The Orphan Choir (13 page)

I know what Justin Clay wants me to think: why did I wake up? It’s not loud. Could I be imagining this barely audible music? Tonight there wasn’t even a prelude of obnoxious pop or country-lite. He is trying to drive me mad, I think, in the literal as well as the metaphorical sense. He wants me to doubt the evidence of my ears and wonder whether it’s possible that he would wait silently until 2.30 in the morning and then play a strange, atonal version of the Magnificat at an inoffensive volume. Except it was offensive at first – it must have been. I woke in shock, my heart pounding. I was dragged from my dream by what felt like a sudden explosion of young boys’ voices. The only thing I can’t work out is how he manages to time it so perfectly. How does he know exactly how long the loud part has to last to wake me up? He’s bound to miscalculate one day; I’ll find myself fully awake before he’s turned it down and I’ll know for sure. Maybe I’ll set up some kind of recording device – I assume the council has some of these that they loan out to the victims of noisy neighbours, in order to acquire the proof they might later need in court?

And the rich he has sent empty away
. ‘Has’, in this version of the Mag. Not ‘hath’. Did Mr Clay do any work at all yesterday, or did he devote his Monday to building his library of choral CDs to torture me with? It took me no more than an hour to walk to Fopp, buy the Capleton CD and walk home. After that, I got on with other things and even succeeded in forgetting about my war with my neighbour for a while (mainly because I was busy missing my son, but still). Now I feel stupid and naive. So I’ve bought one CD – so what? If I want to defeat the noise plague next door, I must be as single-minded as Justin Clay. Instead of making do with only one CD and congratulating myself on how reasonable I am because I’m only going to blast him with one song, I must set aside time to build up a library of music with which to bombard his early mornings over a period of weeks, maybe even months.

Well, there’s no point in my going back to sleep now if I’ve got to be up at quarter to six, preparing to give Clay his alarm call. Also, the swollen patches under my eyes have split again and are simultaneously stinging and throbbing. I am in too much pain to sleep. All this crying I’m doing lately means I’m having to rub my eyes a lot, though I’m trying to avoid doing so. I hope that when you read this,
council, you will take urgent action (as I’ve been pleading with you to do all along). It’s not only my sleep and my eyes that this bastard is wrecking. At this rate my marriage won’t be far behind. At the moment, I couldn’t possibly hate my husband more, on account of his lack of support. I doubt I’ll see things differently in the morning, since I will be as tired then as I am now. And, actually, it’s already the morning.

Hello, Noise Diary! Sorry – I sound like a teenager. My excuse is that I am feeling triumphant. While I don’t want to tempt fate by saying anything as blatant as ‘My plan worked,’ or ‘That went better than I could have hoped,’ I must admit that my feelings at the moment are along those lines. At exactly six o’clock this morning, I pressed the ‘play’ button on my old ghetto blaster, having first positioned it right next to my bedroom wall, which was as close as I could get it to Justin Clay’s sleeping head. Capleton’s ‘Leave Babylon’ started to blast out (the Fopp guy was right, its melody is subtly hidden beneath a surface of cacophonous
aural assault). While it played, I danced around the room, jumping up and down as heavily as I could, hoping that the pounding bass effect would be accompanied by shaking floorboards on Mr Clay’s side of the party wall.

I succeeded in waking him up. When the song finished, I switched off the ghetto blaster, stopped leaping around and waited in silence. Three seconds later I heard him shout, ‘All right, for fuck’s sake. Point made and taken.’

I really don’t want to get my hopes up (too late – they’re up, and there’s nothing I can do about it), and I’ve replayed his words over and over again in my mind, hunting for other possible interpretations, but I’ve found none. What he said and the way he said it sounded to me like someone unambiguously conceding defeat.

Can it really be as easy as that?

Pat Jervis isn’t listening to me. Not looking and not listening. Instead, she’s standing in front of the window, pressing the tip of her index finger against the pane.

