by Chris Simms
‘They even tried to topple your bird table. Must be able to smell the seeds on it. I’ve banged it back in lower, but the base is all splintered from their dirty great claws.’
‘Well, I suppose they were living here first...’
‘No wonder the last lot didn’t do anything with the garden,’ he grunted, before disappearing into the large shed that jutted out from the side of the house.
Her eyes lingered on its arched double doors. Like so much of Lantern Cottage, the shed was slightly odd. Picturesque, but still slightly odd. The side facing the road had a hatch built into it, the windowsill consisting of a large slab of stone that extended out a good half-foot. Above the shuttered opening, an ornate wrought-iron hook had been bolted into the brickwork. This, the estate agent had told them, used to hold the lantern which gave the cottage its name. Steep eaves jutted out. Clinging beneath them, a row of swallows’ nests awaited their owners. Already she longed for spring and the birds’ return.
Her eyes travelled over the rest of the building. Extra bits had been tacked on over the years: a small conservatory at the back of the kitchen, a little extension consisting of a snug sitting room and box room above it at the cottage’s far end. There were swallows’ nests beneath the extension’s eaves, too. Or at least the beginnings of them. But, for some reason, the birds had abandoned their work. The shallow crescents resembled sad smiles, she thought, now shrouded in cobwebs. What was it that had put the birds off from nesting there?
When they’d found the property back in the summer it was empty. They put an offer in considerably below the asking price and, to their delight, it was accepted. That gave them a five-month period before they moved in to have various renovations done. It was Laura’s idea to have the ageing conservatory knocked down and replaced with a larger orangery which looked out over the rear garden.
It was there they’d sit with a glass of wine, music playing in the background, contentedly listening to the sheep bleating in the steep, tussocky fields that sloped down to a thickly-wooded valley. It still seemed scarcely possible such an idyllic property cost less than half of what they’d got for their town house back in Richmond.
Raising the latch on the outer porch, she let herself in, removed her shoes, unlocked the inner door and paused. Despite telling herself not to, she couldn’t help doing it. Listening for the mysterious trickle of birdsong.
In the first few days after moving in, she’d assumed it was Owen playing a recording in his study; some sort of last-minute adjustments to the piece he’d spent so long on. When she questioned him and realised it wasn’t, she’d become convinced it was the ring-tone of a mobile phone, accidentally left by one of the recently-departed builders. She could picture the device, fallen beneath a floorboard or inadvertently sealed behind a freshly-plastered wall. After all, the batteries of modern phones could last for ages, couldn’t they? But enough time had passed for her to be certain it was no phone. Yet still...on the occasions when she heard the noise, it seemed to be emanating from so deep within the house, she found it hard to conclude anything else.
Savouring the absence of sound, she padded across brand-new carpet to the kitchen. Above her stretched the old timber beams which finally swayed her in favour of the place.
A step led down into the flagstone-floored kitchen where a battered pair of sheepskin slippers awaited. She slipped them on and placed the shopping bag on the side. Broad beans; she was certain there was a bag in the freezer.
The door in the far corner opened and Owen stepped in from the garden.
‘Darling, I’m sorry, I’ve got badgers on my brain. How was it at the doctor’s?’
She see-sawed a hand. ‘A bit of a mix-up, to be honest.’
‘Oh?’
Bending before the freezer, she examined the frosty shelves. At the back, was her bottle of Grey Goose vodka. She kept it there for special occasions: like moving into a new house. Fat chance of that, she thought. Not with Owen’s concert so close. ‘I wasted too much time going on about my rubbish sleeping. By the time I got to the noise, my slot was up.’ She glanced back to see his attention had wandered to the shopping bag.
‘Slot was up?’
She stood, the bag of frozen broad beans in her hand. ‘Afraid so. I’ve got another appointment booked for next Tuesday. We’ll see if there’s any change before then.’
‘Right,’ he said vaguely, lifting the folds of the shopping bag. ‘What’s for supper?’
