Voices in the Dark

by Catherine Banner

  ‘How did you know it was her?’

  He shook his head. ‘I just knew. She was just how I imagined her, from that angel’s voice. She walked like an angel, like her feet didn’t touch the ground. I know it’s an old and hackneyed way of speaking, but I swear it was how I felt. And she had a way of dressing, too, like she refused to be poor. I remember that about her. In the years afterwards, even when we were struggling—’ He broke off then and laughed. ‘But I have given the story away now.’

  I was sure that he had meant to. ‘So you got the courage to speak to her eventually?’ I said.

  ‘Eventually. I sent word by one of the nuns, and she met me at the convent gate. I had thought she would refuse altogether, but she came down to meet me. She was very proud and indignant. She wanted to know what I had been doing standing under her window every night. I told her the story.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘Thought I was a very foolish boy and marched away in a high temper.’ He laughed. ‘And eventually became my wife.’

  I waited for the moral of the story. The tales he told me of his past life always had some meaning, like the chord that resolves an old song. ‘So I know what love is,’ he said at last. ‘And let me tell you, I’m glad I had the courage to go up to that door. I’m glad, even though I lost all hope when she turned and marched away. It was weeks before she relented and let me see her. To try and find out the truth, or change the world, or make your own life better is like jumping from a cliff – you risk losing everything. But the cautious lose everything anyway, because they try to hold onto it. Either you cast it to the four winds and trust to faith that it will come back again, or it falls through your fingers by degrees.’

  ‘Are you telling me to go and find Michael again?’ I said.

  He shook his head. ‘I would never do that. I am just telling you what I think.’

  The snow threw itself against the window and made the little boy sleeping in the corner murmur softly and turn his head.

  ‘Go on with your story,’ said Mr Hardy. ‘It is of much more consequence than my sentimental ramblings.’ He gave a quick smile.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It was interesting.’

  ‘Well …’ He acknowledged that with another smile and poured me more spirits. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know how to go on,’ I said. ‘That’s where I’ve got to so far. I’m writing it down, but I don’t know what to write next.’

  ‘Then you can always read to me, if you aren’t too tired.’

  I nodded and got out those papers. When he was not listening to my story, he wanted to know all about them, and it was easier to read to him than listen to the silence of the country around us.

  ‘This part is somewhere else,’ I said. ‘It’s part of the same story – I think it happened at the same time – but it’s not in the same place.’

  ‘Did you write it?’ he said as I unfolded the papers. ‘I have been wondering.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t even understand it.’

  ‘Who did, then?’

  ‘Someone else.’

  ‘Someone you know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Someone,’ said Mr Hardy, ‘who knows about other places.’ Then he was silent for so long that I thought he had forgotten the inn and the story and the night outside.

  ‘Yes, go on, read it,’ he said eventually, and came back.

  * * *

  The car was packed, and Anna and her son stood side by side in the rain. ‘Is that everything?’ she said without expecting an answer. The old Rolls-Royce was caked in dried mud and dented where a low branch had hit the roof. Anna rearranged the pile of boxes across the back seats. To have reached twenty-two years old and still be able to fit all that she owned into a dozen battered cardboard boxes seemed to her dismal, as if this was all her life on earth amounted to. She turned and gave a smile she knew was false. Ashley did not return it. He stood there silently, wearing a worn red coat with the sleeves all chewed and a mutinous expression. Anna knew that look well. ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t want to leave.’

  ‘I know. But listen, Ash— ’

  Monica appeared at the side door. ‘Can’t you manage that box?’ she called, and raised a hand to shield her eyes from the rain.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Anna, jamming the last box back into place. The side burst, and records slid out across the gravel at her feet.

  ‘Here,’ said Monica, bustling forward to help her.

  ‘It’s all right; I can manage.’

  ‘No, let me do it.’

  Anna stood back and let Monica pick up the records. ‘They aren’t scratched,’ Monica said. She polished them on her jacket sleeve and stacked them back in the box.

