The Silent Tide

by Rachel Hore

  ‘Of course I do. And remember, I hand in my assignment next Friday so I’ll get a bit of a break. Except for some journalism, that is.’

  ‘It is a shame about today,’ she couldn’t help saying, but this seemed to irritate him.

  ‘Look, Em, I said I’m sorry. Anyway, it’s not just me that cries off things. Sometimes it’s you who’s busy. Remember last month when you spent all weekend editing and wouldn’t meet up at all?’

  ‘That was different. It didn’t affect anyone else. Mum and Dad will be disappointed.’

  ‘But the whole clan will be there today, won’t they? Your sister’s family? They won’t notice if I’m absent, not really. Not with the children running about.’

  ‘I will notice,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ll tell you something, though – I don’t think I’m up to explaining in front of Mike that you can’t come because you’re writing poetry.’ Matthew and her brother-in-law, bank executive and rugby player, struggled to find subjects to talk about. It was obvious that Mike thought Creative Writing MAs a waste of time and money.

  ‘Yes, tell him,’ Matthew said with one of his sudden bouts of passion. ‘Poetry is vital, like breathing. It communicates the essence of things.’

  She laughed. ‘I don’t think he’d go for that at all. It would only start an argument.’

  ‘And what’s wrong with a good argument? My family is always arguing. It’s silence between people we have to worry about.’

  ‘My family’s different, you know that.’

  Emily considered all this whilst on the train to her parents’. Family arguments were wearing. Silence of the right sort could be wonderful when you felt at ease with someone, like she usually was with Matthew. This weekend, though, she worried that they were losing the connection. Something was different, but she couldn’t tell what.

  On Monday morning, she found an old cardboard folder on her desk and thought of another kind of silence, the silence of a voice smothered, a secret muffled.

  She opened it to find a sheaf of old papers, all neatly clipped together. She knew what it was when she read the typed letter on the top. At the bottom was Hugh Morton’s characteristic black signature and the date, October 1949. The letter was addressed to Stephen McKinnon, Hugh’s publisher, and it was all about Coming Home. It was to thank Stephen for a cutting of a book review, which had clearly been favourable. The whole file was about Coming Home!

  Joel must see this, she thought excitedly. Had someone found it in the archive? She looked in vain for the official form that had accompanied the other files. Why, anyway, should Parchment possess a file about Coming Home? The book was published by a company she didn’t know, but obviously owned by Stephen McKinnon.

  Emily glanced at her colleague Sarah, who was checking a Twitter feed and frowning. ‘Do you know who left this folder?’ Emily asked her.

  ‘No, sorry,’ Sarah murmured, hardly looking up as she started to type.

  ‘Anyone?’ Emily asked, appealing to Liz and Gabby opposite. They said they didn’t know either.

  ‘What’s in it, something exciting?’ Sarah asked, turning from her computer at last.

  ‘It might be, yes,’ Emily said. ‘But I don’t understand. How have I got a file for a book we didn’t publish?’

  ‘Who did publish it?’ Sarah asked.

  Emily consulted again the address at the top of the letter. ‘McKinnon and Holt, Percy Street. Any idea who they were?’

  Sarah scooted her chair alongside. ‘I think I have. Let’s see. What book is it the file for?’

  ‘Hugh Morton’s first novel, Coming Home.’

  Sarah inspected the file, flicking the pages. A few were coming adrift from their mooring.

  ‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘I’ve no idea about this particular book, but Parchment bought up some smaller publishing companies in the nineties. McKinnon and Holt came with one of those. Therefore we probably do own the rights to this book.’

  Emily looked down at the file in astonishment. So Parchment was now the publisher of Coming Home. She wondered if Gillian knew this. But where had this file come from?

  Liz’s face appeared above her partition. ‘Time for the cover meeting, folks,’ she called. Sarah slid her chair back to her desk and started gathering up papers.

  ‘Be with you in a sec,’ Emily told her. She set about straightening the pages in the file, but more kept coming loose from the old metal binding. One, near the back, simply wouldn’t be tidied and she pulled it out to see why. It was older than the letter at the top of the folder, a whole year older, but of course the file was in reverse date order. From it, a name caught her eye. The address typed at the top started Miss Isabel Barber. The letter began, My dear Miss B . . .

  Isabel. She’d found Isabel. She felt almost dizzy with excitement.

  Sarah put her head round the door. ‘Emily they want to do your books first,’ she said.

  ‘Do they?’ Emily said, putting down the file with reluctance. ‘All right, coming.’

  It wasn’t till much later, when the office was quiet, that she had time to inspect the folder once more. Carefully she opened the metal fastenings to free the paper. Then she turned the thick pile over and took up a page from the back. It was from a literary agency, whose name she didn’t recognise – another company lost in the mist of history. She read it eagerly.

  Dear Mr McKinnon, it began. I am pleased to send you this novel by a Mr Hugh Morton, whose work I have recently agreed to represent.

  She reached for the next sheet in the pile – no, two, stapled together. It was a reader’s report, addressed to Stephen McKinnon and signed with the initials IB. Isabel Barber. Isabel had been meticulous, correcting typing errors in small, neat italics.

  Morton paints pictures with words. He writes so tenderly about what it’s like to be young, to have hopes and dreams, and then to see them destroyed by war. I have often wondered what it felt like to be in a plane, caught in the open with the enemy shooting at you, how terrifying it must be, and he makes me see and hear and feel it all. This must be the story of so many young men and he tells it with such power. He is a natural writer. The only weakness is his female character, Diana, who seems a little too perfect, passively waiting for him like that. I know I would have been quite exasperated by his behaviour sometimes.

  Yes, that is exactly what Emily herself had thought about Coming Home – how freshly told it was, how tender. She hadn’t minded about Diana though, the hero’s long-suffering girlfriend; indeed, Diana’s sense of frustration and anger had been most convincing. And then it occurred to Emily that in this report, Isabel had been commenting on an earlier draft. Maybe Morton had made further changes to the script?

  Emily turned the fragile pages, noticing letters between Isabel and Hugh Morton. Isabel must have been his editor for this book, she concluded, before the man who worked on The Silent Tide – what was his name? Richard something.

  As darkness thickened outside, she read on, utterly absorbed.

  .

  Chapter 12

  Isabel

  ‘You’re in a very good mood these days,’ Vivienne said, cocking her head to smile at Isabel. They were walking together to the bus stop. It was one of those very clear sunlit days and spring seemed finally to be swinging into action. They would ride the bus together as far as Tottenham Court Road, where Isabel would get off, leaving Vivienne to continue another couple of stops to the great classical portico of the college and the laboratory where she worked.

  ‘Am I?’ Isabel said dreamily. ‘Must be the weather or something. Isn’t it nice not to freeze to death every night?’

  ‘Well, if they bottle your happiness I’d like some.’

  Isabel cursed herself for being self-absorbed. Now she came to think of it, Vivienne did look tired and listless.

  ‘Was that your mother again on the telephone last night?’ she asked, wondering if something at home might be the cause. On her way to the bathroom she’d passed a long-suffering-looking Vivienn
e hunched against the wall in the lobby, the receiver pressed to her ear.

  ‘Yes. My cousin’s getting married.’ Vivienne sighed. ‘I’m delighted for Mary, I really am. But . . . it’s the third time I’ll have been a bridesmaid and Mummy is finding it a little hard to bear.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Vivienne, overtall and awkward, was never going to be besieged by suitors, but she was such a caring and interesting person, Isabel felt sure that she’d find someone to love her. They’d reached the bus stop by now and joined the queue, and couldn’t continue the conversation.

  Once she thought about it, Isabel began to recall how quiet Vivienne had been recently. She was still as friendly as always, and they often cooked together if they were both in, and sat companionably together in one or other of their rooms, reading or listening to Vivienne’s wireless. Vivienne would pay attention as Isabel chattered about her work, the new responsibilities she was being given, but she confided little in return except once when she’d complained about an arrogant young man at work called Frank Something, who kept putting her back up with his comments, once, failed to invite her to an office do. Isabel vowed to find out more.

  For her own part, as Vivienne had observed, she was happy.

