by Chris Simms
‘A viral infection of my inner ear. He said it should clear up on its own. A few weeks.’
‘Really? A virus?’
‘Yes,’ she beamed. ‘A virus.’
‘Well, that’s great news.’ He said nothing more, but he didn’t need to. It was obvious to Laura what he’d been wondering about the sounds: were they a presage of something more serious? Some kind of relapse to how she was before. The atmosphere in the room was noticeably lighter.
‘Is that for me?’ He reached for the A4 envelope with Do Not Bend printed across the top.
‘Yes. The postmark says it’s from the Bridgewater Hall. Oh, there was another letter this morning. I opened it, assuming it was for me. But it was to the previous occupants of Lantern Cottage. Did you know they had a son? I’m sure the estate agent described them as a couple.’
Owen had got his envelope open. He slid out a glossy print from inside. ‘Thought so,’ he said happily. ‘I asked for a copy of the posters they’ve put up all over the Bridgewater Hall. We could frame this. Hang it in the downstairs toilet.’ He turned the notice round so she could see it.
A stock publicity shot of Owen conducting. She’d seen it so many times before. He really needed something more recent. The lettering announcing the event was refined, elegant. Running along the base of the sheet were logos from all the companies who’d sponsored it. The Cooperative Bank. McVitie’s. Bruntwood. Astra Zeneca. Urban Splash. All businesses or companies with some kind of link to Manchester, she assumed. ‘It looks wonderful.’
‘Well,’ Owen said. ‘It will brighten up the loo. You were saying?’
‘The last people who lived here. Did you know they had a son?’
‘I don’t even remember their names. Who we they again?’
‘Edith and Roger Hall. The son is called William. This letter was about his transport to a respite centre near here. He must be disabled.’
‘Sounds it. Did you return it to sender?’
‘Of course. But I was sure the estate agent said the couple moved from here because they were getting too old to cope with going up and down the lane. Don’t you remember?’
‘Afraid not.’ He tipped his head to the side. ‘Well I never! Where did this come from? In a glass jar, too.’ He’d spotted the Ovaltine and was out of his seat.
‘The little shop in the village,’ she answered. ‘Not the supermarket, the other one.’
‘Ovaltine,’ he fondly rotated the jar. ‘That takes me right back. I used to drink this as a boy.’ He started to murmur a little song under his breath. Something about Ovaltinies.
She couldn’t help but smile at the sight of him. Hair ruffled, shirt almost hanging out: in many ways, she thought, he still was a boy.
‘Do you know?’ he said, tapping a finger against the lid. ‘I think I’ll take a cup of this with me to bed.’
After he’d gone up, she sat at the kitchen table listening to the swish and rumble of the dishwasher. She looked at the clock. Not even ten. She didn’t feel in the slightest bit tired. She contemplated seeing if there was anything on TV then realised the front room still needed to be cleaned. The firemen had tramped around in their boots, spreading soot all over the carpet.
She opened the laptop instead to check her emails. There was another one from the lady in America. Tamsin Harper. The subject line said, Viral ear infection. Probably saying how lucky I am that I don’t have tinnitus, she thought. What had the woman said about hers? A hurricane blowing through a keyhole. How did people cope? She opened the message and began to read.
Hi Laura, I’m very happy for you. A viral infection! No doubt about it, that would be a nice resolution. I was wondering – did your doctor ask if the noises you hear are in one or both ears? (Unilateral or bilateral?) Did you check if there’s any pattern to when you hear the noise? Has he referred you to an ENT specialist or consultant in audiovestibular medicine? There’s only so much a doctor can tell by looking into your ear with an otoscope. Believe me, I’ve been there, done that! You didn’t mention experiencing any discomfort with the noise. Normally I’d expect that with a middle-ear infection. Sorry to ask these questions, I hope you don’t mind.
Laura stopped reading. Actually, she thought, I do. I do mind you asking all this. But another part of her was already thinking that Dr Ford hadn’t asked those things. She returned to the message.
