The Orphan Choir

by Hannah, Sophie

  ‘Yes.’

  Except I don’t have a choice. Dr Ivan Freeman, director of music at Saviour, believes that Joseph, as one of his precious choir’s probationers, belongs to him at least as much as he belongs to me and Stuart. In Dr Freeman’s eyes, we have as little right to comment as Mr Fahrenheit has in mine.

  ‘I know a bit about Saviour College,’ Pat says. ‘Friend of mine’s a bed-maker there, took me to see the boys’ choir once, in the chapel. They were brilliant. I say go for it, much as you’d rather have your son here – I appreciate that, but it’s an amazing opportunity for him. My friend says Saviour’s choristers have gone on to have amazing musical careers, some of them – famous opera singers, prize-winning classical composers, all sorts. Real star stuff, she says. If your boy does well in that choir, he’ll be set up for life. And don’t they waive the fees for choirboys? You can’t say no to a deal like that, can you?’

  ‘On the noise nuisance front, what’s the next step?’ I ask abruptly. Pat’s speech about the benefits of a Saviour chorister education is uncannily similar to the one Dr Freeman regularly delivers. I’ve also heard versions of it from several of the other choirboys’ parents. I suppose they have to try and believe it’s worth it.

  ‘Next step.’ Pat slaps her notebook closed, making me jump. ‘If you’re happy to make it official, I can arrange to have a communication sent out to Mr Clay on Monday morning, first class post, so he’ll get it Tuesday. At first all we do is notify him that a complaint’s been made, what might happen down the line –’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘Well, we’ll inform him that we’ll be monitoring the situation,’ says Pat.

  Monitoring. That sounds like a terrifying disincentive.

  ‘Any instances of unwelcome noise in the future, you call us out straight away, we assess the disturbance. If we agree it’s a problem, we speak to Mr Clay in person, give him a final chance to behave reasonably. If he persists with the nuisance, we serve him with a noise abatement order.’

  I try to listen to her, but the paranoid babble in my head is drowning out her voice. What if he does what he did tonight every time: turns off the music when he sees her car pull up outside my house so that she never catches him, never has a chance to assess his noise and label it problematic?

  I’m so tired; my brain feels like a swollen balloon that’s about to burst.

  ‘After that, assuming he violates the order, we’re into serious measures,’ Pat is saying. ‘Confiscating his music equipment – speakers, sound system. Sometimes it goes as far as a court case. People are fined, some spend time behind bars.’

  A custodial sentence for playing Queen at too high a volume? ‘Really?’ I say.

  ‘I’ve known noise pests to be that stubborn, yes.’

  I picture Mr Fahrenheit in the dock, facing a stretch in solitary confinement. I kind of hope it goes as far as a trial at least, though I wouldn’t honestly want him to be locked up: that would be excessive. I am feeling more lenient, now that Pat has convinced me she can solve my problem.

  I realise that until she does, I can’t put the house up for sale. Legal obligations notwithstanding, I couldn’t live with myself if I sold it with an untamed Mr Fahrenheit next door. No, there’s a better way: Pat will sort everything out, and then I’ll be able to tell our buyer the full story, complete with happy ending. And give them Pat’s phone number, just in case Mr Fahrenheit tries his luck again once I’m gone.

  ‘Nine cases out of ten, the first letter we send out does the trick,’ Pat says. ‘Oh, it’d be very useful if you could log all incidents, keep a noise diary – also, of any interactions between you and your neighbour, your husband and your neighbour, even your son, though obviously he’s not here at the moment. But when he is. Anything at all. There’s no knowing at this point what we’re going to need, so, if in doubt, put it in the log. Depending on how stubborn your neighbour is and how much he wants a fight, it might come in useful.’

  ‘All right,’ I say. ‘Should I log what happened tonight?’

  ‘Yes, might as well.’ Pat stands up. ‘And remember, next time it happens, ring me straight away. Me or Trevor or Doug. You’ve got all the numbers, have you? Office hours, emergency call-out?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  Pat walks up to the mirror and touches its surface with the index finger of her right hand, exactly as she did with the glass of the framed painting in the kitchen. What an odd woman she is. Still, she’s also the noise nuisance Terminator, so she can do no wrong as far as I’m concerned.

  Once she’s had enough of pressing my mirror with her fingertip, she turns to face me and stares past my right shoulder into mid-air, as if that’s where I’m standing. ‘People whine that there’s no point ringing the council, they never do anything,’ she says. ‘Nothing could be further from the truth. You watch – you’ll see. We’ll sort out your Mr Clay. I don’t see it taking very long.’

  I feel less reassured than I did a few seconds ago. Is she allowed to be so cocky? Doesn’t the same council rule book that forbids eye contact in case a member of the public misinterprets it and falls in love with you also warn against promising people favourable outcomes that you can’t possibly guarantee?

  ‘I’m not allowed to tell you that officially.’ Pat plays with the zip on her tracksuit top, pulling it up and down. ‘Trevor wouldn’t. Doug wouldn’t. Never get their hopes up, that’s what we’re told, but I say if it goes our way, there’s no harm in having started celebrating early, and if it doesn’t go our way, well …’ She spreads her arms as if it’s obvious. ‘You’re not going to feel any worse because you spent a few months hoping for the best, are you? I’ve yet to meet someone things have gone wrong for who wishes they’d started feeling miserable a damn sight sooner. Have you?’

  ‘No. But …’

  ‘Goodnight, Mrs Beeston. Louise, sorry.’ Pat shakes my hand without looking at me. ‘Get some sleep. But fill in the log for tonight first, if you would. You’d be amazed how much detail a night’s sleep can wipe out.’

  I open the front door for her and she hurries away, bobbing from left to right as she goes.

  I sit up, my eyes still glued together with sleep. My mind slumps forward inside my body: boneless grey mush that I must force into an upright position because something is happening and it’s frightening, and I need to think about what it means.

  Music. Different. Too close.

  I open my eyes and feel as if I’m breaking them. Something’s not right. I run my fingertips along the hollows beneath them. They don’t feel hollow. They stick out: lumpy. It’s as if they’ve been filled in with a thick substance that has swollen and started to rot. Perhaps it’s just tiredness, or a build-up of angry tears I’ve held back. Moving my eyelids is like driving two sharp pins into the back of my skull.

  What time is it? I could find out by reaching for my phone on the bedside table.

  The singing isn’t coming from next door’s basement this time. It can’t be. This is sound that has travelled no distance. Children’s voices. Boys.

  Stuart snores beside me: a different rhythm from the music playing on the other side of the wall. That’s where it must be coming from: Mr Fahrenheit’s bedroom.

  That’s Joseph singing.

  No.

  The tune isn’t one I’ve heard, but I know the words very well. It’s the Opening Responses. Saviour College’s chaplain and the boys’ choir sing them at the beginning of every Choral Evensong.

  O Lord, open thou our lips:

  And our mouth shall shew forth thy praise.

  O God, make speed to save us:

  O Lord, make haste to help us.

  Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.

  As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

  Praise ye the Lord.

  The Lord’s name be praised.

  There are many different musical settings for these words, just as there are
for what Joseph calls the ‘Mag’ and the ‘Nunc’: the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis. Before Saviour College School kidnapped my son, he didn’t know the street names of any liturgical pieces of music.

  That’s Joseph singing.

  No. Impossible.

  I can hear my son singing to me through the bedroom wall.

  I am shaking. Trying very hard not to scream. I think I’m about to fail.

  Noise Diary – Sunday 30 September, 5.25 a.m.

  I have just put the phone down after having had the following conversation with Doug Minns from Cambridge City Council’s environmental health team. What follows is pretty much word for word, I think.

  Me: Hello, could I speak to Pat Jervis, please?

  Him: Can I ask what it’s in connection with?

  Me: A noise problem. My name’s Louise Beeston. I live at 17 Weldon Road—

  Him: Your details are in front of me. Mrs Louise Beeston. Noise disturbance from a neighbour at number 19. Loud music.

