by Rachel Hore
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she cried through her sobs. ‘I didn’t mean to . . . I had to go. Don’t you see?’
‘I do.’ Her mother gave a long, shuddering sigh, like a death rattle to her hopes. She pulled back and studied Isabel’s teary face. ‘Don’t worry, darling, I won’t try to make you come back. It would be wrong, I can see that. It was just such a shock, the way you did it.’
Isabel was astounded at her mother’s answer. For a moment she felt a sensation of falling. Her mother didn’t want her back. They don’t want me, I have no home. She tasted the selfish little phrases and tried to feel sorry for herself. It didn’t work.
‘How are the boys? And Daddy?’ she asked, her voice uncertain.
Her mother wiped Lydia’s nose and tucked the handkerchief back into her sleeve. ‘The boys are in bed with the most frightful colds. Charles – well, he doesn’t know I’m here,’ she mumbled. ‘In fact, I’d better go soon. Peter Jones, that’s what I told him. Lydia needs a proper winter coat, don’t you, poor mite? I’ve had to cut the feet off her snowsuit, she’s got so big.’
Had her father forbidden her mother to see her? Isabel felt dread, but she didn’t need to ask, for the truth was plain in Pamela Barber’s face.
‘He does care about you, Izzy,’ her mother said finally. ‘But he finds it very difficult. Everything is black and white to him. He can’t help it. Try to understand.’
‘Yes,’ Isabel said, her voice dull.
‘I really must go. Your father has no patience minding the boys. Here, I really don’t need this.’
Isabel allowed her mother to help her into the cardigan once more and to straighten the collar of her blouse.
‘Would you like the hat back?’ she asked reluctantly. Her mother smiled and shook her head.
‘No, you keep it. Now, you look very pretty, dear. That new way with your hair.’ She turned her face away and set about stuffing a struggling Lydia into the mutilated snowsuit. Isabel collected up bits of Russian doll, her heart suddenly full of things she wanted to say, but couldn’t.
Pamela Barber rose to go, with Lydia in her arms. ‘It’s strange to think,’ she told Isabel. ‘A long time ago, I ran away from home, but for a different reason. I left to get married. How times have changed.’
Isabel stared as her mother opened the door, wondering exactly what she meant. Had things changed for better or worse? There was no chance to ask.
Out in the hall, Penelope handed the woman her coat and hat. ‘Goodbye, Pam,’ she said. The two sisters eyed one another. Penelope opened the front door.
‘Take care of her, please,’ Isabel’s mother told her.
‘I think Isabel can take care of herself,’ Penelope replied.
When her mother and Lydia had gone, Isabel escaped up to her room and climbed into her bed. There she cried until she fell asleep. When she woke it was twilight, the room felt chilly and she was starving. Going downstairs, she discovered that her aunt had gone out with the dog. There wasn’t much in the larder. She opened a can of meat stew and stood wrapped in a coat, spooning it up ravenously. It was here that Penelope found her.
‘I walked and walked,’ she said. ‘Gelert’s exhausted, aren’t you, poor animal?’ The mournful animal lay slumped on his rug.
‘Whatever’s the matter?’ Isabel asked.
This family – if you can call it that. I suppose my poor mother is to blame.’
Isabel put down her tin, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and asked, ‘Why did we hardly see Granny?’
‘Your mother’s never explained?’ Penelope placed the kettle on the stove. She scraped a match and the gas whooshed into flame.
Isabel shrugged. ‘Granny lives a long way away, that’s all I know.’
Penelope took a seat at the table. ‘Norfolk’s not far,’ she remarked. ‘Drydens is such a lovely old house. I used to think it the most wonderful place in the world.’
‘I saw a photograph of it once, with Mummy and you as little girls. Such funny square fringes you had.’
‘Oh, those awful hairstyles! We went to the local school because there was no money. Your grandmother was convinced we’d get lice from the other children so she cut our hair short. I never knew such a snob. It was mortifying for her that we went to that school. We were certainly not allowed to bring any of our friends there home. Poor Mother. Her daughters turned out to be such a disappointment. One divorced, such a disgrace, the other married to . . . to . . . '
'My father.'
