The Silent Companions

Newly widowed and pregnant Elsie Bainbridge travels to her late husband’s— Rupert—family country home in Fayford. The home is called The Bridge, and Rupert’s cousin, Sarah, is traveling with Elsie; Sarah is unmarried and meant to be Elsie’s companion. The misty, foggy weather obscures Elsie’s view, but what she can see reveals an unkempt landscape, suggesting many years of neglect. The carriage gets stuck in the mud, forcing Elsie and Sara to walk toward the house. The land’s tenants stare from their windows as the ladies tramp through the mud. Sarah falls, ruining her new dress, and a cow stares as she emerges from the mud. Peters, the driver, frees the wheel from the mud, and they finish the journey in the carriage.

Elsie’s first impression of the home is that “It look[s] dead” (16), as all the gardens are choked with vines and weeds, and the house has no character. The Bridge staff gather outside to greet their new mistress, but Elsie doesn’t want them to see her so messy; she asks Jolyon, her brother, who is there to greet her, to send them back inside. Elsie never got along well with the staff of her and Rupert’s London home, as she always felt they judged her for coming from a lower social class than Rupert. The casket containing Rupert is in the house, but Jolyon says few people have come by to pay their respects. Elsie peers inside but feels like the body doesn’t look real. She notices that Rupert has mysterious splinters in his chin.

As Jolyon leads Elsie to her room, they bicker. Rupert was an investor in Jolyon’s match factory, which he saved from closure: He was 10 years older than Elsie, and the marriage was made partly for business purposes. Jolyon now reveals that after Elsie told Rupert that she was pregnant, he changed his will and made her his sole heir. With his death coming so soon afterward, people began to talk. Jolyon has brought Elsie to the country to shield her from the rumors until they blow over. However, he wishes she would show more outward grief.

Sarah helps Elsie out of her muddied gown. Sarah gasps when she sees Elsie’s hands, which are worn from factory work (and, it is later revealed, scarred from the fire in which her father died).

Dr. Shepherd has a painting of a child’s nursery put in Elsie’s cell to cheer her up, but the sight of it disturbs her. She uses her slate to tell him that wood bothers her. He wonders aloud if that is because she grew up in a match factory. The doctor produces a lengthy file that details her life story. He insists he doesn’t want to upset her, but the police have tasked him with getting her to make a statement about the fire. Four bodies were found, but only two deaths were accounted for prior to the fire. Elsie doesn’t remember the fire even when the doctor shows her a newspaper clipping with a picture of her wrapped in bandages. He pushes back her sleeves to reveal extensive scarring from burns. The article’s caption reads, “Elisabeth Bainbridge. Detained on suspicion of arson” (33).

Mabel, a housemaid, comes to Elsie’s room with a tray of food. She tells Elsie there are only two maids and that there hasn’t been a lady in the house for decades because the Bainbridges fear the home. During King George’s reign, someone found a skeleton in the garden; later, many servants died. No one from the village of Fayford will work in the house because of its history. Mabel turns off the lamp when she departs, leaving Elsie in complete darkness.

Elsie dozes, waking to a hissing sound, like a saw. In the darkness, she crawls carefully to the door and then follows the sound outside her room and up the stairs. Mrs. Holt, the housekeeper, finds her and escorts her to the garret, the source of the sound, where Mrs. Holt explains that squirrels or rats make nests. However, none of the staff’s keys open the door; Rupert had promised to find someone to fix the problem but died before he could. Mrs. Holt now promises to write to someone in Torbury to fix the lock. Hearing Rupert’s name reminds Elsie that the funeral is tomorrow, and she goes weak and asks Mrs. Holt to take her to bed.