It’s reasonable for you to expect a more thorough check-up. A full hearing test, X-ray, blood test, even a CT or MRI scan.
She had to stop reading again. What did the woman think this was: an episode of ER? Blood test? MRI scan? She was obviously labouring under the illusion everyone in the UK had private health care. Yeah, why not an MRI scan? Let’s throw in some psychoanalysis and anything else that comes to mind, too. Silly woman. Laura closed the laptop without bothering to reply.
Right, she said to herself, taking the cleaning stuff from beneath the sink. In the front room she paused before the hearth to examine the mess of powdery marks.
They almost looked like they’d been put there by a brush. She supposed a bird’s feathers were similar to a paintbrush. She imagined the marks were a message in a long-forgotten language. Hieroglyphics. Mayan code. Maybe something even older.
Could the sound of birdsong have been coming from the chimney? The thought had suddenly materialised in her head. Whatever the bird was, it might have built a nest up there. There could even be chicks; the noises they made would certainly be faint. Lacking in strength. Perhaps that’s what she had been hearing. Except it was November. No chicks would be hatching now.
She considered how the chimney stack towered above the roof. There would be room inside it for a nest, that was for sure. Several, probably.
Getting down on all fours, she poked her head into the hearth. Smoke-stained bricks angled in above her. The air felt cool. She craned her neck, twisting uncomfortably so she could see up the chimney itself. Blackness. No stars or glimmer of the night sky. Just complete and utter blackness. Like a physical entity, hanging there, silent and brooding. She was hit by the sudden sense that something was up there in the darkness, staring down at her. Shrinking away, she straightened to a kneeling position and regarded the fireplace. Her pulse had speeded up. The feeling of something being wrong persisted. Something what? Dangerous? Not dangerous. Just something…not right.
She stood, glad to move away from the dark opening and over to the window. She pulled on rubber gloves and sprayed the sill with disinfectant. A full hearing test. MRI scan. She couldn’t help pondering over the American’s latest message. Dr Ford had mentioned none of those things. Wouldn’t a virus be accompanied by other symptoms? A headache at the least?
She began scrubbing at the droplets of dried blood and looked at the hearth once again. The thing needed a bloody good clean, too. All of it. Tomorrow, she decided, I’ll search online for a chimney sweep. Get any birds’ nests dislodged, along with anything else that might be trapped up there.
Chapter 14
Leaning to the side, she dropped the tissue into the toilet bowl and pressed the flush. No spots of blood or any other signs. Her nightie slipped back down as she stood. As she washed her hands, she looked in the mirror and examined the skin around her eyes. It looked tired. I feel tired, she told herself. Drained. Is this what getting old means?
The singing had broken out in the middle of the night. It had never happened in the middle of the night before. 3.07 was when it first came. A burst of notes, sometimes growing fainter, sometimes getting stronger. She had lain on her back listening to it, Owen fast asleep beside her. The certainty gradually grew. This noise is not in my head. She turned on her bedside lamp then lifted her hand to wake Owen; surely he’d hear it now, in the silence of the night? ‘Owen! Owen! The birdsong is back. Owen!’
It was like trying to rouse an animal from hibernation. The pattern of his breathing changed first, followed by his head tilting back. His mouth opened slightly and tremors passed through the skin of his eyelids. The bird song warbled
on.
She shook his shoulder harder. ‘Owen, can you hear it?’
A hand appeared from beneath the duvet to wipe at the moist skin at the corner of his mouth. ‘What?’
‘The bird singing!’
The slack skin of an eyelid twitched more strongly, like a cinema curtain about to rise. The singing stopped as it finally opened. ‘Hear what?’
‘Birdsong. Just now. Did you hear it?’
He cocked his head, eye already closing. ‘I don’t hear anything.’
‘Not now. Just before.’
‘No.’ His voice was groggy.
‘Never mind.’
His skull sank back against the pillow. ‘Night.’
‘Night.’ Within seconds, his breathing had deepened and slowed. She reached over and turned her beside lamp off. About twenty minutes later, it started again. A quick burst, silence, another quick burst. Never long enough for her to try and rouse Owen again.
