Hush

by Sara Marshall-Ball

  ‘That night, they ate the most sumptuous feast; when they went to bed they were all smiling widely. But when Jia-li awoke in the morning it was to find her parents crying uncontrollably. She tried to comfort them, but nothing she did made any difference; they could not stop themselves.

  ‘Terrified, she went to the village to summon help. She found the local yī shēng – doctor, to you and me – and dragged him back to the house with her. By the time they arrived there was a puddle of tears on the floor around her parents, and still they could not stop crying.

  ‘The doctor examined them carefully. He looked in their ears, their mouths, their noses; he took their temperatures and listened to their chests. After a while, he took Jia-li to one side, where her parents could not overhear him, and he gave her his diagnosis. “I am sorry to tell you,” he said, “that your parents are suffering from broken hearts.”

  ‘“But how is that possible?” Jia-li asked, shocked.

  ‘“I don’t know for sure,” he replied, “but I have seen cases like this before. It is usually because some kind of bad spell has forced its way into their body. Have they eaten anything unusual in the last day?”

  ‘Jia-li said that they had eaten nothing out of the ordinary. And then she remembered about the fish, and she told him about the strange man who had sold it to her. “But it tasted normal,” she told him. “And I ate it too, and I am not brokenhearted.”

  ‘“Are you quite sure about that?”

  ‘At his words, Jia-li realised that the sight of her parents crying in such a way had indeed left her broken-hearted. The only reason she was not crying herself was because she couldn’t stand to cause them further pain. “Whatever will I do?” she cried in despair.

  ‘The yī shēng told her that, because it was food that had caused their distress, it would be food that fixed it. But he could not help her further than that, and he left her wondering how she would ever find food so powerful it could mend a broken heart.

  ‘For the next week, she did everything she could for her parents, but they did not stop crying. They spent all day outside, watering the flowerbeds with their tears, because when they were inside they were in danger of flooding the house. They slept with empty bowls next to their beds, and when they awoke the bowls were full to the brim with water. Every day Jia-li cooked them a different meal, the most elaborate and wonderful food she could conceive of, but nothing seemed to help.

  ‘After a week of such meals, Jia-li was running out of money, because in their current condition neither of her parents was able to work. Though she tried not to show it, she was very worried. She could not afford to buy more food, and her parents would never get better if she didn’t find the food to cure them.

  ‘It was at this point that a wonderful thing happened. The villagers, hearing of Jia-li’s plight, had been eager to help her in some way, but they had not known what they could do. When they saw her shopping in the market, and buying much less than she usually did, they realised that she must not have the money to buy enough food. And so they decided that they would each donate some food to her family, to help them get better.

  ‘Because the villagers were very poor, they could not give much. They got together and decided they would each give a little, and in this way there would be a lot. They each gave a little meat, or fish; and, to keep it safe, they wrapped each food parcel in an edible wrapping. Then they all gave their offerings to a young boy, Ning, who carried them in a basket up the hill to Jia-li’s house.

  ‘Jia-li was overcome with emotion when she saw what Ning had brought, and she invited him to join them for dinner. She spread out a selection of the food – keeping some back for later, because she was not of a greedy disposition – and they all sat down to eat. For a while there was silence, as they ate and appreciated their meal. And then, very slowly, Jia-li and her parents came to realise that the flow of tears had stopped. Their hearts had been healed.

  ‘The food that the villagers made came to be known throughout China as dim sum, or “speck heart” – the sort of food that can touch one’s heart and invigorate it.’

  Richard had been watching his hands while he told his story. As he fell silent, he looked up at Lily, searching her face for signs of emotion. She was leaning back against the headrest, and had her eyes closed, though he knew she was still awake. Her bare toes were still clenching and unclenching, rhythmically. ‘That was wonderful,’ she said, finally, opening her eyes just enough for him to glimpse the flash of blue beneath thick lashes.

  ‘I’m glad you liked it. Does that mean you’re ready for bed now?’

  She smiled silently, and offered no resistance as he switched off the light, climbed into bed, and pulled the covers gently over the two of them.

  then

  Connie took a long time getting ready on the first day back at school. Summer had been endless and uneventful, most of her time taken up with visiting Lily or hiding from her parents. She had no friends, and so she saw no one, but she found she didn’t mind too much. It was infinitely nicer being on her own than being around people who hated her.

  She found her school uniform, clean and ironed and hidden at the back of her wardrobe, and pulled it on without enthusiasm. The skirt felt shorter than it had done six weeks ago, the shirt tighter. She wondered whether she had actually grown, or whether it was just her reluctance to be back in uniform that made the clothes uncomfortable.

  Last week, she had snuck out to the shops and purchased foundation, mascara and lipstick. She’d spent most of yesterday evening trying them out, borrowing some of Anna’s eyeshadow, copying looks out of the magazines that she’d started stashing under her bed when Anna had deemed them ‘inappropriate’ for girls of her age. She did the same now, hoping to achieve something that looked at least vaguely similar to what the rest of the girls in her class did. It took longer than it had the night before, and she ended up skipping breakfast in order to get to the bus stop on time. As she left the house she found herself profoundly thankful for the fact that her mother never got up until after she’d left; she didn’t have the energy to argue about whether or not she was making herself look like a slut to attend school.

  The bus stop was crowded, the thirty or so children from her year and the years above joined by five terrified-looking newcomers. Eleanor Newland, Connie’s chief tormentor, sat in the middle of the bench, surrounded by people. She sneered when she saw Connie, and whispered something to her friends, who erupted into laughter. Connie turned her back on them. Any hopes that things might have blown over in the course of the summer were swiftly dashed.

  The bus turned up five minutes late, by which time Connie was sick of the whispers and giggling from the group behind her. She made her way to the back of the top deck, hoping that they would stay downstairs, but they followed her, of course.

  ‘Isn’t it amazing how different people can look after a break,’ Eleanor said loudly, sitting down in the seat in front of Connie. ‘Some people look better, of course. And some just seem to have morphed into clowns.’

  Her friends laughed, predictably. Connie kept her eyes fixed on the outside world and tried to convince herself that she wasn’t paying attention.

  ‘Then again, if I was a killer, I suppose I would try and disguise myself as well.’ Eleanor turned around so she could look Connie directly in the eye. ‘Is that it, killer? You’re trying to hide from us? Because I can’t think of any other reason you would voluntarily make yourself look that stupid.’

  Connie didn’t reply, digging her fingernails into her palms to keep herself in check.

  ‘Of course, it might not be us she’s trying to hide from,’ Eleanor continued. ‘I’ve heard Billy’s dad’s been looking to get his revenge. Apparently he’s been running around the woods at night, summoning demons to avenge his son’s murder.’ Eleanor leaned in so close Connie could feel the heat of her breath on her eardrum. ‘Is that it, hmm? Scared someone’s finally going to make you pay for what you did?’

  Co
nnie’s palms throbbed, but she didn’t relax her hands, scared she might lose control and let some emotion flicker across her face. The rumours had been going round for a while; she’d heard them like everyone else. But everyone else didn’t have to put up with the woods backing on to their garden.

  Everyone else didn’t have to hear the stirring of the trees, the noises of animals in the dark.

  After a while Eleanor seemed to get bored, and started talking about something else. Connie tried to tune her out, but regardless of what she was saying her voice was still like a drill, boring holes into her skull. She spent the journey fantasising about what Eleanor would look like with a bloody nose, or a black eye; lying on the ground with all of her friends laughing at her.

  It wasn’t much, but it helped a bit.

  The sight of the school building rolling into view made her feel momentarily dwarfed and powerless. As she stepped off the bus she found herself surrounded by people who were talking, laughing, catching up with friends after a long absence, and she was struck suddenly by the unfairness of it all. No one would ask her how her summer had been. No one would even have noticed if she hadn’t come back.

  She made her way up the path to the front doors, alone, and tried to remember what life had been like before. It felt as if it had been much longer than a year.

  now

  Lily’s lectures were always crowded. Richard wasn’t sure whether she noticed him, sitting at the back of the room, shadowed by a sea of eager undergraduates. He hadn’t told her that he sometimes came to watch her, performing small miracles of revelation which might impact on ten people in the audience, or a hundred, or even, by osmosis, the whole world.

  He’d snuck in before she’d arrived, found a seat at the back of the lecture theatre. She rarely looked further than halfway up her audience; he knew it made her nervous to look at people who were so much higher than her. She directed her lectures at the people in the first two rows, and so there was always competition among the students to sit as close to the front as possible, something Richard observed with pride.

  ‘The continuum of probability falls somewhere from impossible to certain, and anywhere in between.’ Her voice was strong when directed at large audiences. It would be difficult to guess how rarely it was used outside her working life.

  As she talked, Richard tuned out the individual words, allowed the rise and fall of her voice to wrap itself around him. He’d heard the lecture enough times before to understand the basic concepts, but that wasn’t the point. He wasn’t there to learn, or even to marvel in the amount that she knew. He was there simply to listen.

  She spoke for two hours, her voice expanding within a scribbling silence. And afterwards she left, without preamble,

  without pausing to speak to her students, without seeing him there. The room bustled, and emptied; and Richard sat in the silence, alone, until all trace of her voice had faded.

  He got a call from his editor when he was on his way back to the office. There had been a house fire on the outskirts of town. No one dead, but the family dog was badly burned, the kitchen and one of the bedrooms completely gutted. The person they would usually contact to cover the story was busy; would he mind stepping in?

  The photographer was already there when he arrived, strutting self-importantly through the remnants of the blaze, taking photos of things which, through the act of being photographed, he hoped to inject with retrospective poignancy. He would undoubtedly take beautiful photos, none of which would be used. The shot that would accompany Richard’s story would be the standard family-stand-devastated-before-ruined-house photo. No artistry in that – nor, for that matter, in the writing that would accompany it.

  ‘Hello, Mike.’

  ‘Richard! What a surprise. Am I right in thinking you don’t usually do this sort of thing?’

