House of Silence (7 page)

‘Saint Christopher.’

‘Gwen, you are a mine of useless
information. I insist you’re on my team for
Trivial Pursuit
.
Saint Christopher! That’s the one. Wading across the river carrying
a little child who gets heavier and heavier and turns out to be
Jesus Christ, bearing all the sins of the world. That’s me,
carrying that little bastard, Tom Dickon Harry. He started out as a
boy but now he’s bigger than me and I’m very,
very
weary.
Frankly, I’d like to dump him in the river and leave the precocious
little sod to drown, but for Rae’s sake - and my sisters’ - I curb
my murderous tendencies.’

‘You’re too good to be true, Alfie.‘

‘Like Deborah. It must run in the
family.’

‘Deborah?’

‘Deb is the nicest of my sisters. She’s also
the dullest. The two characteristics are possibly connected. Deb is
Deputy Head in a dustbin primary school in Great Yarmouth and she’s
there till she retires now. She’ll never make it to Head. She’s
forty-eight and been passed over so many times, she’s given up
applying. So she’s stuck, dodging the flying flak, but maintaining
her relentless enthusiasm. Though the last time I saw her, the
smile had become a bit fixed.’

‘Is she married?’

‘Only to the job. She was married to boring
Bryan - a social worker, even duller than Deb - till he upped and
did a runner with his Tai Chi teacher, twenty years younger. Usual
story. So we don’t talk about Bryan.’

‘Any kids?’

‘A son, Daniel, doing VSO. You see, altruism
does
run in the family. Daniel won’t be home for Christmas,
so Deb will be thoroughly miserable, but she’ll put a brave face on
it and organise the parlour games. You have been warned. Actually,
you’ll be a nice distraction for her. She likes young people and
she’ll like you. You might even like her.’ Alfie paused and sighed.
‘Deb deserves to be liked, but somehow I never quite manage
it.’

‘Didn’t you like her even when you were a
boy?’

He paused to consider. ‘She was eighteen or
nineteen when I was born. By the time I was old enough to register
her existence, she was away at university. Our paths barely
crossed. And I only lived at home for the first five years of my
life. Rae’s second husband, Alfred left her and took me with
him.’

‘Rae just let you go?’

‘She wasn’t really in a position to object.
How can I put this tactfully?... Rae has always been somewhat frail
mentally. Apparently she was severely depressed after I was born.
Postnatal psychosis is the medical term, I think.’

‘Oh, that’s nasty.’

‘She was never really right after that, I
gather. And the marriage breaking down didn’t help.’

‘Your father was the philanderer, not the
bore?’

‘Correct! As you’re aware, I don’t have a
boring gene in my body. Rae put up a fight, but she wasn’t fit to
care for a small child and Viv didn’t want to do it. So Alfred took
me abroad with him, married again and my stepmother packed me off
to boarding school at the earliest opportunity.’

‘So who looked after Rae?’

‘Vivien. Viv and Hattie were the only
sisters still at home. Hat is six years older than me, so we were
never exactly playmates. She lost interest in me once I started
objecting to being treated as a doll. Deb - who’s really into Child
Protection issues - said it wasn’t very OK for Hattie to keep
removing my clothes and dressing me up in her old frocks. Though as
I recall,’ said Alfie with a swift look at me, ‘I quite enjoyed all
the attention. And the frocks.’

‘That must have been the formative
experience of your youth: poncing about in dresses. You were doomed
to become an actor.’

‘Indeed. And destined to have relationships
with wardrobe mistresses.’

‘With a penchant for removing your clothes.
Tell me more about Hattie.’

‘No, it’s Frances next,’ Alfie said firmly.
‘We must be systematic, Gwen, or you’ll get confused... Fanny is
the youngest of my half-sisters. She’s beautiful - and doesn’t she
know it! I suspect she became a photographer as a result of an
unhealthy interest in photographs of herself. But she does have a
wonderful eye. The house is full of photos, most of them taken by
Fanny.’

‘Is she married?’

‘At the moment.’

‘At the moment?’

‘Yes. It’s sometimes possible to catch Fan
between husbands when she’s briefly single, or should I say
unmarried, since she has a variety of lovers, some of whom
become
husbands and some of whom she runs concurrently
with
the husbands.’

‘That all sounds very complicated.’

‘She has a big, fat desk diary with coded
symbols to keep her life and lovers organised.’

‘Children?’

‘No, that’s one complication Fan avoided.
She’s always been a career woman. That’s why one marriage broke
down. She’s just not maternal. Like her mother before her.’

‘You seem to know a lot about her private
life.’

‘I do. And she knows a lot about mine. In
fact we’ve got enough dirt on each other for a lifetime’s
blackmail, but I’m too good-natured and she’s too lazy. In any
case, we
like
each other. I suppose we’re close in a way.
Not in age. Fanny was about fifteen when I was born. But she always
took an interest in me. I was her protégé. She likes to think of
herself as a talent-spotter. It was Fan who encouraged me to pursue
an acting career. She took all my professional photos when I was at
drama school.’

‘So she’s... early forties?’

‘Forty-four. But looks younger. She takes
good care of herself, but then she has the example of her two elder
sisters as An Awful Warning. Actually Viv is very like Fanny
physically. I suppose they both take after Rae. But Vivien looks
like a preliminary sketch - a rather dog-eared one - for the
portrait that would become Frances. Fan’s features are refined and
delicate versions of Viv’s. You’ll see what I mean when you see
them side by side. You wouldn’t think it possible for two women to
look so similar and for one to be drop-dead gorgeous and the other
to be - well,
plain
.’

‘Poor Viv. Do you think she knows?’

‘Oh, yes. Viv may be a desiccated old dyke,
but she isn’t stupid.
None
of my sisters is stupid, though
Deb sometimes pretends to be, and Hattie can appear half-witted at
times. No, there’s little love lost between Viv and Fanny. Viv
doesn’t approve of Fan and Fan thinks Viv should mind her own
bloody business. So Deb keeps the peace between them at Christmas.
Between
everyone
. It’s Deb’s great talent. She should have
worked for the UN. “Peaceful conflict resolution”, that’s her
forte. And in case you didn’t know, that’s education-speak for what
to do instead of murdering a sibling. Deb says it’s more important
for kids to learn conflict resolution than reading or writing.
She’s probably right. Let’s face it, some kids will never learn to
read or write, but being able to resolve their conflicts peacefully
is a really useful skill. Especially in prison, which is where, Deb
says, a lot of her pupils are destined to continue their
education.’

‘Well, despite your attempt to paint a black
picture, I really like the sound of Deborah. She sounds
intelligent. And a good person.’

‘Yes, she is,’ Alfie said gloomily. ‘That
must be why we don’t get on.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m allergic to do-gooders.’

‘Why?’

He exhaled, as if he was tiring of his
commentary. ‘I think their motives are suspect. I never met one who
wasn’t trying to ease their own conscience.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with that, surely, if
they actually do some good? What would Deborah have on her
conscience anyway? It sounds as if she’s led a blameless life.’

He turned and gave me a puzzled look. ‘Do
you believe
anyone
leads a blameless life, Gwen? We all have
secrets. Things we’ve done that we wish we hadn’t, things we’re
ashamed of. Don’t
you
?’ I didn’t reply and turned away, to
look out the window at the bleak and colourless landscape. Alfie
resumed. ‘Oops. I’ve gone too far, haven’t I? Do I hear the sound
of skeletons rattling in the Rowland cupboard?’

‘I think the only thing I’m ashamed of is...
being ashamed. I was ashamed of my family. All of them. I told you
about my aunt who was a drunk. And my mother... The only other
member of my not very extended family was my uncle Frank. And he
was a promiscuous and predatory homosexual.’

‘Oh... Well, not a lot to brag about
there.’

‘I loved them all dearly and they were all I
had for a family, but I was terribly ashamed of them. At times I
even wished them
dead
. And now they are and I’m ashamed of
me
. They did the best they could and coped in ways that
worked for them. I shouldn’t have set myself up as judge and
jury.’

‘You were just a kid, surely?’

‘I suppose so. They were all dead by the
time I was sixteen.’

‘Gwen, cut yourself some slack. You were a
child
, for God’s sake!’

‘In some ways, yes. Chronologically, I was a
child. In other ways I felt middle-aged. My mother used to take me
out with her when she went on her thieving sprees. She thought if
she had a child in tow, people would be less likely to notice her
nicking stuff.’

‘Probably true. What did she steal?’

‘Food mostly. All her money went on drugs.
So we used to do Waitrose together. Only we
really
did
Waitrose. Pay for some stuff, steal more. I never went hungry.
There was always food in the house, good nutritious food. It just
hadn’t been paid for. But in the end I couldn’t eat it. I felt so
ashamed. Then I thought maybe I could blackmail Sasha into coming
off drugs by starving myself. So I went through an anorexic stage
when I was about eleven. She didn’t even notice. But Aunt Sam did.
She said if I didn’t eat, she’d take me to our GP and tell him my
mother was a junkie and a thief, then I’d be taken into care.’

‘She’d have shopped her sister?’

‘Well, she threatened to. And I believed
her. So I started eating again.’

‘Brutal, but effective.’

‘Yes, I suppose so. Aunt Sam was a tough
cookie. Well, she was with half a bottle of vodka inside her...
Tell me more about Harriet.’

‘Batty Hattie.’

‘Oh dear. As bad as that?’

‘Fan coined the nickname. She’s not the most
politically correct of women, as you’ll discover. My sister Harriet
is - how shall I put it? -
eccentric
. But quite harmless.
More sinned against than sinning, if you ask me. But I’m biased.
Hat’s extraordinarily fond of me for some reason.’

‘Well, they say blood is thicker than water.
She is your sister, not your half-sister.’

‘Maybe that’s it... She’s much younger than
the other three, so she was something of an only child until I came
along. Hattie was born nine years after Frances, so she never had
anyone to play with. Rae regarded her as the last in a long line of
disappointments - yet another baby who failed to be the longed-for
son. So Hattie was pretty much neglected, I think. She grew up a
bit wild and a bit...
odd
. But she wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Literally. She’s a vegetarian and won’t even kill a wasp. She helps
Viv and Tyler in the garden and one of her jobs is to collect up
all the snails. Viv won’t use bait because it poisons the birds.
Hattie’s supposed to drown the snails, but she refuses.’

‘What on earth does she do with them?’

‘Disposes of them in hedgerows and ditches
around Creake Hall. Apparently she can be seen on a summer’s
evening, sauntering along, like something out of Thomas Hardy,
swinging her bucket, broad-casting snails. God knows what she’s
doing to the ecological balance of the countryside.’ Alfie slowed
down as we approached a crossroads. ‘We’re nearly there. Are you
sure you’re ready for this?’

‘I’m looking forward to it! From what you’ve
told me, I fully expect your family to be as entertaining - and
exasperating - as you.’

‘You can have too much of a good thing, you
know.’

‘On the contrary. As my late Uncle Frank
used to say, “Too much is never enough.” And believe me,
he
would know.’

Gwen

I don’t know what I’d been expecting. A ramshackle
farmhouse. A Georgian rectory, perhaps. I certainly wasn’t
expecting an Elizabethan manor house, a jumble of tall, barley
sugar chimneys and crow step gables, red brick walls and a battery
of mullioned windows, winking at me as the car struggled up the
pot-holed drive.

It was love at first sight. I knew even
before I entered Creake Hall that it would be a House of Horrors,
domestic, architectural and probably culinary, but I didn’t care.
The house spoke to me, even at a distance. It looked neglected,
wounded somehow - quite possibly by its present owners. The part of
me that had considered textile conservation as a more worthwhile
and lucrative career roused itself and scented challenge. But I
determined to keep my eyes open, my mouth shut and my itchy,
exploratory fingers to myself. I was
not
on a rescue
mission.

I dragged my eyes away from the chaotic
roofline silhouetted against the vast Norfolk sky and, as the car
came to a halt in front of a massive double oak door, I turned to
speak to Alfie, my excitement bubbling over. He sat braced, both
hands still gripping the wheel, his chin sunk onto his chest. It
occurred to me then that perhaps I
was
on a rescue mission
after all.

His head shot up, he let go of the wheel and
turned to me, a bright, artificial smile plastered across his face.
He said, ‘Showtime, boys and girls!’ then leaned over, pulled my
head towards him and kissed me hard on the mouth. Almost as if he
was saying goodbye.