by Rachel Hore
She pushed her empty cases behind the shoes and sank down on the bed, which let out a creak so violent she leaped up and tried again more gingerly. She wondered what to do with herself. Vivienne, who was Jewish, had been spending the day with her family. For the first time in London, Isabel felt truly alone. But not miserable. Before her, the curtains stood open and a golden January twilight began to steal over the room. A blackbird was singing on its perch in an ilex bush and she listened for a moment. How peaceful it all was. Tomorrow being a Sunday, she’d explore. There was Highgate Cemetery to see, which she’d passed on the taxi ride, and a row of interesting-looking shops round the corner.
She was setting her alarm clock on the bedside table, when there came a gentle knock and the door opened. ‘Hello, are you decent?’ A smiling freckled face with a frizzy halo of fair hair peered round, and a lanky figure slipped into the room.
‘Vivienne,’ Isabel said joyfully. ‘I didn’t know you were back. How is your family?’
‘Just about endurable today,’ Vivienne said, coming to sit next to her on the bed, which squealed in complaint. ‘Looks like you’ve settled in all right, then. Gosh, it’s chilly in here. Have you fed the meter? Let me do it.’ She slotted in Isabel’s last few coins and found matches on the mantelpiece. She crouched by the fire like a spindly insect, then yelped in surprise as the gas caught light. They both knelt down beside the fire, waiting for it to heat up. Soon the room began to feel like home.
‘Super. I’ll go and make a pot of tea.’
She and Vivienne had taken to each other immediately. The other girl must have been a couple of years her senior, and she, too, had been forced to move away from home to establish her independence. Vivienne was at Duke’s College and had recently joined a research team in a laboratory, working towards a further degree whilst earning a little money for setting up equipment. It must be a pittance if she had to live here. Her parents had originally supported her desire to study, but not to pursue a career as a scientist. She and Isabel came from quite different backgrounds. Her parents sounded wealthy, though they tried to control Vivienne by denying her money. The link to Isabel’s world was slight. ‘I don’t know Audrey very well, actually’ she’d told Isabel when they first met. ‘My brother works with Anthony, her fiancé. Audrey’s awfully stylish, isn’t she?’ That was something else the girls had in common: nervousness of Audrey.
Moving to Highgate that winter was only one way in which Isabel began to establish herself and grow in confidence. Lord Pockmartin’s book had sold so well over Christmas, along with the film star’s biography, that Mr Greenford the accountant agreed with Stephen McKinnon that a small raise for Isabel was indeed possible. The weeks went past and there was no more talk of her having to leave.
Isabel and Audrey had their work cut to a pattern now. There were still hours of typing for Isabel to do, and filing, and showing visitors in and answering phones and making endless cups of tea, but she became quicker at the office tasks and was now reading regularly for Stephen, as did Trudy, and a freelance reader named Percival Morris, who was shy as a moth in person, but devastatingly acerbic in his written reports.
Given that Trudy was back to full strength, Isabel felt she had to be tactful about impinging on her#R0 McKinnon responsibilities, but Trudy was generous and seemed genuinely not to mind. After all, the firm’s decision-making lay with Stephen, all aspects of negotiating for new books, indeed any money matter. Trudy’s job was to work with the authors and to turn the scruffiest of scripts into rigorously edited and properly proofread books. There was plenty of work for all, and towards the end of January when there was a rush, she asked Isabel to look at some proofs for her and showed her how to mark them up. ‘They’re a final set, so you’re just checking to see that all the corrections have been made properly,’ she said. ‘It’s the Ambrose Fairbrother, and he really has been very naughty with all his last-minute rewriting.’
‘I’ll can start on it straight away,’ Isabel said, glancing at Audrey, who shrugged. ‘Stephen’s out this afternoon.’
Trudy was pleased with Isabel’s careful work and began feeding her other tasks. Before long she was checking rolls of galley proofs and engaging in conversations with writers, typesetters and printers. January turned to February and although she was still anxious that the moment might arrive when Stephen would call her into his office and say sorry, he couldn’t afford to pay her any longer, that moment didn’t come and she started to relax.
