It wasn’t the silence of a town that was shutting up for the night that met me as I alighted at Bourton-on-the-Water in another blustery shower. It was Robert’s voice mentioning my name: Mrs P.
At least, I recognised the voice for his when I turned and peered at him through the dark. It was a very odd sort of moment to encounter a colleague in the wrong town when I had just been quietly contemplating the peaceful prospect of an hour between buses and the chance of a cup of tea.
He was clad in a long grey raincoat and a hat that was about as serviceable in this weather as mine. He was stepping out of the shelter of a doorway into the light of the shop window that illuminated the bus stop. About five people splashed past and then we were standing there beside the bus with our heads on a slight tilt because we were each having to hold onto our hats and I was raising my voice above the noise of the gusting wind to say, ‘Is this a meeting by chance or by design, Mr Underhill?’
‘By design,’ he said. I saw what passed for a smile come and go. He added, ‘With a carefully choreographed plan that has already gone slightly awry. Mr Lock and I were out with a hired van for a delivery and we had the bright idea that he should leave me here to meet you while he finished the job before coming back to pick us up. Only, he’s just telephoned to say he’s had to return the vehicle to the garage before they close, so we’d better catch the bus. Shall we take shelter in a tearoom?’
The information wasn’t given with charm. It was delivered flatly, with that unease of his that these days seemed to run to asking me unplanned questions about my training, my tastes or my happiness before retreating once again into something more businesslike. This evening, though, the focus of his tension was more immediate. This was like that time when I had met him on my aunt’s stairs. He didn’t need to ask me questions, because for him everything had settled to a better kind of calm just as soon as I had stepped down from the bus.
I thought he was feeling the surprise he had given me and realising that I wasn’t too displeased to see him; which implied to me that he was acting here under instruction.
All the same, I went with him across the great lake that was the high street.
Bourton was very like Moreton in that the opposing faces of the buildings which lined this main thoroughfare were divided by a wide space dotted with trees. The difference here was that there was also a shallow river running down the middle – deliberately that is, and not just because of the increasingly heavy rain.
We crossed at the little humpbacked bridge and dived into a hotel that seemed to be open. And it was as the first glare of electric light slanted across the brim of Robert Underhill’s hat and onto the angle of his cheek that I saw again the fading edges of restlessness in his manner, and felt its strain.
I asked with rather too much concern, ‘Is everything all right, Mr Underhill?’
We were shown into a neat little corner booth with seats like pews – high backed benches made comfortable by deep cushions. It enclosed us in dim gas light with darkness outside and it was blessedly near the fire, because two hours and two buses had done little to ease my chill after all that walking about the countryside with Jacqueline.
The waitress hovered. ‘Soup with pie to follow?’ she asked.
‘Soup,’ I agreed, and so did Robert. There was no question today of shunning the two courses permitted in these days of strict regulations.
The man opposite smiled at the waitress and then smiled at me. Divested of his sodden coat and hat, he was thoroughly presentable in his navy suit and today he definitely matched Amy’s idea of a good-looking man worn by hard experiences to a slightly angular maturity. He had hair that was a mid brown shade and a nice sort of height that he carried like someone who had played a lot of cricket as a youth. He was leaning in with his elbows resting on the tabletop.
‘So,’ he asked pleasantly, ‘did you manage to resolve the editing issues today?’
It was an echo of the friendliness that had joined me at my desk yesterday when we had discussed our options for meeting Jacqueline’s impending publication deadline.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Amongst other things, Jacqueline needs time to examine the markings of the giraffe in her photograph for the purpose of identifying its species, so I’ve got to go back tomorrow to collect the final edit. And on that note, I really wish you hadn’t said what you had yesterday about my coping with the idea of encountering a fellow widow. She isn’t one, and you rather put the thought of my husband’s loss in my mind. At least, I think that’s what was wrong today. And besides all that, I really don’t see why it’s fair that you should get to know all sorts of things about me while I don’t know anything about you. Don’t you ever speak about yourself?’
