The Orphan Choir (8 page)

‘Lou’s got a point, though,’ Stuart says. ‘This guy works from home a lot. There’s no doubt we’ll disturb him.’ He turns to me. ‘Perhaps you should ring the council first thing tomorrow morning and withdraw your complaint.’

‘What? Why would I do that?’
Another small grey pebble, poised at the top of the chute, ready for the long roll-down
.

‘Well, it’s hardly fair, is it?’ Stuart says. ‘Whatever position the council might take, and even if Imran’s
right, if we’re going to subject Fahrenheit to weeks of sandblasting noise, perhaps we should wait to complain until it’s over and we’re no longer noise pests ourselves. Otherwise it looks hypocritical.’

‘No,’ says Imran firmly. ‘You’re comparing two things that aren’t equivalent. One’s legitimate noise, the other isn’t. When it comes to noisy neighbours, you show no mercy. Appeasing them never works.’

‘I’m not planning to appease anybody,’ I say.
Not Mr Fahrenheit, not my husband and not Imran
. ‘I was thinking that maybe we should delay the sandblasting. Or even cancel it altogether.’ Since I have made the effort to attend this meeting, I might as well say what I really think. ‘I’m sorry, Imran, I know this is the last thing you want to hear, having come all this way –’

‘Don’t worry about me, Lou. It’s no problem at all. I’ve got jobs to last me two years. Believe me, a cancellation’s always welcome –’

‘Whoa, hold on!’ says Stuart. ‘No one’s cancelling anything.’

‘I might be,’ I remind him.

‘Lou, you’re overreacting. Until all this happened with Fahrenheit—’

‘That’s irrelevant, Stuart. That was before. It
has
happened, and it’s convinced me I don’t want to live next door to him. Imran, this is nothing to do with you or your work. I know you’d do a fantastic job, but
what’s the point in our spending the money, really, if we’re not staying?’

‘Imran. We’re not cancelling you.’ Stuart’s words gang up with the tone of his voice to pull rank. As if nothing I’ve said matters. ‘We want you to start as soon as possible, for the very reason Lou gave. It seems we might end up selling the house, if Lou’s serious about escaping from Fahrenheit no matter what –’

‘Why you do keep saying “Lou” as if it’s just me? What about you
?
Do you want to live next door to a man who persecutes us in the middle of the night with the sound of choirboys?’

‘
What?
’ says Imran.

Stuart closes his eyes. ‘Long story.’

‘Well, not
that
long,’ I say.

‘I’m sure it was just a one-off,’ Stuart insists. He obviously doesn’t want Imran to hear the story, whatever its length.

‘You have no way of knowing that!’

‘Even if we decide we want to move, spending thirty grand on the sandblasting now is absolutely the right thing to do. It’ll add at least
fifty
grand to the value. Probably more, on a street like this, so close to the station.’

‘He’s right, Lou. And bear in mind I’m doing this for mate’s rates.’

‘Right. So, we go ahead. Proceed as planned.’ Stuart drums the flats of his hands on the table, rocking it and spilling my tea. I reach for the section of the
Sunday Times
that’s nearest to me, and lay it down over the small beige puddle. I hope it’s the news section. I further hope that Stuart hasn’t read it yet and now won’t be able to.

The liquid soaks all the way through to the top, despite the segment of newspaper being several pages thick. I turn it over and see that it’s the property section – my favourite. I haven’t read it yet and now won’t be able to. Does what goes around normally come around so quickly?

‘So you’re prepared to be in the dark for a while?’ Imran asks.

‘In the dark?’ I say.

He looks at Stuart, puzzled. ‘You didn’t tell her?’

‘It went right out of my head, I’m afraid. It won’t be for long, will it? And I mean … we’ve got electricity. And candles in the event of a power cut.’

‘So?’ I stare at him. ‘Now that you’ve remembered, are you going to tell me what you’re talking about?’

Stuart looks at Imran, who says, ‘There’s going to be scaffolding up all round the house. You knew that, right?’

I nod.

