The Silent Tide (2 page)

A picture came into her head of an ill-nourished man with nicotine-stained fingers reading her polite but firm refusal and uttering a cry of despair. At twenty-eight, after six years in the business, she still hated turning books down. She knew about the months, even years, some writers put into their work, the tender yearnings with which they sent it out into the world. But so many were not destined to succeed. She brushed some dust off her skirt and picked up the next package, resolved to harden her heart.

After sealing the final parcel she checked her phone. Seven-thirty. Still nothing from Matthew, no answer to her enquiring texts. She slicked on some lip gloss, pulled on a red coat, then went to the window, leaning her forehead against the cold glass as she peered out into the darkness, hoping to see a tall lean figure, long scarf flying, striding across the square, but there was only an old man taking an elderly Labrador for its evening constitutional.

She sighed, slipped her tote bag on her shoulder and scooped up the parcels for posting under one arm, which left her free to haul open the heavy fire door with the other.

Out in the lobby, the dim light from an antique chandelier flickered like candleflame, casting sinister shadows on a row of closed doors. She must be the only person left in the building, she thought uneasily. An empty post trolley had been abandoned by the lift and she stowed the packages in it. If only Matthew would hurry up. She would nip to the loo, then go and wait downstairs. As she walked across the lobby, she gave the wire post-racks an automatic glance, but the compartment with her name on it was empty.

When she emerged from the cloakroom a moment later, she was surprised to see the lift doors open. She caught a sideways glimpse of a woman inside – middle-aged, laden with bags – before they shut. Whoever she might have been, and there was no spark of recognition, it was plain that Emily wasn’t the only soul working late after all. The thought was comforting. pleased by what she saw.li McKinnon

Passing the pigeonholes on the way back to her desk, she paused. There was something in hers after all, pushed to the back. Common sense told her to leave it till Monday, but something made her reach in and pick it up.

It was a book, a small, worn hardback with yellowed, rough-cut pages and a jacket of cheap, unvarnished paper. It felt light and warm to the touch and she liked the way it fitted snugly in her hand. Who had left it for her and why? The picture on the front was a simple line-drawing in white on a dark, patterned background. It was of a heraldic shield with a plane flying across it. The plane must be in trouble, for the lettering of the title had been forged out of smoke swirling from the fuselage. Now she could make out the words
Coming Home,
which the damaged plane looked as though it wouldn’t be. The helpful words
A Novel
were printed beneath the shield, but the jacket had been ripped at the bottom and the author’s name was unreadable.

Emily was puzzled. Perhaps the book was meant for someone else – Gillian, her boss, for instance, whose cubbyhole above hers was, as always, overflowing? But when she angled the book to study the spine, she knew with a little shock that it was for her, after all. The author’s name was Hugh Morton.

She moved nearer the chandelier to study the photograph on the back of the jacket. It was a monochrome portrait of Morton as an attractive young man; hard to believe he’d once looked like that, given the cragged-up, bulldog personage of his later years in the images that had dominated the obituaries of him. This portrait must have been taken in his late twenties, before he became well known, maybe before he published the phenomenal bestseller
The Silent Tide.
She considered the title again,
Coming Home.
He had written so many novels, but she didn’t recall this one. She checked the publisher’s logo on the spine – an M and an H, intertwined.
McKinnon & Holt,
it said underneath. She’d never heard of them. One of many publishers that had come and gone over the years.

She turned to the first page and stared. Under the title and the author’s name was something scrawled in bold, black pen strokes. In the dim light it took a moment to work out what it said.

‘“To Isabel, who makes everything possible,” she read out loud. “With kind regards, Hugh Morton.”’

Isabel.
As she said the name the light overhead flickered, making the shadows dance. She wondered who Isabel might be.

Her eye moved to the bottom of the page where there was a date, 1949. Several years before
The Silent Tide
then, which she vaguely remembered was 1953. That was the book everyone spoke of when Hugh Morton was mentioned, the novel that made his name and his fortune. She’d read it a couple of times, the second quite recently when she’d joined Parchment, because it was one of the most famous books in their catalogue. It was the story of a woman, Nanna, who wanted to make her mark on the world but who ended up overwhelmed by circumstance. Somehow it struck a chord at the time it was published, and went on, unusually for a literary novel, to be a huge bestseller. It was also the book that became a curse for Hugh Morton. He could never again quite emulate its success in the whole of his long literary career. A not unfamiliar publishing story, but Emily couldn’t imagine how it must feel for a writer to know his future was behind him.