If he was looking every inch the man who belonged in this dignified dining room, I on the other hand was looking very much like a woman who had spent the day stamping about a derelict mansion. My windswept state was a fitting accompaniment for my sudden loss of patience.
Then he asked in an oddly braced sort of voice, ‘Well, what is it you want to know?’
He was sitting a little straighter, not leaning in any more.
I leaned in myself. ‘First of all,’ I said shortly, ‘I should like to know whether you and the other people at the office call me Mrs P or Mrs Pea.’
He looked nonplussed.
I added by way of a prompt, ‘As in – are you using the initial letter “P”, or is it the green vegetable?’
Then I allowed an eyebrow to rise.
For once his reaction to my idea of humour was a shy hint of a laugh rather than a prompt urge to bolt. Or perhaps he never really ran away because otherwise this man before me now was too much of a transformation.
He seemed relaxed but contrite as he confessed, ‘It’s the initial letter. Did you think we were mocking you?’
‘I didn’t know what you were doing. But I don’t see why I can’t be called by my name.’
‘Mrs Peuse?’
‘Lucy.’
I’d surprised him again. And I had surprised myself too, because this was cowardice masquerading as friendliness when really I didn’t dare to launch into all the other questions I had. I also had to notice that he didn’t return the gesture by inviting me to call him Robert.
After a moment while my mind filled with the memory of that small contretemps we’d had about how equally we were ranked in the office, he merely asked steadily, ‘And if that was your first question, what was your second?’
I was determined to be at least a little bit brave. I asked him, ‘Are you all right? You looked as though you’d seen a ghost when you met me from the bus.’
‘I’m fine,’ he assured me and then the soup arrived. It was some time later that he suddenly grimaced, turning his head as if to shake away some inner constraint. Then he followed it by abruptly fixing me with a gaze that made my hand falter with the soup spoon midway on its journey to my mouth.
His eyes were an intimidatingly intense shade of brown.
He began by saying briskly, ‘You’ve heard that Nuneham’s is closing down?’
I hadn’t, of course.
My heart was suddenly running unreasonably fast. Because this was frankness after a day of disorientation from being required to be a listening ear or a new convert or whatever it was the doctor and Jacqueline or anyone else had wanted from me. This was the decision he had made just now. To talk to me when he might just be silent.
I asked, ‘Nuneham’s is closing?’
‘Do you understand what that means?’
I nodded. ‘It means that another old business has fallen prey to the war. There’ll be an unseemly rush from all the survivors to claim the redundant stock of paper and ink before any of the other neighbouring businesses can reach it first. And it’ll all be done on the quiet, because it’s hardly legal in these straitened times to repurpose supplies that have been dispensed as rationed goods.’
‘You’re very well informed.’ I didn’t think he had expected me to be quite so forthright.
I might have also added that I knew that the Nuneham’s Book Press was based near Abingdon, just beyond Oxford, and the trainline from Moreton ran there.
I said rather uncertainly, ‘Are you trying to tell me that your late return home last Friday marked the end of an attempt to haggle over Nuneham’s remaining supplies?’
‘Yes. And since your uncle doesn’t keep a vehicle of any sorts, I spent yesterday organising a hired van. Today, Mr Lock and I travelled to Nuneham’s to stake our claim on the prize we wanted.’
I disguised the force of my surprise by dwelling only on the smallness of the secret, after all that mystery. I remarked lightly, ‘Poor Doctor Bates, he will be disappointed.’
‘Doctor Bates? Why?’
‘He’s mentioned Nuneham’s once or twice to me in the manner of a rival interest for Miss Prichard’s book, and, since we’re being honest, I’ll tell you that he told me today to pass on the reference to you.’
I saw Robert’s eyebrows lift to express mild surprise. He asked, ‘When did you meet the doctor for him to be able to tell you that?’
‘Well, this morning, on the bus. He travelled with me as far as Stow.’
‘Did he?’
‘We had quite a chat. I have a feeling he’s hoping to use the threat of a rival publishing firm as leverage to encourage you to be generous when deciding Miss Prichard’s terms.’
