The Old Silent

Abby kept herself rigid. 'You can't have a hiding place in my barn.'

This was a longstanding argument, clearly, cut off by the voices outside. An elongated shadow that fell across the threshing floor doubled as the man and woman separated at the door. Abby thumped at the corner of the poster one last time and clambered down from the chair.

'Hullo, Abby.'

'Hello.'

The gentleman and lady standing there spoke simultaneously, the woman with a little more authority than the man, who seemed, although smiling, less certain of his welcome.

Abby merely turned from the poster-fixing, returned the greeting glumly, and went back to resticking the chewing gum.

'Having tea, are you?' the lady said, looking from Melrose to Ethel, to the makeshift table and back at Melrose at the same time she dropped the hood of her coat from bronze-colored hair vaguely streaked with white, whether from age or highlighting he couldn't say; she appeared to be in her forties, and was dressed in some long, loose, patchwork-bright garment that the Princess probably would have approved for sheer flamboyance.

When Abby didn't turn from her work, the woman walked over to the wall, turning to say 'Rena,' when Charles Citrine had introduced her as 'Irene.' She held out a small package to Abby that was (Melrose heard her say) '… from Nell.'

Abby looked at the brown wrapping and slipped it in one of the big pockets of her skirt.

Melrose caught snatches of their-or her-conversation as the brother spoke casually to Melrose about the weather, the country in January, and Weavers Hall. Citrine (with a nod of his head in some direction back there) said he lived in an old house 'across the moor.'

Irene Citrine stood there conversing with Abby. Although conversewas hardly the word, since Abby's end of this conversation was uncompromisingly monosyllabic. Melrose made out that the box was from 'Nell, who specially wanted you to have it… had she tried rubber cement to hold up the poster?… a handsome poster… Who are they?… Nell's sorry she couldn't… Nelligan's flock is… need anything…?'

They were wandering in decidedly unlabyrinthine avenues of conversation, given Abby's answers:

'Thanks.'

'No.'

'Yes.'

'Rock band.'

'Well.'

'Yes.'

'No.'

In other words, a typical Abbyesque exchange with someone she was indifferent to, although she appeared to prize the gift if not the giver. Melrose thought the giver was surely trying her best.

Charles Citrine was trying his, too. Citrine was a man who would be tagged 'affable' straightaway. In these circumstances, however, the manner was strained. The man's thoughts were elsewhere; the pale blue eyes fixed on his sister and Abby, at the same time he exhausted the conversational possibilities with Melrose about the weather, the countryside, the Hall.

It was, perhaps, simply a more mannered version of Abby's own responses to Nell Healey's aunt.

Once the Citrines had gone, Abby walked to the byre and then back to her 'bedroom' and then over to the table, where she exchanged the thick chipped mug Ethel had set out for Melrose for a fluted cup and a mismatched saucer with tiny blue flowers.

'Well? What is it?' demanded Ethel. 'What's the present?'

'I didn't open it,' said Abby calmly.

Ethel fluttered her hands excitedly. 'Open it, open it.'

'It's in my hiding place. Get the kettle.' Abby sat with her hands folded.

Grimly Ethel swung the kettle from the rod with a thick cloth and poured it into the pot while Abby settled herself on the low wooden chair. Since Ethel's seat was the stool with a cast-off cushion, their relative heights round the table were wholly disproportionate. Melrose felt as if he might be looking down from that heaven that Abby disclaimed any knowledge of.

Abby poured the tea, Melrose's cup first, plunked down the pot, and picked up her sandwich. These were indeed 'rough' sandwiches, ill-cut portions of cheese between hunks of bread.

'Well, this is a welcome relief from the morning's events.'

When Abby looked at him, apparently doubting great things had come of a morning at Weavers Hall, he wished he could stop being so hearty.

There was a ritual silence as they drank their tea. The two dogs had each been given their meal and Stranger took this as a signal to relax his vigil and lie by the fireplace. Tim had left in search of something more inviting than this inactive person.

Abby divided her attention between her plate and the empty air round Melrose's shoulder.

Ethel, despite her prim neatness, turned out to be a noisy eater, chomping her cheese, slurping her tea, and beating a tattoo with her heels against the stool. Having hit upon one more thing to madden her friend, she said to Melrose, 'I've got things hid in this barn and Abby don't know where.'

Given Abby's stony look, she apparently believed it. 'You can't have a hiding place in somebody else's barn. I told you.'

Ethel simpered. 'Well, I do. You don't know, I could keep a gun there.' She then started in, nonstop, on the murder at the inn.

'Blood all over-'

'No, there wasn't.' Abby's voice was a flat-out contradiction. 'Stop talking about it.'

But given the sacrilege earlier paid to the dead singer, Ethel was clearly going to get hers back. Crumbs gathered in the corners of Ethel's mouth as she went on: 'She shot him. Splat!'

'Ethel!'

Melrose himself would have hesitated to continue, faced down by that pair of eyes, but Ethel was going to turn the knife. Anyway, it wasn't every day such juicy gossip came along in this isolated region.

'We wasn't to talk about it.' Abby's voice was level but her look would have stunned the animals in the stall.

'That Missus Healey, she's your friend.'

Ethel, Melrose saw, for all her milky-whiteness, her ribbons and ruffles and dimples, was a small fiend, sitting there with that hair of fiery licks, the upright kitchen fork like a trident.

'And she can't come here, can she? Because your auntie won't let her.'

This was delivered in a snide, singsongy voice meant to engage and enrage her hostess. Ethel was bringing out the big guns. 'And anyway, yougot the pictures of dead people,'-she motioned with a nod of her head toward the crate that held the books-'right over there. I saw them all. There's pictures of that little boy, Billy, and his friend.' When there was no response to this, she said, 'They're terrible, my mam says. Says they just let that little Billy die. I saw all the pictures of you and him and the other one, that Tony.'

'Toby.' The correction was automatic, issuing forth from some brain and mouth not Abby's own.

Melrose interrupted. 'I suggest you stop talking about things you know nothing about.' He shoved his chair back, looked at Abby, wondered if she were some sort of magnet for negative planetary waves. Ever since he had first seen her, she seemed always to be bedeviled.

Although she said nothing, the vibrations issuing from her stony posture made the table appear to quiver, the dirt floor beneath them vibrate; on her face was the expression Medea might have worn on Jason's return.

'Go home,' said Abby.

'We're having the funeral. You said we were.'

It was then that Melrose noticed the small black-draped box by the bed. A votive candle, unlit, stood at one end. Buster. Melrose looked away.

And Abby merely repeated, 'Go home.'

'But we've got to bury Busted Or she'll start smelling up the whole barn.'