She was enjoying her new life. In the evenings, sometimes, she’d go to a party, the launch of a new novelist, perhaps, or accompany Berec to a poetry reading. If she and Vivienne were both at home, they’d cook a simple meal together in the chilly kitchen at the back of the hall, where occasionally one of the house’s other inhabitants might be glimpsed. There was a plain-faced, youngish woman, the secretary for a uniformed church organisation , who once gave them leaflets of Bible verses with her too-bright smile. A fourth tenant was much older, a woman who , Isabel guessed from her manner – rightly, it turned out – was a retired schoolteacher. She wore a perpetual expression of disapproval and kept herself to herself.
On 10 February, Isabel celebrated her twentieth birthday. Despite her general neglect of her nieces and nephews, Penelope had always remembered Isabel’s birthday, and this year she sent her five pounds, an unimaginably high sum. Isabel didn’t like to question the motive. Perhaps her aunt felt guilty that she’d not been more hospitable. She spent it on clothes, using all her precious ration coupons. After all, she had to be smart for work. And even Audrey gave her approving looks when she wore her new suits. Appearance was everything for a girl on the make.
Chapter 10
Isabel
Isabel sat at her desk, trying to ignore a throbbing headache. She stared at the page in the typewriter in front of her, but the words kept moving in and out of focus. It was a cold day, even for March, but she felt as if she was on fire. A wave of dizziness finally overcame her and she laid her face on the desk. How lovely and cool it was.
‘For goodness’ sake,’ Audrey sighed, ‘don’t droop about here. Go home. There’s no point being a martyr if the rest of us catch it.’
Jimmy Jones, the packer’s son, was loitering in the doorway, picking his nose and waiting for Trudy to give him a parcel to take to the Post Office.
‘What are you staring at?’ Audrey snapped. ‘Go and find her a taxi.’
‘Awright, keep your hair on,’ he muttered and slouched off.
‘You needn’t worry,’ she told Isabel, who was trying to finish up. ‘Take the fare out of petty cash – spoil yourself.’
Audrey helped Isabel on with her coat. Whilst the older girl’s back was turned, Isabel slipped a manuscript that Stephen had given her inside her shopping bag. If she had to be ill, she’d want something to read.
For the next three days, however, there was no question of reading anything. She slept, cocooned in the extra blankets that Vivienne had dragooned their landlady into giving her so she didn’t have to spend precious pennies on gas. Nothing passed her parched lips and burning throat but water. Each evening, when she came home, Vivienne went and sat with her, sponged her face and tidied up the bed. On the fourth day she felt a little better, and on the fifth, well enough to feel absolutely wretched. She missed her home, she missed her old bedroom, above all she missed her mother. She blew her nose until it was swollen and stinging and felt sorry for herself. She must be the loneliest, ugliest girl in the world; everyone had forgotten her and no one would ever love her again. It was in this mood that she cast about for distraction and remembered the manuscript in her bag. She staggered out of bed and fetched it.
An hour later, she had forgotten her aching head and runny nose. She was completely caught up in a young man’s voice, as he told her a story of suffering, of love denied. She read until it grew dark and Vivienne knocked on the door to see how she was. She read again when Vivienne left her later. She dreamed about the characters and woke
in the night to find pages of the manuscript rustling round her on the bed. The next morning she finished it, actually weeping when the young man and his love, Diana, were finally parted by Diana’s death in an air raid when he was on his way to meet her. But when she’d dried her eyes, she gathered up the pages and felt better, much better. She sat up in bed, a coat around her shoulders, and wrote a long and enthusiastic report. Finally she threw pen and paper aside, tired out. She had to be well enough to go to work the next morning. If she arrived early she could type up the report before tackling the pile of tasks that undoubtedly awaited her return, and eagerly anticipate Stephen’s response.
After a week of tense waiting she asked Stephen, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve had time to read that report on Hugh Morton’s book I left you?’
