The Silent Speaker Read online

  Selina could scarcely frame the words.

  “What did she say to that?”

  “She laughed again. Then she said: You’re talking the most awful nonsense.’ Then she went up to her bedroom.”

  “Whatever made you say a thing like that?”

  Verily raised her head slightly.

  “You’re going to absolutely hate me.”

  “I’ll never do that. Go on.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be sick.”

  Selina fetched a vase off the mantelpiece.

  “We’ll have this by us in case. Now finish what you were saying.”

  There was a long pause while the child held her front and rocked to and fro as if in pain.

  “It was one night in Ireland. I wanted some milk so I came to the top of the stairs to ask you. You were sitting by the fire reading a letter. Just when I was going to speak you kissed the letter. I was surprised because you aren’t a soppy type, and I suppose I moved and you heard me. Then you scrumpled the letter up and put it behind a cushion.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “While you were getting the milk I took a quick peep and saw it was written by Daddy.”

  Selina’s mouth was so dry she had to collect saliva before she could speak.

  “You read it?”

  “Of course not, anyway there wasn’t time.”

  Selina remembered the night perfectly. She had been lonely and it was her favourite letter. Fool that she was not to have put it in her pocket.

  “Did you tell your mother what you had seen?”

  “No.” Verily hesitated, then she spoke in a burst.

  “I was a jealous beast about Mummy, I’m sorry now.”

  Selina, though nothing could help her now, probed on for Verily’s sake.

  “You think your mother believed what you told her about me?”

  “Of course she didn’t. She knew Daddy adored her, that was why I was jealous, holidays aren’t all that long, I did think Daddy could spare some time for me but it was always ‘Where’s Mummy?’ ‘What’s your mother doing?’ I thought it was mean.”

  Selina looked at Verily as if she were some rare animal.

  “But if you think she didn’t care what is it you are worrying about?”

  Verily thought that a stupid question.

  “Don’t you think I know everybody is prying round asking why? I thought soon someone would find out what I’d said. It’s so awful having a thing like that hanging over you—it’s beyond imagining, Selina.”

  “Not past my imagining, darling, but it will be all right now. There’s nothing more you want to tell me, is there?”

  Verily licked a finger and drew it across her throat.

  “Cut my throat if I lie. That’s the whole truth, I swear it.”

  * * *

  It appeared as “meant” that George and Bernard should turn up for a late lunch at the same hotel. They got out of their cars together so it would have been difficult even had they wished to for them to have avoided eating with each other. As it happened both were pleased, George because he looked upon every chance to talk to Bernard as Heaven sent, in the real meaning of those words, Bernard because his morning had disturbed him and George was perhaps the only person who would understand why.

  Having ordered their food Bernard unburdened himself.

  “I’ve been made to feel worthless. There’s a small community a few miles from here, their life work is to take care of what can only be described as dregs.”

  George was interested.

  “Down and outs?”

  “Worse, drug-takers, drunks, I think there are a few habitual criminals, prostitutes of both sexes, in fact the sort that on their own spend half their life in prison.”

  “Are you writing about them?”

  “That’s why I went to see the leader, but it’s not so easy. They want to remain anonymous and they don’t want money.”

  “What religion?”

  “The community are Catholics—the patients anything or nothing.”

  “How do they live?”

  “Many of them were well-to-do and brought most of what they have with them. They’ve got good farm land and half of them work it, the others rake the cities for their patients or look after those of the patients who need it; some of the patients recover enough to help in the house or on the farm but a lot don’t. God, what lives the members of the community lead for many of their cases are pretty sordid types.” Bernard shuddered at what he remembered. “You know, I never saw people so happy as the members of that community.”

  A waiter brought their drinks. George took a sip of his lager.

  “They share everything? I mean, have nothing of their own?”

  “Not a thing.”

  George thought of Wyster, it was a glorious possession but keeping it going for Harry was backbreaking work.

