The Silence of Ghosts (24 page)

‘I . . . can hear . . . them whispering,’ she said. ‘The children . . . like . . . they did . . . before. Whispering to me . . . to join them . . . I don’t want . . . to go . . . but they are . . . forcing me . . .’

She grew silent, but when I listened I could hear them whispering to her, in low tones that I couldn’t understand. And that was when she died, on a single breath, while her eyes were closed in darkness and her hand went limp in mine. The heat began to leave her body as if it had never been there.

Thursday, 9 January

Dr Raverat and the Reverend Braithwaite were in the kitchen, sitting with Rose and Jeanie. I fetched them in and said I thought she had stopped breathing. The doctor looked for her pulse and placed a mirror above her lips, and when he had done he pronounced her dead.

I didn’t know where to look for grief. It was not in my heart. Death had come as too great a shock. I didn’t even know what had killed her, whether it was leprosy or this new, unidentified disease. The ambulance had never come, nor the medicines that might have saved her tiny life. She had passed from life to death as silently as she had lived. Octavia was precious to me beyond words, but I still lay awake some nights with the noises of the Battle of Dakar ringing in my mind. I had seen thousands of men lost at sea, and now I had too little grief in me to mourn my only sister.

Rose wept, and her mother was moved to tears of her own.

Dr Raverat took me aside.

‘Dominic, we have a problem. We can’t leave Octavia here for long. I would normally have taken her to the mortuary in Barrow, or asked them to fetch her. We need to have a post-mortem, to see if we can get any answers to the question of how she died. But that seems impossible for the present. I don’t want to put her in some barn or outbuilding – that would be too undignified. Would your family mind if I asked Oliver Braithwaite if she could be moved to the church in the morning?’

The vicar was very keen to open St Peter’s and place her in front of the altar straight away, given the events leading up to her death, but he didn’t think we’d make it that far.

‘What about Donald McIntyre’s little motor launch?’ I asked. ‘It’s still moored near the jetty, isn’t it?’

Oliver nodded.

‘But we’ll have to wake him up,’ I thought aloud. ‘And he’s very fussy about letting other people use his boat.’

‘I’ll take care of it,’ he replied, ‘and I’ll come with you to the church. Will you be all right for the journey? It’s several degrees below freezing.’

‘Has the snow stopped? We’ll have to run as close to the shore as possible. Come back when you have the matter in hand.’

He left, wrapping himself against the wind. I knew it would be even colder on the lake.

Rose had set about washing Octavia and dressing her in her best nightdress. About half-way through, she stopped and asked Dr Raverat to come across.

‘Doctor,’ she said, ‘something’s wrong.’

‘I can’t see anything.’

‘It’s what’s not there, sir. The leprosy scarring. I can’t see any sign of it.’

He put his spectacles on and looked closely. Rose was right: the marks of leprosy had gone.

Fifteen minutes passed. Then the door opened, bringing with it a light flurry of snow. The Reverend Braithwaite came in, stamping his feet and clapping his hands hard together. We let him go to the fire, where he stood for a little while.

‘I have good news and bad news,’ he said, still chafing his hands together. ‘The bad news is that Donald’s motor launch is out of order. He’s still waiting for parts from Barrow, and he doesn’t expect to get them now till the bad weather is over.’

‘And the good news?’

‘He has a catboat, the
Tigger
. Donald is a great Winnie-the-Pooh fan. The boat has room for three people. It could do the trick, if you think you can sail it.’

I nodded.

‘I know his boat quite well. Where is it?’

‘That’s the other good news. He’s moored it at the steamer jetty while the steamers are down at the other end of the lake.’

Rose took my hand.

‘You’ll both have to keep warm. There’ll be a sharp wind on the lake, and it could be dangerous if you get a chill. How will you get back?’

‘On the boat, of course. It’s about four miles each way.’

She shook her head, and Jeanie and Dr Raverat followed suit.

‘My medical advice is that you shouldn’t do this at all. For one thing, you’re under enormous stress following Octavia’s death, and for another you must be exhausted. It’s after one o’clock, and I know I’m tired.’

