by Rachel Hore
‘Guilty? What of?’
‘You’ll have to read it to find out. It’s quite a story. Read it, and then we’ll talk again about what to do next.’
She came round the desk to shake Emily’s hand.
Lydia, Emily thought, meeting the woman’s warm gaze. It was still difficult to accept that it was her. She already liked the woman immensely; felt there was a connection between the two of them. It was astonishing when you thought about it. Here she was, forging her career, meeting a woman whose work as an editor was nearly done. And like a presence between them was someone else again – Isabel, a young woman whose career, whose very future, had been thwarted.
Chapter 36
Isabel
As good as her word, Penelope telephoned halfway through January. Reginald, she told Isabel, was attending the wedding of his eldest daughter in Hampshire, so she was at a loose end. They arranged that she should pick Isabel and take her to stay overnight at the beach house, which was nicely warm in winter, Penelope assured her. There was some talk as to whether Lorna should accompany them, but in the end Lily Catchpole offered to look after her, so it was with a rare sense of freedom that Isabel found herself riding beside Penelope in her sleek blue-black car through the wintry countryside. They turned down the narrow road across the marshes to the little seaside town and along the lane to the lonely white-painted house behind the sand dunes.
Once inside, Penelope set about making coffee in the kitchen, whilst Isabel sat stroking Gelert’s rough coat.
That hound’s too big for this house,’ Penelope grumbled, pushing past him to take down cups from a cupboard, but her tone was affectionate.
Isabel thought how different Penelope was here, more relaxed and talkative. Who’d have thought it, her elegant perfumed aunt with her love of good clothes and city entertainments, at home in this desolate setting with only the sound of the waves, the sough of the breeze across the marshes and the cries of the seabirds for company.
‘I have Gelert,’ Penelope said, when Isabel commented on this. ’We get along together very well when he isn’t under my feet, don’t we, my good dog? Perhaps we could walk him along the beach, if you feel up to it.’
The tide was high and they walked by the great waves of an iron-grey sea. The air was cold but still, so that their voices bounced off the cliffs, crisp and clear – not that either spoke much. Penelope walked in front, her head bowed as though under some burden. Isabel shoved her hands deep in her coat pockets in an effort to keep warm and laughed at the dog’s comic forays into the sea. And all the while her sense of trepidation grew. Her aunt had brought her here for some reason, but what that was had yet to be revealed.
They walked along the concrete promenade and past the empty pier until they came to a wilder part of the beach, not much visited. Here the brown earth edges of the cliffs were crumbling away and great dead branches of trees lay on the ochre sand where they’d fallen, to be bleached clean by the merciless sea.
‘It’s like a graveyard of trees,’ Isabel remarked at one point. It was the first time either of them had spoken for some time.
‘Once or twice it’s been a house that’s collapsed,’ Penelope said. She brushed the sand off a tree trunk and they both sat down on it, looking up at the eroded cliff whilst Gelert ran about before coming to flop down at their feet. ‘Everything and everybody is ultimately washed away by the tides of time. And our labours are as naught.’
Isabel glanced up at her aunt in surprise at her bitter tone. She was astonished to see tears in Penelope’s eyes, though the woman did her best to hide them.
‘Ah, I’m sorry,’ Penelope said. ‘I was thinking of Pamela.’ She brought a packet of cigarettes from her coat pocket and lit one, before saying, ‘I know you’re wondering what this is all about.’
‘I suppose I am.’
Penelope sighed. ‘As you know, I went to visit your mother in hospital before Christmas. She’d written to tell me that she was ill again and wanted to see me.’
‘I wish she’d let me know, too.’
Penelope laid her hand briefly on Isabel’s arm. ‘It’s very difficult for her. She’s a fighter, your mother. But you must let me continue.’
She continued, hesitant at first, then her words flowed more freely.
‘Pamela and I for a long time have had little to say to one another. There are things about the way I am that horrify her. And in my turn I’ve found her and your father hard and unforgiving. Although we’re sisters, we do not have much in common these days.’
