Tower of Silence Read Online Free PDF Page B

hair tied up in silly spanielly ringlets on each side of her head.
    When Mary was six she was allowed to accompany her parents to the memorial service, and afterwards they walked around the garden, hand-in-hand, talking quietly just as they always did. Mary had thought she would walk with them this year: she thought she could walk in the middle holding her father’s hand on the left and her mother’s on the right. She thought that even though she had not been born until two years after this wonderful sister died, she could join in the If-she-had-lived game, because she had listened to her parents and she knew all the things that had to be said. Things like, If she had lived, she would have been learning to play the piano now. If she had lived, she would have been a wonderful musician.
    ‘She loved music,’ said Leila Maskelyne.
    ‘I like music as well.’ Surely mother knew this from school concerts, when Mary sang in the junior school choir?
    ‘Yes, dear.’
    And English. If Mary’s sister had lived she would have been studying at the grammar school by now. She might even have been clever enough to go on to university.
    ‘I’m clever,’ said Mary. ‘Miss Finch thinks I’m very good at sums and writing. I could go to grammar school if I pass the eleven plus.’
    ‘That will be very nice, dear.’
    A year later, 8 June fell on a Sunday, and Mary’s mother started to say ‘Seventeen come Sunday’ months ahead, and arranged for that year’s memorial service to include the Vaughan Williams arrangement of the old English folk song.
    ‘A very nice sentiment, Mrs Maskelyne,’ said the vicar. ‘Yes, the organist can certainly play that for the service. My word, you do keep your girl’s memory green, don’t you?’
    Mother said, ‘She is never out of my thoughts for a moment. Not for one moment.’ After supper that evening she said, ‘Seventeen, William, only think of it. If she had lived she’d have been seventeen. We’d have had a party. There’d have been young men taking her out, by now.’
    Mary was almost eight and it was half-term so she was allowed to stay up a little later. She listened to the conversation, wondering what year her parents thought they were living in, because life seemed to have stopped for them in 1948.
    ‘That child who escaped,’ said Leila Maskelyne, and Mary heard with a shock that her mother’s voice was different as well. It was harder, colder. ‘She is so much in my thoughts lately. I hate that child, William.’
    Mary’s father said, ‘Hush now, my dear, no good ever came of hating anyone.’
    ‘I can’t help it. I hate her so much.’ Mary had always thought of her mother as very pretty, but now, for the first time, she saw how the prettiness could change, and become thin and cruel and spiteful. ‘She is enjoying the life that our dear girl should have enjoyed,’ said Leila.‘Seventeen this year. I know how old she is, that girl, I marked her age at the time, William. She is our dear one’s age almost exactly, and so today, this summer, all these lovely sunny afternoons, she will be doing all the things that girls of seventeen do. Out there in the world. Alive! Living! Walking and breathing and laughing and buying new clothes and listening to music…’ The pretty hands that sometimes played the piano in the front sitting room–hands that must have taught that other child how to pick out some of the notes–and were always protected from gardening and cooking by household gloves, curled into claws–there was no other word for it. Mary watched. ‘If there was to be one who escaped,’ said Leila, ‘why couldn’t it have been our dear, lovely girl?’
    Mary had wanted to say, But you’ve got me now, but mother was already starting the harsh dry sobbing that made her feel so uncomfortable, and father was kneeling in front of her chair, giving her his handkerchief, saying, There, there, my poor dear, you always feel like this after the birthday memorial, and