‘I need to do it tonight,’ I said. ‘You heard the weather forecast earlier. If we wait till morning, the lake may freeze over and the roads will be more impassable than ever.

Oliver broke in.

‘The snow I brought in with me was the last, for now. All the cloud is breaking up and it’s going to get a lot colder. But if the cloud is blown away, there’ll be a good wind and the moon’s a week past the half turn.’

‘Have it your way, but I can’t come with you. I have patients who may need me. Rose and I will carry Octavia to the boat.’

Oliver was right. The moon wasn’t at its best, but it was bright and getting brighter. Everywhere, stars had emerged, as if to welcome my sister into their silent world. Rose and the doctor placed her on deck, facing towards the stern, with some room to spare. A catboat has a gaff-rigged mast set far forward, and a single sail. The beam’s very broad, leaving room on deck. Oliver and I had to stay there in order to navigate. He was not a sailor, which put the greatest burden on me.

We were well supplied for our eight-mile journey, down and back. In addition to our coats and hats and scarves and gloves, Jeanie filled the
Tigger
with heaps of blankets, stone hot-water bottles and two flasks of hot soup.

I hugged Rose goodbye, and her mother, and shook the doctor’s hand. He was still concerned, but he knew there was nothing more he could do.

Donald McIntyre was at the jetty, of course. He told me how sorry he was to hear of Octavia’s death. He said he’d watched her on her walks through the village and been entranced by her pale, childlike beauty.

He came on board with me and spent ten minutes reminding me how to sail a catboat.

‘I brought this over from the States,’ he told me. ‘They sail a lot of them there. You’ll be running before the wind all the way to Howtown. Take care of the boom, in case it flies off from one side of the boat to the other, and be careful of swamping. There
are heavy waves tonight, and this boat will wallow if you’re not very careful.’

And so we sailed out into the lake and into the darkness. Sailing was difficult at first, and for a while we took on water, which Oliver threw back out again. But finally I was able to take control at the helm, keeping us on course by careful turns of the rudder.

For a while Oliver and I talked. He asked how things went with my parents in London.

‘Not well at all,’ I said. ‘My father says he will disown me if I marry Rose.’

He was surprised, and I told him things about my father I had never told anyone. He listened well, and he avoided counselling me, as he might well have done to a regular parishioner. I asked him why he had never married, for I guessed him to be well over thirty.

‘I wasn’t lucky like you,’ he said. ‘I didn’t meet the right woman.’

‘It’s not too late. I suspect it’s never too late. My mother-in-law-to-be has you in her sights, you know. Not for herself, but for any number of young women she thinks would make good vicars’ wives. She says a vicar without a wife is only half a vicar and half a man.’

‘Well, she’s right there. A wife and family are important assets in our trade. Some say the mission fields are the place to go hunting.’

I laughed.

‘You don’t need to travel that far. I went to Dakar and lost my leg and found a wife back at home.’

In the end, we had to concentrate so much on navigating and keeping warm that a silence fell on us. I looked up at the great expanse of the night sky. Even in its half light, the moon as it moved cast a blue-white glow on countless galaxies, and the
stars moved too. If I had believed in angels, I might have seen them striding across the bright pinnacles of the stars, their wings lambent with starlight. I remembered that Octavia had always loved the angels on our Christmas cards and the angel figures in our nativity. And who am I to say I do not believe in angels, when I have spoken with ghosts and seen their pale faces in a dark room, while Octavia looked on?

I lay back, watching it all, and there was silence across the lake. I thought it ironic that Octavia, who had spent her short life in an aching silence should make this, her final journey, through the greatest silence one can imagine. She lay at my feet in a white sheet like a shroud, and I knew that if I touched her she would be colder than death itself. But I could not bear to think of that, so continued to look up at the stars.

It was not easy navigating at night, and had it not been for the moon and the starlight, we should surely have lost our bearings completely. We hugged the eastern shoreline, passing Sharrow Bay, while the fells loomed over us like giants in the night sky.

Suddenly we saw yellow lights that flickered on the moving water ahead. At first, neither of us could make out what they were, but as we drew near it hit me like a blow that they were coming from the windows of Hallinhag House. I wanted to stop, but as I prepared to do so, the body in the sheet began to move.