  Since she’d shown something of her abilities by working successfully with Hugh Morton, Trudy seemed to trust her more and was now showing her how to mark up manuscripts for design and typesetting. She was an exacting teacher. ‘Readers are hawk-eyed. We’ll get letters if we make mistakes,’ she told Isabel.

  The office was getting busier. There was more and more to do. Lord Pockmartin’s war memoirs were still selling, and the latest Maisie Briggs had been declared her best by a romance reading club in the United States and was going like the clappers. The new children’s picture-book series was also performing well. Stephen looked as harassed as ever, but there were greater intervals between those awful occasions when Mr Greenford shambled through to Stephen’s office to complain that they couldn’t pay such and such a bill. Audrey, on the other hand, could be heard moaning that since Isabel never had any time to help her now, could she have another clerical assistant, please?

  One lunchtime at the end of March 1949, when the office was empty apart from Isabel, who was going through some urgent final proofs, the telephone rang on Audrey’s desk. Isabel snatched up the receiver and recited, ‘Good afternoon, McKinnon and Holt?’

  ‘Is that Miss Barber?’ The cultured voice, warm as honey, was instantly recognisable.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she replied, sitting down suddenly in Audrey’s chair.

  ‘I’ve finished the final draft,’ Hugh said. ‘I thought we might meet. How about lunch next week?’

  ‘I’ve taken a flat in Kensington,’ he told her, after the waiter had brought their soup. ‘London is where I need to be now.’

  ‘Where in Kensington? Near Hyde Park or the other end?’ she asked.

  ‘Very near the park, tucked behind the Albert Hall. I’ve a bracing new regime. Half an hour’s walk through Kensington Gardens before I start work in the morning. It clears the head and it’s so lovely there I can almost forgive myself for abandoning Suffolk.’ He paused. ‘I’m not sure that Mother can, though.’ He shrugged and turned his attention to the thin orange-coloured soup.

  She picked up her spoon but wasn’t really interested in her food. Instead, her eyes were everywhere. No one had brought her to anywhere as grand as this before. She loved the arches and the vaulted ceiling of the restaurant, covered in what surely couldn’t be gold leaf. The stiff white linen tablecloth and napkins were an unimaginable luxury and the glass that held the chilled white wine was so fragile she feared she’d break it as she drank.

  She glanced at Hugh, who was watching her with an amused smile. ‘What is it?’ she asked. He was so merry and teasing today, happy probably that he’d completed his book. The precious manuscript lay in a rough brown folder under her chair. She was terrified that she’d leave it behind or that someone might steal it, and kept prodding it with her toe to make sure it was safe.

  ‘There’s something that defines you,’ he said, watching her finish her soup. ‘Nothing bad,’ he said, laughing at her wary look. ‘It’s the way you savour every moment. I’m so glad you’re not one of those terrifying modern girls, you know the kind I mean. Stephen McKinnon’s secretary, what’s her name? Miss Foster. She’s one. Knows exactly what she wants and how to get it.’

  ‘Audrey’s all right once one gets to know her. Well . . .’ With sudden insight she saw what Hugh Morton meant. Audrey had life worked out to a frightening degree. She knew her strengths and limitations, what was acceptable for her to achieve. She read the kinds of magazines that confirmed her prejudices, recognised exactly what she was expected to do and was happy to do it. Audrey was smart, yes, but it was a narrow kind of smartness. Isabel wasn’t sure that she liked herself for seeing all this.

  ‘You’re different,’ Hugh went on. ‘Fresh. I like that in a girl.’

  ‘You do say some odd things,’ she retorted. ‘I’m not sure I’m at all complimented.’

  That amused him no end. A waiter appeared and bore away their soup bowls, then dishes of braised steak were laid before them, and a basin of vegetables. Their glasses were refilled and the waiter withdrew.

  ‘It certainly looks like real steak,’ Hugh murmured, prodding it with a knife.

  ‘I hope so.’ Which meat was on or off the ration was a staple of office small talk. ‘Mmm, it’s very tender.’

