The Silent Tide (18 page)

‘Jimmy’s gone to see.’

Mrs McKinnon looked properly at Isabel for the first time. ‘You’re very kind,’ she said. ‘ I suppose you must be Isabel.’

‘Yes.’

‘Stephen did mention you. He says you’re doing very well – you should feel flattered.’ The woman curved her lips in a vague smile and glanced out of the window. They saw Jimmy come out of the Fitzroy Tavern, but instead of coming back to the office he turned right up the street and out of sight.

‘I suppose he wasn’t there. Do you think he’ll be long?’

‘I hope not, but Mr Ford can be very . . . time-consuming.’

In the end she settled Mrs McKinnon in Stephen’s office with a glass of water, which was all the woman would accept. It was another twenty minutes before Stephen appeared, smelling of the pub.

‘Did Jimmy find you? Your wife’s here,’ Isabel whispered to him.

‘No, he didn’t,’ Stephen replied, looking alarmed. He immediately went into his office and shut the door. Now Grace McKinnon clearly lost her coolness, because the sound of raised voices was audible. Isabel was too curious to absent herself, but to avoid any accusation that she was eavesdropping she started to type loudly as if her life depended on it. A minute or two passed before the door flew open and Stephen stormed out, closely followed by his wife.

‘It won’t do any good. Stephen. Daddy simply won’t have it.’

‘I need to go and sort out a misunderstanding,’ Stephen told Isabel, snatching up his coat. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

He left in a hurry, almost bumping into Jimmy on the way. Grace McKinnon and Isabel stared after him.

The next day, Stephen didn’t appear in the office at all, but he rang up Audrey and gave her various instructions to pass on to Mr Greenford. Over the next couple of weeks, he was often out and there was a heightened atmosphere of uncertainty. Redmayne Symmonds marched in once and closeted himself with Mr Greenford in Stephen’s office, going over ledgers. Everyone else carried on as usual, though Philip looked perpetually worried and Trudy was unusually quiet.

‘What’s going on?’ Isabel asked Audrey when she got her on her own.

‘Money,’ Audrey said shortly. ‘He’s looking for new backers. Redmayne Symmonds won’t put in any more.’

‘No!’ Isabel said, horrified. ‘But I thought business was going well.’

‘So did I, but who knows. Don’t worry your pretty head too much. It’s happened before. He’ll sort it out.’

And that’s exactly what did happen. After another week or so, the tense unhappy look Stephen had worn for so long lightened. He even arrived in the office whistling one morning. That was the day he called his small staff into his office, where they gathered in nervous anticipation. Only Trudy was absent.

There was good news, Stephen told them. ‘You might have heard rumours about the firm’s imminent demise. In fact, it’s completely the opposite: we’re expanding.’ He explained that although Trudy’s husband had decided to withdraw as a director, Stephen had secured the investment of two City businessmen. When he mentioned their names, Isabel was surprised. One of the names meant nothing to her, but the other was Reginald Dickson, Penelope’s manfriend. From what Isabel could gather, Penelope had introduced Stephen to him.

Stephen went on to assure them that Trudy would continue working with the firm, and to announce that he’d been able to buy up a small publisher of books in a new line: psychology. The editor and his assistant would move into the building. ‘We’re taking the tenancy of the flat above our heads, all being well. And we’re going to recruit a sales manager!’

It was as everyone was trooping back to their desks that Stephen called Isabel back.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, amused by her anxious face. ‘It’s nothing terrible. Trudy has made it known to me that she intends to cut down her days. I don’t want to lose her. She manages the schedules like nobody’s business. But we’ll be needing another editor.’

‘Another editor? Isabel had a sudden vision of this new editor. A man, probably. But Stephen was continuing.

‘You’re still very new, but you’ve been learning fast. I’d like you to take on the role, if you would. Under Trudy’s guidance, of course.’

‘Me? Oh yes, thank you.’ She was smiling at him stupidly, but he didn’t say any more so she thought she was dismissed and she stood to go. At the last moment she remembered. ‘I’ll need more money,’ she told him firmly. ‘I can’t be expected to manage on what you’re giving me.’