‘We’re going to need to cover the scaffolding with
thick plastic sheeting, front and back, and cover the windows with cardboard, tape them up. You’re not going to be seeing much natural daylight until we’re finished, I’m afraid. But hopefully since you’re at work all day it won’t make that much difference. And with the nights drawing in –’

‘No natural daylight,’ I repeat, looking at Stuart. I’m very aware of my heartbeat, suddenly.
He wants to bury us alive
. I feel as if it’s happened already. The room seems darker than it did a few seconds ago.

‘That’s the advantage of the nights drawing in,’ Imran says cheerfully. What is? I missed it, if there was one. I didn’t hear anything I liked the sound of. ‘Disadvantage is, the job’s going to take a lot longer than it would in summer, because we can’t work in the dark. So I’m afraid you’re going to be stuck with our scaffolding and sheeting for a while.’

‘Can’t you do it in sections?’ I ask. ‘Cover the windows one floor at a time, or do the back first and then the front?’

‘Sorry,’ Imran says. ‘It’s just not the way we work.’

‘Even if customers want you to work a different way?’

‘Lou,’ Stuart mutters.

‘It’d double the costs if we had to get the scaffolders out twice,’ says Imran.

‘Then we’ll pay double!’

‘No, we won’t,’ says Stuart. ‘Lou, don’t be crazy. It’ll be fine. Like Imran says, you’re at work all day –’

‘Not at weekends! And what about the Christmas holidays? Joseph will be home then.’ I turn to Imran. ‘Will you be finished by the fourteenth of December? I’m not bringing my son home to a house with no natural light. I’m not! I’ll tear the plastic sheeting off myself if I have to.’

‘It’s unlikely to be finished that soon,’ says Imran. ‘Sandblasting’s a fiddly job if you do it right – and I’m a perfectionist. Look, call me oversensitive, but the vibe I’m getting isn’t one of unbridled enthusiasm. Maybe you two need to—’

‘We need to go ahead and get it done,’ Stuart insists, cutting him off.

It isn’t only the light that we’ll lose. The views will go too. Nothing but blackness at every window.

‘There must be an alternative,’ I say, panic building inside me. ‘I’m not agreeing to this if it means living wrapped up in a dark box for months. I’ll move out! You can live in the dark on your own,’ I snap at Stuart.

‘Lou.’ He puts his hand over mine. Looks worried. ‘You’re tired, and you’re massively overreacting.’

‘You are a bit, Lou,’ Imran agrees. ‘I’ve been doing this for years. People get used to the no-light thing. Honestly – you’ll be surprised how soon it seems normal. And if we don’t do it, we’ll have people
queuing up to complain within half an hour of us starting the work. If you were in the depths of the countryside with no neighbours for miles around, we could forget the sheeting and you could keep your light, but …’ He shrugs.

Countryside: the word lodges in my brain. I heard it very recently. Where? No, I didn’t hear it; I read it. On wet newsprint.

I look down at the tea-stained
Sunday Times
‘Home’ supplement in front of me and see a full-page advertisement for something called Swallowfield: ‘Where Putting Nature First is Second Nature’. No, that can’t be right. Swallowfield must be its name, whatever it is, and the rest is advertising. ‘The perfect peaceful countryside retreat, only two hours from London.’ There’s a background picture of fields at dusk, separated by hedges; a row of trees in the distance; a sunset of purple and orange streaks. On top of this, blocking out parts of the idyllic scene, are three other pictures in small boxes: a woman’s bare tanned back with a row of round black stones dotting her spine and a white towel covering her obviously toned bottom; a large outdoor swimming pool with water that looks dark green and stone fountains at its four corners pouring new water into it; and a long, one-storey house that seems to be made almost wholly of glass with only the odd
strip of metal holding all the glass together. The caption reads: ‘Our award-winning Glass House’. It’s beautiful. Like a jewel, with nothing around it but green emptiness.

I like all the words I can see on this page. I like them a lot more than what Stuart and Imran are saying.

A gated second-home community in the Culver Valley
. That might be two hours from London – a little bit more, actually, more like two and a half – but it’s only an hour from Cambridge.

The perfect peaceful countryside retreat.

Our heated outdoor green slate 25-metre swimming pool, open to residents and their guests 365 days a year.

A hot stone treatment at our award-winning
£10
-million Lumina Spa.

