Night Voices

Praise for Helen Hudson's previous books:

...a brilliant, witty writer.... her insights, her similes and metaphors gleam like knife blades in the sun. -Newsweek

A superior writer...Miss Hudson has Charlie Chaplin's magic way of provoking derision, sympathy, exasperation and curiosity all with the same gesture. -The New Yorker

Miss Hudson is a gifted writer... her pliant style and warmth for her characters are uncommon virtues. -The New York Times Book Review

Her touch is light, whenever we come close to weeping, she saves us with her laughter. -Look

A fine and sensitive writer. -Publishers Weekly

Criminal Trespass explores with accuracy, loneliness, racism, ignorance, the will to learn and the ability to love with extraordinary tenderness... enough emotional torque to move any reader. -Los Angeles Times Book Review

Tell the Time to None is a novel admirably wrought and richly satisfying. The luminescent prose moves like a soft but searching light..." -Chicago Tribune

NIGHT VOICES

by

Helen Hudson

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

The Wessex Collective on Smashwords

Night Voices

copyright 2009 by Helen Hudson

Cover design by Loy Whitman

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Table of Contents

Prologue

chapter 1 (Millicent)

chapter 2 (Cassandra)

chapter 3 (Pilippa)

chapter 4 (Tess)

chapter 5 (Eliot)

chapter 6 (Lettice)

chapter 7 (Millicent)

chapter 8 (Tess)

chapter 9 (Cassandra)

chapter 10 (Philippa)

chapter 11 (Tess)

chapter 12 (Tess)

chapter 13 (Lettice)

chapter 14 (Cassandra/Eliot)

chapter 15 (The Ladder)

chapter 16 (The Disturbances)

chapter 17 (The Gathering)

chapter 18 (The Police)

chapter 19 (Millicent)

chapter 20 (Impossible Choices)

chapter 21 (Millicent)

chapter 22 (Eliot)

chapter 23 (Gone)

a note about the writer

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PROLOGUE

Rewley Island, a tiny English village at the western end of Oxford, lies peacefully between the arms of the Thames which opens to enclose it on its way soutah. It is in Oxford but not of it, protected by the river from the noise and chaos of the Cutteslowe Road, one of the ugliest streets in all England. It is crowded with cars and lined with small, battered shops: Chinese and Indian takeaways, launderettes, grimy pubs, enormous hoardings and a huge, empty lot piled high with rusted machinery and dismembered cars. Strange looking men in oily, black jackets, their hair matted or shaved or braided and tinted in various colors, lounge outside the Day Centre or walk their emaciated dogs toward another hungry, homeless night.

A small, iron bridge on the right of the Cutteslowe Road leads to Rewley Island where the noise and chaos give way to peace and order. The island is neatly laid out in four main streets that run up, down and sideways, and are named alphabetically: Abbot, Bishop, Cannon and Dean. Friar's Lane, a small street, crawls unobtrusively off Abbot and finishes up in the river.

The Jolly Crew, the island's popular pub, faces the river and, in summer, its patrons often spill out along the banks. There is a small, corner grocer's shop, known as Fotheringay's, where the shop assistants—elderly ladies in aprons—greet the customers by name and add up the items with pencil stubs on scraps of paper. A letterbox is tucked into the wall beside it, with a public call box opposite.

The streets of the island are lined with small, terraced cottages built in the 19th century by the railway for its employees. The houses stand neatly, shoulder to shoulder, all the same size, height and age. They all toe the same line and show a strong family resemblance with only slight differences: in colors, doorways, trim and the choice of flowers in the window boxes. But these small variations merely add interest and do nothing to diminish the atmosphere of harmony and equality of the island. All have gardens, small patches snuggled close to the front of the houses, or long, narrow strips stretched out behind, crowded with flowers like choirs in full voice.

Though the houses all present a similar solid front, inside they are wildly different. Some have been gentrified with expanded kitchens, sitting rooms, modern lavatories and finished lofts with dormer windows. Their occupants, too, are different. Members of the middle class inhabit them. Other members of the middle class include a sculptor, a writer, a journalist, a solicitor and several dons. And a filthy lot they are, Mrs. Pullman, the publican's wife says, for all their posh airs. Forever doing up this and decorating that and spreading their dust and paint and rubbish all over the road.

Two elderly women, who live side by side on Abbot Street, are known as Widow 4 and Widow 5. Widow 4 has six cats and three more buried in her garden, all named after characters in Shakespeare. Widow 5 keeps four spaniels named after Old Testament characters. The two women have not spoken to each other in seven years, not since Widow 5’s Habakkuk attacked Widow 4’s Cordelia.

The other residents of the island are a mixed lot. A few elderly men with canes walk their dogs and elderly women in aprons sweep their doorsteps or work as part-time domestics. Women with shopping bags hurry to the City Centre and Old Age Pensioners, in jeans and boots, cycle slowly to their allotments on the other side of the Cutteslowe Road. The young ride bikes or cars to work. Large families of Pakistanis live in the tiny houses on Dean Street, the men and boys in western clothes, the women and girls aflutter in traditional garb: thin, brightly colored draperies with long bare feet sticking out of their sandals; as if Allah expected the males to adapt and conquer the west but insisted that the females remain locked up forever inside their past.

