An Absence of Natural Light

by F. G. Cottam

  ‘You know that joke I made about Lars Ulrich?’

  ‘He isn’t in London, Tom. Honestly he’s not. He went from Denmark on a sports scholarship to America as a student. He was a tennis prodigy and basically he formed a band and just stayed. That was in Southern California. He lives in New York now.’

  Tom was staring at her. ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘what a mine of unexpected information you are.’

  ‘It’s my guilty secret,’ she said. ‘I like Metallica.’ She pointed at her iPhone on the table between them. ‘Lars is drumming on about half the tunes on my playlist.’

  Tom looked at the phone. He said, ‘Anyway, you’re right, it isn’t him.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘The music I’ve been hearing at night. It’s very faint and it’s not every night and it sounds like it’s coming from downstairs.’

  ‘Well it no doubt would be if you’re hearing it in bed.’

  ‘No. I hear it sort of drifting up, usually when I’m in the sitting room. Like I said, it’s very faint, almost like an echo more than an actual tune. It’s jazz, sort of mournful, a trumpet as the lead. It must be coming from a neighbour’s basement.’

  Rebecca frowned. ‘I wasn’t lying to you when I said those walls are very thick.’

  ‘I’m sure you weren’t. In fact I know you weren’t, from when I had the survey done. The surveyor kept commenting on the building spec. And it’s faint like I said, barely audible. I kind of wish I could place it, but I’m no authority on jazz.’ He took a sip of his beer and blinked and looked at her brightly and said, ‘That’s me all over, just an ex-pro player beating on the doors of the knacker’s yard, ignorant as they come, knowing bugger-all about anything except kicking a ball, which I can no longer do.’

  ‘What is it you’d like to know more about?’

  He was still looking at her. He looked out of the window to his right, to the glittering night vista of the river, with its black water and reflected, floating shimmers of Embankment light. He turned back to her. ‘Everything, Rebecca,’ he said. ‘All of it.’

  He walked her home along the river. Thirty seconds into their progress she hooked her arm through his and leant into him. It was late by now and dark but there was enough light from the orbs atop the ornamental lampposts for them to see and be seen. People approached them going the other way, some of them double-taking as they recognized the man she was with. Of course they did; he’d led his country as well as his club and had played all over the world. Millions had seen him from the tiered seats of stadiums. Hundreds of millions had watched him on their TV screens.

  The run of elaborate lights to their left were known as the dolphin lampposts. This was a misnomer because the fish coiled around their cast iron bases were apparently modeled on sturgeon. They didn’t look like sturgeon to Rebecca. They looked mythic, she thought, wondering whether any of this was known to Tom and deciding probably none of it was. Did it matter? It did, only, though, because knowledge mattered so much to him.

  ‘Do you know what an autodidact is?’

  ‘No. I don’t. I’m guessing it might be something to do with sleepwalking.’

  ‘That’s a somnambulist.’

  ‘Show-off.’

  ‘An autodidact is someone who educates themselves by reading the contents of a library alphabetically. They learn everything, just by ploughing indiscriminately through the whole bloody lot.’

  ‘Good word.’

  ‘It’s what I imagine you doing, at night, in that sitting room of yours, as the phantom jazz creeps up the stairs.’

  He stopped, obviously offended. She wondered if the wine had loosened her tongue further than it would have gone completely sober. He shrugged himself free of her and she blinked and was about to mouth an apology when he turned to face her fully and lifted his hands and cupped her head in the cradle of his fingers, his thumbs light against her cheeks. And pulled her to him and kissed her, properly.

  ‘There,’ he said when the kiss eventually broke.

  ‘Why did you do that? Was it to shut me up?’

  ‘Because I wanted to, because I’ve wanted to since you walked into Costa that afternoon three weeks ago with your hair all damp from the rain and I saw you for the first time.’

  He kissed her again. And they kissed a third time at her front door before she closed it and he turned for his virtuous journey home, still able to taste her, wishing the sensation would last longer than he knew it would.

