The Silent Tide

by Rachel Hore

  The food arrived in a delicious scented cloud of lemon-grass and coriander. They shared it round and ate with gusto.

  Emily watched Joel covertly. He was very at home with the television people, while she didn't feel so sure-footed. He knew his way about, remembered the names of those who mattered, spoke the jargon. He even listened politely to Lucan, whom she sensed Pippa didn't like very much either- though she was too courteous and professional, and they all argued quite good naturedly about the latest Scandi thriller and whether tehe audience had had enough of the genre. Lucan was well informed and made some good points about audience bases. Emily managed to feel a little sorry for him, a young man on the make in difficult times.

  It was eleven by the time they left the restaurant. Lucan and Pippa said goodbye at Waterloo station and went off separately.

  Joel and Emily walked together to the river and back over the pedestrian bridge o Embankment. They paused halfway across the bridge to gaze at the view, St. Paul's Cathedral glowing creamy silver in the distance. The walk had been the first chance they'd had to talk alone all evening.

  'How's the book coming along?' she asked. 'The TV adaptation will be a great preparation for it.'

  'Won't it. I still hope they deliver to you by September. I've reached nineteen ninety now. That's when he tried writing crime fiction. It was a bit of a disaster, unfortunately. He couldn't really do plot, could our Hugh.'

  She laughed. 'What did you think about the photocopies I sent you?'

  'Lord, I did read those. Where did you say you got them?'

  'They were left on my desk. On Valentine's Day, of all days. Joel, I don't know who's doing it. They left a photograph, too, taken at their wedding- Hugh and Isabel's I mean.'

  'I've seen one or two of those in albums at Stone House.'

  'This one's in a frame.'

  'Interesting. I don't remember seeing one about the house.'

  'Nor me. It's all most mysterious.'

  He was quiet for a moment. 'I'm not sure,' he went on, 'what to make of what you sent me. Whoever it's by . . . '

  'Isabel,' Emily said firmly.

  'How can we know for certain it's Isabel? The handwriting is all over the place.'

  'Joel, I'm sure it's hers.'

  'Whoever it is, she sounds a bit mad. All that ranting about Hugh's book.'

  That would be The Silent Tide.

  He sighed. 'Perhaps I should simply show it to Jacqueline.'

  'Maybe you should. What else has she given you about Isabel?'

  'Precious little. She says it's not something she wants opened up again. It distresses Lorna, apparently.'

  Emily hadn't thought of that. 'That's difficult,' she admitted. 'But you can't ignore Isabel. She was Hugh's wife and the mother of his eldest child.'

  'I promise you that I am not going to ignore her,' he said shortly, and she saw that she was irritating him.

  They watched a motor-launch power towards them and disappear under the bridge. A cold draught rose in its wake and Emily shivered in her short jacket and flippy skirt.

  'Shall we go on?' Joel said. Emily nodded. She was thinking about the photograph of Hugh and Isabel, how bright and alive the bride had looked, the dark eyes in her heart-shaped face sparkling with intelligence. She believed Isabel to have been the more likely inspiration for Nanna in The Silent Tide than the more placid looking Jacqueline.

  As they came to the steps that led down to Embankment, she caught her high heel in a crevice and stumbled. Joel gripped her arm to save her.

  'Thank you,' she said. When he released her, she still felt the warmth of his touch.

  At the tube station, they passed through the ticket barrier and stood together awkwardly for a moment.

  'You go down there, don't you?' he said. 'And I go this way.'

  'It's been a lovely evening, thank you,' she told him. They solemnly kissed each other's cheeks.

  'It has been good,' he said, standing close, his eyes steady on hers. 'We must do it again sometime.'

  She watched his tall figure disappear round the corner an tried not to think of Matthew.

  A week passed, then one morning Emily came into the office to find another of the mysterious envelopes in her pigeonhole. She opened it carefully and held her breath as she withdrew another thick wad of pages covered in Isabel's handwriting.

