Broken Voices

by Andrew Taylor

  He went down on his hands and knees and crawled slowly across the room, examining each board. He was such a ridiculous sight, a black blob on all fours, an enormous nocturnal insect. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. Most of all, I wanted to escape from the Cathedral, go back to the Sacrist’s Lodging, crawl into my bed and pull the covers over my head.

  Suddenly, Faraday raised his hand. ‘Did you hear it?’ He was so excited he forgot to whisper. ‘And there it is again.’

  I thought he had gone mad. ‘What?’

  ‘Those notes — the music I heard. Those four notes.’ He sang them to me in his pure treble voice: ‘La-la-la-la.’

  ‘I can’t hear it.’

  ‘Shh — there’s more. Listen.’

  He tried to sing the new notes but this time his voice betrayed him. He croaked like a frog. Not that it mattered one way or another to me because the la-la-la-la was just noise as far as I was concerned.

  Anyway, I didn’t believe him, not really.

  ‘There’s something here,’ he said in a different voice, excited and breathless. ‘I think it’s moving. Yes, it does. It’s showing me where to look.’

  I couldn’t see what he was doing because his body was in the way. ‘Rabbit! For God’s sake, come back! You must be near that trapdoor if you’re not on it already.’

  I had a sickening vision of the trapdoor breaking free, Faraday falling, just like Goldsworthy, to the floor of the tower below.

  At that moment, the lantern went out.

  13

  ‘I’m scared,’ Faraday said. ‘I’m so scared.’

  In the darkness his voice seemed to come from very far away. I had not realized what a difference that little lantern made.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, though it felt all wrong. ‘Find the other candles. Light one of those.’

  I heard a scrabbling sound. Then silence. Then ragged breathing and more scrabbling.

  ‘Hurry up,’ I said. ‘Come on, Rabbit, we haven’t got all night.’

  ‘I… I can’t find them.’ He sounded further away than he had been.

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’ I heard the panic in my voice. I swallowed it. ‘The ones from the choir vestry. Remember?’

  ‘I put them down when I was looking for the key. I must have forgotten to pick them up.’

  I bit my lower lip and tasted blood. ‘We haven’t time for jokes.’

  ‘It isn’t a joke. I’m sorry.’

  I nearly shouted at him. But I knew there was no point. ‘You’ve got matches,’ I said. ‘Light one and find where I am. Walk towards me. When the match goes out, I’ll say something. Come towards the sound.’

  There was another delay. Then a scrape and a flare of light, shocking in its intensity.

  ‘It’s the last one,’ he said.

  Faraday rose to his feet as he spoke. He was in the centre of the ringing chamber, I saw, which might well be the very place where the trapdoor was. He moved too quickly. The flame guttered and died.

  For the first time we were in complete darkness. I felt dizzy again. The tower sensed our new weakness. It seemed to shift beneath my feet like a sleeping giant making a minute adjustment to its position.

  Faraday whimpered.

  ‘Come towards me,’ I whispered. ‘Keep together.’

  I heard him crawling. A moment later the sound stopped.

  ‘Hurry up,’ I hissed.

  ‘I can hear it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The music.’

  ‘For God’s sake — shut up about that damned music. Come here.’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ he murmured. But he started to crawl again.

  I turned round, stretched out my hands and tried to find the door. I knew it wasn’t far away. But the darkness had disorientated me. Faraday was still shuffling towards me.

  ‘Where are you?’ he said. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Here, you fool.’

  He sounded much nearer than I had expected. Something brushed the skirt of my coat. I jumped back and screamed like a girl. Something rattled in my coat.

  ‘It’s me,’ Faraday said. ‘Oh, I’m so glad we’re together.’

  So was I, though I didn’t say so.

  ‘What was that?’ he said. ‘When I touched you… it sounded like—’

  ‘Matches,’ I said. ‘Matches.’