If I was probing for his reaction to Doctor Bates’ hints, I certainly won a response of sorts. But not the one I was expecting. I had expected him to treat all mentions of Doctor Bates’ name with the same seriousness that the doctor seemed to place upon the name Robert Underhill.
But this man’s response was distaste; simple uncomplicated distaste in the form of an unexpectedly direct question. ‘Odd that he didn’t use his car, don’t you think?’
‘What I think is odd is that neither you nor my uncle told me this before. When you made me withdraw my question yesterday about my uncle’s part in your various excursions, I thought … Well, I don’t know what I thought, but it was nothing quite like this.’
‘Thank you,’ he said after a moment, ‘for not making me break my promise to your uncle.’
I met his gaze steadily. ‘So what’s suddenly changed? Did you succeed?’
‘Take a look at the racks in the printworks and answer that one for yourself.’
It was a strange moment for me because there was something disconcerting about learning that this conversation wasn’t so very different from the recent encounters with Doctor Bates and Jacqueline. Here at last was an urge to assume an air of being wise to the ways of the world and be calm – and, in this instance, to refrain from passing judgement about the mild criminality of this act.
Only I wasn’t wise and I wasn’t even sure if that was what he wanted from me. The single judgement I had was that I understood that my uncle’s allowance of paper had been determined at the outbreak of war. It had been calculated by the volume of titles he and my aunt had published that first year. Luckily for Kershaw and Kathay, they’d published a decent handful, but even so the allowance of paper was never enough. So it had fallen to this man to do something to salvage the mess and I wondered how willing he had been.
I said with sudden sympathy, ‘You must have found it difficult.’
In truth, I was thinking about this man’s self-evident strain in recent weeks and wondering if this had been the source of the worry for my aunt and uncle. Because this task must have been very difficult, otherwise my uncle would have done it.
I suppose they’d decided that my uncle had grown too old to be chasing about the countryside after reams of paper. The doubt lingered, though, that they might have delegated the responsibility to someone else. My aunt was utterly out of the running for obvious reasons, but still they might have thought of asking me to bear the burden instead.
The doubt was echoed in the next moment when, instead of smoothly passing onto an easier subject, the man opposite me added as if there was still more for me to understand, ‘Your uncle will be as glad as I am that it’s finished with. I’ve spent quite a few weeks now visiting another ailing business to pick through their stock, but the last lot subjected me to a bit of a run-around. It transpired that they were holding out for a ransom we couldn’t pay. Luckily, Nuneham’s were prepared to be more reasonable.’
I saw him set his bowl to one side. I felt like I was staring. I probably was. He loosely clasped his hands together on the tabletop and seemed to be waiting for me to ask something.
Only then he told me briskly instead, ‘Anyway, even today things didn’t go entirely smoothly. Mr Lock and I had a run-in with the bullyboys from one of the Oxford printworks. They were there on a similar mission and I’m afraid they saw the place as their territory.’
‘There was a bit of a squaring off?’
‘Yes, and an awful lot to do afterwards. And I’m not, I afraid, a man with the patience for a rough scene.’
He wasn’t speaking about the questionable legality of buying up redundant stock any more. It sounded like he was describing a blaze of temper; a raising of fists. Some men, I knew, wore their easy fury like a badge of honour, polished up and presented every once in a while to impress.
Suddenly, I was sitting back in my seat and turning my head aside. ‘You had to make a stand? How unfortunate.’
I returned my attention to him. It was a false sympathy. I had to wonder now how much Uncle George’s concern had been because he had been helpless to say that the paper wasn’t needed if it meant tiptoeing around a man’s rare but harsh tendency for anger. Perhaps this was why Robert had told me about it now. Perhaps he was one of the men Doctor Bates had described, who had been welcomed home from the war only to prove that they were wracked with rage for all the terrible things they had seen.
Only Robert didn’t quite conform to that bleak view. He allowed the waitress to exchange his bowl for his dinner dish and then corrected my mistake with such wry amusement that it was like meeting the man anew.