  “Sometimes I envy such people. Imagine waking to a day without a personal care, with all your hours to spend to the glory of God. I find it increasingly difficult to see His glory through a fog made up of income tax demands and rising costs.”

  There was silence, while a waiter put their food in front of them, during which both men thought of the earthly problems which filled so much of their lives. Presently Bernard said:

  “The leader of the community, who I gathered was a successful city type before he left the world, said it took a series of blows to make him see the futility in his short time on earth of almost everything he was doing.”

  George looked up from his food.

  “I often consider that, but when you have commitments, such as a wife and children, it could not be what God intends that you should desert them to lead however selfless a life.”

  “They only use Christian names so of course I don’t know who the leader was when he was in circulation—they’ve been going since just after the war, he had a daughter, he told me about her in answer to a question about being discouraged.”

  “Discouragement must be their worst enemy, drunkards and drug-takers are discouraging material.”

  Bernard poured himself out a glass of wine from the half bottle in the wine cooler beside him.

  “It could have been the daughter that led the father to start the community. He said she went to pieces and became the sort of jetsam for which they search. But she refused help, and while he still had money to give she only spent it on drink.”

  “Poor soul. Let’s hope the father gets hold of her in the end.”

  “He won’t. Just over a week ago she was hooked out of the river. She’d drowned herself.”

  “Poor soul,” said George again.

  Bernard looked at him and decided he would like to confess, for George would understand, or at least if he did not understand would listen with charity.

  “That story knocked me for six. I was upset by Helen’s death, it seemed so futile. Why? I ask myself. Why?”

  “We all wish we knew that,” said George.

  “Ah, but you want to know in order to help Tom. My only reason, as I can see now, was curiosity. Against a story such as I was told to-day curiosity seems a dusty quality. That man doesn’t want to know what drove the people he is trying to save into becoming what they are, he’s only interested in their souls to-day. I don’t think he even wanted to know what it was that finally drove his daughter into the Thames to be picked out at East Lane stairs. But telling me about himself made me feel I needed a bath.”

  “Why?”

  Bernard told him. From his first lunch with Olivia after she had seen Mrs. Simpson and heard about the chrysanthemum wire to the abortive visit of himself, Anthony and Olivia to Andy Digue’s club.

  George heard him in silence. Then he said:

  “I think, since you know so much, I would advise that Selina Grierson’s possible connection is a line of enquiry best left u
ntouched.”

  “It’s all going to be left untouched by me from now onwards. I tell you that man made me feel like some dirty peeping Tom.”

  “A life of sacrifice does humble one,” George agreed.

  “It wasn’t that, it was the daughter. I remembered about her as soon as he said where the police had found her. She was one of the news items in the copy of the News of the World I gave Helen.”

  “But what could a woman found in the Thames have to do with Helen?”

  “Nothing, absolutely nothing. But if this Christ-like man is not asking why his daughter drowned herself but accepts that she did, and that for some reason God would not permit him to help her while she was alive, what am I doing? As soon as I get to London I shall tell Olivia I’m just not interested any more.”

  George finished his food and laid down his knife and fork.

  “I think your decision is the right one, anyway Edward Cale thinks he may have found the answer. But if you wish to help you could give it through prayer, Bernard. There is a load which could be lifted, I wish you would pray that with God’s help it may be.”

  Two hours later Bernard was back in London. Olivia was expecting a late night so she was resting when he rang her. He did not, of course, attempt to convey to her the reason for his conversation.

  “Darling, the hunt’s off. I ran into George Worn at lunch time. He thinks Edward Cale has found the answer.”

  A wail came over the phone.

  “But what good’s that to me? I’ll go into a decline brought on by curiosity.”

  In his present mood it went against the grain to say it but Olivia had to be kept from arguing.

  “Sweetie, what talk from the smartest snooper in town! If Edward does find the answer what’s the betting Celia will know about it, and if you can’t drag it out of her you’re not the girl I take you for.”

