Wait For Tomorrow

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Until the moment Charlotte discovered the letters hidden behind the broken mirror, nothing really extraordinary had ever happened to her. She was, she always throught, an attractive, secure , happy young girl with no doubts about her place in the world, no fear of the future. But the letters changed all that. Suddenly she was faced with a past she never knew existed. Her past. And like some strange, unwelcome shadow in the night, it threatened everything she held dear.

Release date: April 24, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

IT all began when the mirror hanging over Mrs. Harvey’s satinwood bureau in the sitting-room broke loose from its moorings. It crashed on to the top of the charming, rather fragile bureau, smashed a French porcelain clock to pieces, bent the two ormolu candlesticks, and sent a leather-framed photograph of John Harvey spinning across the room. The lid of the bureau, which was locked, was torn open. A pile of letters, envelopes and papers was scattered over the floor. The mirror itself landed on its face and the glass shattered into a thousand pieces.

When Charlotte Harvey and old Miss Fish, who had been having elevenses together in the kitchen, rushed upstairs to see what had happened, a sorry sight met their eyes. The olive-green Wilton carpet looked as though buckets of chipped ice had been spread all over the thick pile. There was glass glittering everywhere. Old Fish, as the family called her, croaked a warning:

“Oh, my goodness gracious, all that glass! Charlotte, mind how you go —”

Charlotte stood still, staring down at the mirror, noting that the brown paper on the back of it was still curiously intact, but that one of the screws to which the wire had been attached had come out. Looking up at the wall she now saw that it was not the hook that had come adrift. It was still there — solid as ever. So it was the screw on the mirror that must have come away, she decided. Of course it was a very old mirror, possibly worm-eaten at the back. Funny that no one had ever thought of examining it.

Old Fish, ever practical, said:

“I’ll run down and get a dustpan and brush. Don’t touch the glass, Charlotte. You know what you are. One little cut and you fester.”

“Oh, dear,” said Charlotte. She put her hands in the pockets of her tight blue slacks and went on staring at the debris. The heavy mirror had played havoc with the lid of the desk. Mummy would be heart-broken. She was so fond of it. It had belonged to her mother. It was a very private piece of furniture which only Mrs. Harvey used and which she kept locked. Charlotte and her young brother Michael sometimes teased her about it. It was where she kept her love-letters, they said. Michael, who had a strong sense of humour, had once suggested that the letters were so awfully intimate, Mum didn’t dare let anyone, even Dad, see them. But this Dad had firmly denied. If there were any intimate love-letters around, they were his, he declared. And as far as Charlotte knew, it was true that there had never been anyone else in Mummy’s life except Daddy. They had their battles — what normal couple didn’t, at times? — but on the whole they seemed to get on. They had been married for twenty-five years — had celebrated their silver wedding in January, six months ago. Luckily it had been when Michael was on holiday, having just left Shrewsbury School. He was now at Grenoble learning languages, waiting to go to Bristol University. The whole family was home to celebrate.

Everybody had said how beautiful Mummy still looked at forty-nine — and Daddy at fifty-two was as upright and boyish-looking as any of his Stock Exchange friends — more so because he had always been careful with his figure.

Mummy was health-conscious, and very careful of her diet. She had regular massage and facials, and wore beautiful, tailored clothes. Her chic appearance was, in fact, rather a bone of contention between Charlotte and her mother. Charlotte was not really interested in clothes. She was too ‘mod’ for her parents’ liking. She wore her light auburn hair long, falling down each cheek, almost hiding her thin pale face. She preferred slacks and jeans to skirts. She also preferred living in the bungalow which her father had built in St. Nevell in Cornwall, near Cadgwith. Ever since Charlotte left her finishing school in Switzerland a year ago, she had rebelled against London life, and anything approximating a deb’s existence. She was often told with sarcasm, by her mother, that she should have been brought up on a farm, instead of in her nice home in London.

Charlotte hated London.

Charlotte hated the job she had lately acquired as an assistant in a smart interior decorators’ shop in North Audley Street. It was run by one of Mummy’s friends. It wasn’t that Charlotte didn’t like antiques and beautiful curtains and all the things that made her own home so attractive. But being shut up all day from nine to five in any shop, following a business routine, was disagreeable to Charlotte.

As Old Fish was always telling her (and she ought to know, having been Nanny to both children and nursemaid to John Harvey), Charlotte was too moody. Too sensitive; inclined to take offence — undisciplined. Her brother was more easy-going and didn’t seem to mind control. It was the girl of the family who was the difficult one — and nobody was more aware of this than Charlotte herself.

She just didn’t know what to do with her life. Daddy, who was a darling, and less critical than Mummy, had once told her that she would be better if she brooded less and made a career for herself. Mummy wanted her to get married, but so far, although the slender auburn-haired Charlotte had had a string of admirers she had fastened her affections upon no one in particular.

