Secret Shores

by Ella Carey

  Time out. The words ricocheted around the room. Tess glanced up at her boss, who sat there, unmoving. She stood up, gathered herself together, and made her way to the door.

  “Thank you, Leon,” she said.

  He nodded at her.

  Tess held her head up as she made her way out of the building. She walked out onto Fifth Avenue, but the crowds of purposeful people on the street who usually invigorated her seemed irritating now. She didn’t agree with Nico: fate was something you had to fight sometimes. Accepting setbacks was not her motto. It was all very well to sit back and watch life pass you by. But it wasn’t what Tess did. And it certainly wasn’t how she’d built up her career. But what to do when it was clear you had no choice? That was the rub, and that was the place from which she had to push on.

  After an hour, Tess knew she had to go back. Her thoughts spiraled around and ended up in the same place. She marched back into the building and stood sentinel in the elevator, her shoulders rigid as a set of planks.

  Leon appeared at her office door a matter of seconds after she sat down at her desk.

  Tess felt her heart speed up as he came in and sat down opposite her.

  “I can’t do anything about Alec, Tess. He’s requested James and that’s all there is to it.”

  Tess clenched her hands into two tight balls and stared off to the side. While she was angry, while she knew it was unfair, guilty thoughts rolled one after the other like tumbleweeds. She’d done something wrong. He wasn’t happy with her work. In three seconds flat, she raked her mind over their most recent meetings. Had she said something? Done something untoward? But what?

  “I have a proposal to make,” Leon said. “Tess?”

  Tess sat on her hands and waited. Please, she thought. Just give Burgess back . . .

  “I want to give you a new author.”

  No.

  “He’s experienced,” Leon went on. “If you want to work on something with a little more depth, then I’d like you to try Edward Russell.”

  Tess searched her memory for the name. Nope, nada.

  Nothing.

  “I’ve never heard of him,” Tess said. Her voice sounded strangely professional. Tough. Oddly, she felt as if she were dealing with a new person, not the old Leon, not the man who had guided her career. A man who was capable of double-crossing her. Tess wrapped her arms around her body.

  “No, you probably wouldn’t have heard of him, Tess.”

  Tess waited.

  “He’s written . . . poetry, years ago.”

  “Poetry?”

  “Russell’s Australian. He published three sets of poems in the 1940s which were, by all accounts, quite well received in that country.”

  Tess wanted to die on the spot. She thought of Alec and all his success. The glamorous launch parties. The interviews with the press . . .

  “Since then, he’s written biographies and had a career lecturing.”

  “Whose biographies?” Tess asked. But she sounded as flat as a floor.

  Leon grimaced. “I think they were Australian artists. Maybe a war hero.”

  “Yep,” Tess said.

  “No.” Leon laid his hands on his knees. “Tess. If you want to show that you can manage a work of depth, then Russell’s manuscript should fit the bill.”

  “But he’s not Alec.”

  “He’s not Alec.”

  “I still cannot believe that this could happen.”

  “It does happen, Tess. It doesn’t mean that you’re a bad editor. It’s just change.”

  Tess leaned her head in her hands. “I don’t want to edit some washed-up Australian poet’s book, Leon. I’ve worked too hard. I just don’t know.”

  Leon pushed a file toward her. It slid across the surface of her desk until it stopped right at the perfect place. “Edward Russell. Secret Shores.”

  Tess heaved out a sigh. “Leon,” she said darkly, “I am at a loss for words.”

  Leon stood up. “Don’t be,” he said, sounding cheerful now. “Sometimes, you have to go with the flow—things happen and they work out in the end.”

  Tess glared at his retreating figure.

  She slid her fingers into the folder and picked up the first chapter of the book.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Melbourne, 1946

  Rebecca let herself into her mother’s house just after midnight, pulling off her shoes and slipping upstairs with the practiced silence of a thief. She ran her hand up the smooth, polished banister. There was no risk of splinters cutting into her palms here. Everything was polished in Mrs. Swift’s house because Rebecca’s mother insisted that Rebecca clean every room from top to toe twice a week.

  Rebecca had begun to call her mother Mrs. Swift once she realized that her mother’s treatment of her had never been Rebecca’s fault. When Rebecca was fourteen, her mother had ripped up a drawing Rebecca had taken great care with, soon after her father’s death. Rebecca had propped the little sketch up on her bedside table, setting a small jar of daisies from the garden in front of it, along with the teddy bear that her father had bought her and a photograph of him. Her mother took exception to the sketch, telling Rebecca that it was disrespectful to draw her father with a champagne bottle in his hand. But Rebecca had not understood the problem. It was simply how her father had always been. This was when Rebecca had begun to appreciate the extent of her mother’s propensity for avoiding the truth.

  Mrs. Swift never acknowledged that her husband was an alcoholic. She never talked about the way his bouts of drunken behavior tore at their family’s heart. Rebecca ended up screaming her feelings about it in her most private pieces of art. She had hoped, valiantly, for years that Mrs. Swift might miraculously transform. Instead, Rebecca was always told to take herself away when she would burst with exuberance into the smart boutique where her mother worked, hoping beyond everything that Mrs. Swift might listen to her as other mothers did.

  Rebecca moved across the landing on the top floor of the bungalow in Elwood. The sound of Mrs. Swift’s radio drifted through the house. She tuned it to the same station every night. Jazz. Mrs. Swift liked to think she was modern. It was all part of her meticulous act, which only seemed to have intensified after Rebecca’s father’s death.

  She had never known her father as a real person. He’d been a drunk version of himself, distorted by alcohol whenever he was at home. Her parents’ nighttime arguments had been appalling rows during which she hid under her covers. Mrs. Swift locked Rebecca’s father in the spare room when he was out of control. Then she had become meticulous about cleanliness after his death, presenting an immaculate front to the world.

  When she was little, Rebecca accepted everything as if it were normal—didn’t most other people live in houses where there were atrocious fights? But at the same time, her imagination developed. Drawing became a vital means of escape. She could either create her own reality straight from her imagination—drawing a better world—or allow brutal representations of the life she had to endure to emerge. Even now, her art tutor at the Gallery School was alarmed by the passionate nature of the work that appeared in Rebecca’s sketchbooks.

  She sat there, like all the other students. And put up with the lessons on technique. But technique didn’t seem to cut to the heart of what was important in art. Life, Rebecca had come to understand, was like art—you could focus on what didn’t matter, technicalities, or you could get to the point. It was the emotion of her drawings that mattered. The deepest truths were the things that were worth seeking out. The modernist movement and its correlating beliefs about both art and life excited her; new ways of living and expression seemed the right answer to the last generation’s ills.

  The last thing Rebecca needed after the party with her friends, people who thought as she did, was an encounter with her mother. What was more, she didn’t want to think about anything other than Edward. Talking with him had felt something like the freedom she experienced when she was painting or drawing. She wanted more of his conversa
tion—he’d also stirred something in her, there was no doubt about that.

  Rebecca locked her bedroom door and picked up her pencil. She’d planned each sketch that she was going to make tonight while sitting in the tram travelling down Chapel Street and staring out the window at the darkened shops.

  Rebecca selected three pieces of paper, all the same size. Smallish. When she started working, charcoal gave her the scope she needed to achieve the nuance and expression in the faces that she had to convey. She would draw over this, later, with brush and ink, but first she needed to get the essential few strokes that would bring the portraits to life.

  The first two sketches were a warm-up of sorts. Max Harris with his dark eyelashes and a cigar in his hand, Joy and her peroxide hair, a knowing expression on her face. Rebecca worked fast on Joy and Max, then lingered for ages over Edward, adjusting her lamp so that it shone where she needed it as she worked into the early hours of the morning, taking great care with each stroke. Each stroke mattered. It was the way she worked. If she couldn’t capture the essence of a person in a few lines, then it wasn’t worth drawing someone at all. She wanted to capture their character, their true self. There was no point making drawings that didn’t speak to anyone. His eyes, green, his hair, dark blond, his expression, amused, she thought, before turning again, a switch back to suddenly serious. By the early hours, she was satisfied that she had captured almost everything she needed to see in him in order to try and distill that moment, that party that had moved her in a way nothing ever had before.