‘But you were once close? That photograph of when you were children,’ Isabel said, remembering. ‘Your square fringes. You looked so alike.’
‘We did, didn’t we? Despite being nearly three years apart. Yes, there was a time when we were close. We had to be. It was always us against the world, especially at school. I remember speaking to you once about your grandmother,’ Penelope said. ‘I’ll start by telling you about her. It’s a way into the story, if you like. Her own father died young, and being the only child, she was left the family farmlands. Where we were brought up, that was the manor house. Not the original one, of course, but built on the site of the original. What she ought to have done was marry some local landowner who’d look after the place, but instead she followed her heart. Our father was the younger son of a Norwich businessman. He wasn’t a bad man, but nor was he a wise one. He inherited none of his own father’s acumen. After he invested in some bad business ventures, my parents ended up selling the farmland to get them out of debt. Then in 1916 he was called up, just in time for Passchendaele. He died of injuries sustained in his first week at the front. My mother was left a widow with a tiny pension and two small daughters, and had to beg her husband’s family for handouts. The point of me telling you all this is to make you understand about our upbringing. Mummy was always very strict and proper. Although we were never allowed to tell anyone, she worried all the time about money. That was what made things worse, her pride. She was an awful snob. We were never allowed to mix with local children out of school; their parents thought we were stuck-up, and of course that meant our lives were miserable. We were thrown onto our own company a great deal. You can imagine how all this affected us – the secrecy, the isolation.’
Isabel thought about it all. She could imagine her mother as a very young woman, proud, keeping up appearances, suffering in silence, guarding her sister Penelope, whose own aloofness was a form of armour. Yes, it all made too much sense.
‘Our gardens backed on to one of the Broads and we had our own mooring and a small sailing dinghy. One day, when your mother was nineteen and I was sixteen, we found a strange boat tied up and four young men sitting on our jetty eating sandwiches. When we confronted them, they said they hadn’t seen the Private sign and were terribly apologetic. They were nice boys, Londoners all of them, in their early twenties, but despite their good manners we knew instinctively that they weren’t Mummy’s type. Pam and I thought them very dashing, especially when they larked about and flirted with us. Right from the start, though, it was obvious that the best-looking of them had his eye on Pamela. Your father was one of those quiet, brooding types then, Isabel – the way I imagined a Romantic poet to be.’
Isabel smiled. It was hard now, remembering him from when she was small, before the quiet brooding turned morose. Mostly it was an impression of gentleness.
‘It is a bit chilly,’ her aunt said, standing up and tossing her cigarette on the sand. ‘I think it’s time to go back.’
They walked slowly side by side. Penelope had fallen silent again. Isabel asked, ‘What happened next? I mean, I know they went away together.’
‘They did, yes. Your grandmother, predictably, kicked up a terrible fuss about Pamela seeing Charles, and Pamela was always stubborn. I often wonder whether, if Mummy had kept quiet, the whole thing would have died a natural death. As it was, Pamela simply would have him, and that was that. There was the most ghastly row and Mummy said she didn’t want to se
e her again. So Pamela went away. I suppose she must have got Mummy’s consent, I really can’t remember. I do know we didn’t go to the wedding.’
‘They lived in Kent, didn’t they, by the time they had me?’
‘They lived with his relatives in Clapham for several years. Your mother used to write to me from there. It was before the Slump, and your father had what I’m told was a good job at the Post Office, but it wasn’t until he was promoted that they could afford to set up house.’
‘I wasn’t born till later on.’
‘Yes – on the tenth of February nineteen twenty-nine. There, I remember your birth date perfectly.’
Isabel smiled. ‘You’ve always been good at that.’
‘I have, haven’t I?’ Penelope stopped for a moment and turned to look out to sea. She murmured what sounded like, ‘At least I got something right in my life.’
