An Enormous Yes

by Wendy Perriam

  The sentence trailed away. How could she admit her two overwhelming fears: first, that Silas might have died, which would be shock enough for Amy and, second, if he were alive but Amy located him first, he might let slip something about the presumed abortion. No way must her poor daughter stumble on either of those disastrous facts with no warning, no support.

  Whatever she herself discovered – hopeful, tragic, or worryingly ambivalent – she must digest it first, somehow come to terms with it, and only then relay it to Amy with the utmost tact and, yes, tenderness.

  Chapter 14

  ‘NO, NEVER HEARD of the fucker!’

  Maria winced at the aggressive tone, well suited to the pugnacious fellow confronting her in the doorway. With the solid build of a boxer, and his red, veined face suggesting an addiction to the bottle, he seemed unlikely to cooperate. Nonetheless, she stood her ground. ‘Are you absolutely sure? He lived in this house for seven years, according to the records, and only moved out in 2009.’

  ‘How the hell d’you think I’d know, then? We didn’t come here till last December and the house was sodding empty.’

  ‘But it must have been owned by someone. Could you possibly tell me who you bought it from?’

  ‘Listen, madam—’ The man raised his arm in a threatening gesture, on a par with the contemptuous ‘madam’ ‘—I don’t want you, or anyone, poking their nose into my private affairs.’

  Seeing he was about to close the door in her face, she pressed the full weight of her body against it; a resistance fuelled by desperation. ‘Look, the last thing I want is to pry. But I’m extremely anxious to track down this Silas Keegan. It’s a vital family matter, otherwise I wouldn’t dream of—’

  He cut her off mid-sentence. ‘I couldn’t give a fuck! And if you don’t shift your arse, I’ll thump you.’

  Maria turned tail and ran. It would hardly help the search if she landed up with a broken jaw. Amy was already fretful that a full month had gone by with, as yet, no clue as to Silas’s whereabouts, although she had impressed upon her daughter the hours spent on the computer, while hushing up the ever-mounting costs. She had been obliged to raid her savings to pay for the credits, search fees and numerous other charges. Google, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace all had offered leads but, once followed up, the Silas Keegans they had yielded were invariably too old, too young, in improbable professions (an osteopath, a banker, a ballroom-dancing instructor), or lived in unlikely places.

  And, certainly, this dreary Tolworth street seemed eminently wrong for a man who had always loathed the suburbs and insisted on being close to London’s cultural highlights. Yet a Silas Keegan of exactly seventy-six had apparently lived in this cramped and shabby house until a mere two years ago. No doubt, the trail would go cold again and if she did eventually track him down he would prove to be not her Silas but simply someone of the same name and age. However, she couldn’t afford to ignore even the slightest chance of finding him, so she unlatched the next-door gate – number twenty-five – hoping the aggressive man she had just encountered might have more helpful neighbours.

  She walked up the weed-flanked path and rang the doorbell loud and long. Whatever else, her assertiveness had increased over the last few frustrating weeks, especially on the phone. Having cold-called scores of people, her tone had gradually changed from apologetically tentative to confidently forceful – not that a single one of the calls had led her to her quarry.

  The door was finally opened by a small, oriental-looking man, who shrank back in obvious fear to see her standing on his doorstep. Before she had uttered a word, he began vigorously shaking his head, as if denying all complicity in some crime or misdemeanour.

  She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘I’m just trying to hunt down a friend, a Mr Silas Keegan.’

  He shook his head still harder, letting out a few indecipherable words.

  Enunciating each syllable distinctly, she asked if he spoke English, but her question only elicited another unintelligible babble. However, she had learned persistence as well as boldness, so she raised her voice and all but shouted, ‘Is there someone else I could talk to?’, hoping a wife or grown-up child might be alerted by the noise and put in an appearance. But it only seemed to frighten him still more, so, to prevent causing any further distress, she was forced to relent and retreat.

  Perhaps number twenty-one would prove more fruitful – a lucky number, after all. At least the gate was less wobbly, the path less weed-infested. A woman opened the door, this time – and a woman who spoke English.

  ‘Oh, you must be the new health visitor. Do come in.’

