The Silent Tide

by Rachel Hore

  Emily had felt close to Isabel this past year, reading her words, learning about her life; had been moved that she died so young, and in such awful circumstances. Sometimes she wondered what might have happened if she’d been reunited with Hugh. It was, of course, impossible to say.

  Lorna had recently been in touch. She was coming to London to stay with her cousin – Lydia’s daughter Cassie – and she’d asked to meet Emily for lunch on Monday. There was talk of wanting to show her something. All very mysterious, but Emily was free so of course she’d said yes.

  Watching from the window, she caught herself scanning the people passing, as though looking for someone in particular, but she was expecting no one. It dawned on her finally that it was Matthew. She was looking for Matthew. How pointless. She turned away, remembering now the anxiety of anticipation, how annoying it had been that he was late so often, but she couldn’t help recalling, too, how beautifully he read his poetry, the soft lilt of his voice, spell-binding, musical. She thought of his passion for his writing, remembered so many things about him: the gentle touch of his fingers, the clean soapy scent of him . . . and a deep sense of loss washed over her. He would have finished his studies now, she supposed. He'd have done well- Tobias always spoke highly of him. She sometimes wondered if she should get in touch, but then she'd recall seeing him that time with the girl in the white shirt and wasn't sure she should.

  She should stop being maudlin and go. One last check that the shelves were empty, then she restacked a precarious-looking heap of papers in one of the crates and swept up some paperclips from the desk. A new life would begin for her on Monday. She switched off the lamp then, thinking that she might as well be helpful, crouched down to unplug it from the wall.

  The back of the desk, where it met the partition, had a wooden modesty panel to hide one's legs if positioned in the middle of the room- and beneath the panel a triangle of paper peeped out. She should have checked before whether anything had fallen down there. Forgetting the plug, she got up to pull the desk out an inch or two. Then she checked underneath once more. Several items caught behind teh panel had now fallen to the floor- nothing interesting: a stained teaspoon, some curled-up scrap paer and what looked like a piece of white card, the size of a small postcard. She reached in and gathered all of this up. The bit of card was thicker than she'd first thought and was actually an envelope. It bore her name on it in a flowing script.

  She frowned as she lifted the flap, wondering how long it had been there. Inside was a handmade card, pretty, with cut-out hearts- a Valentine's card, she realised with surprise. She opened it up to see handwriting she knew- no name of course. For a moment, she was so amazed that she couldn't make sense of the words. She switched on the light again to examine it properly. Yes, it was definitely a Valentine's card. There was a folded piece of paper, too. The writing on the card was Matthew's.

  'I hope you love the flowers,' he had written. 'They speak for themselves. My letter says the rest.'

  Red roses. She'd never found out who gave them to her. She hadn't suspected Matthew for a single minute; he'd never given her flowers, ever, had been contemptuous of Valentine's Day. But this card had come with the roses. Red roses, for true love. A tender pain stabbed cruelly through her. Her hands shook as she unfolded the letter.

  My very dearest Em,

  I write in great humility to tell you now that now that I've had time to think about it, I realise that I've made an awful mistake in finishing things between us. Em, I am simply not happy without you. I miss you all the time. I miss everything about you, even your views about poetry and when you get antsy about the mess in my kitchen. I have no expectations- I simply don't deserve to- but if you'd at leat agree to meet up, perhaps we could talk.

  With hope and Love, Little Bird

  Yours ever,

  Matthew.

  She felt a great relief. Matthew had tried to get in touch with her. He did love her. But then peace was replaced by horror. It was too late, the letter had been written back in February, nine months ago! She'd had no idea who'd delivered the flowers to her desk, but the envelope had obviously not been secured to the cellophane properly. It had slipped away and fallen behind the desk. And now it was November. All that lost time. How shattering to think of Matthew waiting and hoping, never knowing why she hadn't called. How he must hate her now. Or have forgotten her altogether. She'd seen him with that girl. It was all too late. She covered her face with her hands.

  For a long time she sat there, thinking of reasons and consequences, the quirkiness of fate, the way huge events could turn on small coincidences. In the end the answer came to her.

  She must follow her heart.

