The Silent Tide (11 page)

He picked up a newspaper and began to read, ignoring her. All was as before. Ted moved a chess piece, Donald gave an impatient whistle. A log settled in the fireplace. On a string above the mantelpiece, half a dozen Christmas cards fluttered pitifully in the heat.

‘I’ll go and help Mum,’ Isabel said feebly and retreated.

Upstairs, she glanced about her old bedroom, disconcerted to find it wasn’t hers any more. Lydia’s cot had been shoved alongside the bed and a rosy Lydia was in it, dressed in pyjamas, bouncing with excitement as she clutched the rail. The clothes spilling out of the drawers were Lydia’s and her teddy bear stared glassy-eyed from the dressing table. Isabel had been away for two months, and she saw no evidence that she’d ever lived here. Then her eye fell on a suitcase standing by the door.

‘The rest of your clothes are in there,’ her mother said. ‘Perhaps you can take them with you. We had to put your books in the shed. There wouldn’t have been space for the cot otherwise.’ Lydia had previously slept in their parents’ room. ‘You won’t mind sharing when you’re here, I’m sure.’

Both the family and the room had adapted to her absence.

The next two days dragged past. She helped her mother in the kitchen and played with her siblings. The atmosphere she found oppressive. Her father was morose and her mother by turns irritable and falsely cheerful. Worse, Isabel felt herself slipping back into her old, mutinous ways. On Boxing Day, only a long, lonely walk across sodden fields saved her from bad temper. Then it was dusk and her brothers walked her to the station, carrying her cases. As the train pulled away, a mixture of relief and loss overwhelmed her. But as it got nearer and nearer to London, the relief won out.

At Earl’s Court she staggered up the steps of the Underground, longing for her little room at Aunt Penelope’s, and to return to work the next morning, to see Audrey and Stephen and Trudy, and maybe Berec.

It was late by the time she reached her aunt’s. The lights were on in the living room, though the curtains were drawn. When she opened the front door and hauled her luggage inside, she heard voices, a woman’s laughter, smelled cigar smoke – Reginald’s, certainly, but there were others there, too. Gelert pushed his moist nose into her hand. ‘Good dog,’ she said, stroking his rough hair and wondering if she should announce her presence or creep up to bed. Gelert looked up at her, his eyes shining in the darkness. The living-room door opened in a rush of warm air and there stood her aunt, a vital, glowing presence in a cloud of French scent. She held a glass tumbler in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ Penelope said, her voice slurred. ‘I thought I heard the door, but I wasn’t sure. Are you all right? Come in and have a drink. They’re just a few friends.’ She stood back and Isabel saw past her into the room. Reginald was there, sprawled in an armchair. He nodded in her direction, but did not smile. How unreadable she always found him, though she understood why her aunt might be charmed by his regular good looks. There was another couple there, too, a man of Reginald’s age and, sitting in the other armchair, a much younger woman with neatly waved pale hair and an air of fragility, but when Isabel was introduced to them she didn’t retain their names, and she soon shyly presented the excuse of having to get up for work next morning and departed for bed.

She tried to settle to sleep, but she was anxious, as though little demons hurled barbed thoughts into her mind. How difficult the last two days had been and how alone she felt. From downstairs came the women’s laughter, and the clink of glasses and the men’s low voices.

After half an hour of this she gave up, got out of bed, shuffled into slippers and dressing gown and slipped downstairs. Gelert, curled up on his mat in the kitchen, barely raised his head. There was a little milk in a jug in the scullery, and while it warmed in a saucepan on the stove, she noticed an envelope lying on the top of a cabinet, her aunt’s reading spectacles weighting it down. The handwriting drew her attention. It was familiar. She poured the foaming milk into a teacup, then glanced at the letter again, frowning. The writing seemed very much like someone’s she knew – her boss, Stephen’s. But why would Stephen write to Aunt Penelope? She knew they were acquainted – after all, Berec often spoke of Penelope’s generosity to him. Perhaps it wasn’t Stephen’s writing, perhaps she thought it was because she’d been thinking about him just now, and about being back in the office.

Emily

‘Quick, she’s off the phone now,’ Gillian’s assistant Becky said, listening at the door of her boss’s office. She knocked, announced Joel and Emily, and ushered them inside. It was a pleasant room overlooking Berkeley Square gardens. Being early December, several Christmas cards were already lined up on the windowsill.

