by Rachel Hore
Hugh walked faster than she did, as if he was late, and she had to hurry to keep up. She noticed how people couldn’t help glancing at them, he purposeful, briefcase under his arm, his coat-tails flying, she a step behind, his humble attendant.
When they entered the smart teashop on Oxford Street it was to find it dark and half-empty, the electricity supply having cut out. A waitress in a black dress and white apron pounced on the new customers gratefully. There was a table free in the window, which Hugh commanded at once. Isabel caught their reflection in a glass panel as they made their way towards it. Her chestnut-red hair and coral lipstick, and his crimson scarf were the only touches of brightness in the place, and when they sat down, the gloom conveyed a thrilling intimacy.
The waitress assured them of the possibility of a pot of tea, and they chose from a selection of cakes on the trolley. When she had gone away, Hugh studied Isabel with amusement. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, leaning towards her. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but you look . . . well, like Red Riding Hood meeting the wolf!’
It was hard to convey how overwhelmed she felt. Here she was, alone with a young writer whose work she admired and whom she was expected to impress, yet she wasn’t sure what to say. Still, his comment roused her. She drew herself up.
‘I’m sure I do not,’ she said hotly.
He laughed. ‘I’m certainly not in the habit of eating women, don’t worry.’ Suddenly he was serious. ‘Thank you for meeting me. I wanted to tell you face-to-face, you see. It was very useful, what you said about my novel. Thank you for taking the trouble. To tell you the truth, I didn’t like it at all at first, anyone’s interference in my work. But then I thought a good deal about your comments and realised perhaps there was something in what you said.’
‘I’m glad if that’s the case.’ Despite his condescension she felt a massive sense of relief.
‘It is.’ He reached down for his briefcase. ‘I have the script here and I’ve started work. I should like you to take a look now, if you will. Tell me if you think I’ve grasped the right end of the stick.’
By the time the waitress returned with a laden tray, the two of them were poring over a pile of typed paper and deep in discussion. They carried on talking whilst the woman laid out cups and plates around them, sniffing loudly.
Isabel hardly noticed. She had completely forgotten her shyness, and was engaging in ways in which Diana might develop as a character on the page. ‘You could use the way she dresses,’ she told the author. ‘She might be dowdy at the beginning, when he meets her, but become more stylish. I do mean stylish, not blowsy.’
‘No, she’s not that kind of woman at all. I like what you said about the way she speaks,’ he went on, turning a page. ‘Here, do you think this would work?’
She examined the alterations, which were handwritten, but not at all difficult to read.
‘Mmm, I like that,’ she said.
‘Should I pour your tea before it gets cold?’ the waitress broke in.
As they ate and drank, they continued to talk, and Isabel wondered how she could ever have been nervous of Hugh. He was older than she was, thirty, perhaps, and had already seen so much of life – and death, too, she imagined, thinking about the wartime episodes in his novel – but this hadn’t thickened his writer’s sensibilities. He was intensely defensive of his work, but she respected that. It showed how committed he was. She, for her part, felt she intuitively understood the way that he was working, the paths along which his mind travelled. All she had to do was ask questions, drop the smallest of hints and he picked these up. It was like walking along a balancing bar, being careful never to let him think an idea wasn’t his own. ‘How clever you are,’ was how she merely had to flatter him and he’d brighten. She loved the way his emotions played on his sensitive face.
Eventually she plucked up the courage to ask the question she’d longed to. ‘Is the story based on events that happened to you?’
He drew a pack of cigarettes from his inside pocket and when he offered it she felt it natural to take one, though she didn’t usually like to smoke.
‘To me or to people I know, yes,’ he replied. Their hands touched thrillingly as he lit the cigarette for her. ‘Schoolfriends, people I grew up with. We’d all grown up having similar experiences and with similar expectations. And then the war came.’ He made a gesture of dismissal. ‘Now we ask ourselves what it was all for. We can’t get ourselves going again as a country, can we? We’re stuck in the past, hankering after shabby glories. This government, they think they’re reforming everything, but underneath there are the same old rules, and the same men are still in control.’
