by Rachel Hore
‘And now it’s going to be published, surely your mother is pleased?’
‘Yes, she is. Now it feels as though life is finally beginning for me . In fact, I’m having a small gathering next Saturday to celebrate. Nothing very grand, a few friends, that’s all. It would be marvellous if you could come.’
‘Oh, what a pity.’ She’d promised to go to the cinema with Vivienne on Saturday.
‘You’re doing something already?’
‘A girl I share digs with. We often go out together.’
‘Why don’t you bring her if you think she’d like it?’
‘I’ll ask her. Thank you.’
Twenty-two Corton Street was a handsome, white-stucco terraced house in a quiet mews amongst the maze of streets behind the Albert Hall. Isabel and Vivienne hesitated beneath the flickering light of an ancient lamp post, arguing about whether it was indeed the right place. It seemed much grander than Isabel had ever imagined. Finally Vivienne, in her matter-of-fact way, took the risk of pushing the upper of the two electric doorbells.
‘I’m going, Hugh, don’t worry,’ trilled a female voice from within. There followed a tripping of high heels down steps and finally the front door flew open. The woman who stood there was tallish and poised. She had a square face framed by neat, wavy fair hair, with wide-spaced blue eyes. She stared, and something about the two girls seemed to surprise her. ‘Hello,’ she said finally. ‘I suppose one of you is Miss Barber?’
‘I am,’ Isabel said, relieved that they’d got the right place after all. ‘This is my friend Vivienne Stern. Mr Morton mentioned that I might bring her.’
‘Yes, of course,’ the woman said, standing back to admit them. Once inside they shook hands. ‘I’m Jacqueline Wood,’ she told them. ‘An old friend of Hugh’s.’
‘I’m so sorry we’re late,’ Isabel rushed. ‘It wasn’t easy . . .’
‘It’s a nightmare to find, the first time,’ Jacqueline said. She was older than Isabel, in her late twenties, perhaps. It was difficult to tell. The curves of her full figure were accentuated by the cinched-in waistline of her two-piece costume, which was made of a stiff silk that rustled when she moved. ‘Do come on up,’ she told them. ‘Hugh’s tied up with gin and its, poor old thing, or he’d have come down himself.’
She led Isabel and Vivienne upstairs. Isabel, close behind her, thought every movement spoke of calmness, competence and femininity down to her shapely nyloned calves and classic court shoes. Perhaps her own choice of a dress of bright green would be out of place here? Well, it was too late, there was nothing to be done.
‘Do you really work at Hugh’s publisher?’ Jacqueline said, glancing back as they reached the landing. ‘I hope you won’t be offended, but I expected someone a bit, well, older.’ She gave a well-bred little laugh.
‘That’s Mrs Symmonds you’re thinking of,’ Isabel said, intelligence dawning. ‘She’s the other editor, but it’s me who works with Hugh.’
‘Please don’t think I was implying you weren’t up to the job,’ Jacqueline said coolly. She raised her hand to push open the door of the apartment and Isabel noticed the glint of a wedding ring. Perhaps Jacqueline really was who she said she was – an old friend.
In the tiny entrance hall of the flat, Jacqueline took their coats before showing them into a charming drawing room, which was sparsely furnished and smelled of fresh paint. A cheerful fire crackled in the grate. Half a dozen people were seated or standing about the room, talking quietly. Heads turned and one or two of the men got up politely. Hugh put down the tray he was holding and hurried over.
‘Isabel, how wonderful that you came,’ he said, taking her hand in both of his. He swung round and announced. ‘Everybody, this is Isabel Barber, my editor. Hell, I love the sound of that word,’ he added in a fake American accent. ‘And this is Vivienne . . . I’m sorry?’
‘Stern,’ Vivienne said, ‘I’m Vivienne Stern.’
Isabel felt increasingly self-conscious and wrongly dressed as Hugh steered her and Vivienne towards two conservatively suited young men. One was introduced as James Steerforth and the other Victor something she didn’t quite catch. They were schoolfriends of Hugh’s, it turned out. The girls also shook hands with the wife of one of them and the fiancée of the other. The women both shifted enough for Vivienne to sit between them on the sofa. This group, who occupied the only comfortable seating, sat slightly apart from the other two people in the room, both men, who were standing to one side, more casually dressed. Hugh drew Isabel across to meet them.
