House of Silence Read online

  I don’t know. Vivien doesn’t know either.

  But I know you can’t get it back. That’s what Alfie said. When he came home for Christmas - was it last year? Or was it in 1996? We played Charades. And Monopoly. It was such fun! And Alfie said - what was it he said now? I try very hard to remember the things he says. Sometimes I ask Vivien to write them down for me so I can remember them. Alfie said… ah, yes, he said he was making up for lost time.

  The time is lost. Lost to me…

  So are the stories now. Even Alfie’s. I’ve forgotten it.

  I’ve forgotten now what it is that I don’t remember… What I mustn’t remember… It’s all for the best, Viv says. But I don’t remember why…

  I wish Vivien would come. I’m so tired.

  I wish Alfie would come… He’ll be home soon. For Christmas. As usual…

  Where does the time go?

  ~~~

  Vivien sat at the kitchen table, her legs extended towards the Aga, warming her frozen toes. To hell with chilblains. She’d come in from the garden an hour ago but still didn’t feel warm enough to remove her coat. And it was only October. The cold would get worse.

  She hadn’t minded so much when she was young. Perhaps it wasn’t so cold then? It must have been. The planet was warming up, they said. Though not this particular corner of north Norfolk, with nothing between the coast and the Arctic to deflect bitter north winds. How had they managed all those years without central heating? Admittedly fires were always lit then and there were more bodies to warm the place up, children running about and dogs that could be trained to sit on your toes.

  Vivien looked down at the pair of West Highland terriers dozing in front of the Aga, side by side, one old, one young. Harris and Lewis. In perpetuity. Rae believed them to be the same dogs, after all these years. When the original Harris had died, Rae (who still had her wits about her in those days but was too distressed to think of a new name) called the replacement pup Harris. By the time Lewis died, Rae didn’t know what year it was, let alone the age of the dogs, so it was agreed that while she was alive, there should always be two dogs. Two Westies: one called Harris and the other, Lewis. It made everything simpler and it reduced the number of awkward questions Vivien had to answer.

  She gazed fondly at the dogs, spread out in front of the Aga like a grubby sheepskin rug. Harris made a high-pitched whimpering noise and let out a shuddering sigh. Doggy dream-time, she supposed. Picking up a pen, Vivien pulled a spiral-bound notebook towards her. She kept one in every room, even the loo. It was the only way to keep on top of things, keep track of her ideas, of all that needed to be done, especially at this time of year.

  She opened the notebook and looked down at a list headed TO DO.

  .

  Chiropodist (Rae)

  Collect prescription

  Make Xmas puddings

  Make mincemeat?

  .

  Turning her mind back to the garden, she added to the list.

  .

  Store/check apples & pears (Tyler)

  Clear gutters (T)

  Lift dahlias. (Scrap yellow)

  Asters?? (Ask T)

  Plant bulbs in orchard. (More crocus?)

  Order seed

  .

  Where were the seed catalogues? She was getting as bad as Rae. She’d put them somewhere safe so they wouldn’t be turfed out with the junk mail. She could order online of course but she liked to sit by the fire with her feet up and a cup of tea, studying the catalogues. She loved them. The promise of spring. A new start. Renewal. Regeneration. All those big, hopeful words. Colour and bounty were crammed into the gaudy pages of those little booklets and she still got excited when, every autumn, they landed on the doormat. After all these years…

  She remembered Deborah playing with Harriet on a wet winter’s day when Rae was pregnant for the last time and couldn’t be bothered with her six year-old daughter. Deborah, by then a student teacher, was helping Hattie cut out pictures of flowers from old seed catalogues, showing her how to stick them down and make a picture of a summer garden, a picture for Rae, who never showed the slightest interest, in that or anything Harriet made, then or since. Rae cared for nothing apart from the birth of the baby she knew by then would be a son. But Deborah was patient and loving. She mothered Harriet. And Vivien mothered Rae. Everyone had rallied round. Even Frances.

  Vivien turned over a new page in her notebook, headed it TDH, then wrote:

  .

  Update website - cover (& blurb?) for TDH & the Crystalline Cave

  Type up synopsis & draft chapters of TDH & the Fortress of Fear

  .

