Joss Stirling - The Silence

So for that, he’d been kicked out of paradise. An overwhelming feeling of relief swept through him.

Jenny hauled her bags and boxes up to her room one by one. There was no sign of Jonah when she would’ve welcomed the help. Maybe he only carried things in exchange for food? She didn’t even know which room he was in to knock on the door. Never mind: she was used to doing things alone. Hadn’t she decided she preferred it that way?

Belongings safely ferried, she stood for a moment to take stock of her new kingdom. It was clean and neat – just as she liked, no, needed it to be. The light was fading but the view out front was unsullied by streetlights. A bold orange tinge flushed the horizon, indicating the busy heart of London just over the hill, but here it could almost still be the eighteenth century when the house was built. That’s if you ignored the cars and the planes winking by, lining up with the Thames to land at Heathrow.

Pulling her duvet out of a box, she went to the bed to strip off the white lace counterpane. A bouquet of orange Californian poppies lay on the pillow. Petals fell off as she lifted it. Someone should tell the cleaner that poppies made terrible cut flowers. All she was left with was confetti and unattractive stubby heads on hairy stalks. She placed them in the bin, reminding herself to get rid of them before the next visit by the cleaner so as not to offend her.

Odd though. Bridget hadn’t mentioned anything about a cleaner in her briefing on house rules. Jenny didn’t expect one but she should make it a priority to ask. She liked to know if someone was coming into her space so she could prepare.

It didn’t take long to unpack. Her books went neatly onto a shelf by the fireplace, Maya Angelou, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, Jane Austen and Vikram Seth all snuggled together. Growing up, she’d craved culture of all sorts – theatre, literature, but mostly music. She’d been teased for it as a child as other kids didn’t get it; now she found there were far more of her tribe out there than she expected, people like Louis. That was the best thing about adulthood: not having to apologise for your taste. Next was her mini speaker and docking station. She thumbed on Stravinsky’s Petrushka on her phone as she had to play that piece the following day. Shaking out her clothes, which were heavy on the black skirts and shirts, light on anything pastel, she hung them in the white wardrobe. That amused her: it was shaped like the one that danced in the The Beauty and the Beast film. She waltzed a few steps with one of her long dresses and laughed, before putting it away. Underwear hid itself in the top drawer of the dresser – it didn’t look fine enough for this place. Perhaps she’d buy herself some silky lingerie with her savings? Could she even consider dating again? Harry’s rejection had scared her off men for months. She’d foolishly thought he was the one, her childhood sweetheart. Her mum had warned her not to fall for her own fantasies about the relationship. Nikki Groves had done that with Jenny’s father and ended up a single mum in Harlow.

Mum would love it here.

And now the bathroom. Jenny swept into it in manner gently mocking of Bridget’s prima ballerina style. She emptied her toiletries into the vanity unit, leaving out on the ledge her favourite perfume, a tub of moisturiser and her seven-day pill dispenser. The plastic compartmented box looked ugly compared to everything else. She’d have to see if she could find an antique one on one of the junkeroo stalls in Greenwich market. She ran the tap. With a few groans and splutters it eventually ran warm, then scorching hot. Nothing wrong with Bridget’s boiler. She added some cold and washed her face thoroughly, removing all trace of makeup. She was going to be happy here, she could just tell.

Dabbing her face dry, she went back into her bedroom, clicked off the music and took her violin out of its case to tune it. A little thrill ran through her. Though she held the instrument for hours each day, she still got that shiver of anticipation, like the wonder of first love, when she knew what they were about to do together. An ocean of classical music gently lapped before her mind’s eye: everything from the storms of Beethoven to the silences of Arvo Pärt. The violin brought it all within her reach. They would have to wait though because she really needed to practice for tomorrow. Would that disturb anyone? It was bound to annoy Bridget and Jonah if they were having an early night. The snug? Was that far enough away from the bedrooms? Taking her music and folding stand in one hand, the violin and bow in the other, she went downstairs and set up the score for the concert. Her fingering for the opening scene still wasn’t right. She loved the Russian folk tunes that weaved in and out of the composition but she hadn’t quite captured the spirit of them. Violin loose at her side, she closed her eyes for moment and breathed to ease the tension in her back muscles. She tried to summon up her impressions of Tsarist Russia: bright peasant clothes, long winters, furs, puppet shows, dancing bears, sleigh rides. Ready now, she set the violin in its notch under her chin, ignoring the familiar twinge of pain, and launched into the first song. Yes! That felt good. The high ceiling flattered the sound of her violin solo. It was so much better practising here than in her old house. Reaching the end without a mistake, she held the last note.

Applause shocked her. Spinning round, she saw that she wasn’t alone as she had assumed. Jonah was on the balcony, cigarette in hand. If she could speak, she would’ve shouted at him for creeping up on her.

‘I don’t know what that was but it sounded great,’ he said easily, taking another puff. ‘Don’t mind me. I sneak out here as Mrs Whittingham doesn’t allow smoking in the house.’

The last five minutes that had felt so perfect were now tarnished by the knowledge she’d had an eavesdropper. She had thought she was sailing on her classical ocean alone and Jonah’s appearances was as shocking as a U-boat surfacing next to her. She put the violin down and gathered up her music.

‘Don’t stop.’ Jonah stubbed out the cigarette, pinched the end and slipped it in his pocket. ‘I guess I should’ve announced myself but, you see, I’m not supposed to be out here.’ He gestured to the rusting balcony. ‘Mrs Whittingham is always full of warnings of dire disaster but I figure that the vine will hold me if the ironwork doesn’t.’

Jenny told herself to slow down, not to flee as instinct was telling her. He had been here first and that it was her negligence to check that meant she’d been overheard.

‘Are you all unpacked?’

She nodded.

‘Got time for another tune?’ He pointed to the violin. ‘I’ve never been to a classical concert. Don’t you want to expand my horizons? People keep telling me they do.’

She shrugged.

He laughed and clapped a hand to his chest. ‘Jenny, you wound me. You’re saying you don’t fucking care one way or another? You’re right. No need to care about me. I was just curious. I’ll go.’

She held up a hand. She might as well try to make a friend of him if they were to live together – it would be safer that way. And it was hard for her to imagine a life that hadn’t included concerts. Going without classical music was akin to missing out on a sense.

Jonah perched back on the rail of the balcony, surely testing its strengths to the limit. He saw her aghast look.

‘Chill, Jenny. What’s life if not just another day cheating death?’

He had a point. Since her fourteenth birthday, she’d shared that philosophy. Everyone lived on borrowed time. So, what to play him? She needed a piece where the violin part was complete in itself, something in the easy listening category, and that she happened to know by heart. She settled for John Williams’ theme for Schindler’s List . If Jonah could listen to that and not weep then he had a heart of stone. Setting bow to strings, she yearned her way through the music, putting into it all the senseless pain of the tragedy it described, rising on to the balls of her feet as she did when caught up in a theme. She’d heard the piece during a televised Prom when she was a teenager and it had set her on the path to her current job, that ambition surviving even her own personal tragedy. God, she loved this: it felt like the top of her head opened and she was floating. There was nothing more powerful in life than this, not even pain, not even violence, not even love.