The Voices

by F. R. Tallis

  ‘Ah.’ It was only a single syllable, but it communicated sudden, grave insight – resentment and anger. Christopher was too het up to detect such nuances. He did not register the portent in her eyes. He only saw the severe, masculine cut of her hair and the pendant bulge beneath her chin. ‘I don’t know what you’re becoming – what you’re turning into.’

  Laura stared at the magazine in front of her. A red rash had suddenly appeared on her neck.

  ‘You want me to be like this again, don’t you?’

  The truth of the accusation had the effect of leaving Christopher speechless. Eventually, he replied, rather weakly, ‘No.’

  ‘Well, it’s not going to happen. OK?’ She picked up the magazine and placed it on top of the others in the box. ‘Now, please. Take it outside.’

  Christopher conceded defeat and silently did as he was told.

  Before going up to his studio he went into the bedroom to find a thinner T-shirt. Although it was still early in the day the temperature had started to climb. On Laura’s dressing table he saw the bottle of perfume he had bought for her in Paris. It was unopened.

  For the rest of the morning Christopher couldn’t concentrate. He tried to focus on his music but he kept on thinking about Laura, and when he listened back to what he had recorded he was disappointed. It didn’t compliment the scene he had been watching on the TV screen: androids converging on a moon base surrounded by parabolic dishes. The soundtrack lacked urgency and the textures were too thin. He was tempted to erase the tape and start again, but he resisted the urge. What he needed was a break, some fresh air to clear his head. In the hallway, he shouted out, ‘I’m going for a walk, OK?’ Laura didn’t respond. He shrugged, slammed the door and walked down to the gate.

  As he crossed the road he noticed that the tarmac was tacky. The soles of his shoes stuck to the ground and when he lifted his feet he heard a tearing noise. He had to curl his toes otherwise his shoes would have come off. The sun was so strong the tarry surface had begun to melt. He had never seen anything like it before. Apart from a little thundery rain on the first Sunday of the month, the sun had been a permanent fixture and temperatures had soared into the eighties every day. The sky had become a glaring dome of blue-yellow haze. London was burning up. He remembered a headline he had read in the Express a week earlier: ‘Sweat It Out For Fifty Years’. Scientists had just discovered an atmospheric phenomenon called the ‘greenhouse effect’ and experts were predicting longer and fiercer heatwaves to come. In a final twist of fate, the weather had joined forces with the inept politicians, striking unions and terrorists to hasten the end of Britain. The whole nation was about to spontaneously combust.

  Christopher hurried onto the shaded path beneath the trees on the opposite side of the road and began to penetrate the wooded margin of Hampstead Heath. Once again, he began to think about Laura. What was happening to her? She had been changing for some time now, but the process of transformation had accelerated over the last few months. Throwing away her magazines was a symbolic act, a disavowal of her past. In effect, she was declaring that she was no longer the person who he had fallen in love with. And if that was true, didn’t it follow that their relationship would suffer or, even worse, become unworkable? Yet neither he nor she could just walk away from their shared commitments. There was Faye to consider. Christopher suddenly felt tension arising as two contradictory impulses pulled in opposite directions. On the one hand, he accepted the responsibilities of marriage and family, but on the other hand, the artist in him balked at the prospect of confinement in an unhappy domestic situation. A photographic image of Ancel’s apartment clarified in his mind: the tall windows, the oil painting, the scantily clad young lover. Christopher felt envy curdling in the pit of his stomach, like many men of his generation, he had heard Cyril Connolly’s assertion that There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall repeated more times than he cared to remember. Perhaps there was some truth in it after all.

  Once out of the woods, Christopher ascended a path which took him up to the Bronze-Age burial mound known locally as Boadicea’s Grave. He noticed that the surrounding fields were mottled with brown patches. The absence of rain was causing the grass to shrivel and die. After crossing the south meadow and the duelling ground, he negotiated the hump of a quaint stone bridge and made his way up towards the eighteenth-century stucco facade of Kenwood House.

