Echoes of Silence

by Marjorie Eccles

  Dot went to the sink and began washing her mug, furiously rubbing it dry with the tea towel. Filled the kettle and put it on again, uncaring. Polly, herself a compulsive mover, watched, appalled, but knowing how it was. You couldn’t go on talking, talking, without doing something to occupy yourself until the words came. But when Dot at last turned round, her face had grown ugly, her eyes were sparking malice, her mouth thinned so that it almost disappeared into the powdery whiteness. ‘She wouldn’t be told – spoiled little madam! She started whingeing for Philip. I gave her a little tap, and she fell, and went quiet, and …’

  ‘And you hit her again? With another little tap, I suppose, and another?’

  Sarcasm, anger, did nothing to make the nightmare better. Which was, after all, such an easy thing to believe. Always free with her hands, Dot, with anything that happened to be in them. If you were a child, you learned to dodge if you could, to run away and nurse your ringing ears, your hurting arms and legs in silence, until her rage had cooled. Which it soon did, give her her due, and then you’d be given sweeties and allowed to watch rubbishy television programmes. On the tacit understanding that you didn’t tell your mother about something she never guessed at. Never seeing the marked bodies, because Freya never bathed or undressed her children herself.

  Polly remembered Eddie, too, tough and frightening, yet with eyes filling with sentimental tears when he’d witnessed the blows and slaps and pinches. But too afraid of Dot himself to do anything about it. So that they’d laughed when it was Eddie’s turn, too, for bruises and black eyes, when they’d realised where his injuries came from – not from fighting outside the pub after getting drunk, as the fiction went, but from his skinny little wife. Giggling then, and Ginny singing in a Cockney voice that old music hall song, a favourite of their grandfather’s: ‘ … ’itting of a feller wot is six foot three, and ’er only four foot two!’

  They’d laughed, cheeky, not understanding.

  ‘If she belonged to me, I’d let ’er know oo’s oo,’ went another bit. But Eddie never did let Dot know who was who. Or at any rate, he went on letting her hit him. Eddie and Dot, that was a different ball game to Dot hitting children, smaller and more defenceless, Polly realised as she grew older. Something secret, darker, there. Some kind of tacit agreement between them. Collusion. A kind of love, maybe. Who understood the inner workings of a marriage?

  Or the compulsion to hit a child? To kill?

  What had made the rage so unstoppable, that time? With Beth? A delightful child, with a mind of her own. A bit mischievous at times, but laughter easily overcoming tears and tantrums. Enchanting. A surprise and a delight, a treasured gift to a grown-up family, through Peter, of all people! Quickly becoming a favourite with them all, with Philip especially, who was patient with her over her piano lessons, not averse to spoiling her a little, talking of making money over to her in his will …

  Polly’s heart gave a lurch. Why hadn’t she ever thought of that before?

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to send for the police?’ Dot demanded.

  The police, yes. Tom Richmond. She began to move, mechanically, and Elf sprang away from the position in front of the dresser, where she’d seemed to have taken root, at the thought of being left alone with Dot. ‘I’ll get Philip – even if I’ve to break his door down!’

  ‘No!’ Dot commanded her sharply. ‘What good has Philip ever been to me? Go down to the cottage and bring Eddie back. I’ll wait here until he comes. You don’t have to worry,’ she added wryly, ‘I won’t run away. It’s far too late for that, now.’

  18

  It was money, of course, that had made her hit that child, though it wasn’t the thought of money that was running through Dot’s mind at the time. Then, she’d been curiously detached. Like now, as she waited for the police.

  But before then, for weeks, ever since he’d so casually mentioned it, the words had festered. All that money of Philip’s going to a stranger, a child he barely knew … Oh, what fools girls were! Wilful, she was, Elf, not to make it up with Philip, blind not to see which side her bread was buttered, that it would cost her nothing but smiles and a bit of flattery to put him back in the right humour. So that she’d end up with what was only hers by rights, anyway.

  These were not maternal feelings stirring in Dot’s breast, she told herself. She’d never had any, not even when the baby was born. Love? No, not she. She’d been born lacking that capacity, hadn’t she? But the instinct to look out for her own was deeply ingrained in her sharp Cockney nature – a creed instilled into her since birth. An inborn sense of survival.

  She felt drowsy in the heat of the kitchen, the last fifteen minutes had passed like a dream since Elf went to find Eddie, and Polly … well, Polly, of course, would have sent for the police. Dot was calm, she’d known it was all over since she’d raised her eyes from Freya’s coffin and seen Richmond’s gaze on her. She told herself she was glad. Ten years of keeping it held inside herself had wearied her. No one knowing except her, and Eddie.

  She made herself yet another pot of tea, waited for it to brew, to become strong and dark with tannin. Whatever anyone else thought of Eddie, he’d been like a rock. Getting rid of the bodies for her, first the child, then the woman. Never mind that he had as much to lose as she had. She told herself that neither act had been premeditated, and perhaps that was true of Beth, it was something she couldn’t help, a product of this rage inside her.

  She’d always known she was worth more than the raw deal she was destined to get from life. It hadn’t been much of a life, all told, and sometimes the anger at it came boiling out, unstoppably, vented on those who wouldn’t tell.

  The Austwick woman would have told, if she’d lived. She had a mouth on her, that one. But she needn’t have died, if she hadn’t tried to be too clever. If she hadn’t threatened to tell what she knew, or had guessed. Not as a means of getting money, that Dot might’ve understood, but merely as revenge because Eddie had ditched her.

  Eddie and his women. They’d been no surprise to Dot. She’d known before she married him that she wouldn’t be the only one in his life, especially as she grew older, as what looks she’d had faded. Twenty years ago she hadn’t been so bad, still had her sharp, piquant looks, which other men besides him had found attractive. Thin as a whippet, but Eddie liked his dogs and his women thin. And he’d said he loved her, though she knew it was the cushy number here, her expectations that he’d loved more. But what the dickens do they see in him? she’d thought, God knows, he’s no oil painting. Hasn’t much at all to recommend him, except his virility … She hadn’t really minded these other women, though – the other girls, always pretty, always young … At any rate, until he’d taken up with that old crow. And that Dot had minded.

  Dot didn’t drive, had never learned. That night, after Eddie had gone to his darts match, she’d walked down from Low Rigg to the main road and then taken the bus that stopped at the Clough Head Estate. She hadn’t meant to kill the woman, only give her a piece of her mind, but the big torch she’d needed to see her way on the unlit moorland road was still in her hand when she knocked on the woman’s door …

  She shouldn’t have laughed. She shouldn’t have pleaded, either, when she saw Dot raising the torch. ‘I’m ill!’ she’d lied. ‘I’m on my way to hospital!’ Maybe she hadn’t lied after all, though. Illness of any kind had always disgusted Eddie, and maybe that was partly why he’d been as glad to see the end of her as Dot was. Putting her into a dustbin liner wasn’t difficult. Dragging her into the tiny kitchen had been less easy, and she’d had to lie her diagonally across the floor, but she’d had to do it, to get her out of the way to clean up the hall. The woman had no bleach under the sink, to get everything clean, but she’d made do with what there was. Then left her there until she could come back with Eddie to dispose of her.

  Eddie, as usual, had known what to do. No blame, no questions. Picked her up as though she was nothing, put her in the car boot, driven her to the quarry. D
ot thought it was as well she’d been there, he’d have thrown the woman in just as she was. Dot was the one who’d had the idea of weighting her with her own suitcase, only it hadn’t kept her down. They hadn’t said, the police, but her belt must have come undone or something.

  She poured some tea into the clean mug, eager for the revivifying taste, then stared in disgust at the pale liquid which emerged from the pot. Tea begrudged and water bewitched. What had she done? Forgotten to empty the pot, poured boiling water on to already used leaves, that’s what. She filled the kettle to start again.

