CHAPTER 34
It was to be nearly all hers. It felt terrible; she felt terrible. She would have given anything not to have it: not just because of her mother, but because it felt so wrong, so – so overloaded, so uncomfortable. Like eating a huge meal, and being asked to sit down for two hours and offered another. She just didn’t want it all. She really didn’t.
Jamie had talked her through it. Explained that the lawyers had decided that everyone could be informed of their entitlements, since there were no great complications, there were ample funds for the taxes and death duties, and it at least enabled everyone to get on with their lives.
‘Your mother left almost everything to you. In trust, that is. Most of her personal fortune, and Lyttons in its entirety. Apart from the thirty-two per cent of Lyttons London owned by the family.’
‘And they’re going to buy the rest?’
‘They hope to.’
‘Can’t I just give it to them?’
‘No, Jenna, you can’t. It doesn’t work like that.’
‘But I want to.’
‘Darling, you can’t.’
She had been fiddling with a stapler on his desk; she suddenly threw it down, petulantly childlike, got up, and walked over to the window and looked out. He watched her. She was still very, very easily upset, trembled on the edge of her raw grief. She struggled, day by day, struggled to be brave, to cope with it all, to behave as she knew her mother would have wanted, but it was horribly hard. The grief caught her unawares; came out of nowhere, tore at her when she was doing the simplest, happiest things, riding, walking on the shore at Southampton, shopping, giggling with Cathy at a TV programme. It hurt even to watch her as he was now: quietly patient, waiting for her to recover herself. Again.
‘It’s so unfair,’ she said suddenly, then managed one of her rather fierce smiles. ‘So unfair. Tell me, is there anything for Mr and Mrs Mills?’
‘Yes, there is. Ten thousand dollars. And the cottage for the rest of their lives. And five thousand for Maria.’
‘That’s really nice. I’m glad. What about the Millers? Billy and Joan. Lots, I hope.’
‘Quite a lot. One hundred thousand dollars. Whatever that is in pounds.’
‘That’s really good. And – Charlie? What about him?’
‘Well, first of all, your mother has appointed him as your guardian.’
‘Well, of course she would have done. She knew how much we loved each other.’
‘I know. But it still needed to be confirmed, legally. In her will. So he has day-to-day care of you.’
‘Fine. And did she leave him any money?’
‘She did. Two hundred thousand dollars.’
She smiled happily. ‘That’s great. I’m so very glad. He deserves it.’
She obviously felt, Jamie thought, in her touchingly childlike way, that it was a reasonable bequest, the sort of thing Charlie would be pleased about. Actually, of course, it was an insult.
He had been insulted: insulted and outraged. Jamie could see that. He had fought to keep it under control, had said how very generous, but he had left as soon as he politely could, his face white, his mouth set.
Difficult: very difficult. Of course it was sensible. Whatever Barty had left him, he would have run through in no time. For Jenna’s sake it had been decided not to pursue the matter of the forged cheques, for which Charlie had been reluctantly grateful. But it would be very difficult: to be the widower of someone with a personal estate of around three million dollars, and to be the guardian of her extremely rich child, when all you had been left was two hundred thousand dollars. Jamie actually wondered why Barty had left Charlie anything at all, why he had even featured in her will; but of course all her affairs were in perfect order, they always had been, and she would not have risked his getting his hands on her fortune, however remote the chance might be.
How could she have done that, Charlie thought, walking so fast, so hard up Sixth Avenue that he kept crashing into people, almost knocking them over, angry with them as well as with himself. He thought he might laugh, at first: laugh out loud. At the sheer bloody ludicrousness of it. Two hundred thousand bucks. To him. To her husband. Out of an estate of – what? Three million easily, he had calculated. If you added in the houses and the shares and so on and so forth. Before tax, anyway. It was horrible: an insult. Worse than nothing, in a way. That would have been a drama, he would have attracted interest, sympathy, rather than the embarrassed looks he knew he’d get now.
That was how she rated him, as worth little more than her servants. Look at him, her will said, look carefully, I want you all to see that he cannot be trusted with any more, he doesn’t deserve it, he will waste it, lose it, he must not have it. OK, so he’d lied to her a little; he’d still loved her, cared for her, made her happy, made her laugh, and looked after her child, her grieving, broken child as if he had been her own father. Of course Barty hadn’t expected that: hadn’t expected to die, hadn’t expected to leave him. But it still meant the same thing: that was how she rated him; very, very low. It would scarcely cover his loan repayment. He felt absolutely diminished.
