The Voices (2 page)

The room smelt of joss sticks and fresh linen. Christopher traced a line down his wife’s spine and she acknowledged the contact with a soft sigh. His mind was pleasantly vacant, but it soon filled with recollections of the day: the house, the room he had chosen as his studio, and Petrakis. He needed to get a surveyor, an architect and a reliable builder. The garden could wait.

This last thought reminded him of Laura, standing by the French windows. The memory reconstructed itself in the soft pastels of his imagination. He saw her once
again leaning back and pressing the base of her spine. He remembered her gasping, her agitation as she looked through the glass.

‘Laura?’

‘Yes.’

‘When we were at the house today . . .’

‘Yes.’

‘What was it that you saw in the garden?’

‘I told you. It was nothing.’

‘All right, what did you
think
you saw?’

‘A man. A man coming out of the gazebo.’ She paused. ‘But there was no one there. Not really.’

‘What did he look like?’

Laura showed her irritation by striking the duvet. ‘There was no one there.’

‘What are you saying? That you were hallucinating?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe?’ Dismay made his voice climb to a falsetto.

‘It happens,’ Laura replied, unperturbed by her husband’s reaction. ‘It’s not uncommon during pregnancy.’

‘Since when?’

‘Lots of women see things. Dots, shapes . . .’

‘You’ve never mentioned that before.’

‘Would you have been interested?’

‘Yes. How many times has it happened?’

‘
Only once or twice. I’ve seen the dots – out of the corner of my eye. They move very fast.’ She replicated their trajectory with her hand.

‘What’s the cause?’

‘Hormones, I suppose. They seem to account for everything.’

Christopher was silent for a few moments. Then he said: ‘Seeing dots is one thing. But a man? Seeing a man—’

‘Hormones,’ Laura cut in. ‘Chris, it doesn’t matter. He wasn’t there.’ She turned to face Christopher. The change of position was difficult for her to accomplish and the effort made her slightly breathless. ‘Why are you going on about this?’

‘I’m not going on about it.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘All right. What if you weren’t hallucinating? What if there’s a tramp living in the garden?’

‘There was no one there,’ Laura said firmly.

‘But what if there was?’

‘He’ll move on. That’s what tramps do. As soon as the builders turn up.’ A car passed and Laura yawned. ‘Besides, I didn’t see a tramp.’

‘What did you see?’

‘A man wearing an old-fashioned coat. A frock coat. I blinked – and he wasn’t there anymore. OK?’

Christopher stroked Laura’s hair. ‘OK.’

‘Can we go to sleep now?’

‘Yes.’

Christopher closed his eyes and entered a state that was neither wakefulness nor dreaming, but somewhere in between. He heard fragments of conversation and saw flickering images of red double-decker buses, but he remained tethered to reality. He knew all along that he was still in his bed.

‘Oh my God!’ Laura screeched.

Christopher was wide awake in an instant. ‘What? What is it?’

Laura sat up and put her hand between her thighs.

‘Oh my God,’ she repeated, this time less hysterically. ‘I think my waters have broken.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Christopher. ‘What do we do now?’

A West Indian nurse, smiling broadly, was standing in front of him, holding out a bundle of terry cloth. Buried in a loop of towelling was a tiny pink face: eyes, nose, lips and ears, compressed into an unfeasibly small space. Christopher took his daughter and sat down on an orange plastic chair. Without breaking the spell of this first, special communion, the nurse repositioned his
elbow so that the baby’s head was better supported. Her ministrations were performed with such sensitivity that Christopher was completely unaware that she had intervened. Time became meaningless. Each subjective moment stretched beyond the arbitrary limits of measurement. Christopher, entranced, stunned, placed his index finger into the palm of his daughter’s hand. She opened her mouth and emitted a small cry. Her vulnerability was simply too much to bear. Something seemed to rupture in his chest, the world blurred and tears began to stream down his cheeks. ‘Faye,’ he said very softly, struggling to control himself. ‘Hello, Faye.’

March 1975

Four months later

The door of the house was wide open. Christopher could hear the sound of hammering and loud, distorted music. He locked the car and made his way through the front garden between a yellow skip and piles of stacked timber. After entering the hallway, he turned into the drawing room, where he found two carpenters replacing floor-boards. The air was opaque with cigarette smoke. One of the men noticed Christopher and nodded.