  He could imagine the smile on that little monkey face. Olivia gave her gurgling, sexy laugh.

  “That’s my boy. I wonder if I had better start softening Celia up right away or wait until she’s something to give.”

  Bernard made kissing sounds over the phone.

  “That’s up to you. Good-bye, Mrs. Sherlock Holmes.”

  He put the receiver down and went to the window. A ray of sun caught the tower of Westminster Cathedral. His eyes focused on it until, as if a voice had called him, he knew his doubting period was over. Curious, he thought, that it should be Helen who has given me the push I needed. He had a name waiting for this day. He went to his desk and got out a sheet of notepaper.

  “Dear Monseigneur . . .”

  * * *

  Miss Foster was 87, a little creaky with rheumatism but otherwise brisk and on the spot. She knew all about George and his high-church visitors to Wyster so was delighted to meet him.

  “I’ve seen you before,” she greeted him, “but I do not suppose you saw me, I was seated three places away from you at the passion play at Oberammergau.”

  George looked at Miss Foster almost with reverence. He had found the performance of the passion play moving but an endurance test; what then could it have been for this old lady?

  “A wonderful experience, of course,” he said, “but I must admit I was grateful to the friend who warned me to bring a rubber cushion to sit on.”

  Miss Foster looked disapproving.

  “Rubber cushion! Nonsense! It was a pilgrimage, Lord Worn, I enjoyed the hardness of the seats as other pilgrims enjoy approaching a shrine on their knees.”

  It was an almost irresistible temptation to discuss the play, especially the scene of the Last Supper, which George believed would move him as long as he lived, but he was not there for that.

  “I’ve come, as you know, in my friend Edward Cale’s place to ask you some questions about Helen Blair, whom you knew as Helen Lomax.”

  Miss Foster, though she was in an armchair, was sitting bolt upright. At George’s words her spine grew even more poker-like.

  “I read, of course, of Helen’s death and Mr. Cale stated it was in reference to Helen that he wished to see me. He is, I understand a busy man so unlikely to waste his time on gossip, so I invited him to call, but I intended to say to him, what I now say to you, unless you can convince me any good purpose will be served by discussing Helen we will drop the subject and over our tea discuss something else.”

  George had been briefed by Edward how to answer.

  “Tell the old girl the facts,” he had said. “She sounds a wise old bird, she’ll take the story in her stride.” So George, as simply as he could, told Miss Foster the facts.

  “So it seems to Mr. Cale and to me imperative that we should if possible run Helen’s real motive to earth.”

  Miss Foster replied in her precise clipped English.

  “I accept your motives. Now what were you hoping to learn from me?”

  “We were wondering if you could recall when Helen was sent to you whether you were warned of a past history of hysteria or anything of the sort?”

  Miss Foster sounded reproving.

  “If there was anything to recall I could recall it perfectly but there is nothing. Helen entered my school when she was fourteen. Her history was the one those of us who teach have learned to dread, her parents were divorced, both had married again. Helen had lived with first one couple and then the other, attending whatever school proved convenient. She was the exception, there appeared to be no ill-effects from her broken background. She was one of my most outstanding girls, not academically, but for leadership and character.”

  “You must then have been shocked to read how she died.”

  There was a long pause.

  “No, I was not. It was my habit up to a few years ago to stay in my club in London once a year so as to invite those of my old girls who lived in London to take tea or a glass of sherry with me. I naturally invited Helen but she never came, so when her first child was born I wrote her a note saying it would give me pleasure to see her and her baby so might I call. She answered on a post card ‘Please do not come.’”

  “Did you try again?”

