Rebecca Connell - Told in Silence

There was pride in her words. I stared out across the lawn, shading my eyes against the evening sun, trying to imagine it filled with people intent on celebrating Harvey’s sixty-fourth birthday. It was an arbitrary number to be making such a fuss over, but I suspected that the birthday itself was little but a device to kick-start Harvey’s return to society. Last year, visitors had come and gone with a monotonous regularity that had rapidly thinned into nothingness when it became clear that none of us was inclined to put on a brave face and entertain company. I could tell that through his grief Harvey was still capable of being disappointed by the shoddy pretence of respect with which his erstwhile friends and colleagues had retreated – and contemptuous of it, too. All the same, the garden party had been his idea, perhaps to test the permanence of the situation. As the RSVPs had trickled back I had sensed a kind of cold satisfaction emanating from him, a growing confirmation that he had not been erased as swiftly as it had appeared. He had always known, as well as they did, that he was not the sort of person who was easily forgotten.

‘It’ll be strange,’ I heard Laura say, as if half to herself. ‘Seeing everyone again. It feels like such a long time since we’ve had this sort of gathering.’ Her fingers plucked disconsolately at a thread of lilac crêpe, teasing it apart into long filmy strands. ‘I hope Dad enjoys it.’

‘I hope we all do,’ I said, ‘but there’s no reason why we wouldn’t.’ Empty though the words were, they seemed to reassure her, and she nodded. I hesitated, and then put my hand over hers. Despite the heat of the day, her skin felt cold and faintly damp, as if she had just come in out of the rain.

‘I think this will be good for you, Violet,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘You’re too young to…’ She trailed off and, not wanting her to go on, I gripped her hand more tightly. The sudden smart of tears behind my eyes surprised me. Affection, even love, for Laura tended to strike me like that; randomly, as if unthought of ever before.

‘I’m looking forward to it,’ I said, as brightly as I could muster, and as I smiled at her I felt my spirits lift with the knowledge that I wasn’t lying. The closest I had got to a party in the past nine months was a strained, abortive gathering with a few of Jonathan’s old university friends – women ten years older than myself who wanted to drink cocktails, talk loudly about their own lives and subtly compete to give the impression that they themselves had been far more deeply touched and bruised by my husband’s death than I could ever imagine. It was a mistake that I had never made again. There was something unsettling about the distance I felt from them, a sharp contrast to the easy friendliness with which they had seemed to welcome me when Jonathan and I were first married. Perhaps they had seen me as temporary. Now, in their eyes and mine, he would always belong to me, and they had not liked it.

‘Really, I’m looking forward to it,’ I said again, almost defiantly. Still smiling, I swung round to look back at the house, and saw Harvey there. He was standing motionless at the kitchen window. I raised my hand, but he gave no sign of having noticed me. He was staring out through the glass across the lawn, his face blank and remote, as if he were watching Rome burn.

I began to walk back towards the house. I didn’t want to see the garden through his eyes, as I knew I would if I turned around again: the pointless little bunched-together groups of tables, the coloured bows fluttering emptily in the breeze. Harvey had a way of stripping back pretence, albeit without intent or volition. He simply saw the futility of things, and it bled out of him, tainting everything that it touched.

I heard them before I saw them: a rising and falling hubbub of voices outside the kitchen door, their words blurring into each other so that I could barely make sense of them. I kept my head down, piping cream into meringues in perfect circles, feeling heat spilling over me. Now that the guests were arriving I wanted them gone again. A painful shyness was spreading in my chest, making me gasp for breath. My fingers shook as I placed the strawberries one by one on top of each meringue, taking far longer than I needed, spinning out the task. Above the general hum I heard Harvey’s coolly authoritative tones, inviting the guests to go out into the garden and exchanging niceties. Now and again, I thought I could hear Laura chiming in, palely echoing his words. Shadows moved across the work-surface as people passed outside, but I kept my back to the window. I collected the meringues on to their silver platter, then went to wash my hands. In my agitation I turned the tap on too hard and water sprayed out on to my dress, staining darkly against the red linen. I dabbed it ineffectually with a tea towel, feeling my heart beat faster, hearing the voices grow louder outside.

‘And where is Violet?’ I heard someone say, my name cutting through the babble of words. ‘How is she?’ I didn’t recognise the woman’s voice, but her tone was deferential, sympathetic, as if she were referring to an invalid. I couldn’t catch Laura’s reply, but the woman made a noise of ostentatious understanding in response. ‘Of course, it’s very hard on her,’ I heard her say. ‘On all of you.’

I snatched up a tray of quiches at random and made for the back door, gripping the tray tightly to cancel out my shaking. When I saw the lawn I stopped in my tracks and blinked, half dazzled; dozens of people, many of them women with bright, jewel-coloured hats and shoes that danced and sparkled jauntily in the sun. I had not meant to make an entrance, but as I appeared, conversations seemed to fade, heads turn sharply my way for an instant before whipping back into place. I came forward across the lawn, placed the tray carefully down on to the nearest table, then straightened up, searching for a face I recognised. Many of them stirred up vague memories: ex-colleagues from Harvey’s law firm, their eyes alert and watchful. I couldn’t remember a single one of their names.

I saw Laura and made my way towards her, forcing my lips into a smile. Next to her, a large matronly woman loomed, her hair teased up into tight little brown curls that clustered around her bovine face. I knew instinctively that it was her voice I had heard in the kitchen, but I had no idea who she was.

‘Violet, I was just going to bring out some more of the food – but you remember Miranda,’ Laura said, almost beseechingly, as if willing me to say yes. I looked closer, and with a shock I connected the name and the face: Miranda Foster, Jonathan’s godmother and an old family friend. All at once I could see her on our wedding day, bearing down on me and telling me how lucky I was and how Jonathan was like a son to her, before enfolding him lasciviously in a hug like no mother I had ever seen. The past eighteen months had not been kind to her; her face looked strained and stiff, as if it had been dipped in wax.

‘Of course,’ I said, holding out my hand, but Miranda made an impatient gesture and cast aside the sandwich she had been holding, pulling me against her voluptuous bosom into a forced embrace. I froze in shock, the sticky, cloying scent of her perfume flooding my nostrils.

‘My poor child,’ she whispered into my ear. ‘What you must have been through!’ As swiftly as she had drawn me towards her, she pushed me back, holding me by the shoulders to examine me. ‘You look older,’ she said, a little critically. ‘I suppose it’s to be expected.’

Yes, I almost said, the passage of time tends to have that effect – but I knew that was not what she meant. What she was trying to imply, not very subtly, was that grief had ravaged me, stolen the youthful bloom that she might once have envied and rendered me wholly unremarkable. She may well have been right, but I fiercely resented her assumption that she was entitled to say it. She was no one to me; had meant less than nothing to Jonathan, who had once told me that he wished the old harridan would stop undressing him with her eyes every time they met. For an instant I felt my colour rise and the words threatened to burst out of me.