by Susan Hill
Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Susan Hill
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Copyright
About the Book
You’re a young woman. You can choose. Which career to pursue. Who to have sex with. Who to marry and have children – or not – with. This is now.
Step into the shoes of Olive. You’re a happy, open-hearted girl. Your (tricky) mother is dead and you live with your father in a solid, Edwardian house with apple trees in the garden. Your passion for books gets you easily into university, where the world is surely waiting for you.
There, you meet a boy. But then you make a mistake – the kind any one of us could make – and face an impossible choice. You are young, still, and full of hope. You can’t possibly know how that mistake will sit in your heart. Or that when you get a job at a school you will fall in love with an older colleague. But the affair must stay secret; the world won’t have it any other way.
All you have ever wanted is for your heart to be free. But you are living in a time and place where freedoms we now take for granted had the power to destroy.
About the Author
Susan Hill has been a professional writer for over fifty years. Her books have won awards and prizes including the Whitbread, the John Llewellyn Rhys and the Somerset Maugham; and have been shortlisted for the Booker. She was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Honours. Her novels include Strange Meeting, I’m the King of the Castle, In the Springtime of the Year and A Kind Man. She has also published autobiographical works and collections of short stories as well as the Simon Serrailler series of crime novels. The play of her ghost story The Woman in Black has been running in London’s West End since 1988. She has two adult daughters and lives in North Norfolk.
Also by Susan Hill
Fiction
Gentleman and Ladies
A Change for the Better
I’m the King of the Castle
The Albatross and Other Stories
Strange Meeting
The Bird of Night
A Bit of Singing and Dancing
In the Springtime of the Year
The Woman in Black
Mrs De Winter
The Mist in the Mirror
Air and Angels
The Service of Clouds
The Boy Who Taught the Beekeeper to Read
The Man in the Picture
The Beacon
The Small Hand
A Kind Man
Dolly
Black Sheep
Printer’s Devil Court
Non-Fiction
The Magic Apple Tree
Family
Howards End is on the Landing
The Simon Serrailler Crime Novels
The Various Haunts of Men
The Pure in Heart
The Risk of Darkness
The Vows of Silence
The Shadows in the Street
The Betrayal of Trust
A Question of Identity
For Children
The Battle for Gullywith
The Glass Angels
Can it be True?
From the Heart
Susan Hill
1
EVELYN PIPER HAD prayed for a family of three sons, only to be disappointed by giving birth to a single daughter. Olive was a calm and peaceful baby, a contented child and a pleasant, rather self-contained girl, and at every stage had the knack of being liked, but was never able to believe that this was the case.
Her mother had wanted compensation for producing just one child, a girl, by her being, at the very least, a beauty. But Olive had a plain face and by the age of fourteen she was short-sighted and so hid it behind large spectacles, which made her look startled. In fact, when it had settled into its adult form, she was attractive, simply because her natural expression was one of open friendliness. She had a perfect skin, silk-smooth when others suffered from varying degrees of acne, and her brown eyes were both warm and intelligent. But the large glasses did a good job of hiding all that, too.
‘Whoever would be drawn to you?’
Olive was not unhappy with the implied answer, and if young men were not drawn to her, friends were. There was everything to like about her. She was a sympathetic listener, she was good-tempered and she had a certain shy wit. She was interested in things. She grasped things. She was tactful and truthful, and she did not tell tales.
And all the time her mother, though always loving her, could find nothing about her daughter in which to take pride.
Evelyn Piper died suddenly when Olive was seventeen and preparing for her A levels.
An unexpectedly large number of people came to the funeral, most of whom Olive did not know, though some she recognised – neighbours, a cousin. But others, all women, came from the Townswomen’s Guild, to which Evelyn had belonged. She had led an active social life during lunch hours and in the afternoons, though had said little to her family about it, and in the evenings had rarely ventured out except to the local repertory theatre, two or three times a year, with her husband Ralph – she had despised the cinema – and twice a year to Ladies’ Night at the Masonic Lodge.
‘I’m glad we decided to do the tea,’ Olive said to her father that evening. They were sitting in the small back room overlooking the garden. Her father called it his study, though he only read the paper there, or listened to Light Music programmes, such as the ‘Palm Court Orchestra’ on the radio. It had been the room his own father had occupied as a study, for this was the house in which he had grown up, and which he had inherited. He had moved back in the year after he had married Evelyn.
The windows were open onto the May garden, and always afterwards the smell of wallflowers brought back that evening of the funeral.
‘There was never any question of not giving tea, was there?’
There had been. Twice he had said that he was sure it wouldn’t be necessary, that few people would come, so that Olive had almost given up on the idea herself. As it turned out, there had not been enough to eat and too few teacups. She had had to rush about collecting empty ones and washing and replacing them and cutting small cakes up to make smaller ones.
