The Silence of Ghosts (5 page)

‘Tell me about Octavia,’ she said.

I told her what there was to know. That she’d been born with good hearing but that at the age of five she’d contracted mumps and gone completely deaf. Rose listened gravely, and I had a feeling that she took a special interest in the matter.

‘I’d like to help her,’ she said. ‘I have a cousin, John, aged fifteen, who was deaf from birth. He’s been to all manner of teachers and advisers, most of them useless. But a couple of years ago he was fitted with a hearing aid. Doesn’t Octavia have one?’

I shook my head.

‘We heard they weren’t very good.’

‘Well, that’s understandable, the new type were only developed a few years back. But they can do a lot of good. I’ll look into what’s possible. I take it your family have money?’

It was hard to dissemble. The house itself and its furnishings spoke for themselves, and though I was bed-bound, I was wearing a smoking jacket that had been bought in Paris at a little shop my mother knew, in an impasse in St Germain.

‘Normally, quite a lot. With the war, things aren’t so good.’

‘Well, if she gets an Amplivox, it shouldn’t cost more than thirty pounds. It’s a lot of money, but if your parents can meet the cost . . .’

Just then, Octavia came in again, gesturing.

‘I’ve been in the kitchen,’ she said. ‘It’s really cold. It’s even cold in here.’

The living room, which I had made my bedroom and general quarters, was piping hot. A large wood fire was blazing in the
fireplace, and Rose had told me that the weather outside was mild. The room is Octavia’s bedroom as well, where she sleeps on a French sleigh bed that my mother had ordered down from one of the rooms upstairs.

Rose called Octavia to her and used a thermometer to take her temperature.

‘Normal,’ she said. ‘But if you still feel cold, Octavia, I’ll take you up to Pooley Bridge to see Dr Raverat.’

She said goodbye after that and said she’d pop in again tomorrow. Octavia saw her to the door.

Wednesday, 11 December

This is, God knows, as lonely a place as I have known. I have Octavia for company, of course, but she is ten years old, and I often want to speak with an adult, a man or even a woman. Of course, with a woman I can never expect any more than intelligent conversation. All I can hope for is to have some women for my friends. The loss of my leg has diminished me so completely, I scarcely think of myself as a man now, a proper man, well formed, active, not the partial thing I have become.

The sense of isolation here is made worse in the long evenings and nights. The blackout hems us in, but I had forgotten that the house was never fitted with either gas or electricity, and that we must depend on candles and oil lamps of various kinds. When dark comes down, the house changes. It is all shadows, shadows that shift and change. I feel disturbed by it. Lying alone in my bed, I am trapped, and my mind fixes on the shadows and the way the flickering of a candle will send them scurrying in all directions. Sometimes they will cluster in a corner, and
my imagination fancies that they move of their own accord, or that someone is watching me from within them. I keep a lamp burning through the night. Octavia sleeps on the sleigh bed at the foot of mine and says she does not mind the shaded light. At times she whimpers in her sleep, but I do not think she can hear the small sounds the house makes as its wooden beams expand and contract.

Rose came again today. She arrived by car instead of bicycle. It’s Dr Raverat’s car, a little TB Midget, bright red and striking, even with its folding roof securely in place. I realized that the doctor must trust her a lot, to let her drive on these country roads in such a smart little sports car.

She had a reason for borrowing it.

‘I prefer my bicycle,’ she said, ‘but I’ve brought something that wouldn’t fit safely on a bike.’

She went out to the car, and when she came back in she was carrying a pair of wooden crutches.

I recoiled when I saw them. ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘I’m not ready for those.’ I was terrified at the thought of them, of going outside, of falling on my back, of crashing on to my face, catching them in weeds, displaying my awkwardness, like a child learning to walk for the first time. Frankly, I didn’t want them at all.

She smiled and approached the bed.

‘The sooner you can get out of that bed and start to walk, the better you’ll feel. You’re stifling in here and getting bedsores.’

‘I don’t have any clothes.’

She laughed.

‘Octavia has shown me where your things are kept.’