I watched his mouth as he told me, ‘I didn’t hit anyone. Heavens, I’m not trying to confess a guilty secret like that. I’m answering your question about whether it was difficult. It was. I’m not fit to cope with the strain of putting my head down and getting on with the real work after a sudden confrontation. Scenes like today shake me. I’m sorry.’
He said it like he knew I must think him weak.
My brows furrowed. I asked quickly, ‘You’re feeling shaken? You’re injured?’
He wasn’t moving like he was injured.
I added, ‘Perhaps you have a cold on its way. Amy was worried she’d given you the one she had, and Doctor Bates said that sometimes a temperature can muddle things a bit in your mind – in anybody’s mind, I mean.’
I bit my lip to suppress the guilty memory of that rotten spell of gossiping in the shop. I certainly deserved the slight sharpness of Robert’s reply.
He retorted shortly, ‘Doctor Bates again?’
There was something in the way he said the name that struck me. I heard myself saying, ‘He isn’t your doctor, is he? You barely know him at all.’
Robert contradicted me quite gently. ‘Actually, I know the man well enough to be aware that he graduated from the same medical college that taught me, and that he uses it as the excuse to take a slightly tactless interest in the whys and wherefores behind my move away from medicine into publishing – which was why I interrogated you quite so unnecessarily about Miss Prichard’s motive for paying you a visit, I’m sorry. I wondered if I needed to worry that he was prying.’
Then he set down his knife to say bluntly, ‘But whatever the man’s been telling you, he certainly needn’t trouble himself with my health. I don’t think I’m coming down with anything.’
There was a pause that was accompanied by another turn of his head; as if he knew he hadn’t yet quite reached the truth. Then in the next breath he was telling me, ‘Today’s encounter with the men from the Oxford printworks was really just a few tough words while they tested to see what they could get away with. But I’ve had enough of mediating between men with an overblown idea of their rights. I learned that during the years I spent being pushed to the fore as a doctor in a camp of POWs.’
This, suddenly, was something I never would have expected him to tell me.
I said carefully, ‘You enlisted as a medic, I know.’
He gave a small nod. ‘I did.’
Then he added, ‘There wasn’t, however, a qualified doctor amongst us, so I was roughly promoted to the rank of resident medical officer. It was my job to warily negotiate better care from the guards, always with one eye on their faces in case that slight look of irritation meant I was letting us in for another run of punishment, consisting of sheer mind-numbing boredom and insanely reduced rations.’
I watched as his mouth formed a rueful curve. ‘Needless to say, it was always a weak negotiating platform when I was a prisoner too. And, as it was, half the time I wasn’t patching up sores and injuries anyway. I was stepping blind into the sort of incidents where tempers might flare up from nothing in a moment and a man could get himself shot in a nasty little altercation with a guard. That particular time, the man on the ground was a friend and I was crouching over him with every word working to fend off that decisive second bullet.’
There was a momentary hesitation before he said simply, ‘The guards remembered to be humane, for what it’s worth.’
And then, having confessed something vivid like that, he added on a far more ordinary note, ‘These days, I consider myself to be significantly more at liberty to speak my mind. And I expect I bear up to the work that follows well enough. But afterwards, as has happened today after the little spat over the paper, I suppose I start to feel the need to remind myself that I’m not confined any more. And, to be quite frank, the familiar urge to go away on an extremely long journey has only really gone since talking to you.’
For a moment, a very odd feeling rang in the wake of that.
I sat frozen, staring again with my mouth numbed to stillness. Because he was sitting very still himself and it was shocking to finally comprehend the mixture of pressures that were working upon this man. I couldn’t imagine how it must have felt to be made responsible for his fellows, all the while knowing the inevitability of failure because his half-trained skills could only go so far, and he was just another prisoner anyway.
