Listening to the Quiet

by Listening to the Quiet (retail) (epub)

  ‘Come and get me, Marcus. At once.’

  Too late. He’d left it too late to mention the non-existent letter. She had won, again.

  Rubbing his sweaty hands on his napkin, he lifted Eleanor off her chair, carried her up to her room and laid her on the bed.

  Before he could step away, she gripped the sleeve of his jacket.

  ‘I have to get away from these moors, Marcus, darling. To live in a house that suits my position, where I can invite my friends, hold parties again.’ She was harshly insistent about this every day.

  With her other hand, she reached up and caressed his neatly cut black hair, ignoring the petrifying of his body and his silent plea to let him go. ‘You’re such a handsome boy. My precious. My own.’

  She pulled him down to her and held him very close, for a very long time.

  Chapter Five

  Jo was standing in the middle of a dance floor, wearing a badly stitched gown which hung off her body in unflattering folds. The material was coarse and pricked her skin. She knew the other female dancers, all beautiful, curvaceous, in silks and jewels, were laughing at her, making cruel comments about her flat figure. She wanted to run away and hide her shame, but her mother was blocking the doorway, a list of spiteful remarks against her written all over her excessively made-up face.

  A sound woke Jo. She raised her head off the pillows. It was strangely quiet, the room in total blackness until her eyes picked out the dark grey rectangle of the window. She recognised a light step. The bedroom was filled with the scent of gardenias.

  ‘Celia?’ In one rapid movement Jo was sitting up straight. Celia was standing beside the bed, smiling down at her. Celia, so hauntingly lovely, statuesque, astute, assured, kindly. Jo was about to speak but she heard Celia’s voice in her heart. ‘No need for words, my dear. I’ve just come to say hello. Go back to sleep.’

  She vanished, and Jo, forgetting her recurring tormenting dream, slept peacefully.

  * * *

  Creeping out of the back door of the schoolhouse, Marcus lit a cigarette. Dawn was streaking the sky, illuminating the desolate tors on the horizon into vivid looming shapes. The naked branches of the ash trees in the garden swayed like grotesque arms in the east wind. The water closet at the bottom of the path stood out stark and abysmal, like a tiny prison, with all the attendant horrors of such a place awaiting within.

  He had risen from a hot sticky bed and come outside in just his shirt and trousers. But he desired the cold, hoping it would somehow slam precious moments of normality into his life. He filled his lungs with smoke. Normality. What was it like? Would he ever realise it? Not if landmarks of nature and everyday objects in his own garden seemed threatening.

  A touch on his arm made his flesh leap. He exhaled the smoke in a strangled gasp.

  ‘It’s only me,’ Sally Allett, the housemaid, whispered. She was clutching a blanket over her nightdress. ‘You’re jumpy. You’ll catch your death. Come back to bed.’

  ‘No,’ he said sharply.

  ‘Did you have another nightmare?’

  ‘No. Is my mother stirring?’

  ‘Didn’t hear anything when I passed her door. Have you quarrelled with her?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ He glared at Sally’s pretty, showy face, outlined by springy fair curls. ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘Sometimes I don’t understand you two. You’re so attached to each other, but she often raises her voice to you and you sink into long silences and try to avoid her.’

  ‘Occasionally she becomes difficult, the result of her accident,’ he said tersely, ‘and I need some peace. Remember, Sally, it’s none of your business.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She moved closer to him and he could smell the allure of her body. ‘I didn’t mean to pry. I thought I might be able to help.’

  To check himself, he swallowed the saliva in his mouth. ‘You do help. The girl that started this week to do the heavy housework, is she suitable?’

  ‘Beth Wherry’s a bit simple-minded but she works well.’

  ‘Good. I want you to concentrate on my mother’s needs. Keep close to her. Make sure she has everything she requires.’ The more tasks Sally performed for Eleanor the less demand she made on him. It would make it easier to break the hold she had regained over him.

  Sally’s hand travelled down his arm to rest on his quivering palm. Her skin was warm and alive. She was the same age as Joanna Venner but different in every way. Sally had no ambitions except to obtain a husband and her own home. She was totally uninterested in what went on in the world outside the village. Her body was formed in bountiful curves, which she flaunted at men to look at, to use, and many had taken up the invitation.

