The Silent Tide (3 page)

‘It is very cold today, yes?’ he said, peering over the paper at the fire, which was beginning to roar.

‘Very,’ she agreed.

She sat gingerly in one of the two armchairs, pulled off her gloves and rubbed her hands together as she looked about. The room was dark, even for a day without sun, owing to a great honeysuckle that grew across the window outside, its tangled tendrils knocking on the glass in the wind.

Her aunt, she guessed, was fond of ornaments, and must be very sociable, for correspondence cards and invitations fought for space with china dogs and shepherdesses on the mantelpiece. There was a crowded bookcase against one wall. A slim book had been left open face down on a side table. She craned her head but couldn’t make out the title or author.

‘There,’ said the man, lowering the newspaper and stepping back. In silent satisfaction they watched the fire, now leaping merrily. Soon the room started to feel cosy, rather than gloomy. Isabel unbuttoned her coat.

‘Good.’ The man tossed the folded paper into a box and balanced himself on the arm of the second chair, where he mopped his shiny face with a handkerchief. Finally he extracted a cigarette packet from his inside pocket and offered it to her.

‘No, thank you, I don’t,’ she said, touched, for though he sought to disguise the fact, only one was left in the packet.

He took it himself, then paused, changing his mind. ‘Save it for later,’ he said with a shrug and put the packet away.

The lilt of his speech reminded her of someone. At the end of the war, three or four years ago, a Polish family had come to settle in the small Kent town where Isabel’s family lived. It was the eldest boy, Jan, she came to know, a tall, narrow-framed lad with passionate eyes, who gave her a lift home once on the back of his bicycle. She smiled, remembering their laughter as they’d clattered down the hill, then frowned at the memory of her father’s angry face at the door as the bike wobbled to a halt outside their pretty cottage. She still wasn’t sure whether it was her hoydenish behaviour that had annoyed him more, or her association with a foreigner. All she knew was that her father had returned from the war a different man. Three cruel years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Bavaria had soured all his sweetness, making him prone to bouts of furious temper. She’d not seen Jan since last year, when her father found a better job and her family had to move near it. The ugly pebbledash house on the pre-war housing estate was only a dozen miles from her old school and the friends she’d grown up with, but it might as well have been a hundred.

The stranger was watching her now with an interest that was sympathetic rather than discomforting.

‘It seems that we must make our own introducings,’ he said. ‘I am Berec, Alexander Berec.’ He rose and offered her his hand with a gracious little bow that charmed her. Close up, she saw that, less charmingly, his eyes were puffy, with violet shadows beneath.

‘I’m Isabel Barber,’ she said for the second time that morning. Not Izzy, no more Izzy, she decided. ‘You are waiting for my aunt? Well, of course you must be.’

‘Mrs Tyler is your aunt?’ Berec said, sitting down again. ‘Ah, she is an admirable woman, is she not?’

‘Is she?’ Isabel said, breaking out in hope. ‘You might think this odd, but I don’t know her very well.’

She couldn’t remember when she’d last seen Penelope. Five or six years ago, perhaps, soon after Isabel’s grandmother had died. Her elegantly dressed aunt had arrived by taxi in a cloud of scent with some paperwork for Isabel’s mother to sign. Plainly ill at ease in the cramped cottage kitchen, she hadn’t stayed long, but Isabel often thought of her and she came to represent the life she longed for, a life less ordinary than hers with its routine domesticity, her anxious mother’s scrimping and saving. It made Isabel feel better that Berec thought Penelope admirable. Her parents certainly didn’t seem to think so.

Berec looked curious, but before of the Dome of Discovery. would b she could muster an explanation about the icy wastes that lay between the two sisters, they heard a frantic tripping of high heels on the path outside, then the front door banged and sounds of commotion came from the hall. Berec and Isabel jumped to their feet as the sitting-room door flew open and a large, slavering beast burst into the room, dragging a beautiful auburn-haired woman in its wake. Isabel backed away from the beast and into the shadows.

‘For goodness’ sake, Gelert,’ the woman cried, losing her grip on its leash. The animal, a sort of big hairy greyhound with a comical-looking bandage round its head, galloped over to Berec and greeted him rapturously. Isabel’s attention, however, was fixed on the woman. Aunt Penelope’s presence lit up the room. Expensively dressed, perfectly made-up, she was every bit as Isabel remembered: a younger, more glamorous version of Pamela Barber, Isabel’s mother.

