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

by Ruth Wade

  ‘Here, take this. It’s cats and dogs outside. Ask one of the farmhands to wake me when they round up the cows for milking, will you? I won’t say goodbye in the morning, but all being well, I’ll see you next Sunday.’

  ‘Have you forgotten that’ll be Christmas Day? There’ll be no trains. Why don’t you come down on the Friday night and stay over to celebrate with us – if you haven’t any other plans? We have a bit of a carol concert but after that it’s nothing but eating, drinking, and making merry. You can let me know what you decide. I don’t want you fretting about Edith whilst you’re away from us though; she’ll soon be back to normal.’

  He almost winced at Helen’s use of such a layman’s casual prognosis. But she’d performed a clinical intervention and therefore the patient was now under dual care: next weekend he’d reveal everything about Edith Potter. The thought of having Helen to hold his hand through the minefield was all the reassurance about the future he needed. He bent down, pecked her on the cheek, and then walked up the stairs to Edith’s bedroom before he said – or did – anything he’d regret in the cold light of a less traumatic day.

  *

  He’d found some candles, and the room was bathed in the soft tranquillity of a shrine. The storm had blown itself out a long while back to be replaced by a temperature he could see dropping, degree by degree, in the huffiness of his breath; there’d be snow on the ground before dawn. The armchair fitted neatly between the wall and the bed, and with both their overcoats topped by a spare eiderdown he’d found in the top of the wardrobe draped over him, Stephen was able to remain immobile without freezing solid. The flask of gin he’d liberated from Peter’s sideboard helped.

  For hour after hour, he watched the rise and fall of Edith’s chest. Her breathing was steady with only an occasional cat-dream muscle tremor in her limbs to remind him that she wasn’t catatonic. Their relative positions were so reminiscent of the asylum that he wondered what he had to show for the past year of his life. He’d thought professional recognition and the adulation of his students would bring him happiness. The whole package of everything he’d ever wanted had been so close: respect; veneration; a secure financial future; a shelf of published books; invitations to speak at the psychological institutes in Vienna and America; an end to self-doubt; satisfaction. But he had none of those things – not permanently or irrevocably or in any sense that mattered. If he was summoned to the Pearly Gates now, in the lonely death-watch of a new day, and St Peter asked him to account for himself then he could do so in one word: failure. He scrabbled on his lap for the flask. The raw spirit burned his throat and brought tears to his eyes. Helen was right about gin lubricating his maudlin streak. Except if he couldn’t indulge in both when he was in all-but solitary confinement, then when could he?

  ‘Have you ever mused on why I drink so much, Edith? To seek refuge in the bottle? Quite simple really, and not unlike what you’re experiencing with your veins full of sedative: a numbing of the pain. The ache – physical, and in the soul, and in the psyche; a longing, a pull, a tug into despair. To escape the incessant need to probe the wound.’

  He took another swig from the flask, the skin on his fingertips sticking momentarily to the cold metal.

  ‘It’s shaped me into the man you see sitting before you and I hate the thought that I’m sadder, wiser, more cautious, scared, diminished ... all because of this one trick of fate. I’ve turned into a not very nice person, Edith; I’m vengeful and bitter, and want she who has caused me such pain to suffer for it. Once upon a time I was so self-contained but now my happiness depends on things over which I have no control or on the whim of someone else to want to change things. And she’s made it very clear to me since our re-acquaintance that she doesn’t.’

  Why hadn’t he thought to steal a packet of cigarettes along with the gin? He expected that if he went up to the Hall he’d probably find something to smoke left about in the recreation room. Only he’d made a promise to himself that, other than a call of nature, he’d maintain his vigil until it was time for the train. Not that it would make any difference to Edith. But he owed her the sacrifice. Besides, they say to shrive oneself is good for the soul and he’d never said any of this – drunk or sober – to a single person; the fact she couldn’t hear him or comprehend a single word in the depths of her unconsciousness made no difference to the lightening of his burden. Or, rather, it did. The flask was three-quarters empty now and his focus was dancing around the candle flames. He wasn’t about to close his eyes in sleep though; the gin-fuelled energy surging through him would see to that.

