This Taste for Silence Read online

  ‘Birch,’ he said to her.

  ‘Is that with a “t”?’ she asked, still not looking up, her love finger tapping on the keyboard.

  ‘No. It’s like the tree. Birch.’

  She looked up at him then, her face expressionless.

  ‘You’re far too young,’ Martin said, ‘to have heard of being birched at school.’

  His own father had been caned with birch twigs when he was a boy. ‘Never did me a bit of harm, son,’ he’d always insisted, though not long before he died he’d broken down and sobbed when a man smacked his kid in the Aldi car park.

  The love-finger girl, who was no more than eighteen, gave a small nod. It was hard to tell whether she was agreeing that, yes, she was far too young for whatever he was going on about, or deciding that this loser and possible pervert, who couldn’t hold his drink, was never going to just spell out his friggin’ name and let her get on with it.

  ‘Wednesday,’ she said, and slid a green ticket across the counter. When Martin reached out to take it, her hand flew up as if the ticket had been electrified.

  It was beginning to feel really cold on the doorstep. Martin picked up his bag. The yappy little mutt at the corner had started up again. In the house beside him, the new people had all the lights on, as if they wanted to celebrate every inch, every beam and cornice of their new lives. In the narrow garden bed that separated the two houses, a smirking plaster gnome grinned in the spilling light.

  Behind his own front door, Martin could hear his young daughter wailing, ‘But I want it!’

  Shelley was shouting, too. ‘I’ll give you what you deserve in a minute, my lady.’

  Martin took a deep breath. He turned the key, pushed the door. The preposterous, heavy oak door on his weak-jointed house.

  It opened without a sound.

  The Way It Sounds

  Uncle Hector was the best because he had a hole in his neck.

  ‘Can we see your bullet wound?’ we’d ask.

  ‘My wooooound?’ he’d say, dragging out the sound like a ghost. But he always smiled when he said it, so we knew it was funny. He was a good joker, Uncle Hector.

  Then he’d say, ‘Attention!’ like we were in the army and he was the boss. We’d line up, taking it in turns to put our finger along the little trench at the back of his head.

  ‘That was lucky, Uncle Hector,’ someone would say, and he’d ruffle our hair. ‘You’re telling me. Lady Luck was on double duty that day, eh?’

  Once, one of the cousins said, ‘Uncle Hector, what happened to the bullet? Where did it go after your neck?’

  And he didn’t smile then. Or make a joke. He just rubbed his hands together like he was really cold. They made a scratching sound.

  ‘Straight into the head of my mate,’ he said, and his face went red, even redder than at Christmas.

  ‘Does he have a wound, too?’ someone asked.

  And he smiled, but only his mouth looked happy. He patted our shoulders and told us to skedaddle.

  Later, we saw him in the garden, way up near the back fence. He was digging fast, then wiping his face on his sleeve. It wasn’t very hot that day.

  I asked my mother what Uncle Hector was doing.

  ‘Just digging,’ she said. ‘He’ll be in soon.’

  I watched him from the upstairs window. He was very old but still strong. The shovel made an ugly sound going in. The sound of metal, hitting hard.

  The Painting

  ‘It’s worth a pile,’ she said, her breaths coming harder today, ‘or so your father reckoned.’

  In the silence that settled between them, he watched her insect fingers curl and uncurl around one corner of the frame.

  ‘You don’t deserve it,’ she said, ‘but there’s no one else to give it to.’

  She pushed the painting across the counterpane that had been on her bed since before his father left. Watching the picture scrape across the cloth, he saw how filthy the bed linen was – the unwashed colours still jauntily bright, the nodding daisies mired in a field of grime.

  Beneath the cover lay her rasping form, her yellow hair fanned out, her eyes filtering the last of the light through aqua-tinted lids as fragile as ancient lace. With night coming on, she stirred a little. Deep within her frail bones, something was rattling to the surface. She stared hard at the ceiling, seeing beyond the swags of web, the tongues of paint arching down.

  ‘Rory deserved it,’ she said.

