The Silence

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘Then she said, “So I keep all old papers and letters, just in case”.’ Nell’s eyes were shining. ‘Michael, if anyone in the West family has any more old letters or notes about the past, it will be Emily.’

  ‘You clever girl,’ said Michael, and began to kiss her.

  TWENTY THREE

  Emily West was charmed to be invited to Oxford by Nell, and enchanted to meet Dr Flint who had collected her from the station and driven her to The Mitre, where Nell, the dear generous girl, had insisted on paying for a couple of nights’ stay.

  ‘Far too extravagant, my dear, but my word, what a beautiful place, and the staff all so helpful and courteous.’

  ‘It’s my pleasure,’ said Nell, smiling at the small figure with its froth of grey hair and beaming snub-nosed face, and the scarlet jacket. Emily had explained she had worn the jacket so Dr Flint would be able to pick her out at the station. She had not, she said, wanted to risk getting overlooked in the crowds. Nell thought, but did not say, it was unlikely that Emily, with her air of finding such delight in everything, would ever be overlooked anywhere.

  ‘And I know you offered to travel up to Aberdeen, Nell, but it’s a very long journey, and you have your life here and your beautiful shop with all those lovely things.’ Emily broke off to look with pleasure around the little sitting room of Quire Court, which Nell had furnished with several of her choicer pieces from stock. ‘And I do enjoy travelling, you know, and meeting new people and seeing new places. Also, I’ve never been to Oxford before, isn’t that a shameful admission?’

  ‘I’ll show you around properly tomorrow,’ said Michael.

  ‘Would you really, Dr Flint? Now that would be a great treat.’

  ‘Only if you stop being so formal. Please call me Michael.’

  ‘Well,’ said Emily West, looking delighted, ‘I do feel, you know, that if you’ve worked hard to achieve a doctorate you ought to be called by it as often as possible. But I’ll manage Michael, on condition that I can be Emily.’

  ‘It’s a deal,’ said Michael, smiling at her. ‘Do you know, Emily, I wanted to meet you ever since I read your letters in Caudle.’

  ‘Egg-nog Village,’ said Beth, quietly, and Emily beamed at her.

  ‘Now that’s a very good name for it,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk about that later, Beth. There have been some very interesting people who’ve lived there. And I’m glad to hear my letters made you want to meet me, Michael. Margery says they’re nothing but rambles.’

  ‘I like rambles,’ said Michael. ‘And yours are very vivid. Have you ever thought of trying your hand at fiction, Emily? A short story, perhaps? There’s such energy in your writing.’

  Emily became pink with pleasure. ‘That’s a great compliment from someone like you. As a matter of fact I met a very nice young man recently who has some kind of publishing interest – although I don’t know quite what – and he said one can get stories published without all the fuss of sending them off to publishing companies and one only has to pay a very modest sum of money, and he offered to—’

  ‘No!’ said Nell and Michael in unison, and Emily looked surprised.

  Michael said, ‘Emily, when it comes to getting things published they pay you. Please remember that. But if you do decide to take a swing at a short story, let me read it first, and I’ll advise you if I can.’

  ‘He’s good at helping people write things,’ offered Beth. ‘On account of writing about Wilberforce.’

  ‘But Beth helps me to write about Wilberforce,’ said Michael.

  ‘Shall I meet Wilberforce? I’m very fond of cats.’

  ‘Yes, certainly you can meet him. Would you like to have afternoon tea in my rooms at Oriel? Wilberforce might not be very polite, though.’

  ‘I would love that,’ said Emily, at once. ‘I don’t care how impolite Wilberforce is.’

  ‘Good. Beth, shall we make Aunt Emily a cup of tea before I drive her back to The Mitre?’

  ‘Very nice,’ said Emily approvingly to Nell, as the two of them went into the kitchen. ‘Oh, very nice, my dear. Beautiful manners, and so good looking. English literature, did you say? The Romantic era in particular, I should think? Yes, I thought it must be, looking like that. I knew a young man – a long time ago – who studied poetry, in fact he even wrote some although it wasn’t very good. He was very romantic, but he had great energy at certain times, if you follow my meaning, Nell dear.’

  ‘Aunt Emily, you’re a constant source of surprise,’ said Nell, grinning.

