The Silent Tide (23 page)

Caught up in the excitement of it all, Isabel forgot that she’d ever had doubts about Hugh. She was deliriously happy. She’d enjoyed surprising her colleagues, too, who were all delighted for her, even Audrey, who seemed after all to think Isabel had been ‘clever’ in landing Hugh. Admiration from Audrey was not something she was used to, but then Audrey had softened since the occasion of her own marriage, seemed more mature, and Isabel secretly wanted that for herself, too.

She’d taken Hugh down to meet her parents on the Sunday after their engagement. It had not been an easy meeting. Mr and Mrs Barber had been surprised, of course, and asked Hugh all sorts of questions, which he answered readily enough, but she could tell that her father was on edge. Her mother, coming from a similar section of society to Hugh, was more gracious, but both of them were worried about the idea of a July wedding, not so much because it was all a terrible rush, as because the couple had not known one another long.

‘People got married at the drop of a hat during the war,’ Hugh reminded them.

‘And some came to regret it.’ Mrs Barber’s retort was gently expressed, but it was still an admonition. Yet Isabel was insistent, passionately so. Her parents could only shrug and give in.

Now she would have to meet his mother. She wondered nervously how Lavinia Morton would regard her. Hugh was her only child, after all, and Isabel already had an inkling of how important mother and son were to one another.

They drove down to Suffolk the following Saturday.

Isabel was surprised that he knocked on the door of the drawing room before entering. ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘this is Isabel.’

Mrs Morton rose slowly from her chair by the fire, and Isabel crossed an interminable acreage of carpet to greet her future mother-in-law.

‘How do you do.’ Hugh’s mother spoke in regal tones as she took Isabel’s hand briefly into hers. ‘Welcome to Stone House.’

‘Thank you.’ Isabel found herself looking up into a pair of hazel eyes, Hugh’s eyes, in an oval face framed by lacquered waves of greying hair. Mrs Morton might be nearly sixty, but she was determined not to let time win. She was very well made-up, her eyebrows painted arches, her thickening figure tightly corseted. Her manicured hand rested elegantly on one hip as her gaze flickered over her son’s choice of wife. Something told Isabel that she was disappointed by what she saw.

Hugh didn’t seem to notice. He was opening an envelope he’d found addressed to him in the hall. ‘Oh blast,’ he said, ‘some local society wants me to address them.’

‘I do hope you will, Hugh. I’m afraid it was I who mentioned your name to them.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t, Mother.’

‘But, dear, you must put yourself about to further your career. Now, will you show Isabel her room? I’ve given her Magnolia.’

Left by herself in a bedroom at the back of the house whose decor gave off a pinkish-white aura like medicine, Isabel at last felt able to take in her surroundings. She had built up a mental picture of Hugh’s beloved childhood home from his descriptions, but Stone House was somehow bigger than she imagined, chilly inside, and alarmingly remote. She went over to the window and found herself looking out across a great apron of lawn edged by a gravel path and flowerbeds. Beyond the garden was a field, and beyond that, as Hugh had told her, the marshes. A line of glittering silver in the distance must be the river. She pushed open the casement, admitting a draught of cold wind. Rich scents of earth and greenery, the desolate cries of seabirds, filled her senses. She leaned over the sill and immediately drew back, shivering. It was a steep drop to the flagstones below.

She did not enjoy the weekend much. Hugh was subdued, not at all his usual self, and she sensed that Mrs Morton was playing some power game with her, the rules of which she did not know, and in which she had no desire to engage. Typical of this was the discussion over dinner of what Isabel should call her.

‘I’m thinking it’s too familiar for a young person to call me Lavinia,’ the woman intoned. ‘I would feel most uncomfortable.’

‘Isabel can’t call you Mrs Morton,’ Hugh said. ‘That would be impossible. How about “Mother”?’

‘But I am not her mother, Hugh, do be sensible.’ Sometimes Lavinia spoke to him as though he were still a young boy. ‘How about ‘‘ Mother-in-Law’’? Yes, I think that would be best.’

Mother-in-Law? Isabel tried it once or twice but it sounded ridiculous. She decided she would get round it by calling her nothing. Thereafter she thought of her always as just ‘Hugh’s mother’.

