I had been glowering at the bound proof for about three hours when Robert finally chose to emerge from his office shortly before dusk fell. He was presumably wondering where his afternoon cup of tea had got to. The part that perplexed me was that he was looking perfectly unharrassed, while I was the one who was feeling short of rest.
I should explain that the Jacqueline Dunn book was a dramatized account of an old family by the name of Ashbrook who had owned a large estate in the region for about 200 years. She had authored it with a person called Harriet Clare, and their version of history was about as unconvincing as any children’s book I had ever read.
The last of the Ashbrooks had been snuffed out by the Great War. But aside from the authors’ intermittent tendency for spelling the worthy family name Ashbrok or Ashrbook, the main mystery here was how Jacqueline or Harriet had ever decided to call their book The Man who Bred Miniature Giraffes.
I suppose it was irrelevant to me whether or not there was any substance to this historic tale of diminutive African plains animals being bred in the Cotswolds. As her publisher, the point that I was concerned with – and was really causing my brain to ache – was the fact that Jacqueline’s covering letter had lightly explained that she had passed the book to someone else for a final perusal and this person had noted a few minor edits in the margins. Jacqueline’s instructions to me were to confirm or discard this new hand’s changes before proceeding to print.
My principle difficulty was that this friend had made some pretty enormous alterations to Jacqueline’s idea of the English language. And they had also left a number of unfinished comments, so that often all I had were obscure instructions to insert a reference to the dedication in the family chapel. The problem for me was that no one had thought to mention what this dedication actually said.
So when I looked up to find Robert Underhill standing before my desk bearing the loose sheets of what appeared to be another manuscript, I was perhaps less than friendly.
Unperturbed, he handed his papers to me. ‘I thought you’d appreciate the chance to see this. Further to the accusations you levelled at me last week about misjudging your visitor Miss Prichard, I have to tell you that you’re guilty of forming misconceptions about the lady too.’
I politely waited for him to continue.
‘It turns out,’ he said, ‘that only a portion of Miss Prichard’s tale is about her famous doctor. The rest is about her own career, which isn’t purely housekeeping. It’s also the history of herbology. Miss Prichard is a historian and she’s determined to confront the slander cast upon nosegays by a notable brand of soap.’
‘Soap,’ I repeated flatly.
‘Yes. You know the one. It ran an advertisement in all the papers in the spring. Now half the nation is convinced that in the days before modern baths, brides carried bouquets to disguise their body odour. But Miss Prichard absolutely, categorically and unequivocally states that medieval girls knew perfectly well how to use a damp cloth. And she means to prove the real value of herbs and flowers by making reference to any historical texts that give a contemporary record of their uses. She begins by citing Shakespeare’s Ophelia.’
He directed my gaze to the quote at the head of the first page. It read: There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.
I will be frank here and admit that I was a little taken aback by this conversation. He had never spoken to me so freely before. I looked at the papers he had handed to me and then I looked up at him, trying not to feel too much like I was staring.
I wasn’t being helped by the guilty memory of all that recent gossiping. And all the time I had the echo of my uncle’s concerns ringing in my ear – in effect declaring that this man wasn’t permanently fixed here.
I wasn’t mute after all. I heard myself remarking vaguely, ‘Miss Prichard didn’t say a word to me about this last week.’
My eyes strayed to the pages of her manuscript again. Perhaps the change in him was because I wasn’t being terribly talkative myself. Or frightening him away by smiling.
I gave myself a shake and asked in a crisper tone, ‘Will you publish her?’
‘Read it,’ he said simply. ‘She’s a woman after your own heart.’
Then, having said something ambiguous like that to me so that my attention flew back to his face, he asked, ‘Now, what about the Jacqueline Dunn book?’
I took a breath and pulled myself together. Straightening my shoulders, I found professionalism and a stronger voice. ‘All right,’ I asked. ‘Who’s Harriet Clare?’
‘Her daughter. At least, I think so. She’s aged about eleven anyway, so I presume she’s the daughter.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘I got the impression that Jacqueline lost her husband during the war and had to move to the rotten lodge on the edge of this Ashbrook estate. As I understand it, the grieving daughter was a bit shaken up by the move so they wrote this book together as a way of forging a fresh start and a new bond with the place. She and Harriet uncovered the old story about the giraffes and dived straight in.’
‘That’s nice,’ I said sincerely. Then because of the way he had paused in the middle of that, added, ‘Aren’t you sure?’
‘It’s hard to be certain. Jacqueline is a touch too excitable to be clear at times and one can hardly ask about the husband.’
‘No,’ I agreed.
I didn’t mean him to, but he must have detected an undertone in that reply, because after a moment he remarked, ‘This has been rather dropped on you, hasn’t it? Shall I sit down and we’ll go through it?’
I actually laughed at that; quite genuinely all of a sudden. I had to ask him, ‘Have you even read the edits?’
I was far too far along the path of failure to mind the implication that, if I needed his help, I didn’t know my job. I set aside the loose sheets of Miss Prichard’s manuscript to tell him exasperatedly, ‘I’m supposed to decide whether the giraffes were the Masai or reticulated sort. And I have a sneaking suspicion that this meddling friend is actually Mrs Dunn herself, because, for all the changes this friend made, they don’t appear to have noticed any of the misspellings of Ashbrook.’
Robert claimed the chair on the other side of my desk.
I had already handed him the book and pointed out a few of the more choice corrections. After a time his eyebrows rose. To my relief I wasn’t sitting there watching him and wondering if he had slept at the weekend. I wasn’t even trying to calculate whether his little trips away meant he had found a new haunt. I was examining a set of bus timetables I had collected when I had stepped out for lunch.
