The Day of the Storm
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Authors: Rosamunde Pilcher
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Contents
St. Martin's Paperbacks Titles by Rosamunde Pilcher
Enter The Enchanting World of Rosamunde Pilcher â¦
1
It all started on a Monday at the end of January. A dull day at a dull time of the year. Christmas and the New Year were over and forgotten and yet the new season had not started to show its face. London was cold and raw, the shops filled with empty hope and clothes “for cruising”. The trees in the park stood lacy and bare against low skies, the trodden grass beneath them dull and dead, so that it was impossible to believe that it could ever again be carpeted with drifts of purple and yellow crocus.
It was a day like any other day. The alarm woke me to darkness, but a darkness made paler by the wide expanse of the uncurtained windows, and through them I could see the top of the plane tree, illuminated by the orange glow of distant street lights.
My room was unfurnished, except for the sofa bed on which I lay, and a kitchen table which I was going to strip of paint when I had the time, and polish with a coat of beeswax. Even the floor was bare, boards stretching to the wainscotting. An orange box did duty as a bedside table, and a second one filled in for a chair.
I put out a hand and turned on the light and surveyed the desolate scene with the utmost satisfaction. It was mine. My first home. I had moved in only three weeks ago but it belonged entirely to me. With it, I could do as I pleased. Cover the white walls with posters or paint them orange. Sand the bare floor or stripe it in colour. Already I had started to acquire a proprietary interest in junk and antique shops, and could not pass one without scanning the window for some treasure that I might be able to afford. This was how the table had come into my possession, and I already had my eye on an antique gilt mirror, but had not yet plucked up the courage to go into the shop and find out how much it was going to cost. Perhaps I would hang it in the centre of the chimney breast, or on the wall opposite the window, so that the reflections of the sky and the tree would be caught, like a picture, within its ornate frame.
These pleasant imaginings took some time. I looked again at the clock, saw that it was growing late, and climbed out of bed to pad, barefooted, across the floor and into the tiny kitchen, where I lit the gas and put the kettle on to boil. The day had begun.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
The flat was in Fulham, the top floor of a small terrace house which belonged to Maggie and John Trent. I had met them only at Christmas, which I had spent with Stephen Forbes and his wife Mary and their large family of untidy children, in their large and untidy house in Putney. Stephen Forbes was my boss, the owner of the Walton Street bookshop where I had been working for the past year. He had always been enormously kind and helpful towards me and when he found out, from one of the other girls, that I would be on my own for Christmas, he and Mary had immediately issued a firm invitationâmore an order, reallyâthat I should spend the three days with them. There was plenty of space, he insisted vaguely, a room in the attic, a bed in Samantha's room, somewhere, but I wouldn't mind, would I? And I could always help Mary baste the turkey and pick all those torn bits of tissue paper off the floor.
Considering it from this angle, I finally accepted, and had a wonderful time. There's nothing like a family Christmas when there are children everywhere and noise and paper and presents, and a pine-smelling Christmas tree, glittering with baubles and crooked home-made decorations.
On Boxing Night, with the children safely in bed, the Forbeses threw a grown-up party, although we still seemed to continue playing childish games, and Maggie and John Trent came to this. The Trents were young marrieds, she the daughter of an Oxford don, whom Stephen had known well in his undergraduate days. She was one of those laughing, cheerful out-going people, and after she had arrived the party went with a swing. We were introduced but we didn't manage to talk until a game of charades, when we found ourselves side by side on a sofa, trying to guess, from the most incoherent gestures, that Mary was trying to act to us, in dumb show, the title of a film.
“Rose Marie!”
somebody yelled, for no apparent reason.
“Clockwork Orange!”
Maggie lit a cigarette and sank back on the sofa, defeated. “It's beyond me,” she said. She turned her dark head to look at me. “You work in Stephen's shop, don't you?”
“Yes.”
“I'll come in next week and spend all my Christmas book tokens. I've been given dozens.”
“Lucky girl.”
“We've just moved into our first house, so I want lots of coffee table stuff so that all our friends think I'm wildly intelligent⦔ Then somebody shouted, “Maggie, it's your turn,” and she said “Cripes,” and shot to her feet, and went stalking off to find out what she was going to have to act. I can't remember what it was, but watching her make a cheerful fool of herself, my heart warmed to her, and I hoped that I would see her again.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
I did, of course. True to her word, she came into the shop a couple of days after the holiday wearing a sheepskin coat and a long purple skirt, and carrying a bulging handbag stuffed with book tokens. I wasn't serving anybody at that particular moment and I came out from behind a neat stack of shiny-jacketed novels and said, “Hallo.”
“Oh, good, there you are. I was hoping I'd find you. Can you help me?”
“Yes, of course.”
