Voices in the Dark

by Catherine Banner

  ‘I always thought this should have been a garden,’ said the girl after a few minutes had passed.

  ‘What should?’

  ‘Covent Garden.’

  Ashley smiled at that. ‘You aren’t from round here?’

  ‘Not originally, but I’ve been here ever since I can remember.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Since I was five years old.’

  Ashley looked up. ‘Can’t you remember before you were five years old?’ he said.

  The girl considered it, then shook her head. It seemed to trouble her, not remembering. ‘I’m not from here either,’ said Ashley. ‘And nothing in this city is like its name. I couldn’t understand it when I first came. Half the places sound like magical lands out of some story.’

  ‘White City,’ said the girl. ‘I’ve never been there, but I always imagined the buildings all made out of white marble, like a palace.’

  Ashley shook his head and won a faint smile. The first lines of his sketch were emerging now under his right hand. Half the time his drawings came easier if he did not concentrate. He fixed the girl’s spirit in his mind instead. She was rich enough to have the glossy look of someone who had always been well fed, and she was rich enough to wear impractical shoes and a white coat. She was twisting her sleeve again and rearranging each strand of her hair. Ashley thought if he could make her stop doing that, he might stand a chance of getting this portrait accurate. ‘There are places in America with better names,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Some of them,’ said Ashley. ‘Like Rifle or Telescope. Eureka. Bumble Bee.’

  ‘Are those real towns?’

  ‘What about Truth or Consequences?’

  ‘There isn’t actually a place called Truth or Consequences?’ He nodded. ‘That’s a poetic name,’ she said. ‘As if you have to tell the truth or suffer the consequences.’

  ‘I think it means the game. Like Truth or Dare.’

  A chill wind troubled the pages of the sketchbook. From her expression, Ashley could tell the girl had never heard of that game. He drew on, glancing up at her face every few seconds.

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’ she said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Those pictures in your book. How did you capture the people’s spirits?’

  Ashley looked up, and when he did, he realized that she had been studying his face too. ‘Their spirits?’ he said, and set down his pencil.

  ‘Yes. That man in the black suit – who is he?’

  ‘Show me.’

  She took the sketchbook and turned over the pages. She had very white fingers, as though she had never washed a plate or swept a floor in all her life. ‘Here,’ she said.

  Ashley looked. ‘He’s the man on the door of a club somewhere. I was waiting in the queue, so I drew him.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘I don’t know. I never spoke to him.’

  ‘But I know things about him just from looking at it,’ said Juliette.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘He wants to be a musician. He has a wife and a child.’ Ashley looked up at her. ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing. Only that’s what I thought about him too.’

  ‘How is that possible?’

  ‘Maybe this sounds strange,’ said Ashley, ‘but I understand about people when I start drawing them.’

  Juliette held his gaze for a moment, then looked at her clasped hands. ‘It’s not strange,’ she said. And then: ‘So what do you know about me?’

  ‘You have a lot of money,’ he said.

  ‘Not a lot …’

  ‘No? Then I made a mistake.’

  She looked down at her hands. ‘Maybe. But I don’t want that to be the first thing you think about me.’

  ‘It’s not. It’s just the first thing I see. It’s on the surface, you know?’

  ‘Tell me what else.’

  ‘You want to be liked,’ he said, abandoning tact in favour of the truth. ‘You look like you don’t feel safe in this city, which is strange, because you must have been here a long time. You are on your own too much. And something else.’

  He looked up at her and frowned, and this time she did not look away. And suddenly he knew what it was. She was like him. In this whole city, with its millions of inhabitants and millions of visitors, someone like him had come up and asked him to draw her portrait, and he could see her soul and he knew.

  ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘What else?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘That’s all. I should go home.’

  The girl took hold of his arm. She did it lightly, as though afraid of hurting him. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Can I tell you what I see about you?’

  Ashley wanted to say no, but his voice had constricted to a whisper. ‘You don’t feel safe in this city either,’ she said, ‘because you don’t feel safe anywhere. You don’t know where you belong. It’s a kind of restlessness. You probably drink and smoke and think you’re very old. I’ve seen other people like you; they come and ask my father for work. He says they are lost people. At first I thought they were just eccentric, but it’s not exactly that. I’m like them, I think, and you are too. You walk about the streets drawing pictures, and that’s your way of searching for another world.’

  ‘Another world,’ said Ashley. And there in the cheerless dusk, he felt his whole life alter. He had never considered that there might be anyone else like him.

  Anna went home to the wrong flat after work. She had done this twice before, and each time she had the same sinking sense like missing a step and then had laughed at herself for being stupid. But as she went back down to the Underground, she thought, I have never been fixed in one place. Sometimes I forget where I am when I wake up in the morning, and when I leave work, I have to think about where to go, because I have never belonged anywhere. She and Ashley were back at Bradley’s now, because they were looking for another flat. In truth, his old house in Forest Park Mansions was the place she thought of as home more than anywhere.

