Something Dangerous

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘Well I think she’s getting too serious,’ said Sebastian vaguely. ‘A year off will do her good.’

  ‘Sebastian, I’m not sure that it would. What’s this all about?’

  ‘Nothing.’ His dark-blue eyes were blank suddenly. ‘Nothing at all.’

  He picked up Jenna, who was sitting at his feet, playing with his shoelaces. ‘You’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you? Looks like her dad, does she, darling?’

  ‘So exactly,’ said Barty, ‘same hair, same eyes—’

  ‘They are a gorgeous colour. Exactly the colour of that ring of yours.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Barty smiling at first the ring and then him, ‘apparently that was the idea. It’s a nice story, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘You seem happy,’ he said.

  ‘I am happy,’ she said, sounding surprised. ‘Most of the time I’m really happy. Occasionally I get angry, or lonely, or long for Laurence to have at least known about Jenna, but generally I’m—yes, happy. It’s marvellous being back at work, although it’s a bit—difficult there at the moment.’

  ‘So I gather.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to the break. I do love New York, I often feel it’s where I really belong. Silly, I know, but—anyway, let me tell you about the ring.’

  ‘Funny old thing, inheritance, genes, all that sort of thing, isn’t it?’ he said when she had finished. ‘Some children look so exactly like their parents, or one parent—like Izzie could be Pandora now, couldn’t she? And the twins, their mother all over again.’

  ‘Yes, and Giles too, in a way. I often think it’s a bit sad for Oliver, not one of them really looking like him.’

  ‘Kit does, surely. Blond, blue eyes—’

  ‘Well—yes. But that’s all. He’s a different build, and his features are different. Apparently he’s much more like Grandpa Edgar than anyone. Celia says, anyway.’

  ‘Does she now?’ said Sebastian.

  Christmas was not entirely comfortable. Most people made an effort, but Giles was morose, Helena edgy, and Izzie noticeably quiet, sitting close to Kit, and not even responding to Henry Warwick’s teasing, which she usually enjoyed.

  Henry was seventeen now, tall, extraordinarily handsome, easily charming – ‘I feel so sorry for whoever he marries,’ said Venetia to Adele with a sigh. Roo was shorter, less good-looking but extremely funny, with a huge talent for mimicry. Between them they made the day fun, especially the afterdinner charades. Roo being a caterpillar in the style of Frank Sinatra, the new teenage girls’ heart-throb, had everyone crying with laughter.

  ‘Do you like Frank Sinatra, Izzie?’ asked Henry.

  ‘Not particularly,’ she said, slightly primly, ‘I don’t like that sort of music.’

  ‘Why on earth not?’

  ‘I just don’t.’

  ‘Well you ought to,’ said Sebastian firmly, ‘at your age. You’re turning into a little old lady, Isabella. A trip to New York will do you good. You might even see him in person.’

  ‘I don’t want to see him in person. I don’t even want to go to New York,’ she said. And got up and left the room.

  There was an awkward silence; then Helena said, ‘I really think we ought to go.’

  ‘Oh, Mother. It’s such fun,’ said Mary, ‘just one more game.’

  ‘No more charades, for God’s sake,’ said Boy, ‘it’s too exhausting.’

  ‘Let’s play one of those round the room memory games,’ said Amy. ‘I like those.’

  ‘Boring,’ said Elspeth.

  ‘No, they’re not. I like them too,’ said Sebastian unexpectedly. ‘I went to market, that the sort of thing you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, I love that,’ said Tory. ‘I’m rather good at it.’

  ‘Come on, then. You start.’

  ‘All right. I went to market and I bought some cucumber.’

  ‘I went to market,’ said Roo, ‘and I bought some cucumber and some itching powder.’

  Izzie came back into the room. She sat down quietly next to Kit. ‘What are we playing?’

  ‘The memory game. You like that. Come on—’

  They went round the room once; everyone managed it, then people started dropping out, forgetting things. By the end of the third round only half a dozen were left in: by the end of the fourth only five: Kit, Izzie, Oliver, Tory and Sebastian. The list was now extremely long; Sebastian embarked on round five with relish: the end of it saw Oliver off.