‘Joel, how wonderful to meet you at last,’ Gillian said, coming out from behind her desk and shaking his hand. ‘Welcome to Parchment. We’re all absolutely thrilled to be publishing you.’ She adjusted the long gauzy scarf hanging over her shoulder and indicated the sofa and chairs where they should sit down.

‘It’s me that’s delighted,’ Joel said in his warm voice with its soft northern lilt.

‘It’ll be a marvellous book,’ Gillian continued. She leaned forward in her chair, fixing all her attention on him. ‘Now do you have a title for it yet? No? Well, we’ll have to put on our thinking caps.’

Emily, who’d said nothing yet, secretly admired how Gillian could switch on the charm with authors, shaking hands and making them feel special, all in the space of a few minutes out of her crazily busy schedule. She’d often caught herself studying Gillian, learning from her.

‘And how is dear Jacqueline?’ Gillian asked, her expression now one of intense concern. ‘It must be so difficult for her. They were married for nearly sixty years, weren’t they? You will send her my warmest regards? I simply must go down and visit when I have some time.

‘I can’t say I know her well, but I think she’s doing all right,’ Joel said with the slightest touch of humour. ‘I expect she’d love to see you.’

‘And in the meantime is Emily looking after you properly?’ She threw Emily one of her keenest stares.

‘I’d say so.’ Joel said with a laugh. ‘No complaints there. She’s taking me to lunch later to celebrate, aren’t you, Emily?’

‘Joel’s working up in the boardroom this morning,’ Emily told her boss. ‘I got some files from the archive for him to look through. The critical reaction to
The Silent Tide
was amazing. I was reading some of the reviews.’

‘You’ve made quite sure no one else wants the boardroom?’ Gillian’s eyes narrowed.

‘I did check with Becky.’ Emily was set momentarily off-balance. Gillian didn’t like her editors to get above themselves, and booking the boardroom must have sounded a bit grand, but it had been the only suitable room free.

‘Well then, I expect it’s all right.’ Gillian rose to indicate that time was up. ‘Joel, it’s been utterly delightful. And we’ll look forward to reading the finished script. When will that be?’

‘I’ve already drafted a lot of it,’ Joel said. ‘Most of the research is done, so I’d say another eight or nine months.’

‘That means . . . let’s say September. Marvellous, marvellous. Well, goodbye.’ And somehow Joel and Emily found themselves propelled outside and the door closed behind them.

Joel looked relieved. ‘Gillian’s very nice,’ he said, once they were out of Becky’s hearing.

‘Yes,’ Emily said carefully. ‘She can be.’

At lunchtime, she went upstairs to the boardroom to find him still surrounded by papers.

‘Do you need a few more minutes?’ she asked. ‘I could let the restaurant know we’ll be late.’

‘No, I’ve finished. But come and look at this.’

She sat beside him at the table and he pushed one of the files, opened at a page of faded type, between them. It was a letter from Hugh Morton dated June 1954 to someone he addressed as ‘Stephen’.

‘Stephen McKinnon was his publisher at the time,’ Joel explained.
‘The Silent Tide
must just have been published. It’s this part that interests me.’ He read aloud: ‘“The response to the novel has been better than anything I could have hoped for after the struggles of the last few years. Little Lorna is well, thank God. Jacqueline is marvellous with her and we live a very peaceful life here. The garden is at its most beautiful at this time of year and I sit in the sun and think that life cannot be more perfect.” Now doesn’t that sound like a contented man?’

‘He does sound happy.’ Emily could imagine how lovely that Suffolk garden must be in summer.

‘Doesn’t he just?’ Joel made a final note, then closed the file. ‘From what I’ve read elsewhere, I’d say it’s the time he was happiest in his life.’

‘What does he mean by his struggles? Writing the book and it being published?’

‘Mostly, yes.’ For a moment Emily thought Joel was going to add something more, but all he said was, ‘Well, I was pleased to find that. And I’ve cleared up some points of chronology, so this has been really useful, thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’ It was companionable sitting here with him and she liked seeing him at work. It made her feel a part of what he was doing.

‘May I have photocopies of these reviews?’ he said, indicating some he’d marked out. ‘They’re all new to me.’

