The Orphan Choir (21 page)

I hear their voices as I enter the woods again. I know who they are without knowing their names. Their names don’t matter; I will know them when I need to. I’m not worried about being lost, though the trees have formed a ring around me and seem not to want to let me pass. I know the voices will lead me home.

That’s where I will find them: at The Boundary.

I walk slowly. There is no need to run; if I ran, I might scare them away. I must arrive at the house at the right moment – not too soon. The song has only just started. I can hear it faintly, in the distance, drawing me like a magnet. I follow the melody.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,

And ransom captive Israel …

One foot, another foot. One note, another note. Boys’ voices marching me home, telling me which way to go. Bethan and Mr Fahrenheit: it doesn’t matter any more, whatever they’re doing. The choir is all that matters: they’re the ones I must listen to, the only ones.

… That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel …

They get louder as I get nearer. I’m back at the entrance to Starling Copse. Inconceivable, now, to think that Dr Freeman was at Swallowfield today. He was here in the way that Stuart is here: not seeing, not understanding – presence that’s a kind of absence. They weren’t in the same place as me or the choir.

I don’t understand it yet, but I will. The boys’ voices sing me a promise that I will soon make sense of everything. All I need to do is keep listening.

… O come, thou Wisdom from on high,

Who orderest all things mightily …

I pass the trampoline and the tennis court. Swallowfield is still in every detail, silent apart from the choir. The clouds above are fixed in place, not drifting. There’s no shaking of leaves, no breeze to disturb the grass. No breath but mine, and mine makes no movement in my chest. I could be travelling through a landscape architect’s three-dimensional model laid out on a 500-acre table. I could be a plastic figure on a board that someone has taken
out of a box and unfolded – at the moment. I will become real when I am shown the truth.

… To us the path of knowledge show,

And teach us in her ways to go.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel …

I am coming. I have to get home before the song ends, but I don’t know how much of it is left. As I approach Topping Lake, I feel myself being pulled faster. It’s like suction. I’m not even sure if I’m walking any more. I am drifting, gliding, as the motionless clouds stare down at me. They are all in on the secret: the clouds, the hedges, the fields, the jetties, the wooden bird hides. The landscape knows. Swallowfield knows.

… O come, thou Rod of Jesse, free

Thine own from Satan’s tyranny;

From depths of hell thy people save,

And give them victory over the grave.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel …

There’s a space where Dr Freeman’s car was. Good. I don’t need to think about him any more. I
must make room in my mind for what I’m about to learn. All other thoughts fall to the ground: leaves in autumn. Natural. It’s nothing to be scared of as long as I don’t look away. As long as I let myself see.

…
O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer

Our spirits by thine advent here;

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night …

The Boundary’s front door is open. Stuart is standing in the way. I feel sorry for him because he has to say so much that I won’t hear. He has started already. Without guidance, there is no way for him to know there’s no point, and I can’t tell him. I can’t explain because I am too busy listening: the guided, not the guide, not yet. I push past him, walk to the foot of the stairs. Stop. The voices are really loud here.

…
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel …

Upstairs: that’s where I have to go. To the master bedroom. My bedroom. That’s where it is. Slowly, I ascend. ‘Don’t follow me,’ I say. I am the follower. Chosen. He is the left behind. I can’t take him with me for this. ‘Look after Joseph. Keep him downstairs.’

I pull open the bedroom door and, in the same moment, hear it slam shut. What was in front of me is now behind; I am in the room, unaware of having moved forward from the landing, no memory of crossing over.

I fumble for the light switch. Press it. Nothing happens. The room is still dark. It was light when I arrived at the house – midday – but in this room it’s as dark as if someone had taped over the glass to exclude all natural light.

That happened once before, in a house that was also mine.

Except they can’t have done that here. If they had, the view would have disappeared along with the light, and it hasn’t. I can see everything. At last.

The double doors to the balcony that overlooks the lake are wide open.

They’re there: the choir. I try to count them, but they shift and reassemble. Sometimes there are hundreds of them, sometimes only sixteen, like in Joseph’s choir, but I can see each of their faces so clearly. They must be at least 100 metres from where I’m standing, but their noses and mouths and eyelashes brush against my skin as they sing.

I shouldn’t need to ask who they are. I will see them again and I will know. I can’t ask because their singing is too loud. Almost deafening.

… O come, thou Key of David, come,

And open wide our heavenly home;

Make safe the way that leads on high,

And close the path to misery.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel …

There are girls as well as boys. Yes, of course. I think I know who they are now. But I would still like to ask.

Eight boys or hundreds of boys. Eight girls or hundreds of girls. Out above the water, floating over the centre of Topping Lake, where the moon was last night.

Like the moon, they glow silver: the colour of the Swallowfield Christmas lights – a jagged moon made up of the shapes of children, the girls’ long hair streaming in the air, eyes glittering, faces pale and bright. They look so cold: child sculptures carved out of ice, except they’re scream-singing as if they’re afraid no one will hear them.

As if they’re afraid I don’t hear them.

Their eyes lock on to mine, stick into me like pins, their irises blueish-white. I open my mouth to try to tell them that I’m here and they don’t need to sing so loud – they’re not allowed to; they will be stopped if they continue to make such a noise; someone will
complain – but I can’t find the words I want, only the words of their song. I am singing with them.

… O come, O come, great Lord of might,

Who to thy tribes on Sinai’s height

In ancient times once gave the law

In cloud and majesty and awe.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel …

Stuart is banging on the door, asking what I’m doing, what’s wrong with me. Demanding that I come out. I can’t. I don’t know why he doesn’t come in. Perhaps for the same reason. I have an open door in front of me: I can leave him behind, get closer to the choir. I know that’s what they’d like me to do.

