy to drive her, with the wonderful new Triboro Bridge, it would only take three hours at the most, the roads would be clear, she could collect her work and he would bring her right back.

  They were in Gramercy Park by midday; she ran in, collected her briefcase, checked the contents – proofs, original manuscript, cover designs – and then phoned South Lodge. Laurence was still absolutely unconscious.

  She was just letting herself out of the door, leafing through the letters on the hall table at the same time, for she had not been there for fortyeight hours, when Elise Curtis appeared from her own small, rather murky apartment.

  ‘Happy New Year, Miss Miller.’

  ‘Happy New Year to you, Elise. Did you have a good time last night?’

  ‘Oh – you know. So, so. I haven’t seen you to talk to for months, Miss Miller. Course I’ve been working nights—’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve been away a lot,’ said Barty quickly, remorseful that whenever she did see Elise she avoided her, dreading the long rambling stories and the sickly odour that accompanied her everywhere. ‘And then of course I had to go to England for several weeks. My – my uncle was very ill—’

  ‘Yes, I heard you’d gone. That was the bad news in the cable, I suppose?’

  Barty stared at her. ‘What cable, Elise?’

  ‘Why the one that came for you. I signed for it, you know. The day before you went to England. Well you must surely have got it? I gave it to your – your gentleman friend, he was waiting for you outside in his car, I told him to be sure he gave it to you. He didn’t forget, surely—’

  He had tried of course: to deny it first, and then when that proved impossible, to try to explain; she observed him, observed him in a mixture of disgust and rage, lying, prevaricating, jumping ahead of her in a series of the dizzying moves that she had come to know rather well. Lies about phoning London, about making sure Oliver was all right, about wanting to tell her himself after she had had a night’s sleep: ‘You were so tired, so overwrought, I thought it best that you should hear in the morning. You couldn’t do anything that night—’

  ‘I could have phoned,’ she said and her voice was high, trembling, ‘found out how he was. Started making arrangements. They would have known I cared. Instead of—’

  ‘I did instruct whoever it was to make sure they knew you had phoned.’

  ‘But I – oh this is ridiculous. Who did you speak to? No one mentioned it—’

  ‘I have no idea. Some incompetent servant who clearly didn’t pass the message on.’

  ‘The butler at Cheyne Walk is marvellous, he would never have failed to do such a thing.’

  He shrugged. ‘Clearly not as marvellous as you think. Barty, come here, sit down, please let me explain. I know it was – remiss of me—’

  ‘Remiss! You call that remiss. A piece of the most dangerous, wicked deception, while the person I love probably best in the world—’

  ‘I thought that was me—’

  ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘No, it is not you.’

  ‘Please. Let me try and explain. It was only because I love you so much. I wanted to—’

  ‘Laurence, that was not about love. I’m afraid you don’t know anything about love. I’m going to my room now, I can’t ask poor Mills to take me all that way again. But I do warn you, if you come near me I shall scream and tell your servants that you’re raping me. Goodnight, Laurence. I – I really don’t think I want to see you ever again.’

  He had thought – of course – that she would get over it, that it was a passing tantrum, that
she would forgive him, that he could win her round. Convincing him otherwise was the hardest thing she had ever done. For weeks, as usual, he bombarded her with telephone calls, flowers, waited outside for her in his car, sat for hours in reception at Lytton House. Eventually she told him that she would inform the police he was pestering her.

  ‘I don’t want to marry you, Laurence. Don’t you understand? I don’t want anything more to do with you. Please, please leave me alone.’

  And then the other, uglier assaults began, the near-suicide threats, the declarations that he was going to get in his boat and sail away in it, that he was unable to work and the bank was on the verge of collapse, that he was having investigations into a physical condition which might be fatal – all complete fabrications, designed to frighten her, to force her into submission.

  Somehow she managed to hold firm, but it was quite extraordinarily difficult and disturbing.

  Because, of course, she was still deeply concerned for him, and in a way, she was still terribly in love with him.

  She was greatly comforted and distracted through this time however, by the publication of Brilliant Twilight. With some misgivings, encouraged by the modest orders of some of the more important booksellers – Brentanos had expressed great interest in it and ordered twenty copies and three posters – Stuart Bailey had decided on an initial print run of two and a half thousand.

  ‘I don’t think it will do three, but – well, if we’re lucky, we should do over two.’

  Publication date was 16 November – ‘A week before Thanksgiving, it’s a good time’ – and although Lyttons weren’t giving an official dinner for Geordie MacColl, Stuart and Barty took him to the King Cole Room at the St Regis on Fifteenth and Stuart ordered some Krug champagne to launch ‘what I hope will be a vintage book’.

  ‘I hope so too,’ said Geordie. He was very nervous; Barty found it hugely engaging.

  ‘I know so,’ she said, ‘and you should get your first reviews tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m ready for them,’ said Geordie gloomily.

  Stuart Bailey smiled at him. ‘They might be good. You never know. Anyway, even if they’re bad, that’s better than no reviews at all.’

  Geordie said he found that hard to believe and Barty told him it was one of the oldest tenets in publishing and one of the truest.

  ‘People buy it anyway then, out of curiosity. No review and they don’t even know it exists.’

  It had been a very rich literary year: Of Mice and Men, To Have and Have Not, A.J. Cronin’s The Citadel and The Hobbit had all been, or were being, launched; ‘So the competition will be stiff. But there’s nothing really much like Brilliant Twilight,’ said Barty, raising her glass to him, ‘so we’re in with a fighting chance at least. We’ve printed two thousand five hundred you know.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Geordie, ‘two thousand, four hundred and ninety-seven unsold.’

  ‘Who are going to buy the other three?’

  ‘My mother and my two sisters.’