‘Of course.’ She gathered up the files. ‘We ought to go and bag our table, though. Why don’t I do the copying for you later and put them in the post?’

‘Actually,’ Emily lifted her wine glass in a toast, ‘yours is one of the first books I’ve acquired for Parchment.’

‘Well, it’s a celebration for both of us, then,’ Joel said, smiling as they clinked glasses.

They were sitting at a table in the window of a first-floor restaurant overlooking Green Park, where a few brave souls huddled on the benches, hunched against the sharp wind. The place had only been open for a few months, and given how empty it was, Emily didn’t think it would last much longer, though the food was good. The waiter brought Joel a large plate of scallops and Emily a spicy chicken dish. Because it was a special occasion, Emily had broken the firm’s stringent rules and ordered a decent bottle of wine.

They argued amiably about what kind of jacket might be put on the book. Jacqueline, Joel told her, would like the portrait hanging in the hall at Stone House, but Emily felt it was too impressionistic and not recognisable as Hugh. She recommended a photographic approach, maybe the studio portrait of him she’d seen in an obituary – was it in the
Guardian?
– looking intense and reflective. Joel said he’d talk to Jacqueline.

Joel talked a great deal too much about Jacqueline, Emily thought. The woman was insisting that Hugh’s alleged affair with his publicist be dealt with firmly. According to her, it was just a nasty rumour put about by a gossip columnist he’d annoyed, a view Joel agreed with, by the way. She’d also been difficult about him interviewing Lorna.

‘Jacqueline kept coming into the room,’ Joel said, eating a scallop. ‘Poor Lorna, she was flustered.’

‘I’m a little worried that you’re not getting a free hand to write this book.’

‘I don’t think it’s a problem,’ he said, clearly wishing he hadn’t said so much. ‘Why shouldn’t she express an opinion? She’s not telling me what to write. And she has let me see all the papers so far as I know . . . I worry when you look at me like that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘That intense expression . . . It’s like the way Gillian looks at you. As if you don’t believe me.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t know I was doing it.’ She laughed, uncertain whether she liked the comparison. Perhaps she was picking up a few tricks from her boss. ‘I do believe you. It’s just that this book’s very important to me.’

‘It is to me, too,’ Joel said with feeling.

‘Of course. But you must feel free to tell the whole story, not the Jacqueline Morton version.’

‘You have to trust me to do that,’ he said, and she sensed steel behind the softness of his voice.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and changed the subject. She referred to the letter they had looked at together in the boardroom. ‘You said it was the writing of
The Silent Tide
that he meant when he talked about his struggle. It made me think. It’s such a powerful and mature work, isn’t it? Very different from his quiet first novel. A lot of people haven’t even heard of
Coming Home.’

‘I’m sure you’re right. He must have put all his energy into writing
The Silent Tide.
It was such an ambitious novel, of course it would have been a struggle to write.’

Emily had an uncomfortable feeling that he was keeping something back.

‘What or who inspired him to write it, do you think?’ She remembered Jacqueline’s coyness. ‘Surely not
her.
I don’t see it. Jacqueline’s a strong person, but she doesn’t have the passion and charm of a character like Nanna. Could there have been someone else?’

Joel sighed and reached for the wine bottle.

‘Possibly,’ he said, filling their glasses. ‘Morton was married before, you know.’

‘Was
he? I didn’t know that.’

‘Briefly, yes. I haven’t been able to find out much about her. Certainly not from Jacqueline.’

‘What was her name?’ Emily was intrigued.

‘Her name was Isabel. Isabel Barber.’

‘Isabel?’ Emily said in surprise.

‘Yes. Does the name mean anything to you?’

‘Not really. It’s just that, you remember outside Ipswich station, I showed you a copy of
Coming Home?’

‘Yes, but I was desperate to get rid of that bloody lorry.’

‘I found it in the office. Hugh Morton had inscribed it to an Isabel. I’d been going to ask you about her.’

‘Very little is known about her. She wasn’t mentioned in most of the obituaries. One said that she left him and died not long afterwards, drowned in the floods of fifty-three.’

‘How awful.’

‘There isn’t anyone much left to ask. I talked to an old family friend of Jacqueline’s about the matter, but he’d never met Isabel. He said—’