  She wasted no time. She bought a card in Oxford Street on the way home, a reproduction of a beautiful Elizabethan youth reading. The right choice was vital, even more so than what she wrote in it. She must make no assumptions. She could only honestly tell of the lost card, her despair that he'd never had an answer. She supposed, she wrote, that it was too late, but if there was any chance of meeting up, she'd like to do so very much. She dropped the card into the box on Saturday, then, too late, wondered if maybe he'd changed his address, but after a moment's panic, she reasoned it was likely to reach him eventually. The rest of Saturday crept by, then Sunday at her parents'. Maybe on Monday he'd receive it.

  Chapter 40

  Emily

  On Monday Emily paused on the way up the central staircase at Fortnum & Mason to take in the scene. It was Lorna who had suggested meeting for tea. Emily rarely had cause to come here, but she loved the dark wood fittings, the feel of old-fashioned luxury, the exquisite boxes of biscuits and sweets, the rich aroma of ground coffees and chocolate all around. Hanging down from the ceiling into the atrium was a mobile: hundreds of tiny lions and unicorns on dazzling threads. Emily looked up to see Lorna waving to her over the rail on the floor above and hurried up the stairs to meet her.

  ‘I haven’t been here for years,’ Lorna told her after they’d been shown to a table in the ice-cream bar. ‘It’s different now, of course, but still lovely. I’ve bought Mother some special tea. She’s always complaining that tea doesn’t taste the same as it used to. This is the one she used to like best. I expect she’ll still complain, you know.’

  ‘I expect she will!’ Emily agreed, laughing easily with Lorna. Isabel’s daughter seemed different these days, more lively, less diffident. Jacqueline might be diminishing, but Lorna was expanding into her space. She was dressed more smartly today, still a Liberty-print blouse but a tailored jacket and skirt with it, and prettier shoes. A triple string of pearls gleamed softly above her collarbone.

  When the waitress returned, Emily asked for peppermint tea, but Lorna said, ‘Would it be awfully indulgent to have ice cream?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Emily was amused by her guilty expression. When the ice cream came, all covered in strawberry syrup and nuts, she enjoyed the sight of Lorna eating it like a small girl out on a treat.

  ‘It’s always been a weakness of mine,’ Lorna sighed and slid another spoonful into her mouth.

  Emily was still wondering why she had been invited here, when Lorna laid down her spoon, checked her watch and leaned across the table confidingly.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve invited Lydia along. And there’s someone I’d like you to meet.’

  ‘Lydia. That would be lovely – I haven’t seen her for ages. But who . . . ?’

  ‘There’s something I need to tell you about first. Or show you, rather. Hang on, I don’t want to get it covered in ice cream.’ Lorna pushed her sundae dish away, and delved in her handbag. She brought out a package in a white envelope.

  ‘It’s the most extraordinary thing,’ Lorna confided. ‘I can’t really make it out.’

  ‘What is it?’ Emily asked, her gaze fixed on the envelope.

  ‘I need to explain. You know Granny’s old glory-hole, the room beyond the box room she used to keep locked?’

  ‘Yes.’
Emily remembered Isabel’s fascination with the room, and what she had found in it. ‘Is it still full of your grandmother’s clothes?’

  Lorna shook her head. ‘After Daddy died, Mother got a vintage clothes expert in. The woman paid an awful lot for them – because of the good condition, she said. No, it’s something else. Recently Mother said she had found a few things of Isabel’s there she felt I should have. This necklace was one.’ She fingered the pearls.

  ‘They’re gorgeous.’ Emily was a little shocked that Jacqueline hadn’t even given her Isabel’s pearls before. It had taken the recent events to soften the old woman’s stance.

  ‘She also gave me this,’ Lorna said, passing over the envelope. ‘Look at the name on the front.’

  Emily took it from her and stared hard at the handwriting, which was foreign and ornate. It was not easy to make out the words, apart from Stone House and at the bottom, l’Angleterre. The stamp, too, was French, but old, priced in francs instead of euros, though the date of postage had faded beyond legibility. The name on the front was harder to read: probably Morton, possibly Madame.

  ‘Madame J. Morton,’ Emily guessed aloud. ‘Or it is an L?’

