Something Dangerous

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘I doubt it very much,’ said Lady Beckenham, ‘it’s a complicated job, not like putting up a few partitions or slates. Anyway, you won’t be here. I can see the whole plan being scuppered. Damn shame.’

  ‘No, wait. That chap – what was his name, Bill, the plumber?’

  ‘Barber,’ said Billy. He had joined the party for Christmas lunch as he always did when Barty was there. ‘I remember because he said my hair needed cutting. But he’ll have joined up, surely.’

  ‘That’s the fellow. Anyway, Mrs Barber is a plumber as well, apparently. He told me, he sort of apprenticed her, taught her everything. She’ll do it for you, I bet, if Mr Barber isn’t around.’

  ‘Jolly good idea,’ said Lord Beckenham, ‘woman plumber eh? Whatever next. Wonderful what they can do these days. Is she pretty?’ he added hopefully.

  ‘Might have been once,’ said Jay, winking at Billy, ‘she’s fifty now if she’s a day.’

  ‘It is possible to be fifty and not entirely ill-looking,’ said Celia coldly.

  ‘She sounds ideal,’ said Lady Beckenham, ‘ask her to come and see us after Christmas, would you, Billy?’

  Billy did; and not only Mrs Barber arrived to do the plumbing work in the New Year, but also her daughter, Miss Barber, who was as pretty as Lord Beckenham or indeed anyone else might have hoped. Rather more importantly, she was as competent as her mother, working long hours in the freezing conditions of Ashingham; by late February, the new lavatories had been installed, a neat row of six, situated next to the vast bathroom on the first floor. ‘The pipe run will be far easier than at the top of the house, your ladyship. And I would suggest a couple of showers could be fitted in without too much difficulty. Otherwise you’ll never get them all clean, you know how boys will be boys.’

  Lady Beckenham agreed that indeed she did, and commissioned the work; Billy Miller then suggested a second pair of showers be installed on the ground floor next to the utility room while they were about it, thus ensuring further opportunities for cleanliness for the small boys, further work for the Barbers and for Billy continued access to Miss Barber, whose name was Joan. By the spring, romance was definitely in the well-sanitised air.

  Kit had never been so happy. Which was saying quite a lot. In a life which might have been considered charmed and had certainly been hugely agreeable, he had never found much cause for complaint. But as the freezing winter eased into early spring, and the skylarks and kestrels rose into the dazzling clear blue sky above the Scottish moorland he felt very close to heaven. Flying was amazing, all he had ever dreamed of, bestowing a freedom and a power which was quite literally heady.

  As he took off for the first time, as his plane had slightly shakily lifted into the air, as the ground beneath him shrank away, as he looked ahead of him and saw nothing, nothing but sky, he couldn’t help it: he shouted with excitement again and again, laughing with pure pleasure. And he never quite became used to it, the pleasure never even began to stale. Riding the clouds, swooping along the tops of forests and hills following roads and tracks (as sure a guide, once you got to know them, as any map) he felt inviolate, exhilarated, absolutely in command. This was his element, this great sweep of space, this was where in some way he belonged. On the days he did not fly, he felt odd, slightly bereft; restored to it, to his kingdom, he relaxed and came alive again.

  It was glorious; even on rough days, bumpy days, he felt the same sense of ease and comfort, of being absolutely in the proper place. He gained his wings with absurd ease; he had a natural sense of navigation, found the instrument panel, with its complex bank of information simplicity itself; and he had a feeling for the plane, it was as if it were an extension of himself, he could guide it through storms, thick cloud, keep it steady in strong winds. On complicated exercises, switching suddenly from following in convoy to flying entirely independently using instruments, he found the transition easier, less confusing than most of his fellow pilots, seldom dived or found himself upside down – except by choice. Nothing was more fun than that: looping the loop, turning full turtle, they all loved it, would have spent hours at it had they been allowed.

  As the winter of the phony war went on, all of them longed for action; finally in March their squadron was ordered down to Biggin Hill near Bromley in Kent. The name meant little to them; they had no inkling that it would become as evocative and emotive as other famous stage-settings for the war, Dunkirk, Arnheim, and the beaches of Normandy.