  A merciless tiredness came over her on the Underground, but the crowds of people kept her standing. On the escalator, she closed her eyes. She walked the last few streets in a stupor and went up the stairs of the building one at a time.

  When she got back, past nine o’clock, Ashley was sitting at the table. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said.

  ‘Just sitting.’

  ‘I know. I thought you would be out late as usual.’

  ‘I’m finished with that.’

  She gave him a quick smile, threw her keys on the table, and went to the sink to fill the kettle. But she was too tired to lift it, so she just stood there and watched the pigeons fighting on the wet glass of the roof. ‘Mam?’ said Ashley.

  She turned. He looked unlike himself, like he used to look when he was a young boy. ‘Tell me about my father,’ he said.

  For the first time in months, Anna considered her son properly, the way she sometimes studied his face when he was sleeping. His features were almost settled now, black eyes like his father’s and a mouth that seemed permanently fixed in defiance.

  ‘There are things I don’t understand,’ said Ashley. ‘Like why I can make things happen that aren’t possible. And why I believe that this isn’t the real world. Mam, sometimes things come to me out of nowhere. Once I heard music, but it was the middle of the night and everywhere was locked up. And another time I thought I saw …’ He shook his head. ‘I thought I saw people moving out of sight. You know why, don’t you? There’s some reason.’

  ‘I used to tell you stories,’ she said. ‘You thought they were fairy tales, and you asked me to stop.’

  ‘Maybe I would believe them now,’ he said quietly.

  She turned back to the sink. Rain was falling outside. Whenever it rained, the glass roof beyond the kitchen window thundered and drowned all conversation. Lightning flared in the small square of sky. Anna thought that made it easier, to speak with her back to him and her
voice half covered by the storm.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Ashley again. And Anna, as well as she knew, told him. In the years of silence, she had perfected the story as she knew it, and that made it easier than it had been before. She told him everything.

  ‘Are there other people who know about this?’ said Ashley when she had finished.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Anna. ‘I used to think there would be. I thought there must be people. But I don’t know any more. It’s just us, isn’t it? It always has been.’

  ‘Do you still love him?’ said Ashley.

  She had refused to answer this question nine years ago. But what was the use any more? ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think so. As much as I loved anyone.’

  ‘But then couldn’t you find some way—’

  Anna shook her head. Ashley watched her. He was turning Bradley’s expensive saltcellar around in his hand. The salt covered the table and half the floor, but Ashley had not noticed. ‘Can I go back there?’ he said. ‘Not for ever. I just want to see it.’

  ‘No,’ said Anna. ‘No, you can’t.’

  ‘Couldn’t I go and look for him?’

  ‘No, Ash.’

  ‘I want to see him,’ he said. ‘I have to see him. Otherwise I think it might be too late.’

  ‘Too late?’ said Anna, real fear in her heart now. But Ashley did not continue. He just got up and went to his room and closed the door.

  Lying awake that night, things became clear to him. He would find some way to go back to Lowcastle, to the house on the banks of the lake where his first memories were. He would travel backwards, on the road to the north, and somehow by doing that, all the years between would be cancelled out. And somehow by doing that, he would find his father.

  Maybe Juliette had been misled by the title, but to her, Forest Park Mansions looked unimpressive and bleak when she found it at last. A broken tree stood in a small square of dirt; in front of it, a bicycle lay stranded without its wheels. She checked the address several times. While she was still checking it, Ashley crossed the window of the flat and stopped and recognized her.

  She waited for him to come down. While she waited, she heard her heart take up a steady rhythm and beat faster and faster, as though it was trying to choke her. Then the door opened, and he looked out at her. ‘Ashley,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to you.’

  She saw him tap one finger against the door, and he seemed to be considering. ‘I’ll get a coat,’ he said finally.

  She waited. Then he appeared again, and they started out together. They walked for several streets without talking. Then Ashley sat down on a low wall and said, ‘What do you want to talk to me about?’

  Juliette did not know how to begin. ‘After I saw you last time,’ she said, ‘things changed to me. It was that and other things. My father’s old life. He used to work for a man called Mr Aldebaran. I’ve remembered it now. And we used to live in a house in a city with a castle on a rock. I do have memories from before I was five years old; I just didn’t know, but you made me remember them.’

  Ashley studied her face for several seconds. Then he said, ‘That’s where I want to go. That city with the castle. That’s where my father is.’

  Juliette had felt, with something like dread but softer, that there was some connection between them. She could not work it out, but she had known. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ she said. ‘Have you ever been able to do impossible things?’

  ‘Impossible things?’

  Juliette hesitated. Then she picked up a dry leaf from the pavement and held it in the air in front of them, and let it go. It did not fall. Ashley stared at it for several seconds. Then he snatched it out of the air and said, ‘Did you really just—’

  ‘That was what I meant by impossible things.’

  Ashley did not answer for a long time. Then he nodded and said, ‘I can do that.’

  ‘My father writes all the time now,’ she said, ‘and I broke the lock on his door and read what he was writing. It was an explanation about these impossible things. It’s willpower. And people have been born with it in all generations. There are other people, even here in England. It lets you see other worlds and manipulate forces. In my own country, people train in willpower. And that’s where I want to go. Because my father is going to take my whole life away if I stay here. He doesn’t let me out any more. He thinks something is going to happen to me, and he’s sworn never to go back home to our old country; I know he has. But I won’t be happy – I won’t know what the real world is – unless I can go back there.’

  Ashley stared at a burned-out car on the corner of the street. He stared at it so fixedly that he might have been somewhere else altogether in his thoughts. They sat like that for a long time, saying nothing. Juliette was breathing fast because of the cold and because of telling him all these things so suddenly.

  ‘I know about that place you call the old country,’ Ashley said eventually. ‘I think it’s the same place I’m talking about.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘North,’ said Ashley.

  ‘North, and then what?’

  ‘And then I think I’ll know the way. Once I get there.’

  A question was forming itself in her mind, and she did not dare to ask it. But after he fell silent, there was nothing else to say. The wind cut like knives, and a cold rain started. Juliette thought, This rain and this wind are not part of my real life, and if I stay here a hundred years, I will never get used to them. ‘Ashley,’ she said. ‘I hardly know you, but you’re the only person I’ve ever met who understands this.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘Let’s go together.’

  An engine broke the silence, and they both turned. The Rolls-Royce was cruising through the empty streets, with Richard glancing about anxiously from behind the wheel. ‘Quick!’ said Juliette. ‘If my father knows I was talking to you–’

  She pushed Ashley down behind the burned-out car.

  ‘What is it?’ he said.

  ‘My father told me I could never speak to you.’

  ‘I don’t even know your father.’

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Wait–’

  Juliette turned and ran towards Richard, with no thought except to stop him before he came any further along the road.

  He saw her and shut off the engine and came out to meet her. ‘What on earth—’ he began. ‘Juliette, where have you been all this time?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘I was worried about you. I had to get the car and come looking for you, I was so anxious. Where have you been?’

  ‘I just wanted a walk.’

  ‘Get in. Come on. We’ll have to leave the car somewhere and walk; it is much too recognizable.’

  Richard opened the car door to let her in, then got in and started up the engine again. They passed the burned car where Ashley was hiding, but Richard did not even glance at it. As they drove off, Juliette could see it receding in the rearview mirror. She directed her thoughts at it, as though the glass was a concentrating lens. Wait for me and we can go together, she thought. You are the only person who knows the truth.

  ‘Are you all right, Juliette?’ said Richard, but she did not answer. It was like finding your balance or listening for a true note. Anything could set it off-key. As they gained speed across a roundabout and into the traffic of the main road, she found Ashley’s answer in the low hum of the engine. Yes. I’ll wait for you. Tell me when.

  JUST BEFORE DAWN ON

  THE SEVENTH OF JANUARY

  Mr Hardy stretched out his legs, and I heard the joints crack like an old tree in winter. A strange kind of calm seemed to have come over him. He took out a metal flask and poured us spirits, and we both drank. ‘The coach will be moving on soon,’ he said. I glanced to the window. But the coach was not there; the night drew out a while longer. I did not want to go on with my own story, not yet. The hardest part was still to come, I thought, like the last miles of this journey.
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br />   I knew him well enough by now to wait for his verdict without asking him for it. He rubbed his hands together, and I heard the joints crack again. Then he poured out another glass of spirits. I swear his blood must have been pure alcohol. He sipped the spirits thoughtfully, then said, ‘All this makes sense, you know.’ Then he was silent for so long that I was sure he was thinking of something else.

  He was still racked with coughing. ‘Are you sick?’ I asked him.

  ‘Not so bad,’ he said, wiping his eyes. ‘No, not so bad – thank you.’

  I waited for him to stop coughing.

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’ he said when he had finished. ‘Do you think Leonard started to write these things after he read the book?’

  ‘What book?’ I said.

  ‘The Darkness Has a Thousand Voices.’

  I frowned. I was not certain if it was that or Aldebaran dying or both. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘It was only after he read the book that I saw him writing again. That book haunted him. I think he always had a faint hope that Harold North might still be alive.’

  ‘You read it too,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  And what did you think?’

  ‘It’s very like Harold North.’

  ‘Do you remember that night when we talked about love?’ he asked me.

  Sometimes I could not keep up with the drift of his thoughts. ‘When you told me about the girl you fell in love with?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I remember.’

  He set down his glass of spirits. ‘I was dishonest,’ he said. ‘I made it sound as though I had always acted properly, when in reality I am not such a good man at all.’

  I wondered if he was a criminal. But that thought passed. He was too honest; it ran through his whole being, and it was impossible that he had committed any shameful act.

  ‘We’re almost at the harbour,’ he said. ‘It will only be a day or two more. And, Anselm, there is something I’ve been meaning to tell you before I lose my courage. And before I hear the end of what happened. I’ve been meaning to tell you for days.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, misgivings rising in my heart in spite of my attempts to dismiss them. ‘What is it?’