by Rachel Hore
And now her thoughts flew to the editorial meeting of the day before, in the old Regency boardroom with its views across Mayfair and its awful modern features – the long table of pale ashwood, the sleek plasma screen for presentations of budget figures and marketing plans.
The Publisher, Gillian Bradshaw, a tall, willowy woman who ran on nervous energy, had glared round the table at the half-dozen editors present and asked whether any of them knew Hugh Morton’s work well. ‘We’re all familiar with The Silent Tide, of course. It’s a staple of our classics list. But what about the others?’
‘I’ve read The Silent Tide, naturally – find me someone who hasn’t,’ one of the fiction editors said in her sophisticated, world-weary fashion. ‘A TV adaptation is coming with Zara Collins playing Nanna. The fifties are still so popular.’ A couple of other editors murmured that they’d read The Silent Tide. After all, it was on schools’ reading lists. In the 1950s it was considered ground-breaking. ‘That’s the only one of his titles we own, isn’t it?’ she asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ Gillian replied. ‘It’s the only one in print, anyway. Morton had so many different publishers.’
’And kept falling out with them, I gather.’ The fiction editor gave one of her amused smiles and began to examine her long blue-polished fingernails.
Emily, still feeling very new and needing to prove herself, said, ‘I’ve read three or four of the others. Our English teacher gave us an assignment. There was one set in the sixties, I remember, about a writers’ retreat on an island . . .’ She stopped, seeing that everyone was staring at her. She felt her face grow hot.
‘We’ll have to believe you there,’ Gillian said, looking over her glasses at Emily in a not unkind fashion. ‘I must admit that I, too, have only read The Silent Tide.’ She withdrew a crisp, cream-coloured sheet from her pile of papers and smoothed out the folds, then paused dramatically before continuing. ‘As you all know, Morton died two years ago. The funeral was just family, but I wrote to his widow, Jacqueline, to offer our sympathies. She’s sent me what I think is an interesting proposal.’
She frowned as she scanned the letter. ‘Here we are: “You might know that my husband always resisted approaches from biographers, disdaining the modern lurid obsession with the purely personal. I have, however, been approached by a young man who has, I believe, the appropriate attitude to a writer of Hugh’s stature, and have allowed him access to Hugh’s private papers. The project being somewhat advanced, I should accordingly like to arrange a meeting with you. As the current publisher of The Silent Tide, I feel that you are the most appropriate home for Hugh’s biography.’
Gillian stopped and looked directly at Emily. ‘Emily,’ she said, like a cat pouncing on a mouse, ‘since you’ve read more of the novels than the rest of us, I’d like you to follow this up. La Morton clearly wants someone to go and see her in Suffolk and I simply can’t spare the time at the moment.’
‘Surely a life of Morton wouldn’t exactly be a bestseller,’ said a young man with curly blond hair, tapping his pen on the table’s edge. Emily found his arrogant drawl irritating.
‘You’re possibly right, George, ‘ Gillian said, unruffled. ‘But I still think there’s more interest in him than you’d expect, and the TV adaptation will add to that. By the way, does anyone else remember that brilliant programme about Morton in the eighties?’ A couple of the older editors nodded. ‘‘You, George, would have been in nappies at the time.’ Everyone smiled and George gave a self-conscious snigger.
‘You’ll find the house absolutely fascinating,’ Gillian remarked to Emily as she pushed the letter across the table. Emily took it, glancing at the address – Stone House, Salmarsh, in Suffolk – not sure whether the job was prestigious or a nuisance, and wondering if George was jealous that she’d been given it. Since he always spoke as though he knew best, it was difficult to tell.
‘Biography of Hugh Morton, Becky,’ Gillian told her assistant, who was taking notes. ‘Put Emily’s initials on the minutes.’ She shuffled her papers and sighed. ‘I’m sorry to be shifting so much of my work on you all at the moment, but with my Australian trip brought forward I’ve no alternative.’
Now Emily stood in the gloomy lobby examining the book, wondering if Gillian had left it for her. She hadn’t managed to get through to Jacqueline Morton yet. She was just thinking that she must try again on Monday when her phone vibrated with a message: Here now, Em. Where you? xx She smiled and wrote back, Coming. Her mind now full of Matthew, she reached to replace the book in the pigeonhole, then hesitated. She ought to look at it properly.
