The Silent Speaker Read online

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  Noel Streatfeild

  THE SILENT SPEAKER

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  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

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  Also by Noel Streatfeild

  and available from Bello

  The Whicharts

  Parson’s Nine

  A Shepherdess of Sheep

  It Pays to be Good

  Caroline England

  Luke

  The Winter is Past

  I Ordered a Table for Six

  Myra Carrol

  Grass in Piccadilly

  Mothering Sunday

  Aunt Clara

  Judith

  The Silent Speaker

  CHAPTER 1

  Each October Helen Blair arranged a series of dinner parties. It was, she said, the perfect time, offspring were back in their schools, and wherever anyone had been during August and September they had returned from it, and their journeys—unless something of wide interest or wildly funny had happened—were no longer spoken of. Helen’s dinners ran into early November and that was the end of them until the following October, for she mixed her guests with the same care a skilled bartender uses when mixing drinks, and so had no intention of her recipe for a good evening being ruined because one ingredient was missing owing to influenza, a cold or fog.

  That evening there came to St. John’s Wood eight guests, all hand-picked except Selina Grierson, who was almost family. Tom Blair had become an orphan when he was eight, his parents having been killed in a car smash. Both parents were only children and since neither set of grandparents felt equal to bringing up a small boy, Tom’s mother’s best friend, Anne Grierson, had asked to be allowed to have the child to be a brother to her girl, Selina. The Griersons lived in a house called Tallboys in Sussex, which had been in their family since the seventeenth century. It was a charming house with enough land round it to shut it away from the stately homes of stockbrokers which had grown up round it. Tom, who had been left well provided for, was sent first to a preparatory school and then to Eton, but though he got on well at both schools he was a home-loving boy, and lived through the terms his inner eye fixed on Tallboys and the coming holidays. Helen, from the day she first met Tom, though she despised herself for it, was jealous of Tallboys, for it was the centre of that part of Tom’s life when he had been perfectly happy without her. When she asked him questions about his childhood Tom, though he answered her, did so carefully, as if he were afraid of breaking something too delicate to be touched.

  Tom had planned to go up to Oxford but the war intervened; he was sent to Burma and when he got back he went straight into his father’s firm in the City. By then Selina’s father was dead, her mother at the beginning of her last illness, and Tallboys about to be sold. Sometimes Helen wondered if she had said anything at that time which had stopped Tom from buying Tallboys. He had the money to buy it, for his income had been steadily accumulating while he was a minor. Helen was almost sure Selina had expected him to buy it and so had made her mother hang on to the place until Tom was home from Burma. It was true, Helen told herself, that he had met her and they had fallen in love with each other almost as soon as he had reached England and it was also true she would not like living in the country, except that she would like anywhere Tom was, but had he actually asked her about Tallboys? She had been so desperately in love and so in need of Tom it was hard to recall anything clearly through the golden haze that lay across their courting days. With fingers clasped under a restaurant table he might have asked: “Would you be happy living in the country, darling?” and she, conscious of nothing but the tremors that shot through her from his touch and the comfort of his strength, could have answered, without realising Tallboys lay behind the question: “I’d loathe it.” Anyway, however it had happened, Tom had not bought Tallboys, so instead it was sold and a housing estate now stood in its place. But had it been a mistake? If Tom had bought Tallboys and had they lived there would there have been no part of his life she did not share?

  Helen had not met Selina until after her marriage. Anne Grierson’s illness in its final stage had affected her mind and as a result she was difficult and nurses would not stay, so it was hard for Selina to get away, and she had not come to the wedding, which Helen regretted, for after all Tom and Selina had been brought up as brother and sister. But two months after the wedding Anne Grierson had died and Tom, with Helen’s full approval, took the place of a brother and arranged everything for Selina. Helen had gone down to Sussex for the funeral prepared also to help in any way she could, but there was nothing she could do, which distressed her, for that first view of Selina had filled her with pity. Poor girl, she had thought, of course no one looks their best in black which has been scratched together for a funeral, so probably she doesn’t always look so plain. Anyway who wouldn’t look plain after all that nursing.

  Then too, she knew Selina must be cut up at losing her mother, for a mother dying did something to you even when you were thankful for the mother’s sake she was out of her misery. Still, making every allowance at that first meeting, Helen had been surprised by Selina, for Tom, talking of her, had prepared her for someone so different. It was not that he had described her, he never had, but he had talked of her as if she were a vivid personality, whereas, at first viewing, she was a colourless nonentity. Helen had taken it for granted that Tom would suggest that they had Selina for a long visit, and she had talked herself into not only agreeing with an outward show of pleasure, but of working hard while Selina was with them to give the poor thing a good time and, if possible, to persuade her to do something about her appearance. Therefore it had been a pleasant surprise when Tom, after a visit to Selina in Sussex, had announced he was arranging to sell the cottage, which Selina’s mother had bought after she had sold Tallboys, as Selina had changed her mind about living in it, and instead was planning to settle on the west coast of Southern Ireland. Helen, though glad of the news, had not shown it. “I expect she’ll come over a lot,” she had said in a voice which sounded as if that was her dearest wish, “and when she does this must of course be her home.”