  ‘You don’t know either?’ Lorna said, and Emily saw her relief. ‘It was sent in nineteen eighty-five, soon after I got married, you’ll see when you look inside. Mother claims she opened it by accident. I . . . I wasn’t sure whether to believe her, but if you’re not sure either . . .’

  ‘It could be a J,’ Emily said, turning the envelope over. There was a return address on the flap, in Paris, deuxième Arrondissement. ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘I’ll show you.’ Taking it back, Lorna drew out some papers and photographs and laid them on the table.

  ‘I don’t know what to make of it all,’ she said. ‘I wondered what you thought. Here’s the covering letter.’ She unfolded a fragile page. ‘It’s in French, of course, but Lydia knows a bit of French so we’ve worked out what it says. It’s from a Madame Eleanor Sorel.’ She slid the letter between them, and they pored over it together.

  Lorna said, ‘We reckon it says, “These documents enclosed were found amongst the belongings of my friend Mademoiselle Vivienne Stern, who I am sad to relate died recently after a short illness. It is directed that they be sent to Mademoiselle Lorna Morton, who may comprehend their significance”.’

  Emily nodded. The handwriting wasn’t very clear and her French not all that good, but Lorna’s translation seemed plausible.

  Next, Lorna passed her a photograph. It was of two elegantly dressed women, past their youth, but only just, sitting at a table outside a café. They laughed as they posed for the camera. The colour had faded, but the smaller woman definitely looked familiar. Lorna picked out another of her, older this time, thin and ill-looking, standing arm-in-arm with a very French-looking man in a suit in front of a cathedral. She looked to see Rome, 1976 scribbled on the back in an English hand. There was a postcard addressed to Dear V and signed I, extolling the virtues of the food in Sicily and referring to someone called ‘Raoul’, and finally an Order of Service dated 22 November 1976. It was for the funeral of ‘Isabel Lewis’.

  ‘Isabel,’ Emily whispered, hardly believing her eyes. ‘Isabel.’

  ‘I know,’ Lorna said, her eyes round and solemn. ‘Of course, the surname was her mother and Penelope’s family name.’

  ‘But Isabel died – I mean, she died in nineteen fifty-three!’

  ‘So we’ve always believed, but they never found a body, remember.’

  ‘No, but I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Nor do I, Emily.’

  Emily looked at the envelope again. ‘Jacqueline – I can see how she might have opened this, thinking it was for her . . . But she didn’t show it to anyone?’

  ‘She says she didn’t even show it to Hugh. I don’t think she could cope with it. Didn’t want to stir everything up again. That’s what she says, anyway. Part of her has always refused to accept it. After she read it she put it all away and dismissed it from her mind.’

  ‘Oh my goodness! If Isabel was still alive, that would have meant . . .’ Emily stopped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘No, it’s tactless. Sorry.’

  ‘You mean that if my mother had still been alive, it would have made my father a bigamist and his and Jacqueline’s marriage invalid?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Funnily enough, she didn’t spell that out to me.’ Lorna started packing the items back into the envelope. ‘We must remember that Jacqueline never felt that she was quite as loved by my father as Isabel was. Oh, she was valuable to him, of course, and he was immensely fond of her, relied on her utterly. I dread to think how he’d have coped if she’d died before he did. But a deep, passionate love? No, I think he always grieved for Isabel.’

  Emily thought there might be some truth in this. Jacqueline had been the one he’d turned to when he’d lost the other women he’d loved: his pale first love, Anne, then his mother, then Isabel. Jacqueline had been his tower of strength. It had been a good marriage, but perhaps Jacqueline felt jealous of Isabel still. She remembered what Jacqueline had said about Hugh’s remorse after Isabel was believed dead. He wouldn’t have been the first man to have put the first wife whom he’d betrayed on a pedestal after he lost her. And now, extraordinarily, it seemed that she might not have died after all.

  ‘How can you find out more?’ she asked now.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lorna replied. ‘I’m still getting used to the idea. The packet was sent twenty-seven years ago. Is there anyone left who’d know anything?’ She sighed then said, more animated, ‘I looked up Vivienne Stern on the internet. There’s lots about her. She was a very successful scientist. Based in Paris but worked a lot in America, too. That made me wonder, how would Isabel have earned her living?’