  She pressed herself against him. Her fingertips teased his wrist and he was aroused, instantly, agonisingly, but he did not want sex again. After lunch he had to present a respectable front to Joanna Venner. He had to be appealing, full of charm, if his mother’s scheme was to succeed. He felt sick at what he must do if he was ever to find release from his miseries.

  He prised the housemaid’s fingers off him. ‘Bring my breakfast into the study. I’ll eat in there today.’

  * * *

  The unaccustomed smell of fried bacon and eggs filled the Vigus cottage. Rex and Molly had been sitting eagerly at the table for some time. Dishing up the meal on the few pieces of crockery their mother had not sold, Luke joined them.

  ‘Eat properly,’ he snapped moments later. ‘Haven’t you kids got no manners? The old woman’s hung over, she won’t come down and snatch it away from you.’

  Heads bent over their plates, Rex and Molly shovelled forkfuls of food into their mouths a little less ravenously. Molly sniffed and wiped her nose on her dress sleeve.

  ‘Mother took the Christmas presents you left off us,’ Rex said, aggrieved.

  ‘What? I told you to hide them away.’ Luke sighed impatiently.

  The matter was not discussed further. The doll and wooden puppet were gone, irretrievably, a fact of life.

  ‘You staying home long this time?’ Rex asked sullenly.

  ‘A day or two.’

  ‘Can I come with you when you go off again?’ It was the same plea Rex uttered every time Luke set foot inside the door. Luke set aside the terrible wrench it gave his heart.

  Molly whimpered, afraid of being left behind without Rex. She rarely spoke, speech having been beaten out of her from an early age. She was undersized and vacant-looking. A moron, an idiot, an imbecile, the villagers called her, and the local bullies bestowed far worse insults on her. Rex was the only person she trusted, the only one ever to be truly kind to her.

  Rex was very protective of her. As far as he was concerned, Molly was all he had. ‘Molly too?’

  ‘Don’t be daft. What about the baby? You know I can’t take kids on the road. Please don’t keep on about it,’ Luke said, covering his guilt with a growl. No matter how hard he tried he could find no love for these half-siblings, from the mother he hated for her dereliction of the most basic maternal duties.

  ‘Gipsies do.’

  ‘We’re not the same as gipsies. Anyway, I haven’t got a woman to look after you, have I?’ Luke was pleading now for Rex to understand his position. It served to make him feel even more callous for striving to hold on to his freedom. Why should the boy, who’d had one of the worst possible starts in life, care about anything more than his own and Molly’s survival?

  ‘Then bloody get one.’

  Luke cuffed him on the ear for his cheek.

  Rex glanced up fearfully at the low beams overhead. ‘We’re afraid, Luke. Mother said she’ll kill us one day. She means it.’

  ‘No, she don’t. It’s the drink talking. Finish your meal, then give Marylyn her bottle. I’m going out to get you something decent to wear. I promise I’ll come back.’

  ‘Mother’ll only sell it,’ Rex mouthed despondently.

  Luke dropped his fork, his meal uneaten. He could not bear the despairing expression on his littl
e brother’s face. ‘I’ll threaten her with a good thrashing if she does. I’ll get you some liquorice bootlaces. You’ll like that, eh?’

  ‘We need some shoes,’ Rex said tartly, unreceptive of the bribe to shut up.

  ‘I know,’ Luke groaned. ‘I’ll see to it.’

  ‘We’re getting a new teacher,’ Rex murmured, saying anything to keep his older brother interested in his and Molly’s plight.

  ‘So what?’ Luke got up from the table. Rex and Molly’s eyes were on his plate. They would clear it in seconds when he went out. ‘Clean up this damned place, will you? It stinks. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’

  * * *

  When Jo woke again she basked in the peaceful warmth of her unexpected vision of Celia. Her little square clock on the mantelpiece indicated it was ten o’clock. Yawning, stretching, she jumped out of bed into the cosy atmosphere. Mercy had stolen in and lit a fire of coal and driftwood.