‘Where’s Mr Ellis?’ Christopher shouted above the din.

‘The governor’s upstairs,’ the man hollered back.

Christopher climbed to the top of the house where he found a ladder angled into the attic. Footsteps crossed the ceiling and Mr Ellis’s face appeared in the square outline of the hatch. He had long, greasy hair and uncultivated sideburns that grew down to his jawline. ‘Ah, Mr Norton. How are you?’

‘Very well, thanks. And you?’

‘
Not so bad. I’ve been taking a look at the roof.’ The builder paused and his expression became sombre.

‘Bad news?’ asked Christopher.

‘Why don’t you come up here and have a look for yourself?’ Christopher climbed the ladder and joined his builder. The attic was much brighter than Christopher had expected. ‘Just walk on the beams, yeah?’ said Ellis. ‘If you put your feet anywhere else, you’ll go straight through.’ He chopped the air to make sure that his companion understood what would happen. Christopher followed Ellis like a tightrope walker, his arms extended, carefully placing one foot in front of the other. The two men arrived beneath a gaping hole through which slow-moving clouds were visible.

‘Jesus,’ said Christopher.

‘You need a new roof, really,’ said Ellis. ‘But I can patch it up if you want.’

Christopher thought about his mortgage, his bank loans and the number of HP agreements he had signed recently. ‘Patch it up.’

‘All right,’ said Ellis. The builder pointed at an assortment of objects in a shadowy recess. ‘Do you want me to take this stuff down to the skip?’

‘What is it?’

‘Junk.’

‘
What kind of junk?’

‘Old junk.’

‘I’ll take a look at it first.’

‘Fair enough.’ Ellis returned to the ladder. ‘I’m going to see how they’re getting on downstairs. Don’t forget to walk on the beams, eh?’

‘I won’t.’ The builder paused to have one more look at the roof, before vanishing through the floor.

Christopher went to examine the discarded items. At first it was difficult to determine what he was looking at, because everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. The most conspicuous objects were four large boards lying on their sides. They were decorated with faded Chinese dragons. Christopher thought that they were probably the remains of an oriental screen, and wondered whether it could be reassembled. When he examined the panels more closely, he discovered numerous scratches and cracks. The screen – if it was a screen – was obviously beyond repair.

In a cardboard box he found a collection of 78 rpm shellac records. None of the artists were significant and many of the discs were in fragments. He held one up to the light and read the label:
The International Zonophone Company. Death of Nelson, sung by Mr Ernest Pike with orchestral accompaniment, London.
The formality of the language amused him. There were some large mirrors – once
again, broken – some thin wire on a reel and a lampshade. Another cardboard box contained a vintage camera. It was made from mahogany and brass but its bellows were torn. When Christopher turned the camera over some of the parts fell away. He didn’t bother to pick them up. By his feet, Christopher saw what looked like a framed theatre handbill. He crouched to take a look. A web of cracks obscured most of the text, but he was able to make out a few details:
Mr Edward Maybury . . . secrets of the ancient world . . . automatons . . . manifestations and vanishings.
At the bottom of the bill was some practical information:
Every day from 3 till 5 and 8 till 10. Carriages at 5 and 10. Fauteuils, 5 shillings; Stalls, 3 shillings; Balcony, 1 shilling.
Turning his attention to a heap of floral curtains, he tugged them aside. The action was excessively violent and he had to wait for the dust to settle before he could identify what he had uncovered. It was a traveller’s trunk made from brown leather and reinforced with metal trim. A tarnished nameplate near the lock had been engraved with the initials ‘E.S.M.’
Edward Maybury?
Christopher lifted the lid and found himself looking down at a clock-work monkey, a spinning top, some lead soldiers and a mangy teddy bear, but the trunk was otherwise disappointingly empty. Ellis had been right. There was nothing here of value. It really was ‘old junk’.

