Submersion (6 page)

‘I know you two have been in here, playing with the controls,’ he said, smiling, patting his sides at the same time, as if he was searching for something; he was. Pulling out a jangling set of keys from a pocket, he jingled through them until he found the one he wanted. Then, he approached one of the two cabinets that sat stout in the room – the locked one – and, upon inserting the key and releasing the lock, revealed what was hidden therein.

‘What you and Elinor have been privy to so far is just my digital collection – a computer, a
hard-drive
of music. Effective, but clinical, emotionless. This,’ he said, sweeping his hands in front of the open cabinet, as if revealing its contents by magic, ‘this is something very, very different.’

I wasn’t sure what to think at a first glance.

Merlin was right – Elinor and I had been in the room on numerous occasions. It was the one place in the house that our pleasure and amusement was equal. The other rooms – the library, the board games room, the model railway – they held our attention for differing spans. But the music room – once through the door and in those comfy seats, it enveloped us in its surround sound wonder.
Where does it come from?
we would gush, looking up at the ceiling, looking for those hidden speakers, looking back at the stark, black, cubic equipment and wondering how something so clinical and ugly could produce something so beautiful, so unworldly.

When I asked Tristan why Old Man Merlin had so many things the rest of us didn’t, he just shrugged.
Maybe his family had money in the darker times, maybe when everything of value was traded in or handed back, maybe he was from more fortunate stock, but it would be rude to ask.
Tristan had simply insisted we enjoy the access we had.
Just take it for the privilege it is; a kind old man sharing his own privileges.

I would ask Old Man Merlin one day, I knew. But for now, I followed Tristan’s advice.

The locked cabinet, however, revealed something very different looking than its counterpart. At the top of the cabinet was a shelf on which sat a device not dissimilar to the music box in the other cabinet; at a first glance, in any case. In the main, it was a black, oblong machine, with functional buttons across its front. Yet, it had a lid on top, which Old Man Merlin flipped back, revealing a rotating table; adjacent to this, on the right, was a mechanical arm, which he explained held
the needle
that
played the records.

‘Records?’

‘Yes, this is a record player. You must have heard…?’ he questioned, but upon the shaking of my head, he let it trail away.

Below this top shelf were two additional shelves. What they displayed appeared to be a library of files; like very tall, very thin books, they had colourful spines with tiny writing that indicated their contents. But they were not books at all.

‘Vinyl,’ the old man disclosed, his tone exposing the reverence and relish with which he eyed these items. Realising his words of late –
records, vinyl, stereo
– meant little or nothing to me, he pulled one of the
files
out to reveal exactly what he meant.

A wafer thin, black disc of plastic, exactly twelve inches across – according to Merlin – marked with narrow circular grooves, with a colourful label at its centre, where the artist and title were displayed, amongst other things. There was a small hole right in the middle and Merlin showed me the purpose: placing the delicate disc onto the rotating
turntable
on his
stereo,
a small peg went through the hole, keeping the record in place. Next, Old Man Merlin lifted the arm that held the needle in place and gently dropped this onto the edge of the vinyl circle.

‘Won’t it scratch it?’ I asked. Merlin nodded with a smile, as if that was the whole point, then held a finger up to his lips to indicate I should be silent.

‘Listen,’ he whispered singularly and I obeyed.

I think I stayed for an hour. Merlin played about a dozen different records and introduced me to alien artists that have now become familiar – The Beatles, Bowie, Pink Floyd, Eurythmics, Kate Bush, the Rolling Stones –
the classics,
as the old man referred to them. Eventually, I would find my own favourites, but for now I adopted his. Aside from the music, which came flooding in from the same hidden speakers as before, I was fascinated by the mechanism itself. Watching the arm move across the black circle, spiraling in closer and closer to the centre, it was hard to equate this simple, primitive action with the beautiful sound that enveloped us.

‘Any less believable than
that
producing music?’ Old Man Merlin chuckled, pointing to the digital box Elinor and I had played with on many previous occasions.

Yes,
was my answer. Yes, because the contents of that black box were unknown, a mystery; so we could believe everything and nothing of it. But with the record player, the
stereo
, as Merlin had started calling it, there was less mystery, less magic – and yet somehow less to believe. Surely the union of a plastic circle and a mechanical arm with a needle attached couldn’t result in this unearthly, melodic swamping of our senses?

‘Believe it,’ Merlin insisted, still jovial, amused by my disbelief. ‘It’s exactly what’s happening. Happy to go through the science again,’ he offered. But I declined. I was enjoying myself too much; why spoil it with a little educational instruction?

I left soon after that – I had been absent much longer than I intended and I knew Mother had a new found sense of anxiety tugging at her.
News of missing children did that,
Tristan explained to me later.
Every parent who has heard the news will be keeping a tighter reign. Have patience.
I promised Merlin I would be back, probably the next day, I was certain.

True to Tristan’s warning, Mother was on tender hooks when I returned to Aunt Agnes’ house, waiting on the steps in her protective mask, glancing up and down our road. She had probably done this at regular intervals, looking for sight of her one and only child, her anxiety building at each peep. Seeing me unmoor the boat and row back towards her, her body relaxed for a split-second, relieved, then tightened up again, functioning like the pressure cooker Aunt Agnes used to steam vegetables: compressed, boiling.

‘What was I supposed to think, eh? Your cousin goes missing and then you swan off without a word? What was I supposed to think? You could have drowned too! Haven’t your aunt and I got enough to worry about? Now, get in and get out of that gear! You can help me with the cleaning!’

I always hoped the scolding would be followed by a sweep of arms and a warm hug that would reveal the true source of her fury: love. And that was the one thing I kept: hope. Hoping, always.