It can’t be a coincidence. Either it’s a nervous tic or she has an obsession, perhaps even a fetish. Glassophilia – does such a thing exist? Last time she was here, she did exactly the same thing with the lounge mirror and the glass in one of the picture frames in the kitchen. If it were a fetish, surely she’d stroke it rather than prod it with her fingertip.

‘Pat? Did you hear what I just said?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Still, she doesn’t take her finger off the window.

‘I hate myself for being so naive. I feel like tearing up my stupid noise diary –’

‘Don’t do that.’

I could quite easily start howling. How would Pat react? I don’t think she would. I can’t see her rushing over to give me a hug; it’s probably against council rules, and since she can’t bring herself to look at me, I’m assuming actual physical contact is out of the question.

‘It’s very dark in here,’ Pat observes suddenly.

I stare at her. Is that all she’s got to say? I didn’t ring the environmental health department this morning and beg them to send someone round in order to have my house criticised.

‘Funny, isn’t it?’ she says in a matter-of-fact tone, looking straight ahead at the reflection of the room in the window’s framed blackness. ‘If it were dark outside, we’d think it was light in this room with the light on. But this time of the morning, same light on – it seems dark. Because it should be light without the light.’

‘It’s as light as I can make it,’ I say sharply. Imran’s men wrapped us in cardboard and plastic yesterday afternoon, stealing all our views, sealing us in. ‘At least it’s not dusty yet. Next time you come, you won’t be able to breathe quite so easily. They start the sandblasting tomorrow.’

Finally, Pat moves away from the window, sits in a chair opposite me. ‘Next time I come? I might not
need to come again. You never know your luck.’ She smiles down at her bag as she pulls her notebook out of it.

I’ve had enough of this. ‘Why are you being so non-committal all of a sudden?’ I ask. ‘Last time, you were all gung-ho and “Don’t worry, we’ll sort him out.” Today you can hardly be bothered.’

‘Let me tell you something you’re not going to want to hear, Mrs Beeston. I’ve spoken to your neighbour. I didn’t want to tell you until I’d heard your version of events –’

‘You’ve spoken to him? When?’

‘Today. Before I came here, I nipped next door.’

My insides clench around a hot spurt of rage, squeezing it dry. If my windows weren’t covered with cardboard, I’d have known this; I’d have seen her park and go into number 19. I hate Imran, hate Pat Jervis, hate Mr Fahrenheit.

My ‘version of events’. As if others might be of equal interest and validity.

‘Mr Clay admits to having disturbed you with his noise on many Friday and Saturday nights since you moved in. He admits to having played a classical CD to annoy you after the last time you went round to complain, which was the night you made your first call to our out-of-hours service – Saturday the twenty-ninth of September.’

Did she stress the word ‘first’, or did I imagine the emphasis? Is she subtly digging at me? I have phoned the environmental health department dozens of times this week, pleading with them to send someone round – Pat, ideally, though now that she’s here and disappointing me with every word she utters, I wish I had asked for anyone but her.

If the council don’t want to be telephonically stalked by people like me who grow progressively more hysterical with each call, they need to think about introducing some kind of fast-track help for sufferers of extreme neighbour noise victimisation.

‘Mr Clay also admits to having played loud music again the following night, Sunday 30 September. He was still angry with you from the Saturday night, so he played his music between eleven and midnight – exactly an hour, as you said. He corroborates.’

‘I don’t give a toss if he corroborates or not! I’ve told you the truth about every aspect of the situation – whole and nothing but. I don’t need his agreement.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t disregard his account of what’s taken place,’ Pat says to her notebook. ‘He denies absolutely that he has ever played choral music of any kind, or anything that involves children, boys, singing. In his bedroom, with the intention of disturbing you in yours, or anywhere else in his house.’

‘That’s a lie. Read my diary. He’s woken me up at
two or three in the morning every night for the last four nights. Always with choral music, always boys – or maybe some girls too, some pieces, but definitely children, sometimes even singing the music my son sings at Saviour.’