She pressed the button for the lift and when its doors slid open, recalled the brief sight of the woman with the bags who’d left a few minutes ago. Like Isabel in the little book , her identity was a mystery.
Chapter 2
Isabel
London, November 1948
The petite redhead dressed in sherry brown hefted her suitcase off the bus on Earl’s Court Road and shivered as a bitter wind caught her. She stopped to wrap her scarf more tightly round her neck and glanced about, unsure of her way. People flowed round her with eyes cast down, too busy picking their way across fractured pavements to stop for yet another refugee. Above, pewter-coloured clouds hung sullen with rain. Nearby, a skinny youth selling newspapers breathed into his cupped hands to warm them.
‘Excuse me, do you know Mimosa Road?’ she asked him.
‘Nex’ left, Miss, and along a bit,’ came the mumbled reply.
Thanking him, she picked up the heavy case and set off in the direction he had indicated, but the labyrinth of side streets where she found herself had no signs and she had to ask the way again, this time of a young mother with a toddler straining on its reins. Eventually she found herself on the doorstep of a handsome red-brick Victorian villa, one of the few still whole in a bomb-damaged terrace. It had to be the right house: someone had fastened a strip of card with a hand-scrawled 32 above the door, where a glass fanlight must once have been.
She hesitated, wondering not for the first time if she’d been rash of the Dome of Discovery. r,’ he said to come. Since the alternative was to return home defeated, she raised the door knocker. It fell with a loud bright sound. While she waited, the worries chased through her mind. Suppose her aunt was away? Or didn’t live here any more? She wished she’d had the sense to telephone ahead.
The door flew open to reveal not Aunt Penelope, but a wiry, flat-chested woman in a shabby overall, wielding a carpet beater. She had clearly been interrupted in her task for she was breathing hard, and strands of thin, iron-coloured hair escaped an untidy knot at her nape. From the expression on her face, it was plain that finding a strange young woman with a suitcase on the doorstep was an unwelcome interruption.
‘Yes?’ the woman snapped.
‘I’m looking for Mrs Tyler,’ the girl said, in as firm a voice as she could muster.
The woman studied her with a suspicious eye. ‘You sellin’ something?’ she asked.
‘Certainly not,’ said the girl, drawing herself up to her full five feet two, glad that she’d taken trouble with her appearance before setting out. Not only had she purloined her mother’s best hat, but also the precious remnants of a coral lipstick. This, she had been pleased to see in the mirror of the Ladies at Charing Cross station, suited her creamy skin, auburn hair and brown eyes to perfection.
The woman’s mouth set in a hard thin line. ‘This is Mrs Tyler’s residence,’ she said, ‘but she ain’t here. Who might you be, Miss?’
‘Isabel Barber. Mrs Tyler’s niece.’ The woman’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Isabel added less confidently, ‘Please, may I come in? It’s awfully cold.’
‘I s’pose you’ll ’ave to,’ the woman sighed, opening the door wide. ‘Wait in the parlour with the other one.’
Wondering who ‘the other one’ might be, Isabel left her case in the hall and the woman showed her into a chilly, over-stuffed sitting room at the front of the house that s
melled strongly of coal-dust and wet dog. There, a small dapper man was struggling to secure a sheet of newspaper across the fireplace. He looked round at her entrance with an expectant expression, but seeing only Isabel, rearranged his face into a polite smile.
‘Herself shouldn’t be much longer,’ the woman announced. She went away, pulling the door shut, and Isabel, to her alarm, found herself alone with the stranger.
‘I’m afraid the coal is damp,’ the man explained in heavily accented English as he held the paper, waiting for the fire to draw. She nodded, wondering who he was, and, what piqued her curiosity more, why he was wearing a dinner suit at half past eleven in the morning. The suit needed pressing, and though his smooth dark hair with its threads of grey was combed back neatly, his skin was drained of colour, his jaw unshaven. It struck her that he couldn’t have changed since the night before, a thought she found shocking and thrilling at the same time. His undernourished appearance awoke her pity, though, and his expression was friendly.
