The Silent Speaker Page 8

  The corners of Tom’s mouth lifted in what in happier times might have been a smile.

  “That was the idea.” Tom paused while he thought. That had certainly been Uncle Harold’s and Aunt Anne’s idea, but had he and Selina ever felt like brother and sister? As small children they probably had for at that age you accepted adult arrangements without question, but even so were real brothers and sisters so enthralled by their physical differences as he remembered he and Selina had been? Aloud he said, in so stiff a way it was obvious his thoughts had embarrassed him: “I was only at Tallboys in the holidays.”

  Edward’s day had been busy and he had no wish for a hard-working evening, but clearly, if Tom’s story was to be obtained, it would have to be dragged out of him.

  “Did you spend all your holidays at Tallboys?”

  The suggestion that he might have spent them anywhere else evidently struck Tom as foolish.

  “Of course. I was a solitary boy, not the sort that shines at school. I existed for the holidays at Tallboys.”

  Tallboys or Selina, Edward wondered. While he waited for Tom to proceed he tried to imagine those holidays. The Griersons, probably good-hearted but unimaginative, taking it for granted that because they had taken Tom on as a son he and Selina felt like brother and sister. Out of his past a summer day when he was an adolescent came into Edward’s mind, one incident dug up from the many buried under the years. It happened in a sandy cave, almost for a moment he could see the girl, and feel the heady, hot-faced agony of playing at love-making. If Selina and Tom had felt that way at times—and why wouldn’t they, two young things thrown together?—it must have been difficult for them both, to put it mildly, for passion once triggered off, was always at the ready, and even allowing for boxrooms and woodsheds there would be gardeners and servants, let alone the foolish Griersons.

  “Quite a situation, expected to treat a girl as a sister when she wasn’t one.”

  “Yes.” Memories chased each other through Tom’s mind. Those desperate half love affairs, not understood, treated by them both as something shameful, so never spoken of between them, but, of course, recurring. “Yes, I suppose it was.”

  Edward mentally shook his head at the ghosts of Harold and Anne Grierson; for how much were those muddled thinkers responsible?

  “I suppose, as you were treated as the son of the house, no one thought you might marry Selina?”

  “It’s hard to explain but if Harold and Anne Grierson ever thought of such a thing it was in the far future. To them, even when we were 16 and 17, we were children; they liked children and wanted us to stay that way.” Tom looked worried, evidently feeling that he was showing his foster parents in a poor light. “It was meant kindly, they thought we’d be long enough adults, and there’s no time like childhood, you must have met that attitude.”

  “Of course. I was just trying to get a clear picture.”

  Tom appreciated if Edward was to understand he must give him facts. He took his eyes away from the fire and fixed them on his hands; when he spoke there was a shred of vigour behind his voice.

  “Anyway the term I left Eton war broke out and I joined up. I couldn’t get home often for I was stationed near Carlisle most of the time, but before I was sent overseas I got some leave and of course I spent it at Tallboys. Uncle Harold was ill, it turned out to be cancer and though we didn’t know for sure we suspected he was pretty bad, and I hated to leave Aunt Anne to cope.”

  “Where was Selina?”

  “In the land army, but she got special leave to say good-bye to me.” Tom paused, peering backwards into time. It had been late autumn, cold, blustery weather. Already the bleak fingers of war had touched the old house. The household, except for the aged, had been called up for some form of national service, so there was an uncared-for look about the once cherished rooms. The unmown lawn, which had grown as hay, lay sodden and dead. Selina too had changed. She was as warm, loving and delighted to see him as ever, but she made him feel that she felt she was truly his sister and had never been more. Obviously everything had to centre round her parents, for though nobody mentioned it they could feel death waiting to step into the house. Particularly he and Selina had made a fuss of Aunt Anne, who was behaving decently while her life tumbled to pieces. Tom looked apologetically at Edward.

  “Sorry, I was trying to remember how things were. Where was I?”

  “Selina had leave from the land army to say good-bye.”

  “Oh yes. You know, Edward, it’s hard to repeat accurately at this distance even the substance of what was said at the time. But it was an emotional period, what with one thing and another, and of course, without crossing t’s or dotting i’s, I wanted to do what I could to stop Uncle Harold worrying . . .”

  “So you told him you would marry his daughter when you got back?”

  That shocked Tom. For the first time he sat upright.

  “Good God no! It was nothing as definite as that. It was just a sort of general I’ll-be-around-you-know-that, but I’m not saying that the old Griersons may not have read more into it than was there.”

  And Selina too, I wouldn’t wonder, thought Edward. Aloud he said:

  “I am trying to get at the facts.”

  When Tom spoke again he had by-passed the Burma campaign.

  “While I was away Harold Grierson died. Tallboys became a nursery school. Aunt Anne moved into a cottage. Then she got ill and Selina was released from her job to nurse her. I meant, of course, to go straight down to see them as soon as I got back to England, but then I met Helen.”

  Edward knew that part of Tom’s story for he had married Celia about that time, and their first social engagement after their wedding had been Tom and Helen’s wedding. Edward tried to see that wedding in his mind’s eye. The reception had been at The Dorchester, very slap-up affair as immediate post-war affairs went for Helen’s parents had money. At this late date he could remember very little about it except that Celia had worn a hat made of flowers and that there were hordes of guests.

  “Was Selina at your wedding?”

  “No. She couldn’t get away because of her mother. I couldn’t get down to see them, petrol was rationed and Helen needed me, you can imagine how it was.” Tom made a gesture with one hand as if dismissing his prevarication. “That’s a lie, Anne Grierson was dying. It’s no excuse, but I was in pretty poor shape myself for I’m no use in the tropics. Anyway, to my undying shame, I didn’t go and the reason was I didn’t feel like facing any more horrors.”

  Suddenly, with remarkable clarity, Edward saw Tom’s face as he had first seen it. Tom at his wedding, while waiting for Helen, had turned round to look down the aisle and he had noticed how yellow his skin was through his sunburn. Afterwards, when he and Celia had shaken hands with him, he saw the whites of his eyes were yellow too, and that behind his bridegroom’s grin was an exhausted, sick man.

  “What had been wrong with you, malaria?”

  “That and every kind of bug. I did try to get Selina to come up, of course, but, as I say, she couldn’t. Then she wrote to tell me that the nursery school had cleared out of Tallboys, someone wanted to buy the place but they had hung on to it to give me first refusal. If I didn’t want it she would accept the offer, for if I wasn’t going to live there she didn’t care who had the house.”

  Edward turned his inward eye on to Selina. Poor girl, it sounded as if she had taken a knock. Holding on to Tallboys for Tom when he came back from Burma—the Tom who had said things when he had been feeling over-emotional, which she either believed, or hoped, that he had meant. It was hard to imagine Selina as a young woman in love but he would take a bet that was the picture. He would also bet there had been no talk of selling Tallboys until she had heard Tom was marrying someone else.

  “Why didn’t you buy the place as you were fond of it?”

  “Helen didn’t like the country, you know how
she had to be in the middle of things. I told her about Tallboys, of course, but I’m not sure she knew it was a serious suggestion. You remember the way she screwed up her face and pretended to shudder when something seemed to her repugnant, well, she did that then and she said she wasn’t born for the wide open spaces. I couldn’t force the country on her knowing how she felt—she loathed being on her own or having time on her hands, and she would have had both at Tallboys, and anyway I couldn’t see her there somehow.”

  “When was the first time you met Selina after you got home from Burma?”

  “When her mother died. Helen was awfully good about that, she loathed being on her own even for a night but she said I must go at once and see to things.” Tom peered back across the years. “Do you know, Edward, Selina had scarcely changed. The war years and her parents’ death, everything, had left almost no mark. She was never beautiful except for those eyes . . .”

