The Silence of Ghosts Page 8

  I relaxed into all my old sailing habits, and once we were running well with a fresh wind behind us, I let my hand fall to the side and found Rose’s hand and held it. She squeezed back, turned once to look at me, then faced forward again. There was no need for words. I find, when I’m sailing with a friend, that words are redundant. All my worries and misgivings vanish. Who has not known that to happen, on open water, with a large sky above: blue or grey, it makes no difference. I had imagined bringing girls out in the Firefly before, holding their hands, and kissing them if they let me. Now, holding Rose’s hand, I felt more at peace than I ever had before.

  We must have stayed out well over an hour. Rose had brought her little Kodak Bantam camera, and took a string of photos, of me, of the boat, of the shore. She didn’t think they would turn out well, but I thought the snaps would be a kind of bond between us, shared memories we could look at in years to come. By then, although we had dressed warmly, we were both feeling cold, so I turned at the head of the lake and brought us back down to Howtown. I dropped anchor and stood, thinking how best to get myself ashore. As I stood there, a man in late middle age approached. He wore a blazer and a little captain’s cap covered partly in gold thread, the sort no serious sailor would consider wearing. Beneath his nose there sprouted a neatly-trimmed moustache. I had never seen him before.

  He barked at me.

  ‘You!’ he snapped. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘I don’t know that that’s any of your business,’ I answered.

  ‘You don’t know what my business is,’ he said, still barking, ‘and I don’t think I care to explain it to you. Just now I demand to know what you’re doing out in a pleasure boat with a floozie in tow.’

  Behind me, Rose started laughing. I turned and looked at her sternly, but she’d started and couldn’t stop.

  ‘What I’m doing is none of your business, and if you’d like to get out of my way, I’d like to get ashore.’

  ‘What damned cheek! Look here, are you a conchie or something? Because I’ll see to it you’re kicked out of this club, if you’re a member, which I doubt. By God, you’re a scruffy thing, aren’t you? Don’t you know there’s a war on? We’re at war with Jerry, surely even you have heard of that. So why aren’t you dressed properly and out on the front lines doing your duty for God, King and country?’

  The laughing behind me had ceased. He’d gone too far, from the ridiculous to something more serious. Suddenly, I felt Rose slip past me and jump on to the waterside. Then, without a word, she reached for my hand and helped me get from the Firefly to dry land. Without further ado, she bent down and, before I could guess what she was doing, she rolled my trouser leg up to the knee.

  My self-appointed nemesis began to gurgle.

  ‘He lost his leg at the Battle of Dakar,’ she said. ‘Now will you please leave and never speak to us again? And if I see you here again, I will not hesitate to throw you in the lake.’

  Still mumbling, he took his leave, shambling off towards the small clubhouse. I let him go. The war has frayed tempers. Perhaps he meant well and lacked the resources to express himself properly.

  We made sure Firefly was tied up safely. Back on land, it seemed warmer. We shivered, then held hands again. It felt as though the day had ended, but it had scarcely begun.

  We were walking past Howtown and its sparse habitations. The ferry had just gone. I could still see it, the Raven, chugging north towards Pooley Bridge. When I turned back, I noticed Octavia. In one hand she held the basket in which she always put her shopping. But her other hand held that of a girl of about her age. Seeing me, she veered in our direction, bringing her friend with her.

  ‘Dominic, Rose, this is my friend Clare. Say hello.’

  She spelled the girl’s name with her fingers, then tapped out some Morse code on my palm. I smiled and looked at Clare. She had a patch of rough skin on her left cheek. Wasn’t she one of the four children we’d seen before? She was a little shorter than Octavia, with black hair that looked almost grey in the dim light. She wore a coat about two sizes too big for her tiny frame, made of felt – or so it seemed to me – and on her feet were shoes like clogs.

  I asked how they had met, and Octavia answered that they had bumped into one another on Octavia’s first day here, when she went into Howtown to buy some food.

  ‘Clare says she’s an evacuee like me. She’s only been here for a month.’