He began to feel something entirely new that afternoon: only a tiny sliver of a thing, but most certainly there, drifting about in his head. He had been violently jealous of all the Lyttons for some time. That went without saying. But this was new and more dangerous than that: and it centred on Jenna.
There had been nothing of the company for the Lyttons; somehow they had all hoped, against the odds, that there might be. That she would give them a further percentage. Of course there were the share options and Barty had hardly expected to die so young, she had imagined growing old in the company, exactly as Celia had, and no doubt felt she had done more than enough for them. But – still. They had hoped.
To recover something that had been absolutely theirs, and had become absolutely hers, partly through her own efforts to be sure, but mostly by an accident, or a series of accidents, of chance meetings, love affairs, wars, deaths, bequests, going back into the mists of time, into the estates of the Elliotts.
It hurt Celia the most, of course; she felt it personally, felt it as a deliberate blow. How could she have done that? Barty, the child she had saved from poverty and cruelty and neglect, Barty, who had been educated and trained and groomed by her for the position she finally reached, Barty, who knew what Lyttons had meant to Celia, holding as much of her heart as any of her children. How could she not have felt bound to return it to her, and to her family, in the event of her own death? It was a very cruel final blow.
Lucas was different somehow. Adele couldn’t quite work out how. He had been sweet to her for a long time now, thoughtful and affectionate; but since going to Paris, he had become somehow less arrogant, less inclined to criticise everyone, even his cousins, who had always been his targets. And he spent more time with Clio, which pleased her enormously, and actually wrote thank-you letters, without Adele having to nag him, and asked her what she would like him to wear for any social event to which he was accompanying her.
She didn’t comment on it, of course, and he seemed perfectly happy; but she did wonder what might have brought it about. Maybe just meeting Madame André, feeling that part of his life less mysterious and confused. Or that he was closer to his roots.
She would probably never know; but she was certainly very grateful for it.
Jay was finding the delay in settling the company’s affairs almost unbearable. Marcus Forrest was tightening his screws day by day; only the previous week he had blocked the purchase of a novel, which Jay had wanted very much to buy, and refused even to consider it, without really giving any explanation, apart from the fact he just felt it was overpriced and slight. Jay, who had encouraged the author and his agent into thinking he was certain to buy it, had to endure the humiliation of telling them that, after all, he must turn it down. The word was out all over London by lunch time, that Jay Lytton was now in the pocket of New York, and that his judgement wasn’t worth the time of day.
He found himself increasingly at the receiving end of memos instructing him not to buy this, not to publish that, to wait for a decision while Forrest read something, which often meant he lost the book in question anyway. It was driving him mad. He was still capable of brilliant ideas, lateral thinking, following hunches against considerable opposition – his coup for the year had been his plan to publish a thriller in three parts, the first just out. He had fought the entire editorial board, apart from Celia, who backed him with huge enthusiasm, and had won. It had proved not only a great promotional success, attracting vast publicity, but a financial one; the bottom line would be three successful books for the price of one. The author was still reeling at his own naïveté.
After that, Jay had felt he might win more battles; but it proved to be a one-off. Forrest plainly regarded him as yesterday’s man. Which was hard to take at the age of forty-four, when he actually felt he should have up to twenty years ahead of him. He didn’t like to contemplate what would happen to him if they were unable to buy the company, if they couldn’t raise the money, or the trustees decided to set the price too high, thereby enabling other, richer purchasers to get hold of Lyttons. He would probably find himself out of a job.
Jay was by nature optimistic; it was one of his most endearing characteristics. And the optimism was well-founded. The nickname Lucky Lytton, first bestowed on him at school, had followed him through university, a hugely dangerous war, and indeed for most of his career. Jay just never got caught. Where others were beaten for truancy or smoking or drinking, sent down from university for having girls in their rooms, trapped into marriage by unwanted pregnancy, wounded in battle, Jay Lytton, having run the same risks, emerged unscathed. He had a gloriously happy marriage, a beautiful family and a success that was partly, at least, quite unearned. But now it seemed, the famous luck was running out; fate was finally demanding her revenge.
Izzie and the boys had also been sent for by Jamie and told of their inheritance. Ten thousand dollars for Izzie, and five each for the boys ‘to be invested in Neill & Parker,’ Jamie had said, ‘or whatever company Neill & Parker might become—’
‘What, you mean like Neill, Parker & J.W. Thompson?’ asked Mike.
‘Something like that, yes,’ said Jamie. ‘The point is, it’s for the company. Otherwise it reverts to Barty’s estate.’
‘It’ll be invested all right,’ said Nick. ‘How amazing.’
