House of Silence (30 page)

Marek looked at his watch and said,
‘Six-thirty’.

‘Is it really? I’ve been asleep for hours
then.’ She got to her feet and stood the kettle on the hot plate,
then turned round and leaned against the Aga. ‘Why were you so
upset, Gwen?’

I took off my coat and slung it on the back
of a chair. ‘I found out about Alfie.’

Hattie turned pale. Her mouth twisted and
for a moment I thought she was actually going to scream. She stared
at me, her eyes wild, like an animal’s. It was horrible. Barely
able to control her voice, she said, ‘What do you mean?’

‘I read Freddie’s letters to Rae. The
fragments sewn into the quilt top. They said that Alfie died. As a
child. Freddie said that’s what drove him away - Rae’s fantasy that
her dead son still lived.’ Hattie lifted both hands and covered her
mouth. I could see from her shaking body that she’d started to cry,
but I was too angry to care. ‘You’re all in on it, aren’t you?
Every one of you.’

She dragged her fingers away and stood with
her shoulders hunched, her fists clenched at her side. She
swallowed down a sob. ‘We do it... for Rae.’

‘
Why
?’

‘I can’t tell you, Gwen!’

‘Hattie, for five months I’ve been sleeping
with a man who is an impostor. He’s lied to me about his name, his
childhood, his family -
everything
. You’ve
all
lied
to me! This Christmas was a lie, this whole family is a lie! You
have to tell me
why
. Somebody owes me that, surely? Tell me
why and then I’ll leave. I’m not going to wait for Alfie. I don’t
want to see him ever again. I’m going to pack my things, then I’m
going back to the mill. When the trains start running again, I’m
going back to Brighton.’

‘Please don’t go, Gwen! Not yet! Please stay
and explain to Alfie. He’ll be so angry.’

I exploded. ‘
He’ll
be angry? Give me
strength!’

‘He was so worried one of us would let the
cat out of the bag! He’ll think it was me, I know he will! He made
us promise we wouldn’t say anything in front of you. He really
cares about you, Gwen. Honestly! All this
deception
, it
isn’t really Alfie’s fault. It’s mine. All of it.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Rae must have started
all this when you were a small child. How can it be your
fault?’

She shook her head, vehemently. ‘You don’t
understand, it
is
my fault. They did it to spare Rae.’ Her
voice dropped to a whisper. ‘And to spare me.’

‘You’re not making any sense, Hattie.’

She spoke rapidly then, the words tumbling
over themselves, her eyes beseeching me to understand. ‘Rae
wouldn’t accept that he’d died, you see. She went out of her mind!
She insisted that the baby was still alive. She talked about him,
she talked
to
him! She kept the nursery just as it was, with
all the little baby clothes in drawers, all the toys on shelves. We
had to pretend -
all
of us - because if we didn’t, it would
have destroyed her. She was mad with grief, Gwen! And the pretence
seemed harmless. No one was being hurt. No one was being deceived,
not then. We all knew what was going on. And why... My father found
it very difficult apparently, but even he went along with Rae’s
fantasy. It just became a way of life. The doctors said Rae would
recover, that she’d snap out of it eventually. But she didn’t.
Well, not before Freddie left her. He stuck it for five years, then
he gave her an ultimatum. She must accept Alfie was dead or he
would leave... But she couldn’t do it! It wasn’t fair to ask - she
wasn’t in her right mind. So my father left us... I was eleven. He
asked me if I wanted to go with him, but I wanted to stay with Viv.
She was really the only mother I’d ever known. She’d looked after
me while Rae was ill, you see. So I chose to stay at Creake Hall.
With Viv.’

‘Go on,’ I said, sitting at the table.

‘Rae’s version of what happened was that
Freddie had taken Alfie to live abroad. She said Freddie believed
she wasn’t a fit mother, that she was too ill to be allowed to look
after a small child. It was all lies of course, but we pretended it
was true. For her sake. We let her play the martyr.’ The kettle
came to the boil. Hattie took it off the hotplate, turned back and
looked at Marek, then at me, her eyes pleading. ‘What else could we
do?... It was another five years before Rae came out of it. One day
she just started writing. A story started pouring out of her, about
a twelve year-old boy, called Tom Dickon Harry. She stopped talking
about Alfie. She stopped sitting in the nursery for hours, playing
with the toys and talking to herself. She sat at her desk, day
after day, scribbling away at this book. Then when she finished it,
she started another.’

Hattie pulled out a chair and sat down at
the table again, her head in her hands. ‘TDH took over her life.
She talked about him as if he was a real person, as if he was her
son
. But she knew he wasn’t. It was just wishful thinking
and she knew it. In those days she wasn’t mad. But she wasn’t quite
sane either... When the first book was accepted for publication,
she told her new editor that TDH was based on her son, who lived
abroad with his father. A harmless lie, we thought. You see, no one
expected the book to
sell
. It was so old-fashioned! But to
everyone’s surprise, it was a huge success. Word got out about
Rae’s “inspiration”. Interviewers asked her about Alfie and she
just...
lied
. Lied and lied! She had to, or she would have
been discredited. So Viv took charge and tried to limit the damage.
She was wonderful. She dealt with all the PR stuff. She vetted the
questions put to Rae and she stopped her doing interviews in
person. She even did telephone interviews herself, pretending to be
Rae! We thought everything would be all right. Rae was writing all
the time and answering hundreds of letters from children. The books
made her so happy! And they made an awful lot of money, enough to
allow us to stay on at Creake Hall, to maintain the garden and the
fabric of the building.

‘Then one day the BBC rang. They wanted to
make a documentary. About the books. And our family. Viv was out
and Rae took the call. They sold her the idea. She was going to be
presented as the new Enid Blyton, only better. The film would
acknowledge her position as one of Britain’s foremost writers for
children. Well, Rae was always susceptible to flattery. She just
lapped it up. And she said
yes
. When Viv found out, she hit
the roof! She said it was just impossible. The filmmakers would
want to know all about Alfie, would actually want to interview him
and Rae would be exposed as a fraud. Viv insisted she withdraw. But
Rae wouldn’t! So we had to find someone to pretend to be Alfie.
Just for the documentary.’

Hattie looked up then, startled, as if she’d
heard a noise. Her eyes became fearful again, but I pressed her.
‘That was eleven years ago, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘So Alfie’s been playing the part for eleven
years.’

‘Yes... But it was never meant to be like
that!’ she added hurriedly. ‘Things went wrong, you see.’

‘Hattie, you have to tell me - who
is
Alfie?’

She was about to reply when she suddenly
turned her head and, looking over my shoulder, uttered an
indeterminate cry. I wheeled round and saw Alfie standing in the
kitchen doorway, his face haggard and unshaven. He didn’t smile.
‘Who am I, Gwen?...’ His body sagged and he leaned against the
doorframe. ‘That’s a very good question.’

‘Alfie... You’re back.’ Hattie stood up and
for a moment I thought she might throw her arms around him, but
instead she said, ‘I didn’t hear the car... Have you slept at
all
?’

‘No. By the time I’d finished clearing up, I
just wanted to get away... I parked on the road. I didn’t want to
wake anyone. It didn’t occur to me you’d organise a reception
committee.’ He looked at me, then at Marek. ‘So tell me, Tyler, are
you enjoying a nocturnal intrigue with my sister or my
girlfriend?’

‘She’s not your sister,’ I said. ‘And I’m
not your girlfriend. Not any more.’ Alfie flinched, almost
imperceptibly. His eyes narrowed and he looked at me, his
expression unfathomable. I felt frightened then, afraid of this man
about whom I knew almost nothing, but anger came to my rescue. ‘Who
the bloody hell
are
you, Alfie?’

‘Not sure I can answer that,’ he said,
removing his coat. He pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘But I can
tell you who I
was
. And
what
I was...’ He paused,
looked up expectantly and waited. Hattie sat but Marek didn’t move
from his position leaning against the kitchen worktop, his arms
folded. He stood between Alfie and me and I was glad of that.