  But Selina, for more than a year, had not come over to England, and when she did start to visit London she had never stayed for even one night with Helen and Tom. There were good surface reasons: first Verily was born and Selina wrote she knew what it meant having a baby and a Nannie in the house. Then two years later Tim arrived and Selina insisted no house with two babies had room for visitors. When Verily and Tim were six and four a French governess was added to the household and that, Selina said, was more than enough for Helen to juggle with. So by the time Verily and Tim went to boarding schools, and there clearly was room in the holidays, it was established that Selina, when in London, stayed in an hotel. Helen was thankful this was so for Selina was unpredictable, she was always writing to say she was arriving on such a day and then not turning up—the lobsters were good that year and she could not leave her pots, her garden was in trouble, the local Protestant church fête needed her, or the mackerel were running. But if she could not come often to England Verily and Tim could go to Ireland and little by little it was accepted the children spent their summer holidays with Selina, an arrangement that suited Helen, for it meant she and Tom had an annual honeymoon. Tom was not entirely happy about the arrangement; he said he never saw the children,
why couldn’t they all go to some seaside place? But yearly Helen had overruled him, she would be bored in some horrible coast town and it would be good to be on their own, and the children loved Ireland and Selina.

  It was at the end of the summer holidays, when Verily was eleven and Tim nine, that Selina first made a habit of travelling back with the children and settling in a London hotel for three months. “Oh dear,” thought Helen the first year this happened, “she’ll be here for all my dinners and Tom will expect me to have her for the lot. Who on earth will she mix with?” In the event it proved easy. Selina, now she was over forty, was not the Selina Helen had seen at the funeral. She was still lean, weather-beaten and appallingly dressed, all of which now oddly suited her, so far from being a nonentity she had become a distinct personality. “Oh, is Selina over?” friends would say, obviously pleased. “Good. I love meeting her and hearing about that Shangri-la Irish cottage of hers.”

  Helen’s dinners were usually on a Saturday night, so no guest need keep one eye on the clock thinking of the next day’s work, but the dinner that October evening was on a Monday. This was arranged to suit the Worns. George Worn (pronounced Wurn) was struggling to keep his castle intact for his son Harry by opening it to the public, so on Saturdays and Sundays both he and Miriam were savagely busy. It was believed, by those who studied the stately home business, that George Worn was a good showman, but made fewer half-crowns than he should because of his inherited landowner outlook. The castle grounds were constantly on loan free, mainly to church organizations, for George was a strong high churchman. One gossip columnist had suggested it was a pity the earl, since faith was involved, was not a follower of Billy Graham, for if Dr. Graham could have been persuaded to pay a visit to the castle bus loads would have rolled in from all over the country packed with eager Grahamites singing “This is my story—This is my song.”

  Miriam Worn, three parts Jewish, was not exactly beautiful but lit by a smouldering personality which made it difficult to be in a room with her and keep your eyes off her. She was a champion of under-dogs; mention a possible miscarriage of justice, a neglected baby or an ill-treated animal and it was as if bellows were turned on Miriam for at once she ceased to smoulder and flared into flame. She was redeemed from being tiresome by a sense of humour and her integrity, for no lost cause taken up by Miriam had ever been dropped until all that could be done by one woman burning with righteous wrath had been done. Luckily for George’s pocket his castle was one of Miriam’s lost causes.

  Because he would be sure to get Miriam flaming, and because both she and Tom liked them, Helen had invited Edward and Celia Cale. Edward was a Q.C. Celia, his wife, had been at school with Helen. In those days the girls had been close friends, and enough links remained for them to enjoy each other’s company, though they would probably have drifted apart and almost forgotten each other had they not both lived in London, and had not their husbands liked each other. To meet casually Celia and Edward appeared a fortunate pair blessed with good looks plus his successful and most lucrative career. But closer knowledge of them showed the present-day Edward and Celia making out well on a life built of ply-wood over a sorrow so deep it had nearly wrecked Celia’s life, and could have ruined their marriage had not Edward refused to allow that to happen. Their child, Prunella, and there had not been another, had died of polio when she was four. The months that covered Prunella’s illness and death were now like months lost, for neither Edward nor Celia ever directly spoke of them, or indeed of Prunella.

  Olivia and Anthony Browne were invited to dinner because Olivia, an old friend, was such good value. She had the charm of a small monkey and wore, as if it were a wrap, the glow of the greatly desired. She had been born American but one Scots, one English, one French and one Spanish husband had diluted her nationalistic qualities, although her American viewpoint on what was due to her from men, merely because she was a woman, had not varied since she was out of nappies. Anthony, whom Olivia had only married six months before the dinner, worked on some obscure trade paper, never made much money, had a social conscience—something which was outside Olivia’s understanding—and was, in the opinion of many, heavy on hand and often a bore. But because his social conscience pushed him into work in clubs for boys who might become delinquents, he had something in common with George Worn, which made him a suitable diner on the night when the Worns were invited. But what Olivia, whose previous husbands had been either rich or glamorous, could see in Anthony was beyond Helen’s understanding, but that he made her happy was indisputable.

