The Silent Companions

by Laura Purcell

  Prison, the asylum. It was all the same, without Jolyon. ‘Then let them arrest us. At least we will be out of this damned house.’

  Sarah went to fetch her bonnet and tied the ribbons hurriedly beneath her chin. While she pulled on her mittens, Elsie gazed at the baize door. Mrs Holt had not made a sound since she had passed through it.

  ‘Do not worry, Mrs Bainbridge. We will get through this, you and I. It seems impossible now, but . . . Somehow we will rebuild our lives. Together.’ Sarah squeezed Elsie’s shoulder. ‘I think Rupert would have liked that.’

  No doubt Sarah meant it kindly, but Elsie could not endure her saccharine words. She pulled away.

  Sarah opened the door again, letting in a fine spray of rain. The gardens were soaked. The hedges dripped and water cascaded from the jowls of the stone dog like drool. Sarah put one foot out of the door.

  ‘Wait!’ Elsie reached into her pocket and gave Sarah her purse. ‘Take this, in case you run into trouble. It will pay for lodging or a conveyance home.’

  Bestowing one last look on her, Sarah ventured out into the rain. Elsie watched her go: a hunched, grey figure crunching over the gravel, growing darker and darker as the shadow of the house fell over her. She crossed the hills and disappeared from sight.

  Less than ten minutes later, the mist descended.

  She slumped down by the fireplace and sat with her legs stretched out, next to Jolyon. Or what passed for Jolyon: the cruel, blue-grey parody of him. She did not want to store this image of her boy: waxy and puffed; features imprinted with horror; vicious cuts to the dear skin. But she knew it would encroach, stealthily, and overwrite all the happier times. Death, once conceived, was rapacious. It took all with it.

  Every tick of the grandfather clock echoed through the Great Hall. The rain drummed in counterpoint. Elsie sensed the clouds pressing down, blotting out the sun. Taking her head in her bandaged hands, she waited.

  She did not dare to close her eyes. With her back to the wall, she kept a vigil. The companions might take Jolyon’s life, but she’d be damned if they desecrated his body with more splinters. She knew how that felt – to be invaded, against your will. She would never, never let that happen to him.

  Time crawled by. Nothing moved. All she saw was grey stillness; all she heard was the constant patter on the windows. It was a kind of torture.

  Her mind wandered down the misty paths to Torbury St Jude; saw Sarah lost, falling into the river, dragged beneath the current by her sodden skirts like the gypsy girl in Anne’s diary. She slapped her cheeks and tried to steer her thoughts in a better direction. They twirled for a moment and then, dizzy, stumbled towards Jolyon. No.

  After two hours had passed, she thought she would lose her mind. Stiff in her joints, she clambered to her feet with a groan. Still the rain fell, light but insistent. Everything looked the same as it had in the morning. She felt she had lived ten lifetimes since then.

  The air was turning. Odour rose slowly, like a blush from Jolyon’s corpse, stealing the smell of bay leaves and lime that had always been a part of him. He looked so dirty and neglected: streaks of mud on his hands, fragments of glass sparkling in his tangled hair. Police be hanged – she was going to wash her boy.

  She limped through the baize door into the servants’ quarters. It creaked shut behind her, encasing her in cold stone.

  Last time she entered this passage there had been a staff of five. Now the hallways carried an air of abandonment. Gone was the sound of the kitchen range and the smell of soap. No oil lamps shone.

  As she edged towards the kitchen to fetch water, she passed the housekeeper’s room. The door was shut. Had Mrs Holt sat there alone, all this time, in the dark?

  Her hand hovered over the panels, unsure. If Mrs Holt wanted to be by herself, she had no right to disturb her. She had just made up her mind to walk away when she heard a sound from inside.

  Not a sob, as she expected. Something lower, prolonged. A groan or a creak, like old bones.

  She reached for the doorknob, but she did not turn it. The pulse drummed in her throat.

  Creeeak. A draught crept under the door and touched her ankles. She had to get back to Jolyon, she had to—

  Just as she turned away, Jasper cried out.

  It immobilised her. That pathetic, reedy sound, so like a baby’s wail. She tried to shove it aside and harden her heart but it came again, louder this time. Piercing. Then the same creak.

  ‘Damn it, Jasper.’ Berating herself, she turned the knob and pushed.

  The room glided into view. Elsie tightened her injured fingers around the jamb, driving her nails into the wood.

  Every drawer of Mrs Holt’s desk stood open. Papers covered the little table with the floral cloth. Jasper sat on it, mewling, as the various receipts and recipes fluttered beneath him. Diamonds of rain spotted his black fur. The window gaped wide open.

  ‘What . . .?’ One of the chairs was missing. ‘Jasper, where is Mrs—’

  The creak sounded, right by her ear. She spun around. The air clogged in her throat.

  It was the movement she saw first – gentle, like a tree swaying in the wind. Only then did she begin to make sense of it: the creak, not of wood, but of hemp; the swinging feet. Her gaze travelled up the black dress to slumped shoulders and a face that belonged to no one: blue-red; the eyes popping; the tongue lolling out. The housekeeper had looped a noose around a hook in the ceiling. All that had once been Mrs Holt hung there, suspended like a sack of grain.

  Nausea pushed up from her stomach. As the skirts waved back and forth, she caught flashes of a wooden face behind them, a maid’s face made terrible by fear. Helen.

  She reached out and snatched Jasper from the table.

  Fear dominated her pain as she skidded out of the door, through the passages, into the kitchen. Hiss, hiss. Oh yes, they were coming now. They had only waited for her to see Mrs Holt’s nightmare before starting her own.

  Her hand fumbled with the yard door. ‘Come on, come on.’

  Jasper scratched with her.

  It creaked and groaned, but it would not move. The door was locked.

  Hiss.

  The housekeeper’s room – Mrs Holt had the bunch of keys. She just needed to get in there and – no, damn it, she didn’t need to rob a corpse of keys, she could climb out of the open window in the room. Why hadn’t she thought of it before?

  Hiss, hiss. Inside her brain, buzzing along her thoughts. Hiss.

  ‘Shut up!’ she screamed. ‘Shut the hell up!’

  She was forced to stoop down and place Jasper at her feet. Pain burnt: hot needles up and down her leg, flames raging in her chest. Then that feeling inside her head as the hiss came again, a firecracker going off.

  Jasper mewed and trotted forwards, turning back to see if she would follow. With great difficulty, she limped after him.

  Hiss, hiss. Different from the sound that haunted her dreams: now she heard the steam of the factory in it. A saw too, but not one cutting through wood. It ripped through some other substance, spraying liquid.

  ‘No.’

  The white-paint letters spelling Housekeeper swam into view. Those letters were on the front of the door – but hadn’t she left it open?

  Hiss.

  Locked. Another door, locked. She threw her shoulder against the panels, crying out in pain and frustration. Her fists pummelled, useless, on the wood.

  Hiss, hiss.

  Jasper hissed back. He prowled off down the stone passage. Hunting.

  ‘Wait.’

  She stumbled after him. Pain flared and threw black shapes before her eyes. She had to ignore it, she could not give in now. This agony was nothing compared to—

  Hiss.

  Shock kicked her in the stomach, then in the chest. She did recognise the sound. It was in her, part of her, yet her brain was smothering it and refusing to let the memory rise.

  Hiss.

  Objects slapping into the trough. Not splints. Softer, wetter.

/>   They reached the baize door.

  Jasper gathered himself and pounced. The door burst open, magnifying the sound and the smell – not roses this time but phosphorus, burning wood and scorched metal. A sharp, sickly note rising high above it all. Blood.

  She staggered into the Great Hall. The wind whooped, gleefully hurtling rain against the windows. Light was fading fast. The dying fire touched Jolyon’s face with orange streaks, and beside him—

  ‘No!’ The word ripped from her, taking her insides with it.

  Jasper screeched and arched his back.

  Another companion: one she had carried for too long. His leering face, the hefty, brutal muscle of him.

  Pa.

  Hiss.

  She could not feel the pain in her ribs any longer. Other sensations took control. It was so much worse than she remembered; not just the terror but the anger, impotence and disgust.

