The House at Tyneford (31 page)

A fortnight later, Mr. Rivers and I stood in the driveway and watched as Art guided Mr. Bobbin out of the yard, Kit seated beside him. The bus would take him from Wareham all the way to Hove and naval officers’ training. We watched in silence as the horse lumbered along the green lanes. A fine drizzle began to fall, but we stayed watching, determined not to miss the last glimpse of our boy. I remembered Anna, Julian and Hildegard waving good-bye on the station platform, all resolutely not crying. The station hummed with hissing steam, baying porters, squalling babies and whispered good-byes. I shivered and wrapped my woollen cardigan around my shoulders. An icy wind trilled through the eaves, carrying with it the comforting scent of wood smoke and peat. I imagined the sound to be the house itself calling some kind of farewell. At a bend in the track, Kit gave us a cheerful wave as he jumped down from the cart to open the first of the seventeen gates leading to the ridge and the world beyond Tyneford. Mr. Rivers and I stayed as the figures became dots on the horizon, barely distinguishable from the stripped trees or the cattle scattered about on either side of the path. The cart inched along the top of the hill and then disappeared into the dark tunnel of trees, heading for Steeple, Wareham and a bus to another world.

“Mrs. Ellsworth says the war will be over before Christmas,” I said. “His training will take a while, so it’s possible he’ll never have to serve.”

“I hope Mrs. Ellsworth is right. Shall we?”

He stood aside, allowing me to lead the way back into the house. I lingered in the quiet of the hall, listening to the whir and tick of the deathwatch beetles in the heavy beams overhead. A vase of brown-tipped roses stood on the table, and a stray withered petal had fallen onto the surface. Any other day Mrs. Ellsworth would have ensured they were instantly replaced—petals were barely allowed to drop before they were tidied away—but at the instant of Kit’s departure the house had assumed its forlorn air. The dying flowers left in their vase. A smear of polish on the parquet floor. The damask curtains beside the front door no longer appeared genteelly worn; they were shabby and old.

“I’ll be in the library,” said Mr. Rivers.

He strode away and I heard the door click shut and, a second later, the clink of the whisky decanter. I sat down on the bottom stair, resting my chin in my hands, and listened to the silence echo in the afternoon. I felt a long way from everyone I loved. I’d listened to Kit talk with the other boys, and they were all so eager to fight. “Let us at him,” they clamoured, as though the minute they joined up they would be presented with a string of enemy soldiers ready for a good thrashing. I wished I could talk to my father. I knew he’d say something to comfort me or at least make me smile. I hadn’t spoken to Julian for nearly two years, but if I went upstairs, I could break the viola and take out the pages. His novel lay there waiting for me to read.

In my old attic room, I retrieved the viola from its hiding place and sat with it on my knees, feeling the strange weight in its belly. I picked it up by the neck and held it aloft for a moment, ready to smash it down on the edge of the iron bedstead. And then, instead, I slotted it under my chin and, clasping the bow, drew it across the strings. For the first time in ten years I played the viola. I had not played since I heard the miracle of Margot’s music. That was how the viola was supposed to sound, not the schoolgirl tunes that I could wrench from the strings. But this viola was different. It could only sound strange with the novel inside and I need not feel ashamed of my inability to produce music like my sister.

The tone was soft, as though the viola could only whisper. I tried a simple Mozart melody. It was thin and sad—the voice of a choirboy as opposed to the rich chocolate of an operatic soprano—and it suited me. Music isn’t just notes; it’s also filled with rests or measured silences. We wait during the pauses, listening to the possibility of music. I wanted to play into the gap left by Anna and Julian and fill up their silence, but their silence was not a rest. No black mark on the page told me when the sound would begin again. Their silence was not musical but a vacuum—a void where no sound can exist. I played another nocturne, but this time I could not hear the tune, only the pauses between the notes.

I
went to bed early on New Year’s Eve. Mr. Rivers was obliged to attend a party held at Lulcombe Dower House by Lady Vernon, and while he’d insisted that I would be most welcome, we both knew this to be a polite lie. I remained at Tyneford, listening to the wireless in the library and eating candied figs in front of the fire, slipping away before Mr. Wrexham could worry about whether or not to invite me to join the remaining servants for their glass of midnight sherry in the butler’s parlour.

I kept off all the lights on the landing as well as those in my bedroom and peeled back the blackout curtains and opened the window. It took my eyes a minute to adjust to the absolute darkness. It used to be that the odd light from the village glimmered in the night, or else the larger lights from distant Weymouth and Portland cast a yellow haze on the horizon. Now the darkness oozed about me. I curled up in an armchair and breathed the freezing air, so cold that my teeth tingled. It must have been nearly midnight, but I couldn’t see my wristwatch, and the church bells were silent—the law dictated that they were only to be rung in order to signal an invasion. All I could hear was the boom of the sea. By now it was an echo as familiar to me as the patter of my own thoughts. On the rare occasions when I had to venture into Dorchester or Wareham, I was struck by the quiet. The streets bustled and teemed but beneath the noise was a steady silence. I knew I could never live without the sea again; that was my music. At last I understood how Anna and Margot felt on the odd days when they could neither play nor listen to music.

Raising my whisky glass, I toasted my family and then Kit, knowing with happy certainty that wherever his ship sailed, he was thinking of me. Every few weeks I received letters from him. (I kept them all these years and by now each one has grown worn around the folds from being endlessly reread. They are filled with earnest nonsense, the sort of things that a boy writes to his sweetheart, but which somehow, when they are meant for you, never feel tired or clichéd or anything other than absolutely tender and true.)

I sat in the gloom and took out my bundle of letters and since it was too dark to read, recited them by heart.