I wondered how long this man had taken to regain some idea of what freedom meant upon his return home after the war. And how much he thought he had found it in his work for my uncle’s business. I wondered if Amy really was wrong to say that he might be about to leave us, because I suspected that above all things, he was trying to prove to himself that the only responsibilities he had to bear these days were small and within his reach.
I didn’t dare to ask him whether the trouble he had met at Nuneham’s fell safely within that plan. But still I ought to have spoken. I ought to have found some reply.
In the next blink, the certainty that had fixed his attention so firmly upon me was fading and that old urge to retreat was back in evidence again and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all.
I had to lean in and find my voice after all to say quietly, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push excuses and explanations upon you as though it were necessary for there to be some temporary influence upon how you’ve been feeling.’
‘No. Of course not.’ Then, quite as if it didn’t matter that the odd business of the paper had forced him to tell me something utterly private, he united his fork with the knife upon the plate, set the lot aside and asked lightly, ‘So what did Doctor Bates really say about me today?’
That trace of shame had gone in him. In fact, my expression made him smile.
‘All right,’ I conceded while the waitress sidled across with the bill. We slid out of our seats and began shrugging our way into our dampened coats.
I saw my companion sigh at the state of his hat and then I told him, ‘Doctor Bates was asking about the fee we would charge to publish Miss Prichard’s manuscript.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes,’ I said, buttoning up my coat. ‘He wanted to know what proportion of her payment would go towards my salary. So I gave the doctor a long and entirely uninformative lecture on how fabulously knowledgeable Miss Prichard is. Her old doctor was her peer, not her patron, and I have every faith that her name deserves to become equally established as a figure of respect. And in a way, it means that I’m with Doctor Bates on the question of whether we’re a good enough publisher for her. Only, she’s so utterly unassuming that I don’t quite believe any of the academic publishers would take her seriously. I think she’s wonderfully steadfast in her own quiet way.’
And then my flush cooled abruptly because it was at that moment that I remembered the brief encouragement this man had given me when he had passed me the pages and asked me to read them. He had said she was a woman after my own heart.
‘Mr Underhill,’ I began as a kind of caution. I was conscious now of the other compliment I had received today on the subject of Miss Prichard’s work – the one from Doctor Bates. It felt truly offensive to endlessly reduce that woman’s endeavours to the level of a fresh form of flattery for me. Particularly when I wasn’t in her league in the first place, because I wasn’t even quiet.
Robert ignored me anyway. He was dragging open the door to the dark outside. At least the rain had stopped.
Then he remarked gently, ‘That was a long lecture you delivered to me just now as well, wasn’t it? Presumably because you’re trying to hide what he said to you. Only it’s too late because you know I can guess what’s troubling him. The world of medicine is a small one, and I think it’s fair to imagine that he’s been able to establish that our old university professor kept a space for me so that I could resume my studies when I came home.’
‘You went back to your medical college? I didn’t know that.’
‘I did. But, as it turned out, I only picked up the old thread of my university life for about three months and then I abruptly left. All of which means that our good Doctor Bates has now got to face the fact that, for no sensible reason, I’ve pitched up here in a small and struggling publishing company, and I’m suddenly responsible for safeguarding his ageing landlady’s dreams. In that light, I think he’s right to be concerned. But not,’ the man beside me added, ‘to the point of harassing you about it too.’
It was said quite coolly. I wasn’t entirely sure this wasn’t my cue to level my own questions about his inexperience. In a way, it would have been a fair exchange since I could remember perfectly well how this man had recently challenged me about my own skills and ambitions within the scope of my uncle’s business.
The bus drew in as we crossed the river and once we were settled in our seats, I remarked rather defensively, ‘You know you’re good at your job, Mr Underhill.’
My compliment amused him. At least I thought that was the feeling that briefly touched his mouth. He turned his attention to the route ahead where it gleamed in the narrow beam of the bus’s headlights. I heard him retort mildly, ‘I spent a little over five years in a prison camp, Lucy. My idea of my self-worth is a touch confused.’