She was at the moment in a state of not having ‘found herself’. It didn’t make things better because her mother held such different views and was such a totally different character from Charlotte. Anthea Harvey was never moody. She often seemed to Charlotte to be rather too calculatingly cool and correct. But, admittedly, she was a success with her husband, her friends and her son — if not altogether with Charlotte. Charlotte secretly admired her and envied her her poise, her grace, her wonderful white skin. She hadn’t a wrinkle or a grey hair. Her mouth was rather thin and hard. But her eyes were a truly marvellous blue. As an auburn-haired girl, she had been a famous beauty and one of the debs of her day.

During the war, she had worked tirelessly in the W.V.S. while her husband was away serving in the ‘Wavy Navy’. He had spent a considerable time in minesweepers in the North Sea. He had obviously been very much in love with his beautiful Anthea when he married her, and still was. They had a certain amount in common. Both shared a passion for golf, and played together at week-ends. Both enjoyed travelling. Yet Charlotte sometimes believed that her father needed more tenderness, more demonstration of affection than he got from Mummy. So she, his daughter, had always tried to give it to him. She felt a bond with him that was missing in her association with her mother. She disapproved of Mummy’s philosophies: almost disliked her when she said things like: “Why don’t you stop brooding and get yourself a nice rich husband, darling?”

Charlotte thought this despicable. There was a strangely puritanical streak in her, at war with her more generous side. She was a fervent idealist. She believed that somewhere, somehow, something greater and more worthwhile than what Mummy called a ‘good marriage’ lay in wait for her.

It seemed to Charlotte that her mother got along better with Michael than anybody. But then Michael was easygoing and a bit of a snob — like Mummy. She kept on saying that he ought to have gone to Eton, but in this Mr. Harvey had opposed her wishes. He was an old Salopian and to Shrewsbury School Michael went.

It was sad, in Charlotte’s estimation, that her mother could never really be a friend to her, or understand her and how she ticked. This morning, however, she felt full of sympathy. Mrs. Harvey would return from Paris to find her favourite mirror, her private bureau, and her lovely Sèvres clock, smashed beyond repair.

Old Fish came in with pan and brush and a pair of gloves.

“You put these on, now, Charlotte, and pick up the big bits of glass. I’ll sweep up the splinters, then we’ll get the Hoover,” she said.

Dear Fish, thought Charlotte; nothing ever destroyed her composure. Throughout the years, Charlotte could remember that it was always Fish (Nanny in those early days) who had coped with each minor catastrophe in the Harvey household. Mrs. Harvey could not bear the sight of blood or anybody being sick. It was Nanny who dealt with the unpleasant incidents and who remained imperturbable and helpful in emergencies.

Today, at seventy, Miss Fish was still fit and energetic, small, thin, grey hair short, skirts long in defiance of modern fashion; fingers knotted and stiff with rheumatism. Even now, as she knelt down, Charlotte saw her grimace with the pain in her knees. The doctor had told Fish she had arthritis, but she was the type to work on until she died. No retirement into an old people’s home for Nancy Fish yet.

Fish adored Charlotte’s parents — particularly John Harvey. She adored Michael too, the baby of the family. Charlotte was not quite sure that she herself came in for so much adoration, although Fish had always been loving and kind to her. Charlotte was intelligent enough to admit that her feelings were, perhaps, prompted by an unreasonable jealousy of her young brother. When she was a child the family used constantly to assure her how much they loved her. She had tried to believe it. But not when she was in one of her black moods. Then she was positive that she came second to her brother in the family affections. She often, in fact, wished that she were a little more like Nanny, temperamentally; that nothing, either good or bad, could rouse her to open display of feeling. Old Fish’s emotions rarely, if ever, overflowed. Even when her only, much-loved, sister had died suddenly of a heart attack, she had not shed a tear in front of the family. She had just gone with the bad news to Mrs. Harvey and quietly asked for a couple of days off so that she could attend the funeral and see to her sister’s meagre effects. But Charlotte was an extrovert — excitable and impulsive. She leapt quickly into emotional battle, and, as quickly, surrendered. She never bore malice.

Now times had altered. There was less communal family life. Mike was often away. Fish, as a Nanny, became redundant, but she stayed on as cook and very well she did it.

Charlotte was fond of her old nurse. As she picked up the biggest jagged pieces of glass and placed them on newspaper, she said:

“Don’t work too hard, Fishie, let Mrs. Parsons get down to it later. It’s not your job.”

Old Fish looked at her over her spectacles.

“We all have to do things at times that are not our job,” she said briskly.

Charlotte laughed. That remark was so Fish-like.

After the glass had been cleared away and Fish had gone downstairs, Charlotte seated herself at the broken desk and started to tidy her mother’s letters.