  Jo looked out of the window over the yard. The rain had drifted away during the night and the sun was shining optimistically. She opened the window, which creaked on its old sashes. Noisy starlings were flitting about below, impertinently searching for titbits among the territorial hens, ducks and geese.

  Directly across the yard reared a forty-foot barn, supported by massive granite pillars. Memories came flooding back. She had been a small child when Lew Trevail, then a robust boy, twice her age, carried her up the steps at its side, and climbed on top of the rough-wood roof with her. He’d left her stranded there, oblivious to the danger, and Jo, who had thought this a great adventure, could have tumbled off and been killed. Ten minutes later, when she had been about to jump off on to the haywain, which might have caused her serious injury, Mercy had rescued her. Jo grinned, remembering how Mercy had beaten Lew for his recklessness.

  Darius Pendower, a bent-over old codger from Pendeen, a mining village two and a half miles away, emerged from the barn dragging a heavy sack on a sledge. He was about to take chopped mangolds to the fields to feed the cattle, who would get their ration outside today as the weather was dry. Darius had seemed ancient to Jo when she was a child. She pondered his age. Seventy? Eighty? He had to be at least eighty because Darius had worked for Mercy’s grandfather. He was as much a part of Nance as the fields and buildings, a shy individual with platinum-white hair and a thick accent few people could understand. He moved very slowly. Mercy also employed Kizzy Kemp, an enormously fat woman, now middle-aged, and inclined to be lazy, in the washhouse and dairy. It occurred to Jo that the condition of her employees meant Mercy must perform most of the farm’s tasks herself. There was a sense of familiarity and continuity on the farm which Jo had never experienced at Tresawna.

  ‘Good morning, Darius,’ she called out, cupping her hands to her mouth. Darius was hard of hearing and did not heed her. She watched him plod off.

  ‘Hey, Shrewface!’ A man she had not spied in the vicinity of the pigsty was waving to her. ‘Heard you was here. What time of the morning do you call this?’

  ‘Lew Trevail!’ Jo looked down on Mercy’s older nephew with disdain. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Haven’t come t’see you,’ Lew shouted back, grinning mockingly, strutting through the cackling poultry with his hands thrust inside his heavy black belt until he was under her window.

  ‘I gathered that,’ Jo retorted rudely.

  ‘There’s hardly any work in the mines now, so Aunt Mercy took me on three months ago.’ Lew guffawed as if it was a big joke. ‘Didn’t she tell you?’

  ‘No, she did not.’ Jo stared down at the craggy, insolent, dark looks which helped Lew succeed with just about every female he fancied.

  ‘I’m looking forward to dragging you through the cow shit again, like at our first meeting. Never forget you running off like a scalded cat.’ Lew bawled with mirth. ‘Just imagine what the kids at the school would think, eh? Me and Russell know you for not being much of a lady, Jo Venner.’

  ‘You had better not.’ Jo shook with indignation.

  ‘Put the kettle on then, maid,’ Lew said, digging a cigarette out of his waistcoat pocket.

  ‘Oh, very well, you darned nuisance. Give me a minute.’

  ‘I’ll be in for a big mug of tea drekkly.’ Lew strode manfully back to the pigs.

  ‘You’re in good company,’ Jo muttered at his proud back.

  She was not vexed with Lew for long. It was his and his younger brother Russell’s rough play which had led to the events which had changed the course of her stifled, formal life, bringing her to where she was now, in a career and a destination of her own choosing.

  What kind of woman she would have grown to be if denied Celia’s love and influence she had no way of knowing. She could not guess if she would have been weaker or more stubborn, painfully shy or brazen, becalmed or hopelessly frustrated. One thing Jo was certain of, she would always be thankful for the richest blessing of her life so far, the all-enduring love of Celia Sayce. For she was able to give and receive recommendation and criticism without docility or suspicion, to genuinely care for the pupils in her charge, to own real affection for Alistair, to trust and respect Mercy.

  Jo washed and dressed in a hurry in the bedroom of the farmhouse. After lunch she had two appointments to keep, and before that she must entertain one of her old playmates.

