Echoes of Silence

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘Well, I shall be too busy to help you settle in, whatever house you decide on.’ Freya smiled beatifically, as if that had ever been a possibility Apparently, she’d decided to go along with Polly, for the moment. ‘Due to these memoirs of mine, you know,’ she added, and paused. ‘Which I really wanted to keep a lovely secret, but alas! Dot’s been very naughty, telling you. She never could keep anything to herself,’ she added roguishly, an attitude so at variance with her usual one it was not to be taken seriously.

  Sonia glanced at Polly, saw that this announcement was no news to her. Well, of course, Dot Nagle, once having let the cat out of the bag to Sonia, would have had enough sense to lose no time in telling Polly as well. Sonia shifted uneasily, waiting for the outburst as Freya’s limpid gaze turned from one to the other, but Polly, having been prepared, wasn’t rising to the bait.

  ‘Not a bad idea, really,’ she said mildly, with a swift warning glance at Sonia. ‘It’s a pity not to leave a record of the family to posterity.’

  Freya’s rare smile appeared. Catlike, satisfied. ‘Absolutely right, Polly! And when I say my memoirs – well, I really mean the book will be about the Denshaws – but I am part of them, after all! There’ll only be a teensy little chapter on me.’

  ‘Edited, I assume,’ Polly said.

  There was the slightest of pauses. Then, ‘Of course!’ Freya declared, but it was accompanied by the Look. The one that had once made her famous on two continents, the haughty smoulder that had started a whole new generation of look-alike models. A new creation, a new face, right for the time, it had launched her on a meteoric career. Now she allowed it to remain only for a moment, then determinedly cleared her expression. ‘I shall need your help when we get to the family bit, Polly. Yours and Philip’s. You two have always been so keen on that sort of thing - you know so much more about it than I do.’

  By which Polly assumed that, although Freya had apparently been working with this writer woman for nearly two months, they hadn’t yet got beyond the ‘teensy little chapter’ on Freya herself.

  ‘I’d be delighted.’ The intrinsic interest of it apart, it would mean that she and Philip could keep an eye on what was said – if that wasn’t already too late. Freya could be discreet, stubbornly so when it suited her, but if she wanted to say anything, nothing would deter her.

  Tall and willow-slim still, she was seventy, and could have passed for younger had it not been for the arthritis which had crippled her of latter years. She hated having to walk with the aid of a stick, she who had once pranced so elegantly down catwalks in many of the world’s capital cities; she loathed the heavy, orthopaedic shoes she was forced to endure, drawing attention away from them as much as possible by wearing trousers or long skirts, though this was hardly a penance, since they further served to accentuate her grace and slenderness. Tonight she was immaculate as usual, in beautifully tailored dove grey slacks and a heavy silk shirt the colour of aubergines, with a lilac cashmere button-through jersey thrown casually around her shoulders; big pearl ear studs gleamed beneath the immaculately cut curve of dark silver hair. She was one of those women whose skin, through luck – or constant pampering – had stayed soft and elastic, and tonight, in the glowing lamplight, it looked radiant.

  Polly was never quite sure whether love or admiration predominated in her wary relationship with Freya. She’d always stood her corner, challenged the hidden steel in her mother’s personality, but inevitably she’d been drawn back by Freya’s – charm, was it? Charisma?

  Call it what you would, combined with her striking looks, it was a quality which had knocked out their father, already middle-aged, the successful and respected headmaster of the local grammar school, when he first set eyes on her. They’d met at a dinner party given by old friends of his, at a time when Freya had come north to model clothes at a prestigious charity fashion show in one of Yorkshire’s stately homes, and Laurence’s hosts had regarded their guest as something of a catch. What had possessed him, a supposedly confirmed bachelor, to ask her to marry him? To assume she’d be prepared to throw up her glamorous modelling career to become the wife of a mere schoolmaster - one with a big house, local status and a small private income, to be sure, but none of them anything to write home about? Maybe he hadn’t really expected her to say yes, but she had. Their marriage had apparently been the subject of bitching and speculation in all the newspaper gossip columns and those reputed to be in the know gave it three months, yet it had endured for the next twelve years, until Laurence had suddenly died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-four.

  It was a bit daunting, growing up knowing that your mother had been the most talked of fashion icon of her day, the Naomi Campbell, the Kate Moss, the Evangelista of her time. Polly had embarked on a school project on women’s magazines in her senior year, and had come across her mother’s striking face on so many old covers of Vogue and other magazines that she’d shrunk with embarrassment and been tempted to give up the project in favour of something else. She’d been heavily into feminism at the time, and ashamed of a mother who’d been, for heaven’s sake, a model! A lovely face and nothing between her ears.

  Well, those were just feminist clichés, the sort of excess baggage that Polly had long since thrown overboard, and had they ever been true of Freya? Something of a lightweight she might be, but her shrewdness was never in doubt. That, presumably, was why she’d married Laurence, calculating that time was not on her side, that her fame and glory couldn’t last for much longer. Cameras showed no mercy and she was knocking thirty. She was untrained for anything else and she’d always lived extravagantly. Perhaps she’d felt it better to withdraw while she was still at the height of her success and grasp whatever security was offered to her.

  Marriage. Whoever, outside it, could tell whether it was successful or not? Polly had no means of judging that of her parents, since Freya gave no indication and Laurence had died when she was only three. But Freya had never showed signs of regretting what she’d done – though she talked and gossiped endlessly, wistfully, with Dot Nagle about those glamorous years, dropping the names of couturiers and fashion photographers still famous. Encouraged by Dot, her erstwhile success grew in her mind, exaggerated beyond what it had been. Yet she seemed to have accepted without grumbles the vastly different life she’d found, playing the headmaster’s wife when strictly necessary with charm and grace – providing she could make her own rules and have her little expeditions up to town now and again. Though still, as she’d always been, Ruth among the alien corn.

  As a widow, her life hadn’t altered appreciably. Never known to lift a duster, content to leave the care of house and children to Dot, she read endlessly romantic fiction, family sagas tried painting, until darling Peter’s talent exposed the lack of it in herself. Then she taught herself to embroider. Tapestries, cushions, bedspreads. At first clumsily, then more competently and afterwards exquisitely, with tiny, beautiful stitches until what she accomplished were works of art in themselves.

  All the same, there was a streak of wildness in her that ran through her stoic acceptance. Manifest in the wilful business of these memoirs. She’d made up her mind about that and nothing would stop her. Polly had a feeling of impending disaster. Why couldn’t Freya let sleeping dogs lie?

  ‘Well, I’d better be on my way …’

  Sonia, Polly realised, was embarking on the routine of her usual protracted departure. ‘Goodness, look at the time!’ had been said some time since. Next, she’d be sorry to break up the evening, but … Just say good-night and go! Polly apostrophised silently.

  She began to round up Harriet for bed. Maybe Sonia would take the hint, the equivalent of putting the cat out, she was thinking, when sounds were heard in the hall and Philip came in, interrupting the business of ritual protests and reluctant obedience on Harriet’s part.

  Philip had given up teaching the piano, but his life still revolved around music. He was deeply involved in helping to keep up the town’s musical traditions. Mu
sic appreciation night classes every Monday. Tonight, choir practice at St Wilfrid’s, where he was organist and choirmaster. Tomorrow rehearsing the Steynton Choral Society for their Christmas production, this year Judas Maccabeus … Handel was always a favourite.

  ‘You’re up late, Princess,’ he remarked, smiling at Harriet, and to Sonia he said, ‘Nasty out there, freezing like the clappers. Watch how you go.’ He poured himself a whisky before settling his plump form into a chair and stretching out his legs to the fire, smoothing his sparse white hair across his pate. ‘Could be snow again before tomorrow.’

  ‘Wicked,’ Harriet said, above Sonia’s cries of dismay as she thought of driving down the moorland roads, but at least the announcement had had the effect of propelling her a little nearer the front door. ‘Mummy, if it does snow, can I build a snowman?’

  The small, electrified silence was broken by Freya and Polly speaking at once.

  ‘It won’t stay, this time of year,’ said Freya.

  And Polly said, ‘Hattie, I won’t tell you again. Pick your things up and off to bed. I’ll come up with you.’

  Harriet lifted a token book from the sofa, still trying to spin it out, unaware of the tension her innocent remark had caused. ‘We’ve saved some treacle tart for you, Uncle Philip.’

  Philip rose to the occasion. Feigning horror, lightening the atmosphere with a joke. ‘Didn’t you know sugar’s bad for me at my age? D’you want my teeth to fall out? Why don’t we save it for you, for tomorrow?’

  Polly could see Harriet was on the verge of asking interesting questions about why his teeth hadn’t already fallen out and been replaced by false ones, like her Granny Winslow’s …

  ‘Harriet!’

  ‘Your mum’s getting cross, Princess. On your way, and I’ll see you tomorrow.’ His white, well-kept hand strayed to stroke the soft, dark hair for a moment.

  A reserved and gentle man, not renowned for his verbal communication with adults, or his sense of humour, Philip was good with children. He should have had a family of his own, grandchildren by now, but he and his wife had either been unable to have them, or she hadn’t wanted them. Poor Philip. Polly knew that innocent remark of Harriet’s about the snowman had hit him right where it hurt.

  Wyn Austwick was younger than Richmond had expected from her letter, but older than she wanted to pretend. Around forty, he judged, too short and chunky for the jersey pants suit and too old for that cropped, unforgiving haircut, too sallow-complexioned for that vivid lipstick. But she looked as though she knew what she was about. Matter-of-fact, and with a sharp gleam in her eye.

  ‘I’ve never met a ghost writer before,’ he remarked, after the waiter had brought coffee and the brandy that had been offered and accepted, setting the tray on a low table in front of them and leaving them to roast in front of yet another blazing fire.

  She’d said she didn’t smoke, but her voice was gravelly as if she might have done, once, and her laugh was grating. He couldn’t quite place her slight accent, which wasn’t local. ‘I suppose you could call me that, but that’s not how I refer to myself. They wouldn’t like it, my clients. I have to be discreet, because they usually want the book accredited to themselves. Don’t even want their families to know they haven’t written it, sometimes – know what I mean? In any case, they usually prefer to call it a private memoir, or even an autobiography.’

  ‘Do you get many clients?’ She had a sort of sly, know-it-all manner which he found off-putting but perhaps not everyone did.

  ‘Enough to make a better living than I did trying to get my own books published! I used to write romantic novels but all they want nowadays is sex, and I know my own limitations. Readers can spot it a mile off if you’re only writing from theory.’ Her face was deadpan, not wanting him to believe that, and he didn’t. He thought Wyn Austwick, in the right circumstances, might be a very sparky lady. ‘Anyway this suits me better. You’d be surprised how many people are prepared to pay good money to see their name on the cover of a book. A lot of it’s vanity, but on the other hand, some people have a genuine desire not to let their family history die out. Or else they’re convinced their life’s been exciting enough for other people to want to read.’ She raised a mocking eyebrow. ‘Which it hardly ever is, believe you me, but never mind that.’

  Richmond drained his coffee. Never one for small talk, he now deemed it time to finish with this. ‘You said when you wrote that you’d come across something of enough interest to warrant our meeting.’

  ‘I knew that would bring you here.’

  He wasn’t going to let that pass. ‘It’s lucky I had business up here,’ he said austerely. ‘I wouldn’t otherwise have driven all this way without knowing why.’

  He detected a look on her face that suggested she knew better. ‘It’s not something I could write about easily in a letter.’

  ‘You’d better explain, then.’

  ‘I’m coming to it, but you’ll have to be patient. To begin with, I’ve been working on a book for the last couple of months with Mrs Freya Denshaw.’ She paused expectantly, but he said nothing, waiting for what was coming. ‘Mrs Denshaw of Low Rigg Hall, the one who used to be -’

  ‘I know who you mean.’