  Eyes, thought Edward! I never noticed anything about Selina’s eyes. I don’t even know what colour they are.

  Tom gave his head a puzzled shake, as he tried to understand the Tom of those days.

  “Coming home had been a knock I suppose, everything was so changed, including the people, so it was quite a shock when Selina met me at the station, as if there’d been no war, and I had come home for the holidays.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “Have you ever noticed how Selina misses out on the usual ‘How do you do’s’ and ‘How are you’s’ and goes straight into what she wants to say? In the old days when I came back from school it had been ‘The cygnets have hatched on the moat’ or ‘They’re thatching the long barn.’ Her cottage wasn’t far from Tallboys so it was still East Grinstead station, and that time all she said was ‘I’ve got a Ford station wagon.’”

  Curious how that little picture sprang to life in Edward’s mind. He too could remember the “knock,” as Tom had called it, coming home had been after the war. The deadly acceptance of intolerable conditions by the civilian population, no conquering hero stuff but instead a lower standard of living than he had put up with in the army. He had first been drawn to Celia because she had refused to accept privation as something against which it was useless to fight. He was sure Helen had never been one to endure needlessly, but he could see how relaxing meeting someone like Selina, who was not being gallant but who was truly unchanged, must have been.

  “God, how dreary everybody was! I know civilians had the Hell of a time, but they could have snapped out of it quicker if they’d tried, I can see Selina would be a tonic.”

  “Everybody, including Helen reckoning Selina as my sister, took it for granted I’d stay with her at the cottage. In fact I took it for granted myself, and once I was in, seeing the lawyer and the undertaker and all the rest of them, it would have made things awkward to move out. So I stayed. I wish to God now I hadn’t. You see, I—we found out I’d made a mistake in marrying Helen.”

  Edward made what he hoped was an understanding sound. It seemed incredible to him that with his new bride, the gorgeous Helen, at home Tom could have fallen for Selina, who, even though much younger than she was now, could not have been attractive in the way Helen was. But other people’s love affairs were not something you tried to understand, they were something you accepted.

  “It was after the funeral that Selina saw the solution. She bought that cottage in Ireland.”

  Edward thought to himself that a cottage in a place so isolated every visitor was of interest was a damn’ silly place to have a love affair.

  “It was over a year before she visited England,” Tom went on, “and by then we’d got a hold on ourselves. She always stayed in an hotel and we never met alone, of course, except in the public rooms.”

  Edward had got up to refill his glass but Tom’s last words pulled him up.

  “What’s that! If you and Selina have never met except in public rooms what on earth is Selina’s letter about?”

  Tom was back in his old position, one hand propping his tired head.

  “Helen would never share a person, with her it was all or nothing. From a law point of view I was faithful to her, I mean after that time in the cottage, but not mentally and my letters would have told her that.”

  Edward was incredulous and sounded it.

  “I never heard such poppy-cock. You think Helen had known for some time that you loved Selina but calmly waited for a suitable evening to turn up to finish things?”

  “Yes.”

  Edward helped himself to a large brandy.

  “I never heard such bloody nonsense. Helen, as I saw her last night, had no more thought of killing herself than I had.”

  “But if Selina’s right and Verily found a letter from me to her and gave it to her mother . . .”

  “I’m convinced Selina isn’t right. I don’t know what bee Verily’s got in her bonnet, I expect it’s as imaginary as yours. But I do know one thing. I had not until this moment thought it important what Helen’s motive was, but now, to kill this nonsense about you and Selina, I’m going to make it my business to find out.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Miriam, her heart burning with compassion, drove to Aylesbury to fetch Verily. Her twin daughters, had they known what she was up to, would with accuracy have described their mother’s thoughts on that drive.

  “Poor lamb! How ghastly to lose your mother that way. No wonder she ran away. Probably no one understood or cared how she felt. I shall make a tremendous fuss of her. I shall keep her at Wyster as long as she likes to stay. It’s awkward she’ll be around for the funeral. I’ll get someone to have her for the day. I’ll try to take Helen’s place so that she knows she has someone she can come to to talk about absolutely anything.”

