House of Silence (31 page)

‘Fan was worried that my mates at drama
school would recognise me and blow the whistle, but I told her I’d
always been vague about my background. I’d never talked about my
parents - too ashamed of them - and I’d certainly never told anyone
I was brought up by foster parents, who dumped me in a children’s
home when they’d had enough. No, I’d maintained an air of mystery,
along with a classless accent. For all my fellow students knew, I
could have been anybody. I mean, if you’d been christened “Alfred
Donovan”, wouldn’t
you
have changed your name?...

‘I was perfect for the part. Or I was by the
time Fan and Viv had finished coaching me. I even looked a bit like
some of the fake photos Fanny had taken for Rae, to flesh out
Alfie’s childhood. We agreed a fee and a yearly retainer, which
bought my silence as well as my performance for the cameras.
Everybody was happy. Nervous, but happy.

‘But things didn’t go quite as planned. I
wasn’t allowed to retreat into obscurity. The documentary got a lot
of attention. So did Rae’s books. Tom Dickon Harry became a craze
with kids, a household name. I got phone calls from journalists
asking for interviews, which I refused. But then I started getting
calls from casting people who’d seen the documentary. It was one
thing turning down money for interviews - though that
did
hurt - but I wasn’t going to turn down work offers, or meetings
that might lead to work offers.

‘There was an added complication, a serious
one that no one could have foreseen. The filming upset Rae badly.
Or maybe it was me, my performance as Alfie. She’d seemed thrilled
with me at the time, but she became unstable again and cracked up
badly after the documentary was filmed. By the time it was shown on
TV, Rae actually believed the script! She believed I
was
Alfie, the son who’d died. So the family did what they’d always
done... They played along with poor old Rae’s fantasies. She was no
longer capable of writing a shopping list, let alone another TDH
instalment. It was clear Viv was going to have to step into the
breach. What was one deception more or less? So when Rae insisted
that Alfie would be coming home for Christmas... Well, Fanny can be
very persuasive. Alfie came home.’

He leaned back in his chair. Under the harsh
fluorescent light, he looked hollow-eyed with exhaustion. ‘I took
Alfie’s name as my Equity name. I adopted Creake Hall as my nominal
home and the Holbrooks as my surrogate family. Viv gave me the use
of Rae’s London flat, for which I agreed to visit once a year to
act out the Alfie charade for Rae. I’ve done that for eleven years.
So to answer your question, Gwen, “Who am I?”... There are three of
us. “Alfie” is a set of triplets. There’s the man I pretend to be.
There’s the man I was - though I don’t remember much about him now.
And then there’s little Alfred himself. The late lamented, dear
departed. Except that he never really
was
, was he? He was
never loved, never even
known
. Baby Alfred never achieved
boyhood, let alone manhood. That was the book Rae didn’t write,
couldn’t even bear to think about:
Tom Dickon Harry and the Boy
Who Never Was.
’

Alfie looked at me then, his brown eyes dull
and hard, like stones. I’d expected to see remorse or sadness.
Self-pity perhaps. All I saw was emptiness. ‘I didn’t have much of
a childhood. Not the kind you enshrine in photo albums anyway. So I
stole someone else’s. And made it mine.’ He shrugged. ‘Where was
the harm? Alfred John Donovan was dead. He died as a baby. I stole
a childhood that never happened, one that might have been, but
sadly, never was. The worst you can say about me, surely, is that
I’m some sort of...
grave robber
.’

In the long silence that followed, no one
moved. When I found my voice I said, ‘What is - what
was
your real name?’

His sudden mirthless smile was shocking.
‘Darling, I thought you’d never ask! It’s Tom. No, really! Thomas
Wilson. If poor little Alfie had lived, I would have remained Tom
Wilson, a struggling actor, wondering whether to change my name to
something more stylish, more memorable. Wondering whether to play
up my dismal, deprived background or keep it under wraps, along
with my Geordie accent. Didn’t want to be typecast as a
car-stealing, joy-riding, crack-dealing yob, did I? Though that
might have made more demands on me as an actor than playing the
middle-class tossers and all-round wastes of space that have been
my speciality.’

I found myself unable to meet his eye.
Instead, I looked up at Marek, but he was watching Hattie who was
fidgeting with her dressing gown, pulling at a button, as if she
was trying to unpick it with her fingers. Marek didn’t take his
eyes off her. He watched as if he was waiting for something and I
thought he looked afraid, afraid for Hattie. I sensed he was about
to move towards her, when she suddenly announced, ‘The baby didn’t
die.’

