House of Silence by Linda Gillard Page A

because even she gets confused at times. But we have
to make allowances for Rae and our visitors do too. Did Tyler tell
you his real name?’
    ‘Yes, he did.’
    ‘Gosh, you must have made an
impression!’
    ‘What makes you say that?’
    ‘Because Tyler doesn’t tell anybody anything . He’s been working for us for - oh, I don’t know
how long... years . Yet nobody knows anything about him.
Well, I do, a little bit, because we’re friends, but none of the
others know much about him. I think Fanny tried to get him into bed
once, but I suspect she failed. Either that or he was no good when
she got him there.’ Gwen choked suddenly and Hattie rushed to the
bedside table, poured a glass of water from a carafe and handed it
to her. Gwen controlled her coughing and stood blinking away tears,
unable to suppress a smile. ‘Anyway,’ Hattie continued, ‘Fan was
pretty grumpy, for whatever reason. Of course, she was still
married to Husband Number Two then, so that could have accounted
for it, even if Tyler hadn’t turned her down... Sorry - am I boring
you, going on like this? I forget you won’t be interested in all
our complications . You’re not family.’
    ‘Maybe not, but I’m still interested in
everything you have to say. You’re good company, Hattie. We must
sit and sew together and have a good old natter. Put the world to
rights.’
    ‘Did you bring some sewing?’
    ‘I never travel anywhere without.’
    ‘Oh, yes - let’s! That would be wonderful!’
said Hattie, clapping her hands.
    ‘Did you know that in the days of the
American pioneers, it was essential for women to turn up for the
communal quilting bee? If you didn’t, your character would be
assassinated in your absence by the assembled needlewomen.’
    ‘Really? Just think of all the
stories those old quilts could tell, if only they could speak!’
    ‘I think they do tell stories, in their way.
Silent stories.’ Gwen removed her case from the bed and smoothed
the quilt back into place, stroking Hattie’s pattern of stitches.
‘You just have to know how to read them.’
     

Chapter Seven
    Gwen
    Hattie said she needed to go and peel potatoes, so
she left me to sort myself out. I drew the heavy patchwork
curtains, shutting out the darkness. I set out my toiletries on a
chest of drawers and peered at my tired face in a cracked gilt
mirror. I hoped the blemishes were on the mirror’s surface and not
mine. Contemplating the luxury of a bath, it occurred to me that,
although she’d left me towels, Hattie had neither shown me where
the bathroom was, nor invited me to use it. I thought this was more
likely to be a reflection of her social skills than an embargo on
hot water usage. And it was cold. Once you moved out of the
vicinity of the Aga, the draughts made their presence felt. A chill
rose up from the stone-flagged floor in the hall and lodged in the
marrow of your bones.
    The idea of a bath began to seem more and
more appealing, so I set off down the little winding staircase with
towel and toilet bag, hoping that the plumbing wouldn’t prove to be
Jacobean.
    Well, it wasn’t twenty-first century. Barely
even twentieth. I found a cavernous bathroom in which you could
have held a small cocktail party and still had plenty of room to
circulate. There was something that I thought was probably a
primitive Edwardian shower, but it might equally have been a relic
from an aqueous torture chamber, so I decided to play safe and run
a bath. As I contemplated the depth of the claw-footed, cast iron
monstrosity, it struck me that if I wanted to be ready in time for
dinner, I should have started running the water an hour ago.
Nothing daunted, I turned on the mighty brass taps.
    The room echoed with the distant sound of
trumpeting elephants. Trumpeting elephants in pain. The pipes
juddered and the wooden floorboards began to vibrate. Was this a
quirk of the plumbing or was Creake Hall now the epicentre of a
minor earthquake? I almost lost my nerve and