One turned out to be the editor of a small literary magazine Hugh wrote for, and the other, whom she guessed to be in his forties, a scruffy-looking individual, was already a little loose with drink. Hugh referred to him as a writer of short stories, immensely talented. The man looked even unhappier at this introduction and took a great gulp of his whisky.
‘Everything’s still chaotic here, as you can see,’ Hugh told her. ‘I’m afraid we’re short of chairs.’
‘Oh, but it all looks lovely’ Isabel said, glancing about. The alcoves either side of the fireplace were lined with bookshelves, as yet half-empty. The sad-happy sound of a jazz trumpet drifted from a gramophone next to the writing desk in the window, across which thick curtains were drawn. In the flattering low light from twin table lamps, Jacqueline looked softer and more graceful as she came up behind Hugh and touched him on the shoulder. He turned.
‘Are there more glasses?’ she asked in a low voice.
‘Oh lord,’ he replied. ‘In one of the kitchen cupboards, I think.’
‘Don’t move, I’ll look for them,’ she said, patting his arm and gliding away.
Isabel wondered again about Jacqueline. She was sure Hugh had never mentioned her as one of his friends, which considering how easy they were with one another, was odd. Or perhaps it wasn’t; she had no idea what was normal in these circles.
Hugh was asking the magazine editor whether he knew Stephen McKinnon. The man certainly did, and after lighting a cigarette began to question Isabel about forthcoming books. The doorbell sounded, and Hugh disappeared to answer it.
‘You publish Alexander Berec, don’t you?’ the magazine editor said. ‘Now there’s a poet with a distinctive voice. I’ve met him once or twice. What’s his background? No idea? Nor have I. Nor has anyone. A man of mystery, Berec’
‘Do you think so? I just find him to be himself,’ Isabel said. She always thought of Berec with warm affection, how everybody in the office loved him with his gossip and his little gifts. He was one of the nicest and friendliest people she’d ever had the pleasure of meeting, and she didn’t like this man with his vague insinuations. ‘He’s a good friend of mine,’ she said, pressing her lips together.
‘I’m sure I didn’t mean to offend,’ said the man, flicking ash in the direction of an ashtray on the side table so that flakes of it drifted to the carpet. ‘Merely to point out that he keeps a great deal to himself. What do you actually know about him?’
‘Not very much,’ she said. She thought about Myra, Berec’s wife, whom she’d never met; no one knew if he was actually married. Then there were Gregor and Karin, and she knew Berec was Czech like them. She had never dared to ask about his war experiences. Berec didn’t tend to talk about himself.
‘My aunt might know, I suppose,’ she wondered aloud. If Penelope gave Berec money, which Isabel believed she did, she might know something about him.
‘Your aunt? And who, may I ask, is your aunt?’ The magazine editor looked intrigued, and Isabel lost courage, not wanting to tell him about the money.
Instead she leaned across and addressed the miserable-looking writer, who was pulling books off the shelves to examine before slotting them back in the wrong places. He ignored her, but just then Hugh reappeared, ushering another couple into the room, a woman with bright red cheeks and sparkling eyes, who clung onto the younger man she was with, chattering about another party they’d just visited where there had been a dancing monkey that h
ad bitten someone.
What a bizarre lot of people Hugh knows, Isabel thought, accepting another drink from Jacqueline. Apart from the old schoolfriends and Jacqueline, who was acting as hostess for the evening, none of them appeared to be friends of his exactly. They were business contacts, vague acquaintances. Isabel didn’t take to any of them particularly, so she eventually sought out Vivienne.
Vivienne, wearing an expression of bored politeness, threw her a thankful glance. One of the men – Isabel remembered he was James Steerforth – was holding court about the difficulty in getting petrol. There was some assertion that the Labour government was to blame, though Victor seemed convinced that the value of the dollar had something to do with it.
‘Anyway,’ Steerforth’s wife, Joan, said, ‘it’s all most inconvenient. When will things ever get back to normal?’