‘Goodness me, you’re a radical?’ she asked, blinking at the smoke. She’d met several writers of Stephen’s acquaintance who had strong left-wing views and thought some of them bitter, angry people, though perhaps they had things to be bitter and angry about. Berec’s friend Gregor was like that, always rambling on about social justice. Poor Karin, his wife, on the other hand, hated politics of any sort. ‘Trouble,’ she’d say, drawing a finger across her throat.
Hugh Morton wasn’t one of these firebrands, though. He was passionate, she could see that, but he directed his passion into his writing and seemed sad rather than bitter.
‘I’m not a Communist, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m proud of my country. Just fed up with the same bloody people going on as though they know best. They make a show of asking what ordinary people think but then ignore them. Sorry, I’m preaching. How ill-mannered of me.’
‘Not at all,’ she said. She had been listening intently, chin in hand, elbow on the table. ‘It’s interesting. Is that what you want to write about, politics?’
‘Don’t you think there’s a sense in which everything is politics? You and I sitting here, like two different planets, circling one another, that’s politics. It’s all about human relationships, and that indeed is the territory of the writer.’
He gave one last pull on his cigarette and stubbed it out on the ashtray with a single, savage movement, then looked up into her face, his frown softening.
‘What about you? Do you write yourself or just tell other people how to do it?’
She felt the warmth rise to her cheeks. ‘Only a little,’ she said humbly. ‘Scribblings. I’d like to but I’m not very good, I’m afraid. For now, I love working with writers.’
‘It’s your first job, Stephen tells me. Straight from school?’
‘Yes. I had an idea about studying at university, but it simply wasn’t possible. My father . . . well, there’s not much spare money and my mother needed me at home.’ She told him about her parents, her brothers and her sister and he was interested that her brothers were twins.
‘I don’t have any siblings, you see, and my parents were often away. When I was four or five I used to imagine I had a brother . He was exactly my age, like my mirror opposite, and I used to speak to him in a language I made up. My father sent me to see a man about it, but it turned out there was nothing much wrong with me. Nothing that school wouldn’t sort out. Too much time alone, that was all. It’s true. I used to read, endlessly, and now I look back, what was real and the stories I read became muddled up in my mind.’
That happened to me, too,’ Isabel replied with enthusiasm. ‘The twins had each other. They didn’t take any notice of me. When I was thirteen, I desperately wanted to be Jo March in Little Women, but not to marry the dull old professor. I wish she’d married Laurie.’ She’d longed to meet a Laurie. She glanced at Hugh’s dark shorn curls and the thought popped into her head that he was very like the descriptions of Jo March’s rejected beau.
‘Ah, so you’re a romantic. Very dangerous.’
‘Why does talking about love make one a romantic? You said yourself that writing is all about relationships. And what is love but the most intense of relationships. Not,’ she added, blushing, ‘that I know very much about that yet.’
‘Good lord, now I’ve gone and embarrassed
you. Look, it’s dangerous to believe in happy endings. Life isn’t like that, all nicely tied up in a bow, which you girls seem to think.’
She considered this and said, ‘No, but there are moments of pure happiness to be found and we have to believe those will happen, don’t we? They keep us going during the bad parts.’ He laughed and said, ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ She saw he was looking very fondly at her and she found herself liking him more and more.
Chapter 11
Emily
One Friday, a fortnight to Christmas, Emily came home from an evening with friends at a new cocktail bar that had opened up near the office. Megan was her best pal from school, Steffi and Nell they’d got to know when they all found themselves sharing the same flat soon after Emily moved to London. They had become a close foursome, and though they’d all gone their separate ways, they still tried to get together every couple of weeks or so to catch up on news. Emily enjoyed these evenings of chat and laughter and now, closing the door and listening to the silence, she felt a little wistful, remembering the friendly chaos of shared living. This was only momentary, however. She loved this high-ceilinged first-floor flat that she’d saved madly to buy, with a bit of help from Dad, and had learned there were advantages to living alone. When she put something down, for instance, it stayed put. It was a shame, she thought, that dealing with people was less certain. She wouldn’t be alone tonight – Matthew was due to come over, but what time she didn’t know and he hadn’t been in touch.
