Mrs P’s Book of Secrets. Lorna Gray

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      Over the past two months since I had joined this office, we’d exchanged pleasantries about the weather or some future publication or other that he was editing, but very little more. My unbound cheeriness shocked him sometimes, I knew, but I could usually tell when that had happened because he’d retreat to his desk – which was, admittedly, just as he was doing at present – and I’d settle into collecting up whatever papers I had for him before moving to follow.

      Usually, I was glad of it. Quiet reserve was what I was used to from him. It kept us safely clear of that other extreme of the office workplace – the one where my little slips into unchained friendliness would have been exploited as an excuse to be over familiar, as only a higher ranking male in business might. But he had never preyed on any mistakes of mine.

      So I suppose what I’m trying to say is that in the main I found his uncomplicated style of company wonderfully restful. Whereas this moment was different, because it was unlike him to make me uncomfortable.

      None of this was remotely exciting enough for Amy Briar who ran the bookshop below us. She couldn’t understand him at all.

      She had told me that he had been one of those poor unfortunate men who had gone over in the first wave and been captured almost on the spot. He’d been a prisoner of war until the cessation of hostilities in ’45. Amy couldn’t comprehend why any man would choose, after all those years of incarceration, to settle in this small town business when he might have seized freedom with both hands and claimed every excitement with it.

      I remember thinking simply: what a waste war had made of five years of life.

      Today, as I handed Miss Prichard’s manuscript to him across his desk, I was realising that at least part of the embarrassment I was feeling came from knowing that it was eleven o’clock and my uncle’s second-in-command had barely stepped into the office. And he had immediately approached me with a question about our work, only to catch me staring into the shadows when I ought to have been busy too.

      There had been a subtle touch of hesitation in his interruption, like concern when I didn’t want it. Now he made everything worse by accepting the manuscript from my hand and remarking, ‘Hearing you say all that about Miss Prichard’s memoir, it seems to me as if you and I ought to be trading jobs. My experience in publishing only runs to about nine months, whereas yours runs to years. Don’t you mind settling for taking the messages?’

      His eyes briefly lifted from the manuscript in his hand. He really was different today.

      This was the change that had been brewing over the course of all his little absences of late – a harder energy which ran itself back into stillness through a pattern of asking me more about myself than was the norm.

      I thought he did it whenever something had unsettled his peace of mind. This time, though, I couldn’t help stiffening to say in a clipped sort of voice, ‘That’s an oddly challenging question, Mr Underhill.’

      Then I caught the sound of my own defensiveness. It made me add more cheerfully, ‘It isn’t that I mind, exactly, that you might occasionally require more from me than a harmless chat about the weather. But didn’t you know that you aren’t supposed to draw attention to the smallness of my role?’

      Because he was right in a way – I was an experienced editor. I’d spent a good portion of my own war years working on the staff of the regional ministry office. I'd won one of those under-reported roles that basically required me to ensure that all information leaflets and posters and National Savings campaigns were adjusted to be relevant to the local population. So, thanks to me, a Mrs Whatsit from Ham Cottage had known that in the event of invasion, her emergency food distribution point would be the such-and-such building in Stratford-upon-Avon.

      Then, as it happened, the German tanks hadn’t invaded. The leaflets had been made redundant and so had I. And, with that in mind, this unsolicited comment on my new role here was a bit like that question mark which hangs over the way people talk about the cleaning ladies and the servers. Dignity was a very delicate thing.

      In my case, and the case of an awful lot of women like me, everyone knew how much we’d slaved for the great machine of war when we’d filled the void left by the departing men. They knew too how we were being cheerfully relegated once more to the role of underling now that peace had brought the survivors home again. And yet absolutely no one except a few restless youths ever dared to actually comment on it. Because who amongst us knew what complaint to make, when we were all poor and those war-shaken men had to have the chance to feel that normality was re-emerging somehow?

      So, I suppose the real issue here was that I had already grasped that there was a considerable difference between Robert’s career prospects and mine. I even had a plan for what I would do if it ran into my future. I just never would have expected this particular demobbed soldier to humble me by asking me about it.

      Particularly when we both knew that Uncle George didn’t have the work for three editors. Or the money. And it had been an act of generosity that my uncle had even been able to do this much for me.

      With a head full of concerns of my own about what was the matter with this man today, I couldn’t help retorting then with uncharacteristic coolness, ‘Anyway, it isn’t so much a case of whether or not I mind noting down the messages for you, Mr Underhill. It’s simply that I set quite a high value on having the funds to buy food this side of Christmas, that’s all.’

      I shouldn’t have said that. It turned out that not only was I struggling to deal with the sudden sense of my inequality here, but I also knew even less about his present mood than I thought. Because his head lifted from the manuscript again and I found that I had surprised him.

      He hadn’t expected to offend me. And his expression didn’t match the usual blankness that came in whenever I said something unguarded in this quiet office. This way of studying me was steadier. Aside from his reaction to the barb in my words, I thought it pretty clear that he had noticed that my mercenary summary of my motives was a lie. Normally I spoke by smiling.

      I didn’t even have the chance to answer that look by telling him something truthful, because there was a clatter of the other office door opening and then Uncle George was there in the doorway.

      The older man bustled in with a question for his second-in-command. He didn’t notice the closeness of my position to the corner of Robert’s desk, with the editor himself standing in the small space just beyond.

      Uncle George didn’t notice the speed of my self-conscious retreat to the cabinet by the door either. He was about as opposite a stamp of man to Robert as possible. George Kathay was the intellectual who fitted books and these quiet rooms but was also jolly and comfortable and long overdue for retirement. He had looked the same in all the years I had known him: willowy and wispy-haired and amiable, dressed in neat but old-fashioned brown suits made of wool.

      ‘Good morning, Mr Kathay,’ said Robert. He had moved when I had moved, but more smoothly.

      He had passed further behind his desk to set the manuscript down, and now he was checking his watch to confirm that it was indeed still morning. Just.

      My uncle didn’t have time for the preliminaries today. ‘Morning, Lucy. Rob. I’d hoped you’d be back sooner than this. What news have you got for me?’

      Robert’s reply was brief. ‘Mixed’

      ‘Ah.’

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