  She looked up from the page. Was that a good title? It was rather similar to TDH and the Tower of Terror. But that was ten years old. There was a different generation of readers now. For some reason the publishers insisted on alliterative titles and it was becoming increasingly difficult to come up with new ones. Fortress of Fear would have to do for now. She would try to discuss it with Rae, ask if she had any strong feelings on the matter.

  Vivien shivered. The sun had set and the temperature had dropped perceptibly. Turning back to her TO DO list, she peered at it in the fading light, then glanced up at the calendar hanging on the wall. With a sigh, she wrote

  .

  Buy Xmas presents

  Order cards to be printed (100?)

  .

  Thank God for self-adhesive stamps. Hattie would do the honours. She liked stamps and, impervious to their vulgarity, she especially liked the Christmas issues. Would this Christmas see Hattie’s magnum opus, the Postage Stamp quilt - now ten years in the making - finished at last? And who would be the lucky recipient? Rae? Possibly. More probably Alfie, poor chap.

  Vivien studied her list again and wrote

  .

  Confirm Xmas arrangements with A

  .

  She knew Alfie could be relied upon. He hadn’t let them down in ten years. Nevertheless, she took her pen and drew a heavy line underneath the last item on her list. It was best to be on the safe side. Christmas was always something of a nightmare with Alfie, but it would be even more of a nightmare without him.

  As Deborah wrapped the twenty-fifth copy of Tom Dickon Harry and the Puzzling Pyramid she reflected, as she did every Christmas, that although her pupils would undoubtedly rather have had sweets, giving them a book as an end-of-term gift at least ensured there was some chance they might read over the holidays. Her conscience gave her a pang as she thought of the pupils who would find the text challenging and the few who wouldn’t be able to read it at all, but they’d all enjoy the quirky line drawings and a sense of belonging to the pack.

  In any case, it all depended what you meant by reading. One creatively illiterate girl often asked to “read” to Deborah and always chose a book so linguistically demanding, it remained effectively closed to her. But seated at Deborah’s side, Stacey would improvise fluently and without pause on a theme suggested to her by the book’s illustrations plus the few words she could recognise. She even managed to recite in the same sing-song voice adopted by struggling readers. It was a tour de force. Deborah never failed to remark that she’d enjoyed hearing Stacey “read” to her, which was quite true. The poor girl couldn’t read but, my goodness, she could tell a story! Stacey would certainly enjoy reading her copy of Tom Dickon Harry and the Puzzling Pyramid. She might even improve on the original.

  Christmas just wasn’t Christmas without books, Deborah told herself, then thought of the incongruity of books in a Bethlehem stable. With a smile she visualised a board book for the infant Jesus (Where Did I Come From, Mummy?), then as He grew older and developed reading stamina, a graphic novel (Herod: Slayer of Innocents). Before she knew it, the words Tom Dickon Harry and the Mighty Messiah had popped into her head.

  She was tired. It had been a long and difficult term and she needed to rest. Instead there was the family Christmas at Creake Hall. She hoped Fanny wouldn’t bring that man. Rae would find it
very unsettling. You couldn’t expect Rae to keep up with Fan’s frequent changes of personnel. It was bad enough with Rae asking every year where Bryan was. Deborah’s husband had been gone five years now, so she assumed her mother would never adjust to the split. The thing about Christmas - Christmas at Creake Hall anyway - was that it should always be the same. Predictable. No-one wanted any surprises unless they came gift-wrapped. Deborah decided she’d have a quiet word with Fanny, who could be perfectly reasonable if she put her mind to it. It was a question of catching her at the right moment. Before she downed the third martini.

  Blessed are the peacemakers…

  Is that what I am, thought Deborah. Or is that what Alfie is? She reached for the twenty-sixth copy of TDH, wondering if the reel of Sellotape would hold out. He was such a nice boy. So talented. He deserved to do well. She followed his career, saved the cuttings and made a little scrapbook for Rae every year as a Christmas gift. It would be rather thin this year. Alfie didn’t seem to work quite as much as he used to, which was a bit worrying.