  It started halfway through a sentence, she saw, the sentence that had been left broken off at the end of the previous tranche. She took it back to her desk with a burning sense of excitement. There was no time to read it now, so she stowed it safely in her bag to read at home. Every now and then, as she went through the day, she thought about it there, waiting for her.

  Chapter 20

  Isabel

  The autumn of 1950 was a time of deep happiness for Isabel, but so busy was she that she moved through the days with the constant feeling that she’d forgotten something. From the moment when the alarm clock went off at half past six, even in November, when it was still so dark that her body told her it was the middle of the night, she had to be up and active. Sometimes, though, it was a few minutes before Hugh would allow her to leave the bed.

  Since Hugh would usually fall asleep again, it was she who put the kettle on, hurriedly washed and dressed whilst it boiled, then drank a lonely cup of tea at the kitchen window, looking out on the frost-dusted roofs of the houses behind as the sky lightened and the cats of the neighbourhood made their way home for breakfast after a night’s hunting. Then she’d make breakfast – eggs and bacon for Hugh, if she could get it, and toast for herself – before setting out for work.

  Life at the office was as frenetic as it had ever been. Indeed, for large parts of her day she didn’t think about being Mrs Hugh Morton at all, for she was concentrating on being Isabel, editing manuscripts, reading proofs, typing lists of queries for authors, or writing copy for book jackets. Sometimes, though, she would be reminded, for Hugh would ring up to tell her that he was stuck between paragraphs, and simply wanted to hear her voice. She’d have to patiently talk to him for a minute or two before gently finishing the call.

  Audrey had finally given up her job for a life of domestic bliss, though she occasionally swanned into the office during a shopping trip to say hello. Stephen had a new secretary, Cat, short for Catherine, who had some connection with the literary editor at the Herald, looking to get into publishing. Cat was silky-haired with long-fringed eyes, like an appealing bushbaby. Stephen was beginning to get quite impatient with her, for though her easy manner made her an asset when working with people, she responded tearfully to brisk orders and demanding work schedules. Isabel, too, was getting fed up with digging her out of various messes. Trudy regarded Cat’s tribulations as ‘silly nonsense’ and wouldn’t help at all. Unfortunately, the Herald’s literary editor was not a man to cross lightly, so the weeks passed and Stephen did not quite muster up the courage to sack her. There was talk of passing her on to the psychology editor upstairs, who could do with another assistant, but the psychology editor wasn’t altogether happy about this, and a low-level if good-humoured warfare ensued, the nature of which Cat, bless her, seemed unaware, so that in the end everyone got used to her and she stayed.

  These days, Isabel had her coat on and was out of the door on the dot of five-thirty, a bag of scripts to read in one hand and her shopping in the other, and her life as Mrs Hugh Morton resumed. Their daily came only twice a week and it couldn’t be guaranteed that Hugh would have seen about supper. There was, after all, a handy butcher near the office where the queues weren’t too long, so it was sensible for her to shop there during her lunch break rather than Hugh having to stop what he was doing and go out. It all meant that there were so many things to think about and there never seemed time to relax when she ate her lunchtime sandwich, or to idle in the library as she used to.

  But she loved getting home to their little flat and to have him waiting for her. She didn’t miss her bedsit days one bit, although she wished she saw more of Vi
vienne. Her room had been taken by an austere older lady, so she feared Vivienne might be even lonelier than before. Every time she saw her friend she berated herself for not doing so more often, but married life was proving of the Dome of Discovery., e McKinnon terribly absorbing.

  Was there anything nicer, Isabel asked herself, than preparing a little supper for your husband and sitting down with him to eat it and to talk about one another’s day? Of course, she made plenty of mistakes to start with, serving up a chicken that was practically raw inside, and a Victoria sponge that flopped. Poor Hugh always tried to laugh and not to mind, though it wasn’t really fair on him.

  She knew Hugh’s working life wasn’t easy. He was on his own a good deal of the day – unless he’d had lunch with someone from a newspaper who was commissioning him to write something, or was visiting a library or the offices of a literary magazine – and her homecoming was much looked for.

