The Silence. Joss Stirling
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.
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.
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