The silence factory, p.4
The Silence Factory, page 4
He stared for as long as he could, until the carriage wheels ground slowly around a corner, and the vision was hidden from him – although the sound still sang in his head, insinuating itself between the plates of his skull. Then, quite suddenly, they were driving through a slum. The traffic sped up as they passed a grimy row of cottages, so that he only caught a glimpse of two children gesticulating furiously at each other, their hands flying every which way as though carving threats from the air. A door slammed, just ahead, and a young woman stumbled into the street. She paused, sagging against a lamppost, her hand covering her face.
The carriage had already moved on, but in that brief moment her misery had been so clear, so desperate, that Henry spun round, peering, unable to dismiss what he had seen. ‘Stop,’ he said. ‘Please, excuse me, stop,’ before he realised that the coachman couldn’t hear him. There was a bell-pull beside him – naturally, there had to be – and he tugged at it. A second later, reluctantly, the carriage ground to a halt.
‘Are you quite well, sir?’ The coachman jerked the door open and peered at him as though he was an invalid.
‘Yes,’ Henry said, pushing him aside. ‘But that woman – she is in need of help. Wait here.’
‘Best stay inside if you’ve got the echoes, sir. There’s too many around here who need help.’
Henry waved him away and hurried back the way they had come, past a man slumped alone in a doorway, his mouth open and slack. But his attention was on the young woman who was leaning against the lamppost, her chest heaving. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘you are in distress. Is there anything I can do for you?’
She was dark-haired, full-mouthed, her skin pocked with little scars. She blinked, and more tears rolled down and dripped from her chin. Before she could speak, a bell rang. Another seemed to answer it, reflected from the opposite rank of houses – then more, coming from all directions, prolonged and brittle, as though the chimes were hammers against the glass hemisphere of the sky. Then, miraculously, they died away, and with them the terrible drone of the factory. Suddenly the world was wider, clearer, as though more blood had suddenly flooded into Henry’s brain.
‘That’s the dinner bell,’ she said, and her accent was strange, thickened, as though she were drunk, although her breath smelled only of decay. ‘Let me go – when the shift changes they’ll notice—’
‘But are you all right? Here,’ he said, and fumbled for a handkerchief to offer to her. His hand met the slippery square of silk in his pocket; but that was precious, he could not give her that. He tried his waistcoat. ‘You are weeping,’ he said. ‘Has someone hurt you? If I can help …’
Her mouth twisted. ‘No,’ she said, ‘you cannot. I must go.’
‘I am sorry,’ he said, helplessly. What had possessed him to want to comfort her? Only that something in her stance had made him think of Madeleine, reaching for the nearest support, when the birthing pangs began. Madeleine had been so brave, so absurdly gentle to him, as though he were the one suffering … At first, anyway, until the pains had got worse, and— But he did not want to remember. His fumbling hand found a few coins, and he pushed one into the young woman’s hand. ‘Take this,’ he said. ‘It is the least I can—’
‘And what do you want for it, sir?’
‘Nothing – no, for heaven’s sake, nothing at all,’ he said, feeling the heat rise in his face. ‘Merely to help you.’
She raised her eyebrows at him, with a long look; and then she swung away, wiping her face on her sleeve as she went.
He might have followed her, but at that moment a few men appeared at the corner of the street, shouting and gesticulating. Then, all at once, the pavement was full of people jostling, yelling to one another, spilling forward in a human tide. Henry flattened himself against the lamppost, afraid that he’d get swept up by the oncoming press of bodies. Was there some emergency, some riot? But no, he realised, these were the factory workers going home for their dinner. There was something about the accent that grated on Henry’s ear, and surely their voices were shriller and more piercing than in London. A group of older men walked in morose silence, until one stumbled in front of another; even then none of them spoke, but resorted to clumsy gestures that turned swiftly from hostile to violent. Henry had no wish to become embroiled in a local brawl, and in any case, the woman he had wanted to comfort had disappeared. With a mingled sense of failure and relief, he turned back before the surge of workers reached where he was standing.
