The Silent Tide (7 page)

Around half past ten or eleven of an evening, her aunt would arrive home, wrapped in her fur coat, her eyes gleaming as brightly as the pearls at her ears, her skin flushed from the warmth of the taxi, and she’d talk animatedly of the party she’d been to or the play she’d seen. Twice, she’d brought someone back with her, a man she introduced to Isabel merely as Reginald. Reginald was fiftyish, tall and silent with a blandly handsome face and exquisitely tailored clothes. He had politely shaken Isabel’s hand with a crushing grip on first meeting, but she sensed no flicker of warmth in its strength so she’d made her excuses and escaped upstairs to bed. That night she lay awake for some time, unable to throw off a sense of unease about the situation. Her room was right above the parlour so she could hear murmurings and movement downstairs. She must finally have fallen into a deep sleep because she wasn’t aware of him leaving, but when she passed through the hall the next morning his hat and coat were gone.

It wasn’t every evening, of course, that Isabel spent at home. She became quite friendly with Alex Berec, whom she quickly learned to call plain ‘Berec’ like everyone else did. He had a habit of turning up dark hair bi‘ at the offices unannounced, at least once or twice a week, and was treated as family. Occasionally he’d beg Mr Greenford for ‘a little advance payment’ and disappear again with a pound or two in his pocket. Sometimes, he just came for the company.

‘I was passing,’ he’d say, appearing in the doorway, his smile irrepressible. He’d doff his hat and nod charmingly at everyone, though Trudy, who hated being interrupted, would deliver him a stern look in return. ‘I promise I won’t stop, I can see you’re all
verrry
busy. However, I brought a little something for the workers.’ And he might produce a box of honey cakes and once, extraordinarily, a bag of oranges – and then, of course, Audrey or Isabel would have to make him a cup of tea and he’d chat away to whoever would listen.

Stephen might walk through and ask his opinion on a book jacket or the latest Katharine Hepburn film – Berec was a great fan of Hepburn – but if there was a rush on he’d down his tea quickly and depart. Isabel was quickly becoming his clear favourite, and she’d hurry to let him out, even though the street door was kept on the latch during the day. Occasionally he’d ask her to accompany him to a poetry reading or, once, to supper at the home of some refugee friends.

‘Myra cannot accompany me – a migraine, the poor lady – but you will like Gregor and Karin, I think.’

The flat she was taken to in a gloomy street off Bloomsbury Square was poor beyond her experience, being a single large room, where the bed was screened off from the living area by two Army-issue blankets on a rail. Karin, a shy middle-aged woman, too thin for her shapeless dress, disappeared and returned soon after bearing a steaming tureen containing an aromatic stew, mostly made of vegetables, which they ate with hunks of greyish bread. The conversation was conducted half in English and half in Czech, which was all Karin could speak. Berec had extracted from his pocket a bottle of sweet-tasting liqueur. This made Isabel’s throat burn, but imparted such a deep sense of relaxation she feared she’d fall into a swoon.

She and Karin didn’t say much, though Gregor translated any English for Karin, who nodded and smiled, though she never looked happy. Maybe she never would, it occurred to Isabel, who experienced a sense of floating above the table round which they all sat, surprised to be seeing herself here in this place with these people, when such a short time ago her knowledge of the world outside the family home and school had been through books. Of course she knew all about refugees from the newsreels and her father’s newspaper, but she’d never actually had a meal with any before, or listened to such passionate conversations about politics or seen such despair in a woman’s eyes. Berec had explained to her that in Czechoslovakia, before the war, Gregor had trained as a doctor, but here his qualifications were not recognised and he’d only been able to get manual work. He was well known as a Communist, too, but at home he’d fallen out with his own party and there was no returning for him.

Now Berec was patting her shoulder and saying, ‘My poor Isabel, please forgive me. Gregor and I, we would talk all night. It’s time to go, yes?’ They said their goodbyes and walked arm in arm through the freezing night to the nearest bus stop, where Berec saw her onto the right bus, instructed the conductor to look after her, and kissed his fingertips in farewell.

