The Silence of Ghosts Read online

  I held her close.

  ‘It’s not cuddles I need. It’s what I want but can’t have.’

  ‘I’ll get into bed with you, if you really need me to.’

  I shook my head, though she couldn’t see me in the darkness.

  ‘I think it would give Octavia a fright, and if your mother got to know of it, we’d never live it down.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have time,’ she said, ‘for she’d kill you first.’

  ‘And what about you, Miss Sansom?’

  She tweaked my ears.

  ‘She’d lock me up in the pigsty and never let me out again. You wouldn’t want your desperate passions to lead me to that. I wouldn’t even be able to visit your grave. Think of that: you’d be a lonely corpse.’

  At the mention of corpses, she stopped talking.

  Our mood quickly grew solemn.

  ‘What about the children?’ I asked.

  ‘The evacuees?’

  ‘No, the others,’ I said. ‘The dead children.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Are they lonely, do you think? They have that look about them. They seem abandoned. It’s in their eyes. Some of the evacuees have a similar look.’

  ‘Yes, I thought that.’

  ‘But why are they lonely?’ I asked. ‘The ones at Hallinhag, I mean.’

  ‘Dominic, perhaps it’s a similar loneliness. The evacuees have been torn away from home. Perhaps these children don’t really belong in Hallinhag. Perhaps they come from far away.’

  ‘From Portugal?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  She drew away. Octavia was stirring, as though our speech disturbed her. I still had to write this diary sitting on the side of the bed, using a small lamp. Rose and I kissed, and the kiss made the longing we had just joked about something very real and very troubling. She got to her feet and left. As she got to the door, she turned.

  ‘We have to look into that possibility,’ she said. I nodded and she left.

  Sunday, 29 December

  There was nothing much we could do today. Rose, her mother and I went to St Paul’s Church in Pooley Bridge, where the vicar said special prayers for little Jimmy Ashton. His friends had been brought to the church by their hosts, and they sat in the front pews, and were addressed each by name by the vicar, in his sermon. They were white-faced. I smiled at them as they came in, but they turned their faces away, as though holding me responsible for the tragedy. I knew I could not tell them who the four children were who had taken Jimmy away from his friends and enticed him on to the landing stage. Oliver Braithwaite had said nothing to his colleague about the ghastly event at Hallinhag House. The vicar of St Paul’s was an elderly man, very set in his ways, who regarded tales of ghosts and demons with withering scorn.

  After morning service, the Reverend Braithwaite laid on lunch at the rectory over at Martindale for Rose, myself and Dr Raverat. The doctor was a pious man in his way, though not a regular churchgoer, but he drove us over so we could talk it all over again. We came up with no better answers. I had a particular worry, that if the four dead children were free to walk so far beyond Hallinhag House, then there was no knowing where they might turn up next, or what child they might not seize on and hurry to his or her death. We knew of no way to stop this happening, other than to keep the evacuees in sight at every moment. But it was unlikely that even Dr Raverat’s say-so would carry the necessary weight. The children still did not have a school to attend.

  It was Oliver Braithwaite who came up with a solution to that problem. Plans had already been laid for a couple of teachers to come to Pooley Bridge from Keswick. The little town was host to over one thousand schoolchildren who had been evacuated there some time ago. Pupils from the working-class schools of the North East rubbed shoulders with girls from Roedean and Newcastle High. Our little group should have gone there too.

  ‘There’s nothing to be done about moving them to Keswick, not at the moment anyhow,’ said the Reverend Braithwaite. ‘The schools administration has become very muddled up. The Board of Education hasn’t handled the evacuations particularly well. But there may be a ray of light. St Katherine’s College is a Liverpool institution for student teachers. It has decamped in its entirety, and is now snug and happy in the Queen’s Hotel. I’m thinking that one or, at the most, two teachers from Liverpool would serve our young men and women very well. What do you think? While you are all in Barrow tomorrow, I can ring and put in a request for this and ask for someone to be sent by Tuesday at the latest. I know Hilda Brayfield. She’s a local councillor who lives over on Chestnut Hill. She’s one of these people who serves on every committee that’s going. We’re both on the local education committee, where I’m the Grand Panjandrum for the church schools. If I get her ear, it should be stamped and signed by tomorrow afternoon. Pooley Bridge church hall should prove a very satisfactory place for a school.’

  I held up a hand.

  ‘Oliver, will you ask him if he has a deaf teacher to spare? I don’t think Octavia should be left out of this.’

  ‘Now you mention her,’ said Raverat, ‘I’d like to have another look at that rash.’

  When lunch was over, Dr Raverat, Rose and I returned to Pooley Bridge and Rose’s cottage and the doctor went upstairs to find Octavia. We heard his voice briefly, then there was silence. I made a pot of tea for Rose, Jeanie and myself, and we settled down and switched on the radio. The lull in bombing over Christmas was still in force, as though commands had been given, as though Hitler and his minions respected Christmas and ate strudel and stollen and washed it down with glasses of Kirschwasser, singing ‘Silent Night’, and embodying love for all mankind before sending their planes out again to strafe and bomb and swallow the world. I fear we are in the lull before some storm.

  Jeanie said nothing more about the hauntings at Hallinhag House nor the death of little Jimmy Ashton, though I think he, in particular, was in all our minds. We had sung ‘Jerusalem’ in the church that morning, and Jeanie said it was her favourite hymn. Rose smiled and said neither this nor that.

  Dr Raverat knocked and came in. I thought his face looked rather grave.

  ‘I’m sorry to take up more of your time,’ he said. ‘But I won’t take long. I have to visit a dying woman a couple of miles from here, and I may be there all night. Unless, that is, Rose – would you be willing to come with me?’

  ‘Where to?’ she asked.

  ‘Out at Inglewood. She’s an old retainer, and the family never let her go, even after she was too old to do any work. I don’t think there’ll be much nursing involved, but I’d find you a help. I’m a bit down since yesterday, and tonight isn’t likely to spread good cheer.’

  Rose handed him a cup of tea.

  ‘There’s not much sugar, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘We have to wait till Wednesday before we can get more.’

  ‘This is fine.’

  He looked at me.

  ‘Dominic, I’m growing more concerned about Octavia. Her rash has grown since I last saw her. That’s highly unusual, indeed I can’t think of a single skin condition where the rash grows so quickly. All the more reason for her to see the consultant tomorrow. If things go as I expect this evening, I’ll get Rose back by midnight and I’ll pick you all up first thing.’

  He drained his tea – it’s bad form these days to leave anything in your cup or on your plate – and we all shook hands and saw him to the door.

  Later

  Rose is back. Octavia is fast asleep. I am writing a little extra for today. I turned on the radio just a few minutes ago and came in on a BBC news broadcast, the midnight news. Bill Pickles, a Yorkshireman whose voice it is usually a pleasure to listen to, brought bad news from London. The nation is still taking it in. Tonight, there was a massive raid on the oldest parts of London, an attack so fierce it caught the firewatchers out. The result is a firestorm in which some of the capital’s oldest and finest buildings, including at least a dozen churches, have been gutted. St Paul’s was attacked
by incendiary bombs, and Mr Pickles says it was only the tireless work of the firewatchers there that prevented the whole cathedral going up in flames. I don’t know if Bloomsbury has been targeted, but the bombing is still going on and is expected to continue all through the night.

  I have looked at Octavia while she sleeps and, although I do not have Dr Raverat’s expert eye, I can see that something is wrong. She isn’t right in herself. This business with the house has depleted her, and from some things she has conveyed to me, she holds herself responsible for it all. I have asked her why she thinks this is, but all she has suggested is that the children would not be able to speak if it weren’t for her. She thinks they use her, that they use her deafness as a means to communicate. I see her suffer more and more each day, and I want to get her away from here, from Hallinhag House back to London.

  Monday, 30 December

  We drove to Barrow this morning, and all our conversation was about the raid on London last night. As the adult Londoner among us, I tried to describe to the others the layout of things, where the City lay in respect to landmarks like Buckingham Palace or the British Museum, which is five minutes from where my family lives. Octavia practised with her hearing aid. Rose had made a list of words on paper, and she would show one at a time to Octavia while repeating the word, then asking me to do the same. She had borrowed some magazines from the surgery, mostly Good Housekeeping and recent issues of Life, which were sent from the United States through London. The most recent copy to reach us, from early December, showed Ginger Rogers on the cover. Good Housekeeping was full of illustrations and advertisements that showed household items Octavia was familiar with.

  At the hospital, I stayed in the waiting room while Rose accompanied Octavia inside. Dr Raverat headed for the morgue. I read some of the Life magazines. Some time passed, fifteen or twenty minutes, then the door opened and Rose asked me to come in. She did not smile as she did so.

  I was introduced to Dr Thackery. He was a thin man of about forty, with half-moon glasses and a stethoscope round his neck. He seemed friendly enough, but grave.

  ‘I would like to ask your sister some more questions. Nurse Sansom knows some sign language, but it’s not adequate. I believe you are better positioned to carry out that task.’

  I nodded. He took me to one side.

  ‘Very well. But before we do that, I have to tell you what I think is wrong with Octavia. When I was younger I worked at the Naini Asylum in Allahabad. I worked with its founder, an American called Sam Higginbottom. Of English ancestry. He knew Gandhi very well.

  ‘Now, you may think from its name that Naini is an asylum for the insane. It is not. Naini was set up to treat and care for lepers. When Higginbottom set it up, they were treating the condition with chaulmoogra oil, now they use a drug called Dapsone. I have treated hundreds of lepers, and I have no hesitation in saying that Octavia has somehow contracted the disease.’

  ‘But that’s impossible,’ I said, ‘there is no leprosy in this country.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not entirely correct. It’s extremely rare, but there are perhaps just under one hundred new cases a year. Many are patients who have come here from abroad, from countries where the condition is more prevalent. Take my word for it, Octavia has contracted leprosy. And it seems like a quick-acting variety. I’ve taken swabs from her rash. I want to test them against leucoderma or vitiligo and one or two other conditions, but I know my tests will come out in favour of leprosy.’

  Rose came over and took my hand.

  ‘There is treatment,’ the doctor said. ‘Remember too that leprosy, despite the myth, isn’t particularly contagious. It may be very hard to find out where and how she was infected. Do you know if she has been abroad recently?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘She’d never even been to the Lake District before this trip.’

  ‘All the same, I’d like her to see a friend of mine at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases. They’ve moved from Gordon Street out to the old Dreadnought Hospital in Greenwich, on account of the Blitz. What a terrible thing that was last night. I’m glad we have such brave lads to go up and fight them off, but it’s monstrous all the same. I’m told you have a house in London. Is it safe?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. Where is it?’

  ‘Bloomsbury.’

  ‘Will there be any difficulty in getting Octavia to the hospital?’

  ‘I doubt it. We have a car, though that’s not to say we can get petrol. The Underground doesn’t go to Greenwich, otherwise that might have been the most efficient. We could always take the tube to the nearest station and have a cab take us the rest of the way.’

  ‘Good. You may get an extra petrol ration to cover any hospital visits she may have. The man you need to see is called Raymond Martin. He’s a Belfastman, from Queen’s University originally, but if anyone can understand what’s wrong with Octavia, how she came to be infected, and what the prognosis may be, he’s your best bet. I wouldn’t lose any time in getting her to him.’

  ‘I was already thinking of going back down to London. It’s a case of getting tickets.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll see to that. We have ways of obtaining things for medical purposes. You can pay me when you get back.’

  As we were leaving, I turned back to the doctor.

  ‘Tell me, doctor, is there any history of leprosy in Portugal?’

  He looked at me quizzically.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘My family has close contacts with the country.’

  ‘Has Octavia visited the country?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Not yet, no. But we often have Portuguese visitors.’

  ‘I see. Well, the answer to your question is yes. Just this year, they’ve started work on a very large complex to accommodate and treat leprosy patients. It’s to be called Rovisco Pais, just outside the university town of Coimbra. They’ve invited me over, but I can’t possibly see my way to travelling on the Atlantic while hostilities continue. They expect large numbers of patients. As you may know, it’s still quite a backward country, and levels of hygiene aren’t what they should be. So, yes, it’s possible.’

  Wednesday, 1 January 1941

  Bedford Square, London

  A new year today, but little cause for new hope. It seems incredible that we’re back again and that Rose is here with us. She’s in the guise of my nurse and helpmeet to Octavia, and that’s how she’ll stay until things settle down. The journey took nearly nine hours, with delays at every step. Of course, we had to change trains a number of times, and everywhere we went there were soldiers and airmen and sailors grabbing any vacant space, all carrying kitbags and most of them making a dreadful racket. Rose wore her uniform and sorted them out with cries of ‘Disabled sailor and child!’. I had to wear my uniform too: I’d been advised to take it up to the Lakes, and today I was grateful for having done so. A lieutenant with half a leg flushed the worst of them out. A very polite RAF captain made a sort of barrier to keep the riffraff away and stuck to us like glue all the way to London. He flies Spitfires somewhere on the coast – nobody can ever say where they are based, of course – but he was coming back from leave after visiting his wife in Windermere. He’d only had time for a day with his parents, who live in Keswick. We’d left at seven in the morning, for I wanted to be safely in London – if ‘safely’ is the right word – well before curfew, but it was already dark when we pulled in at Euston. The car was waiting for us, of course, although my parents didn’t deign to meet us, and we made it home just in time.

  It didn’t take long to understand how bad the Blitz has become. Bombs were dropping for hour after hour, and I urged everyone else to head for Russell Square tube, but they weren’t having it. My parents had never liked being underground with the hoi polloi. So we sat in the flat, listening to that implacable sound of German bombers growling overhead and the ack-ack batteries like great doors slamming right above us, and the
whistling of bombs followed by the crump of explosions that always sounded as if they were next door.

  It was a short raid, but frightening.

  ‘I don’t know how you can live through it all,’ I said. ‘It’s absolutely terrifying. Nurse Sansom,’ I continued, ‘don’t you think so?’

  ‘I’ve never been through anything like it in my life.’

  ‘What exactly do you do for my son?’ asked my father. I could see he was building to one of his moods, and I hoped he wouldn’t turn on Rose. She squared up to him.

  ‘I keep an eye on his wound, cleaning it every day, and I make sure he takes his painkillers. Of course, I see to Octavia as well now.’

  ‘Surely any old skivvy could wash the man’s leg,’ he pursued. ‘Can’t see what use a regular nurse would be. Of course, you’re a pretty little thing. No doubt he’s proposed to you already, the way he’s always doing with the women. I’d go back to your hospital and keep well clear of him.’

  ‘Father,’ I butted in, hoping to steer him off. ‘We have to speak about Octavia. It’s one of the reasons Nurse Sansom came down with me. It’s for Octavia that we returned.’

  ‘What’s wrong with her? She has her hearing aid now.’

  Octavia sat to one side, unable to read our lips. My mother faced her, silent. She had not hugged her daughter or spoken more than half a dozen words to her.

  ‘The GP at Pooley Bridge has recommended she be taught by a special teacher for a year or two. The hearing aid, which we got on Nurse Sansom’s recommendation, is helping. But to make it a success she needs someone who has worked with children wearing such aids. However, that’s not what we have to speak about.’

  In unemotive language I explained about the rash and the diagnosis given by Dr Thackery, followed by his referral of Octavia to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases.

  ‘Stuff and nonsense!’ exclaimed my father when he had heard me out. He got out of his chair and stood right in front of me.

  ‘People in this country don’t get leprosy,’ he bellowed. ‘It just doesn’t happen. She’s never been to one of those filthy places like India, there’s no way she can have acquired it in London or the Lakes. You’re wasting all our time with these horror stories. Don’t you think we have enough trouble here with Jerry dropping his bombs on our heads without you bleating about some quack doctor in a godforsaken hole like Barrow-in-Furness who’s been filling your heads with balderdash about leprosy. No doubt he charged you a fancy fee.’