The Silence of Ghosts (9 page)

Octavia seemed well and over our meal declared that her breathing had improved.

‘You’ve not been outside yet,’ I said. ‘That will be the test.’

‘I liked Mrs Mathewman,’ she said. ‘When will she come again?’

I fudged and said it was too early to tell.

Octavia went to bed early. Rose and I sat in the kitchen, listening to the radio. The news items weren’t very uplifting. Most of the bulletin was taken up with a report on the two-hundredth bombing of Liverpool. It’s hard to believe they are going through such devastation. But after that we cheered up a bit listening to the latest hit recordings. They played ‘Fools Rush In’ by Tony Martin, that Ink Spots song, ‘When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano’ (though neither Rose nor I has a clue where Capistrano is). She has a soft spot for Cliff Edwards singing ‘When You Wish upon a Star’.

When it was time to leave, she bent over and kissed me on the cheek as before. This time, I tried to kiss her back, and for a moment she let me, and it seemed as if our little kisses would turn into something more serious. But she stepped away with a serious look on her face, then smiled and said ‘I’m sorry, D . . . Dominic. I . . . It’s too fast. And it’s not simple. Let’s stay friends as long as we can.’

She left almost at once, and I cursed myself for having been such an idiot. I’d blown it. Or, it struck me, it was more likely my leg had ruined it for me.

When I got to bed, I found Octavia awake and waiting for me, a candle burning next to her. I am growing worried about her. She has no friends to play with, something that I had hoped might happen to sustain her new life in the country. She has lost some of the sparkle I’ve talked about before. I haven’t heard her laugh once since we got here. And it’s getting worse. She seems to be taking on a new personality, as if the house is weighing on her, as if our remoteness here has drained her of that buoyant spirit I’ve always known her to be famous for.

‘Not asleep?’ I asked.

‘No. I want to talk to you.’

To help me see her better, I lit two lamps and brought them across.

‘This sounds serious,’ I said, fearing she might have been hearing things again.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘It sounds good to me.’

The lamplight threw the movements of her hands into long shadows that criss-crossed the room. It was cold, and our breath hung on the air. She looked comfortable in her little bed.

‘Did you make a hot water bottle for yourself?’ I asked, feeling guilty that I hadn’t prepared one for her.

She nodded.

‘So, what is this about?’

She smiled.

‘I heard a voice,’ she said. ‘It was a message for you.’

‘You mean, there was somebody in here with you . . .’

‘Let me finish. There was nobody here, but I heard the voice quite clearly.’

‘You mean you imagined it.’

She shook her head.

‘The voice was real. Do you want me to go on, or would you rather I just shut up and not tell you? If you want to know, it was a message. A message for you.’

‘You mean, a message from the dead? Is that what you think this voice was?’

‘I don’t know.’

She was straining now, using her voice to make explosive sounds I could make no sense of.

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Tell me the message.’

She calmed down and took some deep breaths. I hoped this exchange would not bring on an asthma attack.

‘It’s not a long message,’ she said. ‘It’s from someone called
Billy Morgan. He says you’re not to worry about him any more. He’s not cold now. He’s anxious you should know this.’

She stopped talking and looked directly at me, her face wreathed in shadows. I thought my heart would stop beating or that my eyes would close and I would fall unconscious to the floor and that the world would close about me. But I rallied. She could not possibly have known anything about Billy Morgan. I had never mentioned him to her or to anyone else since my rescue from the
Resolution
. Straight away, I resolved to say nothing to Octavia to confirm his existence or his death.

Billy was a Welsh naval lieutenant I had known on board the
Hotspur
. He and I had been transferred together to the
Resolution
and had become firm friends. He used to complain about the cold when we were up in the Arctic. After the sinking of the
Resolution
, while I was in the
Aba
and later in hospital, I had asked repeatedly about him, hoping he’d been brought to either place, imagining he was in the next ward. But when the names of survivors were passed round, he wasn’t on the list. I had never given up hope that he might turn up somewhere, but now an innocent child had dashed those hopes for ever.

Outside, a wind had risen through the evening. Our silence was taken up by it, by its blows and flurries, its alarms and whistles.

‘Dominic,’ she said, though I was hardly listening. ‘Why are you crying? I thought it was good news.’

I nodded. The wind howled and the shadows in the room danced. For the first time, I knew there was indeed something in the house. And it wasn’t Billy Morgan or even a seabed full of the dead.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘thank you. It was good news, but it was also sad.’

And she said nothing, and I said nothing more, and the wind went on blowing, and the shadows went on with their strange
Morris dance, like the dancers in Bacup who process on Easter Sunday with blackened faces. I thought of Billy Morgan, and I thought of Rose, and I wondered what she had meant when she said things were moving too fast.

Thursday, 19 December

I did not sleep until late, and when I did I dreamed of dancers dancing on silent feet, and when I looked they had black faces like the Bacup Morrismen. But without eyes, nose or mouth, and some danced on bleeding stumps and others in shoes of old leather, and drums played very near, and they waved their bleeding hands in the air, jingling and jangling little copper bells. In each hand they carried sticks that they beat together against themselves and against each other, in time with the drums. I can still see them, even though I am awake, and I can still hear their bells and sense the soft dancing of their stumps on a floor of beaten earth. If Billy Morgan can still find me here and pass on a message from beyond his watery grave, what else is possible? Do the dancers dance their way here from Glenridding or Pooley Bridge, are they men of Howtown or Martindale, are they living men or dead? And does Billy Morgan dance among them with a face eaten away by little fishes, does he live upstairs from Octavia and myself, in the unlit bedrooms of this house?

More disturbingly, one thought comes to me, that the
Resolution
was hit amidships and sank at once, taking all hands with her, and that I am as dead as Billy Morgan and the rest of the crew. My body is at the bottom of the sea, but my spirit walks this house, where it has conjured up a vision of female beauty and fallen in love with her. Is that what the dead do? Make hell
and heaven as they please, shut themselves away where no one can find them?

Rose did not turn up yesterday, but she came knocking on the door early this morning, as planned. She smiled when Octavia let her in and smiled at me when she found me, still in bed. Octavia beetled off to play with a jigsaw I had found in a dining-room cupboard.

‘You’re very early,’ I said. ‘I’ve not had breakfast yet.’

‘I have a free day,’ she said. ‘Marjory Wainright is on duty at Dr Raverat’s today, so I thought I’d come to see you for some walking and some sailing, if that’s all right. Though looking at you tucked up in there like a bug in a rug, I don’t know that climbing in there with you might not be the better option.’

‘I don’t think I could control myself,’ I said, making the remark light.

‘Don’t worry. You wouldn’t be the only one. We’re all human underneath, Dominic.’

‘Some of us more than others, I think,’ I said, still trying to retain the light mood.

‘I think,’ she said, and I could detect some nervousness in her voice, nervousness that wasn’t usually there, ‘I think you’re the most human man I’ve ever known.’

‘Me?’ I was genuinely surprised, and I couldn’t really understand what she was getting at. ‘I’m not even complete.’

‘I don’t mean bodily, though I think you do look very well. I mean as a person, inside.’

‘But I’m a wreck. I’m not handling my life very well. I’m sure you must be well fed up with me by now.’

‘Quite the contrary. And I’m sorry for what I said two days ago, about you going too fast. These things will take their own course at their own speed.’

I looked at her without blinking for what seemed an age.

‘What do you mean “these things”?’

‘I mean affairs of the heart. You probably haven’t noticed yet, but we’re having one. It’s not up to much yet, but it will pick up speed. When I said I’d like to climb into bed with you, that’s exactly what I meant.’

I stared at her.

‘Women don’t . . .’

‘You’d be surprised what women think. The war is changing things. Nobody has time to wait these days. A man goes off to war and is killed, never to come home. People are marrying in droves, and who can blame them? Some couples have one night for their honeymoon, then he goes off to his train or boat or plane the following morning and she never sees him again. It’s our turn now, or it will be soon. You won’t go to war again, and I doubt there’ll be bombs on Howtown, but none of our lives is certain.’

‘Are you saying that you love me? I won’t believe any of this if you don’t tell me in as many words.’

She came beside me, and most unexpectedly I felt myself quickening beneath the sheets, then she leaned over and kissed me, and the kiss grew deeper until there seemed to be no ‘you’ and no ‘I’. I moved to touch her, but she pulled away, and I could see she was red and flustered.

‘I love you,’ she said.

‘I’ve loved you since the minute I set eyes on you,’ I answered.

‘Oh, I know that,’ she said. ‘Women always know.’

‘Won’t you kiss me again?’

She grinned.

‘We have to ration everything nowadays. If I did kiss you, I’d be in bed with you before you could fight me off, then Octavia would finish her jigsaw and come in to say hullo, and . . .’

At the moment, Octavia appeared, as if on cue.

‘Rose, are you any good at jigsaw puzzles?’

I interpreted and Rose nodded.

‘Later,’ she said.

Octavia looked crestfallen.

‘Oh, please,’ she said. ‘Just help me get this started. It has two thousand pieces.’

‘What is it?’ Rose asked.

‘I don’t know. A picture. Some painting. By a man called Alma.’

I laughed and shook my head.

‘It’s a painting of ancient Rome by Alma-Tadema,’ I said, making a different configuration of my fingers to spell the name, just as she had done. ‘I used to make it up in the holidays. You’ll like it when it’s finished.’

‘I’ll come and help you now. But no more than half an hour.’

‘All right.’ Octavia smiled broadly and made to go. As she reached the door, she turned back.

‘When are you two getting married?’ she asked, as if nothing was more beyond doubt. The looks on our faces must have been a treat.

‘What makes you think we might be planning to get married?’

‘Your friend Billy told me, of course. He knows a lot of things. And Rose’s lipstick is smeared, which means you’ve been kissing, and I can see red on your lips as well, Dominic.’

‘Can you hear Billy now?’ I asked.

She shook her head.

‘Billy’s gone,’ she said. ‘He says he’s afraid to stay here, that there’s something here that frightens him. He wouldn’t tell me what it is.’

‘Octavia,’ said Rose, ‘I think it will be better if we go to the dining room and take a look at this jigsaw of yours. I need to dress Dominic’s leg, so we must get on.’

While Rose helped Octavia with her jigsaw I managed to get out of bed and to dress myself without help. Aided by my crutches, I went to the kitchen and made myself some bacon and eggs. Bacon is like gold dust nowadays, with four ounces each a week, as much as I used to eat in a day. Rose’s eggs have come in very handy indeed. By the time I finished, I was still hungry.

Rose came in while I was putting things away. In order to hold things, I found I was hopping more than walking. She took over and told me to sit down. When she was done and she had washed and dried the dishes, she sat down opposite me.

‘Who’s Billy?’ she asked, and I detected a note of worry in her voice. ‘Or perhaps I should say “Who
was
Billy?” ’

I answered as best I could.

‘She only told me two nights ago,’ I finished.

‘And you think she’s telling the truth? There’s no other way she could have known about him?’

I shook my head.

‘I never spoke of him to her, nor to anyone else. I’d have mentioned him to you, but I still feel choked up about him.’

‘Could you have spoken about him in your sleep?’

‘Perhaps. I’ve no way of knowing. All I see in my sleep at present are Morris dancers with black faces and stumps for legs. Even if I had talked about him, she couldn’t have heard me. She needs to see my lips or the gestures I make with my hands.’

‘But Hilary Mathewman says there is something in this house, something very dark. Octavia said earlier that she’s been hearing things, a girl who until now could hear barely anything. And now she puts her finger on the one person who is dead and close to you and wants to tell you he’s all right. However much a rationalist you may be, Dominic, none of your rationalizations will add up to this.’

‘Then what will add up?’

‘I don’t know. It’s just possible that something is unblocking Octavia’s hearing, though she may not know what sounds are really like.’

I thought about this carefully, then shook my head.

‘It still doesn’t add up. Even if she has started hearing sounds, she doesn’t understand language. If I tell you what she says, it’s just an approximation.’

‘And yet she claims to understand. You’re back to square one, Dominic. If she can’t grasp language, how can she understand a name like “Billy Morgan” or the message she says he gave to her?’