She was starving. The drinks had been expensive so she’d only had a snack in the cocktail bar. She fetched some juice and a pasta salad from the fridge and settled herself on the sofa. She was reaching for a magazine to read when she remembered the video Nell had just given her. It was of the television programme about Hugh Morton that Gillian Bradshaw had recommended, broadcast in 1985 to celebrate the writer’s 65th birthday. Nell worked in a film library and had dug out a copy for her. She fetched it from her bag, noticing from the label that the last time anyone had taken it out was 1991.
Setting up her old video recorder was the work of a moment. She knelt in front of the screen and pushed the tape into the slot. It started up at once and there he was, Hugh Morton, close up. She’d never seen footage of him before. She turned up the volume and returned to the sofa to watch it properly. He commanded quite a presence, she had to admit: rangy, masculine, with his handsome, cragged-up face and confident manner. The programme followed the typical format of the time, starting with the writer being interviewed in his study, which she recognised from her visit, though it was summer in the film rather than foggy November, for a flower-filled garden was visible through the window. Morton sat at his desk, informal in shirtsleeves, smoking a cigarette as though he needed it.
‘So what if I was friends with the Chairman of the judges. They simply liked the book,’ Morton said, in response to the male interviewer’s question about his blighted Booker Prize win. ‘I’m tired of this argument now. It’s a small world, the London literary scene. It’s bloody bitchy, it needs more air.’
As the interviewer pointed out, there was plenty of air where Morton lived. Swooping views followed of Stone House, lovely gardens rolling out towards marshland. The bleak foreshore of the estuary lined the horizon beyond. ‘I inherited this house from my father,’ the writer explained in a voiceover. ‘There have been Mortons here for generations. You might say the river runs in my blood.’
At this point a narrator took over. ‘Hugh and his first wife, Isabel, settled here in 1951, but sadly parted less than two years into their marriage. It wasn’t long afterwards that he married Jacqueline, a childhood friend. They have a daughter, Lorna, from his first marriage, and two sons, all long grown up.’
Astonished, Emily pressed the pause button. Had she heard correctly? She rewound the tape to listen again. Yes, she had. Lorna wasn’t Jacqueline’s daughter, but Isabel’s. This revelation disturbed her. It seemed so wrong. Poor Lorna, she thought, still living at home, waiting hand and foot on her stepmother while Jacqueline’s own children had escaped their parents’ reach. She remembered the old woman’s wistful expression when she talked about her boys, and the patronising way she’d addressed her middle-aged step-daughter. She wondered whether Lorna remembered her real mother. Joel must surely know, and yet he hadn’t breathed a word. Why not? Still troubled by this, she let the film continue.
The camera cut to Jacqueline’s matronly figure as she cut flowers in the garden and served tea to her husband at a table in the shade of a copper beech. An arrowhead of wild ducks passed overhead, their harsh cries breaking the stillness.
The rest of the programme focused on the books themselves. Morton spoke interestingly about his influences, the effect of his wartime experience, his fascination with the darker areas of man’s soul, defended himself against the feminists who perceived misogyny in his writing.
Near the end, Emily had to get up to buzz Matthew in downstairs. He arrived at the door to the flat to find it open. She was back watching Morton walk by the river, head bowed, presumably deep in creative thought. Then the spell broke as the credits rolled.
‘Hello,’ Matthew said, leaning to kiss her, ‘what’s that you’ve been watching?’
‘An old documentary about Hugh Morton.’
‘Any good?’ he asked, putting down his bag and unwinding his scarf.
‘Not bad. A bit deferential. And there was something odd about his first marriage. Do you know anything about it?’
‘No, he’s not a writer I’ve come across much. God, I’m hungry. All I’ve had since breakfast is crisps.’
