The Silence. Joss Stirling

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СКАЧАТЬ into the room. Jenny used a strong perfume; Bridget could still smell it even though her lodger had left several hours ago. Jenny favoured that fake strawberry scent that was in so many of the cheaper deodorants. Bridget found it unpleasant but she could hardly ask the girl to change something so personal.

      Bridget emptied the bin into the plastic bag she carried. What were dead poppies doing in there? She should remember to mention to Jenny that there was a compost heap behind the gardener’s shed and not to use the waste basket for recyclables. She hadn’t yet made up her mind about her new lodger. Change was not easy, not for Bridget. Kris had filled the house with his booming bass and his immoderate laughter. She’d like the military forthrightness he brought to every situation, the precision with which he’d made his bed and folded his towels. He played his new songs to her, flattered her outrageously, and managed to head off any arguments with some novel distraction techniques learned from his army days. Her favourite was when he had prevented her bickering with Norman about who was suffering from the worst aches and pains by throwing his prosthetic at them both. As a dramatic gesture it had been priceless. She and Norman had been properly shamed into not mentioning health matters on a Tuesday again. In fact, it had been solemnly entered into the list of house rules right at the bottom. Number twenty-four: thou shalt not moan about thy health in company.

      As for Jenny, she was best described as Kris’s opposite. Her silence made others fill the gap.

      We all end up talking too much around her, Bridget mused. She went into the bathroom to clean the mirror over the sink. And that can be dangerous.

      When did I get to be so old? She turned away from the dark-eyed, hollow-cheeked woman who rose from the depths of the mirror-pool.

      I’ll soon deal with you, my pretty. She sprayed blue glass cleaner onto the surface, blurring her reflection. Like Dorothy in Oz making her foe melt. Switching to a J Cloth, she briskly polished the mirror and didn’t meet her own gaze again.

      The jury in Gallant House was still deliberating their verdict on Jenny. The vine liked her but the lilac tree wasn’t sure. The birds in the attic resented her music and the mice in the pantry approved her choice of breakfast cereal. And as for Bridget … It was like the space between dropping a stone into the old well in the kitchen courtyard and hearing it hit the water many feet below. Many had come and gone over the decades since Paul died. It would be interesting to find out if Jenny was one of the ones who stayed the course.

      Taking her bucket of cleaning supplies, Bridget walked downstairs to prepare herself a light lunch as a reward for her housework. She paused in the hallway by the front door.

      Today, I’ll open it and walk right out and keep going, she promised herself. She touched the coat hanging on the peg, her best one, not the old one she used in the garden. It was getting a little dusty on the shoulders. That wouldn’t do. She took it down and shook it. She should send it to the dry cleaners. Feeling in the pocket, she found a bent railway ticket. She checked the date. 8 January 2002. Definitely time it went to the cleaners. She wouldn’t be able to go out, would she, not until it came back?

      Relieved, she went into the kitchen, made herself a salad, and set about revisions on her latest chapter. She’d reached the part where she entered the narrative, the young bride of the much older Paul Whittingham. He had been the son of the first owner of the house not to bear the Jack surname. His mother had been the eldest of a string of daughters, and wrenched the place from being owned by Jacks to settling disgruntled under a new dynasty, that of the undistinguished Whittinghams. It hadn’t lasted long, had it? She wondered if she should contact one of those ancestry websites and have a family tree drawn up. That way she could leave the house to some lucky Jack who was unaware he stood to inherit. The house would like that; she would feel happier back in familiar territory.

      But what if the Jack the tree turned up were American, or, God forbid, Australian? She would have to take that into account, of course, when it came to choosing, vet the individual thoroughly. Better the house was left to charity than that. Her own relatives – all distant cousins – would fume when they found out what she had done only at the reading of the will. It would be like a scene from Dickens. Such a shame she by definition would be unable to attend.

      I’ll specify that my will is read in the drawing room, she decided. If there is an afterlife of the sort that allows me to come, then I’ll make sure I’m present. I’ll swing from the chandelier with the ghosts of past Jacks. That is something to look forward to in all the grim prospect of death. A last hurrah.

      She looked down at her chapter.

       Chapter 14

       The House that Jack Built – Chapter Thirty – My Old Age

      At first, I wasn’t keen on Paul Whittingham. He never appreciated me in his youth, bringing his long-haired friends home to smoke spliffs in the snug and tell his mother that the smell came from the joss sticks. Employment sobered him. The hair was cut, a suit donned, and the city beckoned. He followed his father into Lloyd’s shipping. How his ancestor the admiral would’ve scoffed to see his flesh and blood sitting at a computer screen analysing the risks of going through the Suez or around the Horn. Go out there and see for yourself, he would’ve bawled in his voice that carried over the storm. But Paul was made for comfort. Not for him was life on the High Seas; he was born for riding a desk and drinking down the pub with his friends. They all grew soft, rounded faces and bellies, hair retreating, courage shrivelling. The irony is that the Eighties made these men out to be heroes. Insurance, as he told the woman he was wooing, is much more interesting than it seems.

      He was lying to her, of course. All the men who brought their wives here have lied to them one way or another. All have had mistresses. Sometimes that mistress was a woman, more rarely a man, on occasion the sea. Best of all was when their first love was me.

      I dismissed this new wife of Paul’s at the beginning, thinking she was too flighty for the flabby insurance broker. A dancer, he told his mother proudly. A prima ballerina. Or had been. Bridget Taylor had risen through the ranks of the Royal Ballet but, before she could take on any of the leading roles, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. She rejected the temptation of pushing herself beyond her body’s limits, resigned from the ballet and took to temping – quite a come down for one who had dreamed of her name in lights. And then Paul fished her from the typing pool. Needing a respectable date for the company Christmas dinner at the Savoy, his eye fell on the elegant secretary in her neat French suits. As the date turned into a relationship, he found he wanted to lose a few pounds, take up some active hobbies, even attend the opera with her if she so wished. They never went to the ballet. She didn’t ask and he never suggested. He learnt tactfulness in his middle years.

      His mother was delighted her lacklustre son had polished himself up. She handed over the house and moved to Bournemouth where her sister lived. A Jack returning to the sea – none of us were surprised.

      Paul went on one knee to propose under the lilac tree while it rained down bridal confetti. He offered his bride his love, his considerable income, a share in his pension, and a house. It was me that decided the lady in his favour. She liked him well enough, but her first love had been dancing and that had died on her. Rather than be a widow for the rest of her life, she settled for the pleasant prospect I offered.

      They hoped for children to fill the empty rooms, but Paul was never the most virile of men. His wife languished, wondering what was wrong with her. It was only after his accident that she discovered what she was missing.

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