Listening to the Quiet
Page 1
Listening to the Quiet
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Copyright
To Roger, for always being there. Vicki and Dave Jones, Yvonne C. Craine, Mary Cross and Jenny Cook for their constant encouragement and friendship. Also Joy, Tina, Heidi, Claire, Margaret S., Margaret D., Roger S., Sarah, Natalie, Joan Sheppard in Canada and Kerith Biggs at Darley Anderson Agency. Special mention to Joanne Willoughby; without her interest and belief in me this book would not have been written.
Chapter One
‘You’re back then. How was it?’
‘You know what funerals are like, Alistair,’ Joanna Venner answered her brother, as he helped her take off her hat and coat. ‘It was awful.’
‘I’m sorry, Jo. You look cold. Come into the sitting room. I’ll order some tea.’
‘No, thanks. I want to have a serious talk with Mother. Straightaway. While I’m in a suitable mood.’ Jo glimpsed herself in the hall mirror. Her eyes were red and puffy from weeping. She flicked irritably at her bobbed, reddish-brown hair; why did it refuse to fall sleekly in front of her ears? She tugged at the waistline of her plain black dress. Fashion at the moment might dictate that her shape was to be desired and envied, but she was ashamed of her almost flat chest and boyish hips, and wished she had feminine curves. ‘Blast. I have only to spend a few nights under the same roof as Mother and I start fretting again about my appearance.’
‘Mother’s upstairs in her room.’ Lounging against the newel post of the stairs, Alistair stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘I’d have thought you two would have become closer after all those years apart. Believe it or not, I actually missed you. Are you returning to Hampshire so soon?’
‘No. I’m going somewhere Mother is most definitely not going to approve of. If I were you, I’d keep my head down all evening.’
‘What’s it all about?’
‘Let me get this over with first. I’ll explain later.’
‘It sounds intriguing, little thing. Want me to go up with you?’ He lazily puffed out a cloud of smoke, adding to the confusion of fittings and furniture, which, like the enormous fir tree, were overadorned with brightly coloured tinsel, baubles and streamers, begging for Twelfth Night to be over. The interior of Tresawna House – stately, built high up on the windswept cliff at Carbis Bay – was an unmarriageable blend of elegant Georgian origins and brash modern art and loud decor; the latter their mother had talked Alistair into buying, to show off to her latest acquisition of social acquaintances. Jo felt little allegiance to the house; she had few happy memories here.
‘Thanks, but I’ll do this by myself,’ Jo said resolutely. Whenever they were together, she and Alistair quarrelled tit for tat, hell-bent on bettering one another’s deeds or witticisms. Sibling rivalry apart, and Jo’s resentment at Alistair’s easy passage through childhood in comparison to hers, he was quietly supportive of her hard-won achievement in breaking free from their mother’s demands and expectations and forging her own life. Confident and unhurried, he was not afraid of asserting his authority over their pretentious mother. Jo loved and respected him for it. ‘You’ve got to live with her after I’ve left. We’ll be able to see each other regularly this time though. I’m not going very far away.’
‘Jo, wait. Be careful,’ Alistair counselled gravely. ‘Mardie Dawes called on Mother while you were out. You know how Mother hates having what she calls her mystical aura disturbed after the fortune-teller’s visits.’ He let out a snatch of laughter, sharing a trait of Jo’s, of switching moods rapidly in a manner others found disconcerting. ‘I listened at the door. Mardie told her the usual old tosh about a new man coming into her life and her acquiring a fortune within the next year or two. Then, after warning Mother to watch out for trouble with her kidneys this winter, she babbled on about someone’s mysterious wanderings and that a certain death was not what it appeared to be or something. Don’t know what that has to do with Mother, she’s hardly been out of the house since she contracted influenza back in November. I nearly gave myself away, I was laughing so much.’
‘I find it hard to understand how a cynical woman like Mother entertains such an obvious charlatan,’ Jo scoffed.
‘She’s like you, little thing. Fascinated by anything out of the ordinary.’
‘You’d never catch me parting with good money for something so blatantly fabricated. The old woman is a nuisance to the people of Parmarth. Anyway, if she really could see into the future she would have told Mother that she’s in for an upset, although, as it concerns me, only a minor one.’
Jo slowly climbed the dark oak stairs to her mother’s bedroom, resigned to what would be a confrontation. Katherine Venner had scorned everything Jo had said or done from childhood, while totally approving of her son, who had turned out exactly as a gentleman of education and privilege was expected to be. Married to a young lady of substance and accomplishment, Alistair was successfully expanding a private yacht-building business established on his late father’s banking fortune. Jo knew that this time she would receive not only the usual scorn at her hopes and dreams, but a round of utter hostility.
As Jo expected, her mother viewed her as she always did, with slight irritation and an entire lack of interest. It was an overcast day, but enough light streamed in through the tall windows to illuminate Katherine Venner’s firm outline. Nudging her fifty-fifth year, she had retained her courtly bearing and was still attractive, albeit hard and aquiline. Buffing her nails at her dressing table, she was flashily turned out in a multicoloured crêpe dress. Her softly waved hair, golden-red by courtesy of her hairdresser’s products, obliged her by lying in perfect symmetry. Jo saw new additions in the room she had rarely entered. On the mahogany bedside table, an ugly bronze statue of a naked man cavorted under a painted-glass lightshade. Brightly painted flatware and glass paperweights were peppered among the more graceful porcelain figurines.
‘What do you want, Joanna?’ Katherine jabbed a cigarette into a jade holder. ‘I asked Emma to make sure I was not interrupted. I want time for a long meditation before getting ready for my dinner party.’
‘Emma wasn’t about when I got back. I shan’t keep you long, Mother. I’ve something to tell you.’
‘If it’s not about accepting a suitable proposal of marriage I don’t want to hear it.’ Katherine pursed her glistening crimson lips. She always overdid her make-up and overplucked her eyebrows. ‘Why the black dress? You look like the lead of a pencil. And you’ve spent too long outside in the wind, your eyes are an unsightly colour.’
‘I’m wearing black and my eyes are red because I’ve just come from Celia’s funeral,’ Jo snapped, controlling the lump rising in her throat, not about to let her mother see the extent of her grief over losing her closest friend. Katherine could make Jo feel like a badly constructed drawing, one that Katherine seemed always to be seeking to rub out and reassemble to her own specifications.
‘Really, Joanna! You know I loathe that woman’s name being mentioned.’
‘How else could I answer your question? I’m sorry you still feel so hostile towards Celia. Have you forgotten how good she was to you when Father and Bob Merrick were killed?’
A tiny blue vein throbbed on Katherine’s temple, indicating her gall at Jo’s direct attack. ‘Joanna, you are too old to be sent to your room. Do you want me to slap your face?’
‘Certainly not.’ Jo found it difficult to imagine this woman had actually carried her inside her body and given birth to her. They were like distant strangers. No, more like two people merely on antagonistic social terms. ‘You ought to remember that if it wasn’t for your affair with Bob Merrick I would never have met Celia. She did you a service befriending me and keeping me occupied while you met your lover on the moors.’
‘I don’t wish to discuss that kept woman.’ Katherine ground her teeth, incensed that Jo should remind her how she had used her as a child as cover for her own adultery. ‘Now go away.’
‘I haven’t told you my news yet.’ Breaking from her mother’s hostile disregard, Jo went to a window and looked out across the bay. It brought back more hurtful memories of her home life. A little further downcoast, lacy white spume was riding the heavy winter waves surging towards St Ives’ Porthminster beach. Jo had painted this scene several times, outside on the cliff. Once, seeking Katherine’s acknowledgement, she had showed her one of her paintings and had been scorched by her remark, ‘The sea is like the contents of an inkwell and the figures on the beach look like dead ants on crushed biscuits.’
‘I’m not listening.’ Katherine returned to her nails.
‘Before Celia’s sudden death,’ Jo persisted, ‘which you so unkindly saw fit not to inform me of, but left to Alistair five days later, I had arranged to leave Hampshire and go to live with her. I’m changing schools. I’m going to teach at Parmarth.’
‘You’re what? You’ve left the young ladies’ academy? To lower yourself even further by teaching in a worthless primary school, and you even dare to bring your disgrace near to home?’
Squaring her narrow shoulders, Jo looked her mother straight in the eye. ‘Mother, teaching is a worthwhile profession and taking a position in the village where I have so many happy memories is something I wish to do. I don’t intend staying there for ever. I have other far-reaching plans. There is nothing wrong in following one’s desires – if they’re not selfish.’
‘Oh, you choose to make another jibe at me? You are opprobrious and ungrateful. As for teaching, it’s an option for women who have no hope of making a good marriage. You are plain and shapeless, Joanna. Your seemingly high intelligence is another of your displeasing features, but you have the advantage of your father’s trust fund. It is of ample proportions to ensure a gentleman of good repute will take the bait. Yet rather than look forward to your father’s benevolence in the future, you live on a meagre salary and now, presumably, you will earn even less. You have deliberately chosen to go against his wishes.’
Jo was not prepared to be merely swept away. Celia had taught her many things, one of them to stand and fight for her right to be heard. ‘Father died when I was very young, and there was nothing in his will expressing the wish that I meekly hand over my inheritance to someone else. You’re just bitter that Father left you nothing. I don’t understand your objections to my lifestyle. You’ve broken away from convention yourself, refusing half a dozen marriage proposals since you were widowed. And for years you’ve mixed with women who have chosen an academic career, or who earn their livelihood in the arts, in films, or the theatre. Most of them have never married. Why is it so different for me? It’s because you’ve always despised me, isn’t it? Because I wasn’t the sort of sweet, pretty child you could show off as a compliment to yourself.’
