She put on her coat and slipped out of the house, closing the door slowly and without a sound. It was only a few hundred yards along the road to the mailbox on the corner of Hambro Avenue. Every house was dark, curtained and hushed. Her footsteps on the cold pavement chimed in the silence as she hurried across the road and past the park railings. The trees stood out black against the velvet sky; she felt exquisitely alone, the only brave survivor of some apocalypse.
She hesitated for a second and then, fortified by a tremendous surge of martyr’s joy, thrust the letter into the mailbox. A child’s pink woolen glove, dropped on a visit to the park, had been picked up by a passer-by and mounted on top of the railings. It gave her a ghostly salute as she passed.
39
“Do you think the religious symbolism is a bit heavy-handed?”
“Yes—and very possibly blasphemous.”
Jean and the picture editor, Duncan, were in his office examining young Tony’s contact prints of Gretchen and Margaret. He had taken a reel of naturalistic shots of the pair sitting together on the couch at Luna Street, looking at each other and laughing. Margaret’s hair had been clipped back to more closely resemble her mother’s and in many of the shots their expressions were identical. He had also staged a photograph of Margaret by herself, mirroring the childhood portrait of Gretchen at more or less the same age.
The little girl had played her part with enthusiasm, mimicking, with a hint of mischief, her mother’s uplifted gaze and wistful expression. Young Tony had then overreached himself, having Gretchen assume a Madonna-ish pose with prayerful, downcast eyes while curiously lit to create a glowing halo around her head.
“We can ditch that one right now,” said Jean. Any suggestion of divine intervention made her feel queasy. “We’re not trying to claim it was a miracle. Our line is that it’s an unexplained mystery.”
“Is there any other kind?” Duncan wanted to know.
Jean shot him an impatient look.
“It’s a great image—very seasonal, too. I can’t see why you wouldn’t use it.”
“I’ve got to know this family. They’ve had a difficult time recently.” She cringed inwardly at the understatement. “I don’t want them to become an object of fascination to religious cranks.”
“If one of the nationals picks it up it will be out of your hands.”
“Yes, I know.”
Jean felt a familiar boiling anxiety in her guts. At the previous week’s editorial meeting it had been agreed that it would be a front-page story on the first Friday of December—a considerable coup for Jean but one that gave her no pleasure. Now, she was in the counterintuitive position of hoping that the piece would come and go with as little impact as possible.
“It will be good for you—get your name out there,” said Duncan.
She gave him a weak smile. “That’s what I thought six months ago. A lot has changed since then.”
The urge to confide in someone was almost overwhelming. Duncan gave her a quizzical glance. In all their dealings over the years the conversation had never strayed from the job. If the opportunity to share any detail of their private life had arisen, they hadn’t taken or even noticed it. The temptation and the moment passed; Jean collected herself and grew distant and professional again.
They settled on the studio portraits for the front page and one of the informal shots of mother and daughter for the continuation of the story on page 6. Duncan marked the contacts.
“Could I have a copy of this to keep?” Jean pointed to the picture of Margaret. “This is exactly how I always want to think of her.”
“Gladly,” said Duncan, and if he was struck by the sadness in her voice he kept it to himself.
It was over a week since she had written to Howard and the spirit of righteousness, which had borne her up as she committed it to the post, was diminishing daily. There had been no word of acknowledgment from him, though her letter had hardly merited one, and she had no way of knowing whether or not he had made contact with Gretchen. Having surrendered all claim to him, she now had to accept that she was no longer entitled to any news and that there was every chance she might not hear from him again.
Having done the right thing was nothing like the consolation she had hoped. Without constant congratulation, virtue was a lonely business. She frequently found herself at her desk, halfway through some task like writing up the week’s Household Hints or Marriage Lines, when she would lose concentration and gaze into space, transported by some memory of Howard’s goodness to her.