The Silent Tide (34 page)

Just then, Hugh’s mother came in. ‘I don’t know whether you have any plans today,’ she said, ‘but that was Jacqueline. She’s coming for morning coffee. I thought we should make a start on preparations for Baby.’

‘That’s very kind of you both,’ Isabel said dolefully. She was clutching the manuscript to her chest like something precious. Hugh’s mother’s gaze did not waver. After a moment, Isabel reluctantly laid the script back down on the table. She would have to deal with it another time.

‘I thought Isabel would like the Rose Room as the nursery,’ Lavinia Morton said, pushing open the door to the smaller of the spare bedrooms.

Isabel walked over to the window with its rose-patterned curtains and looked out across the sodden lawn. The half-dressed trees were dripping with rain and the marshes beyond were veiled in mist. She shivered and turned to see Mrs Morton and Jacqueline watching her.

‘Yes . . .’ she said tentatively. ‘I’m sure it will do. Anywhere really.’

‘We must ask Cooper in to redecorate, if we can find anywhere that has wallpaper,’ Hugh’s mother said.

A friend of mine knows a man who found her quite a pretty design,’ Jacqueline said, glancing round the room. ‘Shall I make enquiries?’

‘He must be a magician,’ Hugh’s mother replied. ‘Would you, dear?’

‘Of course. I made a note of his name – just in case, you know.’ She sounded a bit wistful, which moved Isabel to thank her.

‘Nice to see the two of you getting along,’ Lavinia murmured.

Isabel changed the subject. ‘Was this bedroom Hugh’s nursery when he was little?’

‘No,’ her mother-in-law said. ‘That was the one you and Hugh are in now. This was always a guest bedroom. Really, a proper washstand would be desirable.’ She was contemplating the cracked handbasin. ‘I suppose there’s no chance of finding one of those?’

‘At least the bathroom’s next door,’ Jacqueline said. ‘Did I see a little tin bath in the big shed a while back?’ Of course, Isabel thought, she knew the house so well since playing here as a child.

She wished she could warm to Jacqueline more, but found she couldn’t; her dislike was an almost physical thing. The woman’s staidness, the dull perfection of her hair and dress, even her talcum-powdery smell, repelled her. On all sorts of levels Isabel resented her. Jacqueline never passed up an opportunity to imply that she knew Hugh so much better than Isabel did. Hugh’s mother was clearly fond of her, too, and Jacqueline played on this affection. As for Hugh, he behaved only with gentle gallantry to Jacqueline, oblivious to the way the young woman’s eyes followed him and seemingly unaware of the stiff relationship between his childhood friend and his wife.

‘What is that book like?’ Isabel asked Hugh after dinner that evening as they were sitting before the fire in the drawing room. Lavinia had gone out to play bridge. It was unusual for Isabel and Hugh to have an evening alone together.

Hugh took his pipe out of his mouth and looked up. He’d been reading a novel he’d been asked to review, from time to time stopping to pencil a note in the margin.

‘Better than your knitting,’ he murmured, rescuing a runaway ball of wool. Mrs Catchpole had given Isabel a magazine with knitting patterns in it and she was trying now to make a pair of bootees for the baby with wool from an old cardigan.

‘You may well be right,’ she said, frowning at her misshapen efforts, ‘but I want to know what you think of your book.’

‘What? Yes, yes,’ he said, and turned another page.

‘What is it about?’

Hugh looked up and sighed. ‘Party politics. The chap’s got something, I have to say. It’ll annoy a few of the Socialists though. They’ll think he’s laughing at them.’

‘And is he?’

‘Probably, yes.’ He returned to his reading. The Socialists. Hugh rarely mentioned politics these days. She remembered the spirited discussions they used to have. Now he sounded disparaging.

‘Drat,’ she said, dropping another stitch. She laid down her knitting. She was simply no good at it. The manuscript she’d received that morning was lying beside her. She hadn’t found time to start it today, and now she wasn’t in the mood.

‘What about your own writing, Hugh? How did that go today?’

‘Oh fine, fine,’ he said absently. He pencilled a margin note.

‘Was what I said any use to you?’ she persisted. He had, in the end, read her comments.

‘Mmm, oh most certainly.’

‘I’ll look at the novel again sometime if you like.’

‘That’s most kind.’ He smiled at her. ‘You know, you are looking pretty tonight. That’s a new dress, isn’t it?’