Together, we chose a cookery book, a new autobiography which everybody was talking about, and a marvellously expensive volume of Impressionist paintings for the legendary coffee table. All this came to a little more than the book tokens did, so she groped around in that handbag and took out a cheque book in order to pay for the balance of the amount.
“John'll be furious,” she told me happily, writing out the amount with a red felt pen. The cheque was yellow and the effect quite gay. “He says we're spending far too much money as it is. There.” She turned it over to write her address. “Fourteen Bracken Road, SW6.” She said it aloud in case I couldn't read her writing. “I haven't got used to writing it yet. We've only just moved in. Terribly exciting, we've bought it freehold, believe it or not. At least our parents chipped in with the deposit and John managed to con some building society or other into giving us a loan for the rest. But of course because of this, we've got to let the top floor to help pay the mortgage, but still, I suppose it'll all work out.” She smiled. “You'll have to come and see it.”
“I'd like to.” I was wrapping her parcel, being meticulous about matching the paper and folding the corners.
She watched me. “You know, it's terribly rude, but I don't know your name. I know it's Rebecca, but Rebecca what?”
“Rebecca Bayliss.”
“I suppose you don't know of a nice peaceful individual who wants an unfurnished flat?”
I looked at her. Our thoughts were so close I scarcely had to speak. I tied the knot on the parcel and snapped the string. I said, “How about me?”
“You? But are you looking for somewhere to live?”
“I wasn't until a moment ago. But I am now.”
“It's only a room and a kitchen. And we have to share the bath.”
“I don't mind if you don't. And if I can afford the rent. I don't know what you're asking.”
Maggie told me. I swallowed and did a few mental calculations and said, “I could manage that.”
“Have you got any furniture?”
“No. I've been living in a furnished flat with a couple of other girls. But I can get some.”
“You sound as though you're desperate to get out.”
“No, I'm not desperate, but I'd like to be on my own.”
“Well, before you decide you'd better come and see it. Some evening, because John and I both work.”
“
This
evening?” It was impossible to keep my impatience and excitement out of my voice and Maggie laughed.
“All right,” she said. “This evening,” and she picked up the beautifully wrapped parcel of books and prepared to depart.
I suddenly panicked ⦠“I ⦠I don't know the address⦔
“Yes you do, silly, it's on the back of the cheque. Get a twenty-two bus. I'll expect you about seven.”
“I'll be there,” I promised.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
Jolting slowly down the Kings Road in the bus I had to consciously damp down my enthusiasm. I was out to buy a pig in a poke. The flat might be totally impossible, too big, too small or inconvenient in some unimagined way. Anything was better than being disappointed. And indeed, from the outside, the little house was entirely unremarkable, one of a row of red brick villas, with fancy pointing around the doors and a depressing tendency towards stained glass. But inside Number 14 was bright with fresh paint and new carpets and Maggie herself in old jeans and a blue sweater.
“Sorry I look such a mess but I've got to do all the housework, so I usually change when I get back from the office. Come on, let's go up and see it ⦠put your coat on the banisters, John's not home yet, but I told him you were coming and he thought it was a frightfully good idea⦔
Talking all the time, she led the way upstairs and into the empty room which stood at the back of the house. She turned on the light. “It faces south, out over a little park. The people who had the house before us built an extension on underneath, so you've got a sort of balcony on its roof.” She opened a glass door and we stepped together out into the cold dark night, and I smelt the leaf-smell of the park, and damp earth, and saw, ringed by lamplight from the streets all around, the stretch of empty darkness. A cold wind blew suddenly, gustily, and the black shape of the plane tree rustled and then the sound was lost in the jet roar of an aeroplane going overhead.
I said, “It's like being in the country.”
“Well, next best thing perhaps.” She shivered. “Let's go in before we freeze.” We stepped back through the glass door, and Maggie showed me the tiny kitchen which had been fashioned out of a deep cupboard, and then, halfway down the stairs, the bathroom, which we would all share. Finally, we ended up downstairs again in Maggie's warm, untidy sitting-room, and she found a bottle of sherry and some potato crisps which she swore were stale, but tasted all right to me. “Do you still want to come?” she asked.
“More than ever.”
“When do you want to move in?”
“As soon as possible. Next week if I could.”
“What about the girls you're sharing with just now?”
“They'll find someone else. One of them has a sister who's coming to London. I expect she'll move into my room.”
“And what about furniture?”
“Oh ⦠I'll manage.”
“I expect,” said Maggie comfortably, “your parents will come up trumps, they usually do. When I first came to London, my mother produced the most wonderful treasures out of the attic and the linen cupboard and so⦔ Her voice died away. I watched her in rueful silence, and she finally laughed at herself. “There I go again, opening my mouth and putting my foot in it. I'm sorry. I've obviously said something idiotically tactless.”