  ‘My memory’s too old. Tory?’

  But then Tory was out, the remaining three of them sat laughing, playing on and on, their memories apparently flawless.

  ‘This is getting boring,’ said Henry, who had been out in round two. ‘Let’s change.’

  ‘No, we have to finish,’ said Sebastian. ‘Izzie, come on.’

  But as she sailed through the next round, and Kit the next, they gave in.

  ‘Extraordinary,’ said Gordon Robinson. ‘Jolly clever. Photographic memory, isn’t that what it’s called? Absolutely identical brains, obviously, the three of you.’

  There was a brief silence; then Sebastian said quickly, ‘Oh it’s just a knack. I just remember the first letters of everything and make a word out of them. A nonsensical word. Easy.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ said Kit, ‘that’s exactly what I do. Exactly.’

  ‘We really must go,’ said Helena.

  Lying in bed that night, thinking about Izzie, worrying about this trip to America that her father seemed so bent on, Kit suddenly found himself focusing on the slightly odd business of the memory game. That he and Sebastian used exactly the same technique to remember something. He supposed it was a fairly standard thing. Although he’d never heard of anyone else doing it. And then he heard Gordon Robinson saying, ‘absolutely identical brains, the three of you’. And then something else stirred in his head: another memory, in some way relevant . . . What was it, exactly? A photograph, something to do with a photograph—they’d been sitting on the terrace at Ashingham and little Noni had something—no, he couldn’t remember that either. And LM, there’d been something she had said—oh God, he’d had too much of Boy’s red wine. The room was beginning to spin a bit.

  Kit fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 46

  ‘Oh, I love you, I love you. You darling, darling, little thing.’

  Felicity Brewer looked at Barty over Jenna’s red-gold head. ‘She’s just heaven. You clever, clever girl.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Barty laughing, ‘it was actually quite easy.’

  ‘Has Robert met her yet?’

  ‘Of course. He’s a man in love. He says she looks exactly like Jeanette.’

  ‘She does too. Only more beautiful. And Jamie, what does he think?’

  ‘He seemed to like her too.’

  ‘I can’t wait for you to see Kyle. He’s been so looking forward to your coming.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Oh, pretty well. Over his divorce at last. It was pretty amicable. Lucy just—well, I guess she didn’t love him enough.’

  ‘Her loss, I’m sure,’ said Barty lightly.

  ‘Of course. Anyway, dinner here tonight. Robert, Jamie, everybody, it’s all arranged. And this little angel of course. Now then, any time you want to go to visit Lyttons, anything like that, you know she’ll have a very good babysitter right here. And of course my housekeeper can’t wait to get her hands on her either.’

  ‘That’s very nice of you,’ said Barty smiling at her, ‘and just once or twice, it could be very welcome.’

  She had forgotten how easy, how enveloping Americans and their hospitality could be. That was what she liked best about them, what made her feel so at home here. In hours she had been caught up into it all, felt she had never been away. She had been afraid that New York without Laurence would be painful, but it was not; or certainly no more than anywhere else. She felt him more strongly, of course, in the restless, relentless energy of the city, and occasionally she would be taken by surprise and
shaken by some small memory—a café on the Upper East Side where they had had a coffee, a bench in Central Park where they had sat and argued about whether they should go and see the latest Busby Berkeley (her choice), or Modern Times (his). Needless to say it had been Modern Times . . .

  But for the most part, she found it all perfectly easy; she could sit in the Palm Court at the Plaza enjoying tea with Felicity, drive up Park Avenue, past Elliott House, glance in to the Colony, all vivid with memories, but touched with only a drift of sadness. Every day she remembered him more happily; it was a surprising and lovely thing. He had been the most important thing in her life, and she had loved him absolutely, and he had made her terribly happy and terribly unhappy, and she would be quite a different person without him, and she would not have missed a day of him, not even the most wretched, but now she could simply enjoy what he had given her and be glad of everything that they had shared.