Alfie turned on her then, his uncanny
composure gone. He leaned across the table and spat out the words.
‘Of course he died! For God’s sake, Hat - that’s why I’m here! Why
I bloody
exist
.’

‘I meant - the baby didn’t
die
.’ She
lifted her head, opened her mouth to speak, but appeared to lose
her nerve. She looked quickly at me, then at Marek, her eyes wide
with terror and then her chin sank on to her chest. Looking like a
shame-faced child, she murmured, ‘The baby didn’t die... He was
murdered... I did it. I killed Alfie.’

Gwen

Hattie fled from the kitchen. We heard her footsteps
pound up the stairs, then a door banged. Marek looked a question at
me and I nodded. He strode across the kitchen and out into the
hall. I supposed if anyone knew how to deal with Hattie now, it
would be Marek.

I turned to look at Alfie, slumped in his
chair on the other side of the table. He was white-faced and his
eyes were unfocussed. He levelled his gaze at me and, with a
visible effort, said, ‘Gwen, I swear to you, I had absolutely no
idea.’

‘I know.’

‘I’d do a lot of things for money, but
covering up murder isn’t one of them. I assumed it had been a
childhood illness. Cot death or something. I never asked and Fanny
never said.’

Neither of us spoke for a few moments, then
I said, ‘Do you think it’s possible Hattie’s lying?’

‘Why would she lie?’

‘I don’t know. To get attention?’

‘Bit of a drastic way to steal the
limelight, isn’t it? She looked to me as if she’d waited nearly
thirty years to say that.’

‘Yes, I know what you mean. Poor
Hattie.’

‘She killed her baby brother, Gwen!’

‘When she was six years old! She can’t have
known what she was doing! Perhaps it was an accident. I can’t
believe Hattie would commit murder. Not
Hattie
. She’s such a
gentle soul.’

‘She is now. Maybe she wasn’t then. Thirty
years of guilt could change anyone’s personality.’

I thought of Marek, then strained my ears
for sounds of shouting or crying, or footsteps on the stairs. There
was nothing and the silence was unnerving. I said, ‘Do you think
the family know what happened?’

‘They must. It would explain why they went
to such extraordinary lengths to keep Alfie alive.’

‘Maybe Rae didn’t know. Perhaps it was all a
plot to protect her as well as Hattie.’

‘Maybe.’ After a pause, he said, ‘Will she
be OK, do you think? With Tyler?’

‘If anyone knows how to deal with what she’s
going through, it will be him. He used to be a psychiatrist,
remember.’

Alfie said nothing for a while, but I knew
what was coming. Without meeting my eyes, he said, ‘So... are you
and he—’

‘I don’t know
what’s
going on,
Alfie... I suppose I should call you Tom now.’

‘No. Nobody does. Not any more.’

‘I prefer Tom. It suits you better.’

There was another uncomfortable silence and
then he let out a weary sigh. ‘I can hardly claim that you owe me
an explanation, Gwen, but I would like to try to understand... what
happened.’

‘It’s hard to explain. I’d suspected you
were some kind of an impostor. And then I found out that you
were...
I was very upset. Well, that’s putting it mildly. I
was in a bad way. And Marek listened.’

‘There must have been something going on
between you for you to turn to him.’

‘Yes, there must, but I don’t know what it
was. Mistrust of you was a lot to do with it. The knowledge I was
being deceived... You should have told me, Alfie!
Trusted
me. I would have accepted you for who you really were.’

‘Would you? Even if I was nobody? You think
I’d take that risk?’ I didn’t reply and he continued. ‘I had a lot,
Gwen. The flat in London, the car, the family mansion, a certain
amount of celebrity status. But none of it was
mine
. It all
belonged to Alfie. Even my girlfriend wasn’t mine. She was Alfie’s.
Why would I choose to be Tom when I could be Alfie? You see, it
wasn’t just a part I played, I wanted it to be true. All of it! Rae
and I had that much in common. I wanted to
be
Alfie. And I
was. Tom died years ago. How could I have told you that? Maybe if I
hadn’t cared whether or not I lost you, but I
did
care. Very
much. And it wasn’t Tom you liked. It wasn’t him you slept with. It
was Alfie. Everyone liked Alfie. Even me. Well,’ he added with a
shrug, ‘I liked him more than Tom.’

