Mrs P’s Book of Secrets. Lorna Gray
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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