A Quiet Moment

This heartwarming short story by Alison Carter reflects on friendships.

Imogen was finding it difficult to get to know the new face around the harbour . . .

LETTICE, I do not care about the teacups, as long as the room is full!” Imogen Bull was seated at the table, reading an invitation list with inky marks down one side.

She turned to her friend, who was making a count of house crockery and tutting.

“You’ve marked Miss Renfall as a refusal!”

“Because she cannot come,” Lettice said. “It is market day that day, and quite a few people will spend the day at Totnes.

“Shall I ask Mrs Richardson if we may borrow her Derby cups and saucers? Because we simply won’t have enough.”

Imogen ignored the question.

“The day at Totnes,

Letty. We are entertaining from seven o’clock in the evening!

“They will have hours to rest after buying their ribbons, or their geese, or whatever they go to market for.”

Imogen pressed a blotter down hard on the list.

“l don’t know why I stay in Brixham. It’s so quiet!”

“Because this is your husband’s house,” Lettice said quietly.

Imogen stood up and rearranged her chintz skirts with a dismissive shake.

She had indeed come to this fishing town because Frederick Bull came into an inheritance in 1820, soon after they married.

She had been whisked from her London life to fresh air, fields and the endless grey sea.

It was a fine house, set in lovely gardens, but it was not London by any means, and forging a social life here was an uphill struggle.

Frederick’s sudden death a year before created a terrible, unhappy pause in her project of enlivening the place, but Imogen was not cowed.

Lettice was a friend from Imogen’s school days, now staying at Stoke Raphael House for a spring and a summer, to help.

“I thought I’d come to be company for you,” she had joked soon after her arrival when Imogen had loaded tasks on her, all connected to the August dance she was planning.

“Company: help. Aren’t they the same thing?” Imogen had said.

Imogen’s mother, in London, said her daughter did not like to be alone.

“Even in your cradle,” she declared, “you cried if I left the room, or your nurse crept away at bedtime.”

From the moment she could walk, Imogen had been surrounded by people: officers from her father’s barracks, plus an entourage of cousins and her three older brothers’ friends, in and out at all hours.

Imogen did like company and believed, with justification, that she was a good hostess. It was one of the reasons that Frederick Bull, a Naval administrator, had married her.

They’d met on several occasions at military social events. Frederick was older than her by some fifteen years, but was a man of talent and charm.

Only a month after their marriage he had walked into their drawing-room with an announcement.

“Well, I never, Imogen! My uncle Bertram has left me Brixham Hall.”

“What is Brixham Hall, pray?” she said.

He looked down at a letter in his hand.

“I believe it has thirty acres,” he said, shaking his head in wonder, “not including its farmland.”

There had been no question of Frederick refusing the responsibility, but the sedate nature of life in the country had been a surprise to Imogen.

Now that her mourning period over, she was enlisting Lettice’s help in making the best of things.

“Now,” she said, “we must make the most of our numbers. How many card tables do I have?”

There were sufficient tables but a lack of playing cards, and Imogen decided to walk into Brixham to see if she could buy some.

Lettice stayed at home, feeling a cold coming on.

“You cannot have a cold for the party,” Imogen said. “All hands on deck!”

Imogen was a lovely woman of twenty-seven with auburn hair, an

unwittingly flirtatious smile and a fine figure.

Single gentlemen from all over Devon enjoyed her parties.

She expected one day to choose one of them, but not now.

“My purpose is to liven up the town, and my own existence,” she told Lettice.

“l think you want to make a little London by the sea,” Lettice replied.

“What a silly idea!” Imogen said. “And quite impossible! One can barely find fresh oranges, and as for the coffee . . .!”

She walked down to the narrow lanes of the town and harbour, and was greeted outside the Crown office on Fore Street by a gentleman she knew.

An unknown man stood behind him.

“Mrs Bull, it’s a fine day,” he said.

“It is,” Imogen said, momentarily unable to remember the man’s name.

A hundred men of similar appearance had passed through her front door that month already.

“May I present Mr Wymark?” he said.

His companion was in his late thirties, with a pristine necktie and a well-brushed red coat.

“Mr Wymark,” Imogen said with her engaging smile. “I am Imogen Bull.”

Wymark nodded, but said nothing, which surprised her.

She wasn’t comfortable with unforthcoming people.

They made her want to fill gaps in the conversation, to talk about the weather and the paucity of good lobsters that summer.

She recalled that her acquaintance was Mr

Follet, and that he worked in the customs house.

The newcomer, she assumed, was in the same business.

He was handsome, with hair the colour of nutmegs and a good smile.

It all made him a potential asset at a Stoke Raphael House gathering.

“You are visiting the customs office?” she asked.

He nodded again, and Mr Follet butted in.

“Thomas is an inspector.” “Looking for smugglers?” Imogen smiled.

He spoke – finally. “Among other matters,” he said.