  Tom heard the music again that night. He got to the flat only after midnight. He’d walked back along the Embankment and over Lambeth Bridge and hailed a cab on Horseferry Road. Jaguar had said they would give him another car, which had been good for his ego but had done nothing much to affect his daily routine. After three weeks in London, he’d concluded you drove in the centre of the city only if there was absolutely no alternative.

  He got in tired. He felt excited – no, elated – about what had happened with Rebecca. He could still smell her perfume on his fingertips. In Colorado he’d been about as convinced that there was life after football as he thought a committed atheist might be about life after death. He’d wanted something new and different. He’d just doubted he was really equipped for it. It had seemed daunting, unimaginable, really. Then this had gone and happened.

  The music droned, almost imperceptibly, on the edge of his hearing, but he thought it had got fractionally louder and more solid than the first time he’d become aware of it. Then it might almost have been imagined; now it was undeniably there. He thought he recognized it, probably from a car or coffee commercial using the soundtrack to give what it was selling an aura of sophistication. It was naggingly familiar. Maybe he had heard it in a posh boutique with Melody on one of those endless weekday afternoons as she’d tried on a series of expensive outfits in what he was thinking of increasingly as his old life.

  He just didn’t know. Jazz was unexplored territory. He’d been hurt by Rebecca’s earlier autodidact line because he had actually done a bit of that recently. The problem was that there weren’t just gaps to fill in his knowledge and experience of the wider world. There were chasms to try to bridge securely and then attempt to cross.

  It was definitely louder. His beatnik neighbour must have cranked up the volume on his stereo. It had to be one of those proper, old-fashioned stereo systems too. The wattage on the speakers you plugged an iPhone into was too feeble to fire the sound through walls like these. Except that it sounded, actually, as though it was coming not from next door on either side of him, but from his own basement. The tune was leaking through the doorframe at the top of the basement staircase. He looked across to where that hung. The sound was brassy and mournful and insistent. With a surprised swallow of trepidation, Tom knew that he was going to have a look.

  The stairs on the other side of the door were stone and led straight down. The door had to be pulled rather than pushed open, he supposed as a safety precaution. You were forced to take a step back to make room for it so the stairs on the other side couldn’t come as a nasty surprise. He naturally expected the music to become louder and gain in clarity when he opened the door and shifted the obstruction, but it didn’t. It actually seemed to fade, in a way that seemed calculated and therefore slightly menacing.

  It’s late, he thought, I’m tired. And the tune had become barely audible again. He switched on the stairway lights, industrial in character, ovals of frosted glass bracketed with loops of blue painted metal. They looked the business, those lights, when he switched them on; fit for a power station or a submarine, except that they didn’t actually do their principal job of providing much light.

  He hadn’t known what an autodidact was. He hadn’t known what somnambulism was either. But there was another word on the tip of his tongue he thought would describe the music he could no longer hear but had heard recently enough to have a clear memory of. He began to descend the steps. The word was syncopation. It described the way jazz instruments blended to improvise a tune.
The music he had heard had been syncopated. He thought it was probably an old recording, something taped from a live session done in a studio, dingy with cigarette smoke, a lifetime ago.

  He had no sense there was anyone at all in the basement. It was dark beyond the stairs but he couldn’t hear a sound down there now. He’d had the upper rooms furnished, but had done nothing yet with this substantial, stone-flagged space. The darkness was still and quiet and the sense of menace he’d felt on the other side of the basement door had receded. He reached for the switch at the bottom of the steps and the lights came on, brightly: pearly glass orbs he’d been told had been designed to provide light without casting shadows.

  Rebecca had told him that. Rebecca, whose perfume clung to his fingers now, had told him that when he’d first toured the flat a little more than three weeks ago.

  Something caught his eye, on the floor by the far wall, eighty feet away from where he stood. It was a single sheet of paper. It hadn’t fluttered, because there was no breeze. The air was confined by four high walls and their heavy ceiling and was completely still. He’d seen it, because in common with most world-class ball players, Tom Harper’s eyesight was almost preternaturally good. He’d seen it also because it didn’t belong there. He hadn’t been down there since Rebecca had shown him the basement. If the sheet of paper had been there then, he’d have noticed it. They both would.