Stephen burst out laughing. ‘I thought you weren’t going to ask at all,’ he said. He lit a cigarette and looked at her through narrowed eyes. Her feeling of power began to fail.

‘How about another hundred,’ he said. ‘That’ll bring it up to two-fifty .’

Two hundred and fifty pounds a year! She nearly said yes, but something stayed her. She had no idea what other women in the firm earned – no one would have been so ill-bred as to discuss it. But maybe they didn’t need money like she did. Trudy was married and Audrey lived in a flat paid for by her father.

‘I’d like three hundred, please,’ she said, in the same tone in which she’d ask the greengrocer for two pounds of potatoes.

He looked at her in surprise, then thought for a moment.

‘Very well, three hundred,’ he said finally.

It took Vivienne, that evening, to spell out the maths. ‘It’s obvious,’ she said. ‘He’s transferring to you the money he’s saving from paying Trudy. He’s not giving Audrey a new assistant, is he?’

‘He hasn’t said so.’

‘And if he took on a man he’d have to pay him more.’

‘That’s true.’ Still, nothing could stop herself feeling pleased for holding out for the money.

In February 1950, Hugh Morton telephoned her at the office. ‘I’ve tickets for a show on Friday,’ he said. ‘Tom Eliot’s new play. Do you happen to be free?’ She pressed the receiver more intently to her ear.

‘I imagine that would be acceptable,’ she said warily, aware of Audrey earwigging. In truth, she and Hugh had only corresponded on business matters recently and she wasn’t expecting an invitation like this. She wasn’t sure what it meant and whether she should go. However, she was longing to see
The Cocktail Party.
Berec was always talking about T. S. Eliot.

At the other end of the line, Hugh laughed. ‘I’m glad to hear you say so! Shall I come to the office at five? We could perhaps have a drink in the bar there first, a little supper.’

‘Oh no,’ she said, hunching over the phone. ‘How about meeting there?’ Coming to the office wouldn’t do at all. She’d never mentioned going to Hugh’s party – and that, anyway, had been with Vivienne. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if they all saw her going off somewhere with Hugh. The embarrassment would be terrible. Going out with Berec was somehow different. For some reason it never seemed to enter anyone’s mind that she and Berec were anything but friends. Berec was everyone’s friend, as comfortable as toast.

‘You’d rather meet me at the theatre?’ he said patiently. ‘I don’t see why not. Shall we say six-thirty?’

When she finished the call, Audrey was looking at her curiously. ‘Who was that?’ she asked.

‘Just a friend.’

‘Just a friend, my foot,’ was Audrey’s drawled reply.

Isabel had rarely been to the theatre, and then only to see productions of Shakespeare or once a J. B. Priestley play Nothing had prepared her for
The Cocktail Party.
It started in the manner of a drawing-room farce with a married couple quarrelling over the fact that the husband had taken a mistress, and the wife leaving in high dudgeon just as guests were expected for drinks in their London home.

‘I must say, I don’t see what all the fuss is about,’ Hugh confided during the interval. ‘All seems very ordinary to me.’

But when the curtain rose once more, the play turned dark and complicated. An uninvited guest brought the wife home again. It turned out he was a psychiatrist and he proceeded not only to reveal the most unpleasant things about the couple’s relationship, but to point out how much worse it would be if they were to separate.

‘I felt sorry for Celia, the mistress, in the end,’ Isabel said afterwards. ‘Why did she have to suffer like that? It was dreadful, the way she died.’ The discarded mistress had become a missionary, but was killed by the natives she had gone to convert.

‘She had to be sacrificed,’ Hugh said impatiently. ‘It’s sad, but symbolic. She nearly broke up the marriage.’

‘The husband was as much to blame,’ Isabel replied, outraged.

‘Quite possibly, but there were more important things at stake here. Celia shouldn’t have allowed herself to come between a husband and wife. Of course the institution of marriage had to come first.’

‘I still don’t see why Mr Eliot let her be killed like that. She didn’t deserve it.’

‘You don’t know anything about Greek tragedy do you? There are clear references in the play to Euripides. But don’t let the play upset you. I should never have brought you.’

‘Oh, but I enjoyed it,’ she said, her eyes shining.

‘Did you?’

