Mrs P’s Book of Secrets. Lorna Gray
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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.
In spite of all those unhappy thoughts at three o’clock in the morning, I believe that the distress of a hard experience did sometimes give me the freedom to be clearer about what I really wanted.
It must depend on the scale of the shock, naturally, but last night, once it had been established that I wouldn’t sleep until the traces of the nightmare had been shed, I whiled away the hour of wakefulness by beginning the manuscript of Miss Prichard’s book. Memory wove its way through every page; through her study of the written record for herbal medicines from centuries before, and through the life she’d led with the old doctor who had been brilliant in his field.
There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance – and, in less Shakespearean terms, the herb represented the power to recall lives lost and lives present. It actually possessed certain properties that might help. In bygone years it would have been carried at weddings and set upon the coffin at funerals. It had no influence upon either happiness or sadness, it simply asserted the value of ever having met each other. And the importance of fixing their memory upon your soul.
This morning, when I stepped out to catch the bus to Cirencester at twenty-five minutes past seven, I might have been a childless widow but I was also remembering that I was really enjoying the prospect of a day out.
The day hadn’t yet fully dawned. A thin scatter of stallholders for the Tuesday market were grimly laying out wares with the air of people who knew that this was not going to be one of those bright busy days. Any townsfolk who possessed the energy for early morning bustle were climbing onto this bus, including a well-to-do gentleman in suit, raincoat and hat who was, as it turned out, Doctor Bates.
‘Mrs P,’ he said cheerfully by way of a greeting. He must have picked up this version of my name from Amy, only from him it sounded like ‘pea’ rather than simply the initial letter.
He settled beside me on a seat that squeaked and received his little paper ticket from the conductor. I watched him fold it into a breast pocket in a way that made me certain he was going to misplace it for his return trip.
Oblivious, Doctor Bates turned to me and asked, ‘Off on a pleasure trip?’
I showed him the parcel containing the book.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You work hard at both extremes of the day, it seems.’
‘Do I?’
‘I saw that the lights were on late at the office last night. Your uncle’s got you handling a last minute rush before Christmas, has he?’
This was the first time I had ever met the man on my own. In the two months since I had taken my job, I had stepped down into the shop on perhaps a dozen separate days to find him chatting with Amy. Today, I shook my head in the midst of making my own dealings with the conductor, and said calmly, ‘That was a late telephone call with the author I’m visiting today. Everyone else had gone home.’
Yesterday, I had tried several times through the rest of the afternoon and into the evening to reach Jacqueline. At about seven o’clock she had finally answered, so I knew where I was going and that she would be there to meet me. To her credit, she had actually offered to make the journey herself and come to the office. But I hadn’t let her. I really was running away.
The bus cemented my escape by rattling into the line of traffic heading south. The windows were steaming up already. Through the fog of too many people breathing in a confined space, Doctor Bates was remarking, ‘The place was lit on Saturday too.’
‘You really are determined to consider me overworked, aren’t you?’ I replied. ‘You probably saw the lights from the stairs. I had my sister visiting and the stairs are lethal in the dark.’
‘Lives locally, does she?’
‘No – in Worcester. We like to catch up.’ I realised at last that I was in a way blaming this man for that uncomfortable morning I’d spent gossiping about Robert. I made an effort to be more conversational. ‘Where are you going today?’
He didn’t notice my change of tone at all. Instead he asked, ‘Is she an older sister?’
‘Rachel is a year younger. She and I shared rooms in Bristol for a few years while she was based there too.’
I actually had three older brothers – two who had survived the war through working very hard in farming, and a third who had simply been very lucky abroad. Rachel had been followed by two even younger siblings, but I didn’t give Doctor Bates room to ask that. Given half a chance,