He set the bound proof down on the desk and then leaned forwards in his seat to draw my attention. He lightly tapped the cover with his index finger. ‘There isn’t much time to get this sorted out.’
I told him by way of agreement, ‘I’ve been down to the print room. Mr Lock says that Friday is the latest they can accommodate my edits without running out of time before Christmas, and that’s only going to work if Mr Lock’s wife will let him come in on Saturday to begin the printing. I’ve tried to get Mrs Dunn on the telephone. She’s out or not answering or something. She’s been out all day.’
It was then that I showed him the bus timetables.
After a moment he said, ‘I see.’
‘There’s no time,’ I said almost apologetically, ‘to wait for the post. What if she’s away or it gets delayed? If it goes in the post today, she should get it tomorrow, which is Tuesday. Everything is fine if she makes the final changes swiftly and sends the book straight back to us. But what if she isn’t clear? Or isn’t there? I really don’t want to be responsible for making us miss our publication date.’
‘We won’t be missing it. She will.’
‘All the same …’
Abruptly he accepted my decision and came just as swiftly to his own. He sat back in his chair. ‘Would you like company tomorrow?’
‘Don’t you remember? You’re going out yourself. Uncle George said so.’
He didn’t rise to the bait. In fact, he didn’t even acknowledge it. ‘You’ll have a long day. Your journey home will involve a long stop at either Cirencester or Bourton-on-the-Water, depending on which route you take.’
‘I can read a timetable, Mr Underhill. And I think I can manage to buy myself a cup of tea somewhere.’
I made him smile very fleetingly. Then the relief of the feeling left again. He tipped his head to signify that he had come to another decision. This one was clearly less easy to voice. Finally, he said, ‘Very well, I’ll come straight out with it. You won’t find it difficult meeting this woman?’
His directness went through me with a cold jolt that felt remarkably like temper. So did the way he was watching my face. This was like the time he had as good as asked me whether I minded making the tea.
I believe it was something very restrained that made me accept his question and tell him rather too precisely, ‘I’ll be fine. Five years as a widow is long enough to achieve some sort of equilibrium, wouldn’t you say?’
After a moment, I added more convincingly, ‘I suspect that as long as neither of us pretends to know precisely how the other is feeling, there won’t be any trouble at all. In my experience, people always presume that everybody deals with bereavement in just the same way. But when it comes to Mrs Dunn’s experience of losing her husband, who but her could even begin to imagine how it felt to explain his loss to a child?’
‘It’s always the same with you, isn’t it? Someone else has always got it worse.’
That sudden twist of sympathy stung me. Even more than his usual reserve. I felt entirely caught off guard. And now he was accepting my decision and climbing to his feet. I certainly didn’t dare tell him that I ranked him firmly alongside Mrs Dunn on the list of people I couldn’t fathom. ‘Mr Underhill?’
He paused with his hand on the back of the visitor’s chair ready to set it neatly back into its place. ‘Yes?’
‘Where do you go?’
‘I paid a long overdue visit to my parents at the beginning of last week.’
Something about the simply honesty of this answer touched my heart. I suppose I’d never asked him anything so directly before. In fact, I wasn’t sure we had ever spoken frankly like this at all.
Then I noticed the precise wording of his reply. It was a reflection of my careful evasion of his remark about meeting Jacqueline.
Suddenly, I was shaking my head, disbelieving. ‘You were visiting your parents when I was fussing about sending out the proof copy of this book about giraffes. But my uncle didn’t tell me.’
I faltered as I worked out what it meant for myself. Then I continued in a stronger voice, ‘Uncle George didn’t tell me where you were, because he still needed to conceal his inability to explain all the rest. So now I have to wonder whether he won’t tell me where else you’ve been going?’
I hesitated before adding, ‘Or he can’t?’
‘Don’t ask me that. Please.’
His plea was softly spoken. And that surprised me too.
I suspect that the harder dawning of doubt was showing there on my face because in the next moment Robert was saying briskly, to end this, ‘Anything else? No? Good. And good luck tomorrow.’
It was my turn to sleep badly that night before waking with the wish I could run away.
The attic timbers were full of their usual creaks and bangs and I had to add a new pressure to the dark. It wasn’t, however, formed around a certain editor’s unexplained absences, or at least not completely.
My night was filled with a disturbingly persistent dream about struggling to fill the advent calendar for a child. And it was horrible because upon waking it gave me the shock of learning that there was a part of my mind that had been bruised by the loss of the family my husband and I would never have.
Irrationally or not, I blamed Robert for making me think like this. I believe I’ve mentioned before that there was a general policy to refrain from asking a person about their war experiences. This was why. Until this moment it had never troubled me that my brief six weeks of being wildly in love and then nearly as swiftly wildly in grief hadn’t produced a child; there had, after all, barely even been time to learn enough about my husband for real friendship.
But all the same, this sense of the smaller legacy of my loss must have been in me all along to have surfaced now. And it must be said that Robert Underhill hadn’t actually asked. He had been concerned for my welfare and he had meant it kindly. But it was the faint compliment that had been given in the unguarded moment afterwards that was really meddling with the way I chose to confront what had happened to me during the war.
It made it impossible to consider that tomorrow I would simply be a representative of Kershaw and Kathay Book Press going to meet an author about her book. Because the author was a widow and, therefore, as far as my colleague was concerned – and anybody else who chose to worry about me – I must remember that I was one too.