  Hiss.

  ‘You can’t have him! Get away!’

  She went to move but her bad leg crumpled beneath her and she was on her knees, retching.

  ‘Get away from him!’

  Hiss.

  She stared at her hands, splayed out on the grey and black flags. Her bandages were peeling off. There, under the recent wounds, sat the scars of old – the sin seared into her skin.

  Hiss.

  The dam gave way. She remembered it all.

  And she did not regret it.

  She was there in the factory, twelve years old, crouching with her box of matches, her veins pumping with the beat of her heart. Lighting the fire, too hasty, all fingers and thumbs. Once again she felt its vengeful warmth answering the fury that raged inside her. And she did not mind that it had burnt her hands because then she became the blaze, became the flames, became the lure to her father who ran like a madman to try and put it out.

  Did he see her? She hoped he saw her, as Ma did, that split second before he fell. The child he had abused barrelling into his leg, pushing him straight into the circular saw.

  Hiss, hiss. The machinery struggling to cope, the clogged blades. Gore slopping into the trough. A kind of fizz as blood sprayed out across the floor, making the match girls shriek. But then the noise turned into a whirring, a clunking as bones jammed the teeth. Steam panted out from the machine. The saw gave a death rattle. All fell still, and Jolyon was safe.

  Until now.

  ‘You . . . can’t . . . have . . . him!’

  Jasper sprang before she did, claws flashing by the embers of the fire. The Pa companion toppled, leering still, into the grate.

  A puff of smoke, a crack. Then he leapt up in flames.

  Jasper skittered back from the fire. It was going too fast; snaking down the length of the companion, throwing out sparks like luminous fleas. No natural fire could burn like that.

  Smoke stung her eyes. She grabbed Jasper and climbed, unsteady, to her feet.

  A log popped and the oriental rug caught alight.

  ‘Jolyon!’

  But it had him in its grasp. Orange tongues jumped and writhed, reflected on the swords that hung on the wall. She watched it dance, fascinated, appalled, until she began to cough.

  She wheeled around and saw the wavering outlines of companions everywhere: on the stairs, peering down from the gallery, standing in every door. Barring her way.

  It was hot. So hot. Jasper’s fur made her arms sweat.

  Charred snowflakes of ash fluttered in the air. She could no longer make out which companion was which; she could not even see the front door.

  There was nothing but the flames.

  A window. Spluttering, she fought her way towards a rectangle shining through the smoke. The window overlooking the drive. This was where they had stood, Hetta and the gypsy boy, watching her. Knowing this would happen.

  Cradling Jasper in one arm, she hammered on the window with her spare hand. Hot glass – unbearably hot.

  ‘Come on!’

  That old, familiar scorch on her palms. This was how she had won before – fighting through the pain. She could do it. She could make her body do anything. She had learnt the hard way.

  She hit the glass again. Again. Her knuckles screamed and she brought them back, dripping blood. Again. The glass cracked.

  The fire roared behind her. She felt its breath, wringing sweat out from the back of her neck. Of course, she had let the air get at it. She had made it worse.

  ‘Quick, Jasper, quick!’

  He was a muddle of flailing limbs and claws, trying to press his paws either side of the hole and stop her from posting him through it. But she was rough, impervious to him. The glass cracked again and she pushed him outside with it, yowling furiously.

  Heat gusted up her back. She felt her skin lift and tighten. The pain. The pain, rummaging through her clothes with its burning hands.

  She didn’t think. There was no time to think – she took a few steps back and ran, as Jolyon must have done, straight at the glass. With her arms protecting her face, she hurtled into the window and shattered it to pieces.

  A fork of fire lashed out behind her, but she was already on the ground, beating at her gown, rolling across the gravel and smothering the flames. Rain fell and extinguished the last of it. Too late. The damage was done – she could feel her skin blister and pop in the ruthless air.

  Jasper had raced up the closest tree. His green eyes peered down at her as she crawled, steaming and half dead, into the damp gardens. She had to get away from the fire. From the house.

  Her muscles were shrieking. Black smuts danced in her vision and threatened to take over. This was the limit: the fountain. Her body would go no further. She slumped over the rim, red-raw arms dangling into the basin.

