Dreams of another day, p.7
Dreams of Another Day, page 7
‘We need to know, you see. Otherwise we’re just guessing what would be interesting, because none of us has children or knows quite what it’s like to be stuck at home with them. And we don’t always agree with each other’s guesses; but perhaps I shouldn’t say that.’
‘All right,’ said Serena, holding her younger son back from the open front door by his collar. ‘Have you written to Rosie?’
‘Rosie?’
‘Yes, you know. Miss Roseheath from school. She always adored you; I’m sure she’d take a subscription for herself – and probably the school too. And she could talk about it to parents and leavers, which might help.’
‘Good heavens! Is she still there? I’d have thought that she would have moved on to something more interesting years ago,’ said Ming, remembering things that she had not thought about for years.
‘She’s headmistress now – quite a lot of power – and doing great things for the school. If we ever have a girl, I’ll definitely send her there. I must go and get these creatures bathed. It was lovely to see you, Ming. I’m sorry I look such a wreck.’
‘You look like a woman struggling to keep two voracious children occupied,’ said Ming with obvious admiration in her voice. She kissed her friend and said goodbye.
Ming went straight from that meeting in her friend’s nursery to one with Julia Wallington in chambers, which produced a contrast that made Ming ache with sympathy for Serena.
Julia, who had not been in court at all that day, was dressed in a plain suit of some smooth indigo-coloured cloth and a heavy cream silk shirt. Her hair was pinned back into a neat roll and her makeup was so discreet that it was almost invisible. She too looked tired, but, unlike Serena, manifestly in command and rather frightening.
Julia seemed to approve of what Ming was trying to do with her articles for The World Beyond and answered most of her questions about the money that women could earn in the professions and the difficulties they tended to encounter at the bar. Ming, who had never known her well, was very careful in the questions that she put at the beginning of the interview and was pleasantly surprised by Julia’s frankness.
As they talked the questions become more searching and Julia’s answers both longer and more interesting. The more they discussed Julia’s work and its rewards and costs, the more Ming admired her and the more she wanted to know, but there were some questions about its effect on her family life that Ming did not think she could possibly ask.
The article began to take shape in her mind as she worked around those difficult points and Julia’s encouragement gave her the confidence to believe that she would be able to write it in a way that would satisfy Connie and yet avoid all the worthiness that Ming had disliked so much in the magazine’s first few issues. When she got up to go, thanking Julia for giving her so much time, Julia stood up too, saying:
‘Try not to give the impression that it’s easy, won’t you?’
Ming stood with a hand on the door knob, surprised.
‘I don’t mean that I’m exceptional or anything vain like that,’ Julia went on with a smile that made her look much more approachable, ‘but it wouldn’t be fair to make your readers think it’s easy. It’s tough for anyone and for women it is still very much harder than for men. It would be irresponsible not to point that out. All right?’
‘Yes,’ said Ming. ‘I quite see that. Thank you for all your help.’
‘It was a pleasure. I like the idea of your magazine and I’ll do what I can to get it better known,’ she said, adding: ‘Flixe is right, you know.’
‘In what?’ asked Ming, wondering what on earth was coming. Julia smiled again.
‘She once said that you’ve a great gift of sympathy and I see what she meant. You can make one feel that you know exactly where the scars are and that you’d never poke them. That is both rare and valuable, particularly in your profession.’ She raised her hand in farewell and even before Ming had crossed the threshold, Julia had gone back to the brief on which she was working.
Inspired by her example and approval, Ming worked extremely hard for the rest of the week, both planning her two articles and pursuing possible subscribers. She used the same technique of persuasion in person, on the telephone and in letters, and by Friday had taken firm orders from twenty women. It was a start, but it depressed her: she needed thousands of new subscribers, not merely tens.
Sorting through the immense piles of paper on her desk, she came upon the heap of letters from her mother’s friends that had accumulated while she was in Egypt. Guiltily aware that she had not answered any of them, Ming quickly wrote to each woman to explain why she was unable to take up the kind offer of work for charity because she had a full-time job, and then went on to try to sell them the magazine. Most of the women to whom she was writing were well beyond the age range that was Connie’s target, but it seemed worth trying.
Ming also wrote to her old teacher, to the headmistresses of a number of girls’schools, and to the various women’s colleges at the universities asking whether they would be prepared to let her have lists of their graduates or at least include a leaflet about the magazine whenever they sent out material.
By that stage she was well on the way to composing an impersonal letter that could be duplicated in hundreds to save time and would allow her to add a personal post-script where it was appropriate. While she was typing out a fair copy of it, she heard the flap of the letter box and went out into the hall to pick up her post. There was a gratifying number of envelopes and she carried them back to her desk, hoping that several would contain subscriptions. Before she could open any of them, the telephone rang.
Ming answered and heard Mark Sudley sounding oddly tentative as he asked her how she was. Ming smiled at the sound of his voice, delighted that he still wanted to talk to her.
‘I’m very well. Hard at work again and really revelling in it. What about you?’