Cleaning was something that my mother appeared to openly love. It wasn’t just a habit that kicked-in to replace tears or grief; she indulged her domestic need during happier moments as well, and our own home was immaculate as a consequence, despite the grimy waters that surrounded us. But Elinor’s disappearance was a gift to Mother; a way to get her hands on what she privately called
other people’s dirt.
And so, whilst my aunt grieved silently for a daughter that was simply missing in her eyes, my mother donned an apron and an old worn pair of grey rubber gloves (‘They were yellow when I first got them,’ she had informed me once) and got to work washing floors, cleaning windows and rinsing nets. And that was just the first morning.

After my extended absence at Old Man Merlin’s lair, I was sent up to Elinor’s room with an old sack.
Start with a clear-out of all her rubbish, then come back for next instructions.
I knew it was wrong; a sickness churned in my stomach as I ascended to the second story of their house. I entered Elinor’s room with the full knowledge that Aunt Agnes was next door, possibly asleep, but awake or not, she was mourning her loss. Clearing up what remained of that loss seemed out of place, mistimed.

But on entry, I made a discovery that thwarted Mother’s mission: Tristan was sat on the bed.

‘You can forget that right off,’ he told me, nodding at the sack in my hands. ‘You’re not to touch a thing and you can tell your mother I told you so. I heard her instructions downstairs. You hear me? Not to touch a thing.’

I dropped the sack and grinned. I hadn’t really seen Tristan since the first night of Elinor’s absence. He had been out for most of the time, with Uncle Jessie.

They’re up to something,
I heard Grandad Ronan discuss in sharp whispers with Great-Uncle Jimmy.
Thick as thieves, they are.

Great-Uncle Jimmy had something different to say:
You’d think his priorities would be elsewhere, wouldn’t you? You’d think he’d put my niece first?

Mother and Great-Aunt Penny had nothing to say about Tristan’s
priorities;
I think Mother relished the absence of his dirty boots and my great-aunt was never keen to discuss Tristan’s association with the house.
Living-in-sin
was her favourite whisper on the subject, though she never said anything out-loud or to anyone’s face.

I wanted to ask Tristan where he had been, whether it was true that he and Uncle Jessie were
up-to-something,
but instead I sat next to him on Elinor’s bed and asked him for a story. Tristan was full of them, famous for his story-telling ability and he smiled, glad to be distracted from whatever was occupying his mind and time.

‘I’ll tell you about the
White City,’
he said.

‘Or one about the dogs?’ I suggested, eagerly, for whilst Tristan’s darker tales frightened me, I shared my cousin’s sinister fascination with them.

‘The dogs it is,’ he agreed, smiling, sitting up straighter to ready himself. ‘Just no telling that mother of yours.’

The storytelling had a consequence: Tristan was still resident when my aunt woke and when Mother and Great-Aunt Penny served dinner. His presence at the meal table created a frostiness with some – specifically Mother and my great-aunt – but the chilly atmosphere was worth it to see a trace of a spark in Aunt Agnes’ eyes.

When I woke on the third morning, Tristan had gone again.

Fearing another attempt by Mother to enlist me in transforming my aunt’s cosy home into something quite the opposite, I escaped as early as possible to what had become my regular haunt: the Cadley house. I was thoughtful enough, this time, to leave Mother a note, explaining where I had gone, so as not to worry her unnecessarily. I just hoped she didn’t send Great-Uncle Jimmy down to haul me back.

She didn’t.

As usual, upon hearing my entrance, Old Man Merlin popped his head out from the back, just to check if the young man pulling off his safety gear was
friend or foe.

‘Just to be safe,’ he explained, habitually. ‘You can never be too careful.’

Then he was off again, leaving me free roam of his den.

And for the majority of the day, I was left to my own devices. In the music room, the second cabinet – the one that housed the records and their playing machine - was locked again, but I was still able to operate the digital box in the other cabinet. I had the idea to find
The Count of Monte Cristo
from the library and take it up to the music-filled room, combining my favourite Cadley house activities.

The games room I ignored;
Solitaire
aside, there was little I could do by myself and the mere sight of the dressing up box put me in mind of Elinor. I had already grown tired of the model railway, and the room with the dead computers served no interest at all.

So, I submerged myself
in reading and music, quickly oblivious to my surroundings, distracted from my family tragedy for the vast majority of day. Even Old Man Merlin kept out of sight, busy with his televisions, no doubt.

That is, until quite late in the day.

If the old man hadn’t come storming up two levels of the spiral steps in search of me, I may have completely lost track of the time. Other than to change the music – I was finding my favourites, the Beatles in particular – I kept to my spot in one of the comfy armchairs for the entire stretch of the afternoon.

‘Boy, boy!’ he cried, dashing into the room, a look of alarm in his face. ‘Found something, come on!’

And he was out the room just as quickly, disappearing down the steel spiral in a whirl, moving at a youthful speed that defied his years.

‘Follow on!’ he insisted, as he stepped into his rear quarters, sweeping through the area swamped with televisions and to another smaller, narrower fourth ground-floor room beyond that I hadn’t really noted before. It was somewhere between a kitchen and what I imagined a science laboratory would look like – science laboratories feature frequently in Tristan’s stories. It was a thin room, with cabinets and appliances to the left and right and a path of brown tiles down the middle, leading to a rear door, which appeared to lead outside. As well as a cooker, a refrigerator, a kettle and a toaster, other smaller apparatus occupied the sides. Tubes and jars, some empty, others with liquids and powders in them, a compact microscope and a trio of gadgets that Merlin later identified as
Bunsen burners.
Yet, the item that had triggered his urgency was none of these – it was a small plastic container, with the lid sealed.