Mrs P’s Book of Secrets. Lorna Gray

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СКАЧАТЬ pause in the wake of that when it struck me that they were speaking in code. Then my uncle seemed to suddenly consider my presence more seriously. In fact, he began to look like a man who was about to ask me to go and make the tea.

      And that part really surprised me, because I was already making my discreet exit from the room. I mean to say that I always made the tea; it’s just that it was unlike my uncle to use it as a means of bustling me out of the way.

      Today, however, Uncle George gave me the strange experience of learning that after weeks of complacently enjoying the process of finding my feet, I might have been wrong for imagining that we were all friends here, each bearing a different share of the work. Because the rank of editors above the lower staff really did exist. And these two men had private business to discuss.

      It gave me a very peculiar feeling then to slip away to my desk.

      My dim corner was screened from Robert’s desk by the partition between us, so he couldn’t have seen my flush. I thought they might simply shut the door and exclude me that way. But then the younger man made the span of the floorboards between my seat and that open threshold so much narrower when he said with unexpected mildness, ‘Can you give me five minutes to gather together a few things, Mr Kathay, and then I’ll come along to your office?’

      He made it seem as if they were merely about to have one of their ordinary weekly consultations. But it was too late. Uncle George was fidgeting into the open doorway, and then he announced as if it were news the other editor needed to hear, ‘Lucy is our borrowed daughter, you know.’

      Now I truly was concerned. Because I thought I knew what my uncle was about to say next, and yet I was certain that if Robert had managed to grasp my professional qualifications, he must surely have gleaned this little detail.

      All the same, my uncle made it worse by rushing into saying, ‘Lucy is a farmer’s daughter who dislikes the mess of a farmyard. My brother-in-law’s family have a place beyond Worcester with an awful lot of sheep. And cows. Or crops. Actually, I think it’s just sheep and crops, isn’t it Lucy? She’s agreeing.’

      He added that last part for Robert’s benefit since the younger man couldn’t see my uncertain nod.

      I was staring. Because these rapid words were designed to convey affection and an awful lot of care. Uncle George was acting as if I had stalked out and he needed to make amends, only I hadn’t stalked anywhere. And now he was gripping that doorframe and earnestly explaining to the younger man by the desk, ‘My wife and I were childless and growing old before our time, and Lucy wasn’t keen on farming. So when Lucy was about four, her parents sort of loaned the girl to us. And then—’

      ‘And then it just sort of stuck, Mr Underhill.’ I raised my voice so that it carried into the other room.

      I had to stop this. It was all wrong that I should discover the tension I’d noted in Robert present in my uncle too. And I certainly couldn’t bear to hear this story of my childhood being told on these terms; as if my uncle needed to worry himself into an apology, when I didn’t need to be offended by this.

      So perhaps I even intervened for Robert’s sake, because he had been a part of this too, and I thought he might recognise the gesture behind my abrupt return to plain honesty.

      I added in that same clear voice, ‘This life stuck so completely, Mr Underhill, that some twenty-two years later when my job dried up and things got a little frayed about the edges, my idea of running for home carried me here.’

      My uncle beamed at me.

      Then he shuffled away to his office. He didn’t hear the way I felt compelled to add my own small aside to the secrets of this place by murmuring to myself, ‘Of course my real motive was that Aunt Mabel bakes like a dream and we are four weeks from Christmas …’

      ‘Mrs P?’

      Robert was calling me back into his room. He hadn’t heard that last part either. He was being distracted by the effort of remembering whatever it was that he and I had been speaking about before my uncle had begun to lecture him on my origins.

      At least his voice was closer to his usual harmless tone. He was searching through the papers on his desk when I approached near enough for him to say, ‘Did she ask any particular questions, by the way?’

      ‘Who?’ I asked blankly.

      ‘Miss Prichard. What were you talking about as I climbed the stairs?’

      It turned out that his idea of what had passed between us was different from mine. He wanted to discuss Miss Prichard and the submission of her manuscript.

      While he eased a pen out from beneath a stack of notes, I told him, ‘She wanted me to give her some examples of similar titles we’d produced. She had heard about the Willerson archive, naturally. Everybody has. She asked how soon she might expect to be able to get her hands on a copy. She wondered if it might be out for Christmas.’

      On any other day, a comment like that would have been guaranteed to draw a laugh.

      The Willerson archive was a collection of photographs belonging to the family of a dead airman by the name of Gilbert Willerson. He had documented his non-operational life, his happy days spent on leave, the dances, the encounters with people in the town and his friends. Now his family wanted to publish the collection as a memorial to his death and, to be honest, the whole project was one big complication for us.

      Gilbert Willerson’s fearsome last act with one of the training planes from our very own airfield had enthralled the national press. This was a man who, not to put too fine a point on it, had long been exploited for the purposes of propaganda. For my uncle, any attempt to publish even our small portion of the man’s private photographs was a tricky dance around the Official Secrets Act. It meant that Uncle George was having to negotiate with the various Ministry departments which might have an opinion on whether we should be prohibited from publishing at all. Robert had the unenviable job of pulling the pictures into some kind of logical order to give a sense of narrative. It was safe to say we were months away from making the print run that would be our largest title yet.

      Today, however, Robert neither shuddered nor gave the customary rueful smile.

      He merely paused in the midst of testing whether his pen worked while the distant sound of a rather wet sneeze carried through the floorboards from the shop beneath our feet. I saw him give an unconscious grimace, then he asked, ‘And was that the moment when she decided her manuscript should be submitted to me?’

      ‘She didn’t decide that. I did.’ I couldn’t help the impatience that was beginning to creep in. I wasn’t so nervous of his questions any more; just bemused.

      ‘So she wasn’t sent to us by her tenant, Doctor Bates?’

      ‘Not that she told me. And I should say,’ I couldn’t help adding, ‘that if you could hear our conversation as you climbed the stairs, you already know this.’

      Suddenly, he proved he could still smile after all. ‘I couldn’t really hear a word,’ he said, ‘but it’s a fair point.’

      Then he changed the subject.

      He tipped his head towards his desk and said in a lighter tone, ‘I saw your note about the Jacqueline Dunn book, by the way.’

      Oh heavens, I thought. At last I understood why I was finding that every СКАЧАТЬ