  Chapter Six

  Feeling desolate and emotional, Jo opened the wrought-iron gate at Cardhu, walked along the path that cut through the lawn and stopped to gaze at the house. Protected by a five-foot stone wall, it was small in comparison to Tresawna House but much larger than the wayside cottages of the local people. An ashlar-fronted building, with a thick chimney stack at either end, it was graced with large double windows and a front door overseen by a decorative porch. When Jo had first come here she’d decided it exuded the same cheerful friendliness as its owner. A house to be noisy in, to dash up and down the stairs, to flit from room to room without first having to tap on the door and await permission to enter. And no keys in the upstairs rooms where a naughty little girl could be locked in for hours at a time.

  The house was now padlocked, the windows shuttered inside, presumably by the solicitor acting for Celia’s estate. It had stood here in princely isolation for thirty-seven years, built for Celia by her lover. Although the ever-present winds buffeted the moor, the house seemed surrounded by a cathedral calm.

  The front garden was well tended, but Jo wondered if it would be the case if former miner, John Wherry, caretaker of the Methodist chapel, had known before Celia’s death she had been mistress to a married man.

  The rose trees and many plants from the herbaceous borders had been dug up and taken away, a sacrilegious act by selfish vandals. The proud-looking stone eagles which had guarded each side of the front doorstep were missing, the guilty damp patches suggesting they had been stolen only hours before. Jo was relieved to see the gardenia bushes had not been touched. Celia’s favourite flower, she had chosen a partially shaded spot, in humus-rich soil for them, and had kept them trimmed in shape. The white, delicately fragrant, double flowers would soon be in bud, if the frost could be persuaded by mist and low cloud to keep its cruel fingers at bay.

  The house was desolate without its owner, who, despite being terribly lonely here for so many long years, had loved it so much. Her heart raw and aching, Jo walked round to the back of the building.

  * * *

  Moving with animal effortlessness, Luke cast a practised eye round the interior of the small stable. He was disappointed. Ponies had not been kept here for years. There was nothing worth pinching, no feed stuff or spare tack for Lucky, no tools, no odds and ends.

  Outside, under the lowering grey sky, Luke glanced about warily, a little on edge. This place had always seemed lonely, further away from life and habitation than it really was, but now the owner was newly dead, had died within its walls, he half-expected to see Celia Sayce’s spirit loom up in front of him. He wouldn’t hang around long. Anything worth stealing in
the garden had already been taken away. After trying the garden shed and outhouses he would seek entrance to the house.

  His long strides were brought to a halt at the corner of the house when he found himself face to face with a stranger.

  ‘Who are you?’ Jo bluntly asked the man suddenly in her path, someone who had no right to be here by the look of him. A gipsy? His skin had an olive tone, his hair coal-black, falling carelessly across a hardy brow, but his sharp pale blue eyes, although guarded and restless, were less suspicious than those of the gipsy clans she had encountered. She did not take him for a farmhand or casual labourer. There was colour in his clothes, boldness in his stance. He had a free-living air about him, held his bare head at an angle hinting of his own mastery.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded when receiving no reply. He had seemed slightly startled at her arrival; now he was smiling in a lazy, inquisitive manner.

  ‘I saw it first,’ Luke said, warm and insolently, taking time in collecting together his cigarettes and matches. What an interesting little piece she was. Standing out clear and firm, hair the colour of autumn bracken, kind of prettily aloof, staring at him with intense curiosity, undisturbed at finding him trespassing on what was likely a relative’s property. She looked familiar, then he knew where he had seen those black-lashed, wide-set intellectual eyes before. Eyes that had told her story then, as now, of her possession of conviction and vigour, and a trace of disdain.

  ‘Are you saying I’m here to steal something? Is that why you’re here?’

  He smiled as if the accusation amused him. ‘I’m reliving memories of an old friend.’

  ‘You knew Miss Sayce?’ Jo asked suspiciously. She could not place him, and a man of such astonishingly good looks, an instant friendly smile, candid, decadent eyes and such a forthright bearing was not easy to forget.