We stepped down from the bus in Moreton in a jostling crowd of about twenty people. It was very black in the stiff breeze of the wide market place. The garage where Robert had hired the van was dark and shut up for the night, and the dim face on the clock tower – called the Curfew Tower – showed that it was seven o’clock.
‘Lucy?’ His voice recalled me as I began to move to cross the road.
I turned my head. ‘Mr Underhill?’
He was intending to walk me to my door, it seemed. He joined me and told me, ‘I didn’t realise I needed to tell you that you can use my name too.’
He didn’t mean it too but his utterly gentle concession sent a shiver of recollection through me that came from a very different place from our recent discussion of his past.
To avoid showing this man my sudden chill, I glanced quickly left and right for traffic while tightening my grip upon my coat for the sake of warmth, and said quickly, ‘Oh? Well, do you prefer Rob or Robert? My aunt calls you Rob, I know.’
‘Either. Whichever you like.’
A simple remark about making me free with his name shouldn’t have unsettled me. But it was a nudge back into my memory of today, and it was in that same uneasy frame of mind that I found myself stilling on the approach to the shop door with my head bent while I rummaged in my handbag for my key.
The distant light from a solitary street lamp was casting long shadows. We might as well have stepped back a few years into the blackout.
And it was from that darkness that his voice came with a sudden touch of bemusement beside me. ‘What is it? Are you waiting for something? Or are you listening and mapping the sounds of that house again, ready for the night ahead?’
It gave me a second lurch of the heart to realise he was remarking on the intimate bit of chatter he had overheard passing between me and my aunt. For my part, I was finding it even more unnerving to be meeting friendly sympathy in this man. It was as if he could see into my mind and read the echoes there. Then the illusion abruptly passed. This question about the root of my unease wasn’t a lucky guess. This was a product of my unhappy habit of ducking my head and forgetting to smile whenever I tried to hide.
I found my key. ‘It’s nothing. I’m not afraid up there, you know. I don’t need you to fuss about that.’
‘Of course you don’t,’ he agreed. ‘And I am sorry, by the way, that I upset you yesterday with my overbearing comments about meeting Jacqueline. I thought I was only showing concern, where I believe your family in the main tends to presume you’ll manage everything perfectly well on your own. But I can see that under the circumstances my interference wasn’t quite as kind as all that.’
His sudden apology left behind an odd twist of something deep inside that moved halfway between the memory of our first misunderstanding over his view of my role in my uncle’s office, and realising once again that all along he had wanted to give me this feeling of being cared for.
I found I had abruptly begun to say, ‘I have to tell you something that will sound a little strange. But in a way it has come out of my visit today and you’re just the unlucky person who has to bear the brunt of it. My husband was called Archie and I loved him very much.’
Robert became very still.
I found I was rushing into explaining myself. I added, ‘I’m sorry. This is Jacqueline’s fault. It’s an extension of a guilty realisation that first dawned on me in the midst of talking to her today about her Ashbrooks.’
‘Why? What did she say?’ It took him a moment to find his voice.
‘She flung me blind into acknowledging the enduring legacy we can give to the dead simply by remembering them. And at that moment,’ I admitted, ‘it struck me that it has been a terribly long time since I have fallen out of the habit of calling my husband by his name.’
I was suddenly a step closer to the door of the shop. I turned my back to the mixture of glass and wood to tell him foolishly, ‘So, I’m ashamed to say I’ve just corrected the error with you. And now every nerve is on edge because you’re right; half my mind is indeed listening intently to the silence behind the gusts of wind. My grandmother has been desperate to call out to my husband through the medium of her séances, but I’ve never let her do it; and this is why. I suppose it has become a kind of superstition with me that I might undo my efforts to let Archie go if I give his name the real form of sound.’
But, needless to say, nothing was happening here with each new utterance of his name. A person’s name was not a siren call. It was as Jacqueline used it – like a marker on a gravestone; a means of ensuring that the departed soul survived in memory.
Only, unlike her, I didn’t feel compelled to say his name in full.
