House of Silence (26 page)

‘But it didn’t stop at one bottle. Or even
two.’

‘No, it didn’t. And then she stopped liking
the person she became. Started hating her.’

‘And then she drank because she couldn’t
stand the monster she’d become.’

Gwen looked at Frances and hesitated before
replying, ‘Yes, that’s right.’

Frances looked down at her manicured hands
and examined the fine lines and protruding veins with loathing.
There were no brown age spots yet. But they would come. She twisted
the rings on her bony fingers, tugging at them viciously, then
looked up at Gwen. ‘And you say you miss them? This flock of black
sheep?’

‘Yes, I do. Very much. Especially at
Christmas.’

‘You must have loved them a great deal,
despite their appalling habits. How very generous of you.’ She
hadn’t meant to sound sarcastic. Why was it that even when she
tried to be kind, it came out sounding callous?

‘I don’t think it’s so very hard tolerating
other people’s faults,’ Gwen replied. ‘I mean, it’s much tougher
accepting your own, isn’t it? Tougher still believing other people
can actually accept what you can’t.
Love
what you
can’t.’

‘You think self-hatred’s a cushy option,
then?’

‘Yes, compared to self-love, I do. The death
certificates say my family died of booze, drugs and AIDS. But what
really killed them all was low self-esteem.’

Frances’ jaw went slack and her eyes widened
with shock, as if she’d been struck.

Gwen had given a lot of thought to her
Christmas gifts. She’d asked Alfie about his family, their hobbies
and interests and she’d deliberated, drawing up shortlists of
possible gifts until she felt certain she’d hit upon the perfect
present. Alfie had teased her, saying, ‘They won’t go to half this
trouble for you, you know. You’ll be lucky to get a book
token.’

‘I don’t want them to go to any trouble,’
Gwen had replied. ‘I’m the guest. I should bring gifts. And anyway,
I enjoy choosing presents. It isn’t a chore for me, it’s fun.’

The women in the Holbrook family were
delighted with their gifts. Gwen gave Vivien
The Virago Book of
Women Gardeners.
Deborah received a selection of aromatherapy
oils. Frances was pleased with a vintage Italian silk headscarf and
Rae was touched by the gift of an Oloroso sherry - her favourite
tipple. Gwen’s triumph however was her present for Hattie, who
unwrapped her bulky parcel eagerly, tearing at the paper like a
child. Inside, she found a large plastic carrier bag sealed with
Sellotape. Beside herself with excitement, she ripped at the
plastic. As the bag burst open, Hattie was inundated with scraps of
fabric. She squealed and fell upon them, sorting through and
exclaiming.

‘This is Japanese kimono silk, isn’t it? And
this brocade is just
gorgeous
! And look at this lace! And
all the different velvets! Yummy! Gwen, where on earth did you get
all these?’

‘From the waste bins at the BBC. These are
bits and pieces left over from making period costumes, so there are
some lovely fabrics there. Most of the pieces are small, but some
are a decent size. Alfie told me you did patchwork and other
crafts, so I thought you might like a
de luxe
scrap bag. I
tried to choose the most interesting bits, things I didn’t think
you’d have.’

Hattie cast the bag aside and launched
herself at Gwen, flinging her arms round her neck. ‘Thank you!
Thank you! What a wonderful present! It couldn’t have been more
perfect. I shall make some splendid quilts with these!’ She looked
up suddenly as an idea dawned. ‘I can finish the charm quilt now!
We must get cracking on those paper templates later.’ With that,
Hattie sat cross-legged on the floor and began to sort through the
pile of fabric scraps, stroking silks, velvets and satins.

She showed little interest in the rest of
the present giving, until it came to her turn to distribute gifts.
Hattie presented her mother with hand-knitted bed socks which,
after only a cursory glance, Rae set aside. Vivien also received
socks, with which she showed every appearance of being pleased.
Deborah was given a fluffy knitted scarf in a vibrant shade of
green that, as it was unwrapped, caused Frances to wince, but
Deborah expressed delight and slung the scarf valiantly round her
neck, like a feather boa. Frances’ small gift turned out to be a
quilted case for sunglasses and she thanked Hattie with reasonable
grace, relieved not to have fared worse.

Hattie had insisted that Gwen open her
present last. As Hattie hauled it out from under the Christmas
tree, watched anxiously by the women, Gwen realised the rest of the
family knew what the gift was and were apprehensive, even
embarrassed on her behalf. She braced herself, but couldn’t help
feeling a thrill of excitement as she tore away paper, revealing a
cardboard box that had once held a duvet.

Inside the box was a Postage Stamp quilt - a
patchwork quilt made like a mosaic with tiny squares of fabric,
only slightly bigger than a stamp. Gwen was familiar with the
traditional design and estimated there must be three thousand
pieces. Shaking out the quilt, she gasped as she realised it was
double bed-sized and revised her estimate to six thousand.

Gwen clapped her hand to her mouth in shock
and said, ‘Hattie, you can’t give me this!’

‘Why not?’

‘This will be a family heirloom one day. It
should stay in the family.’

‘But I want
you
to have it. You’ll
appreciate it, what went into the making of it. The family have
watched me making it for years and they’re all bored to tears with
it. And I don’t think any of them would ever
use
it. So I’d
like you to have it. I think you’ll look after it. Maybe,’ Hattie
added tentatively, ‘you’ll become fond of it.’

‘I love it already! I can’t tell you how
thrilled I am! This is the best present I’ve
ever
had. Thank
you so much!’ Her eyes shining with tears, Gwen put her arms round
Hattie and the two women hugged each other, while the rest of the
family looked on, bemused but thankful they hadn’t been the
recipient of Hattie’s gaudy
magnum opus
.