She heard a faint slur in his voice, almost as though he had been imbibing.

“Well, that’s good,” she said, tiring of her one-sided conversation. “We don’t want sinners in Brixham!”

Imogen learned that Mr Wymark was here for six weeks to make a survey of port trade and security.

****

As the days passed Imogen saw him sometimes, pacing the harbour with ledgers and many different townsmen.

He was always slightly bent forward, as though thinking hard.

When their paths crossed he was just as taciturn as on the occasion of their first meeting, though always scrupulously polite.

“Mr Wymark,” Imogen said one blustery day. “I have not yet persuaded you to visit my house.” He smiled.

“True,” he said.

It was hard to make out the softly spoken word in the buffeting wind.

“Are you walking my way?” she asked. It seemed a chance to get him to talk. “If so, I will persuade you!

“My next event is just wine and cake, and a brilliant lady pianist!”

He fell in step and they proceeded the length of the curve of the bay.

Imogen had not intended to walk so far – she had an appointment at her dressmaker at three.

For every 20 words that Imogen supplied, Wymark provided one, until they had reached the end of all the buildings and stood side by side on the top of the low cliff.

“The breakwater wants repair,” he said.

It seemed an odd way to begin a conversation.

It was as though he didn’t want to chat and was just being polite by saying anything.

“I dare say.”

Imogen’s dress brushed him, billowing in the wind, but she didn’t move aside.

“Well, now I have described for you all the delights of my Friday salon, and still I have no reply.” He looked down.

“Very kind,” he said softly, “but I cannot.”

Imogen was puzzled. What could this man have to do that was so pressing on a Friday evening?

Unless he was a drunk, and preferred to sit with a bottle of brandy in his hotel?

“As you wish,” she said. His odd habit of using hardly any words seemed to be catching, and he was starting to infuriate her at the same time as interesting her.

Then he took a step forward, right to the edge of the cliff. It was as if he wanted to get closer to the sea or the ships.

It struck Imogen that she rarely came down to the sea just to look.

Since Frederick had gone, she was making calls, arranging other calls, planning amusing things to say and original events to organise, to liven up this quiet corner of England. It could be tiring.

“A tern!” Mr Wymark said suddenly.

“I beg your pardon?” Imogen replied.

He craned his head out to sea as a pair of enormous gulls soared past them, making their loud and raucous call.

“I swear that was a tern. Perhaps it was a sandwich tern. Their call cuts through, but not through a gull’s cry.

“Horrible birds, gulls.” Wymark seemed really unhappy to have missed the call of the bird, and Imogen was more puzzled still.

His mild and intelligent face was angled away from her but she could see how absorbed he was.

It made her want to get through to him and to be part of his world. He was unlike other men she had met here or in London.

He walked her home, and lingered on the doorstep for some time before bowing and departing.

****

Imogen’s Friday salon went well.

Afterwards, Lettice sat her down for their accustomed review of its successes and failures, but Imogen was distracted.

“Am I frivolous?” Imogen asked.

Lettice was taken aback. “Now what makes you ask that?” she said.

He was unlike other men she had met here or in London

Imogen shook her head. “Oh, I don’t know. Something somebody said, or didn’t say.”

“Now you’re talking nonsense!”

“That might be my trouble,” Imogen said.

“My friend, you are still in need of diversion after your loss.

“You naturally gather people around you who are willing to be merry.” Lettice tutted.

“But I am quite over my loss, Letty!” Imogen said, surprised at the comment.

“I simply see myself as a social hub, where this town markedly lacks one.”

But Imogen was beginning to wonder where her life was going.

At the same time, she thought often about Mr Wymark.

Sometimes she added to her walking route the places she knew he would be working in case she came across him.

She even passed the two inns, still wondering if he was a drinking man.

Whenever they did meet he continued to be just as reserved, and Imogen decided, with regret and frustration, that he did find her trivial, and tired of her conversation.

One morning, Imogen learned that Mr Wymark had left Brixham as his work was complete.

She put him out of her head, but soon

found that she had cancelled a cards evening and declined two invitations to tea.

****

A few weeks later, when Imogen was still feeling out of sorts, there was a ball at a mansion on the road to Dartmouth.

She had to go, having accepted the invitation a month before and promised to lead the dancing with the master of the house.

The evening began with a quadrille, a dance Imogen had always disliked for its lack of verve.

She weaved in sedate fashion, smiling at the gentlemen and ladies in turn, until it came to an end at last.

The dancers dispersed, among them pairs of young lovers.

A flood of despondency washed over her. Her low mood was preposterous, she knew.

Crown officer Wymark was a sorry sort of man, silent and grave, and quite possibly a sot.

An elderly man with whiskers spoke to her. He was the father of a friend of hers, and worked in law, possibly as magistrate.

“I think you made the acquaintance of our visiting customs man?”

“Hardly,” Imogen replied. “My daughter saw you in conversation at the harbour,” he went on.