  Rebecca remembered that Edward had hinted at his own need to escape. Was his writing driven by the same deep forces as her desire to create? She wanted to know. She’d given him her number when he’d asked and he, in turn, had given her his.

  Rebecca collapsed on her old floral-covered bed, reached out, and turned off her light. She still wore her red coat. It wouldn’t matter what she had slept in when morning came.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  New York, 1987

  Late on Friday, Tess reread Edward Russell’s first installment and placed it back on her desk, straightening the unmarked sheets of paper so that the pages sat just so. She stood up to look out her office window at the haze and the skyscrapers, avoiding gazing down at the streets below, where people bustled like busy ants and the tops of yellow taxis glimmered as the city roared on in its relentless quest for . . . what?

  Now she was thinking like Edward. And yet, at the same time, she pictured the contrast between this sight and Rebecca’s last view on this earth: the swirling sea beneath the rocks as she fell to her untimely death. Her favorite pencil slipped away from her as fast and as easily as everything else. And as Rebecca reached forward for it, in that split second of movement, she knew it was a mistake. She should have let it go . . . One decision, to pick up a pencil, for goodness’ sakes. And a life was extinguished. Edward’s words sent a shudder through Tess’s system.

  Tess ran a hand through her hair and turned away from the window, picking up her empty water glass only to place it back down on her desk. She’d been determined to hate Edward’s novel on principle, but she was beguiled by Rebecca Swift. What had happened?

  It was frustrating to have the manuscript arriving in small stages. Tess was used to receiving books and reading them in one gluttonous feast on a weekend. Then she would commence a second read and start editing from there, rereading over and over with a sense of the book as a whole as she worked. Edward Russell was throwing everything out of balance.

  Yet, despite all the turmoil over losing Alec, she’d come to one decision she planned to stick to no matter what. It was clear that Alec Burgess was gone, so now she was going to pull out all the stops and turn Edward’s novel into a bestseller.

  She wandered out into the shared office space, only to stop dead at the sight of James Cooper leaning against one of the junior editor’s’ desks, chatting away with a group of Tess’s coworkers as if he was the one who’d worked here for years, not her.

  Tess hovered at the edge of the room.

  “I love The Sound of Music!” James insisted to the group of women surrounding him.

  Tess stood still and watched. Embarrassed glances had met her whenever she ventured out of her office. Word had travelled about her demotion, about the fact that she’d been cast aside for the publishing house’s newest recruit. She’d shut herself away with Edward’s manuscript to avoid people, had made contact with all her other clients. Tried to instill excitement in some lackluster careers. She had a firm belief in many of her writers. But now, to her surprise, she knew that it was Edward with whom she wanted to speak.

  “You love The Sound of Music?” one of the accountants squeaked. Her eyes shone as she peered up at the deity.

  Tess rolled her eyes to the roof.

  “Yes,” James said, dropping his voice just enough so that everyone leaned in close.

  “I confess, I’m softhearted,” he went on, his dark eyes twinkling and a pearly-white grin spreading across his face as he glanced around his audience. “I adore that film.”

  “Oh, you’re a closet romantic.” Leon’s personal assistant faked a swoon.

  Oh, for pity’s sake, Tess wanted to mutter. The only romantic bone in James’s body was directed toward his own ego. James represented everything that Edward abhorred in his book: social privilege, courting the right people, unquestionable wealth . . .

  Tess straightened herself and moved over to the group. This was her territory. She was the social leader around here. The sooner her coworkers realized that James was a fraud, the better, in her opinion.