  Kit and most of his squadron were to fly the comparatively new Spitfire: the already legendary plane, with the same engines as the Hurricanes but with far less weight; it could climb with incredible speed – ‘Twenty thousand feet in eight minutes,’ Kit wrote proudly to Celia, ‘and it can do 362 miles an hour. Marvellous in a dog fight. And don’t worry, the cockpit is made of bullet-proof glass.’

  Celia did not find this totally reassuring.

  But Kit had another reason for not wanting to leave Scotland, another reason for his intense happiness; he was in love. Catriona MacEwan was the daughter of the local doctor in Caldermuir, the nearest village to the base: not quite eighteen years old, dark-haired, blue-eyed, about to leave home to train as a nurse at the Edinburgh Infirmary, she had met Kit at a dance in the village hall. It had been love at first sight: he had not known anything like it before, but recognised it nevertheless for what it was. He had had girlfriends of course, but they had been little more than that, friends who were also girls, whose prettiness and company gave him pleasure, whose hands he had held, and whose faces he had kissed. The extraordinary absorption of his head and his heart, the sense of absolute happiness in Catriona’s company, the heady physical desire she created in him, had much in common with what he felt in his plane, a sense of rightness, of finding something he had been looking for.

  They did no more than kiss and caress; they were young, virginal, respectful of one another and the mores of the time. Nevertheless, the kissing was passionate, powerful, hungry; and the caressing increasingly exploratory; as Catriona had said rather shakily one night, removing Kit’s hand gently but firmly from the top of her thighs, they’d be in trouble soon if they weren’t going to be separated. And then she had burst into tears when Kit told her the separation was only forty-eight hours away.

  Luc was late again: it was really too bad, Adele thought, she had cooked dinner for seven o’clock as he had requested, indeed she had got the children to bed early, because Mme André had suggested they might like to go out ‘just for a drink perhaps, or to the cinema, Carnet de Bal is at the Odeon, so beautiful, you would enjoy it so much’.

  Mme André was very fond of Adele; she worried about her lonely, clearly difficult life. She had observed the mink coat, the visits of her mother, and of her grandmother, bringing the grand old pram; clearly Adele was born to better things.

  Moreover she did not particularly like Luc; he had been charm itself when he took on the lease to the apartment, but since then he had scarcely troubled to pass the time of day with her. No doubt he thought she was a silly old woman; but like all concierges, Mme André prided herself on her ability to observe. And she had observed an increasing tendency in Luc to be home later and later at the end of the day, and once or twice, not until midnight or after. There could only be one explanation for such behaviour: she was very much afraid that Mam’selle Adele – as she had heard him address Adele in the early days and so had adopted it herself – she was very much afraid that Mam’selle Adele was being deceived.

  Adele on the other hand was not in the least afraid that she was being deceived; for the simple reason that she knew Luc could not possibly afford it. There was no money available for courtship of the most modest kind. He had to support her and their children, and he had to support the demanding and petulant Suzette in her warm and comfortable apartment; any girl looking for more than the occasional apéritif was going to be extremely disappointed. If she felt any jealousy, any resentment towards a third party in their partnership, it was of Luc’s work;
if he was not at home, then he was to be found at the warm and comfortable offices of Constantine et Fils in the beautiful building on Boulevard Haussmann. That was his mistress, that was where he was unfaithful to her, it was for the warmth and comfort and interesting conversation there that he neglected his chère famille. Of that she was quite, quite sure.

  Such conviction illustrated more graphically than anything the Englishness of Adele Lytton, and the lack of understanding she still showed of the French philosophy.

  ‘I must leave,’ said Luc with a sigh, looking at the clock on the bedroom mantelpiece, ‘my dinner is waiting.’

  ‘Only your dinner? You look tired, Luc.’

  ‘I am tired. Very tired. It is not easy, working so hard and then, the untidy apartment, the broken nights. I fear Adele is not quite the housekeeper I had hoped.’

  She is English. I could have warned you.’

  ‘You could and you should. But – it is too late now.’

  ‘Luc! It is never too late. You of all people should know that. Nothing is irreversible.’

  ‘Not even two children?’

  She shrugged. ‘Of course not. Send her home to England, that is what she wants. She will be happier there.’

  ‘But – I love those children. Very much. They are beautiful, charming, clever.’

  Another shrug. ‘Then I cannot help you. It is irreversible.’ She moved her hand down, started to caress him, smiled as she felt the inevitable happen.

  ‘Suzette—’

  ‘Here, Luc, let me guide you – yes, yes, that is very, very beautiful – oh now there, yes—’

  The dinner would have to wait; he abandoned himself to pleasure. It was extraordinarily good not to have to worry about children waking and crying, to be in this warm and charming apartment – he had forgotten quite how charming it was – without the unmistakable smell of drying napkins in the air.

  Finally he said he must leave, sat on the edge of the bed, lit a Gauloise; she put out a hand, took it from his lips, inhaled it and gave it back, returned to caressing his back.

  ‘You are thin, chéri.’

  ‘Well – life is difficult. For all of us of course, but particularly for me. Adele doesn’t seem to understand how many sacrifices I have to make for her. Well – I made my own bed, as the English saying goes, and I have to lie on it. But it is not a very comfortable one, I am afraid.’ He sighed, looked down at her, at her naked body, started to caress her breasts. ‘We should have had our own children, Suzette. As you often suggested. I should have been less selfish. It could all have been so different then.’

  The day before Kit left Scotland, he had time off; he took Catriona for a walk over the hills at the top of the village. She was quiet, clearly upset; his own mood was more upbeat.

  ‘You’re excited, aren’t you?’ she said finally, clearly half resentful, and he said almost shamefaced, yes, he was, he couldn’t help it, at last he was going to be able to do what he had been trained to do.

  ‘So am I. But I’d rather stay here with you. I suppose that’s the difference between men and women.’

  ‘I – suppose it is. I’m sorry – darling.’ He used the endearment almost nervously; he hadn’t said it to her before.

  She smiled up at him, clearly moved; she slipped her small hand into his. ‘It’s all right. I understand. It’s natural. Oh, Kit, when shall I see you again?’

  ‘On my very first leave,’ he said, ignoring details like the vast distance between London and Edinburgh, the cost and time involved in travelling it, ‘and I’ll write to you every day.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ she said, ‘you won’t be able to, and then I shall worry more.’

  He turned to her, touched by such tender logic.

  ‘Well – I’ll write whenever I can.’

  ‘That’s better.’

  ‘I love you,’ he said simply, looking into her blue eyes. ‘I love you so much. And you’re so beautiful.’

  ‘I love you too.’

  And then suddenly, because he loved her so much, and because parting from her was so suddenly and intensely painful, looking for some way to ease it, he said, ‘I would like us to be – that is, I wonder if—’ and stopped, and she looked up at him and smiled her sweet gentle smile and said, ‘Wonder what, Kit?’

  ‘You know what I think,’ he said, ‘you know, don’t you?’

  And – ‘yes,’ she said, ‘yes, I do know.’

  ‘And – what do you say?’

  ‘I say yes. Yes, yes, yes.’

  ‘So – we’re engaged?’

  ‘Yes we are. Unofficially of course.’

  ‘Of course. I haven’t even got you a ring.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll know. I love you, Kit.’

  ‘I love you, Catriona.’

  And so they parted, considering themselves promised to one another for ever, their only exchange of tokens being photographs and letters of love, identically worded and signed by each of them. Kit put his in the pocket of his shirt and told her it would be there always, next to his heart; Catriona, her blue eyes huge and dark with tears, said there would never be anyone else for her as long as she lived.

  But as Kit flew south in the morning in a transport aircraft, his thoughts were more of the new life ahead of him than the one he had left behind, however sweet. It was the first of April. The war was about to properly begin.