Jamie smiled rather wearily. ‘She was an amazing person.’
They went down to Chumleys, the three of them, and proceeded to get very drunk.
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Izzie. ‘I really, really can’t. It’s such a lot of money.’
‘You can’t believe it! How do you think we feel? Five thousand bucks apiece. All for Neill & Parker.’
‘I know. It is so extraordinarily generous. Oh dear,’ she smiled a shaky smile, ‘I’d much rather she was here.’
They were silent, suddenly ashamed to be so openly celebrating their good fortune.
Izzie looked at them. ‘Listen. It’s fine,’ she said, ‘she’d be so pleased we were pleased. Anyway, it won’t be ours for a long time. Years possibly, Jamie said. I quite like that, it makes me feel less – greedy.’
‘Yeah. What do you think you’ll do with your money, Princess?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea. I thought I might buy a new rug.’
‘Isabella Brooke,’ said Nick, kissing her tenderly, ‘you sure know how to live.’
It amazed her how much she loved him, and how much he loved her. They were, as he often said, quite appallingly happy.
Neill & Parker was also doing well: not brilliantly, but well. The bulk of their business was still books; and they weren’t making enough to tell Joanie Morell to disappear up her own arse, which was Mike’s most dearly held ambition. But the gallery account had grown, and so had another account, a stationery chain, and Izzie’s idea for the gallery’s radio campaign had led them into negotiations with a small record company. They were still in the same office, and the three of them still did all the work, but there was just about enough of both work and money to fund another employee if necessary.
The boys had been worried about never paying Barty back, but clearly she hadn’t minded in the very least. She had bequeathed them her investment in the company as well as the money.
Izzie still missed Barty terribly, there was a huge gap in her life and always would be; but at least she and Nick both saw a lot of Jenna, invited her over to dinner, with Charlie and Cathy. Nick was less keen on Charlie than Izzie was, he said he wouldn’t exactly trust him with his last cent, but he was happy to spend time with him, if that was what Izzie and Jenna wanted.
Of Geordie they heard nothing, apart from the letter he wrote to Izzie when Barty died, saying how sad he was, and how much he knew she would miss her, ‘as indeed shall I. A very great loss to all our lives.’ It was as if none of them had ever known him; Izzie found it rather disturbing.
He was still living in Washington, had published a new, very successful novel, and was reportedly having an affair with a young editor.
‘Poor girl,’ Izzie said, when she heard this on the literary gossip line. And meant it.
Noni told her he had never been back to England, never tried to see Adele; she was divorcing him. He never saw Clio, it was all very sad.
‘But Maman is so much better, even beginning to take photographs again. And Lucas is really quite human! He went to Paris with Maman and met the old lady who was the concierge where they lived before the war; it seems to have been a very good experience for him, I don’t know why. He’s even talking of joining Lyttons if he’s allowed, after National Service. Can you believe that?
‘Clio seems all right, although I know she still misses Geordie dreadfully. She’s started at a new school, and is very grown up. I’ve promised to bring her out to see you and Jenna next summer. Jenna says we can all go out to South Lodge.’
Izzie had liked that idea: very much. Taking care of Clio seemed to her a modest reparation for what she still saw as her sins.
She and Nick now lived in a very nice, if modest apartment, in the Village; very similar to the one Izzie had had, very close by, only a bit bigger.
Mike had taken over the lease on Izzie’s old one. He said he needed to be near them, otherwise he didn’t know how he would get by, what with having to breathe in and out on his own and so on. It was an act of course, and anyway, he had a very nice Jewish girlfriend now, whose only ambition was to marry him and have babies. Mike, who wasn’t even sure about the marriage part, let alone the babies, was, as he put it, letting her wait a little for him.
Nick occasionally talked to Izzie about getting married, but she told him she wasn’t interested.
‘It’s perfect how it is, why change it?’
‘Most girls don’t see it like that.’
‘I’m not most girls.’
‘I know that. I thank God for it. Well – we’ll get married when there’s a little Lady Isabella on the way. How’s that?’
‘Fine.’
It was her only worry: the only cloud on her golden happiness, that the awful abortion might in some way have affected her ability to have children. Celia’s gynaecologist had assured her it shouldn’t, but you never knew . . .
Anyway, that was far in the future. Well – quite far.
Giles was still very depressed. It was not unusual for Helena to find him slumped at his desk after dinner in the evening, not working as he had said he was going to do, but staring ahead, blankly miserable, as if contemplating a future he did not want.
He felt physically ill; he had a permanent headache, he couldn’t sleep, and he felt nauseated much of the time.