  Everyone quieted awkwardly as Tess approached. Eyes darted to the side, to the floor, away from her. Anywhere. Tess paused halfway across the room, but only for one tiny split second, before marching on toward them. Head up. She held James’s gaze. The expression on his face softened. Just a bit.

  “Are we leaving soon?” Tess asked. They always went out for drinks around this time on a Friday. And Tess was always the one who organized it. “Shall we go to the White Stallion?”

  Tess sensed some of her colleagues relaxing. People started moving about, collecting bags in the way they usually would.

  “Sounds good, Tess,” one of the young male editors said.

  There was a sense of relief among them, as if Tess were back in the saddle.

  Tess caught James’s eye and narrowed her own eyes at him. She could do charming. She could outcharm him. “We usually go out for drinks on a Friday. But you’ve probably already got plans.” He’d only arrived two weeks ago, and he hadn’t shown any interest in drinks yet.

  “No. I don’t, as it turns out,” James said, his voice perfectly even. “I’d love to come.”

  “Fabulous!” one of the assistants crooned.

  “Right,” Tess said. She wasn’t giving away her feelings of disgust toward him here. “Well then. Let’s all get going.”

  The walk to the bar was full of camaraderie. Everybody seemed to be looking forward to the weekend. The chat was about baseball games and kids’ birthday parties, dates and all the usual routines. James walked in silence next to Tess.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice deadly quiet.

  “Of course I am,” she said, staring straight ahead.

  She wanted to get away from him, her sense of fury now mingled with a need to move on. She also, annoyingly, fought with the urge to have things out, no matter where she and James were or whom they were with.

  As they reached the pub, James held the door open for her. One of the team had found a table. James stuck to Tess like adhesive tape.

  “What would you like to drink?” he asked.

  “I can get myself a drink.”

  James glanced at the crowded bar and raised a brow. “No, I’ll do it,” he said, in a low, determined voice.

  Tess looked up at him. Her voice cracked when she spoke. “Tell me, James, do you win every argument?”

  But James leaned forward then, and he spoke close
to her ear. “Give it a rest, Tess. It’s Friday night. Don’t you know how to chill?”

  “Unlike some people, I don’t put on an act. I have no need to brag about what I watch, for goodness’ sakes,” Tess said. “I prefer to play the game straight. I can get my own drink, James.”

  “No. I’m going to buy you a champagne.” He bellied up to the bar, trying—successfully of course—to catch the eye of the bartender.

  But Tess knew she was fired up. She followed him. She was not going to let him get away. A crowded bar was the perfect place. And Tess needed to get things out.

  “So tell me, James, when exactly did you approach my client? Was it before you’d heard about his new book, or afterward? Perhaps you can give me some tips on how to steal other people’s jobs.”

  James threw his head back, his handsome features breaking into a cynical grin. He was impossibly close. Tess was more than aware of, and revolted by, the fact that he was probably trying to win her over along with everyone else—his dazzling good looks must have worked all his life. He ran a tanned hand over his chin. “Look, Tess. Leon obviously thought I was the best person to edit Alec’s new book. End of story. I didn’t approach anyone. It’s simply not what I’d do.”

  Tess felt her chest stiffen. “Taking on an author who’s already a bestseller? Now there’s a challenge. Sure you haven’t just seen the opportunity to steal someone else’s safe bet? Like . . . let’s think . . . mine? Except, oh yes, I already took the risk with Alec years ago. I built his career. So . . . you will be doing, what exactly? Nothing? Smooth move. Is that how you’ve gotten all your authors?”

  James handed her a glass of champagne. “Drink up. It might help you loosen that brittle facade.”

  Tess held up the glass and took a sip. “Cheers, James. Well done.”

  He leaned in close. “I had nothing to do with any collusion against you,” he whispered in her ear. “I would never do that.”

  Tess turned to him, unable to hold back the laugh that rose in her throat.

  “Unfortunately my resistance to fake charm is at an all-time . . . high. And my naïveté is at its lowest point ever. Don’t lie to me, James. I’m just not in the mood.”