The Silent Tide (53 page)

‘Em. Hi! I was beginning to wonder if I’d got the wrong time again.’

‘No, it was my fault – sorry,’ she said, finding her voice. And then they were hugging one another and she felt so happy.

He bought coffees, which they hardly drank; instead, they smiled and threw each other shy glances.

‘I like the specs,’ she told him. ‘They really suit you.’

‘They’re only for reading,’ he said, prodding them on the table. ‘Those late nights squinting at the computer did for me.’

‘It’s over now, your course?’

‘Yes. I’ve just heard from Tobias, in fact. You’re now talking to Matthew Heaton MA.’

‘That’s wonderful!’ she cried. ‘You worked so hard. Oh, congratulations!’

‘Thanks.’ He beamed with pleasure. And Tobias told me something about you – your promotion. That’s fantastic, Em.’

‘Thank you. Tobias’s book helped towards that, you know’

‘He sounds elated by how it’s all going, I must say. I dropped in on him recently to ask him about a reference. I’m applying for jobs, you see.'

They chatted easily. It felt so natural, so right, Emily thought, but all the while she was aware of the deep lake of unsaid words that lay between them.

At last he said quietly, 'It was quite a shock getting your card yesterday.'

'I'm sorry. I felt terrible. I had no idea you sent the flowers. You must have hated me for not replying.'

'I could never hate you, Em.' He pushed his coffee away half-finished and rubbed his face wearily.

Something about the sadness of his expression alarmed her. The memory of Matthew and Lola, arms around each other, came unbidden.

'I visited your college to see Tobias once,' she said, watching him carefully. 'In June, it must have been. I saw you, but you were with someone so I didn't try to say hello.'

He looked at her puzzled. 'Who?' Then the penny dropped.

'She's pretty, Lola. You looked happy together.'

She waited. A world hung on his response. Finally he spoke.

'We're not together anymore, Em. Lola is lovely, terribly sweet. We had fun for a while but it was never any more than that.'

The relief was immeasurable. 'I was with someone for a bit, too,' she said, 'but that didn't work out either.'

'I've missed you, Em,' he whispered, and reached out his hand to take hers.

'I missed you too,' she managed to say. Their eyes locked. 'How did we mess it up so badly?'

'Everything got on top of me that term,' he siad, 'But it wasn't just that.'

'It was me, wasn't it, pushing you places you didn't want to go?'

'A bit,' he admitted. 'But if I hadn't been so selfish . . . '

'Me too.'

'Not as much as me, Em. . . darling, I'm ready now. If you'll have me back.'

Happiness flooded through her, but something made her hesitate. 'We should take it more slowly, perhaps,' she said finally.

He saw at once what was wrong. 'You're frightened, aren't you? I'm sorry. I did that to you.'

'I did it to myself.' SHe saw more clearly now what had gone wrong, how in all sorts of little ways she hadn't given him enough space, not allowed him to come to her at his own rate.

'Let's do it properly this time,' he said, taking her other hand.

The time for worrying was over. He leaned forward, almost knocking the cup over as he kissed her.

The cafe was shutting up, so they strolled hand-in-hand into Soho looking for somewhere to eat, but principally where they could sit and be with one another.

'There's a brasserie I remember that isn't too expensive,' Matthew said, taking them north across Oxford Street.

Emily glanced at a road sign. 'Rathbone Place,' she said and then she remembered. Let's go up here,' she begged. 'There's somewhere I want to look at.'

'Sure, if you'd like,' he said, puzzled.

They passed restaurants, houses and offices, but she hardly took them in. And then they came to the crossing with Percy Street where the road jinked in a sort of elbow, and the buildings were grouped in a quiet square. Emily had never studied it properly before. She recognised the name of one of the pubs.

She looked about, half-expecting to see the sign for McKinnon & Holt, but of course there wasn't one. A corner building it had been, with a few steps up to the door. 'This must be the one,' she whispered. There was no plaque of any sort to indicate the business conducted there now, and only one downstairs light was on.

In the soft lamplight that blurred everything, it might have been today or sixty years ago or longer.

This was the office where Isabel worked,' she told Matthew and he nodded, remembering. There's the Fitzroy Tavern, where they used to go, and over there must have been the cafe where she sat with Hugh and talked about his book.'

She could see it all in her mind's eye, almost imagine the door to McKinnon & Holt open and a small neat figure in a sherry-coloured coat and hat, carrying a bagful of scripts, trip down the steps. Isabel. What had really happened to her in the end? Perhaps Lorna was right and they'd never know.

'There's so much to tell you,' she said. 'Such a story about Isabel.'

'And I look forward to hearing it. But right now, Little Bird, there's something else I want to do.'

