Broken Voices

1

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.’