The Chimes

  ‘Do you trust me?’

  I nod.

  ‘Then trust that you can do this,’ he says.

  ‘If I make a story that puts the memories together, what then? How do we share it?’

  ‘You tend the plot. I sing,’ he says. ‘Isn’t that how the forecast goes? I will put the story to music, and we will play it using the Carillon.’

  The full risk of this, said out so plain, shakes me. It seems small to raise the other thing.

  ‘I’m not sure I can keep them.’

  ‘You mean your own memories?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re not going to forget now, Simon,’ he says. ‘Think of all the work you’ve done. We’ve done. Your memory is much stronger now. You’re not really scared of that, are you?’

  But something, whether my breathing or my silence, must let him know I don’t believe him. He sits back up.

  ‘OK, here’s what we will do. You’re not going to forget anything. Not your own memories, the ones that make you who you are. Not these new memories, which are our task and our test at the moment. There are things that go deeper than Chimes, correct? Bodymemory for one. We’re going to use that.’

  And then he sings our comeallye and orients it to the line of the river and the Limehouse Caisson.

  In my mind I am standing in the amphitheatre. I hear the ferns, the outlines of the tunnelmouths.

  Lucien sings a tune and I follow it through the under. I see the tunnels, the turns he takes, the shifts, the corners. Then he stops.

  ‘Where did I get to?’ he asks.

  ‘The entrance to Mill Wall Tunnel.’

  ‘Good. Now sing it back to me.’

  I do. As I sing, I see myself running.

  ‘Good. Now, you are going to hide your memories in mind’s ear.’

  I look at him to see if he is joking, but his face is serious, intent.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, for each of your memories, you’ll find a turn or a landmark on this run, and then you’ll put it down. If you want them back, you simply need to retrace your steps on this run.’

  And so we start. Back at the amphitheatre. Each turn I stop and I search my memory, and I consult Lucien to check them, and I choose one and I see myself putting it down in the under.

  The burberry I place down in the muddy water of the sluice gate by the first cadence of the first tunnel. The riverstone I place next, where the next tunnel meets the river inlet. I bury the woodblock at the start of the comms tunnel that breaks off from the river inlet and leads south.

  At each turn, each shift in the melody that tells of a split in the tunnel or a change in direction, I place a memory. A roughcloth strip, a bar of chocolate, a dog collar, a paralighter. Until the tune is the tunnels and the tunnels are littered with the story that is my life so far.

  ‘Now we both have the tune,’ says Lucien.

  I sit there, wondering if it will work, wondering how solid a foothold my memories can make in the spiderweb of the tunnels. But Lucien’s voice is confident and it makes me feel somewhat better.

  ‘You can run whatever direction you need through it. Do it presto, lento, da capo al fine, whatever. The memories should stay in place. I can downsound it with you, anyway, if you want.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I tell him, and get up. I don’t know what to say. The space between us has become charged with a silence that seems to be growing.

  ‘There’s one missing,’ I say.

  ‘Which?’ says Lucien, but he doesn’t look at me. He lies back again, staring at the ceiling and rubbing the spot between his eyes as if he has a headache.

  ‘The last one I made. The night before we arrived in Reading.’

  Lucien doesn’t reply. The silence is thick and it’s like sightreading a difficult tune in front of a cold audience.

  ‘What happened in the memory?’ asks Lucien.

  My mouth is dry. What to say to that? Either he’s forgotten it or it meant nothing to him. Whatever the case, the message is clear. He is not going to help me.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I say, with a hot flush of blood in my face. I stand up. ‘I can remember it by myself.’ I pull my jacket back on.

  ‘Simon,’ says Lucien. I can’t read his voice at all. But he’s trying to return to the way things were. Before. And I don’t want to return.

  I need air. ‘I’m going on deck,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t,’ says Lucien, sitting up.

  I turn to him. ‘Why? What’s the bloody point in staying here?’