Things were not going well for him at Lyttons, either; his mother, in her own grief, was particularly querulous and difficult, questioning his smallest decision, Marcus Forrest clearly thought he was a complete idiot, and ignored him as much as possible, his paperback list was failing (largely due, he knew, to lack of a promotional budget in the face of fierce competition from not only Penguin, but also from Pan and Fontana), and the purchase of their shares seemed as far away as ever.
But he had one thing which was relieving his misery: a book. It was an odd story: early that spring, just after Barty had died in fact, a woman had sent in a manuscript – some of it handwritten – about her life in the Highlands. She lived in a remote croft and was virtually a hermit; her main companions were the deer who roamed the hills.
The book was almost a diary of her life with the deer – ‘You should call it Deer Diary,’ Keir had remarked with a grin when he heard about it. Many of the deer were almost tame and she knew them by name.
It made surprisingly charming reading, and was not without drama. She found a seriously injured doe one day, caught up in some undergrowth, apparently shot by a stalker, and managed to get her home in her truck and nurse her back to health; another magnificent stag visited the croft every morning, ate the bundle of greenstuff she had prepared for him and then submitted himself to being stroked and talked to; a fawn, abandoned by its mother, was raised in the croft garden and grew up to be as faithful as a dog. There was a harrowing description of a fawn’s breech birth, with the author acting as midwife, and another of the death of a doe, apparently from poisoning. All the creatures had names and personalities; there were breathtaking descriptions of the surrounding countryside; and some moments that were genuinely moving.
Joanna Scott was also something of an artist, and submitted a couple of watercolours with her manuscript; Giles was very keen to buy it, suitably extended, to commission several more paintings, and sell the book as a Christmas gift.
Jay was sceptical, and so were several of the editors, and Keir was hugely amused when he heard about it, but Celia thought it was a wonderful idea from the beginning.
‘With the English love of animals, how can it fail? I’d back it, Giles, definitely. Get the woman down, make her an offer.’
Joanna Scott appeared in the offices a few weeks later; she was very tall, very thin, with a gaunt, weatherbeaten face and long, straggling grey hair, falling over the shoulders of her lumber jacket, and an accent so thick it was hard to understand her.
‘Not much use for the publicity photographs,’ said Jay.
‘Oh, we can tidy her up. And anyway, we don’t need to take a photograph,’ said Celia.
‘No – the public will want to see her, it’s that sort of book.’
‘Well, maybe they can’t,’ said Celia briskly, ‘we’ll get her to paint the croft instead. That will do.’
The book had been scheduled for the following Christmas: ‘It’s an absolute natural for a gift-book. And I’d be worried about other publishers poaching the idea if we postponed it too long.’
The whole thing amused the rest of the family: it was so unlike Giles and so unlike the sort of book he would normally want to publish.
‘Whatever next, royal memoirs?’ said Elspeth with a giggle. Like most publishers, Lyttons affected to despise the huge success of the memoirs of Marion Crawford, governess to the little princesses.
‘Charlie, are you all right?’
He smiled at Jenna rather wearily.
‘Yes, I’m all right.’
‘You look awfully down. And tired.’
‘I am a bit.’
‘Why? Specially, I mean?’
‘Well – my business isn’t going too well, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh Charlie, I’m sorry. So sorry. I suppose – well, I suppose it wasn’t a very good time for you to launch it.’
‘Not very, no. It was kind of hard to concentrate.’
‘What can I do for you? Make you some tea, fix you a Martini?’
She had often heard him telling people that her mother made the best Martinis in Manhattan; Jenna was working hard at mastering the skill.
‘A Martini’d be nice. Thank you, sweetheart. You’re very good to me.’
‘You’ve been pretty good to me.’
‘The thing is,’ he said, slowly, ‘I’m going to have to sell it. The business, I mean. It’s just not paying its way. And I think – with a bit more time – it’d have been all right.’
‘Charlie, that’s terrible. You can’t do that. I’ll – I’ll speak to the trustees.’
She knew already it was fairly hopeless; but she went on trying. She was beginning to grow very tired of Jamie and Kyle. They were so – obstructive.
They were obstructive that day. ‘I’m sorry, Jenna,’ said Kyle, ‘but we can’t touch the money in your trust fund. Not at the moment. Even if we wanted to.’
‘Which you don’t.’ She glared at them. ‘Well, I’ve got an idea. I can borrow against the fund. I’ve read about that, in the papers.’
She had taken to reading the financial pages; following the progress of her stock, studying other things which she could one day put her money into.
‘Sorry, darling. You can’t.’