  Maria accepted the invitation and stepped firmly over the threshold, knowing she was less likely to be sent packing once she had a foot in the door. ‘My name’s Maria,’ she explained. ‘I’m afraid I’m not the health visitor, but I’m trying to trace a friend who—’

  Her spiel was interrupted by a sudden wail from a baby; the noise issuing from a room upstairs and increasing in both volume and intensity.

  ‘Oh, God – he’s started again! I’m at my wits’ end, what with the other one playing up, as well, and….’

  The sentence hung suspended as the woman dashed upstairs, leaving the front door ajar. Maria stood a moment undecided, wondering whether to offer help. No, best leave that to the health visitor, who was obviously expected soon. Having closed the door, she walked back down the path. Never had she imagined that her search for Silas might result in personal injury or involve damage to an unattended child.

  She persevered, however, crossing the road to number twenty-two. By now, she was so keyed up, it was almost an anti-climax when her repeated shrills on the doorbell brought no response whatever. She had an unnerving feeling that the bruiser in the house opposite was poised behind his net curtains, watching her every move. Too bad. She was doing nothing illegal and refused to give up now.

  At number twenty-four, a cheerful-looking woman actually gave her a smile of welcome and, once she had grasped the situation, invited her into the kitchen and even offered her a cup of tea.

  ‘No, please don’t bother, I’m fine. I just need some information.’

  ‘Well, I’ve lived here donkey’s years so I should be able to help. Take a pew. I’m Ruby, by the way.’

  Glad to take the weight off her feet, Maria was also encouraged to hear that the woman was a long-time resident. Ruby looked about her own age, with wiry grey hair and attractive grey-green eyes.

  ‘I didn’t know Silas personally,’ she began, sitting opposite Maria at the battered kitchen table. ‘And he didn’t own the house. He just rented a room from the Johnsons. I shouldn’t really say this but they were downright standoffish, that couple – thought themselves a cut above the neighbours, which included me, of course – and didn’t want to mix with people they saw as social inferiors. As for their “gentleman lodger”, as they called him, he kept himself to himself. But then,’ she added in a confidential tone, ‘that’s typical of this whole street. No way could you call it friendly.’

  Maria nodded sympathetically. If this were a Northumbrian village, everyone would know everyone else within a five-mile radius. She was determined to keep to the point, however, and not get side-tracked onto the subject of suburban unsociability. ‘But,’ she asked, ‘even if you didn’t know him, I presume you saw him sometimes?’

  ‘Well, yes, occasionally.’

  ‘Could you give me some idea of what he looked like? You see, I have to be sure this is the same Silas as the one I used to know.’

  Ruby rocked back on her chair. ‘Well, he was very tall and thin – angular’s the word I’d use. And he had very dark eyes and thick, black eyebrows.’

  Correct on both counts. Maria allowed herself a flicker of hope.

  ‘I noticed the eyebrows particularly, because they seemed odd on an old, balding chap.’

  Although the thought of Silas being old and balding was utterly abhorrent, she ignored her personal feelings in an attempt
to discover more. ‘What I’m trying to find out is where he might have moved to.’

  ‘Well, I remember when he went – it was the spring of 2009. You see, a month or two before that, Mrs Johnson actually deigned to speak to me – told me they didn’t like the area, so they’d decided to sell up and move much further out.’

  ‘And was Silas going with them?’

  ‘Oh, no! Apparently, they didn’t like him either.’ Ruby gave a contemptuous laugh. ‘But that’s no reflection on your friend,’ she added, hastily. ‘They’d have probably hated Christ Himself if He happened to be their lodger. And if He’d started turning water into wine, He’d have been out on His ear, damn quick! They were strict teetotallers, the pair of them.’

  Maria smiled politely, before pressing on with her questions – despite the awkwardness she felt about subjecting this poor woman to such an inquisition. ‘Did they say what he planned on doing?’

  ‘Gosh! It was so long ago, it’s hard to remember much. But let me think. Yes, I seem to recall she said he’d found a flat.’

  ‘Can you remember where?’ A definite town or region would narrow the search considerably.