  Me: Yes, that’s right. If Pat’s still on duty, I’d really like her to come out to me again and—

  Him: You first rang this number to report a noise nuisance at 1.45 a.m. Is that correct?

  Me: I don’t know. Yes, probably. It was around that time. But since then—

  Him: Is the noise still continuing at an unacceptable level?

  Me: If you’d listen to what I’m trying to tell you, you might know the answer to that by now. Will you please let me speak?

  Him: I’m trying to establish the current situation, Mrs Beeston. Is the noise nuisance ongoing?

  Me: He’s not making a noise now this second, but he just woke me up, only about half an hour after I’d fallen asleep. Deliberately. I’d like Pat to come and—

  Him: It’s not possible for anybody to come out to you if there’s no noise being made at present. First thing on Monday, I can send a communication to your neighbour to the effect that there’s been a noise complaint made against him. Also, if you could log—

  Me: You don’t understand. Yes, I’ll log everything and yes, please, send him a letter, but I need someone to put the fear of God into him now, tonight. Otherwise what’s to stop him waking me up again in another hour, even assuming I could fall asleep? This is more than noise nuisance – it’s deliberate torture.

  Him: This is our only emergency line, Mrs Beeston. I’m on duty as the emergency officer. At present there’s nobody in the office aside from myself. I can’t stay on this line talking to you once I’ve established that you’re not suffering an ongoing noise nuisance that needs urgent attention.

  Me: If you’d bloody well listen to me, you’d find out that it is ongoing. He was playing music before, loudly – ask Trevor Chibnall. He heard it, when I rang him at 1.45. Then he stopped when—

  Him: ‘Ongoing’ means that the music is playing now. Is it?

  Me: No. I’ve said that. But—

  Him: Then I’ll have to ask you to ring again on Monday morning. I’m sorry, Mrs Beeston, but that’s our policy.

  Me: You are the least helpful human being I’ve ever had the misfortune to speak to. Goodbye.

  So, as I hope the above script demonstrates, I was not allowed to explain the situation. I will attempt to do so here, where there is no danger of my clogging up an important phone line.

  At 2 a.m., when I rang the council’s out-of-hours noise number for the first time, my neighbour at number 19 Weldon Road, Justin Clay, was playing loud music which Trevor Chibnall heard. Mr Clay had been playing loud music continuously since shortly after 10 p.m. What I did not tell Trevor Chibnall was that at first he was playing pop and rock music as he always does, but that after I went round to complain and ask him to turn it down (during which conversation he accused me of being a music snob who only likes classical) he turned off the pop and put on loud classical music instead. I cannot see any way to read this apart from as a deliberate taunt.

  Pat Jervis then came out to my house to assess the situation, but by the time she arrived the music had stopped. I worked out that she must have parked outside my house at the exact moment that Mr Clay turned off his music, and I believe he timed this deliberately, to make it look as if I had exaggerated, imagined or spitefully invented the problem.

  After Pat Jervis left, I went to bed and took a while to fall asleep because I was so upset and agitated. I finally fell asleep and was then woken again at 4.20 a.m. by more music, again coming from Mr Clay’s house, except that this time it wasn’t coming from his basement but from his bedroom. Previously, he has always confined his musical activities to the basement. His bedroom is right next to mine (our two houses are mirror images of each other), separated only by an inadequately insulated Victorian wall, and he knows this. When he and I first met, shortly after my family and I moved in next door to him and before there was any problem between us, we looked round each other’s houses at his instigation. I thought it was an odd thing for him to suggest, since we didn’t know one another, but it soon became obvious that he wanted to show off his no-expense-spared interior. So I hope I’ve proved that he knows very well where his bedroom is in relation to mine.

  The music he was playing in his bedroom was choral music. Specifically, it was a boys’ choir, singing liturgical responses of the exact sort that my son sings every Tuesday and Thursday evening at Choral Evensong in Saviour College’s chapel: another deliberate taunt. Mr Clay played the responses over and over again – I don’t know exactly how many times because I became too upset to count. How loud was it? I suppose these things are relative. My husband, woken by my distress rather than the music, said that it was barely audible. Yet it was loud enough to wake me.