Pat shrugs. ‘That’s not what Mr Clay says. He assured me he’d done nothing of the sort.’

‘And you don’t think someone who deliberately plays loud music to intimidate a neighbour with a valid complaint is capable of lying?’ I snap.

‘Oh, I have no doubt he’s capable. Mrs Beeston—’

‘Louise. It’s bloody obvious what he’s up to. He thinks that if he pleads guilty to
some
bad behaviour, he can get away with hiding the worst of what he’s done – the nastier, more sinister, more insidious strand of his campaign. Look, ask Stuart if you don’t believe me. He’s not here now, but come round when he is and he’ll tell you. It might not disturb him in the way it does me, but he’s heard it several times.’

‘He’s your husband, though, isn’t he?’ says Pat.

I laugh. ‘And you think that means he’d support me no matter what? Far from it. I can’t …’ I cut myself off in time. I was about to say, ‘I can’t rely on him for anything.’

‘Louise. Believe me when I tell you that in my long career in environmental health, I have met every kind of noise pest on this earth. I’m not naive.
I know problem neighbours lie – some a hundred per cent, others to a lesser degree. I’ve got a good nose for lies.’ She sniffs as if to prove her point. ‘But I’ve never come across anyone who seeks out a particular kind of music with a view to hurting a neighbour’s feelings. I’ve never met a noisy neighbour who plays music loudly for only a few seconds, to wake someone up, then turns the volume down just in time so that the person on the receiving end can’t swear to it having been louder at first and imagines they’re going crackers.’

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Cannot believe it.

Taking care to compose myself first, I say, ‘All you’re telling me is that you’ve never come across Justin Clay before. That proves nothing! I’ve never lived in a cardboard-swaddled, light-resistant house before – doesn’t mean I’m not living in one now! Tell me this – have you ever known anyone with a noisy neighbour to grow bags under their eyes that swell up and burst?’ With the index fingers of both my hands, I point at the two raw patches of skin on my face. ‘And yet here I am, looking like something out of a horror film, and proving that not all people behave and react in the same way as all other people!’

Pat leans forward: eye contact at last. She squints at me. ‘You need to put some St James’s Balm on
that – it’d clear up overnight. Trouble is, it’s harder to find than the Holy Grail.’ Instead of sitting back, she stays in the leaning position long after she’s said her piece, long after she’s stopped looking. It’s as if the top half of her body has locked into a slant. She doesn’t seem to have noticed that this is making it much harder for her to write in her notebook.

I want to know what she’s writing. That I’m rude and aggressive? A reminder to herself to buy me the ointment she thinks I need, as a Christmas present? It could be anything.

She’s mad. Must be, completely mad. That would explain everything: the change in her attitude, her noise Terminator bravado last time she was here, her lack of support now, the fingertip-pressing of random pieces of glass.

‘You’re evidently very upset, Louise. You’ve been off work how long?’

‘How can I go in to work in this state?’

‘I’m not accusing you of malingering. However … I’d bet good money that whatever’s going on with your eyes is a psychosomatic reaction to your conflict with Mr Clay –’

‘I agree.’

‘– and possibly also to the upset of having your son living away from home, which you alluded to last time we spoke.’

‘I didn’t allude. I told you straight out.’

‘Right,’ she agrees. ‘You did. And that’s why I’m asking you to consider if there’s any chance this boys choir music you’re hearing, or think you’re hearing, might be … something else? Not real, and nothing to do with Mr Clay?’

‘There is no chance,’ I say. Each word is a heavy stone in my mouth that I have to spit out. ‘Stuart hears it too. Unless you think we’re both suffering from the same trauma-induced auditory hallucination – and I promise you, Stuart isn’t distressed about anything. Apparently he isn’t even worried about me looking like Frankenstein’s monster. He just keeps saying, “Oh, it’ll clear up.”’