And now her thoughts flew to the editorial meeting of the day before, in the old Regency boardroom with its views across Mayfair and its awful modern features – the long table of pale ashwood, the sleek plasma screen for presentations of budget figures and marketing plans.

The Publisher, Gillian Bradshaw, a tall, willowy woman who ran on nervous energy, had glared round the table at the half-dozen editors present and asked whether any of them knew Hugh Morton’s work well. ‘We’re all familiar with
The Silent Tide,
of course. It’s a staple of our classics list. But what about the others?’

‘I’ve read
The Silent Tide,
naturally – find me someone who hasn’t,’ one of the fiction editors said in her sophisticated, world-weary fashion. ‘A TV adaptation is coming with Zara Collins playing Nanna. The fifties are still so popular.’ A couple of other editors murmured that they’d read
The Silent Tide.
After all, it was on schools’ reading lists. In the 1950s it was considered ground-breaking. ‘That’s the only one of his titles we own, isn’t it?’ she asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ Gillian replied. ‘It’s the only one in print, anyway. Morton had so many different publishers.’

’And kept falling out with them, I gather.’ The fiction editor gave one of her amused smiles and began to examine her long blue-polished fingernails.

Emily, still feeling very new and needing to prove herself, said, ‘I’ve read three or four of the others. Our English teacher gave us an assignment. There was one set in the sixties, I remember, about a writers’ retreat on an island . . .’ She stopped, seeing that everyone was staring at her. She felt her face grow hot.

‘We’ll have to believe you there,’ Gillian said, looking over her glasses at Emily in a not unkind fashion. ‘I must admit that I, too, have only read
The Silent Tide.’
She withdrew a crisp, cream-coloured sheet from her pile of papers and smoothed out the folds, then paused dramatically before continuing. ‘As you all know, Morton died two years ago. The funeral was just family, but I wrote to his widow, Jacqueline, to offer our sympathies. She’s sent me what I think is an interesting proposal.’

She frowned as she scanned the letter. ‘Here we are: “You might know that my husband always resisted approaches from biographers, disdaining the modern lurid obsession with the purely personal. I have, however, been approached by a young man who has, I believe, the appropriate attitude to a writer of Hugh’s stature, and have allowed him access to Hugh’s private papers. The project being somewhat advanced, I should accordingly like to arrange a meeting with you. As the current publisher of
The Silent Tide,
I feel that you are the most appropriate home for Hugh’s biography.’

Gillian stopped and looked directly at Emily. ‘Emily,’ she said, like a cat pouncing on a mouse, ‘since you’ve read more of the novels than the rest of us, I’d like you to follow this up. La Morton clearly wants someone to go and see her in Suffolk and I simply can’t spare the time at the moment.’

‘Surely a life of Morton wouldn’t exactly be a bestseller,’ said a young man with curly blond hair, tapping his pen on the table’s edge. Emily found his arrogant drawl irritating.

‘You’re possibly right, George, ‘ Gillian said, unruffled. ‘But I still think there’s more interest in him than you’d expect, and the TV adaptation will add to that. By the way, does anyone else remember that brilliant programme about Morton in the eighties?’ A couple of the older editors nodded. ‘‘You, George, would have been in nappies at the time.’ Everyone smiled and George gave a selfconscious snigger.

‘You’ll find the house absolutely fascinating,’ Gillian remarked to Emily as she pushed the letter across the table. Emily took it, glancing at the address – Stone House, Salmarsh, in Suffolk – not sure whether the job was prestigious or a nuisance, and wondering if George was jealous that she’d been given it. Since he always spoke as though he knew best, it was difficult to tell.

‘Biography of Hugh Morton, Becky,’ Gillian told her assistant, who was taking notes. ‘Put Emily’s initials on the minutes.’ She shuffled her papers and sighed. ‘I’m sorry to be shifting so much of my work on you all at the moment, but with my Australian trip brought forward I’ve no alternative.’