That evening, Mrs Morton insisted on sitting up with the engaged couple so Isabel made her excuses and went to her bed early, hoping that Hugh might not be long. She read her book for a little, then turned out the light and waited in the darkness, listening to the wind outside. It wasn’t long before there was a soft knock on the door and Hugh put his head round.

‘Are you still awake?’ he whispered.

‘Yes, of course – come in,’ she replied, and he felt his way to the bed.

‘Where are you?’ he said.

‘Here,’ she replied, drawing him down towards her. Their mouths found each other in the darkness. She pulled him closer, but he resisted.

‘We’d better not,’ he said.

‘I don’t mind, really.’

‘No, my temptress, we must wait. It’ll be all the nicer then, you’ll see.’ She wondered vaguely how he knew this , but would never ask.

‘I wish you would stay. I won’t break.’

‘I know, and I want you madly, but you’ll see I’m right. Good night, darling,’ he murmured, and in a moment he was gone.

She missed him already. When they’d talked about it the previous weekend he’d said the same thing. They shouldn’t go to bed together until they were married. It wouldn’t be long. She was so young, he told her, and he wanted to protect her. It was the right thing to do.

She thought about this long after he’d gone. She wanted him so much but she could hardly beg him, could she? She imagined that being so much older, he was more experienced. Perhaps she should trust him, even though her body cried out for him? She hugged herself for comfort as she waited to fall asleep.

Emily

It was Valentine’s Day. On the top of the bus to work, Emily watched teenagers in school blazers torment each other. One girl, pretty and flirtatious, waved a card in a pink envelope, which the boys snatched away and threw to one another. The girls all shrieked and giggled as they tried to retrieve it. A young man in a City suit bounded up the stairs carrying a bunch of red roses in cellophane that still bore its price sticker. Emily couldn’t help smiling at his selfconscious air, but inside she felt forlorn. There would be nothing for her today. ‘It’s only stupid commercialisation,’ she remembered Matthew telling her once. Even if they’d still been together, he probably wouldn’t have sent her anything. He hated following the herd. She tried to remember when she last had a surprise Valentine from anybody. Not since school, that was for sure.

The office, of course, had gone Valentine’s crazy. A bestselling romance author sent in a huge box of heart-shaped cupcakes, which did the rounds. Someone strung up pink bunting over the mirrors in the Ladies. Even the sullen girl who administered royalty payments displayed a huge bunch of flora on her desk. Her beatific smile transformed her.

Emily’s email box was full of horrors. An overenthusiastic marketing assistant had set viral messages to arrive every hour about a book on internet dating. The Finance Director picked the day to circulate several forms about annual budgets. Filling them in would take Emily hours of meticulous work. And no one seemed to have told Big Brother, aka the Chief of Operations, that it was a day of goodwill. For round about midday a very unloving announcement hit everyone’s inbox, ominously labelled
Maximising Profits.
From around the room came little sighs and groans as her colleagues opened it. The management consultants were coming. The words ‘cost savings’ were mentioned, which everyone knew meant redundancies. Suddenly the joy was gone from the cakes, the bunting and the flowers. Everyone was fearful.

‘The bastards,’ Liz muttered.

‘I don’t know what we’ll do if I lose my job,’ Sarah told the others, her eyes round and anxious. ‘Jules has already had to take a paycut.’

‘You’ll be all right,’ Emily said, trying to comfort her. ‘The Young Adult list is doing brilliantly. I don’t see where they can cut in editorial, anyway. We’re already stretched too thin.’

‘That won’t stop them,’ Liz murmured. ‘You watch. They just don’t care.’

Emily spared a moment to worry for herself – last in, first out being the phrase that rose to mind – and she had a mortgage to manage. But she’d survived redundancies at the old firm, and it was Gillian herself who had recruited her, so she tried to be philosophical. Also, she was feeling that she’d started to prove herself. Her marketing colleagues were keen on a historical novel she’d acquired and she’d been allowed to offer for Tobias Berryman’s literary thriller. It was set in a sort of dark, alternative Elizabethan world that had resonances of today, very cleverly evoked and spine-chilling, highbrow yet readable at the same time. The Sales Director was crazy about it. Surely they wouldn’t get rid of her now. And she genuinely thought they needed Sarah. Everyone relied on her long-term knowledge of the firm.

They can’t possibly let you go, Sarah. No one else can keep Jack Vane in order.’ One of the firm’s big money-spinning authors, Jack was a notorious complainer.