She didn’t know if it was his stooped posture or the tiny creak that ran through his final word, but a profound sense of sadness suddenly engulfed me. Not sadness: something stronger than that. Despair. A shrewish voice in her head rang out. Your mother was right, he’s old, he’s old and he’ll die leaving you without a child and you’ll be alone, alone in the world, too old to marry again, too old for a family with anyone else, no one will want you, you should never have married someone so much older –
‘Darling?’
She blinked to see him looking at her with a kindly smile. ‘Is it beef?’
‘Venison,’ she replied, crossing quickly to the huge porcelain sink. ‘From a local place.’
‘Lyme Park?’
‘That was it. Lyme Park.’ She turned the tap on, needing to have her back to him, just until the horrible urge to weep had passed. ‘Isn’t that butcher’s good?’
‘Crofthouse? It’s been in the family for generations, that place.’
She heard the chink of a bottle and knew he was contemplating a red for their meal.
‘I’m wondering whether to open a Côtes du Rhône. Plenty of punch to stand up to the venison.’
She continued rinsing the beans under the tap, even though there was no need. Just until my hands stop trembling, she thought. Just until this ugly surge of emotion subsides. ‘Maybe a Barolo? I’m grilling them.’
‘A Barolo it is, then.’
‘Lovely.’
A rattling noise from the drawer, the squeak of a cork and a hollow pop. ‘I’ll leave that to breathe.’
She felt sufficiently in control to glance over her shoulder. ‘Oh, Dr Ford wanted me to tell you his tickets are booked. He can’t wait.’
The mention of the forthcoming concert caused a troubled look to pass across his face. She knew he was agonising over the finishing touches, as he always did. She turned back to the sink. ‘Does it seem strange to be registered again at the surgery you went to as a child?’
He didn’t reply and she knew his mind was elsewhere. Pre-performance nerves. There was once a time, she reflected with a pang of regret, when I was familiar with them, too. ‘And to be under a doctor who was a couple of years above you at school.’
He eventually responded. ‘That doesn’t bother me. We always got on. Darling, do I have time to do a little more work? I’m having some problems with the dynamics at the end of the second movement. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s my notations.’
‘What problems?’
‘Oh, it’s the blasted sopranos. I want them to come in pianissimo possibile after the crescendo. They just don’t seem capable of getting it right.’
The tensions of working with a new orchestra, she thought. A process he seemed to always forget about. ‘Of course. This will be at least three-quarters of an hour.’
‘Good.’
She listened to his footsteps recede down the corridor then looked round the room. Where on earth did that ugly voice in my head come from? The lilies she’d recently bought were beginning to flower: shiny green casings being split by the waxy white petals within. Weird how the ones she’d placed on the windowsill up in her studio hadn’t done a thing.
Chapter 3
Birds chattered and squabbled outside the kitchen window. She watched them flit to the bird table where they rapidly pecked at the seed-covered platform before returning to less exposed perches.
Is there, she wondered, an order to their visits? The blue tits, robins and chaffinches all seemed to get along well. The nuthatch or
tree-creeper – she was not sure which – was shy, timing its visits to when no others were feeding. The starlings were like hyenas, swooping in as a noisy group, plundering all they could. Steaming, she thought. That’s what they called it in London: when gangs of youths went mugging en masse.
She’d woken in the night. Not from a dream. She wasn’t sure, at first, why. Owen was sound asleep, his gentle rasp too light to have bothered her. Then she spotted the glow at the edges of the curtains. The security light overlooking the back garden had clicked on. Something outside made a scraping noise. Plastic clattered on stone. Quick footsteps and a huff of breath. Heart beating slightly faster, she climbed out of bed and lifted the corner of the curtain just as the floodlight went out. But in that brief instant before the darkness surged back, she’d spotted movement. Something dark and bulky lumbering across the lawn.
‘How big do badgers get?’ she asked Owen over breakfast.
He looked at her for a moment, the muscles in his jaw flexing as he slowly chewed. ‘Big enough. They used to put dogs against them. Still do in some parts, I imagine.’
‘So they can be the size of a dog?’
‘I’ve seen old brocks – the males – not far off the size of a sheep. Why?’
‘The bin-lids were knocked off in the night. I heard one of them go and looked out the window. Something was making for the shadows just as the security light went out.’
‘Badger,’ he nodded. ‘We’ll have to put up a special fence if we want to grow anything in the summer. It’s a big job, too.’
She gave him a questioning look while reaching for the cafetière.
‘The fence has to go about three feet under the ground then out at ninety degrees for another couple of feet. Stops them digging under. I think they’ve got this place marked as a meal stop on their nightly rounds.’ Stiffly, he climbed down off the stool and brushed at the corners of his mouth as if smoothing an invisible moustache. ‘Right, I’d better be off. Don’t load the bird table with too much food; that only encourages the bloody things to sniff about.’
‘OK. What time will you be home?’
He lifted his leather satchel from the side, checking the brass buckles were secure. ‘Seven, eight? I’ll call you after lunch; I’ll have a better idea by then. What will you do today?’
‘Not sure. Poke around on the internet for a bit. See what else I can find on tinnitus.’
He frowned slightly. ‘Have you been hearing it again?’
‘Only once or twice,’ she lied.
‘OK.’ He bent forward to kiss her. ‘Try not to dwell on it – I’m sure it will only make it worse. Speak to you later.’
She sighed with exasperation. There was just too much information on the internet. It was now after ten and she was still sitting at the breakfast bar, flicking through screens.
Increasingly, she liked the forums best. Something about the actual experiences of others. The official stuff was fine: she now knew that tinnitus was a very common condition – one that affected about a tenth of all adults in the UK. Its onset could be linked to a stressful event – like moving house. It often occurred in later life. Some sufferers resorted to wearing a WNG – or white noise generator – to mask the sound. Please, she thought, don’t let it come to that.
But for her, it was real people talking about what it meant for them that resonated most.
The DJ who woke one morning after a festival to the sound of Morse code beeping in both ears.
The travelling salesman who had given his collection of noises different names: the Seven Dwarves for the chorus of whistles, the Flock of Pigeons for the barrage of fluttering, the Motel TV for the barely audible drone.
The pensioner who slept next to her aquarium to find solace in the gentle fizz of bursting bubbles.
Outside the window, the birds scattered and the garden was suddenly quiet. Strange, she thought, craning her neck to try and see what might have scared them off.
And that’s when the singing started. It was so insubstantial as to be almost the hint of a sound. An echo that hadn’t quite died. She fixed her stare on a distant plane creeping stealthily across the grey sky. Was the sound carrying from somewhere far away? Or was it in her head? She inserted the tip of a forefinger in her ear, wiggled it and listened again. The cascade of notes continued. She raised her hand and gently banged the heel of it against her temple, then did the same to the other side. It failed to dislodge the noise.
The mere act of getting off the stool – the whisper of her silk dressing gown – was enough to drown it out. She opened the window and remained motionless, listening for it again.
Now, she thought, I’ve let the sounds of the outside world in. An engine revving from down in the valley behind the house. A metallic clanking sound. A sheep bleating plaintively and, as if in response, a crow’s mocking caw. None of them loud, but enough to make pinpointing the trickle of notes impossible. Which meant it was coming from inside the house, surely?
She closed the window and then her eyes. Behind the faint whirr of her laptop she heard a snatch of it again. She looked down. It was coming from below her feet. The cellar! It was down in the cellar. But even as she started towards the narrow door in the far corner, her certainty lost strength. Now it seemed to be coming from behind the wall to her right. On the other side of that was the shed with the arched doors. Was it able to move, this bloody sound?
‘First things first,’ she muttered, turning back to the cellar door. The light switch was to the side. She turned it on before pushing the door open. The steep flight of stone steps led down to another flagged floor. She pulled her gown tighter and, as she took the first step, kept a handful of material clutched at her throat.
She remembered the first time they looked around the cottage. She’d recoiled at the cellar’s cold and clammy atmosphere. Owen had said that, if it was to be ever free of damp, they’d have to have it properly tanked. She’d had no idea what that meant.
The yellowish paint on the walls was peeling away, like the skin on a sunburnt back. The slabs making up the floor were covered in a moist sheen. On the bottom step, she looked uneasily about. At face level to her immediate right was the fuse box. The rows of switches were all down. Little labels below them read: cooker, smoke alarm, lights first floor, lights ground floor, lights basement, security alarm. At the end of the row was a large red one labelled Main Switch. A mass of grey wires sprouted from the top and ran up the wall before disappearing through the ceiling.
At the top of the wall on the far side was a small window that, according to the estate agent, swung inward on the hinges along its upper edge. The panes of glass were thick like the bottom of jam jars. Mildew or lichen had stained them a faint green. A low wall of misshapen bricks closed off a narrow rectangle of floor immediately below it. For coal, the estate agent had explained. In times gone by, the window – which was just below ground level outside – would be opened, allowing the delivery to be poured straight through.
Now the only thing in the bricked-off area was a layer of dead leaves that had fallen through the gap at the base of the window above. As she stepped off the bottom step, the leaves rustled and shifted. A shudder gripped her. Toads. Living among the decay. She found the animals repugnant. Owen said he’d removed them, but they must have got back in. Surviving on...it was too disgusting to even contemplate.
Elbows tight at her sides, hand still clutched at her throat, she stood perfectly still and listened. Shelves lined one wall and on them they’d piled various things. Crates of spare plates and crockery. A toolbox. Salad bowls, walking boots and tennis rackets. Tins of paints the decorators didn’t use up. Books on gardening. Paint rollers in their trays. A box containing spare batteries, light bulbs and Owen’s old mobile phone, before he was persuaded to upgrade to something with a touch screen.
A fragment of birdsong wafted across her ears and she looked up at the underside of the kitchen floor. Web-shrouded wires and pipes were tacked to the criss-crossing beams.
Did it come from above? She thought it did. Quickly, she climbed back up the stairs, relieved to be out of the dank pit. Standing in the kitchen, she readied herself to listen once more. But she knew – and she had no idea how – that it was gone. For now.
She realised the birds had also begun returning to the garden and she moved to the side of the room with the views over Manchester. Small splodges of colour were in the field beside the nearby church. The people, continuing with whatever they were doing. Time, she decided, to discover what they were up to. Maybe see if the vicar was there, too. Moving to a place like this, it seemed the right thing to do – even though she only ever went to church at Christmas.
Chapter 4
Her car plunged into the shadows of the lane and when she eventually reached the main road, she turned back towards the village. After crossing the river, the road rose sharply, taking her past a canal that led, in a series of locks, up to an ugly-looking cliff face of bricks. At its base was a row of three arches.
It was, she remembered Owen saying, and old battery of kilns for burning lime. Canal boats once transported the stuff from quarries in the nearby Peak District. It was fed into the top of the kiln and the temperatures inside reduced it to something powdery that farmers spread on their fields or builders used in cement. Now the canal lay still and brown, the kiln’s arches long since sealed up with grey blocks.
A small sign directed her to Oldknow church and, turning off the road, she found herself on a narrow lane bordered on both sides by head-high dry-stone walls. The road continued to climb before twisting round to reveal the church itself. Stone, darkened by passing years, made up its sombre walls – but warm light was shining out from the half-open front doors.
She parked alongside the cluster of vehicles in the small car park and made her way across the graveyard. She wasn’t sure whether to poke her head into the church or continue straight round to the field on the far side. A voice speaking from inside the porch caused her to pause on the path.