Echoes of Silence (2 page)
âNow she must be stark raving bonkers â sticking her neck out like that! She can't have given a thought to anyone else â all that muck's bound to be raked over again.'
Sonia snuffled into her handkerchief. The hot, dry air in this house always gave her trouble with her sinuses. âIt needn't be. Peter says we must all make a stand about that â though I think it's probably too late. She's been at it for weeks, without telling anyone. I wouldn't have known anything about it if it hadn't been for Dot Nagle.'
Ginny shut her mind off, as she always did at âPeter says'. With his dog-collar, her brother had assumed the right to tell them all how they should run their lives. She hadn't yet forgotten the stewardship campaign in the parish a couple of years ago, when he'd presumed to dictate that everyone should pay a tithe of their income to the Church. A tithe of
Leon's
income? Peter had never forgiven Leon for laughing so uproariously. Nor had Sonia, quite, Ginny thought, though she could always forgive Leon more easily than the rest of them, simply because he wasn't a Denshaw.
Leon's
income? Peter had never forgiven Leon for laughing so uproariously. Nor had Sonia, quite, Ginny thought, though she could always forgive Leon more easily than the rest of them, simply because he wasn't a Denshaw.
âI wonder why Philip hasn't tried to stop her?' she mused.
âOh, you know Philip!'
âYes,' Ginny came back, rather sharply. âAnd he's no fool, Sonia. But perhaps he has tried. Freya only takes notice of him up to a point.'
It had always been Freya's way to listen vaguely, appear to agree, but then to go her own way, and Sonia acknowledged that Philip Denshaw, despite appearances, was smart enough to see through this. He was Ginny's uncle, her father's brother, a mild and self-effacing man who, after his wife died, had accepted the widowed Freya's invitation to live at Low Rigg Hall. It was a convenient arrangement all round â company and (since Philip had married a Brackenroyd, thereby setting himself up for life) a way of gaining a contribution to the upkeep of the house for Freya.
Ginny scrabbled hopefully in the chocolate box again and was triumphantly rewarded with a coffee cream. She bit into it with
her strong white teeth and said through the mouthful, âMore to the point â what are we going to do about Elf? How will she react?'
her strong white teeth and said through the mouthful, âMore to the point â what are we going to do about Elf? How will she react?'
There was a silence, full of resonances. The gas-coal fire roared wastefully up the chimney, the porcelain clock on the mantelpiece chimed a silvery five. Sounds of uproar issued from upstairs, where Harriet, Polly's eight-year-old daughter, was being entertained by her cousins. Sonia, hopefully assuming the question about Elf to be rhetorical â there wasn't, after all, a great deal one
could
do about her â shrugged her shoulders and said awkwardly, âWell, I suppose I'd better get Harriet back up to Low Rigg.' Always an interminable leave taker, she looked round vaguely for her bag, but made no other move to go. âDid Polly say what time she expects to be back? She didn't tell Freya - or if she did, Freya's forgotten.'
could
do about her â shrugged her shoulders and said awkwardly, âWell, I suppose I'd better get Harriet back up to Low Rigg.' Always an interminable leave taker, she looked round vaguely for her bag, but made no other move to go. âDid Polly say what time she expects to be back? She didn't tell Freya - or if she did, Freya's forgotten.'
âOh, sometime this evening,' Ginny answered carelessly. âIt's a long way from Norwich, in that little car, and there's no telling what the traffic'll be like. Depends on what time she got away anyway, I suppose. Polly never did have any sense of time.'
âPeter isn't sure she's doing the right thing, coming back to live here, with Freya.'
âNobody's sure, love, least of all Polly! Anyway, I can't see them living together for long â it's only until she finds somewhere of her own.' Ginny swung her long elegant legs off the grey velvet sofa and stood up so that Sonia was forced to do likewise. âIf she finds dear Mama too much, she knows she can always come here.'
Upstairs, a record player emitted noises indicative of someone having killed the cat. âThey seem to be having a high old time,' Sonia said nervously, but Ginny didn't turn a hair.