  ‘I wrote a thousand words this morning,’ he might say as soon as she walked through the door. 'I'll type them up this evening and let you have a look,' and after she'd flown about the kitchen washing the dishes and cleaning, rinsing out the few clothes she might need between laundry trips, they'd work companionably in the drawing room until bedtime, she reading, he typing or sighing over some book he'd been given to review with a tumbler of whiskey at his elbow, the wireless playing softly in the background.

  Some evenings there would be a cocktail party to go to, or a dinner out with friends, and more often than not the theatre, and then there'd be little time for anything when they got home but to fall into bed. And there they might not sleep at once. That first disastrous occasion had cast a pall over their short honeymoon by the sea, for the bleeding she'd experienced at the hotel continued for a day or two, but lighter. She visited the doctor on their return to London and he was able to reassure her. Perhaps, he told her, with some concern, her husband should not treat her quite so enthusiastically. She'd sustained a small tear, although it had quickly healed.

  There came times when Isabel arrived home and knew as soon as she opened the door of the flat that the day had not gone well for Hugh. He'd be morose or sardonic, and she'd feel and awful lump in her throat, fearing that in some way she'd annoyed him, that his mood was her responsibility.

  'What's the matter?' she would ask repeatedly, but it might just be that his mind was wrestling with some dilemma in his writing, or the muse had failed him that day. In time she became used to these occasions, though they still upset her.

  Then there'd follow a delicious making up when she'd weep and he'd apologise for being monstrous, and somehow they'd end up in each other's arms. There were other times again, when the writing went superlatively well, that he might rise in the night and switch on the light in the drawing room and write until dawn. Then both of them would be tired and crotchety in the morning and so she tried to forbid these episodes. But if he didn't get up, the sounds of him lying awake beside her, restless and tormented, stopped her sleeping anyway. Such were the proud marks of being married to a writer.

  Autumn became winter, and winter turned to spring. In May 1951 the Festival of Britain opened to much fanfare.

  ‘It’s just hanging in thin air, isn’t it?’ Isabel whispered. ‘Extraordinary. It’s like they say, a giant icicle.’ She and Hugh, sheltering from the heavy rain, were staring up at the Skylon, trying to make sense of its strangeness, the way it appeared to be suspended from the sky.

  ‘Or a flying saucer tipped on end,’ Hugh said. ‘It’s certainly much bigger now one sees it close up.’

  ‘Isn’t it a shame about the weather, though.’

  It was the opening day of the exhibition. They’d come through the turnstiles amazed by the alien landscape spread out before them. Acres of bombed-out buildings south of the river near Waterloo station had been transformed into a designers’ playground. There was the new Festival Hall, all bleak modernist concrete, the Skylon, a sculpture like a mock cathedral spire apparently floating in the sky, though actually held up by cables. Most extraordinary of all was the curved white roof of the Dome of Discovery.

  ‘Heavens, won’t it blow away in this?’ Isabel said, pointing in alarm. Sure enough, the huge circular canopy, like a big top without walls, was shivering and lifting in the gusting rain, straining at its tethers.

  ‘A triumph of illusion over practicality,’ Hugh murmured, getting out his notebook and writing the phrase down. He’d been commissioned by a newspaper to write his impressions of the day.

  Isabel struggled to open her umbrella, but the wind took hold of it and swung her round, so she gave up and tightened her rainhood. To one side of the exhibition area, masking the ugly lines of the railway bridge, was a display of giant coloured balls, like a child’s abacus. ‘Oh, I like those,’ she said. ‘And the fountains.’ The waterspouts gushed every which way in the gale so that anyone near them was at risk of a soaking.

  This is the new Britain, she thought. We’re finally leaving the dowdiness behind. She tried not to think of the ugly old London hinterland, the brooding hulk of Waterloo station visible between gaps in the bright festival buildings, the acres of sooty houses with their villainous smoking chimneys beyond.