The tiny island draws them all in, enfolding them in its quiet streets, protecting their privacy but providing the friendly touch of community as well. Here people exchange greetings when they meet, linger in Fotheringay's to comment on the weather, and gossip on their front steps. But, in the end, most step into their narrow houses alone.

Only a very few, like Binnie Belcher, were born here. A widow, she still lives in the family house, renovated now and kept in perfect order with graceful curtains and a shiny brass knocker, one of the most attractive houses on Abbot Street. Yet she is constantly seen in an apron with a carrier full of cleaning equipment rushing up, down and across the streets to be cook, cleaner, laundress and baby-minder to her wealthier neighbors. But sometimes she appears in a flowery, print frock, minus the carrier, on her way to tea with one of her employers. In the close quarters of Rewley Island, class lines tend to become blurred.

Riverside Court is the largest building on the island. A chunk of the 20th century wedged into the 19th, it forms three sides of a courtyard. Its enormous, plate-glass windows, like shop fronts, stare down into the back gardens of the Old Age Pensioners in Friar's Lane, spying on them as they tend their gardens or hang out their wash or gossip with their neighbors. All they see in return are the cars in the car park with their noses to the wall—and neglect. The grass around the building is uncut, the flower beds have gone to weeds, and dead plants droop from the hanging baskets above the doorways. Fortunately, Riverside Court is hidden away off Abbot Street, removed from the sight of the rest of the village.

Its residents seem removed as well. At the time of the disturbances, some were merely tenants who came and went. But even the permanent inhabitants remained aloof. They did not belong to the Rewley Island Residents' Association or attend its meetings or social events: the strawberry and cream teas, the open house tours, or the island dinners at the Jolly Crew. Even within Riverside Court, there was little communication. The residents of one wing did not recognize those in the others. Sealed up in their flats, even those in the same entry way remained strangers.

The people in Entry E were, perhaps, the most isolated of all. At the time of the disturbances, there were only two men living there. The women, all but one, were single

They were a disparate group that seemed to have nothing in common but their sex and no interest at all in each other. They barely nodded on meeting. The rest of the time they lived behind drawn curtains and a series of locks and bolts. Only the woman on the top floor felt a need which drove her toward, rather than away, from her neighbors. But she was married and an American.

The man in Flat 13 was acutely aware of them all and sensitive to their obsessions. Perhaps it was this that made him peculiarly vulnerable; made him both catalyst and victim; the victim of the women of Entry E.

ONE (Millicent)

Millicent Morell was suspicious from the moment their taxi turned right, on leaving the railway station, instead of left, and started down the Cutteslowe Road. She remembered, from an earlier visit, that Oxford, the Oxford of dreaming spires, ancient colleges and glowing chapels, the Oxford she longed to see again, lay in the opposite direction. She frowned as they passed under a railroad bridge. The wrong side of the tracks, she said.

Her husband, a native of Oxford, laughed. That's a strictly American concept.

I wonder. Look around you. They've even got enormous billboards plastered up everywhere.

Known as hoardings here, Sebastian said.

Professor and Mrs. Sebastian Morell, from Cambridge, Mass, USA, had not been in England for twelve years; not since market forces had arrived in full strength, summoned by a female prime minister with a sharp nose and hair like a steel helmet. Macdonald's, Pizza Huts and Kentucky Fried Chickens were now firmly settled near the ancient tower at Carfax, in the very heart of the city. There was a Fatty Arbuckle's restaurant on Gloucester Green, an Old Orleans Restaurant on George Street, a Burger King on Cornmarket, a pub named Walter Mitty, and a sign announcing New England Ice Cream—unheard of in New England—was advertised all over the coach station. But the streets, unlike American city streets, Millicent noticed, were clean with baskets of flowers hanging from the telephone poles. Groups of scruffy looking men with herds of mangy dogs were congregated in front of one of the buildings labeled Day Centre. The. homeless, Millicent thought. Just like the US. Only here they were all white instead of mostly black, and here they were accompanied by dogs. In the US, dogs had been used to track down runaway slaves and break up labor union pickets. In the US, dogs were often not man's best friend. In England, dogs were held, not by a leash, but a lead.

Millicent Morell—no one had dared to call her Millie since she was twelve—was a tall woman in high heels and well-tailored pants suits (called trouser suits in England) which she considered appropriate for all occasions. Except, perhaps, for the Queen's Garden Party to which she longed to go. Her husband, a Professor, of History at Harvard, was somewhat younger, tall, good-looking with smooth features, except for the Romanesque arch of his eyebrows which gave him a slightly skeptical air.

The Morells had rented their flat sight unseen. It was small and cluttered with broken antiques including two Louis XVI chairs with unreliable backs, two kitchen chairs with splintered legs, and a Victorian sofa with a removable arm. Still, as Sebastian pointed out, the place was surprisingly cheap and within walking distance to his college, to the railway station, the coach station, the bank and almost everything else. Including the public library and the shops, he added, nodding at her. He took the pipe out of his mouth to say it.

