House of Silence

by Gillard, Linda

  Gwen joined in with the general laughter, glad of a moment’s relaxation. Composed now, Rae looked at her daughters, smiling vaguely, unsure of the meaning of the joke. She looked down at her plate and speared a piece of potato. ‘Alfie will come back,’ she said firmly. ‘Because it’s Christmas.’

  ‘Yes, Ma,’ Vivien replied, her voice as frayed as her nerves. ‘That’s right. Alfie will be back.’

  After lunch, Gwen was banished to the sitting room while the sisters cleared away. She found Frances curled up on the sofa, staring into the fire, her empty wine glass on a side table.

  ‘They still won’t let me help,’ said Gwen, bending down to the log basket. ‘I’ve been sent to tend the fire.’

  Frances didn’t look up. ‘There’s a dishwasher. Viv and Hattie will be arguing over how it should be loaded. Deb will be making an enormous pot of tea and wondering how soon she can plunder the turkey carcase for a sandwich… It’s the same every Christmas. It was only ever the men who made it bearable.’

  ‘Men?’

  ‘Alfie. Daniel. There used to be husbands in the old days. Mine and Deborah’s. Then there were lovers…’ She looked up and added, with an attempt at a smile, ‘Mine, not Deborah’s. Now it’s just Alfie and a lot of lonely old women… Sorry, I didn’t mean to include you in that. I still haven’t quite adjusted to the idea of Alfie bringing a girlfriend home for Christmas. It’s never happened before. He must think a lot of you. Or alternatively, he doesn’t, since he’s prepared to inflict his awful family on you.’

  Gwen settled down on the hearthrug and watched flames stir around the new log. ‘Oh, I’m used to awful families. Not that I think this one is awful. But I used to have one of my own. Really awful. I miss it now.’

  ‘Did you have a black sheep?’

  ‘We only had black sheep. House rules.’

  Frances laughed, showing even white teeth. Gwen could see she’d once been a beauty, perhaps would be still, if her features weren’t so tainted with scorn and bitterness. The cold, grey eyes were focussed now, alight with interest. ‘Do tell. What did your black sheep do?’

  ‘You name it. Drink. Drugs. Lots of sex. My aunt used to say, “If you can’t have success, there’s always excess.” They lived life to the hilt.’

  ‘Well, good for them!’

  ‘Yes… They’re all dead now, unfortunately.’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s OK. They died a long time ago.’

  ‘Were they happy? Living lives of excess?’

  ‘Oh, no, I don’t think so. Briefly, perhaps. My uncle Frank was perpetually in love. Well, what he called love. I can’t say it ever seemed to make him happy. But then he fell for some pretty unsavoury types. Male,’ Gwen added. ‘But I think he preferred excitement to happiness anyway. If he was ever in danger of achieving a state of contentment, Uncle Frank would sabotage himself.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Oh, screwing around. Fits of obsessive jealousy. Getting himself beaten up. Messy stuff.’

  ‘How sad… Who drank?’

  ‘My aunt Samantha. I think there was probably an underlying mental health problem - she suffered terribly with depression - and she managed it with alcohol. Or thought she did. But it killed her in the end.’

  ‘And who did drugs?’

  ‘My mother. She did quite a lot of sex too. She was very beautiful and found it hard to say no. She didn’t have loving parents, you see, so when she grew up and got a lot of attention from men, she didn’t really know how to handle it. That’s what my aunt said, anyway. Beauty was a burden for my mother and it attracted the wrong sort of men. So she lived life in the fast lane. Until she crashed.’

  Frances studied the profile of the young woman who had catalogued her family tragedies calmly, without bitterness, with even a touch of irony. Despite herself, Frances was impressed. She’d wondered why Alfie had made an exception and brought Gwen to Creake Hall. When she’d met her, she’d assumed from the pretty face and figure that Alfie must be infatuated, but talking to Gwen, sensing the steel beneath the easy-going surface, Frances was forced to ask herself if, finally, at nearly thirty, Alfie had fallen in love.

  It wasn’t a comfortable thought. Frances didn’t begrudge Alfie his happiness, it was just the sobering realisation that Alfie was no longer a boy, wasn’t even really a young man any more. Alfie had grown up and moved on. Found himself a lovely girl, with brains, beauty and a kind heart. And Frances?… Frances was forty-four and about to be divorced for the third time.