  I fumbled in the pocket of my overcoat. Hours ago, in another lifetime, I had stood on top of the little wooded hill with Faraday and smoked two Woodbines. Afterwards I had hidden both the cigarettes and the matches in my coat. I had a hole in one of the pockets, which made it possible to push contraband items deep into the lining.

  My fingers were cold and shaking. The hole in the pocket was small. It took me an age to find and extract the matches. I shook the box. It sounded hollow, nearly empty.

  I opened it, first making sure it was the right way up, and counted the remaining matches. There were only six left.

  ‘I can still hear it,’ Faraday said. ‘The music.’

  ‘Shut up. If we’re careful we can just do it.’ I calculated that we would have to use the matches only when we really needed them; for most of the time we would have to rely on our sense of touch. ‘Hold on to my belt again.’

  He obeyed. I scraped the first match on the side of the box. It misfired, the head crumbling to nothing.

  ‘Are they damp?’ Faraday said.

  I didn’t reply. That was what I was afraid of. I tried again: this time the match fired up. I turned. The door was on my right, perhaps three yards away. I took a step towards it. The movement made the flame flicker and die.

  My fingers brushed against the wood of the door.

  ‘Light another match,’ Faraday said.

  ‘Not yet. Just follow me. We’ll go down the stairs very slowly. Don’t hurry. Keep your right hand on the wall.’

  Faraday was so close to me I felt his breath on my neck. The stairs were steep. I concentrated on the wall, on finding the rise of each stair with my foot, on keeping Faraday from going too quickly.

  The archway leading from the landing to the arcade was just visible ahead of us. I reached the landing and stopped. Faraday bumped into me. I took out the box of matches. Just as I was poised to light one, he said, ‘It’s not quite dark.’

  I ignored him. I thought that, after the confined space of the ringing chamber and stairs, it was naturally a little less dark in the body of the Cathedral.

  I struck the third match. The flame burst out, dazzling me. Beyond the archway was the passageway behind the arcade and, at the end, the open door to the next staircase. All we had to do was keep to the wall on our right and not think about what lay on our left.

  ‘Boys?’ a man shouted far below. ‘Boys?’

  Faraday said something I couldn’t catch. I held onto the pillar of the arch and looked down into the church. Light was moving in the nave.

  ‘Boys! Where are you?’

  It was Mr Ratcliffe. His voice sounded younger and more vigorous than usual but very far away.

  ‘Up here, sir,’ I called. ‘In the west tower.’

  I heard his hurrying footsteps. He came out of the south aisle and into the nave. He tried to run but couldn’t manage it. He slowed to a fast walk. He was carrying a lantern, which swung wildly to and fro in his hand.

  Mr Ratcliffe reached the space under the tower. He stood panting in a puddle of light.

  ‘I can’t see you,’ he called. ‘Where are you?’

  I struck a match.

  ‘Good God — you idiotic children! Stay where you are. Don’t move an inch.’

  It was a relief to be told what to do. Mr Ratcliffe’s footsteps hurried across the floor. The sound changed as he mounted the staircase but we could still see him.

  ‘We never found it,’ Faraday said. ‘The anthem, I mean.’

  ‘If you don’t shut up about that bloody anthem, I’ll bloody kill you,’ I hissed.

  He started to cry, irritating little sniffles. It enraged
me that he could be such a self-centred little beast. I was about to be in the worst trouble I had ever been in and it was his fault. I saw now what I should have seen earlier, that being caught didn’t matter to him, because he was already in disgrace. But it was different for me.

  The footsteps were nearer now. I heard Mr Ratcliffe’s laboured breathing. Light glowed at the far end of the arcade, growing stronger every minute.

  There he was, in the doorway, gasping for air, holding the lantern high.

  ‘Don’t — move—’ he said again, sucking in breath between words.

  It was Mr Ratcliffe but it did not look like him. He had taken his teeth out for the night, and his face had collapsed in on itself, making him a stranger with a familiar voice.

  ‘I–I shall come over — to you. Bring you back — one by one.’

  He was hatless, his hair unbrushed. He wore his overcoat, which hung open, revealing a dressing gown and striped pyjamas.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he repeated yet again. ‘Please. Please.’

  He edged onto the passageway and staggered slowly towards us. ‘Don’t move,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t move.’

  ‘Look,’ Faraday said loudly and urgently. ‘Look—’

  Mr Ratcliffe’s head jerked to the right. His body twisted after it. He fell heavily against the railing. There was a moment when nothing happened, when everything simply stopped moving. Then the railing gave way.

  The lantern clattered to the floor of the passage. The candle guttered but the flame lasted another second or two.

  Time enough and more for Mr Ratcliffe to fall into the darkness.

  14

  Faraday wouldn’t move. He sat down on the bottom step and started to cry. I left him to it. I crawled across the arcade — it seemed safer that way. I found the lantern. The glass was broken but the candle was still there.

  Once I was safely at the other end of the walkway, I lit the stub, which was still warm. It took me several minutes because my hands were shaking so much, and I wasted two more matches, including the last one.

  When the candle was alight, I called out, ‘Sir? Sir? Can you hear me?’ I knew it was stupid but I did it all the same. ‘Sir? Are you all right?’

  ‘He won’t hear,’ Faraday said. ‘He can’t hear.’

  I looked back at him. He was still sitting on the bottom step.

  ‘Come across,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t. I’ll fall. My legs are shaking. My head hurts.’

  ‘You’ve got to. Come on, Rabbit. I’ll come over and fetch you.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t. I won’t let you. You’ll make me fall.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘You can’t make me.’

  I didn’t want to leave Faraday behind, for my sake as much as his. But I had to find out what had happened to Mr Ratcliffe. I had to fetch help.

  I went down the spiral staircase. It was relatively easy going after what had gone before, for the steps were wide and shallow. I forced myself not to hurry.

  At the bottom, I cupped the flame with my free hand and moved slowly towards the west door. Mr Ratcliffe lay, a darker shadow than the rest, about a yard away from it. He was on his back. The overcoat had spread around him like a pair of black wings.

  I put the candle carefully on the ground beside him. ‘Sir,’ I said. ‘Sir — please wake up.’

  I knew he was dead. I had known all along. But I touched him. It seemed important to do that, a sign of respect, of sorrow. I felt the stubble on his cheek. I tried to put his overcoat over him: to keep him warm, perhaps, or to make him decent.

  I looked up, into the darkness. ‘Faraday? Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m going for help. Just stay where you are.’

  I picked up the lantern. There was a savage draught by the door and the candle had no glass to protect it. The flame died as if a pair of fingers had snuffed it.

  ‘I say…’ Faraday’s voice drifted down to me. ‘I can hear it again. The music.’

  * * *

  I have no idea how long it took me to escape from the Cathedral. I wandered in the dark, in the belly of the stone beast. More by luck than good judgement I found the south nave aisle. I knew I was there because I could feel the shape of the memorial tablets that lined its wall.

  From then it was simply a matter of working my way up to the choir vestry. I went through the vestry and tugged open the door to the south porch.

  There was a little light here, for one of the College lampposts was fifty yards away on the road to the Porta. I walked through the porch. I glanced to my left. Trails of ragged footprints marched across the grass. That was how Mr Ratcliffe had known we were in the Cathedral.

  Something touched my leg below the knee.

  I looked down. A cat walked briskly but without haste through the archway of the porch and slipped through the bars of the gate leading to the Deanery garden.

  Was it Mordred? It seems far-fetched to think it might have been. But cats are strange animals, and he was a stranger cat than most. I remember that touch on my ankle as we were climbing the first staircase of the tower.

  I fled through the College to the Veals’ house. I have a vivid memory of hammering on their door, of screaming and crying, until Mr Veal came down in his dressing gown, carrying a poker.

  Later I remember hot, sweet tea in the kitchen. Mr Veal wasn’t there then — I suppose he must have gone to the Cathedral. But Mrs Veal bustled about in a dressing gown, with a cap on her head. It was she who saw that my hands were bloody, and so was the sleeve of my coat.