‘I can’t even remember what normal is!’ put in Victor’s fiancée, Constance. She had a high sweet voice like a child’s and a nervous way of laughing at the end of every sentence.
There was a silence after this, then Constance politely asked Vivienne, ‘Do you work with Miss Barber, dear?’
‘No,’ Vivienne said soberly. ‘I’m a scientist at London University. I’m researching the structures of coal and working for my PhD.’ This seemed to cause far more consternation amongst the little group than Isabel being in publishing.
‘That seems a funny sort of job for a girl,’ Joan Steerforth said. She had an odd way of pronouncing job – ‘jorb’ – as though it was not a word she came across very often. ‘I can’t think that we did any science at school, did you, Constance?’
‘Not much,’ Constance said and smiled. She was by far the nicer of the two, Isabel thought. ‘I was a terrible dunce at school, I’m afraid.’
Victor smiled indulgently at her. ‘I’ll have to be clever enough for both of us,’ he said fondly.
‘My elder brother’s girl is at Oxford,’ Steerforth said, looking at the ceiling. ‘He thinks it’s a waste of his money, but there’s no telling her that.’
‘She’s very clever, mind you, James,’ his wife put in.
‘No disputing that, old thing. Very pretty girl, too. Makes me wonder how much studying is going on.’ He was rocking back and forth now, like some giant-sized toy, a roguish leer on his face.
‘James is being naughty,’ his wife said to Vivienne. ‘He does like a little joke.’
Isabel watched Vivienne trying to smile.
‘Coal does sound a dirty thing to work with,’ Constance said to Vivienne. ‘Why did you choose that?’
‘It has an interesting crystalline molecular structure,’ Vivienne said, looking more animated. ‘It might be eventually that we find there are useful implications for how we use fuel.’
‘Yes, I see.’ Constance nodded, a serious expression on her face.
‘When you look at it under a—’
But Mrs Steerforth’s mind had jumped back to domesticity.
The coalman sent his bill in yesterday, she interrupted. ‘Eye-watering, it was.’
‘After all the nationalisation fuss you’d have thought the customer should be better off,’ her husband added. Isabel could see he liked to be at the centre of any conversation.
‘How about we pull clear of politics?’ Victor broke in, going to stand behind his fiancée on the sofa. ‘The ladies find it tedious.’ He placed a hand on Constance’s shoulder and she covered it with her own, looking up at him adoringly.
Isabel stared at him, wondering which of the many phrases forming themselves in her head actually to say and failing to say any of them. Meanwhile, she was dismayed to notice Vivienne was starting to shake. It was a moment before she realised the cause was silent laughter, not weeping.
Fortunately, just at that moment Jacqueline arrived in their midst holding a plate in an oven-gloved hand. ‘Sardines on toast anyone?’ she said gaily. ‘Girls, would you mind passing them round for me?’
Afterwards, Isabel took the empty plate into the kitchen to find Jacqueline in an apron, arranging flakes of cheese on dry biscuits.
‘Oh, thank you,’ Jacqueline said, sounding a little flustered. ‘Just put it down anywhere really.’
‘Can I do anything else?’ Isabel asked, eyeing the piles of dirty crockery with apprehension.
‘No, no, really, there’s just these. We’ll leave the clearing up for Hugh’s daily woman tomorrow.’
‘Oh goodness, yes,’ Hugh said as he sauntered into the kitchen. ‘It’s very good of you, Jacks, to do all this.’ He smiled at Isabel. ‘She didn’t have to, you know. We bachelors are not completely incompetent.’
‘Your job’s the drinks, Hugh,’ Jacqueline said briskly, planting a stray cheese flake on the final biscuit. She looked tired suddenly, tired and sad. ‘And of course I couldn’t leave you in the lurch. It had to be a proper party,’ she said to Isabel. ‘He really has something to celebrate, doesn’t he? His book and moving in here.’
‘He certainly does,’ Isabel replied. She was still gauging the relationship between these two. If Jacqueline’s husband was here, then she’d have been introduced to him by now, surely.
‘Jacks is always a good sport, aren’t you?’ Hugh said. ‘We’ve known each other since I was knee high to a grasshopper,’ he told Isabel.