  Britain’s first air raid had not been over London, or even Dover, but the Orkney Islands; a minuscule foretaste of what was to follow; then came Germany’s invasion of Norway and Denmark. The British defence failed miserably and the whole affair was dreadfully bungled. As a result, Chamberlain’s majority in the Commons was reduced to an unmanageable level; within days Churchill had become Prime Minister and first the House of Commons, then the country listened for the first time to the extraordinarily powerful voice that was to drive it through the next five years. Brutal in its honesty, rough in its sincerity, but absolutely inspirational, it promised them ‘nothing but blood, toil, tears and sweat in the quest for victory . . . however long and hard the road may be . . . Come then, let us go forward together, with our united strength.’

  Celia, sitting by the wireless in a cold and growing terror, thinking of Giles in France, of Boy, at last preparing to leave, of Jay, waiting impatiently to go and above all of Kit, all of them sucked into this dreadful, fearsome vortex, felt strangely comforted even as she wept.

  CHAPTER 27

  ‘I think, my darling, that after all you should go home to England. You and the little ones. I am growing afraid for you.’

  Luc’s eyes as he looked at Adele were tender, liquid with concern; she felt a lump rise in her throat. She had longed for him to say this, to agree to her return; now that it had happened it was – different somehow.

  ‘Oh Luc, no. I – I couldn’t. Not now. You’re right, this is my home now. And our children’s home.’

  ‘But – a dangerous one, I am very much afraid. Hitler is on the move now. First Norway, next who knows? I think it is wrong of me to keep you here. Selfish and wrong.’

  ‘But – you don’t think he’ll invade France? Get to Paris?’

  ‘God forbid. No, of course not. But – I want you safe. And there may not be so much time.’

  Adele sighed; she imagined herself across the Channel, in England, with a longing so intense she could hardly bear it. England: home, safety, family. And then mustered her courage, set herself against it. It would be wrong, wrong to leave Luc, to take her children away from him. They were married in all but name; he was her home, her family now. She had to remember that and be brave.

  ‘No, Luc. I’m not going. Sorry. You can’t get rid of me that easily.’

  It was 9 May 1940.

  ‘Mummy? You’ve heard the news? Of course you have, what a stupid question. Hitler’s invaded Holland. And Belgium and Luxembourg. Oh, my God. It’s begun, it’s really begun. Boy was right.’

  ‘When is he going?’

  �
�Oh – any day now. I expect this will clinch it. Dear God, I wish Dell was here.’

  ‘No more than I do.’

  ‘We should get the children down to Ashingham, don’t you think? The girls, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, I do. Any day now it could become very dangerous.’

  ‘So – what are you going to do now?’

  ‘Now?’ Celia’s tone made it very clear she thought the question absurd. ‘I’m going to Lyttons. Obviously.’

  It had got her through the last war, she thought, as she climbed the stairs to her beloved office; it would get her through this one. Here, within these walls, she could hide from reality, hide from her fears, tell herself that books, catalogues, bookshops, book tokens, were what mattered. As indeed they did; wars ended, life went on. You could not ease yourself into a vacuum, tell yourself that the only thing that mattered was the war. It didn’t. It really really didn’t. Even when your youngest child was about to launch himself into the skies, into battle, in a plane that offered as little protection from the enemy and enemy fire as a motor bike. It wasn’t the only thing . . .

  Her phone rang.

  ‘Celia?’

  ‘Yes. Hallo, Sebastian.’

  ‘You must be very worried.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course. Of course I’m worried. I just wanted to—’

  ‘Wanted to what?’ she said, irritable with her fear.

  ‘Wanted to tell you I was here. Thinking of you. And of Kit. Holding your hand. Notionally.’

  ‘You might have to come and do it literally,’ she said.

  It was 10 May.

  ‘My darling! You’re not still here.’

  It was Cedric, looking dazzling, sitting near the fountains in the Place St-Sulpice in white flannels and white shirt, blond curls grown longer, accompanied by an equally beautiful, equally blond youth, at least ten years his junior, Adele thought. He always had liked younger men.