The English Wife

She stuffs in her iPod earbuds and switches on her chill-out playlist, slumping back into the lumpy seat with a yawn. Her body feels so heavy, like she’s wrapped in a duvet. If only she could just do that – burrow under a duvet and block out the phone calls and the emails and the meetings, meetings, meetings. She swore her skin had looked grey this morning when she’d staggered into the bathroom at three-thirty, drenched in sweat. Bloody New York humidity. She had to do something about that fluorescent light, though. No woman over twenty-five, let alone a forty-eight-year-old, should have to deal with fluorescent light. It was the light of the devil.

Still, this time the prize is worth it. Partner in Richard Niven’s architecture practice. Everything she’s ever wanted. Everything her late mother, Dottie, had always wanted for her. Success. Independence. Freedom. Queen of the hill. Top of the heap. New York. New York.

Well done her. She’d held her nerve with Richard. Refused to back down. Just like her mother had taught her. Dottie would be so proud.

She rubs her eyes. So why has she been feeling so bloody … empty? If only she didn’t feel like the air was constantly pressing her into the ground, like she was a lump of mozzarella having the water pressed out. If she could wake up for once without the empty-stomached anxiety that had been plaguing her for months. Everything was just so … just so nothing.

She shakes her head impatiently and closes her eyes as Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ wafts into her ears. She’s just tired. The break from the office will do her good.

It’d been ten years since she’d stepped foot on The Rock. Stranded there for five days in the middle of nowhere after all the air traffic was grounded, while the world fell apart on 9/11. At least this time she was coming to Newfoundland voluntarily. Well, almost voluntarily. She never should have shown Richard the photos she’d taken in the outport village of Tippy’s Tickle back in September 2001. Of Ellie and Florie’s general store, of the whales spouting off the coast, of her aunt Ellie’s handsome Victorian merchant house, Kittiwake, standing like a colourful sentinel on the cliff above the village. On the same cliff where the consortium wanted to build the hotel.

What would her mother have said about turfing Ellie off her property? Sophie grunts. That wasn’t hard. ‘Keep your eye on the prize, Sophie. Don’t let anyone keep you from fulfilling your potential, least of all your aunt. She squandered everything God gave her on a man. She made her bed, now she has to lie in it. You don’t owe Ellie anything.’

She could hear her mother’s clipped English accent over Adele’s honeyed voice. ‘Do your best, Sophie. Get up early. Stay up late. Work those weekends and holidays. Show everyone that you’re somebody. Show them. Show them all. Don’t let anyone stand in your way or distract you. Don’t make my mistake, Sophie. Don’t regret the person you could have been.’

Oh, she’d been a good student. She’d worked hard and now had everything she’d ever wanted – an imminent partnership at an international architectural firm in New York, a gorgeous rent-controlled apartment in Gramercy Park, a pension plan, designer clothes, money in the bank. No plants, pets, partners or children to distract her. It was better not to get too attached to living things. They only ended up leaving. Or dying. First her father, George, over twenty years ago of a heart attack as he inspected the Cherry Cobblers production line at Mcklintock’s, then Dottie back in 2000. Lung cancer. Cigarettes will get you every time.

It was okay. She was okay. She didn’t need anyone.

Sophie hadn’t even known her aunt Ellie existed until she’d opened an envelope addressed to The Parry Family one Christmas back in the late 70s. The card had a cartoon moose surrounded by tinsel-strewn Christmas trees on the front. Inside, in a fine, confident hand: To all of you at Christmas, from your loving sister and aunt, Ellie. She’d copied the address into the small green leather address book her father had given her for her fifteenth birthday. Then she’d placed the Christmas card beside the mahogany clock on the black marble mantelpiece, with the ones from her father’s colleagues at Mcklintock’s Chocolates, and the ones from the Women’s Institute and the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital Auxiliary. It was gone the next day.

Sophie shakes her head to jolt away the image that threatens to materialise again in the blackness behind her eyelids. She can’t let him into her head. His brown eyes, quizzical and teasing. Her mother had been right. Men only confuse you. Best to keep them at arm’s length. At least the ones who could matter. The ones like Sam.

Maybe that’s why her mother had married George Parry. Because he never really mattered to her. She didn’t do much to hide that fact. Poor Daddy was a means to an end. A means for her mother to become top of the social elite of Norwich.