Sarah and Elsie join the funeral procession to the shabby church the following day. They meet Mr. Underwood, the vicar, who tends to an emotional Sarah, allowing her to rest in his home. Walking into the church reminds Elsie of her wedding, and she thinks, “[W]ho was she now? Livingstone, Bainbridge? Maybe neither” (46). After the service, Elsie and Jolyon greet the guests, though Elsie wishes she could escape. She notices many gravestones featuring the same names in the churchyard. Mr. Underwood explains that the villagers’ children often die so young that they reuse names. Elsie asks about the skeleton found at The Bridge, and Mr. Underwood says there have been multiple skeletons. He explains that the estate remained vacant after the English Civil War; even after the monarchy was reinstated, the home was rarely inhabited because many family heirs died, leaving the estate to younger children uninterested in living there.

That night, Elsie can’t sleep as she worries about how to help the impoverished villagers. She also hears the hissing sound again. It stops, but when she finally gives up on sleeping and gets out of bed, she notices sawdust on the stairs. The sight sparks a traumatic memory from her past, and she almost faints.

At breakfast, Sarah remarks that the last funeral she attended was for Mrs. Crabbly, a woman for whom Sarah served as a companion. Sarah’s parents were poor and sent her to live with the Mrs. Crabbly when she was only eight. Sarah also mentions that Mr. Underwood had no milk for the tea when she was in his home the prior day. This inspires Elsie to adopt the skinny cow she saw during her journey to The Bridge, fatten it, and provide dairy for the villagers. Jolyon remarks that he cannot help her with this plan because he must return to London. This saddens Elsie, as she doesn’t want to be left alone at The Bridge. However, she understands his need to attend to business at the match factory, thinking to herself, “[H]ow could she argue with that? She, who had given so much for that place” (54).

Sarah reluctantly joins Elsie in exploring the house. As they do, Elsie notices the sawdust is gone. They explore several large, innocuous rooms, but the east wing gives Elsie a creepy feeling. They discover a beautifully decorated nursery full of children’s toys, which triggers Elsie’s traumatic memories from childhood and makes her fearful of having a baby. She hastily leaves the nursery.

There are few rooms left to explore, so Elsie tells Sarah she will pick the garret lock with her hairpin. Instead, Elsie finds the door unlocked and the dusty garret packed with relics from the past, including antique books and a journal from a distant Bainbridge ancestor named Anne. Sarah shrieks when she sees eyes watching her from the corner, but it’s a cutout of a young child from another era who looks like Elsie. Sarah sees a family resemblance with Rupert, and Elsie wonders if their unborn child will look similar. Sarah wants to bring the cutout into the house, though Elsie finds it uncannily strange. When Sarah touches it, a wooden splinter embeds in her hand, and Elsie must remove it. Mabel, having heard Sarah scream, enters the garret and injures her ankle when a floorboard gives way beneath her. She doesn’t like the figure and calls it “nasty.”

Because of Mabel’s injury, Elsie fetches the other maid, Helen, to move the figure. Helen tells Elsie that Rupert knew of and was researching the figure, which he called a “silent companion”; she places it in the Great Hall for Sarah’s amusement.

Sarah asks Elsie to return to the garret for the diary, but when Elsie gets there, the door won’t budge. The ordeal makes Elsie feel unwell, and she visits Mrs. Holt to discuss the baby’s impending arrival. Elsie disapproves of the house’s staff, but Mrs. Holt explains that she has trouble hiring help because people in the village believe the home is cursed. Elsie still doesn’t know how Rupert died, and Mrs. Holt says Helen found him dead in his bed. The doctor claimed it was his heart. Mrs. Holt doesn’t know why he would have splinters in his face.

Rupert’s death distressed Mrs. Holt, as she’d known him since he was a baby. She explains that the Bainbridges lost two children at the estate before moving to London, where Rupert was born. Rupert’s father sent Mrs. Holt back to the country house to manage it in their absence. Elsie is confused when Mrs. Holt comments that the house’s nursery is in disarray, so they return to the room. The door is inexplicably locked when they arrive, and the nursery itself is covered in dust, and everything is molding. Elsie disguises her utter confusion and thanks Mrs. Holt for summoning someone from Torbury to fix the garret door, but Mrs. Holt says she never wrote the letter.