House of Silence Read Online Free

after-dinner
speaker circuit, talking about what it was like growing up as a
childhood icon.’
    ‘What was it like?’
    He laughed. ‘Don’t remember! I was too busy
trying to be a normal boy. But I’m sure I could improvise something
over the port. Anyway,’ he said, pushing his empty soup plate
aside, ‘I was raised by my father. I didn’t even know all the TDH
stuff was going on.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Oh yes. I didn’t have to contend with being
a Living Legend until they made the documentary. I was
eighteen.’
    ‘So your parents had divorced?’
    ‘Yes, a few years after I was born. Rae
wasn’t the maternal type and she was pushing fifty. So I went to
live with my father. Then I was packed off to boarding school and
just saw my family in the holidays.’
    ‘So you’re saying your mother created a boy
hero and based him on a child she didn’t actually know?’
    ‘Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. My
dear mother’s a fraud. Being an impostor is one of the few things
we have in common. TDH’s childhood was supposed to be based on
mine, his character based on mine. But when Rae Holbrook wrote
those books, I wasn’t actually around.’
    ‘So TDH is just a figment of her
imagination?’
    ‘Precisely! And if, by common consent, I am
TDH, what does that make me ? A figment of a figment... More
water?’
    ‘Thanks.’ She watched as he refilled her
glass. ‘It’s quite a story.’
    ‘No happy ending, I’m afraid.’
    ‘Your mother sounds extraordinary. I’d be
really interested to meet her.’
    Alfie shook his head and intoned solemnly,
‘Over my dead body.’
     
    Gwen
    Alfie appeared to have inherited his mother’s talent
for words. One of his many verbal flights of fancy was The Short
Life and Lamentable Death of Tom Dickon Harry , a theme he’d
return to often and with relish. He’d pleaded with Rae to kill off
her creation and when she’d refused, he’d devised his own story -
several in fact - in which TDH met a variety of gruesome ends.
There was to be no ambiguous tumbling over the Reichenbach Falls
for TDH, no possibility of a comeback. Alfie murdered his alter
ego in cold blood, sending him to a watery grave, tossing him
into an erupting volcano, blowing him to bits with a bomb. Alfie’s
disposal of TDH was vengeful and very final. I don’t doubt it was
also therapeutic.
    He was right. He was a much better
actor than anyone gave him credit for. But he knew how good he was
and that knowledge contributed to his bitterness. He didn’t want
fame. In a way he already had that. Minor celebrity status anyway.
What he wanted was recognition. He wanted his talent to be
recognised and he wanted to be appreciated for himself . He
hated being thought of as someone’s son, or worse - an ageing Peter
Pan, frozen in time, forever on the cusp between boyhood and
adolescence. He used to say, if only his mother had allowed Tom
Dickon Harry to grow up with the books, his life would have been
more bearable.
    TDH was Alfie’s shadow, attached to him and
a version of him, but a distorted one. The only way he could be rid
of that shadow was to stay out of the limelight, keep a low profile
- things an actor would find hard to do, even if they didn’t
constitute professional suicide.
    On that first evening together we sat
talking in the restaurant until it seemed too late for Alfie to
think about returning to London. He insisted on paying for dinner,
claiming the pittance he was paid was probably more than the
pittance I was paid. He insisted too on waiting with me for a taxi.
There was something oddly appealing about the way he coupled
courteous behaviour with scurrilous talk.
    ‘You could stay, you know. I really don’t
mind.’
    ‘Wouldn’t dream of imposing.’
    ‘It wouldn’t be an imposition. I mean... no
strings. You could have the sofa. I wasn’t assuming that you’d want
- I meant, I didn’t—’ As I ground to an embarrassed halt he leaned
forward and kissed me.
    ‘My return to