I step out on to the balcony. The damp wood chills the soles of my feet. When did I take my shoes and socks off? I don’t remember doing it. The children in the choir have bare feet too, dangling: like white upside-down hands, waving from beneath their robes.

I climb down the wrought-iron spiral staircase to the terrace below. Round and down, like a stone. As I run to the lake, I am pushed back. Something wants to stop me from moving forward. The children start to fade. ‘No!’ I cry out. ‘Where are you going?’

I hear Stuart scream my name. The sound of the
choir is still audible, but receding, as if it’s coming from further away.

… O come, thou Root of Jesse’s tree,

An ensign of thy people be …

‘Come back!’ I call.

I drag my body forward, to the edge of the water. Should I go down the mud steps? They were cut into the grass verge for easy access to the lake in summer, Bethan told me. If I take one step towards the water, will the choir reappear? Is that where they are – under the surface?

‘Louise? Where are you? Are you out here?’

Stuart. He’s on the terrace. No, he mustn’t leave Joseph alone inside. We have to work together to keep our son safe.

I’m scared of Stuart. Joseph should be too. He will try to stop us.

I sink down to my haunches. It’s impossible to see anything by the lake in darkness like this, but I’m scared Stuart will find me. That’s why the choir disappeared: they knew he was coming.

‘Lou?’ he calls again. Nearer this time.

I want to run, but I’m blinded by the blackness that the children left when they took their jagged choir moon away and left an empty sky. I take
a step to the left, then another to my right, but each time I draw back, thinking I can hear Stuart’s breathing.

Suddenly, everything is moving, whispering: the trees, the bushes, the tarpaulins stretched over the garden furniture on the terrace of every house around Topping Lake. It’s not just Stuart coming for me, it’s one man from each house. They are all him. They are coming from all sides.

I can’t stay out here any more. I need to see light so that I know my eyes are still working, that I haven’t gone blind. How did I let myself get so far from my house? Stupid. Crazy. I feel as though I’m miles from home, further than I’ve ever been.

I must sing. If I sing it might bring them back.

… Before thee rulers silent fall;

All peoples on thy mercy call.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel …

Faintly but unmistakably, I hear the children singing with me. Time-lagged, like an echo. I crawl along the edge of the lake on my hands and knees, looking for their reflection in the water, but I see nothing until I close my eyes, panting in panic, and find colours on the insides of my eyelids. Purples,
reds. It comforts me and gives me the answer. That’s it, I think. I need to get back to safety, back to the lights and colours of my house. To The Boundary.

I stand up and turn round. Open my mouth to scream and choke on the loud singing that pours out of their mouths and into mine, millimetres from my face as my eyes hit the glass.

There they are. There they always were.

Blazing with light, hair streaming. In my house, behind the windowpane, hanging there, suspended from nothing; nothing in the room but them and the blinding glare. They’re so close, I can see the pupils of their eyes widen and shrink. Watching them draws all the breath from my lungs, and more of the song from my mouth. We are singing all together now.

… O come, Desire of nations, bind

In one the hearts of all mankind;

Bid thou our sad divisions cease,

And be thyself our King of Peace.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel …

‘Who are you?’ I ask through the words of the hymn. It’s a code. Only the choir could hear the true meaning under the cover of the words I am singing. Stuart wouldn’t understand, and besides, I’ve left him
outside. He won’t be able to get back in, not while the choir is in the house.

A boy in the front row with hair as long as some of the girls’ says, ‘We’re the Orphan Choir.’

Yes. That’s who you are.

‘What are your names?’

A few of them answer.
Alfie Speake. George Fairclough. Lucinda Price
.

I know those names. All of them. ‘Thank you for coming,’ I say. We hide all of this beneath the hymn.

… O come, O come, Emmanuel,

And ransom captive Israel,

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

I know them, and I sing with all their voices. I sing, ‘The Orphan Choir, the Orphan Choir, the Orphan Choir.’

‘Were you going to throw yourself in?’ Stuart asks.

‘No. I don’t think so. I don’t know.’ Only one day later, but it feels like a year. ‘It’s hard to remember. I … wasn’t in control.’

‘At one point you started to walk down the steps into the water. You must remember what was going through your mind when you did that.’

‘I don’t. I really don’t, Stuart.’

‘Why did you push the bedside cabinet in front of the bedroom door? What did you plan to do in there that you didn’t want me to see? If you wanted to throw yourself in the lake, why go up to the bedroom first, and down the spiral staircase? Why come into the house at all?’

Telling him why would involve trying to explain
that the ‘why’ didn’t belong to me. That would lead us to questions of how.
I don’t know. I agree: there’s no way. All I know is that it happened
.

‘I don’t have any of the answers you want,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t … That wasn’t me.’

‘But you are now,’ he accuses.

‘Yes.’

‘How is that possible?’

He is interrogating me the way a policeman would. I’m glad of his strictness. I need his ruthless logic to scare the inexplicable away.

I also need to tell him that it was real and I know what it meant, but if I do, he will write me off as certifiable. He’ll say it’s impossible, completely irrational.

So we have a problem: a paradox. I want him to negate what happened with his disbelief, and yet I need him to believe me so that he can help me to save us. That I can put the dilemma to myself in these terms convinces me, if no one else, that I am not crazy.

I will sound crazy if I tell Stuart what happened. Better to let him think I took off my shoes and socks and sang a hymn by the lake for a reason neither of us knows.