I gazed into Alfie’s sad, brown eyes. I no
longer felt any sexual attraction towards him but my heart - or
some other organ - turned over with a sickening lurch at the
thought of losing him as a friend. Perhaps that was all he had ever
been. A friend I happened to sleep with. But he had been a
good
friend.

And a good son.

‘I remember now, something Rae said the
other night, when I took up her tea. She was rambling on and half
of it didn’t make any sense to me, but I realise now, when she was
talking about Tom, she wasn’t referring to TDH, she was talking
about
you
.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She was telling me about filming the
documentary. What a dreadful experience it had been. She said she
didn’t know how she’d got through it.’

‘A film crew invading your home isn’t a
pleasant experience. A herd of elephants would show more
sensitivity. Rae was pretty upset by it, even leaving aside the
conspiracy element and her fear of exposure.’

‘She said something rather odd. I dismissed
it at the time because I thought she was talking about TDH. She
said, “Tom saw me through it... He was the hero of the hour.” She
was talking about you
,
wasn’t she?’

Alfie nodded. ‘I sat and held her hand and
cracked jokes to cheer her up while they were setting up lights.
She was terrified. But she was also very proud. Proud of her “son”.
She kept looking at me and smiling. You could see her dream had
come true, a dream she’d cherished for eighteen years. She kept
touching me, as if she was trying to convince herself I was real.
It gave the film a particularly poignant quality, the whole
mother-son thing. The director just lapped it up. They made me much
more of a feature than we’d expected.’

‘That’s what Rae said.
Tom
was what
the film makers were really interested in. She said they loved him.
And the viewers loved him. Loved
you
. That’s what she meant,
didn’t she?’

‘That’s where things started to go wrong. I
made too much of an impact. People sat up and took notice. And when
they realised I was an actor, well, one thing led to another. It
was hard for me to walk away from all the... possibilities.’

‘I do understand. I just wish you’d told
me.’

He smiled sadly. ‘So do I, now. I think I
did try. Well, I almost tried.’

I got to my feet. ‘I’m going to make some
breakfast. I feel as if I’m fading away. Do you want some?’

‘Please. I don’t remember when I last ate.’
He rubbed at the fair stubble on his chin. ‘God, I’m tired.’

I put the kettle back on the hot plate and
cracked some eggs into a bowl. Alfie opened the fridge and handed
me a packet of bacon and put plates to warm. It was all so domestic
and familiar, I felt a lump in my throat and dreaded I would start
to cry. I’d expected him to be angry, to be jealous, not sweetly
reasonable. But as I turned rashers of bacon in the pan, it
occurred to me, Alfie would have been angry, but Tom wouldn’t. Tom
was used to losing things. Tom was used to rejection. My eyes did
fill with tears then and I was careful to keep my back towards
Alfie as he laid the table.

He suddenly said, ‘Do you think I should go
and see Hattie?’

I rubbed at my eyes and thought for a
moment. ‘I don’t really know. I would have thought Marek would come
and get us if he thought it was a good idea. He’ll do whatever he
thinks best for her.’

Alfie stood beside me at the Aga, staring
down into the frying pan. ‘None of this was in the script, you
know. Losing my girlfriend to another man... Hattie being a child
killer... What was it I said about promising you your second-worst
Christmas? That wasn’t meant to include me. Or Hattie...’

~~~

Marek knocked softly on the door. ‘Hattie? Can I come
in?’ He put his ear to the door and heard muffled sounds of crying.
‘Hattie, unless you tell me not to, I’m going to come in.’ He
waited a moment, then turned the handle and entered the room known
to the family as Hattie’s Bazaar.

Marek had never seen the inside of Hattie’s
room, which served as study, sewing room and bedroom. A
kaleidoscope of colours, shapes and textures assaulted his senses.
Every inch of dark, wood-panelled wall was covered with quilts,
wall-hangings, pictures and pin-boards, on which hung swatches of
fabric, drawings, cuttings from magazines and postcards. A sewing
machine was set up on a table by the window and a pile of quilt
blocks awaited assembly. On a side table, spools of thread,
arranged by colour, lined up in regimented rows. A bookcase was so
overloaded, the shelves bowed. More books and craft magazines lay
in haphazard piles on the floor where faded rag rugs sat
incongruously on threadbare Axminster. Folded quilts were stored on
shelves and the doors to a large cupboard hung open revealing
Hattie’s fabric collection, carefully ironed and folded, stacked
according to colour and forming a textile rainbow.