George did everything he could to make Dottie happy. Join the Lions Club. Tick. Suck up to the owner of Mcklintock’s Chocolates. Tick. Become a patron of the Norwich Philharmonic Orchestra. Tick. Buy bigger, more expensive houses in better neighbourhoods as he worked his way up to managing director of Mcklintock’s. Tick. Tick. Tick. But her mother was never a happy woman. Sophie had grown up in Norwich in a beautiful house heavy with unspoken words. She’d escaped to university in London as soon as she turned eighteen, Frank Lloyd Wright’s The Natural House and a sketchbook under her arm. It’d been a relief. Like throwing off a thick wool coat in an overheated room. She’d never get married. Ever.

Sophie opens her eyes and examines her hands, moving her fingers the way she’d been taught at the Sign Language Centre. ‘Hello, Becca. How are you?’ Becca must be eighteen now. Sophie didn’t really know what had prompted her to learn sign language, when she’d never intended to go back to Newfoundland. She’d been curious, she supposed. And it was something else to put on her CV. Chances were Becca and Sam didn’t even live in Tippy’s Tickle anymore. People move on. It will be better if they’ve moved on.

Sophie loosens her seatbelt and rubs at the stiffness in her neck. She’d meant to keep in touch with her aunt. But after posting out the first couple of Christmas cards, bought in a hurry at Browne’s between client meetings, time just got away from her, even as Ellie’s annual Christmas and birthday cards, full of the chatty goings-on of Tippy’s Tickle, sat on Sophie’s mantelpiece like a reproach, until they’d end up in the ‘To Do’ pile on her desk, begging for a response that she’d never get around to writing.

She’d thought of Sam often, at first, and an ache would form that would roll into a ball and sit in her stomach like an anchor. He’d left messages, which she hadn’t returned, even though her heart had buzzed with pleasure when she’d found his messages on her phone. She’d meant to call, to text at the very least. She’d stood in the kitchen of her apartment with her finger hovering over the numbers on her mobile phone at least a half dozen times. But, she hadn’t called him. Or texted him. She’d wanted to so much. But, it would never work. He knew that. He’d said as much himself the last time she’d seen him. That had hurt. Especially after … No. She wasn’t going to let herself be hurt.

She shakes her head, catching a sideways glance from the over-tanned Florida retiree beside her as she grabs for an earbud that pops out of her ear. Bloody Sam. What is he doing in her head like this?

Sophie turns off the music and stares out the window at the sky. They say time heals all wounds, but they’re wrong. Time buries all wounds. Dig them out, and the wounds still bleed. Better to keep them buried. The words from a pop song spring into her mind. Absolutely no regrets. She has absolutely no regrets. There’d been a crazy moment when the idea of living an artist’s life on the north coast of Newfoundland with a widowed lover and his deaf daughter, not to mention that ridiculous beast of a dog, had brought her up short on the path that had always been so clear and straight. Then Sam had rejected her. The phone messages he’d left her in New York couldn’t erase that fact. If he’d done it once, he could do it again.

No, she has absolutely no regrets. Her path is clear, her focus laser-sharp, as long as she stays on course. The prize is everything: partner in the firm now; then, in a few years, when Richard retires, managing director of Richard Niven & Associates Architects. A long-distance relationship with Sam would have complicated everything. Some things were better left alone.

All she needs to do now is convince Ellie and Florie and some of the villagers with places along the tickle to sell up. The consortium wanted to build a restaurant down on the shore too, and put in a marina for the multi-millionaires’ yachts sailing up from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The financial package the consortium was offering to the villagers was generous. It shouldn’t be that hard. She’ll keep telling herself that. But she has a bad feeling. Her stomach flutters and beads of sweat break out on her forehead. She brushes the sweat away with the back of her hand. Why’s it so bloody hot everywhere?

The plane veers right. Sophie flips up the window blind. The sun, bright in the western sky, burns out the blueness until all that’s left is throbbing white light. She leans her forehead against the warm glass and closes her eyes. Willing the heat to erase the face that threatens to form again in her mind. Wondering if coming back is a huge mistake.

Chapter 4

Norwich, England – 26 July 1940

Ellie steps back from the easel and squints at the dimpled peel of the orange on the canvas, looking, she thinks, like the spitting image of the dents and pores on the face of Mr Pilch, the greengrocer. She picks up a small, fine-tipped paintbrush and dabs at the titanium white paint on the palette she balances in her left hand. Leaning closer, she brushes delicate strokes of white onto the dimpled skin, copying the effects of the light filtering through the branches of the elm tree outside the large arched window as it gleams on the fruit.

‘Cracking job, there, Miss Burgess. You’ve caught the feeling of that orange extremely well. Can you see when you paint, that you must put aside your notions of what you’re observing, and become like a child observing an object for the first time?’ The woman points a blunt-tipped finger at Ellie’s artwork, dragging the sleeve of her embroidered white muslin blouse across the rainbow of wet paint on Ellie’s palette. ‘Can you see the green cast to the orange? The way the shadow at its edges is almost violet? Can you see how the orange is telling you its story?’

Ellie’s heart jumps. Four weeks into the advanced oil-painting class and this is the first time the celebrated guest tutor, Dame Edith Spink RA, has singled her out for praise.

‘Thank you, Dame Edith. I do think I understand. I’d always thought an orange was round and smooth … and orange. But, it’s not at all. My brain was telling me one thing, but my eyes are telling me another.’

The great woman stands upright and rests her hands on the yellow canvas skirt covering her generous hips. ‘Indeed, Miss Burgess. Now you begin to be an artist, rather than simply a renderer.’

Ellie’s face burns, the compliment almost too much to process. She catches a blue-eyed glare aimed at her by Susan Perry-Gore. ‘Thank you, Dame Edith.’

‘You’ve heard that I’ve been commissioned to do some work for the War Artists’ Advisory Committee?’

Ellie nods at the other students dabbing earnestly at their canvases. ‘We … we’ve all heard.’

‘Indeed. I’m working on a portrait of Corporal Deirdre Cross. Very brave young woman. Saved one of our pilots by pulling him out of his burning plane and throwing herself on top of him when the plane’s bomb went off.’

Ellie shakes her head. ‘I hadn’t heard of that.’

The older woman huffs and runs her hand over the neat central parting of her greying brown hair. ‘The war isn’t just about men, Miss Burgess. There are many brave and capable young women out there doing their part. Their stories must be heard.’

‘Yes, Dame Edith.’

‘I find that I’ll be requiring an assistant. I have another commission to start as soon as I finish Corporal Cross’s portrait.’ The woman frowns, a deep line creasing the still-smooth skin of her broad forehead. ‘Just to mix the paints and clean the studio, of course. Would you be interested, Miss Burgess? I couldn’t pay you, of course, but you could watch and learn.’

Ellie sucks in her breath. Had she just heard right? Had Dame Edith Spink, the first woman to be elected as a full member to the Royal Academy, asked her if she’d like to help in her studio?

‘Oh, yes! I’ll do my absolute best for you.’

‘Right. See me after class on Monday. We’ll make arrangements. You’re not worried about travelling around town, are you, what with this bombing nonsense going on?’

Ellie shakes her head, the net snood holding her ash-blonde hair bouncing on the shoulders of her blue cotton dress. ‘Not at all. My father said the Germans are mainly after the factories down by the riverside, so I don’t go anywhere near there. In fact, I’m meeting my friend Ruthie to see a film after class. We’re not going to let any Jerry keep us away from Tyrone Power in Jesse James. We’ve been waiting ages for it to reach Norwich.’

‘Good show. Nil illegitimi carborundum. We’ll speak after class on Monday.’

***

Ellie spins out the door of the imposing Victorian red-brick edifice of the Norwich School of Art and Design, her heart beating so fast that she’s sure it will fly out of her chest. This is the day her life starts. She’ll be an artist, just like the wonderful Dame Edith. No, no, that’s not quite right. I AM an artist. I AM an artist. Dame Edith has chosen her over everyone else in the class. Over that swot Graham Simmons and his aggressive Cubism, over Grace Adamson and her neo-Impressionist dots and splashes, over even Susan Perry-Gore and her precise Constable landscapes.

She hurries up the road, skirting around the cobbles filled with muddy water from the morning showers, past the knapped flint walls of the medieval Halls, and up St Andrews Hill towards the shops in London Street. She glances at her watch as she rushes past the outdoor market and weaves her way through the busy shopping streets to All Saints Green. When she reaches the soaring Art Deco exterior of the Carlton Cinema, she stops under the canopy and leans her flushed face into the cool, light breeze.

She can’t wait to tell Ruthie the news. And George too, of course. She’ll ring him tomorrow before he heads off to work at the chocolate factory, though she already knows what her fiancé will say: ‘Well done, old girl. I always knew you had it in you. You’re as good as that French fellow, Money, in my eyes, you know that.’

Sweet, faithful, reliable George, who’d once got Picasso confused with a piccolo. He was nothing like Tyrone Power, but maybe that was all for the best.

***

A poke in the ribs. ‘C’mon, Sleepy. We’re home.’

Ellie blinks and rubs her eyes with her gloved fingers. The bus lurches to a stop. She yawns and rises from her seat.

‘Sorry. I wasn’t snoring, was I?’

‘Fit to beat the band. You must’ve been dreaming about divine Tyrone. He’s absolutely gravy, don’t you think? I just love his little moustache.’

Ellie looks over at her friend’s broad, friendly face, the cheeks flushed bright pink from the warm summer air. Under her navy felt beret, Ruthie’s carefully rolled brown hair sits unravelling on the collar of the summer dress she’s remade out of her mother’s old floral dressing gown.

‘Last week it was all about Clark Gable. You’re as fickle as they come, Ruthie.’

Ruthie Huggins prods Ellie down the bus’ stairs. ‘Hurry up, Ellie. It’s late and I’m starving. Mum said she’d save me some shepherd’s pie.’

‘Shepherd’s pie? Where’d she get the lamb?’

‘Uncle Jack’s old ewe kicked the bucket last week. He’s been divvying it up. Dad’s taking the train up to Fakenham tomorrow to get some more.’ She presses her forefinger against her lips. ‘All strictly hush-hush.’

They jump off the platform onto the pavement. Ruthie grabs Ellie’s arm and pulls her back sharply as a bicycle whips by in front of them.

‘Crumbs!’ Ellie exclaims. ‘That was close.’

Ruthie tucks her hand into the crook of Ellie’s arm. ‘You’d think they’d be more careful in this blackout. Margery Roberts’s cousin got run over by a bicycle in London last week.’ She reaches into her sleeve and pulls out a white handkerchief, waving it into the inky night as they pick their way across the road.

They hurry past the boarded-up windows of Mr Pilch’s greengrocer’s and down the road, stopping at an iron gate in the cobbled flint wall of St Bartholomew’s Catholic School for Boys. Ellie jangles her key in the lock. The gate swings open, screeching like a gull. Ruthie reaches over and gives Ellie a hug. Their arms intertwined, the girls gaze up at the sliver of moon in the sky. A lone cricket chirps from somewhere in the school’s new vegetable garden.

‘Do you suppose they’ll come back, Ellie?’

‘I hope not. But they probably will.’

‘It’s been quiet since the nineteenth. And that was only one plane. They’ll probably go after London before us. There’s nothing much here but mustard and chocolate.’

‘There’s the munitions works down by the riverside, Ruthie. They shot that up the other day.’

‘I know.’ Ruthie sighs and leans her head on Ellie’s shoulder. ‘I like to think they’d ignore us. I don’t want things to change.’

Ellie brushes her hand against Ruthie’s soft hair. ‘Everything changes.’ The night air, humid with the promise of rain, is like a velvet cloak around them.

‘That’s such great news about working for Dame Edith, Ellie. Your dad’s going to be so chuffed.’

‘I’m over the moon. But it’ll probably mean I won’t see much of George.’

‘You barely see much of him now!’

‘I know. The Home Guard takes up all his time when he’s not at Mcklintock’s. He takes it very seriously. I think he feels bad about being rejected because of his eye.’

‘No one wants a half-blind pilot.’

‘No one wants a half-blind anything. He’s not even allowed to man the ack-ack guns by the castle. He keeps the shells stacked and ready for the gunners.’

‘At least he’ll be safe in Norwich, Ellie. I doubt they’ll target Mcklintock’s any time soon. I don’t expect chocolate factories are high on their list. Why don’t you just get married? Then you’d see plenty of him.’ Ruthie giggles and pokes Ellie in the ribs. ‘At least at night.’

‘Ruthie! Honestly! I think Tyrone Power has addled your brain. Anyway, George is meeting me at the dance at the Samson tomorrow night. You’re coming, aren’t you? You know he hates to jitterbug and you’re the best.’

‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world. I’m going to keep my eyes peeled for a handsome Newfoundlander. My cousin Sheila in Yarmouth said she’s seen Newfoundlanders all around town. They’ve just been stationed somewhere near Filby.’