  But that can’t be right, I thought. My hands can’t be bloody now. They were bloody before this, after the ratting at Angel Farm.

  I think the doctor came. I think I was given a sleeping draught and put to bed in a little room beside the Veals’ bedroom.

  There’s not much more to tell. I spent the next few days at the Veals’ house. I slept and ate a great deal. I answered questions, often the same ones, over and over again. The Veals asked the questions first. Then the headmaster, a remote figure who had never condescended to speak to me before, then the doctor again. Then two police officers, one after the other, and a man in a suit with a gold watch chain, who I think was perhaps a solicitor.

  I didn’t ask about Faraday but the headmaster told me anyway. Mr Veal had brought him down from the tower. He was running a high fever and he had been taken to the cottage hospital.

  His illness, I heard later, was diagnosed as brain fever, a convenient term in those days that covered a multitude of conditions. I don’t know what a doctor would have called it now. Faraday recovered, I heard later, and his guardian sent him abroad to convalesce in one of the German spa towns.

  My aunt was still in hospital herself, though she was well enough to return home by the middle of January. There must have been frenzied discussions about what on earth to do with me in the meantime. In the end the school persuaded the vicar of my aunt’s village to take me in until she was able to cope with me again.

  Mr Ratcliffe, I presume, was buried, and his house was given to strangers. I don’t know what happened to Mordred.

  In one way, everything turned out well — at least for me. I didn’t have to go back to school. The vicar and his family were kind; and all my Christmas presents were waiting for me there.

  Better still, when my aunt came home and I moved back to live with her, she decided I could have a puppy. I called him Rusty, not Stanley. For a month or two I had lessons with the vicar for four mornings a week. Then my aunt sent me as a dayboy to the grammar school in the nearest town. I was quite happy there, once I had grown used to it, though I never made any close friends.

  So you might say that in the end I had everything I wanted. But somehow it turned out to be not quite what I wanted after all.

  * * *

  I never went back. What would have been the point? My parents came home a year later. When we met again, they didn’t talk about what happened
and nor did I, though once, years later, my mother made some reference to my stay at the vicarage — ‘after you were ill.’

  But I wasn’t ill. It was Faraday who was ill, not me.

  I never saw Faraday again, though there was a time in the 1920s when I wished I could have talked to him about all this: he would have been the one person who might have understood, who might have known more. But Faraday went missing in action at the Third Battle of Ypres in September 1917. His body was never found.

  I am quite aware that everything that happened that night is explicable in a perfectly straightforward way. Two silly schoolboys went into the Cathedral by night for a prank and climbed part of the way up the west tower before compounding their folly by plunging themselves into darkness. The elderly gentleman whose hospitality they had abused came to rescue them. He was not in the best of health. Climbing the tower stairs in a state of acute anxiety brought on a heart attack, which led him to fall — though the doctor was not able to tell whether it was the heart attack or the fall that actually killed him. The younger boy was running a fever at the time, which may have been some excuse for his irresponsible behaviour. But there was no excuse for the behaviour of the older boy.

  All this is true. But it leaves out so much. We went up the west tower because of the story of Mr Goldsworthy: because of his anthem for the bells that were never rung, and because of his dying fall from the ringing chamber.

  La-la-la-la. We went up the tower because of lost notes that only Faraday heard.

  Was Mordred in the Cathedral that night? Was it he who brushed against me on the tower stairs and left the south porch when I did? Did Faraday see something when we were climbing the stairs and, later, just before Mr Ratcliffe had his seizure? After the ratting at Angel Farm, did I really glimpse a man in the arcade passageway when we came through the Cathedral?

  Finally, can I trust my own memory?

  La-la-la-la.

  Lost notes and broken melodies. Sometimes, when I wake up suddenly, I am full of happiness. I know that I have heard in a dream I can no longer remember those notes that Faraday heard and tried to sing to me in his cracked voice. But I don’t understand music. And I never remember my dreams.