Imogen was flustered. Being linked to Wymark made her feel vulnerable.

She took out her fan and flapped it hard.

“I wasn’t sure about him.” “I found him a stout fellow,” the magistrate argued. “Not garrulous, I grant you, but he did his job with care.”

Suddenly, she wanted information about Thomas Wymark more than anything else.

“I heard he is fond of his sherry,” she ventured carefully.

The elderly gentleman turned to face her.

“Goodness, that quite contradicts my own experience.

“I couldn’t get the man to share a bottle of claret, even after all the business was concluded!” he said.

“Then I must be mistaken.” Imogen recalled Wymark’s slight slur, and his absent manner.

“I think you might be referring to his speech, Mrs Bull?” the magistrate said after a long pause.

“The fellow lost a deal of his hearing in the Battle of Albuera. Close cannon fire, I believe.

“It was a conflict that – in my opinion – has not been given nearly enough credit for turning our fortunes against Napoleon!

“The Spanish alliance was cemented, as I’m sure you’ll agree, by . . .”

But Imogen was no longer listening.

She was remembering how Thomas Wymark had listened so hard on the water’s edge, turning towards the sounds, and his annoyance with the screech of the gulls.

His speech must have lost some clarity in the 19 years since his injury.

She had misjudged him.

****

The summer grew hot and Imogen grew listless.

Then, one morning

Lettice came in with gossip.

Twins had been born unexpectedly to the wife of the gutting shed manager, and someone’s wall had collapsed in the dry weather.

“Oh, and that customs man is back,” Lettice said. “There’s consternation at the harbour, I can assure you!”

“Why has he returned?” Imogen asked.

“That’s just the question abroad in the town. He only went away three weeks ago!”

Nobody seemed to know why Mr Wymark had returned to Brixham.

But, that same day, Imogen’s maid announced him, and a minute later he was in her drawing-room, wearing his same red coat.

“Mr Wymark!” Imogen said, keeping her tone light in the role of playful young widow. “You’re not popular in Brixham, I hear!”

He was looking at her intently, and she realised that he was making sure he caught all her words.

“That’s not important to me, Mrs Bull,” he said. “It’s a fine day, and I wonder if you will walk with me.”

Imogen was surprised, but she knew that she felt more alive in his presence than she had for weeks.

“I have an errand in town,” she said, “by lucky chance. My dress for next week’s dance is in need of work, so –”

“I thought we could take the footpath south, towards Hillhead,” Wymark interrupted.

Imogen had done almost no country walking since Frederick had died.

The nearby farmland was dull, with only the lowing of the cows for entertainment. She had come to dread its silence and uniformity.

“Well, the dress can wait,” she said. “I’ll have Heathcoat fetch my boots.”

They had walked for nearly half an hour, commenting only on the scenery, when he stopped beside a stile.

“The birdsong here is something of a mix,” he said. “Too much hedgerow and copse.”

“I cannot tell you about the individual calls,”

Imogen said. “I’m sorry.”

He leaned against the fence.

“You dislike quiet, Mrs Bull, do you not?”

“Call me Imogen, please,” she said.

“You prefer always to be surrounded by voices.”

Imogen felt uncomfortable.

“Not always.”

“Your husband died.” “Frederick. Yes.”

It was an odd leap to make, she thought.

“And it’s since then that you have kept to the lit paths, as it were. You have made sure you have music and laughter all about you.”

Imogen tried to laugh. “You mistake me, Mr Wymark. Perhaps you don’t know that I came to Devon from London, with all its movement, colour and noise.

“That was what I was used to before, so I suppose I aim to make it again –”

“It is very quiet when someone we love passes away,” he said.

Imogen felt as though she were winded.

Wymark was looking out at the gentle slope of the field and the yellowing grass, but he was seeing into her soul all the same.

The silence when they took her husband away that terrible day had been terrifying, deafening.

Her kind man, her unexpected love.

That memory lingered, and the terror was always lurking, about to come to the fore.

She had not acknowledged it for as long as she could remember.

“Sometimes people try to drown out that quiet,” he went on.

“Who have you lost?” Imogen asked.

“A sister, then a mother.” They didn’t speak for a time, and Imogen felt a tear on her cheek.

“This wasn’t what I expected from a country walk,” she said. Her voice broke with emotion. Wymark nodded.

“These things can take us unawares.”

Then he climbed over the stile with an athletic energy, and held out his hand to help her over after him.

She landed with her face inches from his.

“I have decided to stay here in Brixham for a time,” he said.

“I am glad,” Imogen replied.

It was good to speak so honestly, like being washed in cool water.

He smiled.

“Friendships – they must be given time to grow, especially when the people in them need that time to repair.”

Imogen smiled, too.

They were not going to be lovers, not yet, possibly not for a long time.

But, as they walked home, the quiet landscape made her feel at peace, and as though there were possibilities to come.

The End.