I was, in fact, achingly conscious of the mistake I was making in saying anything at all. I was suddenly terribly aware that the real living man before me must be thinking of the timing of this sudden impulse to speak of Archie after the liberty he had given me with his own name.
Robert must be suspecting that I was only speaking like this at all because I’d taken his small gesture as a clumsy bit of courtship to a woman whose marriage had been terminated, but my heart was not free.
The tug between the two rival waves of shame was excruciating. It was like standing alone in an abyss.
Then Robert’s voice came very quietly out of the dark beside me. ‘Your trip to that house has really spooked you, hasn’t it?’
And his quick understanding dragged my gaze sharply to the shadow that was his face. He was noticing that absence of a smile again.
I found I had put up my hand to grip my collar once more. The clouds were really breaking to a clear night sky and my breath was misting in the crisp air as I told him matter-of-factly, ‘There has been an awful lot of talk today about legacies and dead Ashbrooks, and Jacqueline is determined to keep those people alive in her book and in her mind. I suppose that somewhere in the midst of hearing her theory about the dead girl, I realised all of a sudden that I have a responsibility too.’
‘Which is?’
‘Of all people, as his widow – as Archie’s widow – I have to be brave enough to speak of him, haven’t I?’
Only I wasn’t brave really. Not even now having done it and realising that in truth I had never been afraid that a séance would conjure an answer from the silence. I had been afraid to admit that I had always known it wouldn’t.
For Archie was gone, and speaking his name meant acknowledging the wholesale absence of a reply in a moment that was passed in a blink of an eye.
‘What dead girl?’ was all Robert asked after a time. I suppose this was a peculiar conversation for him too.
‘Harriet Clare. She isn’t Jacqueline’s child. About seventy years ago Harriet Clare was a ward of that house, but she died.’
‘Good grief.’
‘Indeed,’ I agreed. Then I said quite calmly, ‘But at least you can feel vindicated for cautioning me about going. Because actually, it wasn’t remotely nice to discover that the jolly exchange I’d expected to have with a mother and daughter about their plan to release their book in time for Christmas was in fact only a confrontation with what amounted to a macabre list of dead people.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
A single shake of my head set aside the apology. Then I added more decisively. ‘Jacqueline meant well enough I think. And how could she have known that my mind’s defences had already been weakened to her sense of drama by a difficult night’s sleep? Her story about a young orphan girl felt, I don’t know, personal I suppose. Particularly coming as it did at this time of year when the long nights are full of family and memories and old traditions in the run up to Christmas.’
This was the moment I stopped pretending that this man was acting as the divide between me and my family.
I admitted that this wasn’t just about Jacqueline’s story, or even the memory of Archie. It was about me. I drew a steadying breath and told him, ‘I don’t know fully how to describe what happened today. It was as if the silence of that dead house was scratching holes in the stiff veil between me and the departed, or was making it move a little closer, or something. I already feel sometimes as though I’m living on the periphery of life, as if the war has cut me off from the people I care about. For a while, it was stronger today. It felt as though I might find myself straining to listen to the wrong voices if someone didn’t step up quickly and make an awfully big noise. Just as you did appearing out of the rain by that bus stop. And as my aunt and uncle do at regular intervals, thank heavens. Did my aunt tell you that my mother and grandmother and all the rest of that side of the family are spiritualists?’
If he noticed this change of tack, he didn’t interrupt it. He inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘I gathered as much when you mentioned séances just now. And Mrs Kathay said something about it. Mainly that your grandmother threatens her with a tarot reading every once in a while – and, before you ask, those were your aunt’s exact words. Are you trying to tell me that you’re a little bit fey yourself?’
The question was posed lightly and it made me smile unexpectedly. ‘Doesn’t everybody believe that they have secret talents that they haven’t yet had a chance to discover?’ Then I added on a more serious note, ‘I can read tea leaves.’
I caught a hint of answering warmth in the dark. I felt bolder all of a sudden. I had been angry with this man all day for pushing me into thinking about things I had long since decided were best left well alone. And here I was discussing them for what felt like the first time in years. And now he was asking in that reliably businesslike tone of his, ‘When you go back tomorrow, do you want me to come along with you?’