  There were no more words, just sounds. Weak and girlish in the end. A breeze rose and pushed through the drapes like a visitation. Soon after that, he had no mother. He had an oil painting framed in heavy black, the wood as thick as a child’s arm.

  As he watched the still form, the night cooling around his shoulders, it didn’t seem like a bad exchange.

  Frank said he had no call for paintings, but Eddie saw him lick his lips. That nervous flash of tongue. He’d seen it before, many times. Frank always did it when an easy profit drifted into his pawnshop like the scent of blood.

  ‘I don’t know, Eddie … might take it for my own place,’ he said. ‘The missus might like it. She likes a good view, so she does.’

  But Frank had rested his fingertips on the frame for a second too long. Eddie had noticed. If they touch it, they want it. That’s what the old fella used to say. And he knew a thing or two about selling. And touching.

  He watched Frank lean towards the canvas, peer at its leaden sky, the way the cloud thinned in one corner, the oils there as light as watercolours, a mere tincture of lavender and coral. With surprising delicacy, Frank traced a finger over the small symbols, mostly circular, that were carved into all sides of the frame.

  ‘How old is this thing?’ Frank said.

  Frank wanted to know where he got it, Eddie knew. But he would not ask. It was the one question Frank would never ask.

  Eddie shrugged. ‘No idea.’

  Frank leaned closer to the painting. He was smelling it. Eddie had seen him do that before, long ago when he was barely tall enough to see over the countertop. ‘You can tell a lot by sniffing something, boy,’ he’d told Eddie then. With a jolt of shame, Eddie remembered his father, leaning on the counter beside him, tittering like a fool.

  But Frank wasn’t telling him anything this time. He knew the game as well as Eddie did: make an offer, then do not speak. The one who speaks first loses.

  Eddie squinted out the front window into the afternoon traffic. Frank followed his gaze. They chewed on their secrets in silence, watching the cars pass. It was quiet behind the reinforced glass.

  ‘Frank, I think I’ll keep it after all,’ Eddie said, surprising himself. He took a side of the frame in both hands, felt the strange ridges in the wood. ‘It’s sort of growing on me.’

  Frank let his weight slacken back onto his cushioned stool, one thick forearm still resting on the glass counter. Under a pelt of ginger hair lay a faded tattoo: an anchor. Eddie stared, marvelling that he’d never noticed it before. As far as Eddie knew, Frank had spent the last forty years in this dingy shop. Bar the ferry, he doubted Frank had ever been on a boat in his life.

  ‘Did you grow up in Brooklyn?’ Eddie said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where did you grow up?’ Eddie had no idea why he needed to know.

  Frank snorted. ‘Mind your own business.’ He cleaned some dust off the counter with the flat of his hand. ‘You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.’

  ‘True enough.’

  Rewrapping the painting in an old sheet, Eddie could feel Frank’s eyes on him, taking in his new shirt, the cleaner hair.

  Frank nodded at the painting. ‘Getting a bit cultured in your old age, are you, Eddie?’

  They half-smiled at each other with something close to affection.

  ‘I’ll see you again,’ Eddie said. He picked up the painting, tapped a
pink box on the counter with his free hand. It was empty. ‘And stay off those doughnuts, Frank. They’ll kill you in the end.’

  ‘S’pose it’s croissants and macchiatos for you these days, is it, Eddie?’

  Eddie smiled, but didn’t turn back. The traffic noise pushed through the opened door. Outside, the air was still warm but autumn hung in the wings, pursing its lips. Eddie felt his skin prickle; the frame held solid under his arm.

  Dear old Mother was right, he thought. This painting’s worth something.

  Oblivious to the blaring horns, he crossed against the swooping traffic and headed uptown.

  Walter Fennell had his name on a brass plate by the door, like a doctor. High marble steps led up to a narrow, white-tiled entrance. A miniature tree filled one corner, its leaves trimmed into a perfect cone, the tip sharp enough to scratch a hand like an unfriendly pet. Walter, wary of topiary thieves, would wheel his potted tree in and out each day on its small castors. He kept the place immaculate. More than once, Eddie had seen Walter on his knees with a dustpan and brush, scooping up breakaway leaves and rogue pieces of litter that had funnelled up from the street.