‘She’s still alive!’ I shouted. ‘Dr Raverat must have made a mistake.’

Oliver put his hand on my arm. Octavia moved again, and when she tried to speak, her voice was muffled by the sheet.

‘No, Dominic, this isn’t Octavia. Octavia is dead, you must believe that. When we get her to the church, you’ll see for yourself. Her body is in the grip of that evil place. Leave her and pray for her. Let me pray for her, but don’t let them win.’

‘We have to go back there.’

‘But not with Octavia. That’s not where she belongs. You know that as well as I do. Let me bury her in the graveyard at St Martin’s. Some of her ancestors are buried there already. She belongs there.’

And so we sailed past, and once we had left the house behind, the writhing of the thing on the deck became still and I no longer believed she was alive.

We steered to the little landing at Martindale, and when we had tied up, we lifted her in wet sheets and carried her to the church. Our breath hung on the moonlight like cream, and my eyes were wet with tears. Oliver found a little catafalque in the vestry, and together we laid her in the nave, head towards the altar, surrounded by saints and cherubs. He found a couple of albs, also in the vestry, and we removed the soaking nightdress and sheets, dried her with towels and clothed her in the albs.

We debated what to do next. I was loathe to leave Octavia here alone in order to sail back to Pooley Bridge, and even the vicarage seemed too far from her. I realized that the funeral would have to be my parents’ decision, and I knew I would soon have to ring them. But that would have to wait until the morning. Oliver brought out some Aladdin heaters, and we sat in front of them. When we had warmed ourselves a little, Oliver suggested we use a pew each to sleep on. I was so tired by then that I made an effort, placing hassocks underneath me for some comfort. It was not the best night’s sleep I have ever had, but it saw me through to morning.

We woke up aching and cold. As soon as seemed reasonable, we made our way to Pooley Bridge. Birds huddled in the trees, cold and hungry. The little boat took to the water again, like a silver fish.

I was reluctant to go past Hallinhag, but Oliver pointed at the house.

‘It’s dark again,’ he said. ‘I think we can go by.’

And so sail on we did, but not without my feeling an intense tightness in my chest and fear running through me like a metal rod that had become red-hot.

It took us over an hour to get to Howtown, and when we came to the village everything seemed closed and the whole place deserted. We went straight to Jeanie’s cottage, and while she made Oliver welcome, I was never so relieved to be in Rose’s arms again, frost on my eyebrows and ice on my moustache. Then she kissed me, and the ice melted.

Oliver had wanted to go back home too, but Jeanie forced him to take his coat off and sit in front of the fire facing Rose and me. Once there, he promised to stay for the night. He said he would like to bury Octavia on Sunday, just three days away. He said he wanted his parishioners to be there, and any of the refugee children who were still living locally.

‘Most of your relations will be stuck in other parts of the country,’ he said. ‘But I’m anxious about your parents. You should speak to them this evening.’

Cecil was upstairs, working hard on the letters and other papers. I spoke to him briefly, but we were both much preoccupied, so I left him to it.

Dr Raverat turned up shivering and took a seat near the fire. He seemed peaky. But the kitchen was warm, and we crammed ourselves in at the table to drink hot barley and bean soup with slices of homemade bread and butter.

Afterwards, Raverat and I made our way to his house. Rose came with us: she had patients to see to, and we were hardly inside when the doorbell rang, announcing the arrival of the first.

I rang our London number. The operator put me through as
usual, but after several clicks and buzzes it remained dead. The operator came back on and said it was probably the fault of the line at Barrow, which had been giving trouble since the snowfall. But I asked her to try the office, and gave her the number. A receptionist answered straight away,

‘Lancaster Port Importers. Who do you wish to speak to?’

‘This is Dominic Lancaster. I’d like to speak to my father, please.’

There was a short pause, then she came back.

‘I’m going to put you through to his secretary, Miss Williams.’

‘If he’s in a meeting, can she pull him out of it? I have important news for him.’

‘I’m putting you through to Miss Williams right now.’

There was a click on the line, then a softer ring. Someone picked up the receiver.