  ‘Am I? Nell, I’m so glad you and Beth came to no harm at Stilter House. I did worry about Esmond, you know. That’s why I tried to contact you.’

  ‘I’ll tell you the whole story properly when we’ve got a couple of uninterrupted hours,’ said Nell. ‘But for now we’re trying to find out what happened to Esmond, and that’s why I phoned you. I thought you might have an odd letter or something that might provide a clue.’

  ‘I’ve brought everything for you to look at, as I promised,’ said Emily, happily. ‘Charlotte had some work done on Stilter House some years ago, and she was all for throwing out all the old papers at the same time, but I said she would be destroying bits of history, and when she said she hadn’t the room, I said, I had. So I took a couple of suitcases back to my house, stuffed with old letters and photographs and household books. They’ve been in a cupboard in the spare room ever since, and when you rang, all I had to do was tip them all into the carpet-bag. The man who cleans the drains helped me carry it to the taxi, and the taxi driver carried it to the train and a helpful person at the station leapt up and put it on the train by my seat. People are so kind.’

  Nell thought that for Emily West there would always be someone ready to be kind. It was to be hoped that not too many people would kindly try to con her out of money. Michael, who had come back in with the tray of tea, said, ‘We hoped you’d come out to dinner if you aren’t too tired after the journey.’

  ‘I’d love to.’

  ‘Do you like Italian food?’ asked Nell.

  ‘Last year I went to Florence and ate mountains of it,’ said Emily, happily.

  ‘There’s an Italian trattoria – family run – where they allow children until nine,’ said Michael. ‘We could go there. After nine the students tend to take over and it turns into a madhouse. It won’t be too bad tonight because it’s end of term, but we’ll go fairly early if that’s all right.’

  ‘I once had a spaghetti-eating contest there,’ confided Beth. ‘I won.’

  ‘It was a tomato-sauce nightmare,’ said Michael ‘They still talk about it.’

  ‘I’m having another contest when my friend Ellie comes to stay from America,’ said Beth, unrepentant.

  After Emily had left and Beth had gone to her room to email Ellie about Emily’s visit and the possibility of a spaghetti contest, Nell opened the carpet-bag with a sense of nervous anticipation. It was half past four and she had two and a half hours before Michael collected them for dinner at seven.

  Would there be anything in these stored-away papers and memories that would answer the remaining questions about Stilter House and its ghosts? Would Julia West’s murderer be here? That sinister person who had hidden in Esmond’s tapestry world, and hissed that urgent command to him never to speak.

  You never did speak, thought Nell, sadly. Esmond, I wish I could reach out to you now. I wish I could put my arms round you and reassure you, and make you shriek with glee like Beth sometimes does. Her fingers brushed the neat bundles of letters and old accounts in the bag, and for a moment she felt – as she sometimes did with old furniture – the sensation of other fingertips reaching out from the long-ago and touching hers. She sat very still, but the moment passed. And anyway, thought Nell, these particular ghosts are far away in Derbyshire, and I don’t believe in ghosts.

  Were there any ghosts in Emily’s papers? It did not really matter if there were not; Emily would enjoy staying in Oxford and looking around Oriel College and maybe some of the
others if there was time. They might take her on the river, too.

  And, thought Nell, I can’t delay opening up this carpet-bag any more. I’d better drag the past into the light, and see if there are any answers. There won’t be, of course, but I’ll have to satisfy myself that I’ve searched every avenue.

  It took the best part of an hour to work through the miscellaneous jumble and sort wheat from chaff. There was a good deal of chaff, although most of it would be interesting to study at another date. There were household books and photographs; there were also receipts or accounts for goods purchased or services rendered, and handwritten recipes from a lavisher, cholesterol-unaware time when culinary directions began with such things as, ‘Take a pint of thick cream and six eggs,’ or, ‘Lard the cutlets with fat pork.’ There was also something called a Drunken Loaf, which apparently involved soaking hot bread with a bottle of red wine, then spreading it with ‘as much cream as it will take.’ Nell set this one aside for the medieval Christmas evening Quire Court was hoping to host.

  And then, at the very bottom of the bag, she found a battered, but intact, cardboard folder, bearing the words, ‘Caudle Moor Almshouses.’