  By the time Miriam arrived at Aylesbury Verily had been put to bed with an aspirin and hot milk, so Fred and Edna were alone to greet Miriam. They had been feeling shy before she turned up, not being accustomed to visits from countesses, but warm-hearted Miriam, used to problem-discussing across countless kitchen tables, in a few moments had them at their ease, so much so that they were stunned when in one second their eager interested guest became a flashing-eyed, flushed-cheek avenging angel. It happened when Edna was describing Verily’s condition.

  “I was so glad when at last she popped off. I hate hearing a child cry for something you can’t give them. Of course Fred passed on the message like; ‘The little girl’s crying to go to London,’ he said, ‘she wants to see someone called Selina.’ You wouldn’t be Selina, would you?”

  It was at that moment that Verily slipped from the unhappy-child-in-need-of-mothering category into the lost cause class. Miriam swung round on Fred.

  “What exactly did you tell the child’s father?”

  Fred felt as he did when he had to give evidence in the police court, but there he read the facts, he was not expected to speak from memory.

  He licked his lips.

  “It was the sergeant that spoke to London, not me.

  Miriam looked like a dog after a bone.

  “Did the sergeant tell her father?”

  In spite of inner nervousness Fred refused to be hurried.

  “That’s not for me to say, madam, milady I mean, but if you will wait I’ll get the sergeant on the telephone, unless you would care to go to the station where you can speak to him yourself.”

  Miriam wanted immediate action.

  “Get him on the telephone, please.”

  While Miriam talked to the sergeant Edna and Fred exchanged looks.

  “I hope the sergeant remembered to mention this Selina or he’s for the carpet. Complain right to the top, her sort.”

  Edna was soothing.

  “Don’t you worry, Fred. She’s only thinking of the little girl, she’s angry like at being expected to take her to her home when it’s this Selina she was wanting.”

  Miriam
came back, still seething with annoyance, but to Fred’s relief not with the sergeant.

  “The fault lies with the other end, I gather. They did tell London the child wanted to see Miss Grierson. Why, knowing this, they didn’t cancel the arrangement that I should take her to the castle is beyond my understanding, but as soon as I have handed Verily over to Miss Grierson I shall find out.” She turned to Edna. “Shall I drive her to London to-night?”

  It was Verily who answered that. She had woken up, uncertain where she was, then, as the room came back to her, so did panic. Mummy had killed herself and it was her fault. Through the sheet stuffed in her mouth to hold back the noise Verily screamed.

  Miriam and Edna were up the stairs in a moment. To Verily Miriam was the mother of those twins, Caroline and Harriet and that stuck-up Harry, a family whom she knew because once she and Tim had spent a much-loathed week-end at the castle, so it was into Edna’s warm, safe-feeling arms that she flung herself.

  “Now, now,” said Edna. “You’ve had a nightmare, that’s what it is. And me just about to tell the countess you were asleep.”

  Miriam leant on the bed end. It was not her custom, when dealing with a case, to tell the person being dealt with more facts than were necessary, so by habit she avoided telling Verily she had been sent to take her to the castle.

  “I can drive you to Selina’s hotel now if you like.”

  Edna hugged Verily to her.

  “She’s ever so tired, aren’t you, dear? How about going in the morning?”

  But Verily shook off Edna’s arms. It was as if she were drowning and Selina, if only she could reach her, was a lifebelt.

  “Let’s go.”

  Because the child was the cause occupying Miriam’s attention, but also because she had no reason to think Selina especially involved, Miriam did not telephone her to say she was on her way, bringing Verily. She was accustomed to power and knew the hotel would find a room for the child if she demanded it. So, less than two hours later, Selina, who had been given a hot drink by the solicitous ex-air-raid warden night porter, was woken from a cat nap to hear Miriam’s voice on the house phone.