Hush (14 page)

Lily stood in the room that had given spatial context to her formative years, staring mutely at the walls. They seemed all wrong from this angle: she was too tall for them. The window was too low, and the vines on the wallpaper twined into the drooping plaster of the ceiling to give a sense of the world caving in on itself. The view from the window was not the same as it once had been, and her gaze skimmed over the tops of the trees, seeking the fields beyond.

Richard was downstairs; she could hear him moving.

It felt the same as it had when they had been here a few weeks ago. The house seemed like a living thing that grew around her and clawed its way into her consciousness, dulling her mind and making her sluggish. She couldn’t form thoughts properly; found herself distracted by the patterns in the dust on the floorboards. Everything was subtly wrong – too small, too colourful, too empty – and she couldn’t separate the real from the remembered.

There wasn’t much left of the room as it had been. A single bed-frame cradling a dusty mattress. A desk, far too small to be of any use now. Everything else had been tidied away, shuffled off into boxes, stowed away in attics or cellars or wherever these things were kept. They had done some half-hearted tidying when they’d been here last, putting some boxes down in the cellar, but she didn’t think much of it would have been hers. She’d been shunted around so much as a child, she wasn’t sure where any of her possessions had ended up.

They’d arrived at midday, after an uneventful two-hour drive. Richard had been talkative in the car, but she hadn’t been in the mood, so they’d turned the music up and sung along to the Smiths for most of the journey. Their belongings – those deemed too important to go into storage – had been piled up on the back seat, and when Richard braked sharply they’d heard things dislodging themselves from the mass and tumbling to the floor. They’d pulled into the driveway accompanied by the clatter of falling cutlery.

For the past few hours Richard had been resolutely upbeat, unpacking and organising and sweeping dust and shadows to one side with fluid, easy movements. Lily had trailed behind him, hoping some of his demeanour would infect her, but she felt drained of energy and she couldn’t concentrate. After a while she’d mumbled something about making up the bed, and made her way up the stairs, sinking into the shadowy gloom of the house.

The staircase was a tiered passageway, walled in on all sides and lit by a single, bare bulb. It opened out at the top on to a landing with four doors: three bedrooms and a bathroom. Her parents’ room to the left, looking out over the front of the house. Bathroom straight ahead. And her and Connie’s rooms to the right, side by side, windows overlooking the back garden and the forest behind.

They’d already decided that they would sleep in her parents’ room – aside from any other considerations, it was the only one with a double bed – but she couldn’t resist sneaking a look at the other rooms. And that was how she had come to find herself staring at the walls, unable to believe that this was a real, physical place rather than just somewhere she had imagined. Had she really been a child here? Had Connie?

She heard Richard coming up the stairs behind her, and told herself to snap out of it. She reached the doorway just as he got to the top of the stairs.

‘Which one’s ours?’ he asked. He was carrying two large suitcases.

She pointed to her parents’ room, and watched as he lugged the suitcases through the door, dropping them with heavy thuds on the bare floorboards beyond. ‘God, it’s dusty in here,’ he said, reappearing in the doorway. ‘We’re going to end up with respiratory infections.’

Lily smiled faintly, but said nothing.

‘Is that your old room?’ He indicated behind her, and she nodded. He walked over, so she had no choice but to go back in with him. He stood beside her, surveying it all with interest.

‘I like the wallpaper,’ he said, reaching out to run a finger down it. ‘It’s a bit like being inside a forest, isn’t it? And with the trees outside –’ Lily flinched as he pointed, but he didn’t notice, too busy looking around him.

‘Can we see Connie’s room too?’

Dutifully Lily led him next door. He noted the way the beds met at the wall with a smile. ‘Could you talk through the walls?’

Lily shook her head. ‘We used Morse code.’

‘You knew Morse code as kids? That’s pretty impressive.’

She shrugged. ‘Dad taught us.’

Richard looked at her curiously, but she didn’t say anything else, and he didn’t push her. After a minute he put his arms around her, lifting her face so he was looking directly into her eyes. ‘I’m glad we came,’ he said, his voice soft and serious.

Lily kissed him, then pressed her face against his chest, so she wouldn’t have to answer.

‘Are you absolutely sure you’re ready to go today?’

Lily nodded, impatient.

‘Because you can wait a couple more days, if you want to. It’s no problem.’

‘Dad, stop babying her. She’s fine.’

Marcus looked from one daughter to the other. Couldn’t help smiling at the identical stubbornness of their expressions. They had always looked so similar, both thin and pale, like two blonde ghosts who flashed in and out of existence. Lily looked almost exactly the same as Connie had three years ago. It was almost as if she’d gone away Lily and come back Connie.

Except, of course, that Connie was still there.

‘Okay. You’ll look after her? Show her around?’

‘Yes, Dad.’ Connie rolled her eyes, something she did frequently these days. It made Marcus laugh, the affectation of grown-up gestures, though he struggled not to show it.

‘Good. And don’t forget –’

‘Oh, shut
up
, Dad, we’ll be fine.’

Connie took Lily’s hand, dragged her out of the front door. Marcus thought he heard Lily’s pale goodbye trailing after them, waif-like. But maybe it was just an echo of Connie’s.

As soon as they rounded the corner, Connie dropped Lily’s hand. She started to walk faster, not intending to outrun Lily, but always keeping one step ahead of her.

‘You know I can’t really look after you, right? You have to make your own way in these places. Otherwise people won’t respect you.’

Lily said nothing, her eyes fixed straight ahead. Connie wasn’t even sure she was listening.

‘I’ll be there if you need me,’ she added, her voice slightly more gentle. ‘But I can’t babysit you. You understand?’

Lily nodded.

Connie watched her for a second, waiting. Then stopped dead, grabbed Lily by the shoulders. Her voice was a low hiss in her sister’s ear.

‘And you know, it would be really fucking sensible if you started talking once in a while. I’ve had just about enough of being the sister of a freak.’

Her grip on Lily’s shoulders disappeared as abruptly as it had arrived. Lily stood still, the imprints of her sister’s fingers burning lightly on her skin, and watched as Connie stormed away into the distance, leaving her in the street alone.

It had been three years since Lily had been in a proper school, and back then she had been at primary school – small, gentle, entirely focused on making learning fun, rather than just making it happen as quickly and with as little fuss as possible. The institute had been another world, and Lily had slotted into it as best she could; the fact that they expected you to behave oddly meant that she had never felt particularly out of place when she was there.

Secondary school was different.

It was bigger than anywhere she had ever been. There seemed to be a constant level of background noise, a buzz that filled her ears and made her feel dizzy. People barged into her and didn’t even think to say sorry. She found she was constantly fighting just to keep hold of her books.

The corridors weren’t dissimilar to the institute’s, though they seemed much bigger. They had the same tiles on the floor, black and white squares. She counted them as she walked from place to place. This made her walk slowly, but she found it easier to breathe when she was counting.

The doors were all wrong, though. They led to rooms she didn’t recognise. And the windows looked out on to unfamiliar fields – huge, empty expanses of grass with goal posts dotted at seemingly random intervals.

When she was counting squares she couldn’t count door numbers, so she spent most of the first day getting lost. She walked into rooms late, time after time, and received dirty looks from teachers and students alike. They washed over her, meaningless.

She didn’t speak a word.

They attacked the house together the next morning. Threw open windows, expelled dust from every corner, wrestled territory away from spiders and ants and other creatures that had invaded in the absence of people. The little that remained in the way of traces of prior occupation was carefully and quietly removed by Richard, stowed away in the cellar to worry about later. Lily noticed, but said nothing, glad that he was taking charge so that she didn’t have to think about it.

Lily concentrated her efforts on the front of the house: their bedroom, the living room, the bathroom. If Richard noticed that she stuck close to those rooms, steered clear of windows that overlooked the back garden, then he chose not to comment.