  Would this yield anything relevant? Hadn’t there been something about Simeon Acton having a hand in building or endowing the almshouses? Nell reached for her notes. Yes, here it was.

  Simeon Acton had built six almshouses in Caudle, for ‘elderly people in the area who found themselves in difficult circumstances, or for people who had suffered hardship and were unable to work.’ That fact had been taken from Samuel Burlap’s notes, so it could reliably be regarded as primary source. And the tablet inset into the houses themselves had referred to ‘the shelter, succour and sustenance of the old or the frail.’ Nell thought this endowing arrangement was still in force in some English villages and towns, although in most cases, the Local Authority and assorted Social Services had taken over the responsibility, of course.

  There was further evidence of a link between the Actons and the Wests in that Ralph West, keen to buy the land on which Acton House had stood, had seemed to know about a Nathaniel Acton who was Simeon’s descendant, and had contacted him via the almshouses trust and its bank. The link was tenuous, but it was there.

  Nell set her notes down, took a deep breath and opened the cardboard folder. The scent of old paper met her: the scent of old memories and forgotten loves and sadnesses and dreams and nightmares. The folder might contain the secret of Julia Acton’s death or – what was far more likely – it would simply hold the unconsidered trifles of bureaucracy.

  There was a modest wodge of papers in the folder, some typewritten, some handwritten, but on the top was a letter headed, Caudle Moor Almshouses, Caudle Moor, Derbyshire. Matron and Chief Administrator: Miss C Pursefoot.

  It was dated 1940, and was addressed to Mr John West at Stilter House. Charlotte’s father? Nell would ask Emily later, but the date seemed about right.

  She smoothed Miss Pursefoot’s letter out.

  Dear Mr West

  Since you are the last remaining Trustee of the Caudle Moor Almshouse Trust, I am sending you the surviving files pertaining to the Trust.

  As you know, the Local Authority is to take over the administration of the almshouses next month, so we are in the process of packing away and generally removing all of the private files. It is a sad day for us to see the Trust dissolved, but times change, and we are hopeful that the new regime will be a good one and beneficial to our small community.

  I think some of the past residents’ papers may well be in the box; a number of them occupied their time writing about their lives in the village, and these could perhaps be of interest to those studying local history. If Herr Hitler’s Luftwaffe really do start dropping bombs on us, preserving fragments of Caudle Moor’s heritage will probably be the last thing we will worry about. I do feel, though, that we should try to protect a few shreds of our history, so I am sending these random jottings to you for safe-keeping.

  On behalf of my colleagues, may I express our sincere thanks for your help, support, and frequent financial generosity to the Almshouses Trust over the last few years. It is a matter for considerable regret that the Trust cannot continue, but in these days of rising financial costs and poor returns on investments, it is very understandable that people can no longer make the commitment that once they did.

  Yours very truly,

  C Pursefoot, Matron and Chief Administrator.

  Written accounts of the past, thought Nell, trying to quell the surge of hope. Those dear souls who lived in the almshouses recorded their memories of Caudle Moor. People who lived there – people who could have known Ralph West – even Isobel Acton.

  The first papers were merely exchanges of letters between the Almshouse Trust and the Local Authority and the Bank. There were smudgy carbon copies of letters sent, and sheafs of letters received. Nell ploughed on, going deeper into the past.

  The 1930s – the Abdication, about which some of the residents had clearly felt strongly, one lady having written a very scathing account of it, and ending with the disgusted comment that Edward VIII ‘could have married anyone.’

  The 1920s – wonderful black-and-white photographs of people standing outside the almshouses, the younger women wearing tubular frocks with pleats and bobbed hair, the older ones possessing what Nell always thought of as the S-shaped silhouette of Edwardian ladies.

  There was an inner envelope containing some handwritten lines of poetry – Nell glanced at these and saw they had been penned during the Great War. She placed this envelope carefully on her desk, to study properly later, wondering whether the unknown young man who had written them had come home.

  Here were a few papers from the early 1900s, which might be more fruitful. Letters which someone had deemed it worth preserving – they seemed mostly to be an exchange of family news, but remembering Emily’s view on how Pepys and people like the Pastons had handed down golden nuggets of domestic history, Nell set these aside as well.