  “No. I became very attached to Helen when she was my pupil and she, I knew, was fond of me. Although she did not appear to have suffered from her rootless background it certainly gave her satisfaction to be anchored. I never had a pupil who so thrived on duties and responsibilities. You see, since she was a small child she had never known security for her life was spent drifting between one parent and the other, neither keeping her long enough for her to take upon herself small duties such as belong to a child with a normal home background. Insofar as a busy life permitted I attempted to give Helen the feeling of ‘belonging,’ which should be every child’s birthright. I have, I hope, made you understand that Helen was more to me than just one of my girls, she was more like a daughter, so if she could tell me she did not wish to see me it was not a casual decision on her part.”

  “How distressing for you.”

  Miss Foster dismissed such an idea with a faint brushing gesture with one hand. Such luxuries as feeling distressed or hurt she suggested she did not permit herself.

  “It caused me inward searching. Had my upbringing been responsible? Was my upbringing instrumental in bringing about Helen’s suicide?” Again Miss Foster gave a slight brushing movement with her hand in answer to George’s effort to protest. “Oh yes, it may have been. I found her so responsive I overlooked I was building on a poor foundation, and her upbringing had indeed been poor. She appeared such a born leader, so courageous a young creature, it could be my faith in her was too great, worse, the faith I taught her to have in herself. When I got that postcard I felt convinced that in some way Helen had failed herself. She had fallen so far below the Helen I had helped to build she could not endure meeting me. To live with shame is a terrible thing, Lord Worn, and that I feel is what Helen lived with.”

&
nbsp; “There is confession and atonement.”

  Miss Foster shook her head.

  “When Helen was with me she was a deeply religious girl. But if I am right in my surmise, when she failed herself she lost that too.”

  Miss Foster was far older than George and he was conscious it was not his place to criticise, but he had to ask.

  “Could you not have forced her to see you? If you are right you might have been the help she needed.”

  Miss Foster selected and discarded words in her mind before she answered.

  “I should have, but I dreaded meeting her as much as she dreaded meeting me. For years I had believed I had helped to form a great woman. There was nothing of which I had not believed Helen capable. I made excuses for myself at the time, but the truth is I was a coward and to me cowardice is the unforgivable crime.”

  “I wonder in what way Helen could have failed herself,” George said. “There was, when I knew her, no sign of greatness about her, she was witty in a sardonic way, brilliant even, but she certainly had not grown into the sort of woman you expected her to grow into.”

  Miss Foster leaned forward and pressed a bell.

  “We will have tea. That is something, I suppose, we will never know. Helen was metal which when tested had a flaw, I am sure of that, but conjecture about the nature of the flaw will serve neither your cause nor her memory. Now tell me, was seeing the passion play as great an experience as you had hoped?”

  * * *

  Mrs. Wragge was hurrying home with a bulging shopping bag when she saw Field buying roses from a flower seller’s basket. She was surprised to see him so near the Blairs’ house, for she knew he was no longer helping Mrs. Simpson. She was about to hurry on when a thought made her stop. She had not met Field until the week Helen died so she had not exchanged more than a word or two with him, but she had thought of him as she had told her husband as “ever so gentlemanly.” Mrs. Wragge had for the past three days been spilling over with a piece of news. Several times she had tried to pass it on to Mrs. Simpson but each time at the crucial moment she had lost her nerve. “I know I did ought to tell her,” Mrs. Wragge had told her husband, Bert, “but she can’t half be narky if she likes, and I thinks to myself: ‘Daisy Wragge, why should you have your nose bit off for what’s meant as a kindness?’” Bert Wragge was a man who liked his comforts and his comforts did not include a wife who harped continually on one string. He had lost his temper. “Give over, Daisy, do. You keep on natter, natter, natter about that Mrs. Blair. If you think you did ought to tell Mrs. Simpson what you know, spit it out, if not for Gawd’s sake forget it and talk about something else.” Mrs. Wragge knew when Bert talked like that he meant it, but somehow she could neither get what she knew off her chest to Mrs. Simpson, nor could she stop talking about it to Bert, but Mr. Field was different, if he would listen she could tell him.