by F. R. Tallis
Why hadn’t he recommended Christopher? It would have been so easy. Well, as it happens, Hugo, Christopher Norton is working on something very suitable at the moment. He hasn’t written any serious music for ten years or so, but he played me a new electronic composition recently and I have to say it’s very interesting. It’d be something of a coup, Hugo. Imagine it: Christopher Norton’s return to the cutting edge. Your programme would be the first to announce his come-back. They used to call him the ‘English Stockhausen’. Do you remember? Advocacy of this kind would have been very persuasive, yet Simon hadn’t been minded to say such things, because, fundamentally, he did not believe Christopher deserved an introduction to Hasting-Bass. While Christopher had been attending glamorous parties in the 1960s and jetting around the world, Simon had been living an impecunious existence, refining his technique, poring over scores, finding his voice, night after night, year after year. Christopher would have to make comparable sacrifices if he expected to be given privileged access to the likes of Hasting-Bass. It was only right.
But now, looking at the empty office chair, Simon found his indignation vaguely embarrassing, even shameful. He had been petty and mean-spirited. His friend was dead. What did it matter anymore? The idea of belatedly assisting Christopher to realize his ambitions started to acquire a redemptive aura. Such an enterprise promised relief from the remorseful feelings that would otherwise trouble him in the hours when sleep did not come easily. Simon bent his knees and picked up a spool from the floor. He would listen to all of Christopher’s tapes. The early works – many of them unfinished – were certainly of merit. Perhaps some of the more challenging film music could be edited into a form suitable for broadcast on Radio 3. And then there was the piece Christopher had played him, the piece that his friend had been so excited about. One didn’t have to believe the sounds that Christopher had recorded and manipulated were spirit communications. The procedure that Christopher had employed was sufficiently novel and the overall idea sufficiently ‘conceptual’ to engage Hasting-Bass. Simon pictured himself being interviewed on a television arts programme, talking earnestly about his commitment to ensuring the survival of his friend’s music. Such selfless dedication would undoubtedly raise his own profile and impress his peers.
Simon cleared the spools from the mixing desk and gathered the tape boxes together. The majority had been labelled with cryptic titles: Phobos landing, Android Insurrection factory, Time Slip – Jurassic landscape 3, Motel (Isadora’s secret). It was all film music. Simon pressed the ‘on’ switch of an Akai 4000DS but the VU meters didn’t light up, so he walked around the room inserting plugs. The speakers popped and buzzed and the studio filled with a faint hum. When he returned to the mixing desk, he noticed that one of the cassette players was loaded. He pressed ‘eject’ and removed a C-60 cartridge. It was labelled Speech of Shadows: third movement. He pressed ‘play’, then traced the connecting leads to an amplifier and worked out how to direct the output through the speakers. Suddenly he heard a female voice saying something about an ocean. He continued listening. Complex chords were slowly constructed from oscillator pitches that entered one note at a time. The music evoked the ebb and flow of the sea, and in the brief interval that preceded each successive wave of sound, Simon heard the shimmering of electronic voices. Occasionally, single words or phrases stood out from the background murmur: ‘eternity’ . . . ‘we have been called’ . . . ‘peace’ . . . ‘the dominion of angels’. . . This unusual composition, Simon supposed, must be Christopher’s special piece, and he wondered whether Christopher had really recorded the dead, or whether his friend had simply shaped radio interference and random noise until it conformed to his expectations. That had certainly been his initial impression.
The music was strangely hypnotic. It drew Simon in, its soft undulations gradually dissolving thoughts, its continual unfolding encouraging the surrender of identity. He may even have fallen asleep once or twice – brief but perplexing absences. Amanda had been smoking a lot of cannabis lately, and over the last two weeks Simon had taken to sharing her perfectly rolled, compact reefers. Ordinarily this wasn’t his custom. Smoking cannabis made him feel very sluggish and his faculties were often blunted the following day by episodes of torpor. The music came to an abrupt end. It was clearly unfinished.
Having established the title of Christopher’s swansong, Simon began rifling through the tape boxes. He remembered that he had seen several opening flaps inscribed with the words Speech of Shadows. When he had set these boxes aside, Simon counted sixteen in all. The sides were covered in writing that identified the contents. Second movement – section 4, Tranquil; Fourth movement – We are many to The door is open. Female voices; First movement – introduction, spaced oscillators, all voices; Climax – I pray the Lord.
Simon selected one of the sixteen boxes, removed the spool from inside, and pressed it onto the supply spindle of the Akai 4000DS. After he had threaded the tape through the head block and guides, he attached the laminated end to the take-up reel. He then wound the tape forward a little and experimented with the controls until he could hear music. This time there were many voices, with only a sparse accompaniment. A resonant gong-like effect sounded intermittently against a chorus of exclamations and cries. This din carried on for several minutes but faded as a man’s voice declared, ‘Their suffering has purpose,’ and a woman replied, ‘The summer shall return.’
Through the window, the livid sky was divided by a branching river of white light. Almost simultaneously, thunder boomed. The speakers emitted a crepitating blast of electrical interference and when it subsided there was nothing but tape hiss. Simon was about to turn one of the chunky switches to the ‘fast forward’ position when he was halted by a rhythmic sibilance. He tilted his head to one side and strained to locate the source. Standing up, he pressed his ear against the fabric cover of one of the speakers and heard what sounded like someone whispering. It was impossible to understand what was being said, but once or twice he thought he’d heard his own name. He drew back, somewhat unnerved. The pitch of the tape hiss changed, becoming lower, and the speech became more distinct. ‘Simon. Simon.’ Although enveloped by noise, Christopher’s voice was clearly recognizable.
Simon looked at the revolving spool and then back again at the speaker. Why had Christopher recorded repetitions of his name? ‘Simon.’ The voice became clearer and was animated by a note of urgency. ‘Simon. Get out of the house.’ It was as though his dead friend were addressing him directly. ‘Simon. Get out of the house.’
Confused and disturbed, Simon withdrew from the horseshoe of equipment. A spool that he had failed to pick up earlier crunched under his heel.
‘Simon. Listen to me. Get out of the house.’
Again, it was as though the voice wasn’t pre-recorded. Christopher sounded uncannily present. Simon’s confusion curdled into fear and he found himself responding, ‘Chris?’
The window became a featureless white oblong and another explosive thunderclap sent vibrations through the floor. Simon could hear water overflowing from the gutters and splashing on the flagstones below. There was something else, another sound, intruding on his senses, but it wasn’t dramatic enough to draw Simon’s attention away from the speakers.
‘You must leave. You must leave now.’
There were more bright flashes and simultaneous claps of thunder and the lights on the electrical equipment began to blink. The studio had been unpleasantly humid, but now the temperature seemed to plummet. It was then that Simon identified the sound that, up until that point, had been fluttering in the background. He turned sharply and stared at the Akai. The recording had come to an end. One reel was empty, the other full, and the loose, untethered end of the magnetic tape was making a continuous noise. Yet he could still hear Christopher’s voice: ‘Run, Simon. Run.’
Simon’s head jerked back to its original position. He stared at the speakers, his body becoming tense. Cords of muscle swelled on his neck and cold perspirat
ion made his forehead as reflective as polished marble.
‘Run, Simon. While you can.’
The impossibility of what he was experiencing created a momentary paralysis. His thoughts lost coherence and terror vacated his mind.
‘Run.’ The barked command emerged from a foamy littoral of static.
When Simon finally reacted, he did so instinctively. He wasn’t aware of having made a decision to flee. A few seconds of time seemed to have been excised from his life. Suddenly, the studio door was coming towards him at high velocity. Then he was leaping down the stairs. As he made his descent he became aware of a curious perceptual distortion, a subtle disconnect between effort and accomplishment. It seemed that he was taking too long to reach the next landing, and when he arrived there, he was disorientated by double vision. There were two staircases leading down to the ground floor instead of one, and he couldn’t choose between them. The house seemed to expand and he sensed a proliferation of invisible avenues extending in all directions, a multiplicity of alternative routes that might lead him astray. His rising panic, which had the quality of a harsh, sustained screech, filled his mind with preposterous, fantastic visions of entrapment in a building that had ceased to obey the laws of physics.
Simon took a deep breath and gripped the banister rail. The reassuring solidity of the wood helped him to reconnect with reality. He shut his eyes and when he opened them again, the two staircases drifted together until they were overlapping. As soon as their reunification was complete, Simon seized the opportunity and completed his descent. He skidded down the hallway, knocking over a consul table, and when he reached the front door, he didn’t trouble to look back.
Outside, the rain was falling in sinuous sheets and the road had been transformed into a fast-flowing river. Simon pulled his jacket over his head and dashed to the car, where he made a fumbling entrance with keys that almost slipped from his wet hands. He sat behind the steering wheel of the Austin 1800, panting like an animal, watching the world blur behind a layer of opaque condensation. After turning the keys in the ignition, he activated the windscreen wipers. The swinging black blades removed a film of water and thumped loudly at the extremity of each synchronized oscillation.
What had happened?
Too much cannabis? Too much stress? An anxiety attack? An overspill of the contents of his unconscious? A psychoanalyst would say that he had experienced an auditory hallucination caused by excessive guilt. And he had once known a concert pianist who had had to abandon a promising career because stage fright gave her double vision. He glanced at his wristwatch, cleaned the inside of the windscreen with a paper tissue, and turned the car around.
By the time he got to Jack Straw’s Castle it had stopped raining. Simon was one of the first customers. He sat in a corner drinking single malt whiskies until his hands stopped shaking. A young man entered and strolled up to. the bar. While waiting for the barman to get his drink he looked over his shoulder and smiled at Simon. The boy’s teeth were evenly spaced and somewhat luminous in the half-light. Simon did not respond. Terror had blinded him, even to a thing of sublime beauty.
When Laura received Sue’s letter she couldn’t quite believe it. She savoured each line, each heartfelt expression of sympathy, and every night, just before the lights were extinguished, she slipped the envelope beneath her pillow. Lying on a paper-thin mattress and immured in a variegated, swirling darkness, she pictured Sue working in the garden, as seen from the nursery window. The image had the brute simplicity of Soviet poster art.
On the day of Sue’s visit, Laura was restless. She rehearsed conversations in her head incessantly. There was so much she wanted to say. Yet when Sue was finally sitting in front of her, something odd happened. The sense of urgency melted away and as they looked into each other’s eyes they seemed to enter into a state of wordless communion. When the warden looked away their hands slid across the table and their fingertips touched.
Eventually, Laura spoke. ‘I didn’t kill Faye.’
‘I know, love,’ Sue responded.
‘And I didn’t kill Christopher.’
‘Of course you didn’t.’ The phrase was spoken without a trace of condescension. ‘You couldn’t have. I know that.’
‘They don’t believe me. I told them what really happened, but they don’t believe me.’
‘I believe you.’
‘That house . . .’ Laura bit her lower lip and it became colourless.
Sue nodded. ‘I could feel it too, as soon as I stepped through the front door. I was worried about you . . . and Faye. That’s why I offered to do the rockery. I wanted to keep an eye on you. I should have said something. I’m sorry.’
‘You did – and I wasn’t very receptive. I remember.’
They talked softly while sustaining their surreptitious physical contact and Laura felt as if a healing energy was flowing from Sue’s body directly into her own. Her fingertips had started to tingle.
When their time was up, Sue said: ‘They can’t keep you locked up in here forever. They’ll have to let you out one day.’
For the first time since Faye’s disappearance, Laura imagined a life – her life – extending into the future.
September 1979
Three years later
The preceding winter had been catastrophic: blizzards, deep snow, unspeakable cold; retail markets had collapsed and public sector strikes had produced widespread despondency. The streets of London had been littered with stinking refuse and hospitals had closed their doors. Yet none of this had affected Terry Vance. His business was booming; the new Tory government would surely reduce taxes; and he and his wife, Eileen, had just moved from nondescript Enfield to glamorous Hampstead. He sensed change. A better world coming, one in which a man like him – ambitious, practical, and hardworking – could expect to be rewarded.
The residents of the Vale of Health viewed their new neighbours with suspicion and muted disapproval. Vance owned two sports cars – one red, one blue – with personalized number plates, and every Sunday morning he would emerge from his Victorian villa carrying a bucket of soapy water and proceed to hand-wash both vehicles. He evidently enjoyed the task and when he was finished, he would stand on the kerb admiring the glossy body-work and scintillant chrome. His wife (a short platinum blonde who was rarely seen without high heels, full make-up and encrustations of jewellery) usually brought him a mug of tea at the end of his labours. The sound of her immoderate laughter could be heard throughout the Vale.
In 1971, Vance had started an employment agency for computer-room personnel. It had become successful very quickly and he now rented offices overlooking Cambridge Circus. His achievement was substantial, given that he had started his working life as a humble punch-card operator.
One Sunday morning, shortly after moving to Hampstead, Vance was – as usual – washing his cars when he noticed a woman in dungarees standing on the opposite side of the road. She had arrived in a van spray-painted with stylized flowers and an advertisement: ‘Gaia: Landscape and Design’. Vance assumed the woman was looking for work and called out, ‘Sorry. I’ve already got someone to do the garden. They’ll be starting in a few months.’
She crossed the road and stood by his side. ‘How long have you been living here?’
‘Not long,’ Vance replied. He looked her up and down. She was quite attractive but definitely not his type. Her hair was untidy and he found her large, masculine boots almost offensive. Unfortunately, each stage of his negative appraisal was accompanied by a transparent change of expression.
‘I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ said the woman, ‘but when you bought this house, did they—’
‘Like I said,’ Vance snapped, ‘I’ve already got someone coming.’ He glanced at her van and then added with friendly malice, ‘A proper company – professionals.’
The woman’s expression hardened. ‘Do you have any children?’
‘What?’
‘Do you have any children?’
&nbs
p; ‘No. What’s it to do with you?’
She seemed about to answer his question but she stopped, on the brink of speech, and then sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘What doesn’t matter?’
‘I was going to offer you some advice. But . . .’ She hesitated again. ‘I’ve decided against it.’ She turned abruptly and clumped away. Vance chuckled to himself and set about removing some bird droppings from the soft-top of his TR6. ‘Mad,’ he muttered. When the woman drove off he didn’t even bother to look up.
Vance had wanted a swimming pool, but the garden designer (a rangy man with a weathered, sage-like face) argued against it. A swimming pool would be costly and not in keeping with the character of the house. Subsequently, Vance had lost interest in the project and Eileen was left to make all the decisions. There would be a wide lawn, several water features (including a Gothic fountain) and a pergola leading to a timber-framed summer house.
By the end of August, the clearance of the back garden was almost complete. The gazebo had been demolished and the apple trees felled. Many of the bushes and shrubs had been uprooted and burned. Two close-standing stone cherubs were uncovered and the designer had been keen to incorporate both of them into his plan. Eileen had agreed because she thought they looked ‘cute’, especially the one reading the book.
A small digger was hired to make trenches that would eventually become ornamental pools, and the exposure of fat, writhing worms attracted flocks of hungry birds. The air smelt of moist clay and the unpleasant, faecal undertow of decomposition.
Vance had had an uneventful day in the office, which was just as well, because he needed to get away early. He had arranged to play tennis with a friend at five. The traffic, for once, wasn’t too bad, and he managed to get home with plenty of time to spare. When he got out of the TR6, he could hear the digger at work. He found Eileen in the drawing room painting her nails. She was wearing a woollen dress that hugged her shapely figure, a belt made from large interlocking metal rings, and gold pendant earrings. The room was fragrant with her perfume.