The Silence (15 page)

T
he Pheasant was able to do considerably better than a sofa or a linen cupboard. Michael was shown to a room, whose smallness the landlord apologized for.

‘All we have at present,’ he said.

But the sliver of a room was comfortably furnished, and with it came the offer of coffee or brandy and sandwiches. ‘For,’ said the landlord, who had introduced himself as Joe Poulson, ‘you’ll have had a long drive if you’ve come all the way from Oxford, and if you’ve been out to Stilter House – well, that’s a chilling place of a night these days.’

‘Chilling is one word for it,’ said Michael, a part of his mind noting that Stilter House seemed to have something of a reputation locally. He accepted the coffee and sandwiches gratefully, followed them up with a brandy for warmth, and wrote a quick note to Nell, saying he was here and would explain over breakfast. Tiptoeing along the bedroom corridor to slide it under her door without waking her or anyone else who might be staying here, it amused him to realize he had switched from behaving like a character in a Gothic ghost tale, to someone out of a French farce or an Edwardian house party. It was a pity he was not wearing a lush smoking jacket, and dodging itinerant husbands or wives engaged on various priapic errands. Back in his room, he devoured the sandwiches, downed the brandy, and fell thankfully into a sleep which was only briefly troubled by disturbing dreams.

The dreams had dissolved by morning, however, and seated in The Pheasant’s small dining room, with Nell and Beth opposite, eating Mrs Poulson’s idea of a nourishing breakfast which Michael thought was almost Victorian in its variety and quantity, the world seemed a normal place once more.

Beth was full of the adventure they had had last night; Michael thought she had been considerably frightened by the woman who had come into the house, but it was clear Nell had played down any possible threat, and Beth was now more interested in describing the dramatic aspect for Michael’s benefit.

‘We pushed the furniture against the door so’s she couldn’t get in, and then we climbed through the window,’ she said, eating sausages and tomatoes with industrious pleasure. ‘Then mum drove away at about a hundred miles an hour, and we left the woman there, and we came here and we were safe.’ She looked at Nell, suddenly doubtful, and Nell said, ‘Couldn’t be safer. And whoever that woman was, she was probably just a bit muddled in the head, which is actually a very sad thing. I explained that, didn’t I?’ she said to Beth. ‘About people sometimes getting their minds in a muddle and not realizing what they’re doing? I know it was horrible at the time, but she wouldn’t have known how peculiar she seemed to us.’

Beth nodded, considering the concept of people whose minds were muddled. ‘I ’spect a doctor can unmuddle her, though?’

‘Certainly. That’s why Sergeant Howe is going to look for her this morning, so he can make sure someone helps her. Is that honey in that jar? Well, stop hogging it, Michael, and pass it over.’

Michael passed her the honey and the topic switched to The Pheasant and Beth’s forthcoming session in the kitchen. Beth was buoyantly explaining about helping Mrs Poulson make Bakewell tart.

‘She thought it’d be a pretty good idea for me to know how to do that,’ she confided. ‘I think it would be pretty good as well, on account of we can make some when we get home. It’s extra-double good, Bakewell tart.’

‘If you make it, we’ll have a tea party in my rooms,’ promised Michael. ‘You can invite some of your friends and we’ll shut Wilberforce in the kitchen.’ He buttered a piece of toast, topped up his coffee cup, then said, offhandedly, ‘Nell, do you have to go back to Stilter House this morning?’

‘Yes,’ said Nell and, as Beth looked up, she said, ‘Only for an hour or two, to finish the inventory. I told you Sergeant Howe is coming with me. We should be able to go home soon after lunch.’

‘If I came with you as well,’ said Michael, deliberately casually, ‘I could help with the inventory and . . . Why is Beth giggling, do you suppose?’ He winked at Beth, who said, gleefully, ‘Last time you helped with an invent’ry you got it all wrong, and you lost the bit with Mum’s prices on it. Mum was furious with you, and she said she’d never let you within a mile of an invent’ry again.’

‘I’d forgotten that,’ said Michael, who hadn’t, but was glad he had achieved his aim of making Beth laugh.

‘I hadn’t forgotten,’ said Nell. ‘But you can come with me this time. I’ll let him hold the pen and paper,’ she said to Beth. ‘He can’t get that wrong.’

‘I bet he can,’ said Beth.

‘I’ll make sure he doesn’t. How about you going up to your room to tidy up and brush your teeth before we find Mrs Poulson? Here’s the key. I’ll follow you up in a minute. You know how to unlock the door, don’t you?’