‘Thank you, but no, it’s not,’ she said sadly. ‘It’s an old one I altered. Hugh?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Now that your mother’s so much better,’ she said carefully, ‘could we move back up to Town? I mean, some of the time. Perhaps we could come here at weekends.’

He closed the book, but kept his finger in the place.

‘Are you not happy here?’ he asked. ‘I know Mother loves having you. And you seem to be making friends with Jacqueline.’

‘I’m not sure that I agree with you about any of that,’ she said slowly. ‘Hugh, I don’t think she likes me very much – Jacqueline, I mean.’

‘I’m sure she does, why?’

‘Oh . . . she can be quite stiff with me.’

‘I’m sure she likes you. Why shouldn’t she?’

‘I don’t know. Now I feel a little silly that I mentioned it.’

‘No, not silly, but I do think you’re imagining it. Doesn’t like you . . .’ He frowned and shook his head. ‘Jacqueline’s a good sort. I should be sad if you didn’t try to get along.’

‘I do try. But what about Kensington? Can’t we move back?’

Hugh put down his book and eased himself forward in his chair. He smiled at her lovingly and she thought how dear he was with those lively eyes and his turned-up mouth. He came and knelt before her, and rested his head against her belly. She stroked his hair, then leaned over and kissed it, breathing in the smoky maleness of him.

‘I thought you were happy here,’ he said. ‘It certainly makes me happy, having you in this house all to myself. And it feels the right thing to be here, looking after Mother. It’s part of the reason she’s recovered so well actually. The doctor says she’s in much better spirits.’

‘Oh,’ Isabel said, considering this. ‘Of course, she must like having her son back.’

‘And I don’t think you’d be so delighted with Kensington when the baby comes. Think of those stairs for a start.’

‘I suppose so,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I miss my friends, that’s some of it. I haven’t seen Vivienne for months. Or Berec’

‘I know. But they’d be at work all day even if you were up there. Maybe not Berec, but, well, somehow I don’t see Berec with a baby.’

They smiled at each other at the thought.

‘I think here would be best, Isabel.’ And there was something very definite about the way he said it. ‘When the baby’s born you’ll thank me. Try it and see. I think there’s no better place in all the world.’

She thought about this, bringing up a child in the country, the benefits of the nursery upstairs. It should look very nice once it had been brightened up and the cot brought out of the box room.

‘Hugh?’ He’d returned to his book.

‘Mmm?’

‘You know the box room at the end of the landing.’

‘What about it?’

‘What’s in the one beyond, the one your mother keeps locked?’

‘Old things of hers, I don’t know. I’ve never looked.’ He returned to reading his book.

Jacqueline brought round some precious wallpaper samples and Lavinia Morton picked out a new design: a little girl with big eyes curtseying to a boy who was doffing his hat. Isabel secretly liked one with giraffes better, but her mother-in-law pronounced them ‘daft-looking’, and she was paying, so that was that.

The rolls of paper miraculously arrived late in November, and Cooper, the local handyman, was summoned. A big man who didn’t say much, he seemed to be used to Mrs Morton’s constant interference, for he would simply nod and carry on regardless. After he’d hung the paper and touched up the paintwork, a big rug in surprisingly good condition was brought out of the box room, as well as the cot. Finally Jacqueline appeared one day with a wicker bassinet she’d borrowed. ‘You’ll need this for Baby when he’s tiny,’ she explained to a puzzled Hugh. ‘He can’t go in the cot straight away, he’d roll between the bars.’

Isabel had not been allowed to assist much, but one afternoon when she climbed the stairs to fetch a book, she went to the door of the new nursery and peeped inside. It really looked very pleasant in the afternoon light, though it would be too chilly for a baby, she feared. An electric fire stood ready by the grate, but she wondered if this would be enough. She was finding the house very cold in winter after London. It must be its closeness to the estuary and, beyond, the great expanse of the North Sea.

The question began to bother her. Next to a chest of drawers, the bassinet stood ready on its stand. Where were the blankets Hugh’s mother had found in the box room? She pulled open the drawers one by one, but there were only the piles of little clothes. Perhaps they were in the airing cupboard on the landing?

She pushed the last drawer shut and went out to the bathroom, where she opened the big doors of the airing cupboard and stared at the shelves of neatly pressed linen. On a shelf above her head she thought she could see the blankets. If she stood on the bathroom chair she would reach them easily.

It was her scream as she fell that brought the household running.

The murmur of distant voices. ‘She’s coming round,’ someone said loudly and she opened her eyes to see a woman’s face – Jacqueline’s – close to hers. It was dark and something heavy lay across her forehead. She reached up a hand and touched wet cloth.

‘Leave it,’ Jacqueline commanded, adjusting the flannel. Liquid trickled in Isabel’s eyes and she blinked it away.

‘Is she all right?’ Here was Hugh’s face looming into view and there was his mother peering past him. Isabel was lying on their bed and the curtains were drawn. Her head hurt. She tried to change position but Jacqueline ordered her to lie still.

‘The baby,’ Isabel said, her hands going to her belly.

‘Darling, we’re waiting for the doctor,’ Hugh told her. He was sitting beside her on the bed. ‘You must have hit your head.’ He bent and kissed her cheek. ‘What were you doing, climbing on chairs?’

She started to sob quietly. Her head ached and she was anxious about the baby. She stroked her belly and prayed for a movement. There was none.

The doctor arrived and examined her, the stethoscope cold against her skin. There was a swelling on one temple, which he prodded gently. When he left her alone in the room, she could hear the murmur of voices out on the landing, but not what they said. Soon afterwards Jacqueline entered with a glass of water and an aspirin. ‘Lie still, everything’s all right,’ she said and went out again. Isabel wondered vaguely when Jacqueline had arrived. She felt so confused, and desperate. Why didn’t the baby move, and what had they been talking about outside? She tried to sit up, but this set her head throbbing horribly and she sank back onto the pillow.

‘You’ve given yourself quite a bump on the head, my dear, and you’re concussed,’ the doctor said when he’d returned. ‘However, I don’t see any point in moving you.’

‘But the baby?’

‘A nice little heartbeat there. A bit fast, but then he’s had a shock, too.’

‘Why doesn’t he move?’

‘I expect he will soon, you mustn’t worry. But no more climbing for you, young lady.’

Only later, when she began to feel the child stirring inside, did she allow herself to cry with relief.

Everything changed after that. It was as though they united against her. Jacqueline came every morning for the three days the doctor recommended that Isabel stayed in bed. Apparently, she’d trained as a nurse towards the end of the war and certainly she knew exactly what to do, helping her out to the bathroom and keeping the room orderly and cheerful. Gradually the headache eased , but Isabel still felt tired and slept a great deal. On the third morning she felt much better and decided to get up.

Jacqueline chose some clothes for her.

‘I can manage by myself now, thank you,’ Isabel protested.

‘Of course you can,’ Jacqueline said and withdrew. Isabel tried to hook a stocking over her foot and wished she hadn’t sent her away.

Downstairs, she discovered Hugh to be shut in his study and her mother-in-law out somewhere. She remembered that McKinnon & Holt had sent her some editing she ought to finish, but it wasn’t in the dining room where she’d left it. She looked for it in the drawing room, Jacqueline trailing around after her, asking her how she could help. Finally, she knocked on the study door and went in.

‘Isabel, my darling,’ Hugh said, rising from the desk. ‘Should you really be up?’

‘I feel quite tired, still,’ she said, pushing her hair back from her face, ‘but I can’t lie in bed for ever.’

‘God, that bruise!’ he exclaimed, examining her forehead.

‘It doesn’t hurt so much,’ she told him. ‘Only looks bad. Have you seen that script I’m supposed to be working on?’

Jacqueline had appeared at the open doorway and Hugh threw her a glance of appeal. He said, ‘You’re not to worry about that. We’ve sorted everything out.’

‘What have you sorted out?’ Isabel asked him. He was talking in riddles.

‘I spoke to Stephen on the telephone yesterday morning,’ Hugh said. ‘I told him you couldn’t possibly do the work.’

‘I sent it back to his secretary,’ Jacqueline said. ‘That was right, wasn’t it, Hugh?’

‘Perfectly right,’ Hugh said.

‘But it’s mine,’ Isabel said. ‘You didn’t ask me.’

At this, Hugh became impatient. ‘Really, Isabel, I don’t see how you could have carried on. It’s only someone’s book. I had a quick look myself. It had no merit in it. I found it rather ponderous.’

‘But I was working with the author on it. Hugh . . .’ She glanced towards Jacqueline. She felt she could hardly speak freely whilst the other woman stood there.

‘I ought to go and do some shopping,’ Jacqueline said, and left, shutting the door.