  The heat had made him thirsty so he bought himself a cup of tea in the cafe and searched for a table outside. He stopped dead when he saw Amanda Ogilvy sitting beneath a sun umbrella reading a book. She was wearing a lacy white summer dress that emphasized the darkness of her Mediterranean complexion, and her black hair was tied back. Loose coils framed her face and when she moved they bounced like springs.

  ‘Amanda?’

  She looked up. ‘Christopher? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve been walking. Mind if I join you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  He pulled a chair out from under the table and sat down.

  ‘What are you reading?’

  ‘Stevie Smith – Collected Poems.’ She held up the cover so that he could see for himself.

  ‘Stevie Smith . . .’ He repeated the name in a slightly distracted way.

  ‘You do know her work.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Those lines about being further out than you thought and not waving but drowning?’

  ‘Ah, yes. Fancy that. I’d completely forgotten the name.’

  ‘But not the poem – you only need to hear those lines once and you never forget them.’

  ‘Are you having a day off?’

  ‘No, it’s summer. Or hadn’t you noticed?’ Amanda gestured at the blazing sun.

  ‘So it is.’

  Their conversation flowed easily and required no effort. Amanda talked about films, television and the recent announcement that Benjamin Britten had accepted a life peerage. ‘Have you ever met him?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Simon has. One of Simon’s chamber pieces – the movement for flute, harp and cello – was performed at Aldeburgh.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘He had dinner with Britten after the concert. I wasn’t invited.’

  A sparrow landed on the edge of the table, hopped once and then flew off again. Christopher drained his cup. ‘Would you like some more tea?’

  ‘Yes please. Thank you.’

  Christopher went inside the cafe and returned with a tray loaded with metal teapots, milk and fresh crockery. As he poured and stirred he became conscious of Amanda watching his movements. Their eyes locked. She was frowning slightly. ‘Are you all right, Chris?’

  ‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

  ‘You seem a bit subdued.’

  The argument with Laura had put him in a bad mood; however, he hadn’t given Amanda any reason to suspect something was amiss – or so he’d thought. As far as he was concerned, he had been behaving normally, yet he felt obliged to acknowledge her observation and he responded accordingly. ‘I’ve got a lot on my mind at the moment. There’s this score I’m writing and I can’t seem to get the bloody thing finished, probably because I’ve been spending too much time working on something else: a serious piece – my first in years.’

  ‘The one with the voices – the spirit voices.’

  Christopher started. ‘You know about it?’

  ‘Yes, Simon told me.’ She appeared flustered and a little anxious. ‘That was OK, wasn’t it? For him to say, I mean.’

  Christopher waved his hand in the air. ‘Of course, it’s not a secret.’

  ‘I thought the concept sounded very interesting. But that isn’t it.’ Her eyes widened. ‘No, there’s something else troubling you, isn’t there?’ She leaned forward, as if she were trying to get a better view of his soul.

  ‘Well, I suppose you’re right,’ Christopher replied. ‘There is something else . . .’ He wondered whether it would be wise to continue. But
suddenly the weight of his dissatisfaction pressed down on him, and he felt an overwhelming need to unburden himself. Amanda was an old friend and someone who he could trust with confidences. And who else did he have to talk to? There was no one better qualified to hear his confession. ‘I’m not sure that things are as they should be with me and Laura.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Amanda, leaning even closer. ‘What do you mean?’ She had tried to sound casual but her eagerness was transparent.

  Christopher made some abortive attempts at translating his feelings into words, and discovered that the task was more challenging than he had expected. His sentences gradually became less fragmented and his speech gathered momentum. He found himself saying that Laura had become distant, cold, almost a stranger, and that she was even looking different these days. ‘It’s as though she’s rejecting everything she once was.’ An account of the argument in the kitchen followed. ‘She insisted that I take the magazines back outside. She’s thrown them all away. I can appreciate that she wants to move on – doesn’t everybody? – but why does she have to deny her past?’ Christopher was aware that his voice had acquired an unattractive whining tone, and he made an effort to pitch his subsequent complaints in a lower register. Amanda nodded, her sympathetic expression rigidly set, unconditionally accepting his grievances. He found the ventilation of his feelings curiously satisfying.

  ‘Look,’ said Amanda, ‘this might not be an appropriate question for me to ask, so just tell me to stop being nosey, if that’s how you feel – I won’t be offended – but are you still . . .’ She halted before whispering, ‘Intimate?’

  Christopher looked down, embarrassed. He studied Amanda’s feet. She was wearing sandals and she had painted her toenails the colour of maraschino cherries. ‘Well, yes. But it isn’t what it used to be. It’s all become rather . . .’ He searched his memory for the right word. ‘Indifferent.’

  Amanda tried to comfort Christopher. She urged him to be patient and suggested that Laura might be going through a ‘phase’; she reminded him that it wasn’t unusual for women to experience an ‘identity crisis’ after having a baby and she added that she was sure that they – Laura and he – being mature adults, could ‘work it out’. But there was something missing from Amanda’s counsel. Her jargon sounded trite. She seemed to be quoting from an article or a work of popular psychology rather than speaking from the heart. Perhaps she was aware of this deficiency, because soon after she abandoned language altogether and rested her palm on the back of Christopher’s hand. For a few minutes, physical contact relieved them of any need to talk, but in due course Amanda said, ‘Relationships. Appearances can be so deceptive. You know, me and Simon . . .’ Her lips puckered to form an odd smile. ‘It’s never been perfect, particularly in that department.’ The cast of her face changed. ‘But you must have guessed.’

  ‘No,’ Christopher replied, puzzled. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Well, if things had been better, between me and Simon, then our . . .’ Her forefinger oscillated between them. ‘Our . . . I don’t know what to call it.’ She sighed and concluded, ‘It probably wouldn’t have happened.’

  Christopher was shocked. The subject of their illicit liaison had always been strictly taboo. ‘I had no such excuse. Not at that time. Laura and I were very happy.’

  ‘You say that . . .’ Amanda let her incomplete sentence fill the ensuing hiatus with implications.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We were stoned. We were very stoned. But isn’t it the case that we do what we really want to do when we’re out of our heads?’

  ‘Should we be having this conversation?’

  ‘Probably not, but life’s complicated, isn’t it?’ She lifted her hand off Christopher’s and bent down to rummage in her macramé bag. The front of her dress became slack, exposing the pale floral border of a bra. While she was searching for her cigarettes, she noticed Christopher’s shoes. They were covered in brown dust. It reminded her of the dust she had seen on Simon’s shoes the morning after he had returned late from rehearsals. She realized that she was seeing something significant, but now wasn’t the time to think about it. Sitting up, she offered Christopher a cigarette.

  ‘No thanks. I’ve given up.’

  ‘Be a devil.’ The huskiness of her voice made this modest incitement persuasive. She held the box out in front of her.

  Christopher’s resolve crumbled. ‘Oh, all right. Bugger it.’

  When they started talking again, their conversation was more philosophical. Instead of discussing personal unhappiness, they took up more general themes – the knotty problems of the human condition, the best way to live. It felt like a retreat from a precipice, a withdrawal to safer ground. They had both taken a step back.

  Amanda stubbed out her cigarette and looked at her wristwatch. ‘Oh shit, I was supposed to be meeting a friend in the village. I’m going to be really late.’ They both stood and made some final remarks preliminary to parting, and Amanda offered Christopher her cheek. He bent to aim a chaste kiss on her smooth, olive skin, but she was not quite still enough to ensure perfect accuracy, and instead their lips made partial contact. Christopher detected a fractional lingering, and when they separated, he thought that he saw something new in her eyes – a fleeting presentiment of intent. Or was he just imagining it? ‘Goodbye,’ said Amanda. ‘It’s been nice – talking like this.’ She hung her bag over her shoulder, turned and rushed off, her stride widening until she achieved a rather lazy half-trot. Her jet-black hair was suddenly lustrous in the sunlight, paradoxically gleaming. Christopher watched her until she disappeared. He sat down and looked at the crushed filters in the ashtray. One of them was stained with lipstick. It was then that he noticed Stevie Smith’s Collected Poems. For a moment, he considered chasing after Amanda, but he realized she might have gone left or right beyond the terrace, and he had no way of knowing which. Both directions would get her to Hampstead village, depending on how she intended to get there – by car or bus. He pressed his hands together as if in prayer and fell into a deep, contemplative state.

  That evening, Christopher telephoned Amanda.

  ‘It’s Christopher.’

  ‘You’ve got my Stevie Smith?’

  ‘Yes. Shall I drop it over?’

  ‘Look, we’re going to be away for a few weeks. Could you give me a call at the end of the month?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Had she planned it? He had read a little Freud, and, as far as he could tell, the great psychoanalyst did not believe in accidents. Ultimately, forgetting was always motivated. The famous Stevie Smith couplet that Amanda had paraphrased came back to him. It was easy to drift out further than you thought and to find yourself not waving but drowning. Inevitably, he wondered how far out he had travelled during the course of that afternoon.

  Last week in July

  She was searching for Faye. Once more the house had become a magic box of secret compartments that seemed to unfold and multiply. It was the same nightmare, although not identical in every respect. Previously, she had arrived on the top floor without using the stairs. On this occasion, however, she found herself labouring up a structure reminiscent of an Escher lithograph. Flights and stages defied the logic of conventional geometry. She climbed and climbed, her legs becoming heavier, and almost collapsed when she finally reached the uppermost landing and staggered into the unused room.

  Mummy. Mummy, help me.

  Faye’s impossibly articulate voice drew Laura towards the alcove. She passed through the wall and emerged in the windowless chamber, where she came to a halt and looked around, registering the paraffin lamp, the ochre-stained bricks and the swaying curtain of chains. Instruments of butchery and torture were laid out on the table, but among the meat cleavers and surgical implements she now noticed a Rolleiflex camera, a piece of equipment she associated with her early modelling career. She glanced down at the champagne bucket. It was no longer empty. This time, a bottle of Dom Pérignon was half buried in the slushy ice and a hote
l keyring had been hooked over the cork. A metal tag attached to the keyring was engraved with a room number – 18. Laura sensed that these two digits were connected with some event of personal significance to her, but when she tried to remember what it was her memory supplied no clues.

  Somewhere behind her a door opened and closed, and, as before, she heard footsteps approaching but she could not turn. The tip of a cane made contact with the floor. Chains were brushed aside and subsequently produced a metallic clatter. Clink-clink-clink. The skin at the nape of her neck began to prickle. Clink-clink-clink. It was just behind her, less a person, more a presence – a twisted appetite; merciless, repulsive; eager for depravities, for peeled flesh, exposed inner parts and savage, irregular pleasures. She tried to call for help, but all that she was able to produce was a pathetic whimper.

  Laura opened her eyes and stared into the darkness. Her husband made a grumbling noise and coughed. She clutched the under sheet as though clinging onto something material would prevent her from tumbling back into that terrible place. Her quick, loud respiration subsided, but the world was not quite right; the dream had not been properly sealed off from reality and she was aware of a stray thread of terror, something odd that had carried over, something that persisted.

  Clink-clink-clink.

  Laura sat up, held her breath, and listened. It was the sound of chains colliding; faint and swathed in a continuous hiss. The source was close to her right ear – the baby monitor. For a few seconds, Laura was made immobile by the same paralysis she had experienced in the dream. Then a siren seemed to sound in her head and she leapt out of bed. On the landing, she flicked a light switch and ran into the nursery. Faye was fast asleep. Laura studied her daughter then glanced about the room. Her rapid survey required quick jerky movements and she suddenly felt dizzy. She reached out and grasped the rail of the cot so as to steady herself. Her mind seemed to make a late calibration and the room acquired a more solid aspect. Had she been fully awake when she had heard the clink-clink-clink of the chains? She wasn’t sure.