  I believe that Mr Clay waited until he saw Pat Jervis leave my house, allowed me just enough time to calm down and fall asleep, and then deliberately woke me up, using a piece of music that he’d specially selected in order to provoke me. What has happened to me tonight is far more serious than a simple noise nuisance. It started as that, but has turned into something vicious and menacing that an unimaginative man like Doug Minns has no predetermined procedure for. Although there is currently no music spilling from my neighbour’s house into mine, the problem is ongoing in the sense that there is basically zero chance of me getting any more sleep tonight. I’m too scared of being woken again, which is precisely the effect Mr Clay must have wanted to achieve. Given his malicious and calculating track record, he might well decide to turn the music back on in another half-hour, and if he doesn’t it will be because he knows he doesn’t need to – he knows he’s instilled enough fear and dread in me that I won’t risk closing my eyes. So, yes, the problem is very much ongoing, because I’m terrified that he will do this again – maybe not every night but as often as he feels like it. He can do it any time he wants, and stop whenever he sees a council officer’s car pull up outside my house, so that no one ever hears or witnesses anything. And he knows I know that.

  Look, I’m not a fool. I get it. Obviously emergency out-of-hours noise officers can’t waste their time rushing to houses where once, long ago, there was a noise somewhere in the vicinity – that would be ludicrous. I understand why you lot have the rules you have, but would it kill you to be a bit flexible? Actually, I’m sure if Pat Jervis had picked up the phone instead of Doug Minns, the response would have been quite different. Pat seems to be properly on my side. I’m sure she’d have bent the stupid rules, come round, knocked on my neighbour’s door and told him in no uncertain terms, ‘Cut it out right now, or you could end up in court. This is harassment.’

  Maybe I ought to try the police again and tell them that the council’s environmental health department has no interest in preventing a gruesome murder on Weldon Road. That would get their attention.

  2

  I open my eyes and see wooden slats above me. That’s right: I lay down on the bottom bunk of Joseph’s bed at about 6 a.m., not for a moment imagining that I might fall asleep. That I did feels like a victory, briefly. Then my triumph gives
way to disappointment that I didn’t manage to sleep for longer. I feel worse than I did before: as if someone’s scraped the insides of my eyelids and scrubbed at my brain with a pumice stone.

  What time is it? It’s fully light outside, and no darker in here. The curtains in Joseph’s room are useless: white and gauzy, thin as tissue paper. I’ve been meaning to replace them since we bought the house and not getting round to it. Joseph, thankfully, cares no more about daylight seeping in than he minds about the noise Mr Fahrenheit makes every other Saturday night. He’s completely unaware of both. I’m lucky. Or I used to think I was, until he left home.

  Don’t say ‘left home’. He still lives here. You know that.

  Joseph has always been a brilliant sleeper: 7.30 p.m. until 7 a.m., however light, dark, loud or quiet his surroundings. Other mothers think I’m lying when I say this but it’s true: he has slept all night every night since he was four weeks old. Even his rare sick spells have always involved the kind of illnesses that have made him need to sleep overtime and more heavily. I used to feel sorry for my friends who had it harder – Eniola, who went three nights without sleep when Matthew had terrible colic, and Jenny, with her frequent dashes to A&E on account of Chloe’s asthma.

  I envy them now, both of them, and not only them. I envy any parent whose child hasn’t been stolen by a school for no good reason, which, come to think of it, is nearly every parent I know – any mother whose son is too insecure and clingy to settle or be happy away from home. It’s my fault that Joseph is as relaxed and independent-minded as he is. As a new parent, I wasn’t anxious or neurotic. I regularly left him with babysitters; I believed there was a strong chance they’d be at least as good at looking after a baby as I was, if not better.

  If I’d foreseen a conspiracy to take my son away from me, I’d have made sure to be one of those mums who never lets her child out of her sight. I’d have done everything I could to turn Joseph into the sort of boy who believes something bad will happen to him if his mother’s not there to protect him.