She thought of their substantial house in Cambridge with a living room large enough to accommodate the gathering of her many friends: Friends of the Cambridge Public Library, of the Boston Fine Arts Museum and The Fogg Museum. Too old to be completely liberated but too young to accept the status of housewife, she claimed to be a professional volunteer and boasted that she had friends in both Town and Gown. But Ethel Hochsmeyer, her next door neighbor, said that Millicent didn't really have friends at all, just fellow committee members.

You'll be bored out of your eyeballs in Oxford, she warned Millicent, unless you take some kind of course. Ethel, who had had a month with the Elderhostel in one of the less prominent Oxford colleges, studying Domestic Furniture in the Reign of Queen Anne and antiquing around the countryside , considered herself an expert on Oxford.

But Millicent did not expect to be bored. For one thing, she was not a tourist like Ethel Hochsmeyer but a year long resident with a bank account, a library card and a furnished flat, and she was determined to behave as little like an American as possible. She would take milk, not lemon in her tea, serve cheese and biscuits after not before dinner and refrain from shaking hands or saying You're welcome. She would speak and even think in British English, remembering to say shop for store. cooker for stove, post for mail, call box for a public phone booth, roundabout for rotary, underground for subway, sitting room for living room, flat for apartment and many more. But she balked at calling panties knickers.

She was fascinated at how specific British English was, using several words to make fine distinctions where Americans used only one: the difference between rent and let, cushion and pillow, pass and overtake, coach and bus, spectacles and glasses and five different names for the various styles for what Americans called simply sweater. Sometimes the British used different spellings to indicate different usage as in kerb and curb, check and cheque, tire and tyre, distinctions that Americans ignore. And she preferred their forthright vocabulary to American euphemisms: Old Age Pensioners for Senior Citizens, deaf for hearing impaired though she refused to say toilet for Ladies' Room. She noted, too, that the British avoided brand names: cello-tape instead of Scotch Tape, sticking plaster instead of Band Aid and photocopy instead of Xerox —except in the strange case of the vacuum cleaner which was called a Hoover and was even used as a verb. But all this was beginning to change, she noted, due to the American cultural and economic invasion. She did not, however, attempt an English accent and insisted on being called Mo-rell rather than Mo-rell, refusing to succumb to the English passion for putting the accent on the wrong syllable.

Unlike Ethel Hochsmeyer, she had inner resources. She would keep a journal and perhaps write articles on the English: their history, their literature, their art, and their language. She would go for long soul-searching walks along the river. There, besides the wild flowers and the hawthorn bushes, the blooming chestnut and elder trees, somewhere between the sleepy villages of Iffley and Wolvercote, she would find her real self. Did she want to go on being a volunteer and a mere faculty wife while other women were professionals with imposing titles, impressive salaries and were seated beside distinguished scholars at dinner? Should she go back to school for training? For what? a doctor? a lawyer? a teacher? a social worker? a business woman? Would Sebastian mind? Would he even notice? Could she do it? Did she really want to be any of those things?

During the first few weeks, she walked for hours along the river which curved gently between trees that turned silver in the wind while ducks, swans, cygnets and geese floated companionably on its back. She walked past Portmeadow where cows and horses grazed peacefully together; where rape, a name that gave her pause, turned the fields a bright yellow. Beyond the Godstow Lock, she saw the Godstow Nunnery, an ancient skeleton of a convent with only the walls and stone traceries still standing and the partial remains of a facade jutting up like a bishop's miter. Open to the sky, the nunnery could no longer provide refuge for either body or soul. It rose, haggard and forlorn, in that empty landscape with weeds growing out of its walls like tufts of hair.

Often, she toured the colleges, visiting the places Sebastian had known in his youth: the college where he lived, the chapel where he sang, the Radcliffe Camera and the Bodleian where he studied, and the pubs, fields and river where he played. The young Sebastian had allowed her to look ahead with joy at what was still to come; the older Sebastian, forced her to look back in sorrow, at what was lost.

But now, in this year of grace, she would explore not only the English countryside but the landscape of her own soul as well. Perhaps somewhere in its depths, she would find the key to Sebastian's soul as well.

After one look at their flat, she hired Binnie Belcher from Abbot Street to do her cleaning. She was a small chubby, cheerful woman with a mass of graying hair done up in a loose bun which tended to slide around as she worked and often tumbled down completely. She wore a long apron with crumbs for the birds in her pockets. Her husband had been a fireman, a man who lived with one ear always cocked for the sound of an alarm and Binnie bustled around the flat as if she, too, expected a fire alarm to call her away at any minute. This did not, however, keep her from dusting, polishing and scrubbing with vigor and it did not keep her from talking, even while running the Hoover.

She had been mopping up the gossip of Rewley Island for years and was on first name terms with everyone. Full of women, this Entry is, she told Millicent on her first day. " Except for your husband, of course, and that chap down stairs in Flat 13. And a queer one, he