Into Temptation (Spoils of Time 03) (18 page)

‘Mother, I have to disagree,’ said Giles flushing. ‘I still feel deeply uncomfortable about this book.’

‘Well you shouldn’t,’ said Celia briskly. ‘We’re talking about sexual desire going on in a woman’s head, not a detailed description of her orgasm. Oh don’t look at me like that, Giles, for heaven’s sake. Jay, you’ll agree I’m sure.’

Jay nodded, avoiding Giles’s eye. Celia’s return might have robbed him of a degree of authority, but it had also brought what he could only describe as grit back into the Lytton oyster. Life was tougher but more interesting. And it was a lot easier and less troublesome to side with Celia against Giles and the rest of the old guard than to take up arms himself. The demands of marriage and particularly of fatherhood – Victoria was pregnant yet again, a fact neither of them was entirely delighted about – had increased Jay’s predilection for the easy route, the circumnavigation of obstacles.

Afterwards, Celia invited her granddaughter out to lunch.

‘We’ll go to the Berkeley, just the two of us. Much more fun and it will rattle the others. Princess Margaret might be there – so dreadfully sad for her, giving up Townsend, but absolutely right of course. Anyway, I want to hear more about your young man, how he’s getting on. I’m sorry he’s given up the idea of publishing. I was very impressed with those reader reports he did. He makes extraordinarily clear judgements. I would say he has real talent. Teaching, such a waste of his brains. I suppose it’s his background, the working class always has this reforming zeal. Come along darling, quickly, get your coat before anyone catches us.’

Elspeth also privately thought Keir’s brains were being wasted teaching. Of course it was the most important job anyone could possibly do, everyone knew that, and teaching other working-class children, which of course was Keir’s new ambition, opening up their horizons, letting them know exactly how much of the world could be theirs, was a wonderful achievement. But Keir was never going to buckle under to some headmaster, never going to stop defending his own theories. He was doing temporary teaching jobs now and, as far as she could make out, spent his life arguing vociferously with the other staff. He was going to get himself into serious trouble at this rate. On the other hand, he cared so passionately about his cause, she couldn’t see him dropping it. And he had a new passion now, for the much-vaunted comprehensive system of schooling.

‘The eleven-plus system is divisive and unfair,’ he said, biting off, without a moment’s misgiving, the educational hand that had fed him and led him to his place at Oxford. ‘What of the children who fail, condemned to a second-class education, a life of knowing they’re failures? All our children should be educated together, the bright along with the less bright, so that there can be the same high standards for everyone.’

Elspeth tried to explain this to Celia, who was extremely dismissive.

‘He’s young,’ she said, lighting a cigarette. ‘He’ll learn in time that the only thing which happens when you try to bring all abilities together is a drift – or rather a rush – towards the lowest common denominator. The bright children like Mr Brown’ – she refused to call him Keir – ‘will find themselves stifled by a lot of dolts who don’t want to learn and who drag everyone down to their level. How extraordinary he should think like that when he’s been able to improve his own situation so dramatically.’

Elspeth didn’t feel able to argue with her on the comprehensive system, as their views exactly coincided; but she did defend Keir’s desire to be a teacher.

‘He wants to make a difference to the world, Granny. To really help children who were in his situation.’

Celia said nothing for a moment, then, ‘He’ll learn,’ she said briefly, adding, with apparent irrelevance, ‘I do think he’s extremely attractive. And clearly has a very good brain. Such a pity if it was wasted. I wonder if he would have the time to do some more reading for me, at least?’

Elspeth said she was sure it was worth asking him; she had a fairly clear inkling of the direction her grandmother’s thoughts were going. It was a delicious notion. Unfortunately, she knew that Keir would never agree.

Keir spent quite a lot of time pouring scorn on the publishing profession and what he called – most unfairly – its social apartheid. Elspeth held her tongue; she sympathised too much with his experiences and, besides, felt her own privileged position uncomfortable. But now that he had changed direction, he appeared to have forgiven her that and indeed had assumed a rather lofty superiority over her and her work. ‘Teaching is the finest and most important job in the world,’ he said one evening. ‘Anything else has to be regarded as second best. I feel really privileged to be a part of it.’ It appeared to be a genuinely held view; Elspeth, relieved at his new contentment, nodded an earnest agreement she did not feel but was happy to assume.

She was very happy, both in her work and, even more importantly, with Keir; what she felt for him was an unswerving love. He was difficult, he made her angry, he quite often made her upset, but he also made her feel absolutely happy. And something she could only describe as involved with him. Everything she did, everything she thought, was to do with him; he had become a part of her, and she could not imagine her life without him. They argued a great deal, fought quite often, but they intrigued and interested one another to an intense degree. And their sex life, conducted during his weekends in London, at the flat her father had bought for her and Amy, gave her enormous pleasure.

She had taken the precaution, like all modern girls, of having herself fitted with the latest in contraception, a dutch cap; it had a very low failure rate, the gynaecologist had told her, and it was nice to be in charge of that side of things, and not have to ask Keir every time they went to bed if he had ‘got something with him’. It was also more discreet, she could fix herself up before he even arrived, and there was none of the dreadful fumbling which she so hated, just as she was feeling really excited and longing to get on with it.

Sex with Keir wasn’t just a physical pleasure, it was an absolutely complete one; it absorbed all her feelings, all her thoughts. As time went by, it became more intense, not less; it left her afterwards quite shaken by the depths and distances they travelled together. And he felt the same; he had, almost reluctantly but very sweetly, told her so. They were very happy.

They had a great deal in common, as well as differences, enjoyed a lot of the same things – the theatre, the cinema, reading and books inevitably – and they had also developed an interest in cooking. Suddenly food was changing; the birth of the cheap package holiday took people other than the rich abroad for the first time and it also brought at least a nod in the direction of continental cooking. Hotels on the Costa Brava and in Majorca might serve chips with everything, but people also came back talking of dishes like paella and pasta. Keir bought a cookery book, donned a chef’s apron and served up spaghetti bolognese and steak Diane, having gone shopping with Elspeth to one of the new supermarkets for the ingredients.

‘Supermarket shopping is a completely new experience,’ said Elspeth, laughing, to her mother. ‘You whizz round with your trolley, a bit like a pram, get everything in no time and then stand in a queue for hours to pay, at this thing called a checkout.’ Venetia said she couldn’t imagine anything worse and what was wrong with Harrods delivering everything? Elspeth said Keir thought supermarkets were going to change the shopping patterns of working-class people for the better, and they had to be encouraged.

‘I’m surprised he approves of them, when his parents have their little shop.’

‘I know, and they say it’s just a passing phase, but Keir thinks they’re wrong. They serve a very small neighbourhood, so they’re not actually under threat, not for now, anyway.’

‘Yes, I see.’

Just occasionally, Venetia allowed herself to ponder the possibility that Elspeth might want to marry Keir. She didn’t find it entirely unappealing, she liked him very much; he was intelligent and attractive and of course times were changing and class differences were not what they had been, but when she reached the wedding day itself and thought about walking down the aisle of St Margaret’s, Westminster on the arm of Mr Brown, she flinched. Elspeth would find someone else, someone more suitable. There was plenty of time.

In any case, she had something much more important to worry about, more important than Elspeth’s future, far more important than her mother’s return to Lyttons and the daily conflicts that had set up, even more important than the fact that Lyttons were losing authors and winning no seriously important new ones: and that was Adele and her unhappiness. Which was dreadful.

Venetia could imagine no worse conflict than that between your husband and your child. She and Boy had had their differences and problems, God knew; but nothing ever like this. It was a nightmare.

‘I feel like a rabbit in a trap,’ Adele said to her, her voice shaken and exhausted with endless crying and pain, ‘and there’s no way out of it. If I give in to Geordie, send Lucas back, I truly believe he might do something drastic. So does Noni. He has had the most terrible time, truly terrible, he’s been bullied, beaten, tormented over being Jewish—’

‘Surely not.’

‘Oh yes, he has. And he’s at the end of his tether. At the same time, I have Geordie saying he’s going to leave if I give in to him. I just can’t make him see what Lucas has gone through. He’s terribly stubborn, it’s his greatest fault. And Lucas doesn’t help himself, he goes on being rude and hostile to Geordie—’

‘Can’t you—’

‘Oh God, I’ve tried. But he sees Geordie as being to blame for the whole thing, and he just hates him for it. And I can – well, I can see it from his point of view. But oh, Venetia, I just can’t imagine life without Geordie, I love him so much, so terribly much. But he says – he says that if I really love him, I’ll put him first, stop inflicting Lucas’s appalling behaviour on him. And I can see that too.’

‘What about a different school? Eton? It’s much nearer home, I always thought—’

‘I’ve suggested that. Lucas says he won’t go, says he can’t face trying again.’

‘That’s not helpful.’

‘Venetia, none of it’s helpful.’

‘Can’t Noni help?’

‘No. She’s tried, poor darling. Lucas has turned against her as well now, says she’s just taking our side. It’s so awful, and I feel so guilty. What can I do? Lucas actually turned on me the other day, said I should never have left his father, never taken them away from him, we should have stayed in Paris, a family, that I was a coward and—’

‘You should tell him the truth,’ said Venetia decisively.

‘How can I? Tell him his father was cheating on me, that he’d gone back to his wife. It’s a huge rock in Lucas’s life, knowing his father was a good brave man who died a hero. I can’t have him thinking he was – well, rather different.’

‘I think he’s old enough to be told,’ said Venetia thoughtfully, ‘after all, Luc did still die a hero. And he was a brilliant publisher, Lucas must surely feel proud of that. Identify with it, even. The only bad thing Luc did was cheat on you. I know it was bad, but don’t you think it might help Lucas a bit to know the truth?’

‘No,’ said Adele. ‘I can’t do that, I can’t tell him. It would be too cruel. Especially at the moment.’

Venetia sighed. ‘Poor darling. I just wish so much I could help. What exactly is Geordie saying?’

‘Well – that unless Lucas goes back to school, he’s leaving. That he can’t live under the same roof. That it’s wrong of me to ask him to do so. He did say he’d go back to New York, but I don’t think he’d leave Clio. Not permanently. But I think he’ll spend much more time there. He still thinks of it as home. Oh God. It’s so unfair.’

‘Yes,’ said Venetia, taking her in her arms, stroking her hair. ‘Yes, it is unfair. Terribly. The one person totally not to blame is the one being most hurt.’

The days and weeks of the autumn term dragged on. Adele had written to Fletton, telling them Lucas was not going back; she was having him tutored at home as a compromise, rather than ask Westminster to take him back. That she knew would end any hopes of Geordie giving in. In any case, she was not at all sure that they would. Lucas skulked in his room, refusing to join the family for meals if Geordie were present; he had thanked his mother for her support, but that was his only compromise.

Adele’s tears and pleading, even her threats to send him back to Fletton if he continued to make no effort with Geordie, had no effect on him. He knew she wouldn’t send him back and he was enjoying the furore.

He could also see that Geordie meant what he said; if Lucas continued in his present pattern of behaviour, he would leave.

Which suited Lucas just fine.

‘He’s not really so bad,’ Noni said earnestly to Izzie one night. ‘He has had a truly dreadful time, I think I know more than anyone what he’s been through. And, rightly or wrongly, he does blame Geordie for it. He hates him, and he wants him to leave my mother. He’s very mixed up, I think he ought to have some help, actually.’

‘What kind of help?’

‘Well – psychiatric help. I think he needs someone completely outside the family to talk to, to try and sort him out. I suggested it to my mother, but she seemed frightened by the idea. She just wants to cling to the idea that it’ll all be all right in the end, that it’s just a family tiff. Oh Izzie, it’s so awful. I love Geordie so much, and I can’t bear to think of him going. But I think he will. It just all seems so hopeless.’

She started to cry; Izzie put her arms around her and held her tight. It sounded quite hopeless to her too.

Izzie was beginning to wonder if she didn’t need psychiatric help herself. A dreadful dull weariness had overtaken her. She had recovered, physically, as far as she could tell, quite quickly. The hours of terrible pain had ended, finally. She had burnt in the kitchen boiler – forbidding herself so much as a glance at them – all the towels and rolls of cotton wool which had been so drenched in her blood, and she lay in her bed recovering over the weekend, weak and exhausted, telling her father when he returned that she had had some stomach bug and that there was no need to call the doctor.