  A gust of wind blew across the hills. She smelt it on the breeze: roses and thyme, peppering the smoke. She coughed.

  ‘Mrs Bainbridge!’

  Sarah?

  She peered through the shimmering, heat-hazed garden. But it was not Sarah she saw. There was a companion, by the topiary. The one who started it all: Hetta.

  ‘Mrs Bainbridge! Good Lord!’

  It sounded like Sarah’s voice, coming from the other end of the gardens, although she couldn’t be sure. She could hear two voices at once, one lapping over the other.

  As she stared fixedly at Hetta a dark shape, a taller shape, ran through the gardens, over the gravel towards her. Human. Whether it was male or female, she could not tell. It seemed to her that two were moving there, not one. Both of them, holding out their hands for her.

  ‘Mrs Bainbridge!’

  When she came to there was another calling her name, a nurse with a face like a rat. Her surroundings were white and sterile. She smelt carbolic soap. Urine. Pain was stitched into her skin.

  She cracked open her parched mouth to speak, but only a croak hobbled over her lips. Her voice was gone – gone with the memory and the smoke.

  ST JOSEPH’S HOSPITAL

  When he finished reading, he remained bent over the desk, staring at the last word. Then he pushed back and leant into his chair, making a hollow sound in his throat. That sound seemed to fall right through her, like a penny in a well, echoing as it hit the edges and landed with a dull thud in the pit of her stomach.

  Failure. All that work, ploughing up memories and emotions until they were seeds on top of the soil for the crows to peck at, and still – failure.

  Or was it? She watched him minutely, alert for the slightest change in his countenance. His green eyes had not moved, they were trained on the paper. A good three minutes passed. The space between them thickened, heavy with expectation.

  She pictured his mind like a great machine, the pistons pumping, assembling her past into . . . what? Did she even want to know?

  ‘Well,’ he sighed. ‘Well. It must have been Mr Underwood you heard, calling your name. He found you.’

  Only a crumb of information but she leant forward, eager to take it.

  ‘Although,’ he went on, shifting in his chair, ‘it was conside
rably later than you have written here. Full night. He saw the glow from your house on the horizon and raised the alarm.’

  No one had told her that. No one had told her anything.

  Flashes of aching memory came: not just sepia photographs of people but their voices, their scents, the feelings they inspired. Mr Underwood, Sarah, Jasper. What had happened to them?

  She’d regarded the story as her secret. Now she saw it before her on the desk, pages and pages covered in her large, square writing, and realised it was incomplete. The end was not in her power. Dr Shepherd held the last act, locked inside him.

  Hesitantly, she picked up his pencil and wrote a word at the bottom of the last page.

  Sarah?

  ‘That is the question. What befell Sarah Bainbridge?’

  She tilted her head, trying to see the look in his eyes, but the light was wrong. The lenses of his spectacles were opaque, screening him from view.

  ‘What you have written . . . I think, perhaps, that I can use it. But possibly not in the way you had hoped. It does not prove your innocence, or indeed anything except a great facility for invention. And if imagination were a malady, Mr Dickens would be a permanent resident here.’

  Imagination! At least madness had power. It did not make her sound puerile, a girl dreaming of fairies and unicorns.

  Sarah? She underlined the word, scratching through the paper.

  ‘Yes. She is the only person able to collaborate your story. If what you write is true, she can confirm your whereabouts at the time of Jolyon Livingstone’s death.’

  A tear wet her cheek at the mention of Jolyon’s name.

  ‘Here we reach our difficulty, Mrs Bainbridge. Since you began to write, I have been scouring records in search of Sarah Bainbridge. Will you hazard a guess as to what I found?’ He held out his hands, showing them empty. ‘Nothing. I cannot trace a census entry, a death – not a thing. I even took out an advertisement appealing for information. Sarah Bainbridge has vanished.’

  Another tear, falling to join and speed on the first. Poor Sarah never reached the police. They had not found her body. It could be lying in some ditch, corrupting, flies crawling in and out between her lips. Oh, Sarah. She deserved so much more than that.