‘It is very cold today, yes?’ he said, peering over the paper at the fire, which was beginning to roar.
‘Very,’ she agreed.
She sat gingerly in one of the two armchairs, pulled off her gloves and rubbed her hands together as she looked about. The room was dark, even for a day without sun, owing to a great honeysuckle that grew across the window outside, its tangled tendrils knocking on the glass in the wind.
Her aunt, she guessed, was fond of ornaments, and must be very sociable, for correspondence cards and invitations fought for space with china dogs and shepherdesses on the mantelpiece. There was a crowded bookcase against one wall. A slim book had been left open face down on a side table. She craned her head but couldn’t make out the title or author.
‘There,’ said the man, lowering the newspaper and stepping back. In silent satisfaction they watched the fire, now leaping merrily. Soon the room started to feel cosy, rather than gloomy. Isabel unbuttoned her coat.
‘Good.’ The man tossed the folded paper into a box and balanced himself on the arm of the second chair, where he mopped his shiny face with a handkerchief. Finally he extracted a cigarette packet from his inside pocket and offered it to her.
‘No, thank you, I don’t,’ she said, touched, for though he sought to disguise the fact, only one was left in the packet.
He took it himself, then paused, changing his mind. ‘Save it for later,’ he said with a shrug and put the packet away.
The lilt of his speech reminded her of someone. At the end of the war, three or four years ago, a Polish family had come to settle in the small Kent town where Isabel’s family lived. It was the eldest boy, Jan, she came to know, a tall, narrow-framed lad with passionate eyes, who gave her a lift home once on the back of his bicycle. She smiled, remembering their laughter as they’d clattered down the hill, then frowned at the memory of her father’s angry face at the door as the bike wobbled to a halt outside their pretty cottage. She still wasn’t sure whether it was her hoydenish behaviour that had annoyed him more, or her association with a foreigner. All she knew was that her father had returned from the war a different man. Three cruel years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Bavaria had soured all his sweetness, making him prone to bouts of furious temper. She’d not seen Jan since last year, when her father found a better job and her family had to move near it. The ugly pebbledash house on the pre-war housing estate was only a dozen miles from her old school and the friends she’d grown up with, but it might as well have been a hundred.
The stranger was watching her now with an interest that was sympathetic rather than discomforting.
‘It seems that we must make our own introducings,’ he said. ‘I am Berec, Alexander Berec.’ He rose and offered her his hand with a gracious little bow that charmed her. Close up, she saw that, less charmingly, his eyes were puffy, with violet shadows beneath.
‘I’m Isabel Barber,’ she said for the second time that morning. Not Izzy, no more Izzy, she decided. ‘You are waiting for my aunt? Well, of course you must be.’
‘Mrs Tyler is your aunt?’ Berec said, sitting down again. ‘Ah, she is an admirable woman, is she not?’
‘Is she?’ Isabel said, breaking out in hope. ‘You might think this odd, but I don’t know her very well.’
She couldn’t remember when she’d last seen Penelope. Five or six years ago, perhaps, soon after Isabel’s grandmother had died. Her elegantly dressed aunt had arrived by taxi in a cloud of scent with some paperwork for Isabel’s mother to sign. Plainly ill at ease in the cramped cottage kitchen, she hadn’t stayed long, but Isabel often thought of her and she came to represent the life she longed for, a life less ordinary than hers with its routine domesticity, her anxious mother’s scrimping and saving. It made Isabel feel better that Berec thought Penelope admirable. Her parents certainly didn’t seem to think so.
Berec looked curious, but before of the Dome of Discovery. would b she could muster an explanation about the icy wastes that lay between the two sisters, they heard a frantic tripping of high heels on the path outside, then the front door banged and sounds of commotion came from the hall. Berec and Isabel jumped to their feet as the sitting-room door flew open and a large, slavering beast burst into the room, dragging a beautiful auburn-haired woman in its wake. Isabel backed away from the beast and into the shadows.
‘For goodness’ sake, Gelert,’ the woman cried, losing her grip on its leash. The animal, a sort of big hairy greyhound with a comical-looking bandage round its head, galloped over to Berec and greeted him rapturously. Isabel’s attention, however, was fixed on the woman. Aunt Penelope’s presence lit up the room. Expensively dressed, perfectly made-up, she was every bit as Isabel remembered: a younger, more glamorous version of Pamela Barber, Isabel’s mother.