‘Ah, I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you about that,’ Stephen replied with a guilty look, and her hopes fell. But then he said, ‘The author’s coming in next week. I’ll make sure the two of you are introduced.’
‘We’re publishing the book?’ she asked, in surprise and not a little anger. She was used to not being told much, to having to pick up information through opening the post or by correspondence she was asked to type, but she was hurt that he hadn’t mentioned anything about this project.
‘His agent rang accepting our offer this morning, so it certainly looks like it,’ Stephen said with a boyish smile. Then, more seriously, ‘What I’d like from you is a list of notes. A more detailed version of those changes you suggested in the report.’
‘The ones about Diana, you mean?’ He was actually allowing her to work creatively with an author. Suddenly, he was forgiven.
‘Yes. I’m inclined to agree with you. She does lack spirit. I’ll need to speak to him about it.’
‘Oh, yes, of course.’ She was pleased that he wanted her notes, but disappointed that he would present her ideas for her. Still, it was a start.
The following Tuesday lunchtime she was absorbed in proofreading when a sonorous voice was heard to ask, ‘Where do I find Mr McKinnon?’ She looked up. A tall young man with dark springy hair stood at the door. He carried an umbrella, but his coat glistened with rain. She knew immediately who he must be.
‘Mr Morton?’ Audrey got there first. She slipped out from behind her desk with one of her sinuous movements, introduced herself and showed him into Stephen’s office. Hugh Morton did not even glance at Isabel as he passed, and though she typed away furiously, she could not but be aware of him. His presence radiated intensity.
She heard Stephen say, ‘A great pleasure to meet you,’ to the newcomer, before Audrey closed the door on them and sat down. Five minutes later, the door opened again and Isabel raised her head, half-expecting Stephen to call her in, but instead he took Morton across to Trudy, who congratulated him, and then to Philip. ‘The man who’ll be responsible for the jacket,’ Stephen explained. Finally, they came to Isabel.
‘And this is Isabel Barber, who has also read your novel.’
Audrey chose this moment to interrupt. ‘Mr McKinnon,’ she said, ‘would you mind signing this letter before you go out? It’s to accompany those urgent contracts.’
Stephen turned away to oblige her. Isabel stood up to take the young man’s outstretched hand. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you,’ she said, suddenly shy.
He replied eagerly, ‘The pleasure’s mine. So you’ve read it? I’m rather afraid to ask, but what did you honestly think?’ His low voice was husky now, charmingly so, and Isabel felt all his attention upon her.
‘Oh, I admired it very much,’ she replied, feeling her face colour up. ‘I really did.’
‘I’m so relieved,’ he said, and looked it.
Stephen handed Audrey back her letter. ‘We ought to be off, I’m afraid. There’s much to discuss over lunch. I should be back for my four o’clock. If that man from the wholesaler rings again, either of you, tell him we’ll reprint if he confirms his order.’
Hugh Morton said his goodbyes and Isabel watched them go off together. She could still feel the warmth of his hand and hear the timbre of his voice. It was extraordinary how she felt she recognised him from his book. If she’d been skilled enough to have painted a picture of the hero of Coming Home, she’d have painted Hugh, straight-backed, his dark hair springing from his forehead, the bookishly pale complexion and long-lashed brown eyes with their intense, slightly amused expression. He’d look perfect in a pilot’s jacket, especially . . .
‘Are you all right?’ Audrey’s voice came from somewhere far off. Isabel glanced up to see that she was putting on her coat. ‘You’re not going down with something again, are you? You do look peculiar.’
‘Perhaps I need some fresh air,’ Isabel sighed. ‘I might take my lunch now, too, if you’ll be here, Trudy?’
‘You run along, dear,’ Trudy said.
On their way out to the street, Audrey said, ‘Well, Hugh Morton’s a dish, isn’t he?’ Seeing Isabel’s embarrassment, she laughed. ‘You didn’t really expect that Stephen would ask you to go with them, did you? You’re blushing. You did!’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Isabel said. Sometimes she hated Audrey for her uncanny ability to see the truth, and to portray it in the worst possible light. ‘Why don’t we buy a sandwich and sit in the park?’