  ‘Where shall we begin?’ Hugh asked, offering her his arm. ‘Why don’t we visit the Dome first of all, before the shenanigans begin. At least we’ll be dry under there.’

  Despite her pleasure at being there, Isabel was tired. It had been a difficult week at the office and she’d not been sleeping well. Now she clung to Hugh to avoid slipping as they crossed the vast expanse of concrete, shiny with rain.

  The weather was a terrible shame for the opening day and its ceremonies. Great walls of rain blew across the concourse, the sort of rain that wets right through, dulling the bright plastic seaside colours of the striped pavilions, the automatons and the merry-go-rounds. They passed a tribe of half-drowned donkeys, waiting for custom with all the endurance of their breed. ‘Look at them!’ Isabel exclaimed. ‘Surely no one would hire one in this weather.’

  ‘A display of British stoicism too far,’ Hugh agreed as they reached the shelter of the Dome of Discovery.

  ‘Are the poor troops really going to parade about in this? We’re not all as long-suffering as the donkeys.’

  They wandered about under the wind-tossed marquee for an hour or so, looking at displays about British discoveries, famous people and their achievements. It felt like being in the bowels of a great ship, the roof shifting and sighing overhead as though with the movement of wind and sea, and this compounded Isabel’s feeling of lightheadedness. After a while, Florence Nightingale seemed to blur with Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin and she couldn’t care less about any of them. She found herself staring blankly at an empty showcase, its shelves covered modestly with coloured paper.

  ‘They haven’t finished putting everything up, have they? Darling, you look cold,’ Hugh said. ‘Why don’t we get you something hot to eat?’ They hurried over to a large tent that housed the café. Here she ate soup and an omelette and was able to recover a bit.

  ‘You are a bit pale, you poor old thing. We won’t stay too much longer, but I really ought to walk round quickly and get a sense of everything. Shall I leave you here and come back later?’

  ‘No, I’ll come. I do feel a little better now.’

  The weather was clearing slightly and the place was beginning to feel crowded. As Hugh and Isabel trailed round the sights, the sun even made a brief appearance, so that all the bright colours gleamed and the shiny ground threw up iridescent reflections of the buildings and sideshows. The layout was very eccentric, Isabel thought, not grand at all. In fact, there was something intimate about the jumbled way the different structures were juxtaposed. She and Hugh might leave a building through an inconspicuous doorway to find it opened onto a series of courtyards cheerful with murals. It was a voyage of continual discovery.

  She loved watching the people. Groups of schoolboys would push past, intent on secret busine
ss of their own, to them the whole thing being like a giant playground. In one room Isabel admired a group of women fashionably dressed in jackets with wide shoulders and matching narrow skirts, finding them more interesting than the textiles machine being demonstrated. In another building, spectators tried samples of party pastries which a chef whisked piping hot from the very latest in modern ovens.

  People had come from all over the world. On the escalator travelling back down into the Dome, Isabel watched eight members of an Indian family from father down to youngest child pass on the upgoing escalator, their dark eyes round with wonder. She smiled at them, but was alarmed that their bright figures were coming in and out of focus, the children’s shrill voices ringing round her head. She experienced the sensation of floating like a balloon, up towards the roof of the Dome and looking down on everything and everybody spread out below.

  ‘Isabel!’ she heard her husband cry, as though from very far away. ‘Isabel!’ And after that she knew nothing at all.

  ‘Isabel!’ When she came to consciousness, it was to a cacophony of sound and a throbbing pain in her side. Someone was calling her name. Hugh, it was Hugh. Her eyes fluttered open, but she couldn’t focus.

  ‘Lie still, Mrs Morton.’ It was a woman speaking, soothing, but at the same time firm. ‘The doctor will be here in a minute. He must check that we’ve not broken anything.’

  ‘I don’t think I have,’ she said, concentrating on a pair of shrewd blue eyes. She tried to sit up. She felt a little sick, and her hip hurt, but she thought she’d only bruised it.

  ‘Isabel, thank God.’ Hugh’s face appeared before her and she fell into his arms.