As if on cue, Octavia arrived, carrying a pair of trousers, a sock, a shirt and a thick pullover that I had worn against the cold of the fjords. She grinned and laid the bundle on top of her bed,
then made her way back to the kitchen, where she lived while she was not with me.

‘Shouldn’t I do this in hospital?’

Rose shook her head.

‘Lieutenant, what can I do to make you understand? I am a trained nurse. I have won awards for my nursing. I have worked in two hospitals, and I have seen my fill of amputated legs. Or, in your case, a partially amputated leg. You are already luckier than many men I have looked after: you have a complete leg and half a leg. There are men whose legs begin and end at the top of their thighs. I have dressed wounds, as I intend to dress yours today. Your wound is healing up nicely, but I want you out of bed. As it is, you’ve been bedridden too long. Dr Raverat agrees. He says you’ve been too long on your back. I don’t like to criticize anyone, but I’ve already seen that soldiers and sailors don’t always get the best medical attention. The longer you stay in bed, the more likely it is that liquid will go to your lungs and cause pneumonia. In your weakened state, that could be very dangerous indeed.’

She stayed for the rest of the day, getting me dressed, holding me while I made my way up on to the crutches, lifting me, touching me with infinite care. I felt myself slipping further and further towards her. She walked me round the living room in circles. Without her I would have tripped, and any time she relaxed her hold, I felt myself tilt and head for a fall. But her hands were always ready to catch me. Although I had no prosthetic limb, I slowly learned to balance on the crutches without one. An artificial leg, she said, would come later, perhaps in a week or two, but she wanted Dr Raverat to examine me before I even attempted to walk on one.

She got me back to bed an hour before nightfall, which came just after five.

‘I want to get this car back to Dr Raverat,’ she said. ‘I don’t fancy driving without headlights on these roads. I’d probably drive straight into the lake.’

‘You’re welcome to stay here,’ I said. ‘We have enough for dinner.’

She shook her head.

‘Thanks, but I have no choice. The doctor is going out on his rounds tonight. He likes to see his patients when they’re at home.’

I frowned.

‘Surely they’d be in bed?’

‘Not all of them. Only the really sick ones. Most of them head out to work as soon as they’ve been given their medicine. They’re in reserved occupations and they don’t want anybody to start thinking they aren’t really necessary and sending them into the Army.’

‘Or the Navy.’

She laughed. It was a lovely laugh, like water running over the stones in a brook.

I wondered what it would be like to have a woman like that for my own, but my eyes fell on the crutches, which had been left near to hand.

She said goodbye and Octavia came in. I hadn’t let her watch me on the crutches.

‘Don’t you think a wheelchair would be better?’ I asked her.

She shook her head.

‘I asked Rose about that. She says it would only be an option if you had lost all of your leg. She wants you to try the crutches and not give in. I think she likes you.’

Although all this was said in silence, her last words struck me as if she’d shouted in my ear.

She came to the bedside.

‘Dominic, can I tell you something?’

‘Of course. You know you can tell me anything, dear.’

She seemed thoughtful, possibly anxious. I couldn’t imagine what might have happened. Octavia has always been mature for her age, forced as she is to spend less time with other children than she might have liked. She said nothing at first, whether verbally or in gestures. Then she spoke without sound, using her lips to express with some care what she wanted to say. And she took out the paper tablet on which she could write in pencil and began to scribble.

‘When you were with Rose,’ she wrote, ‘I went out to buy some food for supper. I brought the ration book with me. There’s only one shop in Howtown, so I marched in and smiled at the lady behind the counter. She let me register for us both, even though I’m really young, but when she looked over what I’d written, including our address, she looked at me, as though I frightened her. Well, I know about funny looks from people, and maybe she’s never seen a deaf person before, but I thought it odd. She fetched everything I wanted and stamped the book, but even as I was leaving she kept her eyes on me.’

‘Well, I think you’re right, love. She may not have seen anyone like you in Howtown before. It’s a tiny hamlet. Was she a young woman or older?’

‘Much older. An old lady, I’d say.’

‘Well, she must surely have set eyes on a deaf person before. No doubt she was puzzled more by your being a foreigner, someone from out of town. All these places are very parochial, you know.’