Penelope, pulling off her gloves, didn’t appear to notice Isabel. ‘Dear Berec, what a lovely surprise,’ she said. ‘We’ve been at the vet’s. Gelert’s been fighting again. Not his fault, poor boy, it’s that awful pug at number four. It simply attacked him, with no provocation.’ Gelert’s tail whipped the carpet.

‘Mrs Tyler, my dear Penelope, I’m so sorry about your poor animal,’ Berec said, looking as hangdog as Gelert. ‘I have come once more, I’m afraid, to throw myself on your gracious mercy. I returned home very late last night after dinner with friends, and Myra, once more she has locked the door against me. If you have a little money to lend me, only until Friday . . .’

‘Oh, Berec,’ Penelope Tyler said, folding her arms, as though admonishing a small boy. ‘I must say, you do look a little . . . well, did you sleep on Gregor’s floor again?’ He nodded and she tutted. ‘You’re welcome to use the bathroom, of course.’

It was then that she saw Isabel. ‘But you’d better introduce me to your friend.’ Looking at her properly for the first time, Penelope’s expression altered from polite interest through dawning recognition to blank amazement.

‘H-hello,’ Isabel said, stepping forward.

‘She says she is your niece,’ Berec said, looking from one to the other, bewildered.

‘I know exactly who Isabel is, Berec,’ Penelope told him. ‘My dear child, what on earth-?’

‘I had nowhere else to go,’ Isabel interrupted, her voice quavering with emotion. ‘They don’t want me at home. Not really. I can’t seem to do anything right and they’re always cross with me.’

Now both her aunt and Berec were gaping at her in astonishment. Penelope broke the spell by moving close to place a finger beneath Isabel’s chin and study the girl’s face. ‘Mmm,’ she murmured again, releasing her. ‘So you came to me. How very flattering.’ She stepped back to take a longer view of her and did not seem pleased by what she saw. ‘So it’s your suitcase I tripped over in the hall. What have you got in it? Bricks?’

‘Books,’ replied Isabel.

‘Ha!’ Berec looked delighted at this.

Penelope frowned him into silence and said, ‘ Does your mother know you’re here?’

‘No,’ said Isabel in a tight voice. ‘I left a note, but didn’t say where I’d gone.’ They’d drag her back, she knew they would. She remembered the shouting match with her father at breakfast that morning, how he’d called her an of the Dome of Discovery. would b‘idle slut’. After he’d stormed off to work she’d run upstairs and cast herself weeping on her bed. There she’d lain listening to her mother hustle Isabel’s twin brothers off to school, then little Lydia being buckled into her pushchair, howling, for the daily trip to the shops.

Her mother called up the stairs,
‘Izzy, washing-up!’
as she left the house.

Isabel had sat up, fuming. She was not an
idle
slut. Housework, child-minding, washing! That’s all her parents thought she was good for. Well, she wouldn’t put up with it any more. It was time to carry out her plan. She’d got up and flown furiously about, packing clothes and books and the little money she had. Casting one final look round the featureless house that had never felt like home, she tried to ignore the unwashed bowls, the toast crumbs on the floor, the basket of clothes for ironing. On the way out she had slammed the front door so hard that the last of the summer’s geraniums shivered in their window box.

‘I found you in Mummy’s address book,’ Isabel told her aunt now. ‘You were the only person I could think of to come to.’ She tried a pleading look, but she found no sympathy in the other woman’s face and the look faltered.

Isabel had never been sure why her mother disapproved of her younger sister so much, but supposed it was something to do with the fact that Aunt Penelope had somewhere along the way dispensed with her husband Uncle Jonny, though the exact circumstances had never been explained to the Barber off spring. She did know that Penelope lived in London and liked clothes very much, and going out, and that she didn’t have any children. It all sounded so interesting and exciting, and the disparaging way her parents spoke about Penelope only lent her extra mystique in Isabel’s eyes: references to ‘the odd kind of people Penelope might know’ or ‘Penelope’s idea of a good time’.

‘I thought you had stayed on at school,’ Penelope said severely. ‘Last time I telephoned your mother, she told me you’d passed your exams with flying colours. How long ago was that? I’ve hardly spoken to her recently.’

‘When we moved,’ Isabel said, ‘I’d just finished school. Now we’re living in the middle of nowhere and there’s nothing for me to do. That I want to do, I mean,’ she added hastily. ‘I won’t be their skivvy any more, I just won’t.’ Her voice rose to a squeak. ‘Please, can’t I stay here with you, Aunt?’

‘Goodness me, child, I can’t have you living here. It’s out of the question. But never mind that now. The most important thing to do is to telephone and let your mother know you’re safe.’