‘To protect the coast, I imagine. Pops says the Germans would have a clean sweep into England if they landed up on Holkham Beach. It’s as flat as a pancake up there for miles.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if they start showing up in Norwich. Filby’s not far.’

‘Well, I hope they can dance.’ Ellie disentangles herself from their embrace. ‘George stomps about like an ox.’

‘George is solid. When you’re married you won’t have to worry about him running off with a barmaid.’

Ellie gives her friend a quick peck on the cheek. ‘I’m only turning eighteen in September. I’m in no rush to marry. Besides, I’m too busy. I’ve got art classes and the painting to work on for the summer exhibition next month, and now I’ve got the job with Dame Edith. George’ll just have to wait.’

‘Oh, he’ll wait. George adores you. The way he looks at you … it makes me jealous.’

Ellie shuts the gate behind her and wraps her fingers around two of the black iron rails. ‘Don’t be silly, Ruthie. He’s just a boy. You’re my best friend.’ She slides her hand through the gate and extends her little finger. ‘Friends forever?’

Ruthie slides her little finger around Ellie’s, then grasps Ellie’s hand. ‘Friends forever, Ellie.’

Chapter 5

En Route to New York From London – 11 September 2001

Sophie ducks under a luggage strap hanging like a noose from an overhead storage compartment and dodges an elbow as she inches her way past the other passengers. She eyes her window seat and spots two barrel-chested men in crumpled navy suits in her row. Their faces are flushed a sticky red and their voices cut through the din of the embarking passengers.

‘Gary’s gotta do something about the way he holds his club. We lost it on the eleventh hole, I tell you. Downhill from there.’

‘Yeah. ’Least the boss was happy. You don’t wanna be too good, if you know what I mean. Gotta keep the main man and his clients happy. We got a good deal outta that day.’

Sophie shifts her Longchamp shoulder bag to her opposite shoulder, careful not to dent the thick pad of her new green Escada crushed-velvet jacket, and rests her new carry-on case on the aisle. Checking her ticket, she groans inwardly. Fabulous. Eight bloody hours on the London flight to New York beside an overweight, drunken salesman who’ll hog the armrest and manspread into my leg space.

Shifting aside her new digital camera, she tugs a stack of blueprints out of a pocket of her case. Someone behind her pokes her in her shoulder. She turns around and smiles apologetically at the impatient woman. Tucking the drawings under her armpit, she wedges her case into the overhead locker and shuffles past the two salesmen. As she slumps into her seat, several blueprints fall into her neighbour’s broad lap.

‘Here you go, hon,’ the man says as he hands her the drawings, his fingers like stout red sausages.

Sophie smiles politely. ‘Thanks.’

‘No problem, sweetheart. You don’t wanna get your boss’s drawings messed up.’

Her smile stiffens. ‘They’re my drawings.’

The man jabs his colleague with his elbow. ‘Hear that, Bob? You never would’a thought that, would you?’ He thrusts out his meaty hand to Sophie. ‘Mike O’Brien.’ He jabs a thumb at his companion. ‘This is Bob Roberts.’ He digs into his jacket pocket and pulls out a business card. ‘We’re in garbage. Biggest garbage contractors in Queens. Been talking to London. They like our methods.’ He rubs his sausage fingers together. ‘Very lucrative. Let me tell you, everybody makes garbage. The twenty-first century is gonna be the garbage century.’

***

Sophie hands the flight attendant her breakfast tray across Mike O’Brien’s head and rolls out a blueprint across the flip-down table. She scans the plans of London’s Millennium Pavilion, remembering inking every line, every vertical, diagonal and horizontal. A Point One pen for the glass and the finer details, Point Three for the interior structure, and the heftier Point Five for the concrete exterior structure.

She has to get this job. The teenage summers given up to advanced calculus courses at the expense of the art courses she’d preferred, the seven years of study and internships, the slog jobs making coffees and photocopies, then the better jobs, then winning the commission to design the Millennium Pavilion, and – she still can’t believe it’d actually happened – the call from Richard Niven’s New York office to come for an interview. Everything she’d ever done had led to this moment. Her life was about to change. She could feel it. All she had to do was ace the interview and the presentation. No pressure.

The plane drops suddenly and veers sharply to the right before levelling out. Sophie looks out the window. Blue sky, clouds and miles of white-tipped water. Just another ordinary day.