A glance out of the window showed her that it was beginning to rain. It was cold and stormy for early July. The wind forced a way through the three tall windows overlooking Alexandra Square. Charlotte hoped her parents would get back from Paris before the storm worsened. The forecast was bad. What a summer!

It was always warm and attractive in this beautiful house, she thought. Years ago when her father had first bought it, they made extensive alterations. They had cut off the basement, turning it into a self-contained flat, and made a kitchen on the ground floor. The flat was now occupied by the Parsons family. Mr. Parsons worked in the Post Office and Mrs. P. came up every morning to clean the house.

When Mike was away, Charlotte found the house lonely. John Harvey had been complaining that times were bad, and what with the new Labour Government and extra taxation, etc., he was thinking of selling up and moving to a flat. Charlotte wouldn’t have minded. Her heart was in Cornwall anyhow, and she only lived for the days when they went down there. But Mummy was fighting tooth and nail against the move. She was London-born and much preferred her town house, her dinner-parties and her bridge. She had never cared much for the bungalow in St. Nevell, except that in good weather she could play golf down there. She was an excellent golfer. But the summers had been so bad lately that she resented what she called two wasted months in Cornwall and went there only to please her husband and the two children who adored it.

Charlotte suddenly felt glad that her parents would be back tonight. The three of them would have dinner together and she would hear the latest news from Paris. Charlotte’s godfather, Gaston Delages, was a Parisian; John Harvey had been at Cambridge with him; Uncle Gasty, so Charlotte called him. She had spent some exciting holidays with her brother in M. Delages’ apartment in the Boulevard Suchet.

Charlotte’s good looking godfather was a bachelor in his late forties, a handsome, entertaining Frenchman. He had a mistress — Charlotte had met her. Nobody minded about ‘Yvonne’.

Gaston Delages came over to London regularly and as Charlotte grew older she found him ‘sympathique’ and held him in great esteem. He was one of France’s most noted novelists. Charlotte in her schooldays studied hard at her French just in order to be able to read all Uncle Gasty’s books in the original language.

Humming a little under her breath, she picked up a letter that was still lying on the carpet under the shattered bureau. Her eye was caught by the printed address. ‘Bvd. Suchet, Paris’ and her own name, Charlotte.

Intrigued, Charlotte idly read the letter which she felt sure could not be very private if it concerned her, and was from Uncle Gasty. She had only read one paragraph before she knew it was very private indeed. The letter was dated the 5th October, 1946, the year after the war ended, two and a half months after she, Charlotte, had been born.

Charlotte read on; she was habitually pale but soon her face began to look positively ashen, and her nostrils were pinched. She trembled violently. She read the whole of this letter now with a terrible, avid curiosity. It was written by Uncle Gasty in his perfect English, addressed to both Charlotte’s parents.

My dear John and Anthea,

How flattering to be singled out for the position of godfather to Charlotte Anthea Harvey. I like the names. Of course it makes no difference to me that you have adopted this little daughter. Her background sounds very intriguing and from what you say of her looks, even though she is still an infant, she should grow up to be beautiful. Typically intelligent of you to tell me the truth, and you need have no fear that I shall ever speak of this to a living soul.

Because we are such old friends I venture to offer one criticism. Isn’t it a little difficult and dangerous for you, telling everybody that she is your own child? You say that the baby has auburn hair like yours, Anthea, and that everybody will accept your story. But I cannot see what you have against the idea of adoption.

I remember, mes amis, so well, how deeply you have both felt the fact that after five years you still had no child, and I know that for a long time you, John, longed for one but that you, my dear Anthea, rebelled against the idea of adoption. Perhaps it was your pride — and we all know how proud you are, dear Anthea — that has made you decide to pretend you are the real mother. However, I am sure you will carry it off — you have never been anything but tremendously capable of carrying out the most difficult tasks. Naturally I believed you at the time when you told me that you, Anthea, had developed appendicitis when down on holiday in Helston but now I presume the Cornish nursing home was just a cover up. I also suppose that when you brought the baby back to London, everybody took it for granted that Anthea had given birth to it. Quite ingenious. Certainly you can count on my complete discretion. Cela va sans dire. And I’m sure the faithful Fish will never let on. But I still think it might lead to trouble that you do not own to the little one being adopted.

I certainly understand why you both preferred to adopt a girl rather than a boy. I agree with you, John, that it wouldn’t be fair to let Anthea’s mother leave all her money to a grandson who was not in fact her flesh and blood. I remember you once telling me that she held old-fashioned views. Anyhow, I’m sure the little girl will grow up to be a great comfort to you, Anthea.

I am enclosing a cheque on my London Bank for fifty pounds for you to buy my god-daughter a gift. Once the Court settlement of the Adoption has been finalised, you will of course have her baptised. Unfortunately I shall be away for the next six months as I am taking this trip which I have long promised myself, to New York then on to South Am. . .