âThey're all right. It's time Harriet had someone of her own age to let go with.'
She guided Sonia out into the hall, where she shouted at the top of her not inconsiderable voice, âCome on, you lot, time for Harriet to go!'
Two pairs of feet presently pounded down the stairs, the ten-year-old twins jostling for first place and Sam winning, cannoning down two at a time and putting the brakes on by swinging round the newel post at the bottom, only just missing knocking over the large Chinese jar that stood there.
âDon't
do
that,' Ginny, unfazed, said automatically, without any obvious expectation of being obeyed.
do
that,' Ginny, unfazed, said automatically, without any obvious expectation of being obeyed.
âSorree,' Sam answered, without any obvious appearance of being so.
Ginny ruffled the hair of her identical sons with a carelessly affectionate hand and Joey began an amiable wrestling match with his brother, an attempt to get even with him for coming first down the stairs. Sonia occasionally thought she might like to have children, but shrank at the thought of rough boys like these. It was someone like Harriet she wanted: Harriet, whose face was now flushed with unaccustomed excitement, but who had come sedately down the stairs after her cousins and was already into her coat, saying thank you for having me, in the nice, polite way she'd been taught and never forgot.
She was a sensible, composed child, normally pale-skinned and clear-eyed, with a fringe of silky dark hair. She wasn't like either of her parents: neither her charming and disgraceful father, Tony, now separated from wife and child for good, nor Polly (christened Paulette, but she'd soon disposed of
that
) with her whirlwind energy and her sometimes disastrous enthusiasms, of whom the departed and unlamented Tony Winslow was a prime example.
that
) with her whirlwind energy and her sometimes disastrous enthusiasms, of whom the departed and unlamented Tony Winslow was a prime example.
âHas Mummy got back yet?' Harriet asked with carefully controlled anxiety.
Polly had done her best to teach her independence but, though she wasn't a clinging child, she was only eight years old, after all, and had already lost one parent and couldn't really bear to be away from Polly for too long. Her mother was the centre of her life, always late, always on the rush, too much to do. Lighting up a room when she entered it, energising it, even inanimate objects seeming to take on a life of their own. Talkative, quick-tempered sometimes, bright clothes reflecting warm colours into her face. A magic smile â Harriet's smile as she nodded now, appearing satisfied when Sonia said, âShe hasn't rung, love, but I expect by the time we've driven up to Low Rigg she'll either be there already, or she won't be long.'
The light had gone by the time Sonia had left the town behind, had negotiated her car round the hairpin bend at the bottom of the hill, and was crawling up towards the moors and Low Rigg. The houses grew progressively fewer, the hills loomed either side and the headlights reflected sharp sparkles of frost from the road surface. Sonia, who was a timid driver at any time, and especially in the dark, decided she wouldn't stay for supper, even if Freya should ask her, which was by no means certain. She didn't mind the thought of leaving Harriet with her mother-in-law. The child and the old woman got on together, which was just as well. If Freya didn't take a shine to anyone, she could be very unkind, as Sonia knew to her cost.
Harriet, strapped into the front seat, had fallen asleep within minutes of getting into the car, as she invariably did, lulled by the motion, and tired out tonight by the exuberance of her cousins. Sonia would have liked to have listened to what was left of PM but didn't want to waken her. In the silence, her thoughts rambled inconclusively, undirected.
She wondered if Peter would remember that she'd left the remains of last night's stew for him to heat up in the microwave. Probably not, or if he did, he wouldn't bother with it. He professed to hate anything that came within nodding distance of the new technology, even pecking away at his sermons and other parish matters on an ancient portable Olympia and refusing to think of a dishwasher. Not that they could have afforded one, anyway. He'd frowned on the microwave as an unnecessary luxury, but it had been a present from Sonia's parents, who didn't approve of her marriage to Peter and ecclesiastical poverty. Sonia would never have bought the microwave herself, but she blessed it for its usefulness.