  Most of all, Jenna.

  Barty would not have believed it was possible to love anyone or anything as much as she loved Jenna. She had listened to the twins, to Celia, to other women saying that you didn’t know about love until you were a mother and she had not believed any of them. But it was true. Jenna was more important to her than anything in the world, and she knew that had Laurence lived, even he would have been relegated to second place. Or certainly to a different one. And thought, wrily, that that would not have pleased him very much either. And as Jenna grew and developed into an inevitably wilful, difficult, determined and entirely charming and enchanting child, Barty watched herself and her pleasure in her in amazement and every day wondered at the appalling and unimaginable emptiness there would have been in her life without her.

  It was wonderful to be in New York, after London. In a city that had no bomb sites, no boarded-up buildings; a city where the streets were lined with dazzling store windows, filled with wonderful, almost unimaginable things, silk dresses, fur coats, fine shoes, luxury perfume. Where you could have anything you wanted to eat, and as much of it as you wished, where you could fill your car with petrol as often as you wished, book vacations wherever you pleased . . . Set against the grim reality of London it seemed like a fantasy city, and she couldn’t imagine ever wanting to go home.

  She had booked into a fairly modest hotel in Gramercy Park, near Lytton House, where she knew Jenna would be welcome; but Felicity wouldn’t even hear of her staying there, made her check out the first day and move into their guest suite.

  ‘You don’t have to think you’ll be putting us out or be in the way, because you won’t be. You can come and go as you like, but when you are here and you have time for us, then that will be wonderful.’

  In the three weeks she was there, they saw all the shows; Annie Get Your Gun, Carousel, The Magnificent Yankee, ate in all the best restaurants, shopped endlessly, and went dancing with Kyle Brewer and Jamie and his wife Lindy (American as apple pie, Felicity had described her, laughingly) in Greenwich Village.

  Her only sadness was Maud, who refused to see her, having heard of her reunion with Laurence and the birth of Jenna. She was married, to another architect, and they lived in a town house on the Upper East Side with their two children.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ Robert said, clearly embarrassed. ‘She says she just can’t accept you.’

  ‘It’s all right. I understand. Really I do.’

  She did, but it hurt.

  She visited Lyttons New York several times; it was a fierce contrast to Lyttons London. Busy, energetic, successful, ‘making a lot of money,’ Stuart Bailey told her, ‘there’s quite a little boom in publishing over here.’

  He had aged very little; still rather stern-looking, with his iron-grey hair and patrician features, but lean, fit, full of enthusiasm. She thought of Oliver and the sad contrast between them, and then felt dreadfully disloyal.

  ‘Your Geordie MacColl is still a big success,’ Stuart told her, ‘one of Lyttons’s bankrollers. That was a great discovery of yours, Barty. We keep him firmly under lock and key, I can tell you. They’ve all been after him in their time, Doubleday, Random House, Macmillan, the lot, but we’ll never let him go. You should have him over to London, do some promotion for him there. He has a new book, Opium For the Few, coming out in May, his usual thing, but very topical, about a GI returning from the war; why don’t you publish it over there? We’d want quite a lot for it, mind you, but—’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes we might.’ She wondered how any such idea would get past the blundering dinosaur that Lyttons London seemed to have become.

  Just the same, she had lunch with Geordie; she took him to the Colony, knowing he would like it, testing her courage, laying yet another ghost.

  ‘We won’t get a good table, I’m afraid,’ she said laughing, when she telephoned to invite him. ‘Definitely not in the first enclave.’

  ‘I don’t mind that,’ he said. ‘I love it there anyway. And you know, lots of people prefer the back now. It’s become quite smart. A lot of movie stars, they like the privacy.’

  In the event they got quite a good table. ‘About halfway there,’ he said smiling at her, ‘well done.’

  She had a suspicion it was his name, rather than hers that had procured it.

  He was just the same, with his boyish WASP good looks, his slightly diffident charm; he’d been through a divorce too.