  So it was what he’d suspected it had to be, even from the vague hints she’d given in her guarded letter. A coincidence, he’d asked himself, this woman writing to him, just at the moment when he’d decided to return here? He didn’t believe in coincidences. Isobel would have said it was fate, in his stars, but Richmond found even coincidence preferable to believing that his life was subject to the movement of the planets, out of his control.

  ‘So – you’re helping her with her memoirs?’ he prompted.

  She took a sip of her brandy, looking at him over the rim of her glass. Her eyes were a curious light amber, the kind, it occurred to him, often seen in untrustworthy dogs, the sort of dog who’d let you walk past and then snap at your heels. ‘Theoretically, it’s supposed to be a family history but we haven’t got very far with that. The truth is, she has a big ego, plus she’s seventy, and wants to get her own version of her glamorous life down in case she doesn’t make it before the book’s finished. Can’t blame her. Freya Cass was once quite a name. It surprises me she’s never thought of writing her memoirs before, they’re all at it, anybody that’s been in the public eye for five minutes. But she’d never make a writer. She’s the sort who extracts every drop of drama from a situation, but she over-eggs the pudding, she’s not always strictly truthful, goes right over the top and makes it not credible.’

  ‘All very interesting, but where do I come in?’

  She savoured a mouthful of brandy before answering. ‘I always have to have access to family papers, diaries and such. I make this clear from the start and people don’t usually object.’

  ‘But Mrs Denshaw did?’

  ‘Just the opposite. Threw everything at me, she did, old diaries, letters, everything.’

  He began to see where this was heading. Who would let this woman into their private lives? Not me, thought Richmond, but maybe that was just because he was a policeman, and in any case naturally suspicious, even beyond the call of duty.

  ‘They needn’t show me anything they don’t want me to see,’ she bridled, as if sensing his criticism. He was right about the smoking, he thought, hearing the slight wheeze. Either that or maybe she was just very tense, though he didn’t think that was so. Rather the opposite, if anything. She seemed to be enjoying keeping him in suspense, and plunged her hand into the huge leather bag beside her chair, extracting a sheet of rough paper, holding it out tantalisingly towards him so that he could just see it was a flyer advertising a concert in the New Hall of the Girls’ High School. Still keeping it between her fingers, she turned it over to show the back of it covered in pencilled scribbles, much of it crossed out.

  ‘Freya’s getting forgetful, though she’d never admit it. This was stuck in with a lot of other junk, among a pile of old fan letters. �
�Throw everything else but the letters away,” she told me.’

  ‘What’s this, then, if not a letter? Looks very much like one to me, a rough draft, anyway.’ He held his hand out for closer inspection of the paper but she ignored it.

  ‘You noticed the date on the front?’

  ‘I did, but I’m afraid I don’t see what it has to do with me.’ It was a lie which they both recognised as such. She watched him quizzically.

  ‘Let’s not beat about the bush. We both know we’re talking about the murder of that child, nearly ten years ago.’

  He kept silent, the hard, intimidating silence that could have suspects and witnesses alike pleading to be heard, giving Wyn Austwick look for look. She didn’t flinch.

  ‘I know you were only a DC then, and weren’t on the case for obvious reasons, but you can’t have forgotten it. However, just so’s we’re both singing from the same hymn sheet … the little girl disappeared and the mother then took her own life, leaving a note admitting she was the one who’d killed her daughter, right?’ He made a sudden gesture, almost knocking the coffee pot over, then sat back, his hand covering his mouth and chin. She went on, ‘The child was found four months later, with evidence to confirm that it was indeed the mother who’d killed her.’

  The incandescent heart of the fire collapsed in a spurt of blue-green flame and a small ember of wood rolled to the hearth. Music to dance to sounded from down the corridor. ‘Tie A Yellow Ribbon’ had finished, and now the gentle sounds of ‘Moon River’ drifted along: the oldies’ trip down Memory Lane, getting off to a good start.

  ‘You know a lot about it.’ His voice croaked, felt like razor blades being swallowed.