‘No!’ Isabel cried. ‘They’ll only tell me to come home. I left a note. I was going to write to them – in a little while.

When I’d found a job and somewhere to live.’ She sounded braver than she felt. In truth, she was in turmoil. If her aunt wouldn’t have her, where could she go?

‘And you imagine that these things will happen instantly?’ Penelope said in a quiet voice. ‘Isabel, we must at least assure them that you haven’t been murdered or worse. I should be sorry to learn that you had grown up cruel.’

Isabel turned her face away, her mouth quivering. After a moment she mastered herself sufficiently to mutter, ‘All right, you can telephone. But I’m not going back.’

‘We’ll see. I suppose, thinking about it, I could keep you here for a few days. Just a few days, mind. That would give everyone time to calm down.’

‘Could you? I’m not . . .’ Isabel started, but Penelope was already sweeping from the room. ‘Ohhh,’ the girl cried. She sank onto the sofa, arms crossed, her small face cast in misery.

‘Do not despair.’ She’d forgotten that Berec had been listening all this while. He was sitting by the fire, silently stroking the dog.

‘How can I not? I’ve nowhere to go. I need a job – any job. What is it you do?’

Berec shrugged. ‘This thing and that thing,’ he said. ‘I have to be free to write my poems. People like your aunt are very kind to me.’

‘You’re a poet, really?’ she gasped, for a moment forgetting her troubles. He gestured to the book on the table before her and she reached and scooped it up. Sure enough,
Alexander Berec
was printed on the jacket.
‘Reflections on a Strange Land
,’ she read aloud. ‘Is that this country, or where you came from?’

‘You’ll have to read and see,’ he replied with a smile. She turned the pages, glancing at the poems. Decidedly melancholy, she thought them.

‘My first collection,’ Berec murmured. ‘You will see, here.’ He leaned forward and showed her a page near the beginning. A line read,
My thanks to Mrs Penelope Tyler for her generous support
. ‘Your aunt,’ Berec said proudly, ‘she is my patroness.’

Isabel’s mouth formed an O. Her aunt knew a poet and she, Isabel, had met him, this gentle, charming man. She looked up at him, her eyes shining. ‘I love poetry,’ she said. ‘And books and reading. I wanted to go on to university, you know, but my father said it would be a waste of time.’

Berec clapped his hands together. ‘I guessed you were an intellectual young woman,’ he said, amused. ‘Why, I tell you what, I will introduce you to some people. Come along tonight. Wait.’ He fished the newspaper out of the coal-box, tore off a corner, then using his own book as a rest, scribbled an address.

‘Six o’clock this evening,’ he whispered, passing the piece of paper to Isabel just as the door handle turned. ‘I’ll wait for you outside.’

Isabel thrust the precious scrap deep in her coat pocket just as Penelope re-entered the room. The girl looked up eagerly, but something sombre in her aunt’s face alarmed her.

‘What did my mother say?’ she asked, rising to her feet.

‘It wasn’t she who answered,’ Penelope said, biting her crimson lower lip.

‘Not my father?’

‘She found your note and panicked, called him home from the office.’

‘Oh.’ He’d be furious.

‘What he said was . . . well, I’m afraid you’re to return home immediately. He is, I think, a little upset.’

Isabel took a step back. ‘I won’t go. He can’t make me.’

‘And if you don’t go, he says – my dear, I’m sure he doesn’t mean it – that he doesn’t want you back at all.’

‘Oh,’ Isabel repeated, full realisation of her situation dawning.

‘I’m unsure what to advise. Can you really not go back?’

‘I can’t, it’s simply impossible.’

‘I see. Well, I suppose you may stay here for a night or two. A short while. Until you find work, perhaps.’ Penelope was reasoning with herself.

‘Could I not live here if I paid my way? I’d not be any trouble.’

‘Isabel, it wouldn’t work.’

Though wrapped up in her own concerns, Isabel caught a sudden glimpse of secrets her aunt kept close.

The address Alexander Berec had given her took her north of Oxford Street, to a tall, narrow Georgian house in Percy Street, on a corner at a junction where the road curved in a sort of elbow. A painted sign, palely visible in the lamplight, announced it to be the offices of McKinnon & Holt Publishers. Curtains were drawn across the ground-floor windows, but chinks of light, snatches of voices and laughter betrayed a party going on within. There was no sign anywhere of Berec, but as she hovered outside, mustering the courage to ring the bell, he came hurrying round the corner. ‘Isabel,’ he cried, kissing her cheeks. ‘I am so pleased you came. Mrs Tyler . . . ?’