  He walked across the room, wincing from a twinge in his right knee inflicted by all the walking he’d done, in the leather-soled shoes with no give, that he’d worn on the date. He glanced at his watch. It was a quarter to one in the morning. And it was completely silent now except for the quiet clack of his shoe leather and the steady sound of his breathing. His heart and lungs still had him down as an athlete. His breathing was calm and deep but the pace of his pulse, usually funereally slow, was fast enough for him to feel it jump.

  He squatted down, feeling his knee again, picked up the piece of paper and stood and studied it. It was white and plain, as if torn from an A4 notebook, and a sleeping cat had been smudgily sketched on it in what Tom assumed to be charcoal. He’d been quite good at art at school. But he hadn’t been as good as whoever had sketched the cat, catching its slumber and character in a few deft, confident strokes. Whoever had done the drawing hadn’t signed it. So it remained anonymous.

  He took the sketch upstairs with him and put it on the large desk he’d bought from John Lewis, on which perched his little laptop and at which he’d started to sit recently to do his autodidact thing. He yawned. He was slightly baffled but not scared, which he now knew for certain he had been earlier. His pulse was slowing. The night had provided him with a range of unexpected emotions. He’d go to bed, but before he did so, he went to find the key, helpfully labeled on a hook in the kitchen’s utility cupboard, and made sure to lock the basement door.

  ‘There are no keys other than the set and spare set you were given, Tom. The building has no concierge. We certainly didn’t retain a set. The drawing must have been there all along and we must simply have missed it.’

  ‘How many people did you show the flat to before me?’

  ‘I showed around three prospective buyers. It’s a prestigious address and in retrospect it was quite competitively priced. It wasn’t on the market for very long.’

  ‘You’d have seen the drawing.’

  ‘Except I didn’t, just like I never heard any music. What did you do when you left me last night?’

  ‘Walked, then listened to a cabbie put me to rights all the way from Horseferry Road to Laburnum Crescent on why we didn’t win the title last season. Then I paid him, got inside, heard the music, found the picture and went to bed.’

  ‘And now the picture’s gone?’

  ‘Yes, it’s gone.’

  Rebecca was silent for a moment. She said, ‘Did you go for another drink, after seeing me home?’

  ‘No. And there’s something else. I’ve remembered where I’d heard the music, why it sounded familiar. It was the soundtrack to a car ad on the telly a couple of years ago. That one filmed in Paris at night? All moody café exteriors and gleaming cobblestones?’

  ‘Miles Davis,’ she said, ‘“So What,” from the album Kind of Blue.’

  ‘Boody hell, Rebecca. Is there nothing you don’t know?’

  ‘Not much, Tom. Blame a history degree and the curse of a good memory.’

  ‘Why would an estate agent do a history degree?’

  ‘It was the other way around, and you’re not qualified to offer careers advice.’

  ‘When was Kind of Blue recorded? When did it come out?’

  ‘I’m stronger on Metallica than Miles, to be honest. I think maybe the early 1960s. It was a long time ago, that’s for sure.’

  Tom was quiet.

  ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Just wondering who was living here then, listening to Miles Davis, sketching their sleeping cat.’

  ‘That’s a creepy thought.’

  He looked around. He was barefoot on the deep pile of one of the rugs he’d had strewn over the polished wood. His skin was still glowing from the needling heat of the power shower in the wet room upstairs. His hair was damp against the nape of his neck. He could smell the complex fragrance of the cologne he was paid to wear, freshly dabbed on; top-notes of bergamot, whatever the fuck bergamot was. Sunlight bathed most of the room, but the locked door to the basement, when he looked across, was cast in deep shadow. In a way it was easy to imagine it as the entrance to another world entirely. He wondered for a moment whose world it had been, whose world in some curious, dimly remembered way it still remained.

  ‘Do you want to see me again?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Short notice, but how about Sunday lunch?’

  ‘I’m tied up today, Tom. I could meet you tomorrow evening?’