As Vivien collected up the discarded
wrapping paper and crammed it into a bin liner, Rae turned the
pages of the scrapbook Deborah had made for her, recording Alfie’s
performances over the last year. Frances dozed on the sofa while
Deborah and Gwen helped Hattie sort her scraps into cottons
suitable for the charm quilt and a pile of more exotic fabrics that
she said she would use for special projects.

Deborah held up some brightly coloured
satins and taffetas. ‘Aren’t they lovely? You know, it’s never
occurred to me, Hattie, but I could bring you home some scraps from
school - stuff left over from making the costumes for the Christmas
play. The mums make all the outfits but I could ask, if there are
any scraps, could they save them for me? It was
Cinderella
this year and the costumes for the ball scene were fabulous!’ She
turned to Gwen. ‘I just love to see the boys dressing up. The girls
are used to it, of course - party frocks are nothing special to
them, nor is make-up these days - but the boys get so excited about
dressing up in bright colours. Some of them get quite stage-struck.
It’s so sweet!’

Gwen had been enjoying sorting the fabrics
and the chatty companionship of the women, when suddenly she felt
her spirits plummet. It took her only a few seconds to work out
why. She’d remembered Alfie’s letters home from school and the lies
he’d told. She got to her feet and carefully folded the postage
stamp quilt. ‘I’m going to take this upstairs now,’ she said to the
company at large, avoiding Hattie’s eye. ‘I think I should keep it
out of the way of the fire and cups of tea. I wouldn’t want it to
get damaged.’ She hugged the folded quilt to her chest and left the
room.

Gwen spent the rest of Christmas Day
removing papers from the Thousand Pyramids quilt while Hattie cut
triangles from her new selection of fabrics. Rae and her daughters
variously watched TV, dozed or read their new books. The atmosphere
was subdued. When Gwen wondered aloud if they should ring Alfie to
find out how things were at the flat, there was a long silence,
eventually broken by Frances, who looked at Gwen, her expression
grave, and said, ‘When things go badly wrong for Alfie, he deals
with it like a wounded animal. He goes to ground. He’d probably
prefer to be left alone.’

There was a note of compassion in her voice
that Gwen hadn’t heard before. For once Frances didn’t appear to be
scoring points off Alfie’s girlfriend. Her aim seemed to be to
spare him further pain. Alfie had said Frances was the sister who
knew him best and the rest of the family seemed happy to defer to
her judgement. So was Gwen, who felt oddly reluctant to contact
him. But the awkward questions wouldn’t go away. If Frances wasn’t
in fact Alfie’s sister, how did she know him so well? And why would
Frances - hitherto the last word in selfishness - care so much
about his welfare?

Gwen bade the family an early goodnight. She
tidied the heap of paper triangles into their envelope, folded the
Pyramids quilt top and carried them up to her attic room. Getting
ready for bed, she felt relieved Christmas Day was over for another
year. Things could have been a lot worse. Though hardly for
Alfie... As she lay in bed, open-eyed in the darkness, Gwen
contemplated Boxing Day. Alfie would return to Creake Hall. And she
would see Marek again. Both events filled her with an unsettling
mixture of relief and dread. It was some time before Gwen, still
perplexed, fell into an uneasy sleep.

Gwen

I woke up cold. Reaching for the quilt, I realised it
had slid on to the floor. I switched on the bedside light and
blinked at my watch. Not long after midnight. I got out of bed,
dragged the quilt back and settled down again, shivering, but I was
wide-awake now. I decided to sit up and read until I felt tired
again.

There was a selection of old paperbacks on a
small bookcase and my eye lit on a couple of Georgette Heyer’s
Regency romances - the sort of hot water bottle reads I often
turned to in times of ill-health and heart-break. I turned on the
fan heater and snuggled down comfortably with the gothic intrigues
of
The Reluctant Widow
.

Perhaps the plot was over-familiar. My mind
wandered and so did my eyes - over to the table where I’d placed
the envelope containing the paper triangles. There were hundreds of
them now, many cut from letters sent by Rae’s estranged husband and
a boy who didn’t grow up to become my boyfriend. It was possible
those jigsaw pieces of correspondence held answers to some of my
questions. I was certain I didn’t have the right to read the
letters, but, on the other hand, I was equally certain I had the
right to know who Alfie was, and it didn’t look as if anyone in the
Holbrook household was likely to inform me, least of all Alfie.

My eyes moved mechanically over a few more
pages of Heyer, taking in nothing, then I shut the book and laid it
aside. I got out of bed and fetched the envelope. The room was
warmer now, so I switched off the heater and climbed back into bed.
I tipped the contents of the envelope on to the quilt and surveyed
the pieces.

There seemed no point in examining the boy’s
letters. They were unlikely to tell me anything about the man who
pretended to be an adult version of their author. That left
Freddie’s letters, so far unexamined. Freddie, Alfie’s father, who
left Rae and took their son to live abroad. Rae had said she’d
driven him away. She’d talked without rancour of being deserted by
the love of her life, of being deprived of her only son, the only
child she appeared to love. Surely Freddie’s letters would shed
some light on the various mysteries of Creake Hall?

My last qualm of conscience was silenced by
the reassuring thought that, provided I didn’t refer to the
contents, no one would ever know I’d read them. On this dubious
moral footing, I began to scan Freddie’s letters.

He didn’t seem like a philanderer. There
were only odd phrases of course, but reading those and exercising a
little imagination, you could see that this man cared for Rae and
was trying to help her recover from some serious illness or mental
breakdown. He mentioned Hattie with affection and what appeared to
be a sense of responsibility, but I could find nothing about Alfie
until I came upon this piece:

“For ever at odds over our son”
...
It
wasn’t much to go on but it was evidence of sorts that Alfie
himself was what had come between husband and wife.

Another piece referred to Alfie as a
baby: