The Silence
Applause shocked her. Spinning round, she saw that she wasn’t alone as she had assumed. Jonah was on the balcony, cigarette in hand. If she could speak, she would’ve shouted at him for creeping up on her.
‘I don’t know what that was but it sounded great,’ he said easily, taking another puff. ‘Don’t mind me. I sneak out here as Mrs Whittingham doesn’t allow smoking in the house.’
The last five minutes that had felt so perfect were now tarnished by the knowledge she’d had an eavesdropper. She had thought she was sailing on her classical ocean alone and Jonah’s appearances was as shocking as a U-boat surfacing next to her. She put the violin down and gathered up her music.
‘Don’t stop.’ Jonah stubbed out the cigarette, pinched the end and slipped it in his pocket. ‘I guess I should’ve announced myself but, you see, I’m not supposed to be out here.’ He gestured to the rusting balcony. ‘Mrs Whittingham is always full of warnings of dire disaster but I figure that the vine will hold me if the ironwork doesn’t.’
Jenny told herself to slow down, not to flee as instinct was telling her. He had been here first and that it was her negligence to check that meant she’d been overheard.
‘Are you all unpacked?’
She nodded.
‘Got time for another tune?’ He pointed to the violin. ‘I’ve never been to a classical concert. Don’t you want to expand my horizons? People keep telling me they do.’
She shrugged.
He laughed and clapped a hand to his chest. ‘Jenny, you wound me. You’re saying you don’t fucking care one way or another? You’re right. No need to care about me. I was just curious. I’ll go.’
She held up a hand. She might as well try to make a friend of him if they were to live together – it would be safer that way. And it was hard for her to imagine a life that hadn’t included concerts. Going without classical music was akin to missing out on a sense.
Jonah perched back on the rail of the balcony, surely testing its strengths to the limit. He saw her aghast look.
‘Chill, Jenny. What’s life if not just another day cheating death?’
He had a point. Since her fourteenth birthday, she’d shared that philosophy. Everyone lived on borrowed time. So, what to play him? She needed a piece where the violin part was complete in itself, something in the easy listening category, and that she happened to know by heart. She settled for John Williams’ theme for Schindler’s List. If Jonah could listen to that and not weep then he had a heart of stone. Setting bow to strings, she yearned her way through the music, putting into it all the senseless pain of the tragedy it described, rising on to the balls of her feet as she did when caught up in a theme. She’d heard the piece during a televised Prom when she was a teenager and it had set her on the path to her current job, that ambition surviving even her own personal tragedy. God, she loved this: it felt like the top of her head opened and she was floating. There was nothing more powerful in life than this, not even pain, not even violence, not even love.
Jonah was still, with the pent-up tension of a predator crouching, ash drifting unregarded from cigarette tip.
The silence went unbroken when she finished, strings still resonating with the last sweet high note.
‘Fuck me, what was that?’ Despite his crudity, his voice was reverential. ‘It was amazing. Can I stream it?’
She nodded and jotted down the name of the piece.
‘John Williams. Is he the same as the Star Wars guy?’
She drew a tick.
‘Amazing – I know something about music. I’ve surprised myself. Can we talk without this?’ Jonah tapped the iPad.
She made the gestures for ‘Do you know sign language?’.
He followed her hands like he was studying her. ‘Is that sign language?’
Duh, yes. She nodded.
‘Teach me.’ He patted the spot on the rail next to him. ‘Come on, it’s nice out here. Trust me, it’s not given way yet and won’t tonight.’
Jenny was wryly aware that the dynamics of the playground were in operation. He was daring her, seeing if she was on his side or Bridget-the-rule-maker’s. She’d hated that when she’d been a schoolgirl; she wasn’t much fonder of it now. Putting down the violin – she wasn’t risking that – she stepped out onto the balcony. It creaked a little which made her gasp.
‘Steady now.’ Jonah caught her sleeve before she could retreat. ‘It’s just adjusting.’
There were no more creaks so she perched next to him, her back supported by the thick stem of the vine. She’d already planned to grab that if the balcony gave way. Jonah didn’t appear to need such reassurance. He sat with nothing but a drop behind him.
She held up her index finger. First sign. She ran through the basics: yes, no, please, thank you, ‘how are you?’, ‘what do you want?’. He mastered them quickly.
‘We’re studying movement at drama school,’ he said, which might explain his aptitude. ‘I should ask them to include this. Give me something, I dunno, emotional? Can you swear in sign language?’
Of course. She gave him a few of the mild ones.
‘That’s “wanker”? Right, I’m using that tomorrow. There are a few of the other students who really deserve that.’
She made another sign.
‘What’s that?’
She typed the translation. Be careful. You never know who understands.
‘It’s OK. They expect that kind of language – and worse – from me. So how did you lose your voice? Bridget said it was an illness. Was it cancer?’
He certainly tackled things head on. She shook her head and made the universal sign for ‘goodbye’.
‘You’re going? OK, sorry for being so nosey. Thanks for the song. The cast and crew are going to think I’ve gone all uptown when they hear that playing in my dressing room.’
Jenny contemplated trying to explain to him how music wasn’t the preserve of the posh but decided she wasn’t up to challenging the commonly held view tonight. She made a final sign combination.
‘What’s that.’ Jonah watched her lips. ‘Sweet dreams?’
She nodded.
‘Never had any of those, but thanks, Jenny. Goodnight.’
Chapter 8
The House that Jack Built – Chapter Two – Foundations
The turf peeled away revealing the black soil beneath. In the first spadeful – not that anyone noticed – was a scrap of ribbon let fall by a careless maid who once attended the fair on this very spot. She should never have trusted the promises of her sailor. Next came a penny from Sir Thomas Wyatt’s pocket. He dropped it when he pulled out gold coins to bribe his flagging supporters as his rebellion against Mary Tudor faltered. Further digging turned over the blood, sweat and tears of yet more thwarted revolutionaries: Lord Audley, the Yorkists, Jack Cade, Wat Tyler and Jack Straw. Over the centuries, so many came to dream their impossible dreams on Blackheath’s open space, lost in blue sky thinking that the capital was theirs for the taking. They believed that this was the day when society would change for the better. They were, as axe and sword went on to prove, mistaken.
The spades dug down to more primitive times. The cutting edge severed in two a discarded leather sole from a Dane’s boot. That bloody-handed man abandoned it, a casualty of the long march from Canterbury where they’d done away with the archbishop.
Go deeper yet, I begged from the rolled paper in which I gestated, tucked under the architect’s arm. I need my foundations to reach further back if I am to stand steady.
One digger unearthed a fragment of a stone age tool. The pick was fashioned from antlers by a practical man squatting in his round house on a cold winter’s evening. Chucking it aside, not caring what it was, the labourers carried on until they passed through the thin level of human habitation and reached down to that of the terrible lizards.
Chapter 9
Jenny
Nights were never easy.
Jenny lay in bed, telling herself that she was in her perfect bedroom, in a perfect house, safe from intruders.
But sleep still evaded her, whisking around the corner just when she thought she’d caught up. It was probably the unfamiliarity of her surroundings. Each house had its own time signature of beats and clicks; this one was no different. She could hear the pipes settling, the wash of water as someone used a distant tap. Overhead, though, footsteps paced. One-two-three, one-two-three. It had the pulse of the waltz, relentless and driving. She imagined silken skirts swirling as ladies leant back in the arms of dark-suited men, throats extended, vulnerable. She shuddered. Was Bridget’s bedroom up there? Or Jonah’s. She thought not. Her landlady had said it was only attics. Maybe it wasn’t coming from up there but just sounded like it did?
Jenny put the pillow over her head trying to muffle the steps but it didn’t work. Her brain was now worrying over the unexplained. She was still that child who lay rigid with terror, scared of the monsters under the bed – because she knew – oh, she knew – they were real.
Just go out into the corridor and find out which room it’s coming from.
Frustrated by herself, she threw off the duvet and slipped into her mules. This is the bit in horror movies where you scream at the ditsy female character to go back into the room, she thought with dark humour.
But this isn’t a horror flick. I’m in a feel-good girl-gets-a-break movie, she decided firmly. Anyway, I’m not going into the attics, just listening from the corridor.
She opened her door. A table lamp supplied a little low lighting. Bridget had said she left it on so that houseguests could find their way around in the dark. She didn’t want anyone taking a headlong dive down the stairs.
Jonah appeared at the far end of the corridor, heading for the bathroom in a towelling dressing gown. His room evidently didn’t have the same luxury of an en suite.
‘Are you all right, Jenny? Need something?’
She pointed upwards.
‘What?’
She beckoned him closer. Couldn’t he hear it? Actually, she couldn’t hear it out here either. He approached looking a little confused.
‘What’s the matter?’
She pulled him into her room.
‘Hey!’
Shaking her head at his protest that she was ravishing him, she pointed upwards.
Nothing. The steps had stopped.
That was awkward.
She dashed for her iPad. Waltz on the ceiling.
‘A waltz?’
Steps in a three-four pattern.
‘A three-four pattern?’
Give me strength! She shoved her fingers through her mass of black hair. She’d let it loose for bed and knew it must look like a wild halo around her head and shoulders. Time signature. 1 - 2 - 3. She mimicked the movement.
‘Jenny, I can’t hear anything.’ No wonder he was looking at her like she was crazy.
She bit her lip and signed ‘sorry’, a closed hand circling at her chest.
Jonah repeated the sign back. ‘That’s “sorry”, isn’t it?’
She nodded.
‘It’s OK. You probably just heard a bird. They nest up there. It freaks me out sometimes when I hear them scratching on the tiles. Can’t shake the idea that they’re rats.’
But birds don’t waltz, neither do rats for that matter.
Ghost?
He read her message and had the gall to laugh. ‘Probably. The ghost of Admiral Jack come to haunt us.’ He made a spectral arm flapping gesture to show he wasn’t taking her seriously. ‘He was a nasty piece of work according to Bridget’s history. You should ask her. It would be like him to do something so spiteful.’
OK, so Jonah was the wrong person to ask. In fact, she couldn’t blame him as it had been her to drag him in here.
She signed ‘thanks’ and ‘goodnight’.
‘You really OK? Don’t want someone to give you a cuddle? I’m volunteering in case you’re wondering.’ He put his hand up.
She shook her head vigorously. Maybe on another occasion she’d be unnerved by his suggestion, but right now she was only conscious of her own embarrassment.
He grinned with boyish charm. ‘Can’t blame a guy for trying. Goodnight.’
He closed the door as he left.
Jenny thumped her forehead. How embarrassing had that been? She thought she’d managed quite well on her introduction to her new home but she’d spoiled it all by sending Jonah totally mixed signals. He’d either think she was cracked or that she made a habit of pouncing on men in corridors dressed only in night shorts and a Tee. She looked down. She didn’t even have a bra on so she’d have been bouncing all over the place.
Kicking off her mules, she got back into bed. The house was silent now, pipes settled, footsteps ceased. Bloody brilliant. Her phone told her it was eleven-thirty. She switched it to night mode and pulled the duvet up to her chin.
At two in the morning, the steps started again. One-two-three. One-two-three.
This time she didn’t go and look.
Chapter 10
Yawning, Jenny entered the kitchen carrying her small box of food supplies. Daylight made the ghostly waltz less frightening. In fact, she’d rationalised it away completely. That was what she’d learned to do with her fears – tidy them away, paper them over. She was prepared to accept Jonah’s explanation that there were birds up there. Perhaps they’d been doing something perfectly normal, mating or fighting over territory maybe, and her brain had turned it into a pattern?
‘Good morning, Jenny. I see you’re an early riser?’ Bridget was sitting at the oak table, papers spread around her, pen in hand.
Not by choice. Jenny tapped her watch, indicating she had a shift starting at nine.
‘Sleep well?’
How to reply to that? She nodded.
‘Good. I never slept well the first night in a strange house. You must be built of sterner stuff than me.’
Jenny pulled a packet of muesli out of her box.
‘I should’ve told you last night: you’re welcome to keep your groceries in the pantry. I’ll clear a shelf for you. In fact, I’d appreciate it if you did as I don’t like food elsewhere. Old houses attract mice. So many voids under floorboards and wainscots for them to explore.’
Jenny didn’t think she’d heard anyone actually use the word ‘wainscot’ before. It was rather lovely. She gave Bridget an ‘OK’ sign.
Taking her bowl to the place opposite Bridget, Jenny gestured to the papers.
‘What are these? Ah, this is my history of the house. I can be a terrible bore on the subject as my friends will tell you.’
Jenny pressed a hand to her chest and shook her head.
‘You won’t be bored?’ Bridget laughed. ‘You say that now but give it a few weeks. I swear Jonah dives into the shrubbery when he sees me coming at him with a new chapter. I suppose it isn’t really his thing.’ Her eyes lit up as they rested on Jenny. ‘Maybe you’d appreciate my book?’
Jenny put out a hand. No harm in pleasing Bridget and she did have a genuine interest in the house, not least the fact Jonah had dropped into their late-night conversation about Admiral Jack being a rascal.
‘I’ll give you a sample then, see how you get on.’ Bridget rifled through the papers. ‘Might as well start at the beginning.’ She handed Jenny the opening chapters.
Jenny glanced at the first lines and looked up at Bridget.
‘I know: unconventional, isn’t it? I’ve tried to approach it like a novelist rather than historian. I’ve styled it an autobiography of the house. I’ve given so much of my own life to it that I felt I knew the old girl so well. She seems to speak to me like this.’
Jenny re-read the opening. Actually, it was a good idea, and felt very fresh, once you got past the oddness. She wouldn’t be surprised if Bridget did get it published one day. She could imagine a whole load of spin-offs as historians told their story from the point of view of the objects rather than the people. What would it have been like to be Beethoven’s piano, for example? Or Nelson’s flagship? Hitler’s bunker?
‘You can keep that. I have it all on computer.’
Jenny raised her brows.
‘I’m not totally technology adverse, dear. I just restrict myself to purchasing the very minimum I need to be part of modern life.’
Jenny held up her phone.
‘I have one but it’s not one of those smart ones everyone seems to have these days. Mine makes telephone calls.’
Jenny typed: can we text?
‘I suppose that would be useful. I’ll give you the number. I can’t swear I’ll remember to check it. If you need me urgently, get someone to telephone for you. When you’re in the house and can’t find me, leave a note on the hall table.’
Jenny gave her a thumbs up.
Bridget gave a pained smile. ‘I can’t say I like that gesture – so reminiscent of the Colosseum and a verdict of life or death. Odd how it’s become ubiquitous, used on everything from cat videos to world changing announcements. But don’t listen to me: I’m stuck in the past.’
Making a show of tucking her hand behind her back, Jenny smiled her agreement. She wasn’t a fan either of the thumbs up, or any of the grading systems that had proliferated online. Everyone now was a critic and could destroy, mock and troll a person without even knowing them, as she found out to her cost as a few years ago when she’d first started playing for the orchestra. A mute black female violinist attracted the crazies. It was enough to make you give up on humanity. She gathered up the papers and slipped them in her bag with her music. Getting up, she tapped her watch.
‘You have to run? I’ll see you later maybe. Actually, dear, it would make life easier if you put your comings and goings on my calendar so I don’t have to keep asking.’
Jenny noted down her shifts for the next two days in last few slots left to April and the upcoming Glyndebourne season, when she expected to be away. Jenny then washed her bowl, drank a quick glass of water, did the same for the tumbler, then dried both. She put them in the cupboard.
‘I like a tidy person,’ said Bridget, settling reading glasses on her nose.
That reminded Jenny. When do the cleaners come?’
Bridget frowned over the top of her spectacles. ‘I do have a company in to clean the windows and polish the floors once a month but I’m afraid we keep it tidy ourselves, dear. I hope that won’t be a problem?’
Jenny shook her head. Bridget sounded a little offended. Didn’t expect it, she added on the iPad.
Hurrying to the station, aware she was running behind for her shift, Jenny tried to make sense this new piece of household information. It had to be Jonah leaving the flowers then. Or maybe Bridget was getting forgetful? From the impression Jenny had got of both, Bridget was far more likely to be the one bringing cut flowers into the house.
Anyway, it was only flowers.
Chapter 11
The House that Jack Built – Chapter 3 – Birth
‘You’ve dug deep enough,’ Captain Jack told his men. ‘Now you can start to build her.’