It seemed to be coming from somewhere so close, yet, at the same time, so very far away. Not in any room. The roof, maybe? Or the top of the chimney? It wasn’t a nightingale, so which other birds sang at night? Did nightjars? She wondered if it was something exotic that had escaped from its owner’s house. There must be dozens of foreign species that were happy to sing during the night. But how would it survive the cold of Britain in November?
At breakfast, she debated whether to say anything to Owen. He probably had no memory of her waking him. He was bent over his bowl, methodically working his way through some muesli. She knew his mind was on the concert. He was now completely in its shadow and would remain that way until it was over. He used the tip of a finger to prod some raisins on to his spoon. Raisins. ‘I found an empty box of raisins in the garden,’ she suddenly said. ‘Next to the plant pots on the patio.’
He looked up, eyes refocusing as he travelled back from wherever his thoughts had taken him. ‘Raisins?’
‘Yes, a box of raisins. One of those little ones to go in a child’s packed lunch. Snack-size.’
‘I see.’ He started to look back down and she knew its significance hadn’t sunk in.
‘We don’t have anything like that. At least, I haven’t bought any. Have you?’
The question elicited a half smile. ‘Me? Darling, when do I have time to go shopping?’
‘It seems strange, how it got there. It’s not like it could have blown in from a neighbour’s garden.’
He hunched a shoulder. ‘Dropped by a rambler? Or mountain-bike rider. They sometimes come past, heading out to the moorland further up.’
‘But in the back garden?’
‘Sorry?’
‘In the back garden? How would it get from the front lane into the back garden?’
He gave a sigh of exasperation. ‘Well, what do you think? You obviously have a theory.’
His tone cut her. ‘No… Not really. The only thing was if it’s linked to the disturbances I’ve been hearing at night –’
‘Ah, badgers. Yes, you’re probably right. One could have carried it in its mouth from a bin somewhere else. Dropped it when it smelled the bird food.’
No, she thought. That’s not what I meant. There were no teeth marks or drool on the box: it looked like it had fallen out of someone’s pocket. Someone who was poking round our garden at night. ‘I suppose so.’
He pushed his bowl to one side. ‘Have you seen my car keys?’ He glanced about, one hand checking his pockets. ‘The bloody things.’
‘On the fridge, where you left them last night.’
‘Really?’ He stepped to the side and plucked them from the top. Why he didn’t just use one of the wall hooks, she could never understand.
‘And sweetheart?’
He looked back at her, almost out of the kitchen door. ‘Yes?’
‘A kiss would be nice.’
‘God, sorry.’ Looking chastened, he came across and planed a quick peck on her cheek. ‘This concert…’
‘I know,’ she replied, reaching up to wipe a fragment of cereal from the corner of his mouth. ‘You didn’t tell me if you sorted out the issues with the sopranos.’
He grimaced. ‘I sent them home. I haven’t time for people playing silly buggers.’
She looked down, trying to hide her concern. ‘Sent them home?’
He jangled the keys about in his palm. ‘That’s right. We needed to work on the fourth movement anyway. They have no part in that, so I said they could clear off. Hopefully they’ll use the time to study the passage and actually work out what I’m trying to achieve.’
‘Oh. Are they due back in today?’
‘Yes. But whether we’ll revisit the start of the third movement is another thing. We’ll see how things go this morning.’
Leaving an entire section of a choir hanging about. It was a risky move on Owen’s part. She knew that he was trying to let them know who was boss. But the choir would have its pride. And he was just one, she thought. They are many. No wonder his stress levels seemed especially bad. ‘Let me know what time to expect you home.’
‘Of course. We’ll speak later.’ He headed for the door.
She turned her back on the kitchen window, of the view of him appearing round the side of the house and unlocking his car. Usually she liked to watch him setting off in the mornings; she would from their house in Richmond. But she was afraid the terrible thoughts would barge into her mind. Thoughts that had no place in her head.