Dear Berec, she thought, smiling at him as the bus bore her away, what a warm and generous friend. She felt perfectly safe with him. Safe and free to be herself. She thought that, despite his perpetual lack of money, Myra must be a very lucky woman. Sometimes she wondered about him, what exactly had brought him to England early in the war. She’d read his poetry collection, the one dedicated to Penelope, a translation from the Czech, and had been moved by the ones about exile, but some of them were dark, very dark, about violence and death, and she’d skipped over these, not wanting to know. He never spoke to her of these things. Like her, he tried to put the past behind him.

As the days and weeks passed, Audrey, too, was becoming a little friendlier. At first she was sharp with Isabel and disdainful, which puzzled the girl, for she was keen to prove her worth.

She’d discovered from Audrey herself what the bet was that Audrey had had with Trudy that first day.

‘Stephen obviously likes you, I could tell it straight away.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’ Isabel pinked up as she caught the insinuation. ‘Anyway, he’s married.’

‘You are such an innocent.’ Audrey sat, arms folded, one manicured finger resting against her cheek.

‘I’m not, and you’re wrong about Stephen.’ Isabel stuck her nose in a file to hide her upset. She didn’t understand why Audrey put her down all the time.

It was Trudy who took her aside one day and pointed out how irritating it must be for Audrey to have someone like Isabel, younger and more ambitious, foisted on her.

‘She thinks you want her daylight. Don’t try so hard. Nobody likes a pushy girl.’

Isabel suddenly saw the situation in sharp focus. She thought about it on the bus home. She must tone down her enthusiasm. What was required of her, she decided, was humble obedience . Not, however, subservience . There was a fine line to be drawn, especially with Audrey. She remembered from school how that worked, when she’d wanted a favour from an older girl or been put in charge of younger ones. Fawning was despised. Being spirited but respectful was what brought results. From then on, Isabel made sure that she did everything Audrey asked her, and did it well, but she did not offer to do anything she regarded as being beneath her dignity, such as making tea for young Jimmy Jones. Nor did she openly aspire to tasks that implied she was getting ‘above herself. This meant being furtive about her reading. But with Christmas only a few weeks away, all this effort might be for nothing. Oh, how she longed to be allowed to stay at McKinnon & Holt.

.

Emily

The autumn fog rising off the Suffolk marshes was so dense that Emily, glancing up from her novel, couldn’t make out the station signs. ‘Where are we?’ she asked the woman opposite her on the train.

‘I reckon it’s Ipswich,’ came the reply.

‘Oh, that’s me!’ Emily cried, snatching her coat down from the rack.

Hurrying from the train, she followed the crowds across the bridge and through the ticket barrier. Someone from Stone House was supposed to meet her, and she waited by the entrance to the station, uncertain of what to do next, the world being practically invisible in the fog. Minutes passed. The concourse emptied of people and vehicles, and silence fell. She wondered what had gone awry, if she’d got the wrong date or time, or had been forgotten. She was searching her bag for the letter with Jacqueline Morton’s phone number when a timid voice said, ‘Excuse me, but are you Emily?’ Emily turned to see a short woman with pale blue eyes regarding her anxiously. She must have been about Emily’s mother’s age, or maybe older, it wasn’t easy to tell because she was enveloped from head to knee in a dark green cagoule.

‘Yes, I’m Emily. You must be . . .’

‘Lorna, Jacqueline Morton’s daughter,’ the woman said in an apologetic tone, putting out her hand. It was a gardener’s hand, the skin roughened and callused. Lorna Morton, Emily thought, might once have been pretty in an English rose way, with her round face, pink cheeks and puzzled blue eyes with feathery lashes. Wisps of silvery hair were escaping from her hood. She had a sweet, gentle way about her that matched her soft voice.

‘Thank goodness you waited,’ Lorna said as they walked across the concourse. ‘I’m sorry I was so late, but the fog’s even worse out where we are – just awful – and then I couldn’t see to park.’

‘I should have offered to take a taxi.’

‘Oh, it’s no trouble, really. The car’s here somewhere. I do hate . . . Ah, here it is.’

Lorna, nervous, took some time edging the tiny vehicle into the traffic, then it was nose-to-tail through the town before they finally escaped onto a dual carriageway, where she kept to the slow lane, turning off after a few minutes onto a narrow country road. Here the fog lifted briefly to give glimpses of ploughed fields on either side. They negotiated the twists and turns for several miles, Emily hardly daring to make conversation in case she distracted Lorna from the tortuous business of driving. She learned, however, that the fog had come down in the night, and that Lorna’s mother was still fit at eighty-five and liked to get out to see friends as much as possible, but would probably have to miss a concert in Ipswich that evening if conditions didn’t improve. Lorna worried that Mother did too much.