  ‘It’s all the rage here,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘Really you’re no one, no one at all without at least one under your belt. And certainly not at the Colony.’

  He was working already on a new book, he told her: ‘I’m quite excited about it. It’s about the New York mafia and the way they’re infiltrating the charity thing . . .’

  It sounded rather complicated to Barty, but she smiled and said she couldn’t wait to read it.

  As they were finishing their meal, Kyle Brewer appeared at their table.

  ‘Hallo. Nice to see you, Geordie. Telling Barty you’re coming to join us instead?’

  ‘Sorry, Kyle, no. I like Lyttons.’

  ‘Hey, that could be a slogan. You can have that for free, Barty.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll give you a drink for it. Come and join us.’

  He sat down and chatted; then, ‘Is Barty getting you over to London? That new book is a natural for England, with the war background.’

  ‘She—might be,’ said Geordie, giving Barty his quick, sweet smile.

  ‘Well, if you do, mind you insist on staying chez Lytton. What a dynasty. There’s Oliver, almost a parody of the English gentleman, his wife, the Lady Celia, so beautiful and so witheringly clever, you scarcely dare speak. And then there are the twins, I shall never forget those twins. Absolutely identical and so lovely. They were the most ravishing little girls. Maud has various pictures of them still, one that was in Style that shows four of them, in a double mirror.’

  ‘Oh, that one. Yes it did cause something of a stir. Well they’re still ravishing,’ said Barty, ‘Venetia works for Lyttons, very important, she is—’

  ‘As important as you?’ said Geordie.

  ‘Much more important than me. And anyway, she’s a Lytton.’

  ‘And what does the other one do?’

  ‘Adele is a photographer. A very successful one.’

  ‘And if I do come to London, shall I meet these extraordinary creatures?’

  ‘If you want to, I’m sure it could be arranged.’

  Barty cabled Lyttons that afternoon, asking them if they were interested in Geordie’s new book: accustomed already to New York efficiency and enthusiasm, she was at first outraged, then resigned as no reply came for three days, and then only a suggestion that she brought it back with her so they could ‘have a look at it’.

  This was a book that was being bid for by five major English publishers; Barty felt a wave of despair.

  ‘We should have bought that book of Barty’s. The one by that MacColl fellow.’ Jay came into Celia’s office looking distressed.

  ‘I know, Jay. B
ut—well, you know. I did my best. There was nothing I could do. It’s a terrible shame, we need a bestseller desperately for the early autumn. Have we definitely lost it?’

  ‘I think so. Hutchinsons offered a very high figure. That was the last I heard. Celia, what is happening to Lyttons? It seems to have lost its ability to function—’

  ‘Jay, I know. I would like to say we’re going through a rough patch, but—’

  ‘Well, if we don’t look out, we won’t be here much longer. The place seems to me to be dying on its feet.’

  Jay went back to his office, to cable Barty personally and tell her it wasn’t his fault they hadn’t got hold of Opium as it was called in the trade. Barty cabled back: ‘Didn’t think it was. Hold on to your hat. Barty.’

  Now what on earth did she mean by that, he wondered.

  ‘Isabella, there’s a letter from Barty. And a few postcards, the Statue of Liberty, look. Doesn’t that make you feel excited?’

  ‘No. It doesn’t.’

  ‘What, not even the thought that we’re going to see it?’

  ‘I don’t want to see it. And I’m not going.’

  Sebastian’s temper was never particularly level; worried as he was, it soared. ‘Don’t be insolent. And go to your room. We’re going to New York at the end of your term, and that’s that. Most girls your age would be over the moon.’

  Izzie stared at him in silence, then got up and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said to Kit on the telephone that night, when Sebastian had gone out to dinner, ‘I’ve got an idea.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I daren’t say it on the phone. But—it’s quite exciting.’

  ‘Could you come down here tomorrow?’

  ‘What, to Cheyne Walk? Yes, I think so. I’ve got to go to the dentist at two o’clock. I could sneak off after that.’

  ‘Good.’