‘I’m glad we did it, anyway. People were very appreciative.’
She looked across at her father in profile, sitting in his wing chair, and had not the least idea what he was feeling. She had never known what either of her parents felt, though she had gathered this and that about what they thought.
It was disconcerting. She loved him. He loved her, she knew. Once he had said, with a small smile, that he was very relieved her mother had not got her wish for three sons. But she did not know him.
Of course he had been badly shaken, and deeply upset when it had happened, in such a frighteningly sudden way. Evelyn had been walking in through the garden door, carrying two pots of seedlings, and saying ‘I’m still worried about late frosts, you know’, and
on the ‘you know’ she had fallen to the ground. Olive had been immediately behind her, Ralph had just come in through the front door, from work, and was hanging his hat on its peg. There had been a soft thud as she had gone down, and then she had simply lain, crumpled and utterly still. Olive had not realised that people could die in that way, walking, talking – dead.
2
IF EVERYONE LIKED Olive, Margaret Reid liked her in particular, because Olive had defended her against the others after she had been seen in town one Saturday, holding hands with a boy. Word spread, remarks were whispered, glances exchanged.
‘She is quite pretty.’
‘What has that got to do with it?’ Olive had spoken quietly but still silenced the talk.
‘Ol, it’s got everything to do with it!’
‘I’m sure it’s because he just likes her.’
Sighs. Oh, Olive, honestly. Eye rolls.
‘Anyway, more to the point, who saw them? Did you, Olive?’
But she had not.
‘So who did? Come on.’
‘Loads of people. Sheila. Lois. Penny C.’
‘So, where are they?’
But they were all in the Science set and not in the Sixth Form Common Room that morning.
It was still half being talked about when Margaret came in to fetch her music case. The room went quiet. Margaret stood, looking round at them, defiant. But she went red and Olive saw that she was close to tears. She said, ‘I think you should leave Margaret alone and probably apologise. She hasn’t done anything wrong.’
‘How do you –’
‘Shut up!’ Olive never spoke sharply or raised her voice, but she did so now. And because it was her and everyone liked her, and because her mother had died, they stopped. The afternoon bell rang. People got up. The door swung open and shut, open and shut. After that, the subject was not mentioned again.
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ Margaret said now, across the table with its long white cloth, ‘but it’s not exactly as if I’m unique. Esther Barrett’s been going out with Adrian for three terms.’ She had invited Olive to have Saturday-morning coffee and ices with her in the Garden Restaurant at Archer & Saunders, where the smart local women met.
‘We should wear hats.’
So Margaret had on a small straw one with an upturned brim and a bunch of mauve artificial flowers. Olive only had a beret. Her mother had worn hats, to the Townswomen’s Guild lunches, but she and her father had given them all away, with the rest of her clothes.
‘You wouldn’t want any of these,’ Ralph Piper had said, and it was true. But Olive had felt hurt all the same, wanting to have decided for herself. To her father, she was still seven or eight years old.
She had put the beret on at an angle, and at once heard Evelyn’s voice, regretting the large spectacles.
‘You would think I could at least have had a daughter with perfect eyesight.’
She and Margaret had a silver pot of coffee, and ices in tall tulip glasses, white pink white pink, in layers, with cochineal syrup running down the sides like blood and wafers set jauntily.
‘This is my treat, by the way,’ Margaret said. ‘My mother gave me extra pocket money for it, when I told her you stood up for me. But anyway, let’s not talk about all that.’
Anyone else would have asked about the boy she had been seen out with, but such a question never entered Olive’s head.
‘I came here with my mother once,’ she said, looking round. The restaurant was full. ‘I was nine. I knocked my glass of squash all over the tablecloth.’
She could see the vivid orange stain spreading. Some of it had splashed onto the plate of her mother’s friend Irma, soaking the sponge base of her cake. Olive had cried. She had not been brought here again.
‘Some Saturdays, there are mannequins. They twirl between the tables with their hands on their hips. They model spring suits and fur stoles.’
Olive was disappointed there were none today.
‘We’ll come again then.’
Was this the way it came about, the shift from being a girl to being a woman? With coffee and ices in Archer & Saunders which you paid for yourself?
‘What are you going to do, Ol? Watch out, you’ve got red dribbling down your chin. Maybe you should nudge that beret a bit more at an angle … do you think? Look in the wall mirrors.’
How did Margaret know all this?
‘What do you mean, what am I going to do?’
‘A career. Joyce and Sheila are applying to medical school.’
‘I know, but both their fathers are doctors.’
‘I’m thinking of the WRAF.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘The men, what else?’
‘Oh.’ Olive had never met anyone in the Services.
