House of Silence (17 page)

‘How long have you known him?’

‘About five months. We met in the summer
when he was filming in Sussex.’

‘What do you do? You’re not an actress?’

‘God, no! I’m a humble wardrobe assistant.
But it’s interesting work. Very varied. I really enjoy it.
Especially when we’re on location.’

‘How did you get into that line of
work?’

‘I went to art school to do a fashion and
textiles course. I thought I’d end up working in the rag trade, but
I discovered I liked old clothes much more than new. I also had a
love of old textiles, so working with period costumes seemed like
the ideal job for me.’ Gwen sipped her coffee. ‘How long have you
known Alfie?’

‘I wouldn’t say I do know Alfie. But he’s
been to Creake Hall for Christmas all the years I’ve worked
here.’

‘And how long is that?’

‘Five years now.’

‘You’re obviously happy here.’

‘I suppose I must be.’

‘Alfie doesn’t talk much about his family
and he behaves rather oddly when he’s with them. It’s as if there’s
been some big bust-up in the past. But Viv and Hattie seem so nice,
so easy to get on with... I don’t really understand why he’s so
distant
with them.’

‘He only sees them once a year.’

‘Isn’t that all the more reason to be
friendly when he does see them?’

‘Maybe. Perhaps you’re right about there
being some incident in the past. He seems quite angry with
them.’

‘
Angry
?’

‘Yes. Angry with them, or about them.’

‘I know he’s fed up with
Tom Dickon
Harry
, but I don’t know why he would be angry with his
sisters.’

Marek smiled. ‘I take it you don’t have any
siblings?’

‘No, no family at all. That’s why I’m here.
Borrowing Alfie’s.’

‘What happened to yours?’

Gwen hesitated, then braced herself. ‘I
never knew my father. Nor, for that matter, did my mother, except
in the carnal sense. She died of a drugs overdose. Her sister died
of drink and her brother died of AIDS. And they were the only
family I ever had.’

‘I see... So you’ll know all about being
angry with your family, then.’

‘Me? No, of course not. I
loved
my
family.’

‘Anger isn’t incompatible with love.’

‘But why on earth would I be angry with
them?’

‘Well, for a start they failed in their duty
to provide you with a sense of security and a stable home. You
might also be angry with them because they put their hedonistic
lifestyle before the happiness of a child... But mostly, I should
imagine, you’re angry because they’re dead.’

‘How can you be angry with someone because
they
died
? That’s ridiculous! None of their deaths was
suicide,’ she added.

‘Maybe not, but they were all playing
Russian roulette with their lives. I take it your uncle died of
sexually-contracted AIDS. Was he gay?’

‘Yes. Promiscuously so.’

‘That’s what I mean. It wasn’t suicide, but
it was suicidal. You could be angry about that. Especially when you
were younger. When did you lose them?’

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

Marek winced, then said gently, ‘That must
have been very, very tough. I’d be surprised if you
weren’t
angry with them.’

‘I was grief-stricken!’ Gwen exclaimed.
‘Every time!’

‘The two aren’t mutually exclusive,’ Marek
replied. ‘In fact they often coincide.’

‘But they died
horribly
! All three of
them. I’m not angry with them! I
can’t
be,’ Gwen said,
sounding less certain now.

‘All right, you’re not. My apologies. I
didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘I’m not upset!’

‘Good. That’s OK then. Do you want to go
back to pumping me about Alfie, or shall we change the subject
altogether?’

He watched as her eyes filled with tears;
watched her swallow and try to blink them back; watched her compute
the distance to the stairs and the likelihood of getting beyond
them before the floodgates opened. He leaned forward, picked up a
box of tissues from the coffee table, deposited it at her side,
then leaned back again. He sat quite still, silent, his long limbs
composed, and braced himself for the inundation, but she wept
quietly, discreetly, with her head bowed.

He wanted to touch her, to comfort her, but
old professional habits die hard and he found he could do nothing
other than sit silently, attentively. Eventually, when she’d
composed herself a little, he said, ‘I’m very sorry for my part in
that. You now have good reason to be angry with
me
.’