  If you can’t have success, there’s always excess.

  She began to experience the gnawing hunger that was nothing to do with food; a hunger that was assuaged - briefly - by sex; a hunger that booze, in sufficient quantities, would dull for a few hours. And if she couldn’t get laid, why the hell shouldn’t she get drunk?

  Reaching for her wine glass, Frances was about to go in search of the bottle of Merlot, when her eyes fell on Gwen, sitting on the rug, gazing into the fire, her arms looped around her knees. Frances experienced a pang of something like pity as she remembered the girl was here because she had nowhere else to spend Christmas. Eyeing her empty glass with irritation, Frances said, ‘You don’t drink, do you?’

  ‘No. I tried a little social drinking at college but I was horribly ill. The doctor said it was an allergy, but I’ve always wondered if it was some sort of DIY aversion therapy. My system rejecting booze because I’d seen what it did to my aunt.’

  ‘What was your aunt like when she was sober?’

  ‘She was lovely! So much fun! But she lacked self-confidence. I think she was quite shy, actually. She was a singer. Used to play clubs and pubs. And sometimes she worked in the theatre, singing in the chorus. Phantom of the Opera, that sort of thing. She wasn’t famous, just a jobbing singer. She used to have a drink to calm her nerves before a gig. Then she’d have two. Then there’d be drinks after the show. Other people would buy them for her and she couldn’t really say no. Eventually she got it into her head that she needed booze to perform.’

  ‘Maybe that was just her excuse. For drinking.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Alcoholics are so bloody devious,’ Frances muttered. ‘Sorry, Gwen. I didn’t mean to speak ill of your aunt. I was talking generally.’

  ‘That’s OK, I quite agree. Alcoholics are bloody devious. They’re also bloody boring. But my Aunt Sam liked the person she became after she’d had a few. She said, when she had a bottle of wine inside her, she became the person she’d always wanted to be.’

  ‘But it didn’t stop at one bottle. Or even two.’

  ‘No, it didn’t. And then she stopped liking the person she became. Started hating her.’

  ‘And then she drank because she couldn’t stand the monster she’d become.’

  Gwen looked at Frances and hesitated before replying, ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  Frances looked down at her manicured hands and examined the fine lines and protruding veins with loathing. There were no brown age spots yet. But they would come. She twisted the rings on her bony fingers, tugging at them viciously, then looked up at Gwen. ‘And you say you miss them? This flock of black sheep?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Very much. Especially at Christmas.’

  ‘You must have loved them a great deal, despite their appalling habits. How very generous of you.’ She hadn’t meant to sound sarcastic. Why was it that even when she tried to be kind, it came out sounding callous?

  ‘I don’t think it’s so very hard tolerating other people’s faults,’ Gwen replied. ‘I mean, it’s much tougher accepting your own, isn’t it? Tougher still believing other people can actually accept what you can’t. Love what you can’t.’

  ‘You think self-hatred’s a cushy option, then?’

  ‘Yes, compared to self-love, I do. The death certificates say my family died of booze, drugs and AIDS. But what really killed them all was low self-esteem.’

  Frances’ jaw went slack and her eyes widened wit
h shock, as if she’d been struck.

  Gwen had given a lot of thought to her Christmas gifts. She’d asked Alfie about his family, their hobbies and interests and she’d deliberated, drawing up shortlists of possible gifts until she felt certain she’d hit upon the perfect present. Alfie had teased her, saying, ‘They won’t go to half this trouble for you, you know. You’ll be lucky to get a book token.’

  ‘I don’t want them to go to any trouble,’ Gwen had replied. ‘I’m the guest. I should bring gifts. And anyway, I enjoy choosing presents. It isn’t a chore for me, it’s fun.’

  The women in the Holbrook family were delighted with their gifts. Gwen gave Vivien The Virago Book of Women Gardeners. Deborah received a selection of aromatherapy oils. Frances was pleased with a vintage Italian silk headscarf and Rae was touched by the gift of an Oloroso sherry - her favourite tipple. Gwen’s triumph however was her present for Hattie, who unwrapped her bulky parcel eagerly, tearing at the paper like a child. Inside, she found a large plastic carrier bag sealed with Sellotape. Beside herself with excitement, she ripped at the plastic. As the bag burst open, Hattie was inundated with scraps of fabric. She squealed and fell upon them, sorting through and exclaiming.