The laptop’s screen sprang to life. As the sound of Owen’s car started up she contemplated the email icon on the desk top. Tamsin Harper and her questioning of Dr Ford’s prognosis. The woman, Laura thought, has a presence now, in my computer. I might not understand the science behind how she’s in there – the technicalities by which her opinions are sent and received – but she’s there all the same. And I let her in. I should never have joined that forum.
She moved the cursor to the internet browser and went online. After a second of thinking what to type, she decided on, Chimney Sweeps, Derbyshire.
A good half-dozen came up. Scanning the bit of text visible with each entry, she saw Pomerell & Son were based in nearby Glossop.
She brought up his site. Fully accredited with the Confederation of Chimney Sweeps. In business for over sixteen years. Sounded a good bet.
After having a shower and getting dressed she returned to the laptop and called the number on his contact screen.
‘Andy Pomerell here.’ He had a gentle voice. Probably somewhere in his late fifties.
‘Hello, my name is Laura Wilkinson. I’m ringing to see if you could sweep our chimney.’
‘Where are you, Laura?’
‘We live near Oldknow. Just outside it.’ She’d never had to give directions before; would he have heard of the lane? It was so tucked away… ‘You turn off the B6104 road near a big mill. There are a few houses – not many – and you carry on until you see a building on the left. It’s all boarded up, but I think it was a working men’s club once. There is a sign on it. It’s not a house, anyway. About thirty metres past that you need to look for a narrow lane –’
‘What’s the property called?’
She realised she was waffling. ‘Lantern Cottage.’
‘I know Lantern Cottage all right. Magnificent chimney you’ve got – on the original part of the property.’
‘That’s the one. Have you swept it before?’
‘No. I’ve often passed it: I used to go mountain biking. Some good trails beyond your place. Nice couple used to live there.’
She felt herself sit forward. ‘An elderly couple, the Halls?’
‘Could have been. They bought me out a cup of tea once when I was changing a tyre.’
‘And their son, William?’ she stayed silent, waiting for an answer.
‘Son?’
‘A teenager?’
‘Right you are.’ His tone lifted. ‘I’m busy rest of the week. Can it wait while Monday?’
‘The earliest you could come is next M
onday?’
‘It is. Wood-burning stoves – I’ve never been so busy. Folk everywhere are wanting them fitted.’
She could try another chimney sweep, but anyone that busy must be doing something right. And he knew about the Halls. ‘Monday will be fine.’
Chapter 15
The village high street was quiet. What little traffic that passed her was going in the opposite direction towards the A6 and Manchester. The modest car park opposite the GP practice had spaces, and after putting twenty pence in the machine at the entrance, she made her way back toward the estate agents, musing on the difference in parking charges between Oldknow and London.
The silver BMW owned by Mark Scott was not parked in its usual place at the side of the property. She peered at the windows, but the view into the office was obscured by displays featuring properties for sale: everything from cramped flats in the grim terrace opposite the mill to converted barns with indoor pools, paddocks and grazing land.
A young lady barely out of her teens looked up from her desk as Laura pushed open the front door. ‘Hello there.’
‘Morning,’ Laura replied, glance going to Mark’s work station. No sign of him. ‘I don’t suppose he’s around?’
‘Out inspecting properties,’ she replied. ‘Can I help?’
She took a quick breath in. ‘I moved into a Lantern Cottage recently.’
She raised a finger. ‘Mrs Wilkinson?’
‘Yes.’ Her smile was accompanied by a small shake of her head. ‘Sorry, I’m still getting used to people knowing my name.’
She beamed back at Laura. ‘I’m Becky.’
‘Hello Becky, nice to meet you.’ She couldn’t imagine Becky negotiating prices or closing a sale: she seemed far too young. Perhaps she just did admin. ‘The reason I popped by is because I could do with a forwarding address for the previous occupants of Lantern Cottage. We’ve been getting items for them in the post.’ Well, a part of her said, just one. But you’re not to know that.
Becky frowned. ‘The sorting office up the road should be redirecting anything before it gets to you. I’m sure Mark would have made the necessary arrangements with Derek. He usually does.’