She shook her head. ‘No, it’s... it’s
because it’s
Christmas
.’

He nodded. ‘It can be a difficult time. It’s
all the socialising. Christmas brings us bang up against all the
ways in which our families fall - or fell - short of the
ideal.’

Gwen heaved a shuddering sigh and helped
herself to a tissue. ‘My mother died at Christmas. She overdosed on
Christmas Eve. When I was twelve. I always fall apart. Every bloody
year. Coming here was supposed to be a way of avoiding the
crack-up.’

‘Well, you haven’t cracked - as you put it -
in front of the family. You’ve been putting on a great show as the
perfect guest. And it doesn’t bother me. I’m used to it. You
couldn’t have picked a better person to crack up on. Not that I
think you cracked,’ he added.

‘Oh, please - stop being
kind
, it
just makes things worse.’ And she started to cry again. He sensed
then what she wanted, also finally what
he
wanted, and he
moved towards her - not fast, he didn’t want to startle her - and
sat beside her. He took her in his arms and she sagged against him,
her face pressed against his chest, as if she was trying to muffle
the sound of her cries. He sat still, his arms gently but firmly
enclosing her, and registered the wet warmth of her tears on his
skin as they soaked into his pyjamas. He said nothing and
waited.

Eventually, she withdrew from the damp
depths of his clothing and grabbed another tissue. She blew her
nose, sniffed several times and said, ‘I’m terribly sorry.’

‘What for?’

‘For being such an idiot.’ She pointed to
the dark patch on his chest. ‘And for covering you in snot.’

He looked down at the damp patch. ‘These
were due for the wash anyway.’

‘I thought I’d got it all under control this
year.’

His smile was ironical. ‘That’s when we’re
at our most vulnerable. When we think we’ve got everything under
control. If you’d thought you were on the edge, you probably
wouldn’t have accepted my invitation.’

She looked puzzled. ‘To have coffee?’

‘To talk. We exercise more rigid
self-control when we think we might be
out
of control.’

She looked up at him, her head on one side.
‘Is it very exhausting being so wise?’

He laughed and she was pleased. She felt
she’d regained a little ground. ‘I’m not wise,’ he replied, ‘just a
people-watcher. If you watch enough people and watch them
carefully, patterns emerge. From those patterns you can glean a few
truths about human behaviour. It’s not wisdom, just observation.
So, no, it’s not exhausting, it’s fascinating. Sometimes
satisfying. I don’t do it intentionally any more. In fact, my
intention is
not
to do it, but it still happens. It’s who I
am.
What
I am.’

Gwen didn’t reply for a few moments, then,
crumpling her tissue into a ball, said, ‘Do you think I
am
angry with my family?’

‘I think under the circumstances that would
be perfectly normal. And healthy. I think perhaps you’re angry with
Alfie too.’

‘Why would I be angry with
Alfie
?’

‘Because he has what you want - what you
lost - and he isn’t grateful. Maybe you think his family is wasted
on him.’ She looked up at him again, her face pale with shock. ‘I’m
just guessing.’

‘No, you’re not, you’re mind-reading.’

‘Sorry. Perhaps you’re also angry with him
because... well, because he isn’t what you want. And you thought he
was. Now I
am
guessing.’

‘It isn’t that, it’s that he’s changed! He’s
different here, with his family. He isn’t the Alfie I know.’

‘He doesn’t want to be here, so he has to
put on a show of filial duty. You’re intuitive and you’re picking
up on the insincerity of that situation. It makes you feel
uncomfortable.’

Gwen considered confiding further in Marek,
expressing her concern about the photographs, but decided against
it. It was silly. She had simply over-reacted. It was just a
photograph and Alfie had explained the anomaly. To take the matter
any further would feel like a betrayal. Talking about Alfie like
this, to another man, to an attractive man, to an attractive man
in pyjamas
, already felt like a betrayal. Maybe it was.

She stood up. ‘I think I’d better be getting
back. They’ll be wondering where I’ve got to. Thanks for the
coffee. And I really am very sorry for being such a wimp.’