‘Why not? I can just go to a bank, or Charlie could ask them.’
‘You can’t, because you’re a minor. Charlie can’t, because the trust isn’t in his name.’
‘Oh – ’ She turned away, looked out of the window of Jamie’s penthouse. It was a lovely day; the trees in Central Park were just turning gold, the sky was purest blue. How could she help him: how?
‘I think you’re so mean,’ she said, ‘Charlie’s been so good to me, always. I want to help him. He’s in real trouble, his business is failing, he hasn’t been able to concentrate on it, he needs time. And he doesn’t get the money from the will for ages—’
They looked at her; their expressions were identical, embarrassed, wary, closed.
‘Look – couldn’t you lend him some money, Jamie? I really want you to. I could pay you back, you could take it out of my trust fund. Or when we get this wretched probate thing. Why is it taking so long, anyway?’
‘Because it’s so complex. Because there are so many elements involved. Because—’
‘Yeah, yeah. I heard all that. Look, isn’t that an idea, you lending Charlie some money? It would mean so much to me, I hate to see him so worried and unhappy.’
‘Jenna, we can’t. Sorry.’ It was Kyle; clearly wretched. ‘We don’t have money to pour into a failing business. Money we might not get back. Sorry, Jenna. The answer’s no. It has to be.’
‘Well, I think you’re horrible,’ she said. She was very upset, near to tears. ‘I think you should do it in memory of my mother. She loved Charlie, she’d just hate to see this sort of thing going on.’
‘She probably would,’ said Jamie gently, ‘but—’
‘Don’t say it again. That you can’t do anything about it. I’ll have to think of something myself.’
When she got home that day, Charlie was sitting watching TV. He looked very down.
‘Hi sweetheart.’
‘Hi Charlie. No good, I’m afraid. I’ve tried and tried to get Jamie and Kyle to help, but they just go on and on about the will and the trust fund. I’m so sorry.’
‘That’s all right, poppet. Thank you for trying.’
‘I’ll fix you a Martini. Where’s Cathy?’
‘Out with some boy.’
‘Nice?’
‘He seemed OK.’ He watched her while she made the Martini, smiled bravely at her when she handed it to him.
‘Thanks, sweetheart. Anyway,’ – his voice was very casual – ‘you know what I was thinking about?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘I don’t know why, but – well, your – I guess they’d be your stepbrother and sister. The Elliotts . . .’
‘Oh yes?’ She was pouring herself a Coca-Cola.
‘You never met them, did you?’
‘No, never. I’m sure they wouldn’t want to meet me. My father divorced their mother. And then married mine.’
‘Yes, but there were a few years in between. What were their names, do you remember? And how old were they?’
‘Well, the girl was called Kate. I can’t remember what the boy’s name was. She must be about – goodness, seventeen. Actually, that’s right. I saw a photograph of her in one of the papers the other day. At the Infirmary Ball, I think. Or something like that. You know about all that social rubbish?’
‘You know I do.’ He looked put out.
‘Sorry. Well anyway, she’s very pretty. I’ll see if I can find it—’
‘Really? Yes, I’d like that. Anyway, what I was thinking of, was how odd it is that you had never met them. And they’d known your dad. It might be kind of interesting, don’t you think?’
‘Not really,’ said Jenna, ‘no.’ She did feel quite strongly about that; the father she had never known was hers, she didn’t want to share him with anyone. Especially his children, children who had actually known him, seen him, talked to him, sat on his knee.
‘They must really be rich,’ Charlie said.
‘Think so?’ She was rummaging through the pile of papers on the coffee table.
‘Well of course. They got most of the money, didn’t they? Your dad’s money?’
‘Not sure,’ she said, and then her voice was suddenly sharper. ‘It doesn’t really interest me, Charlie, you know. I hate the whole subject of money. Especially at the moment. And especially who got what. Can we change the subject, please?’
‘Of course. Sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to – upset you.’
He looked remorseful. She felt bad. It had been tactless of her, talking like that about money, when he was so worried about it. She gave him a kiss.
‘That’s OK. I guess I’m a bit touchy. Anyway, here she is. Miss Kate Elliott. All done up in white. Look at those gross gloves. Oh, and here’s the brother, Bartholomew, that’s his name. He looks all right. Not a bit like my dad, as far as I can tell from the old pictures, but . . .’ She handed him the paper.
‘Thanks, darling.’ He took it, studied the photograph; he seemed more cheerful all of a sudden. She was pleased. Although it was a funny thing to get cheered up by, the thought of some dumb girl’s coming-out party.
