The Voices (21 page)

Now, lying on the sofa, absorbed by the intricate curlicues of the ceiling rose, she felt guilty. She had been weak. What did it matter if she had bags under her eyes? And what was the point of trying to preserve her looks? Beauty – or at least her kind of beauty – was unsustainable. She did not want to be defined by appearances anymore. It was so shallow. She thought about her husband, how Chris had been angry because of her insistence on throwing away her collection of magazines. He just didn’t understand. Nor could he understand, ever, because in all probability he would never know what the real cost of her success had been.

The door was ajar and Faye crawled out of the room.

‘Faye?’ That’s all she ever seemed to do, call out her daughter’s name, not only in reality but also in her dreams. ‘Faye? Come back, darling.’ Sometimes the child responded, but not very often. ‘Come on, honey. Please.’ Laura sat up, finding that repositioning her body was far more effortful than it should have been. ‘Do I really have to come and get you? Faye? Please, honey.’ Laura sighed and, feeling annoyed (as much with herself for not bothering to shut the door as with her daughter), she stood and stomped across the floor.

Laura found Faye standing at the bottom of the stairs, her head tilted backwards.

‘Faye?’

The child didn’t move. She seemed to have entered a trance-like state, just as she had before, when Laura had discovered Faye staring at the wall in the empty bedroom on the top floor. Her little body was so still that she looked like a doll, the limbs of which had been manipulated to achieve an even distribution of weight. Laura began to tremble, but she did not lose control. She wanted to study her daughter more closely, to make observations that might inform a diagnosis. The doctor had said that there was nothing wrong with Faye, but he was clearly mistaken. This wasn’t normal.

Laura sat down on the bottom step and passed a hand in front of Faye’s face. The child didn’t flinch. Leaning forward, Laura examined Faye’s eyes, which were very much like her own. The light was providently striking her daughter’s irises at the precise angle required to turn them gold. Faye’s stare was so fixed, so rapt, that it made Laura uneasy. Against her better judgement, she found herself glancing over her shoulder to make sure that there really was nothing remarkable to look at on the stairs or first-floor landing. Laura clicked her fingers next to Faye’s ear and brushed a knuckle against her cheek. ‘Faye, darling, what’s wrong?’ The child’s eyelids began to droop and the upper half of her body rocked backwards and
forwards. When she fell, Laura caught her and clutched her close, kissing her soft blonde curls. Faye began to cry. ‘It’s all right, honey,’ Laura murmured. ‘Don’t cry – everything’s fine.’ She stroked Faye’s spine and kissed her again. ‘Everything’s fine.’

When Christopher came down from the studio to have his lunch, Laura told him what had happened.

‘It was the same thing. Identical.’

‘Yes, but the doctor said she was OK.’

‘I think he’s wrong. I’m going to take her to see him again.’

‘OK.’

‘Can you come with me?’

‘I’m working. Why do you need me to go?’

‘I don’t think the doctor listens to me.’ Christopher’s expression was so disdainful that Laura quickly added, ‘All right. There’s no need. I’ll deal with it.’

Christopher expressed his frustration by making juggling movements with his hands. ‘Of course the doctor will listen to you.’

She shut down the conversation with a curt repetition. ‘I’ll deal with it.’

Three hours later she was sitting in the doctor’s waiting room dandling Faye on her knee. There were six other patients, one of whom had a bad, rattling cough. A
spritely old woman made polite conversation, remarking on Faye’s beauty and disclosing with pride that she was the mother of four ‘strapping’ sons. ‘A daughter . . .’ she said with some regret. ‘I’ve always wondered what it must be like to have a daughter.’

In due course the doctor appeared and invited Laura to enter his surgery. Over the flat expanse of his desk, she addressed a bald patch that had started to show on the doctor’s crown. He remained hunched over his notes, occasionally emitting a protracted humming noise, while she described Faye’s trance. When she had finished the doctor still didn’t look up. ‘You were here in May,’ he said.

She wasn’t sure whether this was a statement or a question. Judging that it would be rude to remain silent, she replied, ‘Yes. I was.’

Finally, the doctor looked up and made eye contact. ‘You know, children are not so very different from us adults. They get tired, their minds go blank, they nod off to sleep. It’s been two months since you were here last. I suspect that if these absences were indicative of a significant underlying problem, then they would have become more frequent in the intervening weeks. And look at your daughter, Mrs Norton. Really.’ It was remarkable how this one small word –
really –
pronounced with particular emphasis –
questioning, sceptical, accusatory – completely undermined Laura’s sense of being an intelligent adult. ‘Isn’t Faye a picture of health?’ His forced smile begged Laura to reflect on her folly.

‘I’ve never seen children do this before,’ she responded.

‘Do you have a great deal of experience with children?’ It was a question with one purpose only – to expose her lack of authority, to embarrass and belittle her.

‘No,’ she mumbled. ‘No. Not really, but. . .’

The doctor talked over her unfinished sentence. ‘As I said to you before, I could refer your daughter to a neurologist. . .’

‘But you’re not going to.’

The doctor raised one of his eyebrows before adopting a tone of casual familiarity. ‘My son used to go to sleep while he was eating. And – if I’m not mistaken – it started happening when he was about Faye’s age now.’

‘She wasn’t asleep. Her eyes were open.’

The doctor ignored this objection and leaned forward. His gaze became penetrating. So much so that Laura detected a hint of stagecraft in his melodramatic attitude. ‘And
you,
Mrs Norton. Tell me, how have
you
been recently?’

‘All . . . all right, I suppose.’ Dishonesty made her
stumble over her words.

‘You see,’ the doctor intoned gravely, ‘I can’t help wondering whether the problem – as you describe it – is only a problem in so far as it reflects your own anxieties.’

She surprised herself by snapping. ‘No! That’s not it. That’s not it at all.’ The doctor withdrew. ‘I’m worried about my daughter!’

‘Are you taking your medication?’

‘Oh, Jesus Christ . . .’ Laura shook her head. She wanted to scream. She had feared this would happen.

The doctor spoke firmly. ‘Mrs Norton, I can’t help you if—’

‘Forget it. Just forget it.’

She got up and placed Faye in the pushchair.

‘Perhaps you should come back tomorrow. You’re obviously quite distraught today’ He pushed his chair back and stood, demonstrating that he had not forgotten his manners. When Laura reached the door she turned and sighed. She considered apologizing, but then dismissed the thought. ‘I can fit you in first thing tomorrow morning,’ the doctor persevered.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said, opening the door and manoeuvring the pushchair through the gap and out into the waiting room. The man with the cough was wheezing
into a handkerchief held over his mouth. A few ominous red stains were visible on the white material.

As she rushed away from the practice she began to cry. She was furious and her head filled with the militant language that she often heard at the bookshop in Islington.
Chauvinist! Male chauvinist pig!
He had no right to treat her like that – no right at all. She carried on walking for some time, not paying very much attention to where she was going. Eventually, her pace slowed and she became more aware of her surroundings. She was walking down a wide, leafy road with large red-brick houses on either side. Her temper cooled and she sat down on a bench. Faye had gone to sleep.

She remembered the argument with her husband over the magazines. He had stood beside her, bemused, perhaps even horrified, and said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ It was obvious that he didn’t like what she was becoming. The memory came to her in a peculiar form, like a black-and-white photograph taken from a third perspective. She saw herself sitting at the kitchen table and Christopher, his expressive hands arrested in the air like a shop-window dummy. It was a desperately sad image.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ She repeated his words
out loud and suddenly she was besieged by doubt. ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I really don’t know.’

Christopher waited until he was alone in the house before he telephoned Amanda Ogilvy. There was always a chance that Simon would answer, but there was nothing he could do about that. As he listened to the ringing tone, he was conscious of a fluttering sensation in his stomach. He was relieved when Amanda’s voice sounded in the receiver. Their conversation was light in tone and he fancied that her frequent laughter was uncharacteristically girlish and, perhaps, somewhat nervous. ‘Your book,’ he said. ‘When shall I bring it over?’

‘Just a minute.’ She put the phone down and went to consult her diary. Christopher could hear an aggressively discordant toccata being played on a piano. He thought of his friend seated at the keyboard, engrossed in his music, oblivious. Amanda returned and said, ‘How about tomorrow morning?’

‘Yes,’ Christopher replied. ‘That would be fine.’

‘Ten thirty?’

‘Yes. Ten thirty.’

The following day he scraped the bristles off his chin with a razor and applied a little too much aftershave.
Subsequently, he drove to Muswell Hill, where he parked his car – not outside the Ogilvy residence, but in an adjacent side street. Fortunately, there were no twitching curtains.

Christopher pressed the doorbell and some chimes sounded inside the house. He listened for a piano, but couldn’t hear anything apart from the birds and the constant low rumble of London traffic. Amanda had decorated the bay window with coloured transfers, just like those he had seen at The Earth Exchange – two mandalas and a CND peace symbol. She opened the door and invited him in, but it was only when the door was closed that she offered him her cheek to kiss. He handed her the book. She took it, thanked him for taking the trouble, and put it on a shelf.

‘Do you fancy a coffee?’ Amanda chirped.

‘Yes, thanks,’ he replied.

On entering the kitchen, she said, ‘Simon’s got a rehearsal today. He won’t be back until this evening.’

‘Right,’ said Christopher.

An hour later they were in bed together.

When they had finished making love they rolled apart, hot and needing to cool down. A fan, placed on a chair by the window, was rattling loudly but having no effect on the temperature. Christopher turned to look at Amanda.
She was lying on her back with her eyes closed, her arms thrown above her head and her legs spread. Her dusky skin was coated in a film of perspiration that gave it an appealing, smooth sheen. He found the ampleness of her body satisfying. He liked the slight bulge above her waist, the generous girth of her upper thighs, and her breasts which, even when deflated by the redistributive force of gravity, still retained a residual curvature. Her pubic hair was thick, fleecy and remarkably black – a black so intense that it fascinated him.

The room was hazy and humid.

Amanda lit a cigarette and let clouds of smoke rise up from her mouth in silky, braided columns. Even though the curtains were drawn, the light was strong enough to penetrate the material. Everything was bathed in a decadent, reddish luminosity.

A conversation of sorts began: a rather superficial conversation about what they were both going to do later that afternoon. They were not ready to discuss implications, consequences. It was far too early. Christopher asked for a cigarette and when he drew on the filter the nicotine rush made him shiver with pleasure.

After a lengthy silence Amanda said, ‘I suppose that counts as unfinished business.’

‘What?’

‘You know – the beach.’

‘How do you mean, unfinished?’

‘Well, we didn’t get very far last time, did we?’

‘What?’

She repositioned herself so she could see him more clearly. ‘We didn’t get very far,’ she repeated.

‘Far enough. Isn’t
all the way
far enough?’

She smiled. ‘God, you must have been stoned.’ She rolled off the bed and stood up; the sight of her hair tumbling down her back and the loveliness of her buttocks stopped him from responding. Amanda slipped her arms through the sleeves of a kimono and left the room.

Later, in the car driving home, Christopher wondered what she had meant. They
had
gone all the way. He could remember, albeit dimly now, the warmth of her moist interior, made inordinately exciting because the sea that they had been standing in was cold. The contrast had produced an extraordinary amplification of sensitivity. He could remember the moonlight on her wet shoulders, her husky groans close to his ear. Amanda was flattering herself. Perhaps she wasn’t as robust as she thought. It wasn’t he who had been heinously stoned, but her. Yes, that was the explanation. It must be. Nevertheless, as Christopher pressed his foot to the floor and accelerated
down Hampstead Lane, the idea that they both possessed conflicting memories of the same event made him feel strangely uncomfortable.

Christopher felt nervous in the presence of his wife. Her powers of intuition worried him. When, all those years ago, they had driven down to the villa near Cannes, Christopher had been amazed by Laura’s map-reading skills. Her directions were faultless. In due course he had noticed that she wasn’t really looking at the map at all, but making consistently correct guesses nevertheless. It had amused him at the time, although now, he supposed, he would find such behaviour rather irritating – in the same way that he now found her ability to guess what he was searching for rather irritating. He avoided Laura for the rest of the day and informed her over a hurried supper that he intended to work late. In fact, he spent the remainder of the evening listening to French piano music and thinking about Amanda.