The Silent Tide Read Free Page B

Tyler’s residence,’ she said, ‘but she ain’t here. Who might you be, Miss?’
    ‘Isabel Barber. Mrs Tyler’s niece.’ The woman’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Isabel added less confidently, ‘Please, may I come in? It’s awfully cold.’
    ‘I s’pose you’ll ’ave to,’ the woman sighed, opening the door wide. ‘Wait in the parlour with the other one.’
    Wondering who ‘the other one’ might be, Isabel left her case in the hall and the woman showed her into a chilly, over-stuffed sitting room at the front of the house that smelled strongly of coal-dust and wet dog. There, a small dapper man was struggling to secure a sheet of newspaper across the fireplace. He looked round at her entrance with an expectant expression, but seeing only Isabel, rearranged his face into a polite smile.
    ‘Herself shouldn’t be much longer,’ the woman announced. She went away, pulling the door shut, and Isabel, to her alarm, found herself alone with the stranger.
    ‘I’m afraid the coal is damp,’ the man explained in heavily accented English as he held the paper, waiting for the fire to draw. She nodded, wondering who he was, and, what piqued her curiosity more, why he was wearing a dinner suit at half past eleven in the morning. The suit needed pressing, and though his smooth dark hair with its threads of grey was combed back neatly, his skin was drained of colour, his jaw unshaven. It struck her that he couldn’t have changed since the night before, a thought she found shocking and thrilling at the same time. His undernourished appearance awoke her pity, though, and his expression was friendly.
    ‘It is very cold today, yes?’ he said, peering over the paper at the fire, which was beginning to roar.
    ‘Very,’ she agreed.
    She sat gingerly in one of the two armchairs, pulled off her gloves and rubbed her hands together as she looked about. The room was dark, even for a day without sun, owing to a great honeysuckle that grew across the window outside, its tangled tendrils knocking on the glass in the wind.
    Her aunt, she guessed, was fond of ornaments, and must be very sociable, for correspondence cards and invitations fought for space with china dogs and shepherdesses on the mantelpiece. There was a crowded bookcase against one wall. A slim book had been left open face down on a side table. She craned her head but couldn’t make out the title or author.
    ‘There,’ said the man, lowering the newspaper and stepping back. In silent satisfaction they watched the fire, now leaping merrily. Soon the room started to feel cosy, rather than gloomy. Isabel unbuttoned her coat.
    ‘Good.’ The man tossed the folded paper into a box and balanced himself on the arm of the second chair, where he mopped his shiny face with a handkerchief. Finally he extracted a cigarette packet from his inside pocket and offered it to her.
    ‘No, thank you, I don’t,’ she said, touched, for though he sought to disguise the fact, only one was left in the packet.
    He took it himself, then paused, changing his mind. ‘Save it for later,’ he said with a shrug and put the packet away.
    The lilt of his speech reminded her of someone. At the end of the war, three or four years ago, a Polish family had come to settle in the small Kent town where Isabel’s family lived. It was the eldest boy, Jan, she came to know, a tall, narrow-framed lad with passionate eyes, who gave her a lift home once on the back of his bicycle. She smiled, remembering their laughter as they’d clattered down the hill, then frowned at the memory of her father’s angry face at the door as the bike wobbled to a halt outside their pretty cottage. She still wasn’t sure whether it was her hoydenish behaviour that had annoyed him more, or her association with a foreigner. All she knew was that her father had returned from the war a different man. Three cruel years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Bavaria had soured all his sweetness, making him prone to bouts of