'Yes. A man with no family, an orphan. Pamela would have him, and it was too much for your grandmother. Your mother's actually very like her- they're proud women, both of them, and they'll never admit that they're wrong. Pam is very loyal, but I can tell she's unhappy. She'll never do anything about it though; she'll see it through. She's that sort. I never was.'
Isabel sat, sipping the tea Penelope gave her, warming her hands on the cup. She'd never heard her aunt say so much before. A lot of things were now clear, but somehow she wished she didn't know them. After a long silence she said, 'Why were you divorced?' 'Because I had the courage to admit my mistake,' Penelope said. 'Life with Jonny was miserable. But I got away.'
'I've got away, too.'
Penelope gave her an odd sideways look. 'Or you think you have.'
Chapter 7
Isabel
‘I’d like your opinion on this,’ Stephen McKinnon said the of the Dome of Discovery.. b. It had following week, placing a short manuscript on Isabel’s desk.
‘Me? You want – yes, of course,’ she stuttered, hardly believing it.
Audrey turned from the filing cabinet and extracted the pen she was holding between her teeth. ‘If you need all those letters typed today, Stephen,’ she interrupted, ‘you shouldn’t ask her.’
‘Well, in that case . . .’ Stephen looked harassed.
‘I can do it this evening,’ Isabel said, glaring at Audrey, who rolled her eyes.
The three of them were the only ones in the office. It was Philip’s day off and Trudy had been away with flu all week. Just then, Audrey’s telephone rang. She reached over her desk and snatched up the receiver. ‘McKinnon and Holt? Yes, Mr Watt, how can I help?’
‘Would you have time to write a report?’ Stephen asked Isabel, with a pleading look. ‘I’d be most grateful. The book’s about a murder in a girls’ school. I’m far from being an expert on female educational establishments, but it seemed rather convincing to me.’
‘Mr Watt on the line about our Maisie,’ Audrey announced. She held out the receiver at an angle so she could stare at her new engagement ring.
‘Oh good, put him through.’ Stephen returned to his office and shut the door. Isabel peeped at the first page of the script, read a line or two, then stowed it in her shopping bag. It was the first time she’d been asked to do something like this, to venture an opinion on a book, and the prospect excited her.
Yours faithfully, Stephen McKinnon Esq., she typed with careful fingers. She wound the paper out of the machine and slipped it into a blotting-paper folder with the other letters for signature. A stack of copy-typing still lay in her tray. It got no smaller because Audrey kept adding to it.
‘He won’t pay you any more for reading that,’ Audrey remarked of the typescript. Nothing escaped her, it seemed.
‘I really don’t care,’ Isabel said. It was vital that she prove herself to Stephen. She was too proud to tell Audrey that she might not be here to bother her after Christmas. There were two weeks to go.
Audrey, however, was one step ahead. ‘Has Stephen said anything to you about staying?’
Isabel shook her head.
Audrey let the light sparkle off the tiny gem on her finger, ‘Of course, I don’t know yet how long I’ll be here,’ she said, with a little smile, like a cat’s. ‘Anthony doesn’t want me to work once we’re married, but that won’t be for ages and ages. We’re saving for a deposit on a house, you know.’
‘What would you do all da
y if you didn’t work?’ Isabel asked in disbelief.
‘Look after Anthony, of course,’ Audrey said in surprise. ‘He deserves to be looked after properly, poor love, he works so hard.’ Isabel had never met the Honourable Anthony Watkins, but she knew all about him as his name peppered Audrey’s conversation. He was a civil servant, currently reporting to a junior minister. Honourable he might be, but his family were as poor as church mice. Audrey went on: ‘But I’m sure there’d be time for luncheon with friends. And of course,’ she blushed a little, ‘a baby might come along. Anthony says we must find somewhere in town with a pretty garden and a room for a nursery.’
Isabel left the manuscript on Stephen’s desk the next morning along with a short report that she’d rewritten twice. All day she waited for him to mention it, but he didn’t, nor the next day, and she was disappointed. The manuscript disappeared under a pile of others.
One Friday, nine days before Christmas, she arrived early to find him already seated at his desk, surrounded by paperwork and writing furiously. He looked up at her, muttered, ‘Good morning,’ and though he smiled, his face was tired and greyish, as though he hadn’t slept much. She felt a rush of concern.
‘I’ll make you some tea,’ she said. As she withdrew he called her back.
‘Isabel, I read that report last night you wrote on the school murder story. I’m glad you liked it. You made some interesting observations, I thought.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ she said, with a swelling of joy.
‘And I agree about that middle section, it does wander about, but Trudy could make him tighten it. I’ll get on to his agent this morning, see what he’ll take. There’s just the space for it in the spring catalogue.’
‘That would be marvellous,’ Isabel breathed.
Stephen was looking at her with amusement. ‘I’m glad you’re pleased,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you some more to look at, if you like. It’ll have to be in your own time. I can’t have reading in the office, there’s too much to do.’
‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘Really. Only . . .’ She bit her lip. ‘It’s nearly Christmas.’
‘I had noticed,’ he said with heavy irony. His eyes were grave. ‘I know I said your job would be until Christmas.’
‘Yes,’ Isabel said, waiting in desperate hope.
‘Well now,’ he said, leaning forward on the desk, turning a cigarette packet over and over in his long, sensitive fingers. He extracted a cigarette, lit it and contemplated her through a haze of smoke. Again, she sensed his amusement.
‘I know I haven’t been here long,’ she said, ‘but I’ve done my best and I do like it.’
‘You have worked well,’ he said, ‘and sales have been decent this month. We’ll try you a few weeks longer. See how it goes. Keep on the right side of Audrey, though.’
‘Oh, I will. Thank you,’ she said, jumping up. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘Good morning.’ They both turned to see Audrey framed in the doorway, taking off her coat. She looked from one to the other and Isabel felt uncomfortable at the inscrutable expression in her eyes.
Berec arrived in the office late morning with a box of biscuits tied up in ribbon, but Trudy was still away sick and the phones were ringing off the hook so no one had time to talk to him. ‘Go away, Berec, we’re busy,’ Audrey said.
When Isabel stepped out at lunchtime, intending to visit the library, there he was waving at her from the café across the road. She hurried across to join him, and over a plate of scrambled egg on toast she delivered her news.
‘What did I tell you?’ Berec pronounced, delighted. ‘Stephen is a good man.’
‘It’s so kind of him. He had been insistent he couldn’t pay me.’
‘He likes you,’ Berec said, looking extremely self-satisfied. ‘I knew he would, though Stephen’s not a man who shows his heart easily. He had a bad time of it in the war, they say.’
‘Oh, the war,’ Isabel sighed, thinking of her father. ‘Will it never go away?’
‘No – at least, not in our lifetimes,’ Berec said quietly and this time he did not smile.
‘I don’t know much about Stephen,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve spoken to his wife on the telephone, but she never comes to the office.’
‘She wouldn’t. She’s not interested in his work. I met her once at a dinner, it must be two years ago. Her name is Grace. She’s pretty in your pale, English kind of way, but quiet, worryingly quiet. They placed me next to her, perhaps because I talk, but I could hardly get her to say a word to me.’
‘How rude of her,’ Isabel said, wide-eyed at this peek into her boss’s private life.
‘I think she did not mean to be,’ Berec said. ‘Perhaps she did not feel at her ease. The occasion was the publication of a collection of James Milward’s poetry. Now there is a rude man. So arrogant, so selfish.’ He laid down his knife and fork. ‘Now, if you’ve finished your meal . . . some more of this excellent tea, perhaps? No? So what are you doing at Christmas, my dear Isabel?’
Isabel was dreading Christmas. Her mother had written asking her to come home and she wanted to, badly, but it worried her, too. How would her brothers act towards her and, so much worse, her father? Her mother had intimated the Saturday she’d visited that her father was angry and didn’t want to see her, yet here was this invitation so it seemed that he’d softened. Still she longed to see them. And after all, the alternative, playing gooseberry at luncheon in Claridge’s where Aunt Penelope’s boyfriend Reginald seemed to live, wasn’t to be endured.
Once she’d written back to say she would go, she felt calmer. On the Monday before Christmas she helped Audrey rig up a small tree and string paper lanterns across the office with all the excitement she’d felt as a child. The days leading up to Christmas were fun, with authors and sales representatives dropping into the office for drinks and a proper party on the Thursday, the night before Christmas Eve. Trudy, still pale under her makeup after her illness, outraged the dignified Philip by catching him under a piece of mistletoe, an act so out of character for both parties that Isabel was rather shocked.
She was even more shocked when Stephen hooked his arm round her on his way out and did the same thing, murmuring, ‘A Merry Christmas,’ to her. And he was gone.
Late on Friday she joined the great shoal of humanity pouring out of the Underground onto the freezing concourse of Charing Cross station, a suitcase in one hand and a bag of presents in the other. She stepped onto a train, thinking about home.
Except it wasn’t home, she quickly saw, and never could be again.
When she arrived, her mother let her in and hurried back upstairs, explaining, ‘I’ve left Lydia in the bath.’
Isabel pushed open the living-room door, to the sound of tinny laughter. At once, her father rose from his chair and stood impassive, his solid bulk dominating the room. He did not come forward to welcome her but reached behind him and switched off the wireless. ‘No, Dad!’ Ted and Donald, who’d been slumped at the table, a chessboard between them, sat up, indignant, then saw her and looked delighted, whilst glancing uncertainly at their father. His handsome face glowered. He shoved his hands in his pockets.
‘Well, we are honoured,’ he said.
‘Hello, Dad,’ that something was wrong. a the co she said, going to quickly kiss his cheek. She gave the boys a sisterly grimace and handed over the chocolate she’d managed to buy for them.
‘Ripping, thanks!’ they said in unison.
‘It’s good of you to turn out and see us,’ her father said, sitting down again. ‘I hope we’ll not be dull company next to your London friends.’
‘Don’t be silly, Dad,’ she said gently, but her fingers clenched into fists.
‘Can’t we have the wireless on again?’ Ted said through a mouthful of chocolate. ‘We were listening.’
‘To a lot of rubbish,’ their father said shortly, but he did as they asked.
‘You got yourself work, I hear,’ he said, above the comedians’ patter.
‘Yes, I really—’
‘Does it pay you much?’
‘No, but it’s—’
‘You could have saved yourself the trouble. Found a job round here and stayed and helped your mother.’
‘There wasn’t anything I wanted to do here.’ She glimpsed an expression in his face that touched her, before the mask fell again, such an expression of unhappiness. She was free of him now. She’d struggled and got free. Is that what he sensed and resented? Or envied?
He picked up a newspaper and began to read, ignoring her. All was as before. Ted moved a chess piece, Donald gave an impatient whistle. A log settled in the fireplace. On a string above the mantelpiece, half a dozen Christmas cards fluttered pitifully in the heat.
‘I’ll go and help Mum,’ Isabel said feebly and retreated.
Upstairs, she glanced about her old bedroom, disconcerted to find it wasn’t hers any more. Lydia’s cot had been shoved alongside the bed and a rosy Lydia was in it, dressed in pyjamas, bouncing with excitement as she clutched the rail. The clothes spilling out of the drawers were Lydia’s and her teddy bear stared glassy-eyed from the dressing table. Isabel had been away for two months, and she saw no evidence that she’d ever lived here. Then her eye fell on a suitcase standing by the door.
‘The rest of your clothes are in there,’ her mother said. ‘Perhaps you can take them with you. We had to put your books in the shed. There wouldn’t have been space for the cot otherwise.’ Lydia had previously slept in their parents’ room. ‘You won’t mind sharing when you’re here, I’m sure.’
Both the family and the room had adapted to her absence.
The next two days dragged past. She helped her mother in the kitchen and played with her siblings. The atmosphere she found oppressive. Her father was morose and her mother by turns irritable and falsely cheerful. Worse, Isabel felt herself slipping back into her old, mutinous ways. On Boxing Day, only a long, lonely walk across sodden fields saved her from bad temper. Then it was dusk and her brothers walked her to the station, carrying her cases. As the train pulled away, a mixture of relief and loss overwhelmed her. But as it got nearer and nearer to London, the relief won out.