  Barty leaned over and gave him a kiss. ‘I’ll buy one. I promise. I’ll stand in the middle of Scribners and ask for it very loudly. That was one of Celia Lytton’s ploys, with every book she published. Only she did all the major bookshops. And of course she’s so beautiful and so grand everyone stared and wanted to know what the book was.’

  ‘Well,’ said Geordie, with one of his shy smiles, ‘you’re very beautiful too. If not quite – grand. Imposing, though.’

  ‘Oh Geordie. You’re very sweet, but I’m afraid it’s not true. Anyway, I shall try it for you.’

  There was no review next day, in a single paper; Geordie phoned Barty in despair.

  ‘You see. Not even a bad one.’

  ‘Give them time,’ she said staunchly, ‘they were all drooling over The Late George Apley.’

  ‘I noticed. Should I fall on my sword now or tonight?’

  ‘Wait till after the weekend.’

  She did not tell him that she had gone into both Scribners and Brentanos and asked for it, and found it poorly displayed at the back of both shops. Barnes and Noble didn’t seem to be displaying it at all. None of the bookshops were using the posters Barty had so carefully commissioned and overseen. She spent several near-sleepless nights, reflecting on the general hopelessness of her life, and wishing Celia was in New York.

  In the Sunday Post there was a very nice, if small, review: ‘Geordie MacColl writes like the proverbial angel, with his pen dipped intermittently in acid to give his tale a sharply etched edge . . . a most promising debut.’

  ‘You see, you see,’ Barty sang down the phone, ‘and there’s all this week, you should get some more.’

  ‘I’m sure I won’t.’

  On Thursday, the New York Times said that Brilliant Twilight was a ‘shimmering pearl of a novel’, and described Geordie’s talent as the ‘piece of burnished grit in the oyster that created it’.

  ‘Bit obscure, but nice,’ said Stuart.

  Next day he rushed into Barty’s office with the Post. ‘Look at this, Barty. This is extraordinary.’

  It was so unlike him to display any emotion other than a rather weary caution, that she was quite startled; she took the paper from him.

  ‘It would be wrong to describe Geordie MacColl as the new Scott Fitzgerald, for he is an entirely new and fresh talent, but in that he covers some of the same territory with much of the same panache, it would not be completely out of order. A brilliant novel.’

  ‘My God,’ said Barty in awed tones.

  The books moved forward to the front of the shops, the posters went up, and the reorders began to come in. Barnes and Noble ordered another ten, Scribner likewise, Doubleday fifteen and Brentanos an astonishing twenty.

  The New Yorker hailed Brilliant Twilight as ‘superlative’ and both the Ladies’ Home Journal and Harpers Bazaar urged their readers to put it on their Christmas lists.

  There were more orders, more reorders in fifties and then hundreds; when a store in Atlanta, Georgia and another in Charleston, Carolina both sent for ten copies, Stuart Bailey signed a print order for a further ten thousand.

  ‘New York, Washington, Boston, you expect to do pretty well there. But when those kinds of places want to read you, you’ve made it in a big way.’

  But what finally sent Geordie MacColl into the literary stratosphere was a superb review in the hugely influential Atlantic Monthly. Its issue immediately prior to publication had carried nothing, to Barty’s secret disappointment, although she told Geordie that a review in it for such a novel was literally unthinkable; but the following month it told its readers that they would pass Brilliant Twilight by to their great loss.

  ‘Once in a decade or so is a great new writer published. There is a moment when bookshops and libraries should clear a space on their tables and shelves, when not to do so would brand them as intellectually feckless, and when to do so would be to grant immense and rare pleasure to their customers. This is that moment in this decade; for an experience of excitement, tension, insight, emotion and carefully careless humour Brilliant Twilight has been given to us.’

  Stuart promptly increased the print run again . . . and then again.

  Articles appeared in all the papers about Geordie, about his old-money charm, his boyish looks, his personal history – ‘Thank God it’s so interesting,’ said Stuart to Barty. ‘I’m very sorry his family lost all their money in the crash but it’s extremely good for us.’

  Lyttons were suddenly on the map; from being a small, modestly successful publisher, which the big boys looked down on with affectionate but mild disdain, they had become a small, brilliant publisher that the big boys looked across at with alarm and envy.

  And Barty, hitherto unknown in New York publishing circles, found herself fêted and quoted as well; Kyle wrote to her, congratulating her and telling her that if ever she wanted a job, Macmillans would be more than happy to offer her one.

  She wrote back and thanked him, saying she was very happy where
she was, but suggesting lunch; over a rather protracted one at the Colony – ‘my treat’ – she told him of the conclusion of, although not the reason for, her affair with Laurence Elliott. Kyle was very sweet: ‘I’m sorry for you, because I know you must be sad, but I’m glad for the rest of us. He just wasn’t nearly good enough for you.’

  He then spent a great deal of time telling her all about his baby son, Kyle junior, known as Kip and what a wonderful mother Lucy was; somehow, Barty managed to display the requisite enthusiasm. Felicity wrote a few days later, a charming little note, saying how sorry she was about Laurence and how much she knew Barty must be hurting; ‘but I promise you it will get better, you must just live from day to day. And remember, you are always welcome here. We’ve missed you.’

  Barty didn’t feel quite ready to start associating closely with Laurence’s enemies, but was touched nonetheless and rather surprised that a person who had been married for almost four decades should be able to remember what the ending of an affair must feel like.

  There was still no word from Maud.

  But as the year drew to a close and Brilliant Twilight was in every bookshop window and on every Christmas list, and she accompanied Geordie to yet another reading at yet another bookshop, Barty would frequently reflect with something approaching disbelief, that she had not thought about Laurence Elliott for at least twelve hours.