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ Audrey said, icily polite, ‘I’m having lunch with a friend.’ And she swept off.
Isabel watched her smart, elegant figure hurry away, and hated her.
Late in the afternoon, after everyone else had gone, she hovered in the doorway of Stephen’s office, watching him sort through the papers in one of his overflowing wire trays, an anxious frown on his face.
‘I’m off in a moment,’ she said, startling him. ‘How did your meeting go at lunchtime – with Mr Morton? Did he mind about making the changes?’
‘The changes?’ The anxiety turned to puzzlement, then his expression cleared. ‘Oh, you mean to his book. No, not per se,’ he said. ‘That is, we didn’t discuss them in detail. He took the notes away with him, and said he’ll give me his opinion.’
‘Did you tell him it was I who’d written them?’
‘Yes. I don’t think he expected . . . Good Lord, well, he said . . .’ He stopped and ran his fingers through his hair.
‘Did I put something badly?’ She was horrified at the idea of offending Hugh Morton. ‘Please tell me.’
‘No, no, nothing like that. It’s just it’s important to take matters a step at a time. Isabel, come in and sit down a moment.’
He faced her across the desk, his face serious, but not unsympathetic. ‘You must have observed by now that a writer’s relationship with an editor is one of trust. A publisher is privileged to work with the creative genius and has to earn that trust. It’s important at this early stage that he knows that I, his publisher, care for his work in every way.’
‘You mean, he expects any comments to come through you. Even though they’re my work. I see.’ Her voice was colourless.
‘It’s not about you. I’m very pleased with your work, it’s just one mustn’t expect too much of people, and often men don’t like . . .’ He stopped.
‘Men don’t like to be told what to do by a woman. Is that what you were going to say?’
‘Not at all,’ Stephen said mildly. ‘You know I don’t think like that.’
‘But a lot of men do,’ she said sadly.
‘Isabel, you are still very young and, I have to remind you, very new to all this. Trust me, please.’
Her shoulders sagged. ‘I expect you’re right,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry. I want to do well, though.’
‘You are doing well, as you put it,’ he replied with a sigh. ‘But please try not to take yourself so seriously.’
She stared at him in amazement. How could she not be serious? She so wanted to succeed.
‘Confound it, those figures must be somewhere,’ he muttered, returning to his search.
She spotted a piece of paper on the floor by his desk
and stood up to fetch it. ‘Is this what you’re looking for?’ she asked, handing it to him.
‘Ah yes, thank you,’ he said, reaching for the telephone. Realising that he’d already forgotten her, she quietly left the room.
Not long after this dispiriting conversation, she was opening Stephen’s morning post and found a letter from Hugh Morton. She read with growing delight. In it he thanked Stephen for lunch and went on to say that he’d done as requested and thought long and hard about the suggestions in the notes that Stephen had given him.
Although I wasn’t convinced at first, Morton had written, I am now of the opinion that they have considerable merit. Since the female psyche is to me, as to most men, something of a mystery, deep, unfathomably so, and mercurial, having a guess at it is like casting a stone into a deep well. I find Miss Barber’s notes illuminate the darkness and am most grateful to her for them. I wonder, therefore, if she might find it acceptable to meet me at a mutually convenient date in order to discuss the matter further. Three or four weeks away should do the trick. I will by then have drafted some revisions for you both to consider.
She took the letter in for Stephen in some excitement and watched him read it.
‘I take it that you would be happy to meet Morton?’ Stephen said, smiling up at her.
‘I’m sure I can spare the time,’ she said airily, and smiled back.
This time, when Hugh Morton visited the office, it was to collect Isabel. She’d suggested they repair to a teashop nearby and he said he knew one she might like. The complexities of either trying to use Stephen’s office when he was out, or having all her colleagues listening to their conversation, were too embarrassing to be borne. She felt Audrey’s disapproving glare boring into her back as they went out, and knew that this time, she had really stepped beyond the pale. She was so happy she didn’t care.