‘Now we both have the tune,’ says Lucien.
I sit there, wondering if it will work, wondering how solid a foothold my memories can make in the spiderweb of the tunnels. But Lucien’s voice is confident and it makes me feel somewhat better.
‘You can run whatever direction you need through it. Do it presto, lento, da capo al fine, whatever. The memories should stay in place. I can downsound it with you, anyway, if you want.’
‘Thank you,’ I tell him, and get up. I don’t know what to say. The space between us has become charged with a silence that seems to be growing.
‘There’s one missing,’ I say.
‘Which?’ says Lucien, but he doesn’t look at me. He lies back again, staring at the ceiling and rubbing the spot between his eyes as if he has a headache.
‘The last one I made. The night before we arrived in Reading.’
Lucien doesn’t reply. The silence is thick and it’s like sightreading a difficult tune in front of a cold audience.
‘What happened in the memory?’ asks Lucien.
My mouth is dry. What to say to that? Either he’s forgotten it or it meant nothing to him. Whatever the case, the message is clear. He is not going to help me.
‘Don’t worry,’ I say, with a hot flush of blood in my face. I stand up. ‘I can remember it by myself.’ I pull my jacket back on.
‘Simon,’ says Lucien. I can’t read his voice at all. But he’s trying to return to the way things were. Before. And I don’t want to return.
I need air. ‘I’m going on deck,’ I say.
‘Don’t,’ says Lucien, sitting up.
I turn to him. ‘Why? What’s the bloody point in staying here?’
‘That memory is harder than the others to tell you about. To ask you about. Can you understand that?’ His voice is strained.
I look at him. I don’t know where this is leading.
He takes a breath.
‘There’s no single memory of it for me,’ he says. ‘There’s no single memory for the way it makes me feel. I promised that I would help you remember it, but I don’t know if I can. Do you understand?’
His voice has a demonic clarity that makes my chest feel bruised and open. Like I’ve run too far, too fast. Like there’s something inside me that shouldn’t be there, a nameless element. Subito I know that it doesn’t matter what he says, whether he feels what I do. Because I’d do anything for him. The knowledge gives me freedom somehow. And a kind of elation. His voice is as clear as a knife and I let it cut through me with its silver light.
He is still facing straight ahead, staring at the wall above my bunk like it’s something he wants to break in half. I have to know.
‘Do you want me to forget it?’
Lucien turns to me and I can’t read his expression either.
‘It’s the thought that you might be able to forget it I can’t stand,’ he says. ‘For me, it’s in everything. Everything I hear. The map of the under, the shape of the river. This journey, the sound of it, it’s you. And that sound is better than any other in my life. Do you understand? I can’t keep it separate. If I could, then maybe I could downsound it for you. But if I did that, I think I might end up hating you. Do you really need schooling in knowing that?’
The current of what he has said rises through my body, up to the top of my head.
‘I don’t need you to remember it,’ I say. I walk over to where he sits. I put my palm against his chest to hear the sound of his heart. Rhythms turn and tumble against my hand, mapping a run entirely his own. Violent and painfully clear.
He looks up at me standing above him and he starts to say something else.
I silence him in the best way that I can think of.
Oxford
Barnabas’s Crosshouse
‘Louse Lock,’ calls Callum from the deck. Then there is a window of light in the black above us and his head appears. ‘This is as far as we go, lads.’
I sit up. How have we come into the city without my hearing? I listen for the noises of boatpeople, tradesongs, prentisses. I listen in vain for the hungry whistles and furtive tunes of early evening. The air is still. The rushing of the lock, the sound of insects. Then at last I hear a faint, dignified tradesong. It runs right through to its end before another begins. Nothing like the clash of life and colour and song I know. I miss London in a sharp burst.
In the dark, the four of us stand on deck for a brief while. Then I reach out to Jemima and hug her. She gives me a quick smirk and signs something in solfege, the only part of which I catch is to do with luck. Lucien shakes hands with Callum and then Jemima, and we jump presto from the boat to the towpath.
The riverwater is deep green. We cross a moss-covered stone bridge that looks like it will collapse into the water at any time. Then we’re on the banks and scrambling up scrub and over rails and into a small concreted park at the arse end of an ordinary enough street. This is strange. I thought all of Oxford would be the Citadel, but we walk now along a street with houses just like anywhere. The same staring redbrick terraces as the one where we found Mary in Reading.
One thing is different — I can already feel the low, thronging call of solid palladium. Down the narrow grey road, the Carillon’s silver arms are reaching toward us. I feel as if I am walking without touching the ground.
The two-floor houses are quiet above us. No one on the streets. But the day is lightening and I see curtains begin to twitch behind para windows. I have my head down when I nearly bump into a smartly dressed man walking out of his gate carrying an embossed leather valise and a clarionet case. He curses politely under his breath, sidesteps me and continues on his way over the broken concrete.
‘We need somewhere to shelter,’ says Lucien. He pauses for a bit. ‘I know a crosshouse where we can wait. Come on.’
Not much further and subito Lucien pulls me into the doorway of a large white building. The wooden door gives and he pushes us inside. There’s the smell of old beer. I can just see out past the green wood of the door.
Lucien is breathing fast.
‘What is it?’ I whisper to him.
‘Ssh,’ he says, and places his hand gently over my mouth. We flatten to the paint.
And then I hear voices. Voices chanting, coming nearer. And footsteps in a clear and clever rhythm. It is impossible to judge how many they are because the pattern is so neat and the footfalls so precise. It never wavers.
Straight ahead are blank redbrick houses. To our left, not far off at all, I see a wooden tower that must be the crosshouse we were heading toward.
The voices approach steadily, and as they come, they become clearer. They are moving in some kind of game. It reminds me for an instant of our own practice in the crosshouse.
One voice begins a tune. A few beats and a second voice enters. The same tune, exact. A strict canon. The two voices intertwine and I marvel at the skill. Then a third voice enters. The same tune a major third below. Then another voice reverses the melody and sings backward against the dense tide of counterpoint. The notes pull and press against each other, but the miracle of it is that the voices are still in harmony, still calmly moving in perfect accord. They are so clear and they echo off the grey streets and float upward in the still morning air.
Then a sixth voice enters. It takes me a while to understand that the sixth voice sings the first tune as if a mirror were held up to it — each note reversed across the stave. I stand still in disbelief. The tune weaves in and around without speeding or slowing. The voices make a magical game of it, throwing the notes like golden balls lightly in the air, juggling them, tossing them from hand to hand. It is one thing to listen to the immaculate canons of Chimes, quite another to hear such music sung in the streets.