There’s a phone number. For a sales office. I tear my eyes away and look up, aware that I don’t want to get caught. Now my heart is beating too fast not with dread but because of a phone number. I wonder why I feel guilty. Since the number doesn’t belong to another man, I have no reason to.

Imran is still talking. ‘It’s up to you if you want to take the risk,’ he says, ‘but on a street like this, with people waiting to jump down our throats if we put a foot wrong, I’d suggest we wrap you up good and tight, or else there’ll be dust clouds in all your
neighbours’ houses and spilling out all over the road. Did Stuart warn you about the dust?’

‘No. He didn’t.’

‘I’m sure I
did
.’

‘How much dust?’ I ask.

‘A not insignificant amount,’ Imran says earnestly. ‘We’ll do our best to protect you by taping up the windows as thoroughly as we can, but … realistically, you’re going to be living with dust for a while.’

Dust. Taped-up windows. No air, no light
. This is how I might be warned about death – in exactly this way, with qualifications like ‘realistically’ and ‘not insignificant’. As if nothing horrifying is about to take place. Terror lands in my heart from nowhere, without warning, and grips me. For a few seconds I can’t breathe or speak. Silently, in my head, I recite what I hope are the magic words, and what Stuart would say:
One day the work on my house will end and, when it does, the light will return and the dust will go away
.

I have to make it clear to Stuart that the sandblasting can’t happen. Later, when Imran’s gone. He has already witnessed more than enough marital disharmony.

The perfect peaceful countryside retreat.

‘I promise you, Lou – it’ll be worth it,’ he says. Stuart nods along.

Where putting nature first is second nature.

‘I know.’ I realise too late that I shouldn’t have said that, but my mind is busy trying to memorise Swallowfield’s phone number.

Dr Ivan Freeman, Saviour College School’s director of music, has the kind of beard I hate. It’s tidy and shaped and dense, as if someone has fitted a rust-coloured carpet with a high pile count around his mouth. I see it every Sunday morning, and also on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. During term time it is not possible for me to see my son without seeing Dr Freeman’s beard at the same time. I’ve started to dread its appearance, even though the first sighting of it on any given day means that I will soon see Joseph. I’m trying to picture it now, before Dr Freeman and the choir arrive, to prepare myself.

Stuart and I are sitting where we always sit in Saviour’s chapel on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. All the choirboy parents have fixed places that they rush to as soon as the chapel doors open: the ones that offer the best views of their sons, each of whom always stands in precisely the same spot to sing.

Our sons
.

We, the parents, arrive first: before our boys and before the rest of the congregation. We hurry into
the cold, silent chapel, not giving a toss about its beautiful stained-glass windows or the elaborate woodcarvings on its centuries-old panelled walls because those things have nothing to do with our children, and we sit on hard benches, awaiting the agonising proximity. We’re excited because we’re about to be close to our sons for a short while, and already devastated because we know this blissful state will last only forty-five minutes, or an hour, or two hours if there’s a buffet lunch afterwards as there is today.

And we won’t be close enough; we’ll be trapped, by custom and politeness, in our pews, several metres away, unable to hug our boys as we yearn to: audience, not participants. Dr Freeman will be closer. When today’s festivities are over, he will lead our sons away into the recesses of the school, and we won’t see them again until the next service.

Perhaps not all the parents feel the way I do. I know Stuart doesn’t. He’s always delighted to see Joseph, but ready and willing to say goodbye to him when the time comes.
As long as he’s happy, Lou, I’m happy, and he’s quite clearly in his element
.

I don’t want Joseph to be in his element. I want him to be in his house. Sleeping in his bed every night.

It would sound sexist, so I never say it, but I don’t
care how Stuart or any of the fathers feel. They’re men. It’s different. I wonder about the mothers: how many of them loathe the set-up as much as I do? I’m particularly suspicious of the ones who stridently parrot the lines we’ve all been fed by Dr Freeman, the chaplain and the headmaster about how lucky we all are and how grateful we ought to be. I secretly hope that one day one of them will crack – ideally during an important service – and scream abuse at the top of her lungs before grabbing her son and making a run for it.