And beneath the lamp post, Matthew, very much real and alive, drew her into his arms and kissed her, and they were lost to time and place.

Isabel

Isabel slipped drowsily from the collapsing house down into the freezing water where, jerked awake, she gasped and struggled to breathe. Then something dug at the back of her neck and she found herself lifted up and flung over the side of a boat, strong hands hauling her in. She lay in the boat’s bottom, flapping and heaving like a dying fish. ‘You’re all right,’ said a smoky voice. She heard the splash of oars. The boat surged forward. She knew no more.

When she awoke, she was warm and dry in a bed heaped with blankets. Her head hurt and when she put up a hand to explore, she found a bandage round it. She stared at her sleeve, orange brushed-nylon with lace at the cuff, an old lady’s nightgown,’ he said, then pushed herself up, though it made her head throb, and looked around. She was in a large room with wood-slatted walls, and beams across the sloping ceiling. It smelled, not unpleasantly, of tar. There was no door, which was peculiar, but pale daylight gleamed comfortingly through a small skylight above her head. Rain pattered on the roof. There was little furniture apart from the bed, just a chest of drawers, a wardrobe and a chair. Upon the chair lay a pile of neatly folded clothes. On top sat a handbag, the only thing familiar in the room. She knew nothing, not who she was or where she was or how she got there, but she wasn’t worried. On the contrary, she felt peaceful and safe.

She lay down again, but as she sank into a doze, there came a knock from under the floorboards, then a trapdoor opened up near her bed and a man’s grizzled head appeared, like a walrus through an ice hole.

‘Ah, you’re awake,’ he said in a country accent. He heaved himself up into the room. ‘How are you?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. She had a faint feeling she’d seen him before somewhere. His weathered face was friendly, his eyes when he smiled almost lost in wrinkles.

‘Where is this?’ she asked him.

‘It’s where I live. And where I work. A boathouse, I suppose you’d call it.’

‘How did I get here?’ she whispered.

He looked puzzled. ‘There was a flood,’ he said, ‘don’t you remember? I rescued you.’

‘Did you?’ She thought a moment. ‘Thank you,' she said simply. 'I'm afraid I simply don't remember.'

The old man's name was Saul and she stayed with him for some while, a week, maybe two; she couldn't track the passing time. He was very solicitous. The nylon nightdresses belonged to his late wife, Doris, and crackled with static. He brought Isabel huge meals she couldn't eat-fish, thickly buttered bread, heavy slabs of cake-and changed the dressing on the large bump on her temple. He didn'tn say much. She sensed that he was glad to have her here, someone to look after. He plainly missed Doris, and the couple had not been blessed with children.

After a few days, she got up and dressed in the clothes he'd left her-baggy skirts and blouses and thick woollen stockings, also Doris's. The old man looked over her up and down, his eyes filling with tears. She sensed he'd like to keep her here, but also that he wouldn't force her, so she wasn't frightened.

She still couldn't recall much. Often she took the contents of the handbag and looked at it all, wondered at the fact it survived the water intact. There was quite a lot of money in the purse, some letters, a birth certificate from which she learned her name, Isabel Lewis. She thumbed the blank pages of the engagement diary, tried out the lipstick and the powder compact, dissolved an aspirin for her headache, watching it fizz in the glass.

As she handled her possessions and read the appointments in the diary, shadowy memories started to dart like fish beneath the tranquil surface of her mind. She was Isabel but not Lewis. She had a husband, Hugh, and a child, Lorna. There was some reason she couldn't see them-here her memory stuck like a gramophone needle on a scratch. They'd been taken away, that was it. The name Jacqueline sounded in her dreams. Jacqueline had taken them. She found she didn't mind. They were safe with Jacqueline. She was free now.

One of the letters in her bag was from a woman who lived in Paris. Isabel read it over and over again, liking the sound of Vivienne and noting the phrase, 'You must come and stay with me here,' Gradually she discerned what she wanted to do.

The day came when she told Saul it was time for her to go and could hardly bear his distress. She thanked him and hugged him. He stood sadly watching as the bus pulled away. She was to catch a train from Halesworth, he'd instructed.

When she alighted at Ipswich, she automatically followed the crowds to the exit, feeling the pull of home, but then she paused as people flowed around her. A woman's voice was playing in her mind: 'Don't go, Hugh darling,' it said. 'Leave it till tomorrow.' Jacqueline. Hugh and Lorna were safe with Jacqueline, she told herself. Now which was the right platform?

She climbed into the train for London, her mind already on the future. She was Isabel Lewis now, she would shed her old life like a dead skin. She'd arrange a passport and a ticket to Paris, but first-she looked down at Doris's old skirt and cardigan-she really must buy some new clothes.