  ‘They were my father’s,’ said Anna. ‘I don’t even have anything to play them on.’

  ‘They might come in useful. Are you ready to go? And are you sure you will be all right driving all that way?’

  ‘We’ll be fine.’

  ‘I hope the old car will last.’ Monica patted the car’s roof. It clanged with a minor note. ‘I’m sure Mr Field would have wanted you to have it.’

  The rain was driving the mud down the sides of the car now. Anna slammed the door and dusted off her hands. Monica touched her arm as she turned to open the driver’s door. ‘Listen,’ said Monica. ‘I never meant for things to turn out—’

  ‘I said, it’s fine.’

  They stood a while longer in the driving rain, but there seemed nothing else to say, so Anna opened the driver’s door. ‘Let me go in and put on a coat, and I’ll see you off at the gate,’ said Monica.

  She turned and started back towards the house, her heeled shoes sinking into the wet gravel. As soon as she vanished, Ashley tugged Anna’s arm. ‘Mam?’ he said. ‘Tell me about my father.’

  ‘What?’ said Anna. ‘I can’t hear you for this rain.’

  But she could tell Ashley knew that she had heard. She was always startled by the guilt that his six-year-old’s honesty could make her feel. He stood there now, with his arms folded and the same mutinous expression fixed in his eyes. ‘Ash, I’ve told you,’ she said. ‘I have told you the story a hundred times.’

  ‘But it’s not true,’ said Ashley.

  Anna reached for his shoulder, then decided against it. Her hand rested in the air between them. ‘It’s the only truth I know,’ she said. ‘Come on, Ash. Don’t be too hard on me; I do my best.’

  The rain was driving in gusts now across the surface of the lake. It clouded every mountain and dragged the sodden leaves from the trees. ‘Was it really him, that time up on the hill when I was little?’ said Ashley.

  ‘It was only a year and a half ago.’

  ‘But he wasn’t real. He was like a ghost.’

  ‘He was really there,’ said Anna.

  ‘I don’t believe you. Tell me the truth about him.’

  ‘I’ve always tried to tell you the truth, Ashley. Always.’ The rain was falling harder now. ‘Come on,’ said Anna. ‘Get in the car.’

  ‘Not until you tell me. I’m not leaving until you tell me.’

  ‘Ash, listen …’ The rain shook the trees now and pounded her skin. ‘Come on.’

  ‘No. I’m not.’

  ‘Monica wants us to leave so she can lock the place up. The new owners want the keys; they want to come in this afternoon. We have to go. We can talk about it on the way down.’

  ‘You won’t. You’ll say you want to concentrate on driving, and we won’t talk about it.’

  ‘When we get to London, then. Just get in the car.’

  ‘We won’t talk about it,’ said Ashley.

  ‘We will. I promise I’ll tell you on the way down, all right?’

  ‘No,’ said Ashley. ‘I don’t want to go. I dream about him here. And I don’t know if I will in London. I didn’t dream about him when we were living there before. And if he comes back to find us, then how will he know where we are? And—’
>
  ‘Ashley, get in the car. Your dry clothes are packed, and I can’t get them out again.’

  ‘I won’t leave. I’m going to stand here until you tell me.’

  Anna unclasped the chain around her neck. The single blue jewel caught the grey light and glittered the same colour as her eyes. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘This is the necklace your father gave to me. And if you wear it, I promise you, you will still dream about him.’

  It was a measure she had been saving for the most desperate of circumstances. ‘Why?’ said Ashley. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I dream about him. It reminds me, you know? You can look at it and know this necklace belonged to him before you were born.’

  ‘No,’ said Ashley sullenly.

  ‘Why not?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s your necklace.’

  ‘It was for you,’ said Anna. ‘That was who he really meant it for. Not me. You can remember him by it, all right? Even when we’ve gone away from here. And I’ll tell you about your father on the way down; I promise I will.’

  Ashley stared up at her for a moment, and she did not know which way the argument would fall. Then he took the necklace, and she picked him up and bundled him into the car before he could change his mind.

  The rain made the engine cough and rattle. Anna always drove gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles turned pale; it was a habit she could not help. Ashley sat in silence, a box of plates and cutlery balanced on his knees under the battered road atlas. Monica waved until they were on the road. Then she turned and went back into the empty hotel.

  ‘She doesn’t care about us,’ said Ashley.

  ‘She has lots of things to do before this afternoon, that’s all. She can’t stand out in the rain waving goodbye.’

  ‘If she cared about us, she would have given us some of the money,’ said Ashley.

  ‘People are complicated,’ said Anna, and gripped the steering wheel tighter. ‘She gave us the car, after all.’

  As if in answer, the car gave a low cough. Ashley opened the road atlas and directed his mutinous stare at the pages.

  ‘The A591 through Lowcastle,’ said Anna. ‘Find that and tell me the way. The fastest route south and east.’

  It was a game they always played, and it distracted Ashley now. Anna turned onto the road out of the valley. As they passed the stone circle on the hill, she saw Ashley look up. The clouds were drifting over it strangely, but Anna did not give it more than a glance as they rounded the hill – the car coughing angrily all the while – and came down into the next valley. ‘There is something wrong with the engine,’ said Anna. ‘Listen, Ash. It sounds like an old man dying.’

  ‘It’s because we haven’t used it for so long,’ said Ashley. ‘It will be all right in a minute.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Ashley glared at the page of the atlas, and Anna thought she saw it crumple. The roads contracted and slid together. She breathed in and stared at him. ‘Don’t look away from the road,’ said Ashley. A van was swinging round the corner ahead. And when she looked again, he had turned to the next page. The windscreen wipers shuddered, and the silence fell between them again. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Anna, staring at the road ahead. ‘I’m sorry we have to leave.’ Ashley did not reply. ‘Uncle Bradley will let us stay for a while,’ Anna persisted in a falsely bright tone she suddenly remembered her own mother using. ‘And I’m hoping you can go to his school. You won’t be in the class he teaches, but Bradley will look out for you. It won’t be so bad, Ash.’

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ said Ashley, ‘is why you don’t just marry Uncle Bradley. Because my father isn’t coming back, is he?’

  ‘No,’ said Anna.

  ‘So why don’t you marry Uncle Bradley?’

  ‘Because I’m not in love with him.’

  ‘That’s not the only thing.’

  ‘No,’ said Anna. ‘No, it’s not. But it is important.’

  ‘He’s in love with you,’ said Ashley.

  ‘No,’ said Anna. ‘He isn’t, and, anyway, there’s nothing I can do about it if he is. You know who you love, and I’m not in love with Bradley.’

  ‘Did you love my father? Did you know about that?’

  ‘That was different. We were so young.’

  ‘But did you love him?’

  Anna had thought she would answer that question, but she changed her mind. She reached for the gear lever, the car running more smoothly now, down the other side of the pass and between rain-darkened fields, every one of which Anna knew. ‘I wish we weren’t leaving too,’ she said. ‘Did you know that, Ash? I wish we could stay.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Anna tried to loosen her grip on the steering wheel, but she could not do it. The silence drew out between them like the winding road. Through the clouded glass, the familiar hills passed and receded again. ‘The M6 south,’ said Ashley. ‘That’s the next road, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Anna, hoping desperately that the question meant he had forgiven her.

  * * *

  Darkness came down while they were stuck on a motorway in the Midlands. ‘Ashley, try to get some sleep,’ said Anna, though it was early. He closed his eyes obediently and after a while lay still. The road atlas slid from his hands. Anna caught it and turned over the pages, tracing their route in reverse. She came to the crumpled page and studied it. The creases looked old. It must have been an illusion, but she could not quite dismiss it. She had dismissed too much of what Ashley had done in the past few months. It had looked as though he frowned at the page and it crumpled under his glance.