  The door would be locked, Eddie knew. He’d been here once before. There was a bell to press. Inside, Walter would be watching the entry from a judicious angle, his finger hovering over a white button on his desk. If he chose, the glass door would swing back as if held by an invisible footman.

  Eddie knew that Walter had not always had the face of a disappointed man. There’d been a big write-up in the paper, years back, after the opening night. For some reason his mother had cut the piece out and kept it. He’d found the clipping just after she died. There was Walter, looking haughty and intense in a spectacularly good suit. He was so sure of himself then, the way he tilted his chin to the camera. Sure that earnest knots of people in black clothes would continue to gather before his door. That they would glide around his white box of a gallery, listening to him enthusing about power and authority, marvelling at the painted squares hung in careful light. Buyers will come, Walter’s confident face had said. Come to press the flesh of his emerging artists, standing, nervous as fawns, on the edge of a wineglassed crowd.

  But they did not come. The gallery sat, now, like the egg of a rare bird in a nest of plain shops, a tattoo parlour two doors down.

  Back in those early years, Walter would never have looked at someone like me, Eddie thought, inspecting his reflection in the glass door. But now, Eddie sensed another slow week in the art world, and knew to wait for the buzz. He thought of his mother, snipping out Walter’s story, and wondered.

  There was the smallest click. Eddie knew Walter could see the painting, and that he would not be able to resist. The door pulled back.

  He hoped Walter wouldn’t remember his last visit.

  ‘Mr Reynolds, isn’t it?’ Walter said.

  Eddie saw that Walter was going to remain at his desk so that he’d have to approach him like a naughty schoolboy. Asshole, Eddie thought. Walter looked a bit thinner, a bit pinker, but when he stood up he was still ramrod straight in his glossy black shoes.

  ‘No medals, today, I trust,’ Walter said, a wraith of a smile under his moustache.

  Eddie felt heat in his cheeks, but kept his voice chipper. ‘Not today, no.’

  The last meeting, two years before, had not gone well. Eddie had been trying to off-load his Uncle Ivan’s war medal, back at the height of things. Or the depth of things. With not much more than flared nostrils and a bit of adept sniffing, Walter had made it abundantly clear exactly what he thought of a man trying to hock his family’s one shred of military pride for drink money. Eddie was back outside with the pointy tree before he could say Dardanelles.

  In the end, Frank had come to the party on the medal. Despite all the pawned tat in his shop, he had a market somewhere for good war stuff. He’d got Eddie a great price; at least he’d thought it was. Might’ve been worth ten times the money. All gone now, of course. The medal was the last of it. The drinking, the snorting, everything. But some of Uncle Ivan’s military discipline must have rubbed off, Eddie thought. The way I pulled up before the last jump. Before the cliff.

  Walter broke into his thoughts. ‘You have something you wish to show me, Mr Reynolds?’

  Eddie laid the painting on the table and began to pull back the cloth, Walter wincing at the prospect of table scratches. When he saw the painting, he was silent for a full minute.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ Walter said.

  ‘I inherited it,’ Eddie told him.

  ‘I see,’ Walter said, scanning the room as if amazed to find himself in an art gallery.

  Eddie, hating his own need to explain further, said, ‘It was my mother’s. She’s dead now.’

  ‘I see,’ Walter said again.

  There was another full minute of silence, Walter staring down at the painting. Eddie watched him run his hand along one side of the frame, his fingers hovering about the wood as if reading its aura.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Reynolds,’ Walter said, ‘but I simply cannot help you. It’s not my field. You’ll need a specialist.’

  ‘A specialist?’ Eddie was genuinely surprised. ‘Can you recommend anyone?’

  Walter wrinkled his forehead as if the question had caused his gut to spasm. ‘Recommend? I don’t think so.’ He waved around the room with an airy, imprecise hand. ‘You see where my expertise lies – I deal almost exclusively in modern art.’ He hesitated. ‘Not medals. Not … paintings like this one.’