  For a while they ate in silence, Isabel never having tasted such delicious food. She cast about for something to say, uncertain what writers liked to talk about. She thought of something her mother had once said, that men liked to be asked about themselves.

  ‘Does your writing take up all your time?’ She could only imagine the smallness of the sum McKinnon & Holt were paying him for his novel, but guessed it would pay no rents in Kensington. He must have some other source of income. His family, perhaps.

  ‘Good lord, no,’ he said, frowning. ‘I only wish it could. Perhaps you don’t read The Times or you’d have seen my byline. I write book and theatre reviews.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, vowing to pay more attention. ‘Just for The Times?’

  ‘Mostly. And one or two of the better literary magazines.’

  ‘What will you work on next, now you’ve finished Coming Home?’ she asked him, feeling for the manuscript again with her toe. She laid down her knife and fork and he raised his forefinger to summon the waiter.

  ‘I’ll start on the next one,’ he told her, when their plates had been cleared. He dabbed at his mouth with his napkin and leaned forward with a grave expression on his face. ‘In fact I wanted to ask your advice,’ he said. ‘What’s the likelihood of McKinnon coming up with a better advance next time?’

  ‘I . . . You’d need to speak to him about that. I’ve really no idea how the money side works.’ Privately she thought that it would be most unlikely but she didn’t want to be the one to say.

  ‘No, of course not. I’m sorry if I’ve embarrassed you.’

  ‘I don’t mind. But it’s thrilling that you’ve an idea for another book. What’s it to be about?’

  ‘Ah, it’s at far too delicate a stage to speak about,’ he told her. ‘Bad luck. It might vanish like the mist.’

  There was an undercurrent of seriousness to his words. She studied him thoughtfully, something of what he meant dawning on her. On occasion she would overhear a few words from a conversation, or be fascinated by a news item and think there was a story in it. It was annoying when a little while later she couldn’t recall what exactly it was that had suggested itself. ‘Sometimes it’s just a feeling, isn’t it?’ she said to Hugh. ‘A sense of something important and truthful.’

  ‘Like a flash of the kingfisher,’ he said. ‘I will reveal that this one is not unconnected with someone I know.’ He watched the effect of his words, smiling as she caught his meaning.

  She was astonished. �
��Someone?’ He smiled more broadly, waiting for her to understand. ‘Do you mean me? How could I possibly be involved?’

  He laughed and finished his wine. ‘I’ll tell you sometime, but not yet.’

  ‘Tell me now.’ She had a sudden feeling of power over him.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hugh Morton!’ He threw back his head and laughed.

  ‘You’re maddening, absolutely maddening!’ She rapped his hand with the dessert menu. This merely resulted in the hovering waiter gliding forward to take their orders. She caught Hugh’s eye. He winked and she managed to stop herself laughing.

  ‘Anything for madam?’ the waiter was asking.

  ‘Oh no, I couldn’t manage another bite.’

  Hugh ordered brandy, and when it came, selected a cigar from a box the waiter proffered.

  ‘Where do you think of as home?’ she asked, thinking the rings of smoke gave him a glamorous, man-of-the-world air. ‘I know you set part of Coming Home in Suffolk.’

  ‘Yes, it’s the place I love best, where I belong. It’s by a wild part of the coast, on a river estuary. It can be very bleak in winter but I think it’s beautiful.’

  He talked of the family house, which dated back to the early 1800s. Hugh’s grandfather, a successful banker, had inherited the house from a cousin before the First War and retired there. It was Hugh’s now, his father having died suddenly several years ago, but his mother still lived there with a daily housekeeper. There had been a house in London, too, but that had been sold to cover the death duties.

  She listened carefully when he spoke of his mother. ‘She’s a survivor – she’s had to be. I’m afraid I disappointed her. I didn’t go into a profession like my father did; he read Law and ended up a judge. I would have followed him if I hadn’t been called up, but I was – and afterwards, well, I was twenty-six when I was demobbed. I found my interests had changed. I didn’t want to continue my studies. I’d started to write when I was at university – short stories, that sort of thing – but when I left the RAF the idea for Coming Home possessed me. Once I’d worked it all out, it proved very easy to write.’