  Bernard Task was usually asked to Helen’s dinners on a night when Selina was invited for he was unattached as far as diners were concerned and was amusing in a malicious way. Tom did not like him, but agreed he was good value as a guest, and meeting him pleased George Worn for Bernard was a permanent hoverer, a high churchman casting longing glances towards Rome, and the solace that would come from being directed. In fact an evening with Bernard was a red letter day for George, for, as he would explain to Miriam afterwards: “Just being with someone who shares your faith must be a help in times of uncertainty.” Miriam, who felt fussing about your soul when there was so much injustice in the world that needed to be put right was a waste of time, would reply: “If he wants to be a Roman let him, he’d be much better with his mind made up, it’s so time-wasting dragging people into corners to talk about your soul.” But outside his spiritual waverings Miriam approved of Bernard for he earned his income, which was large, writing articles for a newspaper and various magazines on lost causes and under-dogs. What he wrote inclined to the mawkish but it was sincere and well informed so, though many would have wished to deny it, he did good.

  It was a most successful dinner, clever things were said, and others, not really brilliant, sounded so because of the mood of the party. As usual it had been Helen who had been the juggler who kept the conversation spinning, tossing it first to one guest and then to another. Seeing that George and Bernard did not start a private talk across the table. Preventing Edward going too far when playing his favourite game of Miriam-baiting. Bringing Selina out with an adroit question about Ireland. Guarding her own tongue against the danger of her and Celia falling into a party-wrecking “Do you remember . . . ?” conversation. That night Edward had come primed with a leg-pull for Miriam. That day he had persuaded a jury of the guilt of a young thug who had beaten an old man over the head with a bicycle chain. As a result the judge had sentenced the youth to a four years’ prison sentence. For Miriam’s benefit Edward had described movingly the young criminal’s tears, plus a sobbing mother. As he had anticipated his story had inflamed Miriam. Her brown eyes had sparked, her voice had throbbed with emotion as she flayed Edward. He was a gloating beast. The poor boy had probably never had a chance. There was one law for the rich and another for the poor. But he was not going to get away with it, she would write to her member of Parliament, she would get up a petition, she would see the Home Secretary. This had been the moment Edward had worked for. Quietly he had listed points which had been stressed in the judge’s summing up: the youth’s good background, which included money, his fine opportunities, his still-loving though broken-hearted parents. Then casually he had thrown out:

  “There’s a long record of crime, he was first brought into court for cruelty to a dog.”

  They all knew nothing inflamed Miriam so quickly as cruelty to an animal, but it had been she who had been first to lead the laughter.

  “Beast!” she had said to Edward. “Why didn’t you start by telling me about the dog? Young horror! I wish he’d got eight years.”

  As the laughter had died Helen had picked up the conversational ball and tossed it to Selina. Tom had watched her admiringly. “Bless her,” he had thought. “How she loves a party, and how good she is at giving one.”

  Helen did not allow the men to loiter over brandy, and none of her friends tried to, for the Blairs’ domestic arrangements were well known. Mrs. Simp
son, Helen’s admirable but terrifying cook-housekeeper, cooked and dished up the dinner unassisted, for “I like my kitchen to myself” was one of her strictures. But on party nights an ex-butler called Field came in to serve the dinner, and to clear the table afterwards, stacking the china and glass in the scullery ready for the daily, Mrs. Wragge, to wash up in the morning. It was a house joke, based on guesswork, that after the clearing up Mrs. Simpson took Field to her bed-sitting-room for a snack and a nightcap; certainly within half an hour of dinner there was not a sign of either of them. So usually someone said at the end of the meal: “Well, I suppose we shouldn’t keep Field from Mrs. Simpson,” or words to that effect, and that was the cue for everybody to leave the dining-room.

  Helen had games, cards or roulette ready for after dinner if her party had flagged, but it was rare for her to have to bring them out. That Monday she had never even thought of them, for Edward had produced a theory that what the papers called “The crime wave,” if it existed, was due to repressions.

  “We need outlets for our sadism. If I was P.M. I’d restore public hangings at Tyburn.”

  It had become a game; suggestions had poured in until it was decided what was needed was an annual national cruelty week when all passions not only could, but would, be released by law. Helen gave Tom a piece of paper and told him to take down the ideas, and by the time he had read them out it was after eleven and everyone was weak from laughter.

  “Darling,” Olivia had said to Helen, “we must go, but I’ve just had the best time so I hate to break the party up.”

  Celia too had got up. She kissed Helen.

  “We’d better all leave at the same time, Olivia, or I hate to think what horrors they will plan for us behind our backs in cruelty week.”

  As they had moved into the passage Bernard had caught up with Edward.