  ‘Lordy – now you’re asking! Lewisham, perhaps. Does Lewisham ring a bell?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea. I lost touch with him ages ago, which is why I’m bothering you. But do forgive me. You’re being wonderfully patient and you’re probably very busy.’

  ‘Far from it. I’ve nothing to do and I’m only too glad of the company.’

  As Ruby embarked on a protracted tale of her divorce, followed by her remarriage and then widowhood, Maria tried to balance sympathy with a keen desire to return to the subject in hand. She waited – at length – for a pause in Ruby’s detailed account of her late husband, Graham’s, funeral.

  ‘I’m deeply sorry about your loss. It must be terribly hard. But, look, going back to Silas, you said he might have moved to Lewisham.’

  ‘Did I?’

  Maria suppressed a sigh.

  ‘Well, in that case, it must be right. I mean, why else would I have come up with Lewisham, when I don’t know a soul there myself?’

  ‘But obviously you don’t have an address.’

  ‘Good God, no! As I said, I hardly knew the fellow. Graham met him once – bumped into him at Waterloo and travelled on the same train back to Tolworth.’

  ‘And did they talk?’ Please God, she prayed, let Graham have discovered some useful fact or detail.

  ‘Not that he ever told me, but then my hubbie wasn’t the world’s greatest conversationalist! In fact, knowing Graham, he’d have probably said a brief hello, then buried his head in a book.’

  As Ruby embroidered on her late husband’s reading habits, even listing his favourite authors, Maria gave a covert glance at her watch. When the woman paused for breath between James Patterson and Wilbur Smith, she quickly put a word in, saying she would have to make a move soon. Ruby, she realized, might be all too happy to reminisce about her husband for the remainder of the afternoon. but since the unfortunate departed man could shed no light on Silas, it was crucial to steer the conversation back to more productive channels. ‘Look, before I go, maybe you could put me in touch with the Johnsons, then I could get my friend’s address from them.’

  ‘Sorry – can’t help there, either. We never kept in contact. Frankly, I was glad to see the back of them.’

  ‘Well, just their first names would help.’ If she had to embark on another search, Johnson was a depressingly common surname.

  ‘I never knew the husband’s first name and even the wife’s escapes me. She’s more or less a blank now, to be honest. Hold on a minute, though, and I’ll try to get my brain in gear. In fact, if you could stick around, Maria, and we had more time together, I’m sure the name would come. And, even if it doesn’t, we could have that cup of tea I promised and a good old natter about life in general.’

  Life in general was not her interest at the moment. Her focus was narrowed to Silas and Silas alone. ‘I’m really sorry but I’m rather pushed for time. So if you could have just one last think about Mrs Johnson’s name …’

  Ruby screwed up her face with the effort of recall, but nothing appeared to be forthcoming. Maria leaned back in her chair, trying to hide her growing frustration, but as she glanced around the small, poky room, with its depressing view of assorted wheelie-bins, she couldn’t help but feel despondent. How could Silas have landed up in a downmarket suburban semi, a mile or two from a station that had only a slow, infrequent train service to London? Tall, angular men with black eyebrows and dark eyes weren’t particularly rare, so the Silas who had lived here might be someone else entirely.

  ‘I’m sure it began with an A.’ Ruby started rehearsing names to herself. ‘Angela … Alice … Annabel … No, nothing as fancy as Annabel. Maybe just plain Anne. Yes, it could have been Anne, I suppose.’

  Anne Johnson – there’d be millions.

  ‘I couldn’t swear to it, though. I may be muddling her up with an Anne I used to know from church.’

  ‘Well, look—’ Maria finally rose to her feet ‘—why don’t I leave you my phone number, then if you do suddenly remember something, maybe you’d be kind enough to ring me.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Ruby reached for Maria’s hand and clasped it firmly in her own, as if hoping to hang on to her for longer. ‘Or perhaps you could visit anyway. I’d love to see you again, so we could get to know each other. I’m nearly always here, and nearly always on my own, so any day would suit. I could show you all the photos of Graham and the funeral and everything. It’s a funny thing, you know, but the minute you showed up on my doorstep, I felt this sort of … bond with you. Don’t ask me to explain – it was just a mysterious feeling that you and me were meant to meet.’