  ‘Do you know something I’ve never understood about you, Edith? Why you took flight in catatonia ... wasn’t that a bit like being dead? I suppose there are two types of people when it comes to pain: those who run away, and those who embrace it. The latter not because they are brave or masochistic or need to prove to themselves they can fight the dragon, but because it makes them feel alive. Right plumb centre of that camp is where I’d put myself. Can you understand that over and above all the anguish is the fear that if I fell out of love with her tomorrow then all the emotion in me would be extinguished forever? I’ll never be happy again. Ah ha, you might well say that I’m not happy now – which is true and just goes to show that you really have been paying attention – but sadness, grief, desperation are all preferable to an unbroken bleak expanse of nothingness. The fact I can feel anything at all is fundamentally what distinguishes me from this bed or the cottage or the ice crystals hitting the window. And, when I weigh everything in the balance, that is a good thing.’

  The warmth of the gin and his growing conviction that he’d hit on a profound philosophy stirred Stephen to a decision he wouldn’t have contemplated in any other circumstances. If he let it out then the purgatory of waiting a whole week until he could unburden himself to Helen was one thing he didn’t have to endure. Raising himself on stiff joints, he untucked the bedclothes around Edith’s feet before stumbling over to light new candles from the stubs of the old. He secured them in their holders then moved two to the side of the cabinet to spill their brightness fully on Edith’s face. The third he picked up and stood where he could both reach Edith’s foot and scrutinise her features at the same time. If she displayed she could feel any sensation by a response even as small as a rapid movement of her eyeballs under their lids then he’d know she was in a state analogous to a hypnotic trance and he wouldn’t take the risk. A touch unsteady – from the alcohol and the numbness in his calf muscles – he lifted Edith’s right ankle, counted to five, and then brought the flame to lick the skin of her sole at the same time as pin-pointing all his attention on discerning any reaction. None. He performed the action a second time just to make sure.

  Stephen placed the candle beside the others, re-covered Edith’s feet, then returned to the armchair. He reached into the inside pocket of Peter’s jacket for the slim bundle of papers he’d transferred from his own sodden one. Ever since he’d written them, the notes never left his person; he slept with them under his pillow. They were the only remaining evidence that the journal had ever existed – it had never been published, he was certain of that: the world of psychology would have thought very differently about Dr Gerald Potter if it had. And Stephen had destroyed the original on a pyre in Fletching churchyard on the eve of his discovery.

  He drained the flask of gin. No matter that his sight had become too blurry to read, he knew every word by heart from all the times he’d gone over them during those terrible weeks holed up in Uckfield. He could recite them chapter and verse at the drop of a hat – not that he was ever going to. When he eventually told Helen, he’d keep it to the bare bones and spare her – and him – from having to listen to the details. Stephen laid the notes on the bed to breach the space between him and Edith. He coughed and cleared his throat.

  ‘I got it wrong. I thought your father resented you for the fact that your mother sacrificed her life for yours. And your games about a childhood imaginary friend, auto
matic writing, and hearing voices led me down the path of multiple personalities. It didn’t cross my mind – not once – that there might be an alternative explanation. But I know now. I know why you hated him so much and I know what he did to you.’

  He could stop at this point. Shut his mouth on the rest. Except he couldn’t. The alcohol had made him loquacious; besides, it would take the willpower of a saint to deny himself the redemption of confession and he was no Thomas Becket. Stephen closed his eyes and the room spun briefly.

  ‘When you were so badly burned ... Oh, Jesus, Edith, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise until now what you must’ve felt walking in to find me putting out a blaze. No wonder you acted the way you did, went into shock. I’ll make it up to you, I promise; if you do by any chance have any recall I can replace the memory with a more pleasant one under hypnosis. A highly unethical practice but you won’t tell anyone, will you?’