They pushed out long-distant memories with the collected possessions of their shared life. Spread their familiar duvet on the bed where her mother had once given birth. Ate dinner off their own plates, watched their TV in the living room, while the ghosts of Connie and Lily’s childhood selves, oblivious, played games to fill the space.

The collected unspent breath of every conversation that had never taken place textured the air around them, but they breathed their way through it. Feigning indifference.

At night, Richard filled the silent space with stories, whispered Lily into sleep with his own personal etymologies. Quietly rebuilt their own private world over the top of the house’s history.

On their third day, they ventured into the village together. The sun blazed cold, the air crisp, their cloudy exhalations colouring the air. Lily held on to Richard’s hand, walking half a step behind, like a reluctant child. She stopped from time to time, to stare at seemingly unremarkable buildings. Richard wondered what she was seeing. Superimposing the old on to the new. Reshaping her childhood.

‘We should go to the high street,’ Richard suggested. ‘Have a look at the shops. They’ve probably changed quite a bit, you know.’

‘Mmm.’

‘The newsagent’s looks as though it hasn’t changed for about a hundred years, though.’

‘Cook’s,’ Lily said, absently, her eyes on some flowers by the roadside. She dropped Richard’s hand to crouch down beside them. ‘Isn’t it the wrong time of year for flowers?’

‘Depends what kind.’

‘What are these?’ Lily reached out a finger, brushed the red-black petal, softly.

‘Hellebores,’ Richard replied, leaning down beside her.

‘Can we grow some? In the front garden?’

‘I don’t see why not. We could have a whole winter garden, if you want.’ Paused. Tentative. ‘There’d be more space out the back.’

She didn’t respond. Brushed the petal one more time, then stood up and resumed their walk.

‘So Cook’s was there when you were little?’

‘Mmm. The window displays looked like a doll’s shop. All dusty and full of old tins. And they had jars of sweets behind the counter.’

‘They still do.’

Lily nodded, smiled almost imperceptibly. ‘Good.’

They walked hand in hand down the high street, peering into all the shops. It was a strange juxtaposition of old and
new: a bookshop with so many piles of books it was as if they’d forgotten what shelves were for, nestled next to Boots, with its clinical white modernity. There weren’t many people around. Pensioners ambling towards the post office. Parents pushing buggies with no particular destination in mind. They went into Cook’s, and Lily smiled to see the seemingly immortal Mr Cook, timeless, ageless, still working away behind the counter. They bought humbugs in paper bags and walked in the direction of the river.

There wasn’t much Lily remembered, really. So much of her childhood had been spent elsewhere, and she’d never returned after the age of twelve. But there was something in the texture of the place. She was trying to fit her adult’s feet into child-sized footprints; reshaping the edges, smudging the exterior lines.

The river was a perfect countryside river, tripping its way over the tops of the rocks and pebbles beneath. There was a bridge – stone, crumbling, story-like. Lily could remember playing Poohsticks with her father and Connie. On the other side of the bridge, outskirts, woodlands. And farmland. A few abandoned structures, tool sheds, stables. Not worth exploring, at least not today.

They took off their shoes and scrambled down the riverbank, out of sight of the path above, not that there was anyone around to see them. They walked for a few minutes until houses had been replaced by trees, fields, absence of civilisation. Lily jumped from stone to stone, shoes dangling from one hand, the other held out to steady herself. Richard followed at a gentler pace, testing each stone before committing his weight to it.

They sat down on a rock at the water’s edge and dipped their toes into the freezing water, giggling as it teased their toes. They sucked humbugs, and realised their mistake as the mint made the cold even sharper on their tongues. Sat arm
in arm, watching the sun on the water. Thought of nothing, as their new home drove out the old one, making space for change.

‘In the beginning was the word.’ Richard’s whisper, in the blanket darkness of their bedroom, not penetrated by street-lamps or civilisation. ‘And the word was…?’

‘Hellebore.’ He could hear the smile in her voice. Couldn’t help smiling back.

‘Once upon a time, in ancient Greece, there was a plague of madness which spread through the village of Argyn. It only affected the women; it caused them to run naked through the streets at night, weeping, screaming, calling down visions of hell upon everyone around them. Their fathers and husbands did what they could to restrain them – tying them to their beds, locking them in their rooms – but all their efforts proved futile. The women couldn’t control themselves, and no number of chains could keep them from breaking free. The men called in priests, and witch doctors; they tried bleeding them, and feeding them sedatives; but nothing had any effect. Every night, the women would run free, and no one in the village could sleep for the racket that they made.

‘One of these women was called Helena, and she, like many others, did all she could to prevent her own descent into madness. With the help of her brother, a goatherd named Melam, she secured a prison for herself beneath their home. They built a concrete tomb, not unlike a mausoleum, and every night Melam would lock her inside. The strength of a hundred men would not have been enough to move the walls of the fortress, and, though Helena fought to break free, she was never successful. During the day Melam would let her out, and she would run the household while he did his daily work. In this way, they continued in some semblance of a
normal life, though they never stopped looking for a cure for Helena’s condition.

‘Several priests passed through the village, offering their opinions on the condition that afflicted the women. One claimed that it was the god Dionysus who was to blame: he had infected the women, forcing them to exhibit their most reckless tendencies. But, no matter how many explanations the priests offered, they could not provide a cure, and one by one they left, and life went on.

‘Melam spent his days on the hillside, tending his herd, and gradually he began to notice that they, too, exhibited certain signs of the madness that was afflicting the female population. In fact, all the animals that roamed on the hillside – the goats, the squirrels, the foxes and the badgers – seemed to suffer from similar symptoms. They would run around, wild and untamed, sometimes foaming at the mouth, sometimes howling uncontrollably. They were never actually violent, but they seemed unable to control their physical impulses. The only animals that seemed completely unaffected were the deer.

‘Melam spent several weeks examining the behaviour of all of the animals. He watched where they went, what they came into contact with, and, most carefully, what they ate. After a month of careful observation he concluded that the only difference between the deer and the rest of the animals was their fondness for eating a certain flower.

‘The idea of plants as natural medicines had of course been around since time immemorial, but Melam could not recall any particular usage ever having been made of this plant. Quietly – not wanting to build false hope within the community – he gathered some of the flowers and took them home with him at the end of his working day. While Helena was locked up in her tomb, screaming and desperately trying to escape, he worked through the night to reduce the plants into a concoction that might be drinkable.

‘In the morning Melam served the medicine to Helena with her breakfast, claiming that it was a plant derivative, just discovered, which would be good for her digestion. Because she loved her brother dearly, Helena did not question him; Melam did not tell her the truth, lest the potion didn’t work. And so both of them went about their day as normal, and when Melam returned home in the evening he locked her up as he always did.

‘He waited outside the door for several hours, but the usual rantings and ravings that could be clearly heard even through the layers of concrete failed to materialise. Melam didn’t dare open the door until morning, just in case the potion had in some way rendered Helena silent while failing to cure her madness. But when he opened the door in the morning he found her quite well rested, and thoroughly surprised.

‘He told her what he had done, and gave her the same potion again that morning; and the next night he decided to risk leaving her free of her prison. Again, she slept soundly; not a touch of madness could be detected in her sleeping countenance. And so, the next day, he brewed up as much of the potion as he could, and he took it into the village.

‘The villagers could scarcely believe their ears when he told them what he had discovered, and, certainly, few of them were willing to leave their wives and daughters unchained the first night. But within a week they were declaring Melam an earthly god, and demanding that the flower be named after he who had discovered it.

‘Melam, though, being the humble person that he was, did not feel worthy of having any article of nature named after him, and so, he suggested a different name. It is from him that we get the name of this flower that for so long was thought to be a cure for madness: from
hellos
, or “fawn”, and
bora
, “food of beasts”.’