  ‘This is Japanese kimono silk, isn’t it? And this brocade is just gorgeous! And look at this lace! And all the different velvets! Yummy! Gwen, where on earth did you get all these?’

  ‘From the waste bins at the BBC. These are bits and pieces left over from making period costumes, so there are some lovely fabrics there. Most of the pieces are small, but some are a decent size. Alfie told me you did patchwork and other crafts, so I thought you might like a de luxe scrap bag. I tried to choose the most interesting bits, things I didn’t think you’d have.’

  Hattie cast the bag aside and launched herself at Gwen, flinging her arms round her neck. ‘Thank you! Thank you! What a wonderful present! It couldn’t have been more perfect. I shall make some splendid quilts with these!’ She looked up suddenly as an idea dawned. ‘I can finish the charm quilt now! We must get cracking on those paper templates later.’ With that, Hattie sat cross-legged on the floor and began to sort through the pile of fabric scraps, stroking silks, velvets and satins.

  She showed little interest in the rest of the present giving, until it came to her turn to distribute gifts. Hattie presented her mother with hand-knitted bed socks which, after only a cursory glance, Rae set aside. Vivien also received socks, with which she showed every appearance of being pleased. Deborah was given a fluffy knitted scarf in a vibrant shade of green that, as it was unwrapped, caused Frances to wince, but Deborah expressed delight and slung the scarf valiantly round her neck, like a feather boa. Frances’ small gift turned out to be a quilted case for sunglasses and she thanked Hattie with reasonable grace, relieved not to have fared worse.

  Hattie had insisted that Gwen open her present last. As Hattie hauled it out from under the Christmas tree, watched anxiously by the women, Gwen realised the rest of the family knew what the gift was and were apprehensive, even embarrassed on her behalf. She braced herself, but couldn’t help feeling a thrill of excitement as she tore away paper, revealing a cardboard box that had once held a duvet.

  Inside the box was a Postage Stamp quilt - a patchwork quilt made like a mosaic with tiny squares of fabric, only slightly bigger than a stamp. Gwen was familiar with the traditional design and estimated there must be three thousand pieces. Shaking out the quilt, she gasped as she realised it was double bed-sized and revised her estimate to six thousand.

  Gwen clapped her hand to her mouth in shock and said, ‘Hattie, you can’t give me this!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘This will be a family heirloom one day. It should stay in the family.’

  ‘But I want you to have it. You’ll appreciate it, what went into the making of it. The family have watched me making it for years and they’re all bored to tears with it. And I don’t think any of them would ever use it. So I’d like you to have it. I think you’ll look after it. Maybe,’ Hattie added tentatively, ‘you’ll become fond of it.’

  ‘I love it already! I can’t tell you how thrilled I am! This is the best present I’ve ever had. Thank you so much!’ Her eyes shining with tears, Gwen put her arms round Hattie and the two women hugged each other, while the rest of the family looked on, bemused but thankful they hadn’t been the recipient of Hattie’s gaudy magnum opus.

  As Vivien collected up the discarded wrapping paper and crammed it into a bin liner, Rae turned the pages of the scrapbook Deborah had made for her, recording Alfie’s performances over the last year. Frances dozed on the sofa while Deborah and Gwen helped Hattie sort her scraps into cottons suitable for the charm quilt and a pile of more exotic fabrics that she said she would use for special projects.

  Deborah held up some brightly coloured satins and taffetas. ‘Aren’t they lovely? You know, it’s never occurred to me, Hattie, but I could bring you home some scraps from school - stuff left over from making the costumes for the Christmas play. The mums make all the outfits but I could ask, if there are any scraps, could they save them for me? It was Cinderella this year and the costumes for the ball scene were fabulous!’ She turned to Gwen. ‘I just love to see the boys dressing up. The girls are used to it, of course - party frocks are nothing special to them, nor is make-up these days - but the boys get so excited about dressing up in bright colours. Some of them get quite stage-struck. It’s so sweet!’