  Maria found herself at a loss for words. Her natural instinct was to respond to Ruby’s overtures, yet the last thing she needed was any new relationship. The search for Silas was all-consuming – so much so that she was even neglecting Felix, and hadn’t yet found time to go back north and check on the car and cottage. On the other hand, Ruby might recall some vital piece of information and thus it was imperative they stayed in touch.

  Gently withdrawing her hand from the woman’s eager grip, she wrote her phone number on a piece of paper, torn from her ‘Silas’ notebook. Amy had insisted that she keep a strict record of all the sites she’d signed up to, all the steps she’d taken so far, all the leads she’d followed up, all the calls she’d made. And every evening, she shared her progress – or lack of it – with her increasingly impatient daughter, who kept offering to take over the search herself; insisting she would do it so much faster and more thoroughly. Unlikely. Amy had a full-time job, and this was a full-time job and, indeed, the demands would be still greater if she had to make space for exacting personal friendships on top of everything else.

  ‘Do you have email, Ruby?’ she asked. A brief email or two would save protracted phone calls.

  ‘Lord, no! I can’t make head or tail of computers. Graham had one, mind, but after he passed away, I couldn’t bear to have the thing in the house. It brought back such awful memories – you know, of him sitting there, fit and well, not knowing he’d … he’d …’

  As Ruby broke off, close to tears, Maria felt torn between her own selfish concerns and Ruby’s obvious needs. Was she a callous brute not to stay and offer comfort to this apparently friendless widow? And what about the frantic mother at number twenty-one? Perhaps she ought to pop back there, to ensure the health visitor was safely ensconced and neither child at risk. Yet she was overcome by a wave of sheer exhaustion. She had barely slept last night; too keyed up about this expedition and the sobering – indeed, frightening – thought of actually possessing Silas’s current address. How naïve she had been to imagine that the present owner of the house would simply hand it over, without some complication.

  She gave Ruby an affectionate hug before passing her the sheet of paper.

 
; ‘Great!’ Ruby snatched it like treasure. ‘I’ll ring you anyway. Will you be in first thing tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered, wearily – at the computer, most like, extending her search to Lewisham and the Johnsons.

  As she trudged back up the road, she almost resented the serenely smug weather for being so out of tune with her mood. The sky was a cloudless blue and conceited daffodils trumpeted their yellow perfection in the small front gardens that weren’t choked with weeds or filled with junk. For her, the suburbs were unknown territory, having spent all her life in a small rural village – and less than three months in central London. However, if Tolworth was typically suburban, then she couldn’t say she was enamoured of its characterless streets and boringly identical houses.

  But there was no hope of going home yet. She still had to make enquiries at all the shops adjoining Tolworth station and, firstly, at the newsagent’s on the corner of this street and the small café next to it. If her Silas had lived in this area, then someone might remember him or even know his present whereabouts.

  The window of the newsagent’s displayed a prominent Royal Wedding poster. With the event just two days away, the hype was building up: souvenirs on sale; pre-wedding colour supplements in newspapers and magazines. As she gazed at the loving couple, she felt her usual pang of regret that she herself had never had a wedding. Forget the dress, the flowers, the cake – those were fripperies – it was the lasting vows she craved; the incredible security of having someone to support her in health or sickness, poverty or wealth. Her mother had been there for her, of course – and in that she was extremely blessed – yet, to her lasting shame, she’d been greedy enough to crave sex as well as support.

  Thoughts of sex rekindled scorching memories of her last passionate encounter with Felix. But that was ten long days ago and he couldn’t understand why she was suddenly so busy and rationing their meetings. For a variety of reasons, she had refrained from mentioning Silas – even his existence, let alone her search for him – and it hadn’t escaped her notice that he, too, seemed reticent on the subject of his past. The third time they’d made love, they’d lain talking afterwards and, although he’d said he was divorced, he had supplied no details of either the marriage or the wife. He had also admitted to a grown-up daughter, but said he very rarely saw her, because she lived in New York and was tied to a demanding job. Deliberately, she hadn’t probed, feeling it was better that they respect each other’s privacy when it came to past mistakes, and try to enjoy the present rather than dwell on former relationships that had brought them only pain.