  It was the look Elf had given her before she fled the kitchen that she couldn’t bear to think of. It came as a revelation to her that she cared, after all, about the child she had borne twenty-eight years ago, the result of what had happened when she’d gone with Philip Denshaw, met when she’d visited Freya, his wife already an invalid – flattered, but never expecting he’d marry her – oh no, his kind didn’t marry the likes of her – but wanting more than she’d ever got from him.

  He’d wanted her to have an abortion, terrified of the scandal. But legal abortions weren’t yet ten a penny in those days, and she’d seen too many disastrous results of back-street operations to risk one herself. The solution he’d put forward, in return for her silence, and with Freya’s compliance, had a lot of drawbacks, but on the whole, it had worked well enough. He’d seen her all right for money – she, like Eddie, wasn’t greedy, she only wanted enough to feel secure and comfortable. And to be sure that her daughter would be, too.

  It was only when she’d seen all the years of keeping herself held in, never able to show any feelings or emotions she might have, all she’d hoped for slipping away because of Elf’s stubbornness and Philip’s attraction to the child, Beth, that she’d balked.

  All, all for nothing.

  In a sudden excess of frustration, she swiped her strong, wiry arm along the dresser top, sweeping it clean of all its accumulated clutter, something she’d wanted to do for years. Chipped plates, mugs, the pewter tankard with the milkman’s money in it, an old date box containing pencils, rubber bands and pins, an ugly, orange-coloured 1950s moulded glass vase crashed satisfyingly to the floor. A storm of old letters, forgotten shopping lists and abandoned junk mail whirled like the snow blowing outside the window. The 1937 Jubilee painted tin tea caddy with the King and Queen on it, now black with age, the edges of the lid and a half moon just underneath it rubbed shiny like silver with wear, spilt its contents over the floor. She’d forgotten the teapot, still full of weak, boiling tea, and that went, too, its lid falling off and its contents scalding her leg and foot. She screamed with pain and didn’t see the bit of paper, that month’s paper-bill, as it happened, which wafted, light as a leaf, on to the kitchen table, right on to the ashtray where her cigarette was still burning. The paper browned and crisped and finally caught fire, setting light to the morning paper, which became kindling for the tablecloth. Flames spread. Charred fragments of paper and burning cloth floated around, a foam-filled cushion began to smoulder evilly, flames licked round the table edge. The square of coco matting under the table started to burn with a brisk crackle as a flaming piece of tablecloth dropped on to it and ignited it.

  Dot was too busy dashing cold water over her leg and foot to notice what was happening behind her until, whimpering with pain, she looked around for a tea towel to mop up the excess water. She couldn’t believe what she saw, and now smelled, how quickly so much of the kitchen was fully alight. She screamed louder and tried to pick up the heavy old tab rug which lay in front of the stove to smother the conflagration but it was one that took two to lift and was too big for her to manoeuvre. Trying to lift it, to drag it over and beat out the flames, she inadvertently stood on the end, tripped herself up and fell to the floor with it. Her black mourning clothes caught fire, then her hair. The rug, impregnated with years of grease, caught fire, too.

  Eddie, opening the door a few minutes later, sent in a freezing draught which fanned the now roaring flames further, through the doorway and into the long corridor alongside the back stairs. He saw his wife stagger to her feet, and then collapse back into the incandescent heart of the fire. He yelled, ran forward, but was beaten back, his face blistered by the tremendous heat.

  It was Eddie’s turn now, to begin screaming.

  Epilogue

  On another dry, sunny day of piercing cold, this time in March, Richmond again parked the Volvo by the reservoir and climbed to the top of Clough Edge.

  The force of the wind flattened the stiff, moorland grass and bent the whin bushes in its path, hitting him like a blow in the chest as he breasted the ridge and stopped, focusing his gaze on Steynton spread below. He turned his head slowly towards the hamlet of Low Rigg and what was left of its ruined Hall, crouched like a black widow spider against the unsullied purity of a thousand daffodils.