‘Or the Wrens. Only they don’t get to go to sea.’
‘Do they fly aeroplanes, in the WRAF?’
‘Yes. They had to let them, once the war got under way. Too many men had got killed. Like my dad.’
Margaret had only mentioned her father once before. He had been shot down during the Battle of Britain, a month before she was born. When Olive had said that she was sorry, Margaret had shrugged. ‘Don’t be. I’m not. How can you be sorry for someone you never knew? Tony’s the only dad I’ve ever had.’
Her mother had remarried before the end of the war. How did it feel, Olive thought now, never to have known your real father? To call someone ‘Dad’ who was not? But it seemed unimportant to Margaret.
Now she stuck her long spoon back in the empty glass.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ll probably end up doing shorthand and typing, you know – secretarial college. You can go to London to do that.’
‘Do you want to go to London?’
Margaret put her hand on Olive’s for a second. ‘You are sweet, Oli. I know why I like you.’
‘Do you?’
She saw that Margaret had drawn a little tick at the corners of her eyes with black pencil. She had never looked so closely at another girl’s face before.
‘Sweetie, everybody wants to go to London … well, of course they do!’
Do I, then? Olive thought.
It was something else that had never occurred to her.
3
‘OLIVE – COME IN and sit down. Isn’t it a beautiful day? Makes me wish we could do all this out in the garden.’
The Careers mistress was the only married teacher in the school which, for some reason they all recognised but could not explain, made her more relaxed with them, and friendlier, less outwardly formal, though she could be as strict as the rest when necessary. She just did not seem to feel it was necessary very often and because she treated the sixth form less like children, more like young women, they behaved well. They liked her. Mrs Pratley – Geography and Careers. But they knew that her name was Alison. They thought of her as Alison. The rest of the staff seemed hardly even to possess Christian names – they were M. L. Philips, E. Pearman, R. J. Black …
Why was Mrs Pratley less stiff? Why did she simply seem more human?
They were in the small room off the front hall, sometimes used for waiting visitors. The sun was on the front of the building, making a halo behind Mrs Pratley’s fair hair. She leaned back, smiling at Olive. There was even something softer and less formal about the way she dressed – pale blue shirt, navy skirt and a white cardigan slung round her shoulders. Small stud earrings. Lipstick.
‘Normal,’ someone had once said, when they were discussing her. ‘She’s just normal and they’re not.’
‘They are – normal for their type anyway.’
‘Exactly.’
What was it? A wedding ring? Was that all the rest of them needed to change them entirely?
‘Right, Olive … you go first. I’m here to give you any information you may want, or even some ideas. But you probably have plenty of your own.’
‘No. No, not really.’
‘What, none at all? Don’t tell me you’re one of those who�
��ve “never really thought about it, Mrs Pratley”.’
She had thought about it. She had made lists. What she was good at. What she was hopeless at. What she enjoyed. Those were easy enough to compile, but what she could see herself doing for the rest of her life, was not.
‘Let’s look at some of the more obvious ones then. I doubt if you’re nursing material, and in any case, you’ve only done the basic required sciences. According to Miss Box …’ She glanced down at a folder open on the desk. Olive saw her own name, upside down, above lists of exam marks, and unreadable teacher comments.
‘Miss Box … feels you are “sadly lacking in any sense of form or design though your ideas for colour are strong”. You don’t play an instrument, not in the choir … no outstanding sports results. And though I always felt you were politely interested, you did not strike me as any sort of a geographer.’ She smiled at Olive, an almost conspiratorial smile. ‘Oh dear!’
Olive smiled back. She did not feel challenged in any negative way by Mrs Pratley. She felt that somehow they were on the same side. Otherwise, she realised that she was just happy to be sitting here, as the sun moved round and warmed her arms. She would like to have stayed and talked, not about herself and her future. Just talked.
‘It’s good to rule things out, Olive … what you might call the peripherals.’ Mrs Pratley’s cardigan was slipping off her shoulder. She hitched it back and the diamond on her engagement ring flashed in the sun.
‘So – what is Olive Piper really like? Tell me. What are your strengths, as you see them? What gives you the most pleasure? Does anything interest and inspire you so much that you want to go on with it beyond the point where you need not?’
‘Oh yes. Medieval English writers. What they thought, what they wrote. Their language. How their minds worked. And then the Metaphysical poets. We’re actually studying the Romantics, Wordsworth and Coleridge and the rest. I hate them – they’re … they’re like pastry.’
Mrs Pratley laughed, showing small, very even teeth. Good teeth. Her lipstick was soft cherry pink, on full lips.
‘And then look at poets like John Donne and George Herbert and a poem like “They flee from me that sometime did me seek …” and … then go back to Chaucer even.’