And they obeyed, birthing me from course of brick and seam of mortar, eyelets of windows, ear flaps of doors. Seasons changed as my skeleton rose from the heath. The next spring, my head they tiled with slate brought from Wales on the slow-running arteries of canals once the ice had broken. Finally, the churned earth was turfed and gardens planted and I stood proud: a gentleman’s residence.
Gallant House.
But I know those earlier people are with me still, the cave dwellers, Vikings, failed rebels and heedless maids. They lie in the soil with my foundations, whispering their secrets to the black heath.
Chapter 12
An oddly disturbing tale – not at all what she expected. Jenny put the manuscript away as her train drew in to Waterloo East. She wasn’t sure what to make of Bridget’s origin story for the house. Her landlady gave it the voice of a needy mistress rather than a family home. After all these years living there, unable to keep up repairs to expensive features like the balcony, did Bridget feel the house absorbed attention in that way? Was she even a little resentful of it even while she was loved it?
Jenny joined the commuters funnelling through the ticket barriers, her violin buying her a little extra room in the crowd like a pregnant woman’s bump or old man’s stick. That was welcome as she hated people breathing down her neck.
The history of the heath sounded fascinating, she thought, even if told obliquely. But did it have to be told in macabre images of burials and unearthing? It wasn’t a reassuring thought for the already problematic night-time to dwell of the numerous sad ends that had been met on the spot. Bridget had made the foundations sound like catacombs. All old houses had seen deaths – of course they had – but Jenny thought that it was better sometimes not to know.
Louis waited for her in the café, eager to hear how her introduction to Gallant House had gone. Jenny was pleased to see that he was joined by Kris, who had chosen his favourite seat overlooking the river. A big man with sandy hair, jug handle ears and a flushed face, Kris appeared the least likely person to have the soul of a poet. That just went to show prejudging was a waste of time and energy; people were rarely what they seemed on the surface. She gave both a wave and dived into the staff room to stow her violin in her locker and put on her uniform.
When she returned, her manager beckoned her over. ‘I’ve got you tea. We’re quiet at the moment so, come on, tell us all about it.’
With a smile, she sat next to Kris. He kissed her cheek. ‘What do you think of the inimitable Bridget?’ His voice was a deep bass rumble, the kettledrum in the Festival Hall orchestra of visitors. ‘Has she got you curtseying yet?’
Not quite yet. Maybe that’s day two?
‘And have you met my guy, Jonah?’
What was it about the man that everyone wanted to adopt him as theirs? She nodded.
‘And?’
Jenny debated withholding the information about dragging Jonah into her bedroom but decided that an embarrassment shared was an embarrassment halved.
‘You didn’t?’ Louis chuckled, after reading her confession. ‘You don’t let the grass grow, girl!’
‘I bet poor Jonah felt all his birthdays and Christmases had come at once.’ Kris patted her hand in consolation. ‘A classy lady like you enticing him into her boudoir. Want me to have a word with him?’
She’d prefer just to forget it. If he mentions how a nymphomaniac has moved in then yes. So what about the house?
‘The isle is full of noises,’ said Kris. ‘Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and not hurts.’
The Tempest? She’d seen that at the Barbican.
‘Correct.’
So I should just ignore the waltzing?
‘Put it like this, I lived there three years and heard odd things all the time. I considered for a while that there was a mad woman in the attic …’
‘How very Jane Eyre,’ murmured Louis.
‘… But when I looked I just found bird nests and a broken window.’
Jenny felt a surge of relief. Her imagination had begun to people the mysterious attics with all kinds of horrors. It was just an attic floor.
‘I decided after that not to worry. It never progressed – no ghostly apparitions, no clanking chains, just noises. Old houses have quirks.’
It was reassuring that she wasn’t the only one to hear things. Did you read Bridget’s history?
Kris rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Don’t say she’s trapped you into reading that already? Damn, that’s fast work. She’s been beavering away on that for a decade. I think it’s become something of an obsession. I told her to get out more, volunteer as a reader at the local primary school, or join a gardening club, but she is attached to that place like a limpet to a rock. She says the best day in her life was the day she was able to do her shopping online.’