Alfie looked at me for a long moment, then
leaned forward and rested his hands, loosely clasped, on the table.
He appeared to study them. ‘What I
was
... was unwanted. I
can hardly remember my mother, but my father - if he
was
my
father - certainly made an impression on me. With whatever blunt
instrument came to hand. Dad was a drunk and he used to beat Mum up
when he’d had a skin-full. Eventually he beat her to death. In
front of me. I ran out into the street screaming for help and I
didn’t stop running. I never have.’ After a pause Alfie said, ‘I’ve
always wondered whether he wasn’t actually my father, just my
mother’s pimp. Money seemed to change hands frequently. It would be
nice to think that bastard was no blood relation. But perhaps any
father is better than none. Would you agree, Gwen?... But I
digress. The man I called Dad was put away and when they found me,
I was taken into care. I was fostered by a succession of worthy
women, but no one ever wanted to adopt me. I wasn’t surprised. I
was a fat, unprepossessing child, too old to feed the fantasies of
the childless. Then, in my teens, I got difficult and started
throwing my considerable weight around. Chip off the old block,
perhaps? At thirteen I was as tall as I am now and my foster mother
couldn’t do anything with me, so she asked the authorities to take
me away. And they did.’

Alfie was silent. His head was bowed and I
couldn’t see his face, but his hands no longer looked relaxed. They
remained clasped but the knuckles were white. He took a deep breath
and continued. ‘I was put in a children’s home and there I stayed,
for the rest of my childhood, surrounded by all the stories, the
personalities, the triumphs and the tragedies of the children who
lived there.’ He looked up and smiled. ‘It was a wonderful training
ground for an actor, growing up with the dregs of humanity. Well,
let’s face it,
I
was the dregs of humanity. I dare say I
might have followed in my nefarious father’s footsteps, if I hadn’t
been sent to a good school. Just the local comprehensive, but I was
bright and adaptable. I was able to associate with a different
class of child there and I absorbed their accents, their lives, the
way they moved, their self-confidence. I didn’t have it, but I
learned how to imitate it. I was a sponge. I soaked up
everything
.

‘I came to the attention of the English
teacher. Mrs Gower. She discovered me. She was a teacher of the old
school and she set us poetry to learn by heart. I actually learned
it. And
liked
it. Liked the sound of my own voice, I
suspect, but my enthusiasm was duly noted by Mrs Gower and she
encouraged me. And I responded... One day she took us to the
theatre to see
Hamlet
. I’d never been to the theatre before
and I... fell in love. With the theatre, with Shakespeare, with the
idea of being an actor, of pretending to be somebody else. Which is
what I did anyway, all the time. It had never occurred to me you
could get paid for doing it. But here was this guy on stage, this
actor, pretending to be a man who was pretending to be mad. Or was
he?’

Alfie spread his hands. ‘I wanted to be him.
I’d spent my whole life wanting to be other boys - thinner, richer,
more good-looking boys, boys with families, pets, proper homes, but
now I wanted to be that man. An
actor
. I asked Mrs Gower how
you got to be an actor and she told me about drama school. I said I
wanted to go. She said if I worked very hard at school, I might get
a grant or a scholarship. So I did. I worked so bloody hard, they
said I should try for university instead, but I said I wanted to be
an actor. I was going to go to drama school. And I did.

‘While I was there I went to a photographer
to have some publicity photos taken, the kind of mug shots you send
to agents. A mate of mine recommended Frances Holbrook. Yes, our
Fan... Fanny liked me. Women tend to, for some reason I’ve never
quite fathomed. I thought Fanny was going to be like Mrs Gower.
Though I could see she
wasn’t
like Mrs Gower. Fanny was...
beautiful. She was fifteen years older than me and glamorous and
successful. Well, that’s how she seemed to me at eighteen... Fanny
knew all about the acting business and she said I’d definitely got
something. I didn’t know if she really meant it, but it was what I
wanted to hear. I’d lost all the puppy fat by then, I’d got fit
with fencing and weight training and I’d allowed the despised blond
curls to grow. I suppose I was... presentable. Must have been. Fan
made it clear what she wanted from me and I was flattered. She was
gorgeous, she was useful, and she fed my fantasies of making it
big. So we became lovers. Her first marriage had reached the end of
its shelf life and I was Fan’s bit on the side, her bit of rough.
She had no idea just
how
rough... So when the BBC approached
Rae about making a documentary, it was Fan who had the brainwave.
That they should get someone to impersonate Alfie Donovan. It was a
mad idea, but who was to know? Alfie was supposed to have lived
abroad with his father for many years. No one knew him in Norfolk
and no one had ever known that the baby died because Rae had gone
into seclusion and refused all visitors.