The Silence of Ghosts by Jonathan Aycliffe Read Free Book Online

she a young woman or older?’
    ‘Much older. An old lady, I’d say.’
    ‘Well, she must surely have set eyes on a deaf person before. No doubt she was puzzled more by your being a foreigner, someone from out of town. All these places are very parochial, you know.’
    ‘That wasn’t all,’ Octavia continued. ‘As I was coming back here, I looked up and I saw a face looking out of the front bedroom window. I couldn’t see it very well, and then it disappeared. It might have been the light. I thought it was Rose, but she was down here with you when I got in.’
    ‘Have you gone upstairs to look?’ I asked.
    She shook her head.
    ‘I don’t like to,’ she said. ‘What if there was really someone there?’
    ‘Well, I’m no help to you. I think the light got you imagining things. I’m sure no one has broken in. Are you sure there was a face?’
    ‘Not sure,’ she wrote. ‘It seemed like that.’
    ‘Then just ignore it. It was a trick of the light.’
    She smiled wanly, but I do not think she was convinced.
    Octavia ventured into the kitchen to prepare supper, which was to be Spam fritters with potatoes – Mrs Mayberry had taught her some basic cooking skills, and she was better than many adults. I began to wish I could use my crutches so I could help her in the kitchen and sit down at the dining-room table. I thought it might be a good idea to find a local woman to come in a couple of times a day in order to make our meals. The smell of the fritters frying wafted in strongly, then I noticed it change. Very quickly, I noticed it become more of a burned smell, mixed with something unpleasant that I couldn’t place. There was no point in my shouting, she wouldn’t have heard me. I just lay back, hoping she hadn’t burned anything. If the kitchen was on fire the house could burn down. Hallinhag House is built solidly from stone, but it is lined with oak beams that may have come from the woods all about us; once a fire caught I was sure the whole structure would catch flame and incinerate anyone inside, especially someone with one leg.
    I pulled back the bedclothes and swung myself into a sitting position, dragging my stump as I did so and crying out with the pain. As I did so, the door to the room opened wide and I saw Octavia standing with a tray in her hands. She came in, pushingthe door shut behind her with her heel, and headed for the little table we’d brought into the room for meals. There she put the tray down. A delicious smell rose from the food.
    ‘Are you getting up after all?’ she asked, without even looking at me.
    ‘Octavia, did you smell the terrible smell just now?’
    She turned and gestured, frowning.
    ‘You mean this? I can throw it away if you don’t like it. But there’s not much in the larder.’
    ‘No, I meant the burning smell. It must have been out with you in the kitchen, or at least that’s what I thought.’
    She shook her head and looked at me as if I wasn’t all there. Like many deaf people, she had a well-developed sense of smell and certainly would have noticed anything as strong as the odour I’d just detected. Perhaps it had been something in the room, I thought, and had gone as suddenly as it had come. I could no longer smell it. Or it may have come from outside, maybe someone was burning something in the woods. I stopped guessing and we ate in silence. I switched on the little radio I’d brought down with me. Radio Eireann was playing ‘The Phantom Melody’ by Ketèlbey. It was at such times I most pitied Octavia, for there was none of this lovely music she could hear. She had to pass her life in almost total silence.
    We had just finished our meal when there was a knock at the door. Octavia went out and came back accompanied again by Rose.
    ‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything,’ she said. ‘But I was a little concerned about you, so I thought I’d cycle back to pop my head round the door and see how you are. Also, I have good news. Tom Wilkinson in