Whether it was these words, or something else like them, she sounded utterly desolate. Aunt Penelope clearly carried some terrible burden that Isabel had never previously suspected. She waited, hardly daring to speak in case she caused her aunt to close up again, and then she’d never learn whatever it was that she and her sister had spoken about – the thing that had opened up a rift between them.
After a long moment, Penelope called to Gelert and they set off once more. Isabel felt increasingly puzzled as her aunt did not continue with her tale, but instead spoke of Berec’s friends Gregor and Karin. Apparently Penelope had had the bright idea of involving Stephen in the campaign to stop the deportation, and Stephen had mobilised one or two well-known writers in their defence. It looked as though the deportation might be stopped.
‘Stephen is a good man,’ Penelope said quietly.
Isabel remembered what Stephen had said, about knowing Penelope for so long, and she thought of Berec and how he’d introduced her to Stephen, then for some reason she recalled the envelope with Stephen’s handwriting that she’d seen in her aunt’s kitchen in Earl’s Court all that time ago. ‘Aunt Penelope,’ she said, ‘you remember how I got my job at McKinnon and Holt. Was that because of you?’
Penelope smiled. ‘No, dear, that was all due to you impressing him. He merely wrote to me for a reference – which I was happy to give.’
‘I’m so glad that’s all it was,’ Isabel said, relieved. ‘Thank you.’
They had reached the beach house now. Inside, Penelope rubbed Gelert dry with a towel then started laying out cheese and bread and wrinkled apples on the kitchen table, and poured them both glasses of ruby port. The heavy warmth of the drink spread through Isabel’s veins like liquid fire. It made her brave enough to say, ‘It’s lovely, being with you like this. Oh, I wish I’d seen more of you when I was growing up.’
Penelope laid some cutlery on the table and frowned. ‘We lived such different lives, your mother and I. And she was shocked to her little puritan core when I refused to put up with Jonny any more. I still don’t think she understands. Just because she stuck with your father all these years . . .’
‘She loves him’ Isabel said loyally. ‘He can’t help what happened to him.’
‘Yes, she probably does,’ Penelope said with a sigh. ‘And, of course, she had all of you to think of.’
‘You and Uncle Jonny didn’t try to have children?’
‘Neither of us wanted them. Anyway, Jonny was too drunk most of the time to do much in that direction.’
Isabel thought of the conversation she’d had with her aunt, when she’d found she was going to have Lorna and her aunt had dropped dark hints about getting rid of the baby. Perhaps Penelope had not been sharing her own experience, after all, just passing on information in case it was useful.
‘I can laugh at it now. It’s all a very long time ago,’ Penelope was saying. ‘Life goes on. But not if we don’t eat.’
The rest of the day passed pleasantly enough. They had tea in a café in the town and bought fresh herring for dinner, about which there was much palaver as neither of them liked the messiness of gutting fish. They grilled them and ate them with new potatoes and a bottle of crisp white wine, whilst Penelope told amusing stories of her life in London, stories peppered with names Isabel had faintly heard of and others who’d vanished into oblivion.
That night, Isabel slept more soundly than she had done for a long time. This house felt like a sanctuary; it must be something about the wood and its cosy situation, protected from the elements behind the dunes. She woke at one point in darkness, heard her aunt’s door open and close, the click of the dog’s claws on the floorboards, but quickly sank into slumber once more.
In the morning she woke late to find that she was alone in the house. On the kitchen table was an envelope addressed to her and a key. Puzzled, she opened the envelope. As she drew out the papers within, a five-pound note fluttered to the floor. She picked it up and left it on the table whilst she investigated the rest of the contents. There was a letter and another envelope with her name on it. She started, naturally enough, by reading the letter.
My dear Isabel,
I have taken the coward’s way out and gone back to London. Please don’t think that I’m not utterly ashamed of myself, because I am, but performing the task that your mother has commanded me to has proved impossible. I hate confrontation of any sort and I cannot bear to see your face when you learn this news. All day yesterday I tried to tell you, but I just haven’t been able to do so. I know I’m leaving you without a lift home, so I hope the enclosed will cover the cost of a taxi. Ask at Bunwell’s for Eric. He’s the son-in-law and I’ve always found him most reliable.