Christopher was about to close the lid, but hesitated. He picked up the clockwork monkey, half expecting it to fall apart like the camera. In spite of its advanced age – Victorian, Christopher supposed – the toy was in relatively good condition. The monkey was dressed in a military uniform and held two cymbals in front of its chest. Christopher turned the key and felt the mechanism engage; the mainspring tightened, and when he let go the key spun around and the monkey crashed the cymbals together with manic enthusiasm. The burst of activity was brief, but curiously engaging, if only for its freakish intensity. Stroking the creature’s nose, Christopher imagined the monkey, shiny and new, on a table in the drawing room downstairs, surrounded by girls in long bulky frocks and boys in sailor suits. He could almost hear their cries of wonder and delight.

Would Faye find the monkey interesting?

The idea of continuity appealed to Christopher. It was somehow pleasing to think of Faye having a connection with the children who had lived in the house before. Christopher closed the lid of the trunk and returned to the ladder, clutching the clockwork monkey and mindful of Mr Ellis’s advice with respect to the beams.

May 1975

Two vans were parked outside the house and men in blue boiler suits were unloading heavy packing cases. They worked in a leisurely fashion, often stopping to smoke or read the
Daily Mirror.
Consequently, everything was taking much longer than anticipated. Laura had positioned herself by the front door and she was directing each man as he came through the porch. She looked quite commanding, her expression made more severe by an Alice band that exposed her brow. When she wasn’t issuing instructions, she adopted a distinctive posture: hand on hip, lips pursed – almost belligerent.

Christopher had moved his electrical equipment into the house the previous day. Now he was feeling somewhat redundant. Laura had already decided where everything should go and the final destination of the linen or the china didn’t really concern him.

As Laura checked labels and directed the flow of traffic, Christopher wandered into the drawing room. He negotiated a low maze of cardboard boxes and proceeded
to the French windows. After opening one of them, he stepped out onto the flagstone terrace and, surveying the overgrown garden, inhaled the cool air. It was suffused with fragrances that reminded him of vanilla and honey-suckle. For a moment his worries, most of which were financial, receded and he allowed his chest to swell with proprietorial satisfaction. He had purchased a substantial property in a very desirable part of London. It was a milestone, a reckoning point, something to be proud of. He could hear the removal men’s banter – the occasional expletive – and a car coming down the hill. The pitch of the engine changed and then fell silent.

When Christopher turned to go back inside he was arrested by his own reflection. As far as he could tell, he could still be legitimately described as handsome (albeit in a lean, world-weary way) and the streaks of grey above his ears created an impression of mature distinction. He was tall and the passage of time hadn’t made him stoop. Through the transparency of his own image he saw Laura enter the drawing room. ‘Chris? Ah, there you are. Look who’s here.’ She swept an arm back to indicate a man clutching a champagne bottle and a woman wearing a short denim jacket and jeans.

‘Simon!’ Christopher cried. He advanced and welcomed his friend with a firm handshake. Then, turning to
face Simon’s wife, Amanda, he added, ‘Good to see you. What a pleasant surprise.’

Amanda tilted her head to one side, then the other, to accommodate the double peck of Norton’s continental kiss. ‘I hope we’re not intruding,’ she said apologetically. ‘It was
his
idea, not mine.’ Her eyes slid sideways towards her husband.

‘Of course you’re not intruding!’ Christopher laughed. ‘Although I’m afraid there’s nowhere for you to sit yet.’

The four friends joked and talked over each other’s sentences. They were excitable and the tone of their conversation was resolutely skittish.

Simon Ogilvy had been one of Christopher’s contemporaries at Oxford. His hair was thick and brushed back off the forehead, his nose large and aquiline. Like Christopher, Simon had also married a conspicuously younger woman. Amanda was fifteen years his junior, striking rather than beautiful: dark, full-figured and husky-voiced. She taught English at a further education college and also wrote poetry. Two collections of her sardonic verses had been published by Anvil,
The Resourceful Goddess
and
The Hostile Mother.

Drawing attention to the bottle he was holding, Simon addressed Laura. ‘Would it be possible to dig out some glasses?’

‘
Certainly,’ Laura replied.

‘She’s been very organized,’ said Christopher.

‘I can’t promise champagne flutes,’ said Laura, as she glided to the door, ‘but I’ll be able to find something.’ She returned, triumphant, holding up four wine glasses as if they were trophies.

‘Oh, well done,’ said Christopher. Then, pointing towards the French windows, he said, ‘Let’s do this on the terrace.’