‘That wasn’t all,’ Octavia continued. ‘As I was coming back here, I looked up and I saw a face looking out of the front bedroom window. I couldn’t see it very well, and then it disappeared. It might have been the light. I thought it was Rose, but she was down here with you when I got in.’

‘Have you gone upstairs to look?’ I asked.

She shook her head.

‘I don’t like to,’ she said. ‘What if there was really someone there?’

‘Well, I’m no help to you. I think the light got you imagining things. I’m sure no one has broken in. Are you sure there was a face?’

‘Not sure,’ she wrote. ‘It seemed like that.’

‘Then just ignore it. It was a trick of the light.’

She smiled wanly, but I do not think she was convinced.

Octavia ventured into the kitchen to prepare supper, which was to be Spam fritters with potatoes – Mrs Mayberry had taught her some basic cooking skills, and she was better than many adults. I began to wish I could use my crutches so I could help her in the kitchen and sit down at the dining-room table. I thought it might be a good idea to find a local woman to come in a couple of times a day in order to make our meals. The smell of the fritters frying wafted in strongly, then I noticed it change. Very quickly, I noticed it become more of a burned smell, mixed with something unpleasant that I couldn’t place. There was no point in my shouting, she wouldn’t have heard me. I just lay back, hoping she hadn’t burned anything. If the kitchen was on fire the house could burn down. Hallinhag House is built solidly from stone, but it is lined with oak beams that may have come from the woods all about us; once a fire caught I was sure the whole structure would catch flame and incinerate anyone inside, especially someone with one leg.

I pulled back the bedclothes and swung myself into a sitting position, dragging my stump as I did so and crying out with the pain. As I did so, the door to the room opened wide and I saw Octavia standing with a tray in her hands. She came in, pushing
the door shut behind her with her heel, and headed for the little table we’d brought into the room for meals. There she put the tray down. A delicious smell rose from the food.

‘Are you getting up after all?’ she asked, without even looking at me.

‘Octavia, did you smell the terrible smell just now?’

She turned and gestured, frowning.

‘You mean this? I can throw it away if you don’t like it. But there’s not much in the larder.’

‘No, I meant the burning smell. It must have been out with you in the kitchen, or at least that’s what I thought.’

She shook her head and looked at me as if I wasn’t all there. Like many deaf people, she had a well-developed sense of smell and certainly would have noticed anything as strong as the odour I’d just detected. Perhaps it had been something in the room, I thought, and had gone as suddenly as it had come. I could no longer smell it. Or it may have come from outside, maybe someone was burning something in the woods. I stopped guessing and we ate in silence. I switched on the little radio I’d brought down with me. Radio Eireann was playing ‘The Phantom Melody’ by Ketèlbey. It was at such times I most pitied Octavia, for there was none of this lovely music she could hear. She had to pass her life in almost total silence.

We had just finished our meal when there was a knock at the door. Octavia went out and came back accompanied again by Rose.

‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything,’ she said. ‘But I was a little concerned about you, so I thought I’d cycle back to pop my head round the door and see how you are. Also, I have good news. Tom Wilkinson in Keswick called to say he has made a nice prosthetic leg for you. I telephoned him two days ago and he told me he’d set to work on it right away. Nothing’s too good
for a war hero, he tells me. You’ll like the leg. He makes them out of wood and leather, and they fit well. All the pressure’s on the leg and the knee, no need to press on the pad. He’ll bring it over tomorrow and I’ll bring it here and fit it.’

I asked her if she’d eaten. She shook her head.

‘I was looking forward to some sardines back home. But if you’re offering, whatever you have will do me fine. It feels like I haven’t eaten since last year.’

‘Where is home?’ I asked. Octavia ran off to cook some sausages, one of the few things that weren’t rationed.

‘I’m from round here originally,’ she said. ‘I had my first job in Keswick after training at the cottage hospital there, that’s how I know Tom. Then I was moved back to Pooley Bridge when old Ethel Scanlan headed off overseas with the Queen Alexandria crowd. My dad died seven years ago, and I still live with my mum.’

Her sausages arrived along with some potatoes I’d left over. She devoured them, and I could see she’d been hungry.