  The next layer was a set of handwritten papers – rather rounded writing, endearingly careful. At first Nell thought it might be a child’s writing, then she realized it was the writing of an adult who was not very used to writing at all. Again, it was probably nothing, but she would skim the first few paragraphs.

  The first paragraph said,

  ‘I suppose I always knew my son was infatuated with Isobel Acton.’

  Nell blinked, read this sentence twice, glanced at the clock and, seeing it was not yet six, took the papers over to the sofa, and curled up against the cushions to read them.

  I suppose I always knew my son was infatuated with Isobel Acton. He wasn’t alone, of course – plenty of men had felt the same. It was not so much that she was beautiful – although she was – it was that she had a quality that attracted men. In the privacy of these pages I’ll admit that I would have welcomed a night with Madame Acton myself. But when I was whole and hale, there were quite a lot of ladies with whom I shared agreeable, if illicit, hours, so I’m not complaining.

  But my son’s infatuation with Isobel was a different matter. I always felt it began when he was very young, for he was an impressionable boy. I did my best to guide him onto the right paths, but I was aware that my own reputation was at odds with any moral principles or rules I might want to instil in him. When you’re known to have bedded most of the ladies in Caudle Moor and Caudle Magna – well, all right, Abbots Caudle and maybe Lower Caudle too – you aren’t in any position to preach.

  I left the preaching to the boy’s mother, but I did my best. And until he was twelve years old I thought I had done a fair job.

  That was when Isobel Acton was charged with the murder of her husband, Simeon, and my life was ruined.

  We all knew Isobel was guilty, but the word was that the jury had been threatened or bribed to give a verdict of Not Guilty. None of those twelve men ever spoke of it, but there were some shamefaced expressions in the village for a long time after the
trial.

  Isobel went back to Acton House afterwards. ‘Brazen as a church bell,’ said the ladies of the village. They always liked to disapprove of her, although I’d have to say she gave them a good deal to disapprove of, and if the stories could be believed she’d had more men than you can shake a stick at. But then who am I to judge? Still, I’ll always regret that she and I never had that night together.

  For a time after the trial it seemed as if life might sink back into its normal pattern, which is to say it would return to being quiet and – let’s be honest – a bit smug. The world hasn’t really touched Caudle Moor, at least not so far. They say they’ll be war with Germany in the next ten years, and it’ll be the war to end all wars, and if that’s so Caudle Moor might find itself shaken out of its placid complacency.

  Nell sent another frantic look at the clock. Still only quarter past six. She would read as much of this as she could. It did not seem to be leading to any details about Esmond or Julia West’s death, but if the writer progressed his story, it might do so later. She managed to resist the urge to flip forward to find his identity, and turned to the next page.

  The ink was of a different colour now, so the writer must have made entries at irregular intervals. This might be useful or it might not.

  But the next page began with words that made Nell’s mind spring to attention.

  ‘Today Mr Ralph West brought his boy, Esmond, to visit us all, and the nightmare I had kept so deeply buried began to claw its way back to the surface again.’

  Esmond, thought Nell. Esmond . . .

  TWENTY FOUR

  Mr West used to visit the almshouses every two or three months. Those of us living here knew he had taken on some of old Simeon Acton’s charity work. Philanthropy, they call it, and we’re supposed to be properly grateful, although I never tugged a forelock to any man in my life, and I’m not likely to do so now, never mind my affliction or how well I’ve been looked after by the Acton Trust. I have been looked after well, I’ll admit that, but it’s a difficult thing for a proud man to accept this kind of charity. When I was a boy we called it going on the Parish, and it was as shameful then as it is now. The Acton Trust and the almshouses aren’t handed out by the parish, but it’s still charity as far as I’m concerned. I hate it. Hate it. That’s one of the reasons I make these entries in my book. I reckon if I can pour out my anger and bitterness onto paper, I shan’t need to be angry or bitter with the folk around me. I shan’t need to rail against the stupid rules that say almshouse folk have to be in their houses by nine o’clock each night, for instance. Nine o’clock! That’s a harsh curfew for one used to roaming around of an evening, without noticing the hour. Still, my roaming days are behind me now. That’s another cause for anger and bitterness.