‘Oh yes.’ Beth, pleased to be allowed to walk through the grown-up hotel on her own, took the key, scrambled down from her seat, and vanished.

‘She’s all right?’ said Michael. ‘I mean – really all right?’ Nell’s account of how the woman had got in and followed them through the grounds had been a rather hasty story while Beth was in the shower, and Michael had the impression that there were other details still to come.

‘I think she’s almost completely recovered,’ said Nell. ‘She’s astonishingly resilient. And it was so fantastic – literally like something out of a fantasy, that I think she’s accepted it as an adventure. I told her we would get away from the house and be safe, and she trusted me. In fact she’s probably already half written the whole thing as an essay for school or an email for Ellie in her mind.’

‘I have a terrible feeling she might grow up to be a writer,’ said Michael. He set down his coffee cup and said, ‘Nell, did anything else happen at Stilter House?’

‘It’s an eerie house,’ said Nell, non-committally. ‘It’s a bit too easy to imagine you see things that aren’t there. Or,’ she said, not looking at him, ‘that you hear things that can’t be happening.’

‘Such as piano music?’

Her eyes flew up to meet his. ‘You heard it as well,’ she said, half questioning, half making a statement.

‘Yes. I saw the pianist, too. Just for a moment, but it was unmistakable.’

‘You can’t imagine how glad I am to hear you say that,’ said Nell. ‘I saw him, but I thought I was imagining it. I kept telling myself it was a trick of the light, or I was half asleep over the inventory notes.’

‘We might be well attuned, but I don’t think we’re attuned to the extent of seeing the same hallucination.’

‘When I heard the music the first time,’ said Nell, ‘I thought it was Beth trying out Charlotte’s piano. But then I heard it again, and I saw the boy, and I thought—’

‘That it might be Brad you were seeing?’

‘I . . . yes, I did. Thanks for understanding. I thought it might be a fragment of memory projected onto the room, or wish-fulfilment, or something,’ said Nell, in a mumble.

‘It’s an obvious conclusion for you to make,’ said Michael. ‘You were in the house where he had stayed so often as a child, you’d be feeling close to him.’ He reached for her hand. ‘Listen, my dear love, I wish you wouldn’t have this block about talking to me about Brad. I want you to have those memories of him – they’re all good ones. Beth should have them, too.’

‘I know. But what I don’t want,’ said Nell, almost angrily, ‘is to think I’m seeing the ghost of him as a child in that horrible house. Apart from anything else, I’m the one who doesn’t believe in ghosts, remember?’

‘I do remember.’ He smiled at her.

‘I found some odd things in the paperwork Margery sent about the house,’ she said. ‘A really peculiar account from the original builder – a man called Samuel Burlap. It’s all capable of logical explanation, although if you saw that boy as well—’

‘I did see him.’ He enclosed her hand in both of his. ‘He looked a bit like Beth, didn’t he? A masculine version, I mean.’

‘Yes.’

‘But I don’t think it was Brad.’

‘I know that now.’ She was frowning at the table, avoiding his eyes again. ‘I didn’t know it to start with, but now I do. Michael, I think it was a boy called Esmond.’

Michael said, very deliberately, ‘So do I.’ He waited for her response, which came instantly.

‘You know about Esmond?’ She looked up at him, startled.

‘Yes. There’re a few things I haven’t had chance to tell you,’ said Michael, knowing that he would show her Emily’s letter and Brad’s composition, but not wanting to swamp her with it yet. He reached into his jacket pocket. ‘Let’s get Esmond dealt with first. I found his music,’ he said, and placed it on the table between them.

‘I found that as well. On the piano stand. It was after I heard him playing, and after I saw him. Esmond,’ said Nell softly, and traced a fingertip over the faded ink of the name on the music score. ‘Who is he, Michael? Because I found a note as well – something Brad wrote when he was a child at Stilter House; he left it in Esmond’s favourite book for Esmond to find.’

‘Brad wrote a school essay about Esmond, as well,’ said Michael. ‘Emily West found it and sent it to the shop for you to see. She left a voicemail message for you – Henry Jessel picked that up and called me. We both listened to it, and it sounded important. Actually, it sounded as if Emily thought you and Beth might be in some kind of danger. But I couldn’t reach her to find out any more and I couldn’t reach you, either. So in the end I opened her letter. Nell, it felt like the worst kind of invasion on your privacy to do that, but I needed to know if you really were in any danger – that it wasn’t just a nice, slightly scatty old lady’s fantasies.’

‘I’d have done the same,’ said Nell, at once.

‘Thank goodness.’ Michael was relieved to have got over this hurdle. ‘There are several things in the letter that made me decide to come hotfoot up here. I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re both all right. I can’t lose you, Nell. I can’t lose either of you.’

‘Nine lives,’ said Nell, smiling at him. ‘You won’t lose me.’

They looked at one another, then Michael said, ‘Well, good.’

‘Let’s save the intense romantic stuff for later,’ said Nell briskly. ‘Did you bring Emily’s letter with you?’

‘Yes. I’ll let you have it before we leave.’

‘Good. I’ll let you see Samuel Burlap’s stuff, as well.’

‘It does sound,’ said Michael, hoping he was giving her the information in sufficiently small doses, ‘as if Charlotte met Esmond, too.’

‘Charlotte did? But look here,’ said Nell, frowning, ‘if Brad knew Esmond when he was here as a child, and if Charlotte also knew him—’

‘And if you and I both saw him,’ said Michael, continuing her thought, ‘it means Esmond hasn’t grown any older for at least thirty years.’

Nell considered this, then said, ‘That’s impossible. I don’t believe it.’

‘I know you don’t. But let’s just go out to the house, finish the inventory, and get the hell out of here.’

‘Leaving the ghosts to their own devices.’

‘You don’t believe in ghosts,’ pointed out Michael.

‘I don’t,’ she said again, and grinned. ‘But I don’t think I want to stay at Stilter House to prove or disprove that.’ She stood up. ‘It’ll be easier if we take my car, I think. Then I can pack up my stuff and Beth’s and sling it all in the boot while we’re there. I’ll get Beth installed with Mrs Poulson, and meet you here.’

Left to himself, Michael wandered around The Pheasant’s ground-floor rooms, which had the pleasing, early morning scents of fresh coffee. In the oak-panelled hall he found a potted history of The Pheasant. Apparently D. H. Lawrence had occasionally called here while he was living in Derbyshire and writing some of his short stories, and Michael instantly wondered if he could set up a holiday study tour for postgraduate students who would probably like the idea of a pub crawl tracing the paths of writers and poets. He sat down in a window seat to write this down in the notebook without which he never travelled and whose pages were somewhat imperfectly contained by a thick rubber band. He put Esmond’s music on the seat beside him so it would not become mixed up with the pages, and wrote down a few preliminary ideas for the holiday tour, adding some details of The Pheasant’s background which might come in useful. In addition to D.H. Lawrence’s habit of nipping in for a couple of drinks, the pub’s genealogy appeared to include hosting a local murder trial, the giving of shelter to a highwayman fleeing the Bow Street Runners, and the existence of a first-floor room occasionally rented by a lady known as Threepenny Meg who had been prodigious with her favours to the gentlemen of the 95th Derbyshire regiment when they returned from the Crimean War.

He was just closing the notebook when Nell returned to report that Beth was safely ensconced with Mrs Poulson, and would probably end up covered in flour and jam from head to foot and it was anybody’s guess what the resultant Bakewell tart would taste like.

‘Oh, and Sergeant Howe rang to say it’d be easier if he went out to check on Stilter House after lunch because somebody set fire to a hayrick somewhere and he has to lock the culprit up. I said after lunch would be fine, because you were here and we were going out to the house together,’ said Nell. ‘What have you been up to?’

Michael explained his idea for a literary pub-crawl for postgrads.

‘That’s a good idea.’

‘Yes, except that faculty budgets being what they are, I’d probably start out aiming for Lake Geneva with Byron and Shelley, or Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett in Florence—’

‘Making use of all those lyric wine shops and tavernas, of course.’

‘Yes, but then I’d find there’d be only enough funds to get as far as Arnold Bennett in Stoke-on-Trent.’

‘Nothing wrong with Stoke-on-Trent,’ said Nell, practically. ‘All that gorgeous porcelain and china. Wedgwood and Royal Doulton and Minton.’

‘True. And we could certainly do a lot worse than this place for starters,’ said Michael, glancing about him. ‘I’ve been reading about its history.’ He indicated the printed details on the wall. ‘I love the sound of Threepenny Meg, don’t you?’

‘She probably gave half the 95th regiment a severe dose of clap,’ said Nell, reading the framed history and grinning.