  Eddie saw that Walter had a small shake in his head. He wondered whether it was Parkinson’s or merely revulsion.

  ‘You must know someone who understands these things,’ Eddie pressed. He could see Walter swallowing his irritation.

  Walter leaned across the desk and wrote a name and address on a piece of paper. ‘You could try this place,’ he said. ‘They may be able to help you in some way.’

  Eddie noted the languid ‘may’ but took the details. He saw that Walter also had a bad shake in his hand. Maybe the uptight old bastard is on the dry, too, Eddie thought.

  ‘You have to be aware, Mr Reynolds,’ Walter said, ‘that there will be significant costs involved in obtaining precise information on your … acquisition.’ He took a pressing interest in the pile of catalogues fanned in a perfect wheel on the corner of his desk, neatened one errant spine. ‘I really think that’s all I can tell you,’ he said.

  Eddie exhaled hard. ‘Oh, I see,’ he said. ‘My mistake. I thought you’d have a sort of broad knowledge about art. You know, a kind of general knowledge about your field. Like, for instance, I know a fair bit about gardening, even though my real speciality is lichen, if you can believe that.’

  Walter looked like he did not, although it was perfectly true.

  ‘I guess it’s different in the art world,’ Eddie went on, sauntering across the blond wood floor towards a chair, as if he meant to sit and chat about life’s daily setbacks. ‘Never mind, I guess I’ll see what this’ – he waved the piece of notepaper towards Walter – ‘specialist can tell me.’

  Eddie turned away from the chair at the last moment, Walter already beginning to gape at the thought of him actually taking a seat. Eddie allowed himself a small smile. His father would have been proud. He felt tempted to whistle.

  And it had worked. Walter Fennell was niggled. He didn’t get that brass plate for nothing, Eddie thought.

  ‘It’s British,’ Walter said. ‘A London street scene. I’m sure of it. Central London, almost certainly. Probably looking east.’ He ran his eyes around the frame. ‘The wood is carved in a curious way. The markings are not typically English. The painting could be two hundred years old, perhaps more.’

  Walter wiped a non-existent speck of dust from the desk with one finger. ‘I strongly recommend that you have it assessed and insured,’ he told Eddie. ‘And you might consider re
storation. It has not been properly cared for.’

  Walter pressed the button with a small look of triumph.

  He loves that freakin’ button, Eddie thought.

  The front door opened with a buzz.

  ‘But is it valuable?’ Eddie said, just to annoy him.

  Walter’s high colour was feverish now. He stood up. ‘Of course it is, if it’s genuine. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment.’ He zipped his leather valise, and nudged Eddie towards the door without touching him.

  But as Eddie had rewrapped the painting, he’d seen Walter’s eyes rest on it a moment too long. It’s genuine, he was sure. Walter didn’t want to buy the painting, he wanted to save it from someone like him.

  Eddie stopped at the door, pointing at the tree with the wrapped edge of the painting. ‘I thought you’d like to know that you’re overwatering your ficus. They don’t tend to like it.’

  The door hissed closed behind him.

  1827. Shadwell, East London.

  At first, Thomas Reynolds didn’t think the man was still alive. He felt afraid, desperately afraid, but there was no one else to help him. Fox Lane was deserted. He went to the edge, his feet slipping, leaned out across the oily black water, pulled the man ashore by the sleeve with all his strength. Just breathing.

  And who is he? Such a heavy coat. Very nearly the death of him. Thomas touched the fine stitching near the collar. It was good once, but worn now, almost to a thread. With one arm, he dragged the man home on the great flail of his coat, its seams tearing as he went. A dog stared from the corner. No other soul.

  ‘Get a blanket, Susannah. And a pillow. Hurry.’

  Thomas tried not to think about the water. The way it had reached up to him when he stepped in, the freezing wrap of it on his flesh. The bad dreams would return, he knew.

  ‘I know it’s late, Susannah.’ Thomas’ voice was loud over her protests at the front door. He turned the man on his side, heard a single gurgle. He could have got his throat cut, Thomas thought, wandering around near there. A stranger.