  She reached across and touched his face. He would not have let her if he was awake; he already thought himself too old to be treated like a child. Ashley’s cheek was warm, as if he had a fever. Anna rested her hand on his forehead to cool it, then bent over and kissed his hair. Car horns were blaring ahead, but the traffic was locked in motionless lines. Anna shut off the engine. ‘I’ll tell you the story of your father,’ she said. ‘Like I promised.’

  The car was very silent without the engine running, and Anna heard her own voice, like a stranger’s. She rested the side of her face on the steering wheel and spoke to Ashley like that, as if the cars on every side did not exist. The rain obscured the windows now, and mist crept over the glass. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what parts of it are true any more. It was so long ago. But this is the story. I was in Lowcastle with your aunt Monica, working at the old hotel, and your father lived down the road in the house called Lakebank. He was a handsome boy, Ash. You should have seen him. He had your black hair and your dark eyes. He used to walk past and talk to me. He came from somewhere else. Not exactly another country. He used to tell me about that place. A long way back, my grandfather’s family came from that place too.’

  Ashley turned his head restlessly. ‘Shh,’ said Anna. ‘Anyway, he had to go back, and after that I never saw him again. He left me just that necklace – that’s all. I don’t know if I believe the story about another place now. It was so long ago, like I said, and …’ She shrugged and trailed off. The story seemed feeble even to her ears, and she wondered if there were other things that should be part of it. ‘And then when we saw him on the hill that night, was it real? I don’t even know. Ash, if there was some way I could find him, if there was some way we could be together, I would still take it. I don’t know if that’s stupid. Bradley has been a father to you more than he ever has. But, yes, I loved him. Love is not a good thing. Don’t be deceived in that. Not always a good thing, because it makes you forget about everything else.’

  The cars were rolling forward now, their red tail-lights drawing away from the old Rolls-Royce as they moved on into the rain-washed dark. Someone blared a horn behind them.

  Ashley sat up and said, ‘Mam, what is it—’

  ‘It’s all right.’ Anna turned the ignition key. Ashley closed his eyes again and murmured something. ‘It was a magic necklace,’ she said as they
edged under a concrete bridge and over the crest of a hill. ‘That was the other thing I should tell you. At least, that was the game we played. A magic necklace that could let you see other worlds.’

  The road spread out ahead of them, marked out in lights, swinging down over this low hill and another, as far as Anna could see. ‘Listen, we’ll stop next time we pass somewhere, and I’ll buy you something to eat,’ she said to drive out the bleak silence. ‘And then we can plan what we’ll do in London. It’s going to be a new chance for us. I mean, the chance for a new life. Ashley, are you awake?’

  Ashley did not answer. Anna smiled at nothing and touched his face again. ‘Go on sleeping,’ she said. ‘It’s all right.’

  It was midnight by the time they reached London. Anna was driving in a stupor, as though the road alone was drawing her on, across one more junction and round another deserted roundabout and into the suburbs of the city, where the famous skyline was too far away to see. The street was where she had thought. Forest Park Mansions. She parked the car close up to the pavement, between a white van and a splintered tree, and shut off the engine. Ashley was asleep beside her, and she did not want to wake him and leave the silence of the car. She thought, This car is all I have of my old life – this car and the necklace in Ashley’s hand, and that’s all. They had moved three times in as many years. Anna wondered if she would always be travelling like this. As if it was her destiny to pack up her belongings again, persuade a mutinous Ashley to follow her, and drive off – the car coughing angrily – in search of another life.

  Anna looked up at the row of houses and searched for Bradley’s window. Most of them were darkened now. She made out an old woman, crossing the lighted room with a kettle in her hand and wincing at every step. Bedraggled plants stood on another windowsill, and behind them music was thumping.

  ‘Come on,’ she said then, shaking Ashley by the shoulder. ‘Let’s go inside and find your uncle Bradley. He will be waiting for us.’

  ‘Where are we?’ said Ashley.

  ‘Here,’ said Anna. ‘Wake up, Ash. We’re in London. At Uncle Bradley’s house. Remember?’