  He giggled. The tension in his chest relaxed a notch. But he’d started crying. The tears fell onto his clasped hands.

  ‘After the fire, only your father and the surgeon he instructed knew the extent of your injuries. And your father kept it from you. If it weren’t for his journal I might’ve thought he did that out of kindness. To prevent you feeling incomplete over what you had lost. But in it he revealed himself to be a monster.’

  The gin rebelled in his stomach and a bitter thread of bile rose to his throat.

  ‘He experimented on you, his own child. He wanted to see what would happen if you were presented to the world as one thing, but inside you were another. You were to be his contribution to the great Nature versus Nurture debate. That is the root of your psychosis. That is why your mind first split, and then concealed. That is why you suffered as intensely as you did: you were being controlled by a knowledge you’d have done anything to keep secret from your conscious self.’

  His tongue felt fat and clumsy and stuck to the roof of his mouth. There were only so many words with which to say it. He had to get them out. He squeezed her hand under the blankets as he worked hard to squash the revulsion he still felt at Dr Potter’s words: Abnormality or conformity? Can you turn what is humanly unacceptable into normality? We will see ...

  ‘You were born Edward Potter. The fire that so nearly took your life, took your masculinity, and with it your identity. Your father did the rest.’

  *

  The room was quieter than he would’ve thought possible. Once he felt he could stand without falling over, Stephen took his notes and the remaining lit candle over to the tiny hearth. With his back to the bed, he held the wad of paper by one corner as flames first charred silver and grey, then turned the truth into nothingness.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  At the smell of smoke, Edith’s eyes sprang open and she turned her head to watch him.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Edith caught the dribbles of water sliding down her newly bare neck and wrapped the towel around her head. Helen had taken her into Lewes to get her hair cut and the image that had stared back from the salon mirror had been startling. The whole visit had been a great success. They’d purchased some block mascara, rouge, and a tube of soft-pink lipstick. Helen had chatted away the entire trip making her feel both special and ordinary at the same time; in a circle of attention but not the centre of it.

  As a consequence, Edith hadn’t once felt Helen’s company to be hard work during the entire day. Not like when she’d been angling for Helen to grant a mother’s approval and pride in her accomplishments, or when she’d played the role herself for the hapless vicar’s wife all that time ago in Fletching. She could now see that’s what she’d been doing with both women; what the difference was between those still-born relationships and uncomplicated friendship free of the burdens of control or need.

  She hadn’t been able to make much conversation herself but Helen didn’t seem to mind as she bustled about buying up the things on her list for the Christmas party. There’d been rolls of red and green crêpe paper to decorate the table edges, some glittery snowflakes to hang from the rafters, a few small presents to put in the bran tub. Everything else had been taken care of. The mistletoe was to be cut from the gnarled apple trees flanking the terrace at the back of the Hall, and Arnold had been charged to gather as much holly and ivy as could be loaded onto a hand barrow.

  All these preparations Edith felt a part of, but strangely outside. She hadn’t celebrated Christmas in over a decade – there had never been any point with her father for whom one day was exactly the same as the next and she’d been disinclined to endure the sadness of going through the rituals of the festive season alone. So this was to be a first in many ways. A fresh start. Perhaps the true spirit of Christmas with its promise of new life and salvation. She was looking forward to it.

  Against her own rules, Helen had given Edith a mirror. Not a large one that could splinter and cut but in the lid of a compact, its surface fuzzy with a coating of powder. Edith would try her hand at applying the mascara while her hair dried. She thought she’d need a number of goes to get it right because she could only see the reflection of one eye at a time and the result might end up with her looking like a clown. Ditto with the rouge, of course, but she hadn’t been so sure about using that anyway and had only agreed to its purchase to make Helen happy.