‘Not half bad,’ he said. ‘I was wondering whether I could persuade you to come and see Salad Days with me. I seem to remember your saying you hadn’t seen it yet. Perhaps we could have some dinner in Soho first. Would you like that?’
‘Very much indeed,’ she answered truthfully. ‘I’ve missed you.’
‘Really? Good. How would next Tuesday suit you?’
‘Tuesday’s tricky, actually, because I have to go down to Etchingham. Monday or Wednesday would be better,’ said Ming, taking it as a matter of course that she would attend the weekly editorial meeting.
‘I’ll try for Monday then and telephone you if they’ve got tickets,’ said Mark, adding with some feeling: ‘It’ll be really good to see you.’
‘Thank you. Goodbye,’ she answered, wondering whether it would be unfair to try to make him take out a subscription. She was pretty sure that he would if she asked him.
Picking up the first envelope in the pile, she slid her forefinger under the flap and ripped it open. There was a single sheet and no enclosure. Assuming that it was a rejection of one of her selling letters, she unfolded the sheet and read the short, typed paragraph:
Ming, You are a cold-hearted bitch. I know that you are trying to ruin everything I’m doing. You won’t succeed, but if you go on doing it, I’ll simply have to find a way to stop you. I am not going to sign this because we both know there’s no need.
The first coherent thought in Ming’s mind was a determination not to be sick. She sat heavily down on the chair by her desk, trying to control the nausea that pumped hot saliva into her mouth. Breathing deeply, she brought her body under control again and then carefully read the letter once more.
‘But I’m not,’ she said aloud.
She looked out of the window at the newly green trees, read the letter once more and desperately searched her conscience for anything she might have done to cause such a misunderstanding. Slowly self-justification turned first to fear and then to real anger. There was a sour taste in her mouth and a ringing in her ears.
‘Ming,’ she said aloud, looking down at the letter again. ‘Who calls me that who could possibly have written it?’
Only her family and her very close friends used the nickname. Could any of them have written such a letter? If it had even addressed her as ‘Mary’, it would have seemed less vicious.
The faces of people she knew that she had annoyed or upset began to swim into her mind. There seemed suddenly to be an awful lot of them; and she knew there could have been others who had hidden their rage or hurt at whatever she had done. She sat shivering as she tried to think which of them could hate her enough to write like that.
Eventually, she forced herself out of her chair and went into the kitchen to make herself something hot to drink. Her hands were shaking and her teeth chattering although it was not cold. She told herself that it was absurd to mind so much about a few lines of words on a page, but she did mind.
‘It couldn’t be Connie,’ she murmured, thinking of the unmistakable anger she had aroused at the meeting. She poured boiling water on the tea leaves, and provided her own answer. Connie had no need to write her an anonymous letter. If she had disliked Ming’s suggestions for the magazine, all she would have had to do was refuse them.
Lurching between sickening suspicion of one friend after another and horror at her own disloyalty, Ming went back to the drawing room to retrieve the envelope in case it gave her any clues. Postmarked from London SW1 at half-past five the previous day, it was plain and white: the kind of envelope that could be bought from any supplier of office stationery. As she was staring at it the telephone rang and she picked it up automatically. Not until she tried to give her number did she realise how badly her voice would shake.
‘Ming? What’s the trouble? You sound ghastly,’ said the familiar voice of her eldest sister. It held all sorts of childhood memories: of teasing and bossiness; but also of comfort. Ming relaxed a little and loosened her hold on the receiver.
‘Hello, Gerry. I’ve had an anonymous letter.’ Her voice cracked on the last word and she breathed deeply in an effort to control it. ‘It’s extremely trivial, but it seems to have affected my voice.’
‘You poor old thing. How utterly beastly. Don’t pay any attention to it.’
‘It’s a bit hard not to.’
‘Why? What does it say?’
Ming read it out, her voice still shaking over some words.
‘It’s obviously been written by some lunatic,’ said Gerry firmly. ‘There’s nothing relevant to you in it except for your name and all sorts of people could have got that. If I were you, I’d telephone the police at once and then forget about it.’
Gerry’s common-sense advice helped to steady Ming and there was the beginning of a smile on her lips as she said:
‘That may not be terribly easy.’
‘No,’ came the astringent answer, ‘but you’ll have to do it; otherwise you’ll brood over it and wonder who wrote it and the whole thing will come to seem even more beastly than it is. And if I were you, I wouldn’t tell anyone else about it.’
‘No,’ said Ming. ‘I suppose not.’
‘That’s probably superfluous advice,’ said Gerry when she thought about what she had said, ‘since you never do tell anyone what bothers you. But I’d have thought it worth keeping this to yourself in case the writer gets to hear how much you hated the letter. You don’t want to give him any satisfaction or encouragement.’
‘God forbid!’ said Ming. ‘But who on earth could it be, Gerry?’
As she heard desperation in her sister’s voice, Gerry wanted to rush straight round to Chelsea, but she remembered Julia Wallington’s disapproval of her unsuitable protectiveness of Ming and tried to offer what comfort she could down the telephone.