Now to finish the story I started to tell you on the beach yesterday. After Pamela ran away with your father, I’m afraid things went badly for me. It’s quite a burden suddenly to become not only the sole repository of a mother’s hopes and expectations, but also the target of her frustrations. I think, looking back, that she must have had some sort of breakdown, for she would often indulge in fits of rage or weeping, which I found terrifying.
When I was eighteen I was sent to live with my uncle’s family in Norwich for a year whilst I learned shorthand and typing. Your grandmother wanted me to take a job somewhere respectable locally until I came across ‘someone suitable’ as she to meet youpre McKinnon put it, but I got it in my head that I wanted to follow Pamela and move to London. I wrote to her several times about how to do this, and after first trying to dissuade me she told me that I could stay with them for a short time whilst I found somewhere.
In the event I never got there, because of someone I met on the train. His name was Tom, Tom Spencer, and whilst he was definitely from the sort of family Mummy would approve of, he was not, as they say, the marrying kind. I thought he was marvellous, so beautiful and fascinating, and well-connected. I don’t know what he saw in me. I was impossibly innocent in those days. Mother never told me a thing about men; she had these wonderful rose-coloured memories of Daddy and that’s all she knew. Tom took me in hand right away – I think he saw me as a sort of project, like Pygmalion. He found me a nice little job typing for a literary agent and I took a room with some friends of his, and for the next three or four years my life was a great whirl of parties and cocktails and late nights. Such fun, you’d think, but at the same time it didn’t seem at all real. Nobody was very serious about anything, and you only had to look around in London with your eyes open in the 1920s to see just how serious life could be. Even Tom learned in the end. His plane was shot down over the Channel in 1940. He’d made an exceptionally glamorous pilot and I hate to think about the messiness of his end.
The partying ended abruptly for me when I discovered I was to have Tom’s child. It’s astonishing how my so-called friends melted away. Tom, of course, denied it was his. No one, it seemed, could help me. So I went to the only person I could count on. Not my mother, the shame would have finished her. I went to Pamela.
You were born in a home for unmarried girls in South London. Most of the girls found it terrible, giving up the
ir babies for adoption by couples they didn’t know, never to see them again. I was lucky, so they told me. At least my child would stay in the family, be a part of my life, but once I’d handed you over to Pamela I felt an appalling sense of relief.
I’d regained my freedom, you see. And Pamela wanted you. They had no child of their own, and feared they never would. You looked so like my sister. She loved you straight away. You should have seen the light in her eyes when she gazed into yours for the first time. And me? By giving you away to my sister I felt I’d lost all rights to you. It was only fair to let you all alone. I went back to my job with the literary agent but I was an innocent no longer. Not long afterwards I met Jonny, and thought I’d found my chance for security and respectability. How wrong I was.
We never saw the need to tell you any of this, your mother and I. The moment never presented itself. But now it’s time. I am truly sorry for the pain this knowledge will give you. I am sorry for failing you over and over again, first as a mother, then as an aunt and as a friend. None of it was planned, it was just how life happens.
Your very affectionate
Penelope
Isabel sank onto a kitchen chair and read the letter through again. She still couldn’t believe what it said. Finally she remembered the little envelope waiting on the table. She opened it. Inside was a piece of thick paper which she unfolded. It was a birth certificate. Here was her name, Isabel Mary, and Penelope’s, Penelope Frances Lewis as she was called then, but under Father was simply the word Unknown. Her date of birth was still 10 February 1929, the place of birth Wandsworth, South London.
It must have been soon afterwards that Charles and Pamela had taken her to live in Kent. A new start, she supposed, where no one would know them. And then four or five years later, the gift of twins of their own, followed eventually by Lydia.