  ‘Perfect,’ he said. He broke the connection. Perfect it wasn’t, because he wanted to see her today. He was used to getting his own way: the legacy of what he’d accomplished and who, until very recently, he’d been. Maybe this new life would mean more compromises. In fact, he was certain it would. He’d need to develop the maturity to accept his future disappointments graciously. If he didn’t, no woman of Rebecca’s quality would be likely to stick around.

  The following evening Rebecca came to Absalom Court for dinner. One of the few non-footballing accomplishments of which Tom Harper was confident was his ability to cook. Melody had insisted on Sabatier knives, Cuisinart cookware, granite worktops, a walk-in fridge and substantial physical all-round dimensions. That was about entitlement, though. To her, good food was what restaurants were for. But training every day gave Tom a ravenous appetite and proper nutrition prolonged footballing careers. So he learned how to cook just out of his teens and discovered he really enjoyed it.

  The food was a delightful surprise, the décor, Rebecca thought, a relief. She’d once heard the interior of a top footballer’s house described as looking as though the owner had been given a million pounds to spend at Woolworths. Woolworths was history, but she’d seen some of the customized cars Premiership stars drove in pictures on gossip pages and they made it glaringly obvious that, in most cases, their bad taste knew no bounds.

  They ate in the kitchen, at the dining table in the area opposite the business end of the room with its range and rotisserie and hung row of gleaming copper pans. He’d turned the lighting down and it was dark beyond the kitchen window and there was no hint of traffic noise to suggest where they were. Being in his company – alone in his company – was still slightly surreal, but she was getting used to it. He was in jeans and a polo shirt and she was glad she’d come casually attired. They were listening to a duets compilation by a singer Rebecca hadn’t heard of named Kate Rusby. Kate was singing the song playing just then with Paul Weller. Tom had told her he liked folk music, plugging the player in.

  ‘You’re at home in a kitchen,’ Rebecca said, after he’d served up and opened the bottle of w
ine she’d bought and they’d sat down to eat.

  ‘I’m more at home in this one than in the one we had in Cheshire,’ he said. ‘That’s the size of a tennis court. This is practical. What’s that word for when things you need to manipulate are built on a human scale?’

  ‘Ergonomic.’

  He smiled and sipped from his glass. She’d bought a bottle of Blanc de Blanc. Melody, she thought; Harmony, Chardonnay. It wasn’t quite free-association, they were the sort of names Rebecca associated with footballers’ wives.

  ‘There you go again’ he said, ‘knowing everything.’

  And she felt for a moment vindictive, snobbish. He’d taken her coat in the sitting room and gone to hang it up and she’d noticed the books in the bookcase and on his impressively large desk, all of them spanking new, the volumes on the desk open, their leather Waterstones bookmarks brightly signalling where he’d got to in the flare of brightness from a studious-looking Anglepoise lamp.

  ‘This is absolutely delicious,’ she said, which was true as well as a change of subject. He’d concocted a Chinese dish unappetizingly described as chicken rice. The result looked mundane served up but the preparation was complex and the flavour nothing short of wonderful. He’d done a huge dish of it, which was just as well because she knew she’d be asking for seconds when she’d devoured what was on her plate.

  ‘Heard any more jam sessions from those dead jazz musicians in your basement?’

  He shook his head. ‘They’re not all dead,’ he said. ‘I did a bit of research. Kind of Blue was recorded in New York in 1959. The drummer from the sessions is still alive, though Miles himself is long gone. That’s the first track, “So What,” the one I heard. I’m embarrassed to say it’s incredibly famous.’

  ‘Only if you’re into jazz,’ she said. ‘It’s a specialist subject.’ She nodded at the sound bar on the work-surface parallel to their table. ‘I’m sure you know more than most people do about folk music.’

  ‘I probably do. But Kind of Blue was an immediate hit with both the public and the critics. Modal jazz, apparently, a departure from bebop for Miles and the band he put together for the sessions. All improvised, which is astonishing when you think it’s possibly the best-loved jazz album ever made.’