‘Yes, Joanna, you’ve always been a disappointment to me, and I’ll never forgive you for becoming so attached to that wretched Sayce woman, for taking her money to sponsor your time at college. Teach in that pathetic little village if you must, but you will not do so from under this roof.’ Katherine took a furious puff on her cigarette.
‘The house belongs to Alistair and he’d make me welcome for as long as I chose, but as I don’t want the atmosphere to be contentious for him and Phoebe, I have made other arrangements now that I cannot live at Cardhu.’ Jo made no attempt to keep the mocking out of her voice. ‘Mercy Merrick has been in touch with me. She’s offered to let me stay at Nance Farm.’
Rising to her well-shod feet, Katherine advanced on Jo, snarling. ‘Is there no limit to the lengths you will go to insult me? You’re actually going to stay with that other despicable woman?’ She halted, as if she could not bear to be close to her daughter. Contracting her eyes, she dropped her voice but still vented pure sarcasm. ‘Do you perhaps get some kind of perverse pleasure from having the Trevail brothers pulling you about?’
‘My plans do not involve getting back at you, Mother. Staying at Nance Farm is simply a practical arrangement. I won’t waste any more time with explanations. You could never understand my reasons for wanting to teach at Parmarth.’
‘Now Celia Sayce is dead you have no reason to stay in Cornwall. Ask Alistair to arrange your reinstatement at the young ladies’ academy.’
‘Can’t you bear the thought of me living so close to you, Mother?’ Jo ridiculed calmly. ‘I’m going to teach at Parmarth. There I shall feel close to Celia even though I won’t have her company. I will not change my plans.’
Katherine gave a malicious smile. ‘I think I know what your reasons were for intending to live at Cardhu. You were hoping the Sayce woman would value you so much in downgrading your ludicrous career and keeping her company in her old age that she’d leave you her house and money. She had no family and it was well known in our circles that Sheridan Ustick kept his mistress in comfort.’
‘That’s a vile thing to say! I loved Celia. She encouraged me to make a success of my life, to achieve my ambitions. She was the mother to me you should have been. What I do with my life is none of your business.’ Jo made what she thought was a fairly graceful withdrawal to the door. ‘I’ll see you at dinner.’
‘I won’t have you at my table tonight,’ Katherine uttered through her teeth.
‘I want to meet Ben Nicholson. I’m interested to learn about his new approach to painting, something you will only pretend to understand.’
‘I’m quite sure Mr Nicholson and the rest of my guests will have nothing in common with you, Joanna. They’re real achievers, while you’re off to stagnate in a place that’s so primitive it belongs to the Dark Ages. We shall see how long you’ll endure living without the basic things like piped water and the luxuries you’re used to. When do you intend to leave for the farm?’
‘At the end of the week.’
‘Make it tomorrow. Be sure you keep out of my way until then. I have no wish to set eyes on you again until you apologise to me and plead that you have come to your senses.’
Chapter Two
A covered wagon rumbled down the main street of the solemn little village of Parmarth. Ignoring the curious faces popping up at many of the lantern-lit windows, Luke Vigus headed his young working horse round the back of the forge to the stable space he rented.
When he left the stable, icy raindrops, borne on a cruel wind, lashed his body, wetting him through in seconds, freezing his flesh. He sought no shelter. Facing the stable door, he cupped his hands and lit a cigarette, drew in deeply, then in a defeated manner, turned and leaned against the whitewashed wall, crossing one heavy boot over the other on the cobbles.
Tall, well set, dressed in dusty working man’s garb, badly in need of a shave, his mouth taut, pale blue eyes compressed, he stared at the angry indigo sky and sighed in edgy discontent. He would rather stay here and perish in the extremes of the weather than go home.
It was a few days into a new decade, but 1930 offered no sense of hope, no fresh start for him. He was a young man. All he should have had on his mind was making a living and enjoying himself, not being dragged down by unsought responsibilities.
When the coldness had seeped into his bones, diluting his frustration to a manageable level, he strode down the village hill to the Engine House Inn and stayed there until closing time.
‘You got anything for me?’ Jessie Vigus demanded, the instant he got inside the door of their one-up, one-down cottage.
Glaring at his mother, Luke hurled back, ‘You got something to eat for me?’
‘There’s only the end of a loaf. I ain’t got nothing else in, Luke. How was I to know you was coming back? You’re on the road for weeks. Got a fag?’
Scowling, he ripped out the cigarette clenched between his lips and tossed it at her. Her hair wispy and prematurely grey, her body bloodless and emaciated by years of alcohol abuse, she was too unsteady to catch the begrudged offering and tottered drunkenly to retrieve it from the filthy stone floor.