Broken Voices (Kindle Single)

Was there a ghost? Was there, in a
manner of speaking, a murder?

Ask me these
questions and I cannot answer a simple yes or no. I did not know at the time
and now, more than forty years later, I am even less able to answer them.
Perhaps an easier question is this: what exactly do I remember about Faraday
and me in those few days before the War? The First World War, that is, the one
that was meant to end them all.

He and I didn’t
know each other long, not properly — four or five days, perhaps. And nights, of
course. I suppose there must be records — a report in the local newspaper,
surely, and a police file. Perhaps letters from Faraday’s guardian. There must
also have been correspondence between the school and my parents but I found no
trace of it after my mother died. We never spoke of it when she was alive, not
directly, and my father wasn’t able to speak about anything after they brought
him back from France in 1915.

So — all I can
really rely on is my memory. But of course memory may, paradoxically, make
matters worse. It is not a passive record of what happens, though it may
misleadingly give that impression. It plays an active role as well, selecting
and shaping the past. Memory speculates about itself; it ruminates and dreams,
edits and deletes: over time, the fruits of these processes become the memories
themselves and the entire process begins again.

So what does that make Faraday’s fugitive notes? Or the man I saw in the arcade? Or
even Mordred?

To take a minor
example. I must have seen the view from the train as we went back to school
over and over again. But in memory it is always winter, though of course I must
often have seen it at other times of the year. All the different journeys have
elided into one which, strictly speaking, never really happened at all.

The train comes
north across the Fens. It’s afternoon but the light is already fading rapidly
from the endless bowl of the sky. The land is nearly as featureless — a plain
of black mud stretching as far as the eyes can see. I stare out of the window,
trying to find something to look at — a windmill, a hedge, a tree, a farm.
Sometimes there is even a Fenlander. We used to call them Boggos.

I do not want
to be on this train. Nor do I want to arrive at school. But there is no help in
it: that’s what I remember most of all, that the desolation outside the window
seemed to mirror the desolation within me.

It’s nonsense,
of course. They call it the Pathetic Fallacy, the belief that one can attach
human emotions and thoughts to inanimate objects, even landscapes. I know that
because Mr Ratcliffe explained it to Faraday and me. It may be a fallacy but
sometimes fallacies have their own sort of truth.

When I look out
of the window into the darkening world, I am looking for the two towers and
dreading to find them. The sight of them means that the journey is coming to
its end. One tower is taller than the other, and they are joined by the long,
high-backed ridge of the nave.

The Fens diminish everything — people,
buildings, trees. Everything except the Cathedral, which deals with the Fens on
its own terms.

Most old English Cathedrals have a
school attached to them, often a King’s School set up by Henry VIII at the
Reformation. Ours was of no great size — perhaps a hundred pupils, some dayboys
and some boarders, aged between nine and nineteen. Within the school was
another school — technically, I believe a separate foundation: this was the
Choir School, whose purpose was to educate the boys who sang in the Cathedral
choir.

The Choir
School was very small — twelve or fifteen boys. It was ruled by the Master of the
Music, Dr Atkinson, who was also the Cathedral organist. For much of the time,
the Choir School boys mingled with the rest of us — they attended the same
lessons and played the same games. But they were a race apart, nonetheless.
They were liable to vanish unexpectedly to attend practice or perform their
duties at one service or another. Their choir duties took precedence over
everything else, even examinations. They had privileges and responsibilities
that set them apart from the rest of us. They rarely talked of these except
among themselves, and then in terms that were largely incomprehensible to the
rest of us, which added to the air of mystery that attached to them.

Faraday was a
choirboy. He was thirteen years old. Before all this happened, I knew very
little more about him, though we had attended the same school for years. I knew
that he was supposed to be good at rugger. I knew he was the head of the Choir
School, which meant that at services he wore a medallion engraved with the
Cathedral’s badge over his surplice, hanging from a ribbon around his neck. But
I was more than a year older. He was two forms beneath mine and he lived in a
different house. Our lives did not overlap.

The other thing
that everyone knew about Faraday was that he had an exceptionally beautiful
voice. Ours was the sort of school where you had to be good at sport, or work
or music if you were to have a tolerable life. Faraday was good at everything,
but especially good at singing. 

I suppose I
should also mention that I did not much like Faraday.

My parents were in India, where my
father’s regiment had been posted. They went to India the week before my
seventh birthday, leaving me in England. The climate was healthier for children
they said, and besides the schools were so much better. It was what many
parents did in their situation: it was considered quite normal and in the best
interests of the child. Perhaps it was. But I wished they had taken me with
them. I still wish it.

During school
holidays, I stayed with my aunt, the widowed sister of my father. My aunt was a
kind woman. But she didn’t know what to do with me and I didn’t know what to do
with her. She and my parents decided to send me to the King’s School because it
was only thirty miles from her house and it had the reputation of being a sound
Christian establishment.

The school was
a spartan place whose routine revolved around the Cathedral, even for those who
were not in the choir. There was a good deal of bullying. Education of a sort
was hammered into us. I made the best of it. What else was there to do?