Jacqueline brightened. ‘Our families live near each other in Suffolk,’ she added.
Hugh said, ‘I came in for a cloth, actually. Someone’s knocked over their glass.’ He snatched up a tea towel and hurried back into the living room. Jacqueline turned towards the sink, but Isabel had already seen her expression and was horrified. The woman was trying not to cry.
‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ Isabel asked again, twisting her hands together.
Jacqueline shook her head as she rinsed a dishcloth and wrung it out. ‘Hugh will need this,’ was all she said.
‘Shall I take it to him?’ Isabel said, reaching for the cloth from Jacqueline, but the look of resentment directed at her made her feel as though she’d been slapped.
At that moment Hugh reappeared and swapped the tea towel for the damp cloth. ‘Isabel, come along, I must introduce you to a new arrival. He’s finished writing something rather good, but his publisher’s gone broke and can’t print it. I was wondering whether Stephen might take a look.’
Isabel went with him gladly. She couldn’t think what she’d done to earn Jacqueline’s dislike.
Shortly after that, she asked to find the bathroom. When she returned to the drawing room, Vivienne was waiting for her. ‘Would you mind if we went soon?’ she whispered. ‘It’s quite late. We might get locked out.’
‘Heavens, is that the time?’ Isabel said, then seeing Vivienne’s glum face said, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, I’m a little tired, that’s all.’
Hugh was most attentive, fetching their coats for them, offering to come out and hail a taxi, but Isabel was firm that they’d find a bus. They said goodbye to everyone.
Jacqueline was nowhere to be seen. ‘Will you say goodbye to her and thank you from us?’ Isabel asked Hugh.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I expect she’s powdering her nose somewhere.’
Going down the stairs and out into the night air was a blissful escape. They hurried off towards the main road, where they hoped there’d be a bus.
‘Oh, those people,’ Isabel said to Vivienne beside her. ‘The Steerforths and their ghastly friends. Didn’t you think . . . ?’ She looked more closely at Vivienne, who’d put up a hand to cover her face, and saw that this time she wasn’t laughing, but crying.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said. ‘Oh Viv, what’s happened?’ She put her arm round her friend. This was too much for Vivienne, who began to sob. They were standing in the middle of an empty street, so Isabel took her hand and led her over to a dark building where there was a set of steps. And there they sat until Vivienne recovered herself.
‘I’m all right,’ she sniffed. ‘Shall we go on?’
/>
‘If you think you can, yes.’
They walked on in silence for a while, then Vivienne spoke, her voice at first a harsh bark. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, then continued more normally. ‘It’s what those people said. So many of them think it, don’t they? That I’m a freak doing what I do. No one will let me be.’
‘This isn’t to do with your mother again, is it?’ Isabel said, feeling her way.
‘No, I can manage her now. It’s other people. And there’s something else. Isabel, I haven’t told you this. I thought it was something to do with me – that I wasn’t handling the situation properly, that maybe it would go away of its own accord.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Isabel said.
‘I told you about that man on my research team. Well, that’s silly, they’re nearly all men, aren’t they? I mean Frank Williams.’
‘I do remember,’ Isabel said. This Frank had done something unpleasant. ‘Was he the one who didn’t invite you to something?’
‘Yes, though I suppose I shouldn’t have expected otherwise. The men go off to the canteen together every day, and of course they don’t let women in there. No, it’s worse than that. It’s the comments he makes – horrible things, dirty, vile. And a couple of the others are copying him. Anyway, my research supervisor is leaving, and Frank’s been given a promotion. He’ll be my new supervisor and I don’t think I can cope with it.’
‘Isn’t there anyone you can speak to? Surely if you explained . . .’
‘There are one or two who are sympathetic, but I can tell they don’t like to interfere. Oh Isabel, this doesn’t seem to happen to the other girl in the lab, so I must be doing something wrong.’ Her voice turned to a squeak.
‘I bet you’re not,’ Isabel said . They’d reached the main road now. ‘Look, there’s a bus!’ An icy wind was blowing across the park and they wrapped their coats tighter as they ran to reach the bus stop just in time.