  Gwen had been enjoying sorting the fabrics and the chatty companionship of the women, when suddenly she felt her spirits plummet. It took her only a few seconds to work out why. She’d remembered Alfie’s letters home from school and the lies he’d told. She got to her feet and carefully folded the postage stamp quilt. ‘I’m going to take this upstairs now,’ she said to the company at large, avoiding Hattie’s eye. ‘I think I should keep it out of the way of the fire and cups of tea. I wouldn’t want it to get damaged.’ She hugged the folded quilt to her chest and left the room.

  Gwen spent the rest of Christmas Day removing papers from the Thousand Pyramids quilt while Hattie cut triangles from her new selection of fabrics. Rae and her daughters variously watched TV, dozed or read their new books. The atmosphere was subdued. When Gwen wondered aloud if they should ring Alfie to find out how things were at the flat, there was a long silence, eventually broken by Frances, who looked at Gwen, her expression grave, and said, ‘When things go badly wrong for Alfie, he deals with it like a wounded animal. He goes to ground. He’d probably prefer to be left alone.’

  There was a note of compassion in her voice that Gwen hadn’t heard before. For once Frances didn’t appear to be scoring points off Alfie’s girlfriend. Her aim seemed to be to spare him further pain. Alfie had said Frances was the sister who knew him best and the rest of the family seemed happy to defer to her judgement. So was Gwen, who felt oddly reluctant to contact him. But the awkward questions wouldn’t go away. If Frances wasn’t in fact Alfie’s sister, how did she know him so well? And why would Frances - hitherto the last word in selfishness - care so much about his welfare?

  Gwen bade the family an early goodnight. She tidied the heap of paper triangles into their envelope, folded the Pyramids quilt top and carried them up to her attic room. Getting ready for bed, she felt relieved Christmas Day was over for another year. Things could have been a lot worse. Though hardly for Alfie… As she lay in bed, open-eyed in the darkness, Gwen contemplated Boxing Day. Alfie would return to Creake Hall. And she would see Marek again. Both events filled her with an unsettling mixture of relief and dread. It was some time before Gwen, still perplexed, fell into an uneasy sleep.

  Gwen

  I woke up cold. Reaching for the quilt, I realised it had slid on to the floor. I switched on the bedside light and blinked at my watch. Not long after midnight. I got out of bed, dragged the quilt back and settled down again, shivering, but I was wide-awake now. I decided to sit up and read until I felt tired again.

  There was a selectio
n of old paperbacks on a small bookcase and my eye lit on a couple of Georgette Heyer’s Regency romances - the sort of hot water bottle reads I often turned to in times of ill-health and heartbreak. I turned on the fan heater and snuggled down comfortably with the gothic intrigues of The Reluctant Widow.

  Perhaps the plot was over-familiar. My mind wandered and so did my eyes - over to the table where I’d placed the envelope containing the paper triangles. There were hundreds of them now, many cut from letters sent by Rae’s estranged husband and a boy who didn’t grow up to become my boyfriend. It was possible those jigsaw pieces of correspondence held answers to some of my questions. I was certain I didn’t have the right to read the letters, but, on the other hand, I was equally certain I had the right to know who Alfie was, and it didn’t look as if anyone in the Holbrook household was likely to inform me, least of all Alfie.

  My eyes moved mechanically over a few more pages of Heyer, taking in nothing, then I shut the book and laid it aside. I got out of bed and fetched the envelope. The room was warmer now, so I switched off the heater and climbed back into bed. I tipped the contents of the envelope on to the quilt and surveyed the pieces.

  There seemed no point in examining the boy’s letters. They were unlikely to tell me anything about the man who pretended to be an adult version of their author. That left Freddie’s letters, so far unexamined. Freddie, Alfie’s father, who left Rae and took their son to live abroad. Rae had said she’d driven him away. She’d talked without rancour of being deserted by the love of her life, of being deprived of her only son, the only child she appeared to love. Surely Freddie’s letters would shed some light on the various mysteries of Creake Hall?

  My last qualm of conscience was silenced by the reassuring thought that, provided I didn’t refer to the contents, no one would ever know I’d read them. On this dubious moral footing, I began to scan Freddie’s letters.

  He didn’t seem like a philanderer. There were only odd phrases of course, but reading those and exercising a little imagination, you could see that this man cared for Rae and was trying to help her recover from some serious illness or mental breakdown. He mentioned Hattie with affection and what appeared to be a sense of responsibility, but I could find nothing about Alfie until I came upon this piece: