Walls of Silence: a stunning historical thriller you won't be able to put down

by Ruth Wade

  He was really enjoying himself and Edith was, too; this was exactly the sort of romantic impression of his travels she’d hoped he’d share with her.

  ‘But the forest wasn’t only home to the stuff of nightmares. There were parrots and macaws, and butterflies so big their outstretched wings wouldn’t fit on a dinner plate. I had a pet monkey for a while. Chatty little thing it was. I called it Norman after that pilot who’d follow us into the pub babbling gibberish – remember?’

  Edith laughed before she could catch herself; one of her father’s cases, the poor man’s shell-shock had manifested itself in the need to constantly make a sound to prove he was still alive. It was an unkind comparison, but perhaps it was only someone who understood how easily life could change in an instant who could mock the afflicted with no cruelty intended. Then Edward did something totally unexpected: he stretched out his hand to grab hers. She could feel the bones of her fingers grate.

  ‘Can you keep a secret, Ede?’

  She tried to re-inject the mirth into her voice: ‘I think if the military top brass can trust me with all those For Your Eyes Only documents then I’d say you can consider anything safe with me ...’

  What on earth was it that had suddenly gripped him with such urgency? His eyes were wide and shining. He shuffled closer.

  ‘I discovered something whilst I was out there. And this time there is a map – one verified as accurate by a Dutch prospector on his deathbed. It pinpoints a source of untold riches …’

  ‘Eldorado, you mean?’

  ‘You don’t believe me.’

  ‘I do, Edward, I do ...’

  ‘More than enough to keep us in comfort for the rest of our lives.’

  Us. He’d said us.

  ‘A ruined city – I’ve been there, seen it with my own eyes. Stumbled across it, truth be told. We’d abandoned our horses and were on foot, making slow progress through the curtains of lianas. The first clue was the unnaturally straight line of an overgrown wall. The guide told me the Indians had always known of the place, and it was one of the things they’d been hoping the jungle would continue to protect. When I was back in La Paz, I got talking about it to some men in a bar and found out the Dutch prospector had identified it as a possible site of one of the lost silver mines the Portuguese had been desperate to claim.’

  He shuffled again to stretch his damaged leg in front of him, lying back on one elbow in order not to increase the space between them.

  ‘So the next morning I tracked him down; he was dying, as I said – of malaria as it happens – and was anxious for someone to continue the quest in his name. He gave me the map on the understanding I pass on a portion of whatever I might find to his relatives back in Holland. It wasn’t difficult to agree. Only I didn’t have enough capital to mount the sort of expedition it would take, which is one of the reasons I’m here.’

  For a moment she’d been swept away with his account. But she got the picture now: he was looking for someone to finance his Rider Haggard fantasy. It was unlikely her name was first to spring to mind but once he’d learned she was a spinster with no dependants and the title deeds to a property ...

  Edward let go of her hand at precisely the same time as she snatched it free. He didn’t seem to notice as he stood and began shaking out his stiff joints.

  ‘Shall we pack up? I don’t want to miss the bus because I need to catch the train to London. The man I’m hoping will sponsor me has agreed to a meeting first thing tomorrow. I really shouldn’t say any more about his possible collaboration at this stage but he’s been involved with one or two similar speculations, and was very enthusiastic in response to my telegram.’

  He started to gather up and fold the rug he’d been lazing on.

  ‘I’ve had a wonderful time – here, with you – and I’m counting on us having lots more like it. I’ll be gone for a few days I expect. Then if I get the green light I’ll be sailing again in the spring. Until then there’ll be a lot of things to get lined-up but I can do much of it from Uckfield with only the occasional trip up to town. Which should work out perfectly because, not only will I draw less attention from any rival fortune-hunters by being based out in the sticks, I’ll have the very great pleasure of being able to see you as well. Although, to be honest, I do have an ulterior motive in that regard ...’

  He’d placed the rug on top of the beer crate and was reaching for the basket. Edith hadn’t moved. She wanted to be still sitting down when he told her he’d need the money from the sale of her cottage as his sponsor’s proof of commitment.

  ‘... you were always so good at organising things – how you arranged Dr Potter’s diary so you could get away to meet me for one – and I was sort of relying on being able to get your opinion on the feasibility of the logistics as I draw up the plans.’

  He looked across at her, his expression full of the bashfulness of a scholar caught skimping on his homework.

  ‘The fact is, Ede, maybe our lives worked out the way they did only in order to arrive at this moment when I tell you I’d be – quite literally – lost without you.’

  In return, Edith realised that love, true love free from the chains of duty and obligation, was about being wanted and needed in equal measure. From now on, there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do for Edward.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The oil lamp gave off coils of smutty black smoke as the flame licked the wick into submission. The air in St Margaret’s was always chill and Edith wished she’d put her coat on over her cardigan. She retreated to the back of the nave and slid into her usual pew. She often came into the church when she couldn’t sleep. When the dreams remained as vivid with her eyes open as when she’d been asleep. Here she could take refuge in things outside herself – beyond herself. She was free to just be.

  The moonlight barely penetrated the jammy hues of the stained-glass windows and she couldn’t see much not directly in the path of the lamp’s yellowish glow but she didn’t need to. She already knew the freshness of the flowers she’d arranged that morning to replace the ones that’d looked so woeful they’d distracted her throughout yesterday’s service. Mrs Mountby had no eye or appreciation for shape or form – who could ever have thought baggy-headed white chrysanthemums would go with delphiniums? She, on the other hand, had sacrificed the most intense of her blood-red roses. Of course they’d have dropped their petals by next Sunday and no one but the Reverend Culpert, and the verger when he came in to polish the silverware, would see them at their best but beauty existed for its own sake not for admiration.

  Edith ran through the familiar lines of the Lord’s Prayer, her lips moving in a ritual pattern rather than in outline of the words. They had never meant anything anyway, contained no message of any relevance to her life. Except the bit about daily bread. That had made her tremble as a child because she’d wonder if God knew about her underhandedness in the matter of feeding the ducks. But she’d grown out of that quickly enough when she’d noticed how He chose to ignore so many other – far greater – transgressions. Was there anything she should be asking forgiveness for? Her too-quick judgements about people perhaps. That attitude of superiority would have to change if she didn’t want Edward to think her snooty. Because he, of course, was the reason for her inability to sleep; his reappearance had flooded her with too many exciting possibilities to let her rest.

  The realisation that her future would no longer be one devoid of anything other than a bleak hopelessness was exhilarating. It was almost overwhelming. When Edward had completed his expedition and returned a wealthy man, they’d start a new life together in London. Or Buenos Aires. She didn’t really care where as long as there weren’t any geese to ruin her garden. But she’d be sad to leave her rose bushes behind – her father had acquired some rarities. Maybe she could have those dug up to transplant wherever they settled. Would roses survive in the South American climate? It was one of the many things she’d have to investigate. As for the cottage, they’d have enough money not to hav
e to bother selling it and she could let it rot. Along with the memories it contained. And the ghost of her former self.

  Which made her wonder if, as a parting gesture, she shouldn’t replace the wooden cross marking her father’s final resting place with a headstone. If so, what would she want it to say? Not much mourned or forever missed or any of the other empty sentiments people appeared compelled to have the stonemason carve. And over her own dead body would she have the lie: rest in peace. Hadn’t she done all she could to ensure that wouldn’t be the case? Like insisting he not be buried where the vicar had wanted him rubbing decaying shoulders with the one other village notable, but at the back of the churchyard; shoehorned between the crumbling mausoleum dedicated to a long-extinct line of landowners, and the unconsecrated ground reserved for suicides. They’d thought her selection a product of shock at his unlawful killing. Equally wrong had been their assumption that the cutting she’d planted and assiduously tended had been a rose. It had been nothing of the sort, as would be apparent to anyone who ventured into that part of the graveyard. A thick vine of the rampant clematis, traveller’s joy, now grew above – and was fed by – Dr Potter’s rotting flesh. A fastidious man in life, he would have wanted to be respectably tidy in death and if there was any such thing as an afterlife she hoped he loathed what he was forced to look down upon.

  Words tickled the back of her throat. She wanted to let them out. To leave them behind with all the other things she’d no longer have a need for. Because they belonged to the old Edith, the Edith she no longer wanted to be. The weight of them would hold her down and prevent her escape if she didn’t release them into a cold dark church where they would be resurrected to live on whenever voices echoed in prayer.

  ‘I’ve been wanting to tell you this for the longest time. I’m only sorry that it had to wait until you were dead, I’d have so much rather seen the look of shock on your face at me breaking a near-lifetime of silence towards you. But I have every faith in my ability to imagine it. You see, I did use to do that sometimes – imagine how you’d react if I told you this. I used to play the game over and over when I was shut up in my room and you thought I was doing calculus. When I didn’t know any better and thought everybody lived in a cold and distant household; before I learned you equated the showing of emotion with mental exhaustion and neurosis; before you condemned me to being a critic of every one of my thoughts and a distant observer of every one of my feelings. And later, when I was engaged in all that work for the Ministry that I couldn’t tell anyone about, it got so that the strain of being plagued by burdensome secrets became too much and made me want to scream them all for the world to hear. But I never did. I never told a soul. But something has happened and I want to now. It’s too late for it to make any difference but I need you to know ...’

  Edith shifted in her seat and her shadow writhed up the wall.

  ‘I hate you. I’ve always hated you. Ever since I was old enough to remember feeling anything, I’ve hated you. And because I know how much store you always set by evidence, I’m going to be precise about the reasons why ...’

  She stretched out her cramped fingers to count on.

  ‘For having me educated beyond any fulfilment I could ever expect as a woman; for making me live a façade of a childhood shut up with that witch of a grandmother; for never showing me unconditional love; for treating me like a puppy to abandon when I was no longer of interest. I hate you for not caring enough to accept the responsibility of everything you didn’t do to make things any better ... But most of all I hate you for condemning me to live every day with the conviction that I didn’t deserve to be your daughter.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  The boy had been on the lookout and so, with his quicker wits and reactions, had dropped his stolen booty and run full-pelt, hurdling the low wall with only a small adjustment to his stride. He, on the other hand, had been expecting to meet no one on his gentle stroll around the garden and could only stutter a few yards before the graveyard swallowed the figure up. The would-be thief was probably hugging himself with glee amongst the gravestones, bent double as he caught his breath. But his triumph wouldn’t last long. If there was one thing his life experiences had taught him it was that patience was always rewarded. Everything, in the end, came to those who wait.

  He perched on the window ledge, tracing the lines of the book’s cover with his fingers in a meditation to still his mind and sharpen his senses. It was something most people weren’t capable of doing. They lacked the discipline, often because they had no conception of how deep you had to go to recognise the things that were at the core of being. It was a cardinal error to think it was the ability to hold abstract beliefs that separated man from the beasts of the earth. There was no difference. Only a lazy arrogance that refused to allow the body to perform the duties it was designed for. He closed his eyes, directing his energy and attention to his fingertips. The leather under them radiated thin veils of warmth, the mountains and valleys of the pores a magnification of his own skin’s make-up. If he hovered his fingers he could intuit where the embossed lines and swags were by the minute changes in the cushion of air.

  He was nearly ready. Almost distilled down to nothing but a bundle of nerve-endings sparking electricity into the night. He lifted his lids just enough that the top of his vision was lash-fringed. It took him a while to train the controlling muscles. Once he’d locked them into an un-fluttering squint he dropped his chin to bring the ground to the right of his outstretched legs into view. The moon silvered the patches of scabby grass. A black beetle wove between the blades like a ship cresting waves. Worm-cast spirals made the pattern of music, little minims dotted on staves. His lips buzzed as he hummed each one, maintaining perfect pitch. He opened his eyes fully now. Training his gaze on the indigo shadows sprawling out from the churchyard yews he mapped the length and angle of the branches by the texture and density of the darkness beneath.

  The sound of childish laughter was the sign. It was thin, and the direction impossible to discern by anyone not prepared enough. Without undue straining, he heard a yelp, followed immediately by the splat of a body hitting water. A girl’s gulped sobbing: ‘I’ll tell my da on you. He’ll give you what-for, Alfie Thresher ...’

  He spun the book through the open sash into the room behind. Like a predator with the sweet scent of tender young prey in its nostrils, he glided out of the garden and onto the green. Nestled in the gap between the oak tree and the wall he tracked the progress of three figures – one dripping wet and crying, the others alternating between telling her to hush her row and speculating if she could hide her soiled clothes in the privy and sneak into the house unseen. The victim’s escalating sobs made it clear that wasn’t an option. Clearly the boy wouldn’t be the only one who would be punished for a misdemeanour tonight.

  The ragged procession disappeared up the lane and the gentler noises of the night came back into focus. Small creatures snuffled in the undergrowth. He could’ve heard the fluttering of a moth’s wings and taste the trail of glistening powder it left behind. A fox padded past, so close he might have reached out and plucked a hair from the end of its brush.

  His back had begun to stiffen before he heard a bicycle spitting stones from under its tyres; then the rhythmic whoosh of reed fronds against spokes. A dozen paces out of his hiding place and he could see his target racing around the pond. Legs pumping the pedals, his arse clear of the saddle. But he wouldn’t show his hand here where there were too many opportunities for evasion. If a rat couldn’t be cornered then the next best thing was to intercept it on the way back to its nest. A child of his nature would be unable to resist the temptation of riding home across the common: he knew because if ever he’d been granted the magnificent gifts of lust and liberty, he’d have done exactly the same.

  *

  He positioned himself between the banked ditch on his left, and the elms flanking the lane. The steady whirr of wheels reached him. Loose links clacking against one another as the
chain bounced in the sprockets. Coming closer. The stone felt made for the shape of his hand. The flint smooth against his thumb as he rubbed it up to the sharp edge and back again. The anticipation was everything. Almost better than the moment itself. Almost. Laboured breaths panting out lungfuls of vapour into the surrounding air. His ... and his ... synchronised into togetherness.

  He’d told himself he’d need only count to twenty-five. He liked the patterns numbers made in his head, the way they could be made to fit. To stretch, but conversely condense, the distance between the waymarks on any journey to a named desire. He tasted the words as he whispered his voice out into the night ... fifteen ... eighteen ... twenty ... He’d estimated correctly. The shape of the hurtling figure was discernible now ... Twenty-four ...

  He stepped into the path of the bicycle. The machine wobbled before crashing sideways, spilling the boy to the ground. He heard the gasp ... saw the stricken look ... felt the flint grow in his hand ... all in the seconds before he tasted the sweetness of retribution.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Edith closed the church door behind her. Her vigil had left her purged but also feeling invigorated with an energy that would make going back to bed straightaway a pointless exercise. A turn or two around the churchyard perimeter should settle her down enough to sleep. Her moonlit shadow seemed to tease her onward; vanishing when she was under the trees, then skipping ahead as if waiting for her to catch up. Something white was glowing between the tombstones up ahead. A barn owl spreading its wings prior to flying off with a meal perhaps? Except it wasn’t moving. She hoped such a beautiful bird hadn’t become entangled in wire or eaten poison intended for buzzards. She crept onto the grass verge towards it. A hunched shape like a giant puffball.