  Edith left the bathroom and walked over to the table. The gifts she’d got for the Hargreaves were sitting in the centre of the sheet of hand-decorated paper the theatre designer had given her. Two identical packets of pen nibs. She’d been wrong-footed when Helen had said they needed to split up as she had to buy Edith’s present. The thought of being given anything hadn’t occurred to her and, panicked by the obligation to reciprocate, she’d plunged into the first shop she’d come to on Lewes High Street. The stationers. She was embarrassed by her choice the minute they’d come back and Helen had thrust a tissue-covered square in her hands and insisted Edith open it immediately; she’d said it wouldn’t wait until Christmas itself as it was for wearing tonight. It was draped over the end of Edith’s bed now. A beautiful satin coffee-coloured chemise edged in lace, the straps slender ribbons embroidered with tiny cream daises. She hadn’t tried it on yet. Didn’t dare in case she creased the fabric or got it dirty. The temptation to wash her hands again was almost overwhelming but she reminded herself that her knuckles were already as red as Rudolph’s nose, and wrapped up the inadequate gifts to her benefactors instead.

  *

  With her hair dry and brushed until she could feel it as slick as a helmet under her palms, Edith glanced at her watch. There were still some hours to go. She could fill in the time by reading – her eyesight wasn’t as bad as it had been and would stand looking at the rose book if she ignored the small print Latin names in italics. But her heart wasn’t in her garden at the moment; it represented her far future and that had come increasingly difficult to picture. The roses would wait for when she was ready to give choosing the care and attention it warranted. If she learned nothing else from her stay at Beddingham Hall, she’d take away the imperative to put your energies into the minutes and hours immediately before you because something could so easily happen to snatch the rest away forever. Just as she’d lost all those in the asylum, and many, many more since then. Already, for that one thing alone, she was an older and wiser woman.

  For the first time since she’d been inside St Margaret’s church in Fletching, Edith got down on her knees to pray. With her palms together like a Sunday School child, and her elbows resting on the edge of the bed, she gave thanks before cataloguing her faults and misdemeanours and beseeching forgiveness. One by one, she felt the burdens she’d been carrying fall away. She stood up cleansed and renewed, and determined to remain that way. She’d turn over the new leaf by doing something for others with no expectation of return – hidden or otherwise. Slipping the curtain-frock over her head, Edith left the bedroom with the intention of accepting any task Helen might choose to give her without complaint, even if it meant peeling
every potato for this evening’s dinner.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  ‘We have had a high old time of it recently, haven’t we, Ede? I don’t know about you but I’m quite exhausted from leading the merry dance.’

  Edward was sitting in the armchair tamping down the tobacco in his pipe.

  ‘Where have you been hiding yourself all day? Chatting up at the Hall over tea and crumpets with the frog-faced man? Helen? I must say that of the two of them I prefer her. She reminds me of the rubber planter’s wife in La Paz – different colouring, of course, the sun would’ve flayed off her Celtic skin in a second. Oops, sorry, insensitive of me to bring up a topic we are so touchy about.’

  ‘Why have you come back? What do you want?’

  ‘I never left, remember; we are two parts of a whole. A circle complete and entire of itself. And I wanted us to talk. A little heart-to-heart is long overdue, don’t you think?’

  ‘I’m not sure I’ve got anything to say ...’

  ‘Which is why it’s so good there are two of us because I’ve more than enough words bottled up inside me to last a lifetime. After all, I wasn’t really allowed to stray onto the things that really mattered on the picnic, was I? You were very naughty then, sidetracking me away from my history and onto stories you invented for the two of us to share. But I’ll forgive you for overlooking my needs – mainly due to the fact that from now on everything is going to be rebalanced ... in my favour. You owe me, Ede. You owe us. It’s not really as if you issued an invitation, I had to crawl through the chinks in your armour; jolly hard work it was too. However, I’ve got a taste for the limelight now and I’m never going back. Are you ready for us to saunter arm in arm down memory lane?’