Penelope, pulling off her gloves, didn’t appear to notice Isabel. ‘Dear Berec, what a lovely surprise,’ she said. ‘We’ve been at the vet’s. Gelert’s been fighting again. Not his fault, poor boy, it’s that awful pug at number four. It simply attacked him, with no provocation.’ Gelert’s tail whipped the carpet.
‘Mrs Tyler, my dear Penelope, I’m so sorry about your poor animal,’ Berec said, looking as hangdog as Gelert. ‘I have come once more, I’m afraid, to throw myself on your gracious mercy. I returned home very late last night after dinner with friends, and Myra, once more she has locked the door against me. If you have a little money to lend me, only until Friday . . .’
‘Oh, Berec,’ Penelope Tyler said, folding her arms, as though admonishing a small boy. ‘I must say, you do look a little . . . well, did you sleep on Gregor’s floor again?’ He nodded and she tutted. ‘You’re welcome to use the bathroom, of course.’
It was then that she saw Isabel. ‘But you’d better introduce me to your friend.’ Looking at her properly for the first time, Penelope’s expression altered from polite interest through dawning recognition to blank amazement.
‘H-hello,’ Isabel said, stepping forward.
‘She says she is your niece,’ Berec said, looking from one to the other, bewildered.
‘I know exactly who Isabel is, Berec,’ Penelope told him. ‘My dear child, what on earth-?’
‘I had nowhere else to go,’ Isabel interrupted, her voice quavering with emotion. ‘They don’t want me at home. Not really. I can’t seem to do anything right and they’re always cross with me.’
Now both her aunt and Berec were gaping at her in astonishment. Penelope broke the spell by moving close to place a finger beneath Isabel’s chin and study the girl’s face. ‘Mmm,’ she murmured again, releasing her. ‘So you came to me. How very flattering.’ She stepped back to take a longer view of her and did not seem pleased by what she saw. ‘So it’s your suitcase I tripped over in the hall. What have you got in it? Bricks?’
‘Books,’ replied Isabel.
‘Ha!’ Berec looked delighted at this.
Penelope frowned him into silence and said, ‘ Does your mother know you’re here?’
‘No,’
said Isabel in a tight voice. ‘I left a note, but didn’t say where I’d gone.’ They’d drag her back, she knew they would. She remembered the shouting match with her father at breakfast that morning, how he’d called her an of the Dome of Discovery. would b‘idle slut’. After he’d stormed off to work she’d run upstairs and cast herself weeping on her bed. There she’d lain listening to her mother hustle Isabel’s twin brothers off to school, then little Lydia being buckled into her pushchair, howling, for the daily trip to the shops.
Her mother called up the stairs, ‘Izzy, washing-up!’ as she left the house.
Isabel had sat up, fuming. She was not an idle slut. Housework, child-minding, washing! That’s all her parents thought she was good for. Well, she wouldn’t put up with it any more. It was time to carry out her plan. She’d got up and flown furiously about, packing clothes and books and the little money she had. Casting one final look round the featureless house that had never felt like home, she tried to ignore the unwashed bowls, the toast crumbs on the floor, the basket of clothes for ironing. On the way out she had slammed the front door so hard that the last of the summer’s geraniums shivered in their window box.
‘I found you in Mummy’s address book,’ Isabel told her aunt now. ‘You were the only person I could think of to come to.’ She tried a pleading look, but she found no sympathy in the other woman’s face and the look faltered.
Isabel had never been sure why her mother disapproved of her younger sister so much, but supposed it was something to do with the fact that Aunt Penelope had somewhere along the way dispensed with her husband Uncle Jonny, though the exact circumstances had never been explained to the Barber off spring. She did know that Penelope lived in London and liked clothes very much, and going out, and that she didn’t have any children. It all sounded so interesting and exciting, and the disparaging way her parents spoke about Penelope only lent her extra mystique in Isabel’s eyes: references to ‘the odd kind of people Penelope might know’ or ‘Penelope’s idea of a good time’.