  ‘I’ll bet it was books.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised, you know,’ Lorna said and they smiled at one another.

  Suddenly, something across the room caught Lorna’s attention. ‘Oh, they’re here!’ she cried, jumping up.

  Emily turned to see Lydia’s neat figure coming towards them and behind her followed a willowy girl with long dark-red hair and a creamy complexion. Lorna greeted each of them with an enthusiastic hug.

  ‘Emily how lovely to see you,’ Lydia said, leaning to kiss her. 'Emily, may I introduce my granddaughter, Olivia?'

  'Hello,' Olivia murmured, looking up shyly from under thick lashes. She was very lovely, a girl on the cusp of womanhood.

  'Olivia's mother Cassie is my goddaughter,' Lorna explained eagerly.

  'I know- you're the one who likes reading!' Emily cried, remembering Lorna buying the fantasy paperbacks.

  'Yes, Mummy is always calling me a bookworm,' Olivia said, smiling.

  'Shall we all sit down?' Lorna suggested.

  After they'd ordered, Lorna told Lydia, 'I've been showing Emily the package from Paris.'

  'What did you think of it, Emily?' Lydia asked in a serious tone.

  "If it is the same Isabel as ours, it's absolutely extraordinary,' Emily replied. 'But what do you make of Jacqueline keeping it from you and Lorna all these years?'

  'It's unforgivable,' Lydia growled, her face darkening. 'No, I'm sorry, Lorna, but it is.'

  'It is, I suppose,' Lorna said. 'But I think she was- I don't know, frightened.'

  'I can imagine the whole thing being overwhelming,' Emily said. She was touched by how forgiving Lorna was of her stepmother. 'Assuming in the first place that she understood the significance of the material.'

  'Of course she would have,' Lydia said. 'Nothing would escape Jacqueline.'

  Olivia glanced from one to the other, consternation in her big brown eyes. 'Who are you all talking about?' she asked her grandmother. Emily was finding it difficult to think of Lydia, so recently retired, being a grandmother.

  'Oh, Isabel again, darling,' Lydia said, and Olivia nodded. She was clearly used to these conversations. A phone chimed
in her handbag and she took it out and began texting while the grownups talked.

  'Not even to mention it to Hugh,' Lydia grumbled. 'That woman is the limit.'

  'She IS the limit,' Lorna said, 'but I think I understand her. And, I've thought about this a lot, Lydia- maybe my mother didn't want to be found?'

  Lydia stared at Lorna for a moment in amazement then murmured, 'I hadn't considered that. You may be right.'

  Emily thought Lorna was right, but didn't like to say anything to come between the two women, still grieving over the loss of Isabel all those years ago. Perhaps the mystery would never be solved. How could Isabel have escaped the flood, for a start? And what made her change her mind and not return to her family? There were still so many questions unanswered.

  'We could go to Paris and look for her grave,' Lorna was telling Lydia now. 'I'd like to do that. I should be angry with her, you know, but for some reason I'm not. Perhaps it's because I feel I understand her. But we need to be prepared for the fact that we may never learn all the answers.'

  'One day the two of you should write a book about it,' Olivia said brightly, putting away her phone.

  'Maybe,' Lydia said gently. Ah, your ice cream's coming.'

  Whilst Olivia ate ice cream and the others sipped tea, Lydia told Emily, 'I especially wanted you to meet Olivia, as she has something to ask.'

  'Oh yes," Olivia laid down her spoon and licked her lips. 'It's to do with school. I'm in sixth form college now and we've been told to get work experience. I so much want to do something with books and reading and-'

  'Would it be a real nuisance, Emily,' Lydia broke in, 'to take her for a week or two? Show her the ropes? She's very good with people.'

  'I'll do anything,' Olivia cried, her eyes sparkling.

  Emily, watching her, smiled and thought of the miracle of the thread that connected the nineteen year old Isabel and young Olivia now. She couldn't work out the family relationship easily, but Isabel being Penelope's daughter and Olivia, Lydia's granddaughter, they must be some sort of cousins, and there was something about Olivia's looks that reminded her of the black-and-white photographs of Isabel. Those large eyes, the intelligence, the eagerness.