‘Don’t apologise. It was a big deal for you,
not for me. You looked into the existential abyss, I got damp
pyjamas. No contest.’ He rose and she felt at a disadvantage in her
stockinged feet, felt she might be about to cry again, but knew it
could just be that she wanted to be held. He was speaking again, in
that deep, reassuring voice, and she was struggling to take in his
words. ‘I hope you feel better for having talked. You’re not a
wimp, Gwen, you’re processing grief. Still. It takes a long time,
much longer than people think. Sometimes we think we’re over the
worst, we think we’ve finally put the past behind us, then - wham!
- we run up against something, some memory, some feeling we thought
we’d buried long ago and we’re back where we started. The wounds
are open and bleeding again. It’s a cyclical process - a sort of
spiral in fact - and it takes a long time to get to the end of
it.’

‘I thought losing my entire family in a
variety of ghastly ways had made me tough.’

‘It probably has. On the outside. There
is
a tough and capable Gwen on the outside, one very
together young woman who knows what she wants. But
inside
...’

‘Inside, it’s all mush.’

‘If you say so. And the tough exterior is
brittle. It doesn’t take much to break it. When it cracks, the
mush, as you put it, seeps out.’

‘You’re making me sound like a liqueur
chocolate.’

‘Not a bad comparison when you consider
what’s inside is powerful stuff.’

‘So how the hell do I get rid of all this...
emotional baggage?’

‘There’s no quick fix. In the end there’s
only time. Time and kindness.’

‘Kindness?’

‘Yes. While you’re waiting for time to pass,
be kind to yourself. Treat yourself as you’d treat someone who was
going through a tough time, who’s having trouble getting over some
major loss. A bereavement. The end of a love affair. Time and
kindness heal. Eventually.’

They descended the flights of stairs in
silence, Gwen following Marek. As he opened the front door for her
she turned and said, ‘Thank you for
your
kindness. And your
time. You know, I really think you should invoice me.’

He leaned against the door frame and folded
his arms. ‘You’re very welcome to both.
Gratis
. Any
time.’

She looked up at him and, with a wan smile,
craned her neck to kiss him on his stubbled cheek. ‘Thanks. For
everything.’

‘It was nothing. Come again.’

She thought he sounded as if he meant
it.

It would be easy. He could see that now. The
way she had clung to him. The way she had opened up to him about
her pain. She was looking for something. Somebody... And it wasn’t
Alfie. Something had come between them. She didn’t say so, but it
was obvious. She was rattled. Frightened even?

He’d been right about her. The capable young
professional was only half the story. Maybe not even half. There
was a little girl lost inside. Confused. Lonely. Wanting to be
wanted.

He wanted her. He knew that now. And he
wanted to be wanted, thought perhaps she wanted him, or would if
she knew her own mind. But she would pick up eventually on the pain
within him, the pain that was rotting him from the inside. What was
the word she’d used?
Mush
. She would sense the rotten mush
at his core and realise there was only a fragile carapace holding
him together. Perhaps that was why she was attracted to him. She
recognised his vulnerability and it resonated with her own.

But she was also looking for strength. A
father figure maybe. The Daddy she’d never known. He could see
she’d already set him on some kind of pedestal. He should just
learn to shut the fuck up... But it was hard when people were
hurting, when they were needy and you thought you could help. And
how, for the love of God, was he to make any kind of
reparation
, if it wasn’t by helping other people?...

She would have been seventeen.

Anna.

Almost a woman. He often thought about the
sort of woman she would have become, but it was impossible to
imagine. She would always be five. Five for all eternity, except
that in his mind, she aged with every year that passed. Every year
she didn’t live was another year added to her
post mortem
life, the life she lived in his head, from childhood to girlhood,
to womanhood.

Between memory and imagination there was no
escape. It was a life sentence. It would never end, except with his
death. And that was just.

A life for a life.

Gwen

I hurried back towards Creake Hall, feeling guilty
for being out so long, guiltier still for having unburdened myself
to Marek. I stepped out briskly, trying to banish the memory of how
I’d felt with Marek’s arms round me: strangely calm, despite the
emotional turbulence; safe, despite the fact I was in the arms of a
strange man while my boyfriend was enjoying a lie-in.