There’s been an awful lot to sort out recently,’ Lorna said. ‘And she’s insisted on doing most of it all herself.’

‘The will and things?’ Emily wondered, never having had to deal with such procedures herself.

‘Mother always says being an author is like running a small business. There’s so much paperwork. And neither of us is computerish. At least all the filing is in good order. She’s always been strict about that.’

‘What will happen to the papers? The letters and manuscripts, I mean?’

Lorna eased the car round a tight corner. ‘She’ll explain everything when you meet. That’s probably best.’

Emily thought of the points for their meeting that she’d jotted in her notebook. She’d also brought
Coming Home
with her, which she’d now read and enjoyed. It was a story about a young man taken from the country life that he knew, the prospect of life as an academic, to fly planes in the RAF, and how he returned to find that everything had changed, including the girl he’d loved. She sensed that it had a ring of the autobiographical about it, like many a first novel.

They drove on, as through some shadowy netherworld, London and civilisation worryingly further and further behind. The road descended sharply into thick drifts of fog, so Lorna slowed down to a crawl. ‘Not long now,’ she remarked, and a few moments later, they passed a village sign, wreathed in mist, then – the air grew momentarily clearer – houses, a village Post Office, the great flint shoulder of a church. Soon after that, Lorna drove between a pair of white posts and along a bumpy drive where delicate winter branches of trees lined the grassy verge on either side. Where the drive dipped, the mist surged in a sinister fashion and the sense of passing into another world intensified. Finally the car lurched to a halt, alarmingly close behind another vehicle, something black and sporty-looking.

‘Here we are,’ Lorna said with relief. They both got out. The air was chilly, with the scent of bonfires.

Lorna led the way past some outhouses, two with stable doors. ‘Are there horses?’ Emily asked, shivering.

‘Not in our time,’ Lorna said, her voice coming across pale and wistful. ‘I would have loved to learn to ride, but it wasn’t something my parents did. Come on. We’ll go via the kitchen, if you don’t mind. I must see that lunch is all right.’

She opened a heavy door and led Emily into a square utility room, then on through another door into a farmhouse kitchen. There was a rugged wooden table in the middle, one end of which was piled with clutter – a radio with a broken aerial, cook books, magazines and sewing. Pots and pans hung above a fireplace that was completely filled by a huge old Aga. A crowded wooden dresser of similar vintage to the table took up one wall. Though cramped, the room was homey and warm, and smelled of something savoury and delicious. A grey cat was curled up in a basket by the stove. It stirred for a moment at their entrance, then settled back into sleep. It was wasted with age, its ragged coat barely disguising the ridge of its backbone.

‘This won’t take a moment,’ Lorna said. She’d peeled off her cagoule to reveal an untidy ensemble of cord skirt, flowery blouse and jumper. Taking up a thick cloth, she opened one of the doors of the stove, inspected the contents of a pot and gave it a stir. ‘That’s all right,’ she said, pushing it back. ‘Let me have your coat. I’ll take you through.’

The kitchen must have been Lorna’s domain, for in it she was a different person from the nervous chauffeur, more relaxed, the evidence of domestic interests all around. She changed again, however, as they passed into the main part of the house. She trod softly and wore a furtive look. Emily sensed why. This big light hall belonged to someone else. It was colder than the kitchen and painted white and pale blue.

Lorna tapped on a door at the far end of the hall and waited. At the sound of a voice, they entered a spacious drawing room with book-lined walls.

‘Emily’s here, Mother,’ Lorna Morton announced. Emily walked across an acre of blue carpet to where an old lady was rising with effort from a chair by the fire.

‘How do you do?’ Jacqueline Morton said.

‘Very pleased to meet you.’ Emily took the outstretched hand, which felt as light and strong as a bird’s wing. She thought how regal and commanding the woman was in her navy-blue suit, the gold buttons of the jacket complementing her earrings and necklace, how composed. Her hair, scooped into a pleat behind, gleamed an expensive creamy white. Wide-spaced eyes of faded blue examined Emily. Finally her thin lips curved in a smile. genuinely bi‘