  ‘Mmm. I suppose I’ve been working my way up to it.’ The photographer raised an eyebrow, and Richard relented. ‘Nick was busy,’ he admitted. ‘Someone found dead in a house in the city centre. Young girl, I think.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I heard.’ Of course you did. ‘Have you spoken to the family yet?’

  ‘No, no. Just arrived. Is the dog still alive?’

  ‘Yeah – lot of fuss about nothing, actually. His fur’s a bit singed but he’s fine. Not even a good photograph in it.’

  Richard nodded. ‘Right. Well, I’ll go and speak to the family, then.’

  The oddest thing about house fires that had been successfully extinguished was the way the damage just stopped. The fire had indeed gutted the kitchen: black walls, food packaging reduced to ashes, the room barely recognisable as it must once have been. The flames had travelled upwards, taking out the bedroom above, and blowing out all the windows at the back of the house. But the fire door between the kitchen and the living room had been closed, creating a perfect border between the devastation of the fire and the normal life beyond. One side of the door blackened; the other standing as if nothing had happened. And, beyond, sofas, carpets, photographs of smiling children. Everything as it had been.

  The family were huddled together in their living room, their space of preserved before-the-event. Mother, father, teenage daughter. It was the daughter whose bedroom had been destroyed, so she sat in tears, clutching her lightly toasted dog in desperate anguish.

  Richard had never covered a story like this, but had been trained in journalism the same way that everyone else had. Knew the questions to ask, the sympathetic noises to make. He was not an intrusive reporter, he was a caring man, a defender of their truth – the man who was going to tell their side of the story. Not that there was really another side: it was a straightforward story; no arson, no foul play. A possible fault with the cooker, which he would need to be careful with, but other than that, simple. Wouldn’t take long to write.

  He made his way back to the office. It was buzzing as always; that irresistible atmosphere of Things Happening Right Now. Sometimes he felt rather detached. Tried not to resent the fact that he didn’t get the stories, but couldn’t help feeling that the news took place around him while he sat blindly in the middle, groping for a handle on the world that stubbornly refused to materialise.

  But this was different. Not the biggest news in the world, but it was a story nonetheless. Something that involved people, emotion, photographable snapshots of humanity. He was a part of the machine, which was so much more to him than just a machine. It was the fabric of his universe; the place where the world was transformed from Event to Word. He was so much more comfortable with Word.

  He was one hundred words into the piece when his phone rang. He picked up the receiver absently, still focused on the sentence he was halfway through creating. ‘Richard Hargrove.’

  ‘Richard, hi. It’s Eric.’

  It took Richard a moment to place the voice. And then it clicked: Lily’s colleague.

  ‘Eric. Hi. Everything alright?’

  ‘Well, actually, not exactly.’ Eric paused, a pause which sent a current of pure fear through Richard’s nervous system. ‘Now don’t panic. Lily’s fine, she is, but she’s been taken into hospital. She collapsed a little while ago.’

  ‘Collapsed? Do you mean she fainted?’

  ‘She was unconscious for about five minutes.’

  ‘Jesus. Did they tell you where they were taking her?’

  Richard copied down the details, in writing which, he observed in a detached fashion, was oddly controlled. His hands weren’t shaking, even though his heart was beating at about twice its usual speed. He left without bothering to shut down his computer, without remembering to tell anyone where he was going. He forced himself to walk in even strides to the door, down the stairs, out of the front door. Broke into a light jog as soon as he was outside, but did not run. No need to run, to panic. She probably hadn’t eaten, or maybe she was overtired. She’d had trouble sleeping recently.

  No need to panic.

  Five minutes was a long time.

  then

  Marc
us got home from work just after three o’clock, most days. The firm he worked for was surprisingly casual in its attitude to working hours; as long as he did his allotted eight hours each day, no one seemed to mind what time he arrived or left. As a result he’d been leaving the house earlier and earlier in the last few weeks, often arriving at work before the sun had fully risen, leaving Connie to get herself to school. Anna, he knew, was unlikely to get out of bed before mid-morning.

  In the weeks since Christmas he’d always made it home before Connie did, to find the house empty, the space oddly deserted and ringing with silence. Anna, who didn’t work, spent most of her afternoons in her bedroom, or walking in the woods, or roaming around the village; she said she couldn’t stand the house when no one else was in it.

  It was the silence of Lily’s absence, he knew; even over the Christmas break, when they’d all been at home more often, Anna had been absent more often than not. But they rarely talked about it, and Anna had taken to acting as if Lily had never been there. He’d caught her one day, boxing up all the photos and childhood mementoes that had once had their home on a special shelf in the living room. She’d shoved them away in the top of the wardrobe in their bedroom, ignoring his protests. ‘They’ll keep better, away from the light,’ she’d said briskly. ‘You don’t want to go rummaging through them in a sentimental moment and then find them all crumbling to dust in your fingertips, do you?’

  He’d conceded the point, knowing that in reality she just couldn’t bear to see the reminders of what their family had been, even though watching her hide them away was almost as hurtful to him as closing the door on Lily at the end of every visit. The shelf sat exposed and empty, now, and Anna’s poor attempts at filling it with books and videos had done nothing to lessen its presence.