‘It’s probably someone you’ve only met once or twice in your life; someone who’s jealous of you. Perhaps it’s someone Anna knew, who thought he had a better right to Anna’s money than you. Whoever wrote it is obviously unbalanced.’
‘That sounds sensible,’ said Ming, still not quite able to keep her voice steady. ‘I’m sorry to be so wet about it, but it was rather a shock.’
‘I’m sure it was,’ said Gerry, hating to hear Ming trying to justify herself for so reasonable a reaction. ‘You ring the police now, and if you need me ring me up. You’ve got my new number at the university, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, I have. But it seems a very trivial thing to bother the police with.’
‘Nonsense, Ming. They’re there to protect us – ring them up.’
Eventually Ming agreed and Gerry rang off without explaining why she had telephoned. Ming dialled the number of her local police station and was told firmly but politely that there was nothing the police could do about anonymous letters unless they contained physical threats. She was warned that there would probably be more letters and advised to keep them all just in case there were ever anything that could lead to an official investigation.
‘If they did ever threaten you, miss, or there were any signs of more physical action we could look into it,’ said the voice at the other end of the telephone, making Ming start shaking again. ‘And the more information you could give us about the letters the better it would be. Keep them and don’t worry about them until they get nasty.’
Actually frightened instead of merely appalled for the first time since she had opened the envelope, Ming had an impulse to shut all the curtains and see that the front door was locked. Footsteps sounded in the doorway and she whirled, dropping the small sheet of paper.
‘All right if I do in here now? Then I’ll leave you be,’ said the charlady, leaning her broom against the wall and flapping a yellow duster out of her apron pocket.
‘Yes,’ said Ming, holding one hand flat against her neck. ‘Yes, that’s perfectly all right.’ She bent down to pick up the letter, folded it up and slid it back into its typed envelope, which she put in the bottom drawer of her desk.
Her enthusiasm for writing to distant acquaintances on her own writing paper to solicit subscriptions for the magazine had dwindled and she decided to ask Connie for some specifically magazine-addressed paper. Ming was perfectly well aware of her absurdity – whoever had written her the letter already had her address – but she was prepared to pander to it.
The horror of the anonymous accusation stayed with her, but during the next two weeks there were plenty of other things to distract her. Most of the people to whom she had written about the magazine responded and a lot of them agreed to take a subscription.
One was Miss Roseheath from Ming’s old school. Her reply was warmly enthusiastic, both about the magazine itself and about Ming’s own part in it:
I often think of you. I used to watch you when you were here and wonder how you would tum out. You had so many talents and yet you were afraid of so many things as a child. Then what with your sister’s death and even the war itself, I felt that you had rather lost your way. This new departure is very exciting and I wish you the best of luck with it.
Yours ever,
Janet Roseheath
Chapter Six
Ming tried to remember Miss Roseheath’s letter, just as she tried to remember all the other affectionate things people had said to her, when the second anonymous letter came exactly two weeks after the first. Its accusations were very similar, although there was one new one: that Ming was dangerous.
That made her laugh aloud, which helped, but as more letters came on the same day each fortnight she ceased to be able to find anything amusing in them at all. They were all typed on the same machine, posted in the same kind of envelope, at the same time of day and in the same postal district of London.
The message in each was much the same as the first, but as the series continued the letters began to include references to things that Ming had been doing or articles that had appeared in the magazine under her name. She began to feel as though she were being watched wherever she went and there were times when she could hardly bear to leave her own flat. Whenever friends, or even her sisters, telephoned her, she could not help wondering if they were capable of such letters and whenever she noticed someone in the street staring at her – or caught someone’s eye on a bus – she was afraid that she had come face to face with her correspondent.
She used her work for the magazine as a distraction and whenever she could stayed overnight with Max before the Tuesday meetings, feeling much safer away from her own flat. But the letters continued to come and they began to make her feel persecuted.
It was a relief one day in June when her mother telephoned from Gloucestershire to say:
‘We haven’t seen you for months. Won’t you come down for a few days?’
‘I’d love to,’ said Ming quickly, both conscience-stricken at having neglected her parents and delighted by the prospect of getting out of reach of her nameless antagonist for a while. ‘I’ve just been working so hard on Connie Wroughton’s magazine that I haven’t been away for the weekend for months.’
‘So I gather,’ said Fanny Alderbrook drily. ‘But come for next week. Do. There’s nothing special on, although the garden’s looking lovely.’
Ming agreed and the following Friday drove herself down to the grey-stone house at the edge of the village where she had grown up. It looked prettier than usual in the low golden light of the late-June evening, and Ming felt a welling of delight that surprised her.
Her father, a retired general in his sixties, came out on to the gravel drive to welcome her. Tall and broadly built, he stood waiting, surrounded by his three black labradors, who were all named after characters in Winnie the Pooh.
‘You look fearfully tired, old thing,’ he said as he kissed her and took her suitcase. ‘Come and have a drink. Your mother’s in the drawing room.’
‘You look well,’ said Ming, meaning it.
‘Country air. It would do you good, too, instead of stewing in London when you don’t need to work at all now.’