  Rose went up close to Clare.

  ‘Hello, Clare. My name’s Rose. I don’t think I’ve seen you round here before, though you seem a little familiar.’

  ‘I live on a farm up there,’ she said, in a strange, rasping voice. She pointed behind her.

  ‘Really? Is that Hallin Fell? What’s the name of the farm?’

  ‘Ravencragg it’s called. Ravencragg Farm.’

  Rose nodded. ‘I’ve heard the name,’ she said. ‘But I thought it had been closed down when old Martin Drablow died.’

  ‘Mark Drablow lives there now. I lodge with him.’

  ‘I’ll see a health visitor goes out to check on you.’

  Rose smiled and seemed about to turn away, then went back to Clare.

  ‘Clare, you do understand that Octavia’s deaf, don’t you?’

  The girl nodded.

  ‘How do you speak to her? You know she can’t hear a word you say?’

  ‘She hears me, Miss. I have a little sister like her, she was born that way, and I’ve learned how to speak to her.’

  Rose frowned, though she still smiled as she questioned Clare.

  ‘With your fingers?’ she asked. ‘Like this?’

  She nodded, then turned to Octavia and gestured to her. Octavia smiled back. When Octavia looked at me again, she flashed a message that they had to go, but that she’d be back well before dark.

  Rose fumbled in her coat pocket and brought out the Bantam. She still had some exposures left. I remembered that one of the lads on board ship had carried one. I wondered what had happened to him and to the photographs he’d taken. Octavia had brought her Weltini Speed Candid to Ullswater, but so far I hadn’t seen her use it. Rose pulled out the front of the Bantam and gestured to the girls that she’d like to take their photograph. Clare seemed reluctant to pose, as though she had never set eyes on a camera before, but Octavia drew her in while Rose clicked the button. Another shot and she was done. She slipped the camera back in her pocket. I noticed that Clare hadn’t smiled once during this exchange. They went on, and Rose took me to the shop cum post office.

  ‘Those were the last two shots,’ she said. ‘I want to send the film off to get it developed. There’s a man in Keswick who does it for tourists. He’ll send the snaps back by post.’ She wound the film back, took it out and put it in a stout envelope, courtesy of the postmistress. Rose and I headed back to Hallinhag House.

  Once there, I lit candles, even though it wouldn’t be dark for a while. Rose prepared lunch, and we ate in the kitchen. She had brought some rice from her own rations and added lamb she’d been sent from one of the nearby farms, a meat more readily available in the Lake District than most other parts of the country. There were spices in the cupboard, and with these she created a very tasty curry. We were awkward with one another, now we felt on the verge of becoming lovers. As before, she was cautious of rushing things. I wanted to go to the living room to rest, but the presence of the bed and the implications it held since our brief courtship early that morning inhibited me. I suggested we transfer to the study, where I had always worked as a child. Rose made cups of acorn coffee, added a spoonful each of honey and some powdered milk. It tasted horrible, but at least it was hot.

  ‘What do you make of Clare?’ I asked after we sat down.

  ‘She seems malnourished. I’d like to have a chance to examine her. And her clothes all seem old, like hand-me-downs. The farms here don’t fare well on the whole, and with the war on they’re bound to feel the pinch. Did you notice that she didn’t have a local accent? She must be a refugee fro
m another part of the country.’

  I nodded agreement.

  ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say her accent was Portuguese. But that doesn’t make sense, does it?’

  ‘I found her very serious,’ said Rose, ‘I don’t know about you; and I had a bad feeling about her, something I can’t put into words.’

  ‘What sort of bad feeling?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘I’d have to speak to her more. Did you see her eyes?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Yes, there was a quality, a sort of deadness.’

  ‘That’s it. Looking at her eyes, she seems much older than she is. I suspect her upbringing has been cruel. She said nothing about a mother. Could that be it? Is she an orphan with a father who’s away all the time?’

  ‘Well, we’ll speak to her when we see her again. I’d like to know how she knows deaf language, if she knows very much at all.’

  I drank my ‘coffee’ slowly, spinning out the minutes. Rose hadn’t said whether she had to leave soon or not. I showed her my collection of Portuguese stamps, which I’d collected avidly as a boy and abandoned on reaching my teenage years, and which I’d found in the study. The album had remained here in Hallinhag for several years. I have a 100 reis lilac, an 1894 pictorial commemorating Henry the Navigator’s birth, and a 1924 stamp that marked the birth of the great poet Luís de Camões. Rose seemed fascinated by them, and came to sit next to me while I browsed through my album.

  ‘Dominic,’ she said, ‘I hope you don’t find me cold. But I find it hard to call you “darling” yet, for I’ve had no practice at all in such things. I love you very much, though, and I know I’ll not change, whatever you may think. We have time ahead of us. The war will finish before long. You won’t go on board a ship again. We’ll both live through it. When I’m ready, I’ll go to bed with you, and when it’s time we’ll get married.’

  ‘And children after that?’

  ‘Yes, children. All the children you want.’

  ‘Will they be born with one leg?’

  ‘Of course. They’ll take after their father in every way, especially the girls.’ She lifted my hand and kissed it gently. Then she looked at her nurse’s watch and said she had to go, she had an errand to run for her mother.

  ‘I’ll try to get back tonight,’ she said and bent over and kissed me hard.

  ‘Don’t bother coming to the door,’ she said. ‘Go to bed now and rest.’

  I did as she ordered and went to bed with thoughts of her in my heart. But my first dreams of her were chased away by harrowing visions of dancing men without faces. They moved in a stranger dance than before, without legs entirely now, bearing themselves up on their hands yet moving quite as quickly as dancers in a theatre, and in the blackened masks where their faces had been, little eyes appeared. As they turned in a ceaseless procession, the eyes followed me, and I heard lonely music drift down from a bleak hill that towered over us all, and when I looked up beyond the hill, at the sky, I could see planes forging through the heavens, bombers accompanied by fighters, and the bombers bombed the hill so that it fell apart and fell down to cover the dancing men. The music grew in volume, and the aeroplanes flew away, and the dancers began to claw their way back out of the soil. Once they were free, they began to dance again, on their legs this time, and I noticed four children among them, their faces blackened, their legs just bone. I woke sweating and lay in bed for a long time. Is there something wrong with me, or is it the house?

  Octavia returned just before sunset. She had left Clare behind in Howtown, she said, because she had to go to the farm and help. Mr Drablow was busier than ever with the war, she told me.

  ‘What about her mother?’ I asked.

  Octavia shook her head.

  ‘Dead,’ she said, crossing her two index fingers to indicate a grave. ‘Some disease, years ago.’

  I would have stayed in bed without supper and gone to sleep, for I was still tired from my morning exertions; but the thought of Rose’s return that evening encouraged me to stay awake. I got up, put on my new leg, and made my way to the study, where I had books to read. My time in the Navy had given me very few opportunities in which to bury myself in books, but it was a great pleasure I had always pursued from about the age of twelve, and I resented the time I had lost. I had started to wonder whether, when the war was ended and my ability to walk complete, I might take examinations and go to university to study something useful. But I as quickly remembered that, by then, I would be married to Rose and would need a trade to bring in money once she gave up work to be a full-time housewife. Of course, the family could well afford to pay my way to a degree. But would my father see that as anything but a total waste of money? If I want money of my own, I’ll just have to join the firm and give up thoughts of anything else.

  I’m reading an American novel that came out this year. My mother bought it for me in London, and I brought it here. It’s called The Ox-Bow Incident and it tells the story of a lynch mob and the crime they commit by hanging three innocent men. It’s a kind of Western, but I’m enjoying it all the same. My father has no time for Westerns.

  Octavia banged the gong to call me to the dining room to eat supper, a trout each with green vegetables, but no potatoes. Maybe next time. The trout was fresh and delicious, and I found enough salt to flavour it.

  Later

  It’s midnight and I’m in the study, but I’m not reading, nor do I have any wish to read. What happened a few hours ago has shaken me. It has shaken Rose as well. She is staying here tonight, for she will not cycle back for love nor money. It is not the journey that disturbs her, but being alone in the dark, with no company but the lake. She reached here about eight o’clock and brought some chocolate and tiny cakes. Octavia went to bed, and Rose and I went to the study, where I sat on my chair and she on the little sofa my mother had insisted on placing there some years earlier. We ate the chocolate. She’d saved up her ration of four ounces a week for three weeks and travelled to Penrith with Dr Raverat to get some. A patient had given her a present of several ounces of tea, and we made a pot, added powdered milk and half a teaspoon of sugar each. My supply of sugar will soon be gone, but Rose says she may be able to find some.

  About ten o’clock, Octavia came to the study. She was sleepy-eyed, and stood in her lemon night-dress, wringing her hands in front of her.

  ‘What’s wrong, dear?’ I asked.

  ‘I want you to speak to Clare,’ she said.

  ‘Of course. What about?’

  ‘She won’t let me sleep. None of them will let me sleep.’

  ‘Who are “them”?’

  ‘Haven’t you seen them?’ she asked. ‘There’s Clare and her three friends, Adam, Helen and Margaret.’

  Rose looked at me meaningfully. I knew what she was thinking.

  ‘Octavia,’ she asked, ‘how are they stopping you from sleeping?’

  ‘Because they keep whispering. I know I can’t hear, but I can hear them whispering.’

  ‘When you’re outside with them, you mean?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No, not outside. In here. They come here and whisper, and sometimes they say things out loud. Frightening things, things I don’t want to hear. I don’t know how I understand them, but I do understand them. And I can hear them dancing and beating sticks like fencing.’

  ‘But they’re not here,’ I said. ‘They live somewhere else.’

  She inhaled deeply, steadying herself.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘that’s where you’re wrong. They live in this house. I think they’re dead. I think Clare is dead. I think they all died a long time ago.’

  ‘But surely you can’t hear them now,’ I countered. My skin was crawling. All the blood had drained from Rose’s face.

  ‘Of course I can. They’re here with us right this moment. Can’t you see?’

  I was about to ask her where they were when I looked at Rose and saw her staring rigidly at a spot somewhere behind me. I turne
d my swivel chair. At first I could see nothing but shadows. Then the shadows parted and I saw them. The four children I had twice seen outside, Clare among them. Their mouths were wide open, and I could hear them hissing like geese, and they were very pale and their clothes were covered in a layer of dust and their hair was matted and coarse. I thought Octavia was right. I thought they were dead. I thought they were old and dead and dusty and pale. I thought their eyes looked at me and Rose and Octavia like eyes that had seen the grave and something beyond the grave, whatever that might be, for I could not guess what their eyes had seen. They held themselves stiffly, like the dancers of my dream, and their eyes reminded me of the dancers’ eyes. But I could not look at their eyes for long, for they held longings and hungers and joys that no living human could endure. I would have touched them in my imperious way, but I knew there would be nothing to feel, for they were ghosts, not vampires nor any living embodiments of death.

  In a few moments, they fell silent, and moments after that their images faded and vanished. But it is now past midnight and I cannot sleep, nor can Rose, who lies beside me, because we know something. We are living in a house full of ghosts. We have not seen the last of them. And I don’t think we know what they are capable of. Dear God watch over us.

  Saturday, 21 December

  It has been a hard night and a cold morning. We are all jumpy. My rationality has gone completely, and I look at the world with caution and some loathing. I dreamed of the dancers again, and this time the music that accompanied their slow prancing steps was the beating of drums, staccato blows on stiff leather, and the brushing of their stumps on the beaten earth. They moved in a circle, now sweeping in to touch, now sweeping back to the fullest extent, and someone began to sing without other accompaniment, a low, melancholy song like a fado, but I could not make out the words. The dancers kept circling, and as they did so took up the song, though they had no lips to move.