  Not that either the Hall or its garden could be discerned properly from here. The house was but a dark, distant huddle and the flowers were simply the dancing, golden haze he remembered from the previous day, though the vision of both was one which would be permanently, indelibly imprinted on his memory. He’d gone there yesterday to say his farewells, intending finally to lay the last of the ghosts. He’d left his car outside the Moorcock and walked up the last yards of the steep road and through the stone gateposts, stepping across the flagged garden, feeling as though he were almost wading through daffodils. Coming suddenly upon desolation.

  Time no longer existed there. Left to its own silence, Low Rigg Hall was a heap of stone slowly returning to the earth from which it had once been gouged; jackdaws and crows had already begun colonising its treacherous chimney stacks and the parts of the roofs which hadn’t caved in. He was appalled to find how soon disintegration had taken over after the fire, aided by a severe winter. Now the winds were blowing through the eyeless windows, chimneys were crumbling, wind and weather had caused an avalanche of stone slates to relinquish their hold and slide to the ground. Only its thick, stout walls remained to show where rooms had once been.

  The old building, once the fire had caught hold, had never really stood a chance. Its dry, ancient timbers fed the flames, and by the time the fire engines had arrived, hampered by the appalling road conditions, the place was an inferno. Now it was nothing but a shell, save for one wing which had partially escaped, though most of its contents had been consumed, gone the way of all the other furniture in the house. It was a miracle that the only life lost in that conflagration had been Dot Nagle’s.

  After three and a half centuries, Low Rigg Hall, as such, had ceased to be, and common sense dictated it was better left so, at least until its departed spirits were at rest. In time, someone with money or pretensions might see possibilities in it, might buy it and remake another home where the old one had stood. Put in a modern central heating system and hang coach lamps by the front door. Install state-of-the-art bathrooms and a country pine kitchen, complete with Aga. Tame the garden and lay patios. Come summer, they might discover a rampant, defiant rose spilling itself unchecked on the back wall, in spring look out on the ocean of daffodils which had lain dormant and unsuspected beneath the cold winter earth. Maybe that’s how it would happen. Meanwhile, the house waited, a ruined, brooding presence in an inimical landscape.

  Richmond had spent the last three months preparing the evidence. Eddie Nagle would face prosecution when he was fit. The severe burns he had suffered had not added appreciably to his good looks, but he would live to take the blame for his part in the two murders. He was freely admitting that part in the hopes of a mitigation of his sentence: he had made a full and detailed statement of what had taken place on both occasions. He’d survive. People like Eddie Nagle were natural survivors.

  As was Philip Denshaw who, without any effort or demur on his part, was now installed with Elvira in her flat, with a new piano and the task of tracking down and replenishing as many of his lost music scores and books as was possible, a fact he appeared to mourn mor
e than the tragic events which had caused their loss, and which seemed scarcely to have made a dent in his conscience.

  Richmond thought fleetingly of the spare, elegant, self-sufficient lifestyle Elvira had created for herself in the flat high above the town, and asked himself if we didn’t all have a streak of masochism in our natures.

  What had made her offer to share a home with her father? The same sort of instinct which had caused her to make one last determined effort to make up the differences between herself and Peter, that had got him to agree to come to her flat on the night Wyn Austwick was killed? A genuine desire for reconciliation? That was what she said had been her motive.

  Sonia at least believed her. But then, scepticism wasn’t in Sonia’s nature. She’d been destined from birth to do what she was now doing: training for ordination, intending eventually to become a parish priest. Perhaps she’d help to redress the balance by becoming almost certainly a better one than ever her husband had tried to be, Richmond suspected.

  He stood thinking about them all, hands thrust deep into his jacket pockets, collar turned up, almost blown off his feet, his eyes watering, ears aching with the penetrating wind, every breath a knife-thrust into the lungs. The sad-green hills, from here descending to the grey valley, were blue on the other side, three-dimensional in the translucency of the air; except for a few white, puffy, racing clouds the sky was blue as a dunnock’s egg. The scene had its own harsh, unique and, for him, unforgettable beauty. He doubted whether he’d ever see it again.