She didn't care about luxury, as such. As servants of the Church, you weren't supposed to, anyway, but she truly didn't. Never having been deprived in her childhood, having
chosen
her vocation of being married to Peter, rejection of material things
was easier for her than for him. She didn't have to prove it so much, as it were.
chosen
her vocation of being married to Peter, rejection of material things
was easier for her than for him. She didn't have to prove it so much, as it were.
Sometimes, she wanted to tell him to relax, but as a second wife, and one of only a few years' standing, she still had to tread carefully. He was a difficult man, and there were areas of his life which were still uncharted seas to her. She didn't, for instance, have a clue why he'd married her. She was pushing forty and not attractive, had no skills as a parson's wife (though she worked harder in the parish than he did, and with more joy), he wasn't interested in the prospect of what she'd inherit from her parents, and as for sex ⦠That was something she preferred not to think about.
You had to watch your step with Peter. She felt it must surely pain him to realise he wasn't much of a success as a parish priest and she tried to make allowances, telling herself it was that which made him so touchy, and very often angry. She wished the bishop would offer him another living, send him where he might be appreciated, to some High Anglican city parish where the parishioners called him âFather'. In this chapel-orientated society where they lived, he was just tolerated by the dwindling minority of the faithful at St Wilfrid's C of E, and regarded with scepticism by the rest.
He'd always intended to take up some sort of career in the world of art but then, while still at art school, had apparently experienced a sudden conversion to Anglo-Catholicism. Saul on the road to Damascus could not have been a more fervent convert, Sonia thought. He burned with â was it missionary zeal, religious fervour? We-ell, perhaps. He preached love and forgiveness, turned the other cheek, he embraced sacrifice â and yet â¦
And yet, there was an unforgivingness about him she found hard to understand. Moreover, although he accepted living without luxury, she didn't miss the way his eyes lingered lovingly and rather wistfully on various
objets d'art
when they visited Freya at Low Rigg â at least, those objects you could see under the layers of dust.
objets d'art
when they visited Freya at Low Rigg â at least, those objects you could see under the layers of dust.
Her thoughts skittered away with some relief from her marital dissatisfactions as she approached the narrow turn-off that led up through the hamlet which had given Low Rigg Hall its name. Rounding a bend of the hill, she steered the car between the last
habitations before the moors proper began: nothing more than a cluster of old dwellings and the ancient inn that was called the Moorcock, then the rambling bulk of the big house glimpsed in the headlights after the last exceedingly steep few hundred yards.
habitations before the moors proper began: nothing more than a cluster of old dwellings and the ancient inn that was called the Moorcock, then the rambling bulk of the big house glimpsed in the headlights after the last exceedingly steep few hundred yards.
The house had been built in the seventeenth century as a farmhouse-cum-manor for the thriving little weaving community of Low Rigg, to stand overlording its domain. Low-built, of solid stone that had been quarried from the heart of the hills two miles away, and weathered to darkness by time and industrial pollution; mullioned windows, low, sweeping, stone-slated roofs. Crouched with its back to the side of the hill, seeking shelter from the scouring winds, it was surrounded by what had at one period been a garden, which was, in turn, encircled by a dry-stone wall. The moor rose up behind, with nothing beyond but bare stretches of heather and bilberry and cotton grass.
The garden was bare now, save for gaunt, stunted elms bent by the prevailing winds, in which crows and jackdaws nested. Nothing much had been done to it for years so that most of the time it looked a mess. The only time Sonia thought it approached anything like attractiveness was when the daffodils, unchecked for decades, covered the garden with sheets of gold in spring, blowing and dancing in the wind. Or when the great, blowsy, sugar-pink rambling rose of unknown origin was in bloom: a vulgar, heavily scented beauty with wicked thorns, festooning the back wall of the house in summer. One day, vowed Polly, one day I'll get at that garden ⦠But she was never there long enough.
Inside, it was never really quite clean, despite Dot Nagle's half-hearted attempts, except when Polly visited and saw to it that at least some of it had a brisk going over, which annoyed both Dot and Freya. And even so, in the lesser used parts, dust gathered in corners and spiders swung from the ceiling, mice scampered behind the wainscotting. Freya, so fastidious about her person, either didn't see it or didn't mind â or probably, as Polly maintained, enjoyed the drama of it. Her working life had been spent in the glare of the cameras and it wasn't inconceivable that she saw it as an
outré
background for one of her outdated fashion pictures, like the one where for some reason she was shown draping a mink stole across a windswept mudflat,
her back-combed hair and side flick-ups still immaculate. But Polly was right about one thing â nothing, dust, cobwebs or anything else, could make any real difference. The house resisted change, it would never be anything but its implacable self, Sonia thought with a shiver, as she drew up on the flagged frontage.
outré
background for one of her outdated fashion pictures, like the one where for some reason she was shown draping a mink stole across a windswept mudflat,
her back-combed hair and side flick-ups still immaculate. But Polly was right about one thing â nothing, dust, cobwebs or anything else, could make any real difference. The house resisted change, it would never be anything but its implacable self, Sonia thought with a shiver, as she drew up on the flagged frontage.
âThere's Mummy's car!' cried Harriet, waking up as the engine died.
And there was Polly at the open door, light spilling on to the flags, arms wide for Harriet to rush into.
Â
Â
Only one vacant space was left in the car-park of the Woolpack when Tom Richmond arrived. He slid into it, surprised at the number of cars there, mid-week. He'd chosen the Woolpack for the simple pub he remembered, a free house, unpretentious, situated in the centre of Steynton. It didn't take him long now to realise that one of the breweries had got hold of it and given it a face-lift: conference rooms had been added, and the old, leisurely, shabby comfort had gone. It was now a clone of every other hotel, all co-ordinated fabrics, wallpapers and curtains, background Vivaldi, and a so-called French chef.
âDinner will be served in the breakfast room tonight, sir,' he was informed by the receptionist, a pretty girl with a warm, bright smile and broad northern vowels, Caro by her name tag. âWe've a function on in the main dining-room. Actually,' she added confidentially, âyou'll be on your own, if that's not a problem for you? We're full up, but all the other residents will be at the dinner dance.'
âDinner dance? Not above the music, my bedroom, is it?'
She smiled, understanding his alarm. âNo problem, sir, you're at the front. You won't hear a thing.'
Richmond, who had been contemplating a light snack alone in his room, glanced into the breakfast room, saw a roaring fire and changed his mind, and was glad he had when he'd located and surveyed the accommodation allotted to him. A northerly aspect, though warm and comfortable enough, if a bit cramped, as single rooms in hotels invariably were. A hard-stuffed, upright armchair and a huge television set dominating the small space. The steep streets of Steynton dipped and rose and swung away at crazy angles from the market square and somehow the window
of this first-floor room was level with an aerial on the roof of a tall building below. A row of melancholy rooks sat on it and stared in at him as he unpacked. A decent meal, and afterwards a glass of scotch in a comfortable chair in the lounge with a book was a tempting thought. But after dinner he had business to conduct.
of this first-floor room was level with an aerial on the roof of a tall building below. A row of melancholy rooks sat on it and stared in at him as he unpacked. A decent meal, and afterwards a glass of scotch in a comfortable chair in the lounge with a book was a tempting thought. But after dinner he had business to conduct.
âI'd like to eat at half-past seven, if that's all right?' he'd asked at the desk. âA Mrs Austwick will be coming in to see me at eight fifteen, so I want to be finished by then.'
âNo problem, sir.'
âAnywhere my guest and I can be private?'
âThe dinner's a reunion for Brackenroyd's retirees, so they won't be bothering with the residents' lounge. You'll be quiet there.'
Richmond had already noticed more than the usual quota of elderly couples wandering around. Retirees. Well. âAll right, I'll wait for coffee until Mrs Austwick comes and we'll have it in the lounge.'
âI'll have them bring it to you there,' returned Caro with a bright, professional smile, adding, yet again, âNo problem, sir.' She handed him his key. âNumber 14, there you go.' She turned to answer the telephone, leaving Richmond wondering whether a training in American-speak had been a mandatory requirement, as part of the hotel refurbishment.
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