Now Emily stood in the gloomy lobby examining the book, wondering if Gillian had left it for her. She hadn’t managed to get through to Jacqueline Morton yet. She was just thinking that she must try again on Monday when her phone vibrated with a message: Here now, Em. Where you? xx She smiled and wrote back, Coming. Her mind now full of Matthew, she reached to replace the book in the pigeonhole, then hesitated. She ought to look at it properly.

She pressed the button for the lift and when its doors slid open, recalled the brief sight of the woman with the bags who’d left a few minutes ago. Like Isabel in the little book , her identity was a mystery.

Isabel

London, November 1948

The petite redhead dressed in sherry brown hefted her suitcase off the bus on Earl’s Court Road and shivered as a bitter wind caught her. She stopped to wrap her scarf more tightly round her neck and glanced about, unsure of her way. People flowed round her with eyes cast down, too busy picking their way across fractured pavements to stop for yet another refugee. Above, pewter-coloured clouds hung sullen with rain.

Nearby, a skinny youth selling newspapers breathed into his cupped hands to warm them.

‘Excuse me, do you know Mimosa Road?’ she asked him.

‘Nex’ left, Miss, and along a bit,’ came the mumbled reply.

Thanking him, she picked up the heavy case and set off in the direction he had indicated, but the labyrinth of side streets where she found herself had no signs and she had to ask the way again, this time of a young mother with a toddler straining on its reins. Eventually she found herself on the doorstep of a handsome red-brick Victorian villa, one of the few still whole in a bomb-damaged terrace. It had to be the right house: someone had fastened a strip of card with a hand-scrawled
32
above the door, where a glass fanlight must once have been.

She hesitated, wondering not for the first time if she’d been rash of the Dome of Discovery. r,’ he said to come. Since the alternative was to return home defeated, she raised the door knocker. It fell with a loud bright sound. While she waited, the worries chased through her mind. Suppose her aunt was away? Or didn’t live here any more? She wished she’d had the sense to telephone ahead.

The door flew open to reveal not Aunt Penelope, but a wiry, flat-chested woman in a shabby overall, wielding a carpet beater. She had clearly been interrupted in her task for she was breathing hard, and strands of thin, iron-coloured hair escaped an untidy knot at her nape. From the expression on her face, it was plain that finding a strange young woman with a suitcase on the doorstep was an unwelcome interruption.

‘Yes?’ the woman snapped.

‘I’m looking for Mrs Tyler,’ the girl said, in as firm a voice as she could muster.

The woman studied her with a suspicious eye. ‘You sellin’ something?’ she asked.

‘Certainly not,’ said the girl, drawing herself up to her full five feet two, glad that she’d taken trouble with her appearance before setting out. Not only had she purloined her mother’s best hat, but also the precious remnants of a coral lipstick. This, she had been pleased to see in the mirror of the Ladies at Charing Cross station, suited her creamy skin, auburn hair and brown eyes to perfection.

The woman’s mouth set in a hard thin line. ‘This is Mrs Tyler’s residence,’ she said, ‘but she ain’t here. Who might you be, Miss?’

‘Isabel Barber. Mrs Tyler’s niece.’ The woman’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Isabel added less confidently, ‘Please, may I come in? It’s awfully cold.’

‘I s’pose you’ll ’ave to,’ the woman sighed, opening the door wide. ‘Wait in the parlour with the other one.’

Wondering who ‘the other one’ might be, Isabel left her case in the hall and the woman showed her into a chilly, over-stuffed sitting room at the front of the house that smelled strongly of coal-dust and wet dog. There, a small dapper man was struggling to secure a sheet of newspaper across the fireplace. He looked round at her entrance with an expectant expression, but seeing only Isabel, rearranged his face into a polite smile.

‘Herself shouldn’t be much longer,’ the woman announced. She went away, pulling the door shut, and Isabel, to her alarm, found herself alone with the stranger.

‘I’m afraid the coal is damp,’ the man explained in heavily accented English as he held the paper, waiting for the fire to draw. She nodded, wondering who he was, and, what piqued her curiosity more, why he was wearing a dinner suit at half past eleven in the morning. The suit needed pressing, and though his smooth dark hair with its threads of grey was combed back neatly, his skin was drained of colour, his jaw unshaven. It struck her that he couldn’t have changed since the night before, a thought she found shocking and thrilling at the same time. His undernourished appearance awoke her pity, though, and his expression was friendly.