  ‘That memory is harder than the others to tell you about. To ask you about. Can you understand that?’ His voice is strained.

  I look at him. I don’t know where this is leading.

  He takes a breath.

  ‘There’s no single memory of it for me,’ he says. ‘There’s no single memory for the way it makes me feel. I promised that I would help you remember it, but I don’t know if I can. Do you understand?’

  His voice has a demonic clarity that makes my chest feel bruised and open. Like I’ve run too far, too fast. Like there’s something inside me that shouldn’t be there, a nameless element. Subito I know that it doesn’t matter what he says, whether he feels what I do. Because I’d do anything for him. The knowledge gives me freedom somehow. And a kind of elation. His voice is as clear as a knife and I let it cut through me with its silver light.

  He is still facing straight ahead, staring at the wall above my bunk like it’s something he wants to break in half. I have to know.

  ‘Do you want me to forget it?’

  Lucien turns to me and I can’t read his expression either.

  ‘It’s the thought that you might be able to forget it I can’t stand,’ he says. ‘For me, it’s in everything. Everything I hear. The map of the under, the shape of the river. This journey, the sound of it, it’s you. And that sound is better than any other in my life. Do you understand? I can’t keep it separate. If I could, then maybe I could downsound it for you. But if I did that, I think I might end up hating you. Do you really need schooling in knowing that?’

  The current of what he has said rises through my body, up to the top of my head.

  ‘I don’t need you to remember it,’ I say. I walk over to where he sits. I put my palm against his chest to hear the sound of his heart. Rhythms turn and tumble against my hand, mapping a run entirely his own. Violent and painfully clear.

  He looks up at me standing above him and he starts to say something else.

  I silence him in the best way that I can think of.

  Oxford

  Barnabas’s Crosshouse

  ‘Louse Lock,’ calls Callum from the deck. Then there is a window of light in the black above us and his head appears. ‘This is as far as we go, lads.’

  I sit up. How have we come into the city without my hearing? I listen for the noises of boatpeople, tradesongs, prentisses. I listen in vain for the hungry whistles and furtive tunes of early evening. The air is still. The rushing of the lock, the sound of insects. Then at last I hear a faint, dignified tradesong. It runs right through to its end before another begins. Nothing like the clash of life and colour and song I know. I miss London in a sharp burst.

  In the dark, the four of us stand on deck for a brief while. Then I reach out to Jemima and hug her. She gives me a quick smirk and signs something in solfege, the only part of which I catch is to do with luck. Lucien shakes hands with Callum and then Jemima, and we jump presto from the boat to the towpath.

  The riverwater is deep green. We cross a moss-covered stone bridge that looks like it will collapse into the water at any time. Then we’re on the banks and scrambling up scrub and over rails and into a small concreted park at the arse end of an ordinary enough street. This is strange. I thought all of Oxford would be the Citadel, but we walk now along a street with houses just like anywhere. The same staring redbrick terraces as the one where we found Mary in Reading.

  One thing is different – I can already feel t
he low, thronging call of solid palladium. Down the narrow grey road, the Carillon’s silver arms are reaching toward us. I feel as if I am walking without touching the ground.

  The two-floor houses are quiet above us. No one on the streets. But the day is lightening and I see curtains begin to twitch behind para windows. I have my head down when I nearly bump into a smartly dressed man walking out of his gate carrying an embossed leather valise and a clarionet case. He curses politely under his breath, sidesteps me and continues on his way over the broken concrete.

  ‘We need somewhere to shelter,’ says Lucien. He pauses for a bit. ‘I know a crosshouse where we can wait. Come on.’

  Not much further and subito Lucien pulls me into the doorway of a large white building. The wooden door gives and he pushes us inside. There’s the smell of old beer. I can just see out past the green wood of the door.

  Lucien is breathing fast.

  ‘What is it?’ I whisper to him.

  ‘Ssh,’ he says, and places his hand gently over my mouth. We flatten to the paint.

  And then I hear voices. Voices chanting, coming nearer. And footsteps in a clear and clever rhythm. It is impossible to judge how many they are because the pattern is so neat and the footfalls so precise. It never wavers.

  Straight ahead are blank redbrick houses. To our left, not far off at all, I see a wooden tower that must be the crosshouse we were heading toward.

  The voices approach steadily, and as they come, they become clearer. They are moving in some kind of game. It reminds me for an instant of our own practice in the crosshouse.

  One voice begins a tune. A few beats and a second voice enters. The same tune, exact. A strict canon. The two voices intertwine and I marvel at the skill. Then a third voice enters. The same tune a major third below. Then another voice reverses the melody and sings backward against the dense tide of counterpoint. The notes pull and press against each other, but the miracle of it is that the voices are still in harmony, still calmly moving in perfect accord. They are so clear and they echo off the grey streets and float upward in the still morning air.

  Then a sixth voice enters. It takes me a while to understand that the sixth voice sings the first tune as if a mirror were held up to it – each note reversed across the stave. I stand still in disbelief. The tune weaves in and around without speeding or slowing. The voices make a magical game of it, throwing the notes like golden balls lightly in the air, juggling them, tossing them from hand to hand. It is one thing to listen to the immaculate canons of Chimes, quite another to hear such music sung in the streets.

  Then they come into view. Walking down the street. Three boys and three girls. They walk side by side: boy–girl, boy–girl, boy–girl. They are all tall and wear plain white gowns. Over these a white tabard broidered with gold threads. Their heads incline slightly each to each. Across their backs they carry small transverse flutes in palladium.

  They move at a steady pace. I breathe in deep of the stale beery air and hold my breath. The group passes. I hear them turn east and head back toward the Lady’s pull. We wait, hardly breathing, inside the doorway. After a while I see the door of one of the redbrick houses open and a woman comes out, woven shopping baskets held in each hand. Lucien relaxes his hold on my arm and we move away from each other.

  ‘Who was that?’ I ask.

  ‘Novices. Probably just about to be ordained. An excursion outside the walls.’

  I stand still, dazzled by those golden balls juggled so briefly.

  ‘Come on,’ Lucien says after a moment. ‘I’ll show you where we wait.’

  Lucien checks inside the entrance for memorylost; then he leads into the dark. The space is quiet and clean. It rings with the odd echo of stone floor and high arches. I hear mice scuttle. The beams are half broken, but the roof is sound.

  It’s a small, simple crosshouse with aisles at north and south divided by stone arches. The blank walls above the arches are painted rough, like something has been covered up. A few figures in gold robes emerge in a shadowy line and make their still journey toward something long gone. Lucien leans against one of the brick-bottomed columns. There are piles of broken chairs. That will serve well for kindling later, I think. And I slump down. The light is fading. I am tired, but I sit on the floor and I take out the memories one by one.

  All of the last slow days and nights in the narrowboat I have worked with them. I began by placing them out in front of me and looking without touch, trying to feel the weight of them in my mind that way. I thought about where they were from, how they might talk to each other. I tried to empty my mind of the other things that it was full of. The pale of Lucien’s bare back in candlelight. His clean, hard forearm cushioning his cheek in sleep. Faces that come up out of the murk of my mind. My father’s. Abel afraid, the scar showing white along his jaw. Groups of people moving like sheep across a green.

  Tried to clear past all of that. Empty enough to go down. And I have gone down into the memories again and again. I think about what Lucien said, that it is a gift, that hunger to find how one thing links to the next thing. To wish to find an answer to the questions ‘How did this happen?’ and ‘Why?’

  But this is not enough. I want something more than that. I want to show an all of us. And I want the story to hold and keep our separate strangeness and the broken pieces of all the human things that do not fit.

  So far the story tells about the world before Allbreaking. It tries to conjure the density and slipperiness of written words. It talks of a world in which ideas are in formation and can be released and yet return at will each night. It shows the Order burning books and destroying words long before Allbreaking. It shows how Allbreaking started, and the bonfires of burning pages. It tells the bodies and faces of the people killed in the blasting chords, brought down in the buildings, drowned as the bridges collapse. It tells that the weapon was a Carillon built by the Order.

  It shows the broken memories and the burnt memories and the memories scattered, and it shows those without memory, wandering lost and helpless, worse than blind. It shows members of the Order binding their arms and eyes with great gentleness before taking them to be killed.

  It tells the legend of the ravens and the growth of the guild and its clever network, and of dead birds stuffed in buried mouths. It tells about the last keeper, Mary, in her memory palace of hoarded precious junk and nonsense.

  It has all of the memories in it, the ones I exchanged for my own. It has babies born and people dying and missed. It has mess and dischord and pain, and it has falling in love. It has my father slumped beside my mother’s bed, holding tight to what he is already forgetting. It has Clare stockstill with terror in the crosshouse by the embankment, carrying nothing of her past except cuts and bruises and the blade of a broken plate.

  This is the story I am working on. But it isn’t yet complete as I don’t yet have the right way to begin. I sit on the crosshouse floor and look at the objects. I see the different ways they could be put together and the way the story changes each time. The objects fall into their groupings and they talk to each other in different fashions depending on where they’re put and at first it makes me panic. I put the memories together again and again in their different patterns and try to understand which is the correct way. Then at last I see that there isn’t one. I see that if I am lucky and I do it right, the story will not ever come together in one final meaning. Because there is not yet any end.

  When I surface, Lucien is watching me. I walk over lento and take a seat, and he pulls me rough toward him. I tip back my head so it meets the hard bone of his shoulder. I feel torn between the clear, strong pull of his body and the weight of the memories that sit in their temporary arrangement on the crosshouse floor.

  ‘You are working hard,’ he says.

  I nod. It’s true. It is pulling something out of me. Going down, and surfacing. ‘What happens tomorrow?’ I ask.

  ‘Tomorrow we will try to get word to my mother.’

  I have b
een pondering the question for a while, but it still feels awkward. I think what to say.

  ‘It would be useful if we knew more about why she got the ring out. You know, I could touch it – the ring I mean. Look at the memory.’

  Lucien sits up straight. ‘Yes. I should have thought of it.’

  ‘I don’t know if it will work. If a person doesn’t need to make memory, it might not hold in the same way.’

  ‘But you can try,’ he says.

  ‘Yes.’

  I must look as sick as I feel, because Lucien elbows me. Then he takes my hand, places the leather pouch in my palm, folds my fingers over it. ‘Go on,’ he says. ‘I’ve seen yours. I’ve heard yours.’

  I take the pouch and open it. I feel the silver of the Lady slide down my fingers and through my joints. And with it I feel my arms go heavy, and slow and sure the deep rushing of water in my ears. Adagio, cantabile. I go down . . .

  I am walking through a room. Maybe the most beautiful room I have ever been in. Pale plastered walls, high eaved ceilings. Light enters and shines into my eyes as I walk, so for some seconds I cannot see.

  Someone is there behind me. I can hear their quiet threat. The threat is not just in their presence but in their hearing. What are they listening for? Hesitation? Fear? My feet tread a skilful bluff. Clear and measured and irreproachable.

  There is a bed and it is covered in a white coverlet.

  I look at the bed; then I allow myself to look at the person who is lying there.

  ‘Mother,’ I say. For it is her. Hold my eyes steady. Do not blink. There are small broidered figures along the edges of the bedspread. Some are playing instruments, and some are dancing. A small cellist with golden curls. They are caught in motion, as if time has stopped for an instant but will soon resume.

  My mother’s hair has been combed back from her head and lies on the white linen of her pillow as if floating in water. It has been twisted in fine strands. On the strands are threaded coloured glass beads. The beads form an intricate pattern, a map, a series of constellations. I stare at them and at first what I am looking at makes no sense.