She offered to make him a ham toastie. ‘Thanks. And I could murder a cold beer.’ He rubbed his face and yawned. Emily noticed with tenderness that he hadn’t shaved. He must have been working hard. She found a can of lager in the fridge. He took a long draught and sank onto the sofa. ‘Mind if I catch the news?’
‘Sure.’
She listened vaguely to the headlines as she made the sandwich but principally she thought about Isabel. Apart from that brief mention of her name, the first Mrs Morton had been completely missing from the programme. The interviewer hadn’t been interested in her at all. And yet Isabel had been Lorna’s mother. What had happened? It was curious.
She carried the sandwich over and curled up beside Matthew as he ate, loving the warmth of him. He seemed a little distant tonight, she thought, self-absorbed. After the news finished she asked, ‘How was your day, then?’ She remembered he’d been nervous at the prospect of a tutorial with Tobias Berryman.
‘Manic,’ he replied, swallowing the last mouthful of sandwich. ‘I wrote the book review by eleven, then made it by the skin of my teeth to a seminar. After that I hiked across town to interview that PR guru for the magazine, you remember I told you about him? An interesting guy, I thought.’
‘And how was Professor Berryman?’
‘Feeling emollient, thank God. Liked what I’d done so far. Made some useful suggestions, in fact. Oh, and he said to tell you the novel is nearly ready.’
‘I hope he doesn’t expect me to read it over Christmas.’
‘Probably. Look, I’m still famished. Any chance of another sandwich?’
‘Yes, if you make it yourself. I’m feeling too comfortable here.’
After Matthew fell asleep that night, Emily lay awake thinking about him. It occurred to her that he hadn’t asked about her day and that was hurtful. He’d been tired, she told herself, that was all it was.
Saturday, however, didn’t go much better. Matthew, some time back, had invited Luke and Yvette over to dinner. They were the couple at whose supper party he and Emily had met. It had been decided dinner would be at his flat because it was within walking distance of where they lived. However, since he had to work all day on his assignment, Emily volunteered to cook the meal. She arrived at his flat during the afternoon with two carrier bags of food and took over the kitchen. As she cooked, she glanced from time to time at Matthew, sitting in
a pool of light at his desk, oblivious to the activity around him, completely lost in his writing. He always wrote poetry in longhand – he liked to see his crossings out, he said – and she was amused by the way he frowned and pushed his fingers through his hair as he worked. He looked the picture of a poet from several centuries ago, in a garret, writing by candlelight. She smiled to herself as she cooked, treasuring this romantic image of him, but eventually had to interrupt.
‘Matthew, we need your desk now or we won’t have anywhere to eat.’
When Luke and Yvette arrived they pronounced themselves enchanted by the flat, but all through the meal Emily couldn’t help remembering their guests’ spacious marital home with its gleaming silver kitchen and designer patio garden. Matthew didn’t care about ‘stuff’, as he disparagingly called it – that was one of the things Emily usually loved him for – but tonight she found herself wishing that he did care just a little bit.
‘Em, I think I’d better give lunch with your parents a miss today,’ Matthew said from the kitchen the next day as he spooned coffee grounds into the cafetière. ‘I won’t finish my assignment in time otherwise.’
Emily, eating a croissant on the sofa and flicking through a magazine, was dismayed. ‘Oh Matthew, I’ve told them you’re coming.’
‘I did say that I hoped to, not that I would.’ She had a vague idea that this might be true. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, coming to sit beside her. ‘I’m not much good for you at the moment, am I?’ He stroked her hair. She thought he#1C b sounded sorry. It was difficult to feel angry with him for long, she loved him so much, but nor could she always tell what he was thinking. What if he simply didn’t want to come? The thought of that, he not being interested in her family, was devastating.
‘Do you still want me to come to Wales for New Year?’ she asked uncertainly. She knew his three brothers slightly and had visited his mother and stepfather near Cardiff for a weekend in September. She found them all warm and friendly. The family were planning a New Year’s Eve party and she was looking forward to it. She hoped he didn’t regret inviting her.