‘Yes. It made me cross, but I like that.’

‘You are a funny girl.’ He smiled fondly and the smile started up a little thrill of warmth inside her. ‘Funny but sweet. I like your hair like that,’ he said, ‘you know, brushed back at the side. Why did you do that?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s just an experiment. Audrey does it.’

‘Goodness, don’t turn into Audrey, will you?’

She shook her head, rather charmed that he liked her for herself. She knew Audrey won when it came to the beauty stakes and pedigree – and, well, style, she supposed – but perhaps she had her own attractions after all. Hugh didn’t seem bothered about silly things like her family background. At the same time she felt a little ashamed for having talked about her grandmother’s big house in Norfolk as though it was a part of her life. To think she’d never even seen the place.

She tried for a moment to imagine Hugh greeting her parents in the ugly pebbledash house. The thought was excruciating. Her father would very certainly be wearing his dreadful old cardigan and say something gauche that tried to put Hugh down. But she was running ahead now, into the future. Quickly she reined in her thoughts.

‘I rather hoped,’ Hugh was saying now, ‘that you wouldn’t mind looking at a chapter I’ve written. I need to be sure about the voice.’

‘Of course, if you’d like me to.’ She was delighted.

He felt in an inside pocket of his jacket and extracted a folded brown envelope. ‘I haven’t had a chance to type it up properly yet,’ he said, his brow wrinkling in a frown. ‘Perhaps you’d forgive me, but I believe my handwriting isn’t difficult to read. Do you want to check? Don’t read the thing in front of me, I couldn’t bear that, but look at the first couple of lines, perhaps.’

He drew some sheets of paper from the envelope and gave them to her. When she glanced at the first line she saw it read,
My darling.
This made her heart beat quickly for a moment, then she saw that, of course, this was one of the characters speaking – the man, she thought, as she read the next line or two.

She felt Hugh’s hand over her own, warm and gentle. ‘Don’t read any more now,’ he begged.

For a moment they were still, he holding her hand, she with the papers, caught in his gaze in the soft lights of the bar. Then he released her and she hid her hot face as she stowed the precious pages in her bag.

It was late when she stepped out of the taxi at Highgate – this time he’d insisted on paying for a taxi – and she changed into her nightclothes and climbed into bed, not to sleep, but to read what he’d given her. Once again her heart beat faster to
My darling
. . . It was the opening chapter to a novel.

My darling, I will not see you for a long time now. From what they tell me, I learn that you might never come. But there is much I ne to meet you on a the coed to tell you, to explain . . .

She read on, transfixed. It was apparent that the narrator was being held somewhere, but whether it was in a prison of some sort, or a secure hospital , it was impossible to say . But it was definitely a man speaking, an educated, articulate man, and there was some terrible gulf between himself and the woman he was addressing, that by his writing he hoped to bridge. The man went on to describe his reaction on first seeing her. She’d been in WRNS uniform, waiting at a station with a heavy suitcase and there’d been no porter.

How lost you appeared, the narrator went on, yet when I offered help, how glacial, as disdainful as a goddess. But I expect you’d known a few men like me. Mere mortals, all of us
.

She got out of bed and found a pencil, then marked the paper in the margin
: more physical description for immediacy
was what she wrote. She read on, from time to time scribbling comments or correcting some small detail.
A woman would not have emerged from this with her hair and make-up so intact! she wrote at one point, after the narrator had ambushed his beloved in a steamed-up kitchen.

She came to the end and lay back against the pillows, thinking. She’d loved the voice of the man, strong, beguiling, yet there was a dangerous edge to it that both thrilled and warned. He was not, she was convinced, a reliable narrator . His would be only one version of the account in this book. But the heart of the story, the girl, Nanna – now she was fascinating, if only Hugh would convey her vividly enough. Was the book all to be from the man’s point of view, she wondered , or would Nanna have the opportunity to tell her own side? Well, she could ask the author.

She already felt a connection with Nanna, though, and remembered the conversation she and Hugh had had that first time, in the restaurant with the golden ceiling. No , Nanna wasn’t at all like herself. Hugh’s heroine was blonde rather than auburn, for a start . He must have been teasing her. A part of her was disappointed.

Emily