I received
regular letters from Quetta or Srinagar or New Delhi, written in my mother’s
careful, upright hand.  Every year or so, my parents would come home on leave.
I looked forward to these visits with anxiety and delight, as I dare say they
did. Seeing my parents was always painful because they were not as they had
been, and nor was I: we had become strangers to one another. We tried to make
the most of it but then they would be away again and whatever fragile intimacy
we had achieved would trickle away, leaving behind more misleading memories.
Still, I longed to see them again. Hope always triumphed over experience.

The last time
they came home, I was twelve. My father tried without success to teach me to
fish; he wanted me to share his passion. My mother took me shopping with her
and showed me off to her friends, who remained unimpressed. We went up to
London for matinées at the theatre.

On one of these
outings we had tea at the Charing Cross Hotel. I don’t remember much about it
except for one thing my mother said.

‘You used to be
such a chatterbox when you were little.’ She smiled at me. ‘Where did all the words
go?’

My parents were
coming home again. They would be here by mid-December in plenty of time for
Christmas. My mother wrote that my father was planning to buy a motor car. If
he did, they would drive over at the end of term and collect me.

The thought of
my parents turning up at school in a motor car added a new element to my
anticipation. At that time cars were uncommon, especially in the Fens. I
imagined my parents turning up in an enormous, gleaming equipage worthy of Mr
Toad in
The Wind in the Willows
and sweeping me away before the
whole school. Like a fool, I boasted to my friends of this triumph to come,
which was tempting fate.

I did not have
long to enjoy it. In my mother’s next letter she wrote that they had been
obliged to change their plans. They would not be able to come home this year
after all.

‘It’s nothing
to worry about, darling,’ she wrote, ‘but I’ve been a little under the weather
lately, and the doctor says it would be better to leave it until next year.
Daddy and I are so disappointed, though we know you will have a wonderful time
at Christmas with Auntie Mary. And next year, we shall try to come home for
longer.’

I know the
reason now. My mother had just discovered she was pregnant. Of course neither
she nor my father ever talked about it to me but it was easy enough to work out
when my sister was born the following May.

Sixteen years
is a long gap to leave between children. Perhaps my parents found it hard to
conceive another child. Perhaps my sister was an accident. Not that it matters
now. But it is strange to think that, if my sister had never existed, none of
this would have happened and I would have been quite a different person now.
And as for Faraday—

‘Try not to
mind too much, darling,’ my mother’s letter ended. ‘With fondest love.’

Nevertheless, I looked forward to
Christmas. If nothing else it meant getting away from school and going to a
warm house where there were four meals a day and I was never left hungry for
long. My aunt knew little about boys but she knew a great deal about creature
comforts. The vicar’s son would be home from school, which meant that for at
least part of the time I would have someone to go about with. And there would
be presents — and perhaps more generous ones this year because my parents would
feel I deserved consolation.

Two days before
the end of term, Mr Treadwell, my housemaster, sent a boy to fetch me. He was a
small, harassed man, a bachelor, who didn’t care for boys or anything else
except geology, which was his passion.

‘There’s been a
difficulty,’ he said, staring at the fire; he never looked at you if he could
help it. ‘I’m sorry to say that your aunt is unwell.’

He paused. I
did not dare interrupt him with a question. My housemaster believed boys should
hold their tongues unless asked to speak. He had a vicious temper, too — we
never knew how far he would go when roused.

‘She’s in
hospital, in fact. Pneumonia, I’m afraid.’ He was still staring at the fire,
but I saw the tip of his tongue emerge, lizard-like, from between his lips. ‘We
must remember her in our prayers. Must we not?’

I recognized my
cue. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘We must hope
for a full recovery,’ he went on. ‘Not a good time of year to be ill. But
still.’

‘What about
Christmas, sir?’ I blurted out.

My housemaster
turned his head and glared at me. But he must have remembered the circumstances
for when he spoke his voice was almost gentle.

‘You will have
to stay at school,’ he said. ‘I have arranged with you to lodge with Mr
Ratcliffe. It will be best for all concerned.’

Christmas that year fell on a Wednesday.
‘Wednesday’s Child is full of woe,’ shrieked one small boy over and over again
as he ran round the playground, until one of the bullies of the Fifth Form
pushed him over and made him cry instead.

The school
broke up two days earlier, on Monday. It was strange to watch the familiar
routines unfolding and not be part of them: the station fly taking boys to the
station by relays; the steady stream of parents, always a matter of enormous
sociological interest; the boys queuing to shake hands with Mr Treadwell.

At that stage I
was not the only one to stay — two other boys at Treadwell’s did not leave with
the rest on Monday. For an hour or two, we revelled in undisputed possession of
a few amenities the house afforded — the billiards table with torn baize, for
example, and the two armchairs that leaked horsehair by the common room fire.
There was a sense of holiday so we talked loudly and laughed a great deal to
show what fun we were having.

On Christmas
Eve, however, these boys left as well, collected one by one by their parents.
Mr Treadwell’s suitcases stood in the hall. He shook hands with Matron, who was
going to her married sister in Huntington, and tipped the maids.

Finally, only
Mr Treadwell and I were left. He looked at his watch. ‘The taxi will be here
soon. I’ll take you over to Mr Ratcliffe’s now.’

My trunk,
packed and corded, was staying at Treadwell’s with my tuckbox. But I had been
given a small suitcase, in which Matron had put those things she thought I
would need, and I had a satchel containing a few personal possessions. I
followed Treadwell into the College, which was the name given to the Cathedral
close.