I tilted my head at him. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Are you afraid I’ll reveal some of this nonsense to Jacqueline and make her threaten us with the name of a rival book press too?’
‘You know that I think you’re good at your job.’
His quick retort was a surprise. I had no idea this man was capable of easy charm. He made me laugh.
‘Actually,’ I couldn’t help remarking, ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you think of me. You never tell me anything unless I ask you a direct question. And I certainly wouldn’t ask you that, because the answer might explain why you always retreat into your office.’
I shouldn’t have said that. It was what I always did to him – I relaxed and then I startled him by being too honest. For a moment he looked completely taken aback.
He repeated blankly, ‘I retreat into my office?’
He really had no idea that he ran away from me. I decided there and then not to repeat the point. Only he must have at least known that he wasn’t following the usual pattern of swiftly turning this conversation to something less personal, because I heard him say a shade wryly, ‘Well, since I’m here, I might as well tell you that I don’t believe your aunt and uncle described you terribly accurately.’
I saw him note the way my eyebrows rose. Then he said, ‘They led me to expect a sad and feeble young woman on the retreat. But you? You’re formidable. In fact, I find it insane to hear you say that you need other people to show you how to cling to life. Because you didn’t bolt for home when things got a little frayed about the edges in Bristol as you said, did you? If you’d done that, you’d have come home months ago when you were first released from your war service. That happened in the spring, I know.’
He left a probing silence as a question. I had always thought that his type of steadiness concealed a deeply thinking mind. I never expected him to turn that mind towards me quite so decisively as this.
I filled the pause unwillingly. ‘I came back because I thought my aunt needed a helping hand.’
‘And instead you found her managing perfectly well despite the rheumatism, and a lodger already installed in your old family home. I’m sorry.’
It was said dryly, without meaning to offend, but perhaps it betrayed again just a shade of that raw measure he seemed to place on his own self-worth. Then, while I digested that, he added on a note that was so ordinary and practical that it almost came close to relief, ‘What time is the bus tomorrow?’
‘Twenty-five minutes past seven,’ I told him, without being entirely sure what I was admitting.
He watched me unlock the shop door. My hand found the light switch on the wall. In the sudden blaze of yellow, I heard him mention my name again and turned to see him squinting on the threshold.
In that same warmer voice that was like his own, and yet new to me, he asked, ‘Lucy? What would you do if your uncle’s business folded as Nuneham’s did? Do you have reserves?’
It was asked so naturally, it felt as if he were merely extending the question about the time for tomorrow’s bus. And yet I was suddenly acutely aware of the two yards or more of wintry air that lay between us now because he hadn’t followed me inside. He quite patently did not consider the office his territory by night.
I lingered between shelves of books and told him, ‘My parents-in-law are still living, so all Archie and I had was what we could earn. And he left me a signet ring, but I put that into trust for his nephew. It seemed the right thing.’ I don’t know why I told him that. I ought to have just said I was poor.
‘And?’
This truly was turning into a very odd farewell. My reply was instinctive because I had already thought about the future. It was just very unusual to be giving it the solid form of a declared ambition.
I told him, ‘If Kershaw and Kathay folded, I’d begin my own book press by buying a few favours with the little I have. Then I’d absolutely beg Miss Prichard to let me publish her.’
I didn’t expect my answer to make him laugh, but it did.
All the same, it wasn’t ridicule that came and went in the night. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘Well, if you do, will you do me a favour?’
‘Which is …?’
I had a sense that this conversation wasn’t quite going as he had meant it to. I saw him frame his words carefully in the form of one last remark before he left me.
He asked with such humility that it rocked me, ‘Would you take me with you?’
He meant as a fellow editor. He meant as my assistant. Now it was my turn to laugh.
I didn’t reply but it was very certain that the slow manner of my shutting of the door was an answer all the same. There was the warmth of companionableness in the act and the prospect of further talk tomorrow, instead of exclusion.