  Wrapping the twenty-seventh copy, Deborah turned her mind to end-of-term projects. She was damned if they were going to sit around watching DVDs for the last week of term, especially not movies her pupils brought in (some of which were rated 18). Nor was she prepared to watch pop DVDs that seemed derived in style and content from soft-core porn. Not that she’d ever viewed any porn, but that’s what they said in the staff-room. When she’d cleared out the last of Bryan’s stuff, she’d found some DVDs and, seeing the lurid covers, the flesh and the leather, she’d thought at first they must be Heavy Metal. (Bryan liked to think of himself as an old Rocker and treasured his vinyl collection of Black Sabbath albums.)

  But they weren’t Heavy Metal. And she hadn’t watched them.

  If only he’d said. She’d had no idea Bryan was unhappy. She was broad-minded. Heaven knows, you had to be working in a place like this, where small pupils gave you too much information about their parents’ domestic arrangements, even their sexual habits. If only Bryan had talked to her, instead of just clearing off. But Fanny said that was men for you. They weren’t interested in working things out, only working things off.

  With tears now pricking her eyes, Deborah looked up from copy number twenty-eight and gazed round the room at the mural her class had made representing The Twelve Days of Christmas, that hymn to materialism, over-indulgence and Beckham-style extravagance. Perhaps there was an end-of-term maths project there? A bit of number fun. How many gifts did her true love actually send on the twelfth day? And - as an extension activity for the brighter ones - how many presents had she received cumulatively over the twelve-day period? How many hens, ducks, geese, etc were there? The class could draw a bar chart to record this, then when everyone was exhausted, they could colour it in mindlessly, in Christmas colours.

  She wondered if there were any gold crayons left or whether Leanne O’Leary had stolen them all. Leanne’s mum’s boyfriend was a local fence, to whom the light-fingered Leanne appeared to be apprenticed, but Deborah imagined there was a limited market for gold crayons. Now glitter glue - that was a different matter. But she kept the glitter glue under lock and key with the other valuables.

  Reaching for the final copy of TDH, Deborah longed for rest. For silence. For blankness.

  Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.

  That was it. That was your reward. You were called “a child of God”. It didn’t seem a lot. Not much of an incentive. You’d have a hard time selling that to Leanne O’Leary.

  Oh well. There was nothing Deborah wanted for Christmas anyway. She’d even stopped wanting Bryan back. She just wanted peace. Peace and goodwill towards men. And her sisters. And her mother. And Alfie.

  Was it really such a lot to ask?

  From: Frances Judd [email protected]

  Sent: 12 December 2008 20:33:10

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: Xmas comes but once a year

  Ciao Alfredo!

  It’s that time of year again! :-( Just wanted to say looking forward to seeing you. I’ll be there on Xmas Eve - and not a moment before - and I may bring a man. If so, it won’t be my husband. Mike and I have gone our separate ways. (Quelle surprise!) Didn’t bother to update you, thought it could wait till Xmas when we can have a good old gossip.

  If I do bring a man, he’ll be called Mark. Confusing, I know, but be an angel and try not to call him Mike. This one’s quite sweet and quite rich and let’s face it, darling, I’m not getting any younger. I’ve warned him about The Addams Family - esp. my irritating (but adorable) kid brother - but it would be nice if for once the clan didn’t live down to my expectations.

  Saw photo of you in the Telegraph mag with some anorexic floozie falling out of her dress. Will somebody please tell me what is erotic about ribs? She looked like a joint of beef. Nice pic of you though. But did my eyes deceive me, or did I spot some silver threads among the gold?… Your Sexy Schoolboy days are surely numbered, sweetie. Does Grecian 2000 come in Golden Blond, I wonder? ;-)

  Your fan,

  Fan

  XXX

  Hattie sat by the sitting-room fire, her workbox at her feet, her embroidery hoop on her lap, executing the final stitches in a labour of love: a sampler she’d designed herself using coloured pencils and graph paper. She’d studied faded family heirlooms beforehand and, taking her lead from them, had included her full name, Harriet Susan Donovan and her date of birth, April 21st 1973. She’d attempted to depict a view of Creake Hall but the finished result, necessarily simplified, resembled a dolls’ house. Resembling dolls were four female figures standing in a line, descending in height. At the end of what looked something like a bus queue was a doll’s doll: a much smaller, trousered figure holding the hand of the smallest female. The two smallest figures were extravagantly yellow-haired. The other three were dark. (Hattie had originally attempted portraits of Harris and Lewis but the white dogs were almost invisible against a neutral background, so she’d unpicked them, feeling faintly guilty about this act of artistic elimination.)

  Hattie wondered if she should tone down the bright hair of the figure representing herself. Her hair, blonde when she was a child, had faded to an ashy light brown but her curls were still copious and unruly. She no longer plaited her hair but left it loose or held it back with an elastic band.

  She decided to leave the abundant yellow hair of her childhood self. She was not after all aiming at photographic reproduction - accuracy of any kind, in fact. That was Fanny’s job. In Hattie’s picture the house and figures merely formed a frame for her text: a rhyme she’d known for many years, a ditty of uncertain origin, one that she’d perhaps learned from her father or grandmother or some other long-dead, half-remembered relation. Hattie had always liked the rhyme even when she hadn’t really understood what it meant. When she was old enough to appreciate its meaning, she adopted it as a personal mantra, a comforting incantation.

  She’d intended to give Alfie the postage stamp quilt for Christmas this year until she’d overheard Vivien talking about it on the phone to Deborah. Viv had laughed and her words had made Hattie re-consider. She’d decided she would save the quilt until she found a more suitable recipient, although she had no idea who that could possibly be. Hattie rarely met new people and the family never seemed to expand, only contract as one brother-in-law after another disappeared from the scene.

  Short of time and daylight hours, Hattie had hit upon the idea of making a sampler for Alfie. It would be a small item and he could hang it on the wall in his flat. Or not. Since Hattie had never been invited to visit Alfie’s home, she would never know if he displayed her gift. But even if he chose not to, she thought he might appreciate the sentiments behind it. Alfie was clever and he loved words. He of all people would appreciate that the expression of her gratitude must remain coded.

  Hattie picked up a pair of tiny silver scissors in the shape of a bird and snipped the thread wit
h the bird’s long beak. She released the canvas from its frame and spread it out on her lap. Though she’d long known them by heart, she read the lines over and smiled as she wondered what Alfie would make of them.

  If you your lips would keep from slips,

  Five things observe with care:

  Of whom you speak, to whom you speak,

  And how and when and where.

  If you your ears would save from jeers,

  These things keep meekly hid:

  Myself and me, and my and mine,

  And how I do and did.

  Chapter Four

  Gwen

  If Alfie’s family objected to an extra houseguest I didn’t get to hear about it. We set off from London by car on December 23rd. Alfie drove and once we got north of Fakenham, the Norfolk landscape began to roll out in front of us like a carpet in an empty room: flat, at times almost featureless, apart from hedgerows and an occasional windmill. The grey sky looked vast and cold as we drew nearer to the coast and I noticed Alfie take a firmer grip of the wheel as the wind began to buffet the car.

  He’d insisted I would need thermal underwear for our trip and informed me, with a sad shake of his head, that sexual congress was unlikely to take place over the holiday period as we’d be wearing so many clothes, we wouldn’t be able to get near each other, and if we did, the intense cold would have shrunk his member beyond usefulness. I took no notice of any of this, used as I was to sea air and Alfie’s tendency to exaggerate, but I’d packed fleece pyjamas, some serious Norwegian socks and a selection of warm jumpers. Alfie assured me it would be necessary at night to wear all these garments simultaneously.

  ‘And don’t, whatever you do, get out of bed in the morning and step onto the lino in bare feet! It will be freezing and your skin will adhere to the floor. Then we’ll have to send for Tyler and his trusty blow torch to thaw you out.

  ‘Tyler?’

  ‘Handyman-gardener. Viv’s right hand man.’

  ‘But not Viv’s—’