The carriage was where he’d left it, and the coachman standing beside it. ‘Got a pretty bad case, haven’t you? Of the echoes,’ he added, at Henry’s look. ‘Can hardly walk straight.’
‘Nonsense. I am perfectly all right.’
‘That’s when you have to watch yourself, sir, when it just feels like you’ve had a few. There’s a box of Numms under the window, you have one of those and relax – once we get out of Telverton you’ll feel—’
‘I thank you for your solicitude, but really, I do not need it,’ Henry said, and swung the door shut on the coachman’s reply.
The carriage began to move. He watched angular shadows pass over the gauze covering the windows. He wished he had waited till the mob had passed, and then followed the woman, insisted on assuaging her sorrow, somehow … But if he closed his eyes what he saw was not the woman but the factory, a glittering edifice, raw and shining. It was magnificent, as a torrent or a glacier was magnificent; it was unlike anything he had ever seen. He imagined the silk taking shape on the looms, growing inch after miraculous inch; he imagined great lengths of it being rolled onto bales, as rich and fine as anything in the world. He imagined the lovely whispering that rose from it when the wrong side was touched, like a phantom singing – but no, in the noise of the machines, it would not be a whisper but a roar, bone-shaking, the glorious thunder of a many-piped organ. So much pure sound: so much silk to answer it, echo it, transform it … It was absurd to call the effect a ‘malaise’, when it was closer to the thrill of hearing an orchestra in full voice. Beside it, the small human miseries of the slums were insignificant – or commonplace, at least … He hesitated, longing to ask the coachman to turn back.
But he was on his way to Cathermute House, and gradually, as they drove, the thought of the factory loosed its hold. After a while the shadows that crossed the windows grew sparser, and the light brighter. Now and again a tree came close enough to tint the inside of the carriage green, and Henry could smell a difference in the air – not so much a scent as a lack of one. His head cleared; he slid a finger between the curtain and the window and peered through again. Outside there were fields and oak trees and hedgerows, expanses of leaf-green and the rust-red of West Country soil. Masses of cow parsley swayed beside the road. There was no noise but the wheels of the carriage and snatches of birdsong. He caught his breath, and abruptly he felt happier than he had since before Madeleine had died.
Now they were driving through the outskirts of a village. He pulled the curtain further away from the window, until his finger threatened to break the wire that held it in place – clearly, whoever had designed this carriage had no interest in looking out – and stared at the cottages with their neat, colourful garden plots, a stone bridge over a river, the lych-gate of an old church. At last the carriage turned and went through a great wrought-iron gate and past a handsome, newly built gatehouse. For a few moments Henry twisted in his seat, pleased by the neatness of the walls and the rosy stone; then he looked forward again as the drive rose gradually through wide parkland, swinging through a generous curve until the house came into view.
It was impressive. As he disembarked – trying to note with detachment the sudden creep of sweat in his palms and the acceleration of his heartbeat, now that he was really here – he forced himself to pause for a moment and look around, taking it in. The place had the same forceful newness as the gatehouse, built in the same rust-red stone, but it was huge – as grand as a church, with high windows, a deep porch and a square tower with a crenellated top. He gazed up at the tower and thought of adjectives: bold, masculine, splendid. In spite of himself, he added, in mental parentheses: expensive.
The coachman said, ‘There.’ He pointed.
Henry said, ‘Yes, thank you,’ and strode, his arms aching with the weight of his cases, in the direction the coachman had indicated. He hardly had to wait at all before the door was opened, and the maid led him along a little passage so quickly that he had to break into a staggering run to catch up. ‘Mr Latimer, isn’t it? Your room is in the east wing. Dinner will be on a tray.’
‘And Sir Edward …?’ he said, panting a little.
‘What about him?’
‘Will I see him tonight, or …?’
‘He’s on business. You’re to see the girl tomorrow morning, after breakfast.’ She pushed open a door and started up a staircase, and they came out into one of the main corridors of the house. He caught a glimpse of a tapestry, a frieze of roses and nightingales in a medieval style, and bare stonework with neat new-hewn edges. He would have liked to look more closely, but the maid whisked along and it was all he could do to keep up. She took him along one corridor and another, until he’d quite lost his bearings; then they climbed a steeper, narrower set of stairs and emerged into a dim passage that seemed to run the whole depth of the house. She opened the door at the far end. ‘This is your room.’
‘Ah. Thank you.’
She nodded, and withdrew. He exhaled, feeling as though he had suddenly disembarked from a merry-go-round, and looked about him. The room was neither grand nor especially shabby: there was a wrought-iron bedstead, an armchair, a rug, a washstand, a desk and chair, and two low windows that looked out over the lawn on one side and a formal garden on the other. A few botanical prints hung on the walls, and the screen in front of the fireplace was embroidered with dusty ferns. It reminded him a little of his rooms in Cambridge: and it was a good feeling, the memory of when he was young and free, before he met Madeleine, before he gave up his dreams of poetry and success. Now his dreams were more mundane, but worthier: he would help a little girl to hear again, and be thanked by her grateful, aristocratic father …
He sat down at the desk, and as he looked around he caught sight of something glinting in the crack between the desk and the wall, like a blue gem. He bent down and picked it up. A corner of cobalt glass, seemingly broken from an octagonal bottle, like the ones that held laudanum. He turned it over in his fingers; there was a dusty brown residue on it, as though the bottle had been full when it was smashed. He was not sure what to do with it. As he cast around for a wastepaper basket, he noticed that the leg of his chair was splintered, and where the rug had slipped askew under his feet there was another stain on the floorboards. Both injuries were old; the raw wood of the chair had dulled with time, and the stain was faded by scrubbing and only just visible. When he slid the rug further sideways, he saw a pattern of marks as though paint had spurted out of a tube, or ink sprayed from a thrown inkwell – or some other liquid, once bright as carmine and thick as oil … He shook his head, trying to drive away the memory of Madeleine, and the blood that had soaked through her sheets, pattering onto the floor—
He shoved the rug back into place with his foot. Outside in the corridor he heard footsteps, and he got up and peered out. But the woman at the top of the stairs was not the maid, returning; it was the full-lipped, dark-haired girl who had wept in the street near the factory. He stared at her, and she tilted her head and stared back, without smiling.
‘It’s you,’ he said. ‘What are you—?’
‘I do not believe we have met.’ And they had not. He could see that now, as though her cool, precise voice had broken a spell. There was a similarity in her gait and the shape of her face, but that was all; and as he stared, even that seemed to evaporate.
He hesitated, taken aback. ‘I mean—’
‘No,’ she said again. ‘I’m afraid you are mistaken. Good day.’
Who was she? She was dressed soberly and without frivolity, but not like a servant. Then she opened a door on the other side of the landing, and he caught a glimpse of a bare room beyond and heard a snatch of birdsong coming through the open window. Was she the little girl’s keeper? A maid, or a gaoler? As she stepped through the doorway she raised her hand, gesturing to someone out of sight, while the door swung closed behind her.
Henry took a few steps, as if to follow her, and then came to a halt. Abruptly he was conscious that he was travel-stained and crumpled, and he had hardly slept the night before. Tomorrow, he thought, tomorrow would be soon enough.
He went back into his room, shut the door, and bent to open the smallest case. He drew out Madeleine’s picture, which he had wrapped carefully and packed last. It was a double frame, hinged in the middle: on one side was a watercolour of Madeleine as a little girl, while on the other a photograph of the Madeleine he had known, already a little thin from the sickness of early pregnancy, stared at him solemnly. The older and younger Madeleines might have been mother and daughter. He thought of Madeleine’s own child – his own child – that he would never know, now, would never watch grow up—
He did not set the frame on the desk, as he had meant to. After a long moment he wrapped it again and pushed it back into the case. Then he drew the square of spider silk from his pocket and laid it out, silent side upwards. It shone like a pool of faint light in the shabby room. He shut his eyes, and let himself remember the giddiness that had swept over him as the train drew into the station, the magnificent thundering of the factory, and the echoing, glittering veil that had seemed to lie over the Telverton streets and sky. It did not drive away his sadness, but it eased it; and mixed in was something more elusive, so fragile that he hardly dared to call it hope.
Three
As Henry knocked on the door of the child’s room after breakfast he heard the hour chime, and then, a few seconds later, another bell and another: as though the clocks at different ends of the house had held to the old way, instead of keeping new-fangled railway time. He turned his head, listening to the clanging music, the melodious disagreements between long-acquainted timepieces, and smiled. He had slept well – surprisingly well – in this new place, and now he felt light-hearted and determined, ready to begin his task and succeed. No matter how backward or ignorant the child was, he would be patient; and this very morning he would begin the long task of ushering her into civilised society.
The brown-haired woman opened the door, with the same level, uncompromising expression that she had worn the previous day. ‘Yes?’
‘I am Henry Latimer,’ he said. ‘I hope you are expecting …’ He stopped. Behind her, the room was flooded with sunlight. At the far end there was a blackboard, with words on it: river, lake, ocean, cloud, rain, flood. In front of it, sitting at a bare wooden table, was a little girl – of five or six, perhaps, although Henry had never known any children and did not trust his own guess. She had paused in the middle of drawing a picture on her slate, and was watching him with bright, inquisitive eyes.
‘Yes,’ the woman said. ‘Come in. I am Miss Fielding, and this is Philomel.’ She stepped aside, holding the door open like a footman; with the other hand she made a quick gesture to the little girl, who gave him a wide, beaming smile. It made her so like her father that Henry stared at her, entirely – absurdly – taken aback.
There was a silence. With an effort he wrenched his gaze away and looked around for somewhere to put his cases.
‘You may set those on the table, if you wish.’
He obeyed. He brushed a fleck of dust off the lid of the top case, as if it endangered the instruments inside. He had thought himself prepared for every eventuality, but not this, not an ordinary, neatly dressed little girl, delighted at the interruption to her schoolwork … Argyll had said that she could hardly speak. But then, how could she be … well, as she was? He had never met a deaf-mute child; from the stories he had heard, they were sullen and feral, on the edge of idiocy, hardly human. This little girl, with her white-frilled pinafore and chalk-smudged cheek, left him entirely at a loss. She was a child like any other; a child like the one he and Madeleine might have had … He felt Miss Fielding watching him, and straightened up. ‘Hello, Philomel,’ he said, making the shapes of his mouth as clear as possible. ‘I am Henry. I am delighted to meet you.’ In the corner of his eye he saw Miss Fielding make another gesture. He said to her, ‘What are you doing?’
Miss Fielding shook her head, but her cheeks were tinged with pink. ‘She is learning to read the shapes of words on my lips, but you are unfamiliar, and she is still very young. Now, Philomel,’ she added, turning to face the little girl, ‘what do you say?’
The little girl took a big breath. ‘H-ow – do – oo – do,’ she said. She was looking past Henry, with the fixed frown that showed she was repeating a lesson. Then, abruptly, her face lit up again, and she began to gesticulate, touching her fingers together in a complicated pattern. But a moment later, in response to something Henry did not see, she subsided, biting her lip, and looked wide-eyed from him to Miss Fielding.
‘What was that?’
‘Nothing.’
‘But—’
‘I am afraid that sometimes she forgets we are forbidden— that we do not use fingerspeak any more. Philomel, you know we must use English now.’ Miss Fielding angled her body away from the table, and Henry was almost sure he saw her make some signal to the child, half hidden by her skirt. ‘Her father is determined that she should learn to speak aloud, so that she can participate in society. She cannot be limited to conversations with other people who can sign. Better that she should say a few broken words to the people who matter, than express herself perfectly to those who do not. True speech is what distinguishes us from animals, is it not?’
