Tower of Silence

by Sarah Rayne

  Great-uncle Matthew’s clock was on guard duty in the hall, but she stuck her tongue out at the horrid ticking thing as she went past it, jammed dad’s mobile phone into the pocket of her leather biking jacket because you never knew, and zipped the jacket up to the neck.

  She went out through the side door, which Miss March called the garden door, locking it carefully so that nothing spooky could sneak in and hide inside Great-uncle Matthew’s clock, and set off through the orchard.

  It was a sharp cold afternoon–the kind of late-October afternoon that Emily liked. The cold pricked tears in your eyes so that you kept seeing things through a little blurry mist until you blinked the tears away, and there was a scent on the air that was a mixture of bonfires and wet leaves and woollen scarves that got into your mouth. The little orchard smelt of apples and the leaves felt dry and crackly as you walked across them. Nice. The disused road was nice as well. You had the feeling that you were walking backwards in time, or even into a different world altogether. Cowardly lions and white rabbits, thought Emily. Still, it’s easier than Alice’s rabbit-hole.

  She thought, at first, that she would not be able to go up to the tower, even like this, even in the middle of the afternoon for God’s sake, with people around, and a mobile phone in her pocket. But Dr Irvine’s off-hand remark–which Emily knew had not really been off-hand at all–had lodged in her memory, and Emily touched it in her mind for reassurance. Spike the nightmare’s guns. Confront the ghosts.

  Seen from right down on the ground, the old tower was as horrid as she had thought. It was dark and menacing and it was old, so old that you could almost smell the oldness breathing out from it, and you had the feeling that if you stretched out your hands you would be able to plunge them, wrist-deep, into the swirling miasma of the long-ago. As well as that, it seemed to lean over, as if it might be threatening to topple down onto her–Emily could just imagine that sudden tumble of blackened crumbling bricks cascading around her head, and the centuries of dust, and the dozens of bird skeletons, light and fragile and unbearably pitiful, in the way that bird skeletons were if you found them in a chimney. The absolute last thing she wanted to do was push open the deep-set little door and go inside. The door would probably be locked, anyhow.

  But it was not locked, wouldn’t you just know it? It swung gently inwards at her touch, and the hinges did not even creak. So it wasn’t a Hitchcock film after all, because a Hitchcock film would definitely have a creaking-hinge door. Emily hesitated, and then remembered that once she had looked properly inside, and seen that there was nothing to be afraid of, she would feel better. It would be nice to be able to ride past the tower without her heart hammering in panic every time.

  She had been prepared for a really bad smell the minute the door moved inwards–she had, in fact, been half holding her breath so that she would not get a faceful of wet-leaves, bird-droppings smell–but there was only a faint mustiness, and overlaying it the atmosphere of extreme age. But Emily received a strong impression of immense unhappiness, almost as if, once upon a time, someone had come here to deal with a huge sadness that could not be admitted to the world. It was as if that someone had spent hours and hours here, and as if all the sadness and all the brooding and the despair had eventually leaked into the crumbling black stones…

  That was completely absurd, of course. This was just a beaten-up old ruin, vaguely eerie, in the way beaten-up old ruins were eerie, and the sooner Emily came to grips with it, the better.

  Her eyes were adjusting to the dimness now, and she could see a flight of stone steps twisting their way up. They looked pretty steep, as steps went; those monks or whoever had lived here must have been very fit, although you would expect that of monks, what with all that fasting and stuff.

  Emily considered the steps, chewing her lower lip. She could hear, very faintly, the occasional beating of wings from the birds who flew across from the Stornforth sanctuary and perched on the tower, or sometimes came in through the narrow windows. But she did not think she was going up into all that twisting darkness, never mind if the view from the windows was the most extravagantly marvellous thing in the entire western hemisphere, and never mind if the birds were the long lost representatives of the great auk or the dodo. The steps were probably unsafe, anyhow, so that if you did manage to bring yourself to start climbing, you would probably end up beneath a pile of collapsed rubble. Scared? jeered an inner voice. You’re meant to be laying a ghost, remember? You might have known you’d duck out when it came to going all the way to the top. You’re a stooge and a coward, Emily Frost. But if it was being a stooge to stay safely on the ground floor, Emily would rather be a stooge than break her neck falling through crumbling stones.