Sarah rolled her eyes. ‘Not having to deal with the Vain One any more. That would be a consolation prize for redundancy.’

She spoke lightly, but Emily saw how jittery she was.

Emily spent a late lunch hour idling the carpeted halls of a huge bookshop on Piccadilly, trying to think how she’d brief the jacket of Tobias’s novel. The bookshop was one of her favourite haunts, where she discovered useful hints of what and how to publish. She loved the look and feel of new books, the smell of the paper, the wondrous possibilities that each one suggested.

She picked up a paperback from a table of debut novels, lured by the illustration on the cover, a silhouette of a girl opening a birdcage and a bluebird flying away.
Maybe,
it said to her,
by reading me, you too will escape to a world you’ve never dreamed of before, and your life will be changed.
She was reading the blurb and wondering whether to buy it, when a woman’s voice said, ‘Hello, Emily. It is Emily, isn’t it?’ and when she looked up, she was startled to see Lorna Morton. Maybe she used her married name, not Morton, but Emily still thought of her as Hugh’s daughter.

‘Lorna, what a surprise!’

‘I thought it was you, but I wasn’t sure,’ Lorna said, beaming. ‘It would be typical of me to accost a complete stranger. I’m useless at names and faces.’

Emily found Lorna’s self-effacement endearing, but at the same time felt sorry for her. Lorna’s country looks were if anything more pronounced today, her face flushed in the warmth of the shop. Instead of her cagoule, she was wearing a jacket of an orangey hue that didn’t quite suit the reds and blues of her Liberty-print blouse, and a very unflattering hiker’s hat.

‘I’ve just had lunch with Joel Richards,’ Lorna confided. ‘He wanted to talk to me without Mother hovering about. I feel a bit guilty about it, though.’

‘Why? Did it go all right?’ Emily asked, the book she’d been looking at forgotten.

‘I don’t know that I was any help, though he kindly told me I was. He had this awful tape recorder and it put me off a bit. I’m embarrassed to think of him having to listen to my muddle again.’

‘What sort of things did he ask you?’ Emily wanted to know.

‘Oh, you know, my memories of Dad, nothing difficult. I had hoped . . .’ she started saying then stopped. ‘No, it doesn’t matter.’

Emily thought of the
Coming Home
file, which Joel had recently come in to inspect. She was about to mention it when Lorna glanced at her watch and said, ‘I must get on and pay for these. I’m due at my goddaughter’s, you see.’

Emily was surprised to see that the paperbacks Lorna was clutching were not, as might be expected, about gardening or cookery, nor even romance, but futuristic fantasy. ‘They’re for her eldest daughter,’ Lorna explained. ‘Though I have to say I enjoy them myself.’

Emily watched Lorna join the queue, a little flustered, her bag falling off her shoulder as she searched for her money. The choice of fantasy books amused her. Lorna, she decided, might turn out to be the darkest of horses.

When Emily returned to the office it was to find a gorgeous bouquet of roses lying across her keyboard.

‘Aren’t you the lucky one,’ Liz said enviously, her corn-rowed head appearing over the partition.

‘Jules only managed a card,’ Sarah told them. ‘It’s years since he gave me flowers.’

Emily gathered up the bouquet to inspect it. The roses were beautiful, proper scented ones, pink and red and white, not those dark forced blooms that you’d find at every street stall. She sniffed their old-fashioned fragrance with closed eyes – wonderful. There was a small envelope stapled to the cellophane, which she opened carefully, savouring the moment.

‘Oh,’ she said, intrigued and disappointed in the same moment. ‘There’s no name.’ Only the printed care instructions.

‘A real surprise Valentine!’ Liz’s round eyes were saucer-like with excitement. ‘Come on, try and guess. Do you think it’s from George?’

‘I sincerely hope not,’ Emily said, the flowers losing some of their lustre at the thought. There weren’t many other possibilities, though.

‘It is so romantic.’ Sarah gave a long sigh.

‘No, it’s not, it’s creepy,’ Emily said.

‘It could be someone gross.’ Liz’s eyes now glittered with fun. ‘That’s the trouble. You might be better not knowing.’

‘Thanks for that, Liz,’ Emily said. ‘Either of you see who brought them?’

They shook their heads.

‘Call reception,’ Liz said. Emily did, but they couldn’t help. There had been so many flowers delivered that day.