The Voices (3 page)

They went outside and Simon whistled when he saw the wildly abundant vegetation. ‘Extraordinary. Like deepest Borneo.’

‘It’s going to be a massive job cutting that lot back,’ said Christopher.

‘I rather like it as it is,’ said Amanda.

‘Not very practical, though.’ Christopher sighed.

Simon peeled the foil away from the neck of the champagne bottle and loosened the wire cage underneath. Amanda and Laura winced, tensely awaiting the ‘pop’. Holding the bottle at arm’s length, Simon waited. After a few seconds the cork shot over the bushes and a frothy discharge splashed onto the flagstones. When all the glasses had been filled, Simon proposed a toast: ‘To Chris and Laura.’

As they sipped their champagne, Amanda, frowning slightly, said, ‘Where’s . . .’

‘
Faye?’ Laura repositioned her Alice band. ‘Oh, don’t worry, we haven’t mislaid her.’

‘She’s with a babysitter,’ Christopher added. I’m collecting her later this afternoon.’

‘How is she?’ asked Amanda.

‘Fine,’ said Laura. The word came out rather clipped.

‘Delightful,’ said Christopher, ‘particularly when she laughs.’

Amanda raised her eyebrows. ‘She’s laughing already?’

‘Oh yes,’ continued Christopher proudly, ‘she’s been doing it for months – terribly cute.’

A removal man entered the garden through the side entrance. ‘Mrs Norton?’

Laura, her face suddenly flushed – perhaps it was the champagne? – excused herself and went to see what he wanted.

‘Such a big house,’ said Simon.

‘Yes,’ Christopher agreed. ‘You should see the studio.’

‘It’s already set up?’

‘Yes. Come on, I’ll show you.’

Amanda pouted. ‘What about me?’

‘You can come too,’ said Christopher. He guided them through the drawing room and they ascended the stairs together. On the first floor he showed them some of the finished rooms. ‘I’ve had the place virtually rebuilt. It was in a terrible state.’

‘
Must have cost a fortune,’ said Simon.

‘Don’t ask,’ Christopher groaned.

Eventually, they reached their destination and Christopher ushered Simon and Amanda into his studio.

‘Most impressive,’ said Simon, gazing at a wall of switches and loosely hanging wires.

‘Are you working on anything?’ Amanda enquired.

‘My agent called last week,’ said Christopher. ‘There could be a new project coining my way soon. A Mike Judd film – maybe . . .’

‘Mike Judd,’ Amanda repeated, uncertain. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen a Mike Judd film.’

‘There’s no reason you should have,’ said Christopher. ‘It’s not really your thing – dystopian futures—’

‘Dystopian futures? Isn’t the present bad enough?’

Simon coughed, a little disconcerted by his wife’s directness, and raised his glass as if he intended to propose a second toast. The gesture proved to be merely ornamental. ‘I’m sure you’ll produce some very fine work here.’

‘Thank you,’ Christopher replied, but he was troubled for a moment by Simon’s smile, which lacked sincerity, and he disliked the substitution of the word ‘work’ for ‘music’. A general feeling of unease was clarified by an inner voice that declared:
He doesn’t think you’re any good. Not really. Not anymore.

‘
Are you OK?’ Amanda asked. Her eyes were searching.

‘Sure,’ Christopher improvised. ‘I just remembered another thing that I’ve got to do later.’ He made a concerted effort to conceal his discomfort and marched over to the window. ‘Come over here. Take a look. The view’s great.’

April 1976

Eleven months later

Christopher was seated in his studio listening to a short piece of unfinished music. When completed, it would be incorporated into the soundtrack of the latest Mike Judd film: a low-budget space opera called
Android Insurrection.

An oscillator throbbed at a very low frequency below intermittent clicks and whirring sounds that suggested the operation of mechanical devices. A pure, inhuman soprano made a slow, steady ascent, and a ring modulator, shaped and filtered to sound like bells, supplied a celestial accompaniment. The music was clearly intended to evoke the future. But it was the future as imagined by a person living in the past, someone with a 1950s comic-book vision of life in the twenty-first century. Christopher favoured primitive, rather outmoded methods of sound production. Many of his most interesting effects were still achieved by playing tape recordings backwards and at different speeds, or by playing several loops of
tape simultaneously. Although he owned three synthesizers – a VCS3, a Minimoog and an ARP 2600 – he hardly ever used them.

After graduating, Christopher had received a bursary to visit the NWDR studio in Cologne and it was there that he came under the influence of Stockhausen: a cerebral, charismatic man, who even then was clearly destined to become the most controversial composer of his generation. When Christopher returned to England, he was feted by the avant-garde. His uncompromising pieces were rarely broadcast, but he was a frequent guest on radio discussion programmes. He could always be relied upon to deliver a spirited defence of new music.

There was only one electronic music studio in Great Britain – the BBC Radiophonic Workshop – and Christopher managed to get a job there. He spent the next few years writing theme tunes and incidental music for science documentaries and experimental plays. After everyone else had gone home, he would stay behind in order to work on his own pieces, and colleagues would often find him the following morning, slumped over the OBA/8 mixing desk, fast asleep.

His music came to the attention of a young American director and he was commissioned to compose the soundtrack for a B-movie called
Parasite,
which, surprisingly,
became an international box-office hit. More film work followed and as soon as he could afford oscillators, modulators and recording devices in sufficient number to equip a modest home studio, Christopher left the BBC. The demand for his services increased and he was invited to LA. He acquired an agent who negotiated higher fees and Christopher enjoyed a corresponding improvement in his standard of living. The pieces he had been working on while he was at the BBC were never finished. His old tapes, neatly packed and labelled, were forgotten, and nobody referred to him anymore as the ‘English Stockhausen’.

The oscillator faded and a beat of silence was succeeded by a delicate, high-pitched thrumming. This transparent, tonal haze was sustained for several seconds before the effect was spoiled by an intrusive knocking. The same noise had occurred in the middle of another piece he had been working on the day before but he had been able to salvage most of the material with some judicious cutting and splicing.
Android Insurrection
was a different matter. It was more densely textured and he suspected that he might have to scrap everything after the beat of silence.

Christopher rewound the tape and replayed the offending passage. The knocking seemed to become louder as he
listened more intently. It could only have been caused by a technical fault; however, the ‘strikes’ were resonant, as if they had been recorded in a natural setting with a microphone, and there was something about the regularity of the rhythm that suggested human agency. Christopher jabbed the ‘stop’ button and got up from his seat. There was no point in continuing.

On his way down to the ground floor he discovered Laura in their bedroom, her body half concealed by the soft, snowy cloudscape of a continental quilt. She was wearing a loose cheesecloth smock, baggy cotton trousers and a flimsy pair of leather sandals. Her eyes were open but she was so deep in thought that she did not realize her husband was standing in the doorway.

‘Where’s Faye?’ Christopher asked.

Laura’s head rolled slowly to the side. She looked at him for a moment as though he were a stranger.

‘Where’s Faye?’ Christopher repeated, a little irritated by her failure to answer the first time.

‘Asleep,’ Laura replied.

‘I’ve got a problem,’ said Christopher. ‘I’m going to call Roger.’

‘OK.’

Christopher went down another flight of stairs, picked up the telephone, and dialled Roger Kaminsky’s number.
The engineer wasn’t very busy and said he could come straight over. Forty-five minutes later a dented Ford Capri pulled up outside the house and a young man wearing a Led Zeppelin T-shirt and patched blue jeans jumped out. Christopher greeted Kaminsky at the door and showed him up to the studio. He pressed the ‘play’ button and described the problem. After the beat of silence the thrumming began and the knocking followed. Kaminsky didn’t react.

‘There,’ said Christopher, pointing at one of the speaker cabinets. ‘Do you hear it?’

Kaminsky tilted his head. ‘Knocking, you say?’

‘Yes,’ said Christopher. ‘Rat-a-tat-tat.’ He turned up the volume and rapped the mixing desk when the rhythm next occurred.

‘I think I can hear something,’ said Kaminsky. ‘Yeah.’

‘Jesus, Roger,’ said Christopher. ‘What do you mean, you
think
you can hear something?’

‘Well, there’s definitely some stuff going on in the background. I just can’t tell what. Got any cans, Chris?’ Christopher handed the engineer a pair of headphones and pushed the jack plug into a socket on the tape machine.

Rewind. Stop. Play.

Kaminsky closed his eyes and after a few moments he said, ‘Yeah, yeah. I see what you mean.’

‘
Do you?’ Christopher could still detect uncertainty in Kaminsky’s voice.

The engineer dislodged the headphones. They fell to his shoulders and the metal arch closed around his neck. ‘Cool piece. What is it?’

‘The soundtrack for a film called
Android Insurrection.’

‘A bit like Tangerine Dream.’

‘Maybe,’ said Christopher. He didn’t like the comparison.

Kaminsky opened his toolbox and said, ‘I’ll give you a shout when I’m done.’

In the kitchen, Faye was crawling on the floor playing with her dolls. She looked up when Christopher entered and produced a squeal of pleasure. Laura was seated at the kitchen table reading a book that Christopher had vaguely heard of:
The Feminine Mystique.
He didn’t know what it was about and didn’t care to ask, but he quite liked the title. He crouched beside Faye and with the aid of two dolls, one small and the other large, enacted a conversation in correspondingly high and low voices. Faye was, for a few seconds, a little alarmed by their sudden animation. When Christopher laughed at her surprise, she laughed too. He handed her the dolls and she clutched them to her chest.

‘
This is so annoying,’ Christopher said. ‘I’d had a good morning too. It was coming along nicely.’

Laura looked over the top of her book. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘There’s this knocking sound. I’m sure Roger will get to the bottom of it, but it might take him a while. I was hoping to get the whole sequence done by the end of the week.’

Laura put her book down, leaving the pages open to keep her place.

‘Chris, would you mind if I went out tonight?’

‘Where are you going?’

‘A bookshop in Islington. There’s a young writer I’m interested in. She’s giving a talk about her new novel.’

‘OK.’ He was expecting Laura to elaborate, but instead she picked up her mug and blew across the surface of her tea. Ripples appeared very briefly and then vanished.

The conversation that followed was fragmented and it was only when they talked about mundane necessities that they seemed to find a common purpose. Laura took to removing the dead leaves from a spider plant and Christopher reached for
The Times.
He found nothing pleasantly diverting in its pages. Only the usual depressing copy: the threat of terrorism, industrial action, the failing economy. It was the same every day. Politicians seemed completely unable to stop the nation’s decline, a
problem compounded by an apathetic silent majority addicted to light entertainment, gassy beer and greasy food.

An hour elapsed and Christopher sank into a state of despondency, after which he heard Kaminsky calling. Christopher made his way into the hallway and shouted, ‘All right. I’m coming up.’

When he entered the studio he found the engineer looking out of the window across Hampstead Heath.

‘Well?’ Christopher asked.

Kaminsky turned to address him: ‘There’s nothing wrong with your machine.’

‘But there must be.’

‘Everything’s fine. I checked.’

‘Then what caused that noise?’

The engineer raised his hands, offering his ignorance to the heavens as well as his employer. ‘I have no idea.’

Although Christopher went to bed early he didn’t fall asleep. The heat of the day seemed to be trapped in the house and he could not make himself comfortable. Timbers creaked and the baby monitor hissed in the darkness. Very occasionally Faye would snuffle or cough, but she didn’t wake. When Christopher heard the sound of an
approaching vehicle he hoped that it was Laura returning from the talk she’d attended in Islington. The engine fell silent and a car door slammed shut.
Good,
Christopher thought.
It’s her.
The wideness of the bed had unsettled him. Other sounds preceded her arrival: her key in the lock, the latch chain being secured, her footsteps on the stairs; a toilet flushing and then water flowing through the pipes. The door opened and Laura crept in.

‘It’s all right,’ Christopher said. ‘I’m still awake.’ Laura slipped beneath the quilt and Christopher embraced her naked body. ‘How was it?’

‘Interesting,’ she replied. She spoke a little about a couple of the women she had met. One of them was a psychotherapist, the other a garden designer.

‘Did you get the designer’s number?’ Christopher asked. ‘We’ve got to do something about the garden soon. It’s getting like a wilderness.’

‘Yes,’ said Laura, ‘I got her number.’ And then, after a lengthy pause, she added, ‘I might join a readers’ group. The shop has one that meets every fortnight.’

‘OK,’ Christopher replied, laying his palm on her stomach. She had put on a little more weight recently. Not much, but enough to cause a revision of the contents of her wardrobe. She used to wear tight jumpers and T-shirts, garments that emphasized her slender form,
but she was now much more likely to throw on a smock. Christopher supposed that she had become self-conscious, which was ridiculous, he thought, because it would take more than a few additional pounds to ruin her figure. Her graceful transit across a room never failed to stop conversations and attract interest.