  It was very quiet in here. There was nothing to be seen, but Emily was beginning to feel a bit spooked. She went outside, closing the door carefully, and walked back along the little rutted road that did not really lead anywhere except to Teind House.

  She was just in sight of the gap leading through to the orchard when a car drew up alongside, and Dr Irvine’s voice said, ‘Exorcising the ghosts, Emily?’

  He was just about the last person Emily had been expecting to see, and he looked so wildly attractive seated at the wheel of his car, so fiercely masculine without Moy’s background of filing cabinets and locked doors, that for a moment she simply stared at him and could not think of anything to say.

  But he made it all right; he said, ‘I hoped I might meet you–I called at the cottage, but Don said you were at Teind House this morning.’ His eyes went to the grim outline of the Round Tower. ‘You really were exorcising the ghosts, weren’t you?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Are you going back to Teind? Well, get in just for a minute, would you?’ He leaned over to open the passenger door. ‘I’ve got a proposition for you.’ When she was in the car, he said, ‘Don was telling me that you were looking round for things to occupy your time.’

  ‘Well, yes, although I’ve got two days at the school, and now Teind House—’

  ‘Could you fit something else in? Because I wondered if you might like to help me by visiting one or two of the inmates at Moy.’

  Emily regarded him. ‘Is this for real, or is it a made-up thing just to give me something to do?’

  ‘No, it’s real, I promise. And it’d be very low-key. I had the idea that you might try visiting one or two of the women–just to talk to them for half an hour or so. Quite ordinary conversation: current events or last night’s TV, or hairstyles or clothes.’

  ‘Would I visit them in their rooms?’

  ‘No, we’d probably set it up for you to be in one of the common rooms,’ said Patrick. ‘Easier from the security angle.’

  ‘You mean so that there’d be staff within reach?’

  He smiled. His eyes creased at the corners when he smiled like that. ‘Yes, you’d have to be within reach of the alarm bells,’ he said. ‘And there would be a few subjects to avoid, but I’d prime you on those beforehand. You’d be perfectly safe.’

  ‘I think I’d quite like to do it,’ said Emily after a moment, hoping he had not sensed that the comment about having to be within reach of alarm bells had sent a slight chill across the back of her neck. ‘I mean–if you think I could be of some help. It might be a bit awkward at first–a bit false and forced, until I get used to it. But it’d be quite a worthwhile thing to do, wouldn’t it?’

  He did not seem to have picked up the momentary chill. He smiled again, and said, ‘Good girl. I’ll set it up and phone you, shall I?’

  So that meant that now Emily would find her heart jumping with anticipation every time the phone rang. This would not do, it simply would not.

  ‘And listen, Emily, you’ll find it easier if you can think of these people as just unwell, or crippled.’

  ‘Cracked minds and damaged emotion-circuits. Battered souls who once stained the world with blood.’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’ He glanced at her, but this time he did not smile,
he looked at her more thoughtfully. ‘That’s rather a good way of putting it,’ he said. ‘People flinch from mental illness–especially this kind of violent mental illness–but they wouldn’t dream of flinching from someone with a broken leg or a furred-up set of arteries, or from a man in a wheelchair. And most of the people inside Moy have–patches of immense despair. Times when they know that what they’ve done and what they are makes them outcasts. That’s a terrible thing for any human being. It’s why I want you to visit some of them.’

  ‘Just as if I’m a friend.’

  ‘Yes.’ He had not restarted the car; he was turned towards her, his eyes alight with enthusiasm. ‘It’s quite tiring to talk to them, in fact it’s bloody exhausting,’ he said. ‘They draw on you–you can feel it happening sometimes. As if they’re trying to suck out your own sanity and absorb it. And at times you get glimpses of the–the aching loneliness, and the darkness in their minds—’ He stopped. ‘Sorry. I get carried away sometimes.’

  ‘I like hearing about it. In fact,’ said Emily, hoping this did not sound arrogant, ‘the more I know, the more I’ll understand and be able to help.’

  ‘Good girl,’ said Patrick again, and started the car.

  Emily, hearing the note of discussion-closure in his voice, felt unreasonably depressed.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Robbie Glennon was practically speechless with gratification when Dr Irvine asked him if he could be available for Thursday afternoon’s talk by a writer of mystery novels.

  ‘I want the right warders in attendance,’ Dr Irvine said. ‘I don’t think there’s going to be any trouble, but there’ll be twelve of our people in one room–four of them men–and there’ll be a good-looking female talking to them, so we need to be watchful but not intrusively so.’

  Robbie said at once that he understood. This was a bit of a departure for Moy, and it was important and serious. They did not want the likes of Flasher Logan upsetting people, not that the Flasher would be present, of course, but there might be others who would think it was funny to disconcert this Joanna Savile. He studied the list that Dr Irvine gave him, and said that it looked like a good mix of people, hoping this did not sound like crawling to the boss.

  ‘I think it’ll work all right,’ said Dr Irvine. ‘I’d like to have included Pippa from Don Frost’s wing, but when I suggested it to her she scuttled into a corner and crouched there for hours, her hands over her head. It’s a pity; I think she might have got something out of it.’

  Robbie thought so, as well. The odd, mostly silent Pippa was so clearly intelligent and interested in books, and if nothing else she might have enjoyed listening to the talk. But everybody knew that she never spoke, and she usually had to be coaxed even to come out of her own room. It was a sad case, said Dr Irvine, but they would keep trying to break through to her. He had it in mind to get Emily Frost to come in to talk to Pippa, he said; Don Frost had been asking around to see if there were any odd bits of voluntary work that Emily could do, and he thought they might kick off with this. If nothing else, Pippa would enjoy having someone as bright and young as Emily around, said Dr Irvine, and Robbie did not say that he would rather enjoy having Emily around himself, because Dr Irvine would hardly be thinking of Emily in quite the way that Robbie was thinking of her.

  So he just said that yes, he would certainly be on duty for the talk, it would be an interesting exercise and he would like to be part of it, and no, it did not clash with an off-duty period at all.

  Dr Irvine never knew who was supposed to be on duty at any given time, and so Robbie forbore to add that he was supposed to finish at midday on Thursday. He had, in fact, been revving up to ask Emily out to the cinema in Stornforth that evening–he had just acquired a third-hand Volkswagen, which Em would probably like, although he would not mind if she wore her black leather motorbike gear for the date, because she looked an absolute knock-out in black leather, that Em.

  Still, you had to get your priorities right, and in the light of Dr Irvine’s request Emily would have to be put on hold for a couple more days.

  The talk was very interesting indeed. Robbie had half expected it to be a bit boring, but it was not boring at all. He made a mental note to get hold of one of Joanna Savile’s books.

  There was a little quiz at the start–bits of music taped from TV commercials, and the group had to identify the product being advertised, and say why the music was appropriate. Robbie noticed almost at the outset that Ms Savile was keeping away from anything involving alcohol or sex. Probably Dr Irvine had warned her off.

  The quiz was so interesting that Robbie wished he could have joined in. He recognised several of the pieces: there was the dreamy, string-plucking music for Hamlet cigars, of course–Robbie had always thought it was called Air on a G String, but it turned out to be just Air in G. Bach. Then there was one for cars, and then a spicy Italian-sounding piece, which even had Dr Irvine joining in and trying to guess. Spaghetti? Pasta sauce? It turned out to be pasta sauce.

  And there was the famous 1990 World Cup Nessun Dorma, with Pavarotti or someone sobbingly singing his heart out. When Joanna Savile said, ‘Now think about this one. Why do you suppose that was picked for a football event?’ several of them said, ‘Triumph.’ And a couple more said, ‘Celebration,’ and she nodded, pleased, and said, ‘Victory over the opponents, maybe? Or even, “We’re going to score twenty goals and win this match”?’ and three of the four men present and two of the women instantly said, ‘Yes!’ with enthusiasm, and punched the air in the classic gesture of triumph.

  The next part was writing down images that music brought into your mind, which followed on very neatly from the fun of the competition. Robbie was not very knowledgeable about the kind of music that was played for this, but he recognised part of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons because it was the one Nigel Kennedy had put in the Top Ten, and he knew The Hall of the Mountain King, as well. It was a good choice, that one, because it made you think of hobbits and things: goblins and dwarfs marching through huge underground caverns and stuff like that.

  It was clever, this getting them all to join in. If Ms Savile had simply talked to them for an hour or so, she would probably have lost them in the first five minutes; Robbie had seen that happen before with outside speakers. But it was going well, and Robbie was glad because Joanna Savile had clearly spent a lot of time preparing everything. He was glad for Dr Irvine, as well, because the afternoon had been a bit of an experiment, and it might easily have gone wrong. He wondered if Dr Irvine fancied Joanna Savile. She would not be Robbie’s cup of tea, in fact she might be a bit of a ball-shriveller if you were not careful, but she might be very much Dr Irvine’s cup of tea. They said he liked them sharp and bright and successful. She had a nice voice to listen to as well.

  Patrick was relieved that things were going so well.

  ‘There’s absolutely no guarantee of anything,’ he had said to Joanna beforehand. ‘As far as I can be sure they’re all pretty much genuine, although some of them might have their own agenda. But you should be prepared for anything from them. Oh, and don’t be fazed by questions about porn, will you?’

  ‘Not in the least.’ She had sounded amused and Patrick had been slightly annoyed, and then had wondered if he had been hoping the question might discomfit her. That was the trouble with working with people’s minds all day: you got into the habit of planting loaded questions in perfectly ordinary conversations, just to see what response you got.

  He said, ‘We’ll see how they behave and respond, and then we’ll make the decision about a second session. Is that all right with you?’

  ‘I’m in your hands,’ said Joanna, and Patrick had smiled courteously at her. She was wearing a rather severe outfit today: a dark grey trouser suit with a white shirt, pinstriped in grey. She had probably picked it to look anonymous and sexless, but she did not look either of these things, because she probably never would look anonymous or sexless, even if she put on a sack. Patrick, seating himself at the back
of Moy’s small lecture room to listen and to intervene if things took a potentially difficult turn, wondered about her husband. Ideally, he should be either a complete wimp so that they would never clash, or a very strong character indeed so that he could master her. He could not in fact see Joanna married to either of those types.

  He looked covertly around the room. The young, eager-faced Robbie Glennon was conscientiously on duty. He was a useful recruit to Moy, that one; Patrick had already had a word with Don Frost about the boy, because he would quite like to have Glennon permanently attached to the psychiatry wing–maybe even set up some extra training for him. Don had thought it a good idea; he had said that Robbie was keen and intelligent and more ambitious than most of the recruits you got these days. He believed Emily was going out with him somewhere or other at the weekend, said Don–a disco or a wine bar in Stornforth or something. It had made Patrick feel unexpectedly old to think of the nice Robbie Glennon and Don Frost’s pixie-faced daughter at a disco together. He wondered what colour Emily Frost’s hair would be for the occasion.

  Most of the group were listening fairly seriously to Joanna and the music, and most of them were scribbling down ideas. The chairs were arranged in a semicircle because seating people in rows made it too easy for drugs or smuggled porn magazines to exchange hands. A couple of females at the far end were being a bit giggly, and appeared to be compiling their notes as a joint project, but that did not matter. Patrick wondered if Joanna was getting the background she needed. Once or twice she interposed a question to one or another of the group, and listened intently to the answers.