The Voices (7 page)

Christopher had been admiring his wife over the course of the evening. She had forsaken her loose tops and pyjama-style trousers for a stylish blouse and tight jeans. At some point, possibly when she had made her entrance with the Black Forest gateau, he had decided that later they would make love, and he had been quietly looking forward to it. The prospect had added a register
of pleasant expectation to his otherwise despondent mental state. Christopher signalled his intent with touches and kisses, and Laura, reliably willing, allowed him to continue. She was not properly aroused, but Christopher knew that his persistence would eventually be rewarded. Just as a mutually satisfying rhythm had been established, the steady hiss of the baby monitor was disturbed by a snuffling sound. He could feel Laura tensing beneath him.

‘It’s all right,’ Christopher whispered. ‘She’s fine.’

But the snuffling didn’t stop, and then there was movement – rustles, creaks, knocks – and then whimpering.

‘Stop,’ said Laura. Christopher pressed his hands flat against the mattress, raised the upper half of his body and listened. The whimpering was becoming more and more like crying. ‘I’d better go,’ said Laura, rocking her hips from side to side.

‘Maybe she’ll settle down,’ Christopher ventured hopefully.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘OK.’

Christopher flopped onto his back. Laura swung her legs off the side of the bed, stood up, and left the room. He heard her entering the nursery, picking up Faye,
and cooing. ‘There, there. What’s the matter?’ Laura’s attempts to settle the child were not entirely successful, and Faye continued to grizzle. Christopher was impatient for his wife’s return. He felt wound up and irritable. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to transcend his emotions. But Faye was inconsolable. It took more than thirty minutes before she fell silent, and Christopher’s discomfort was extended further when Laura chose to spend an additional fifteen minutes waiting to see if Faye would wake up again.

When Laura finally returned, Christopher was anxious to resume their lovemaking; however, Laura disappointed him by removing his hand from her breast.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m really very tired.’

‘OK,’ he said. She turned her back on him but he continued to stroke her spine. ‘OK,’ he repeated.

The next day, Christopher was in the studio creating effects with an archaic piece of equipment known (to a small number of former Radiophonic Workshop initiates) as a ‘wobbulator’. It was a large metal box with a few switches and a centrally placed rotating knob. The device produced a raw, atavistic sound, to which varying amounts of pitch wobble could be added. The sequence
Christopher was working on involved throbbing bursts of output from the wobbulator, followed by long pauses, and it was during one of these pauses that Christopher detected, once again, the sound of a human voice. He rewound and replayed the tape. There were, in fact, unwanted intrusions in almost every interval of silence. Six altogether. Christopher set about saving the effects he had already recorded by cutting and splicing the tape, and in no time he had removed the spoiled sections and completely restored the soundtrack. He then telephoned Roger Kaminsky, who agreed to pay Christopher a visit later that afternoon.

On returning to his studio, Christopher did a little tidying, examined one or two scores, and then found that he was bored. The excised pieces of tape, which were still hanging from hooks above the splicing table, caught his attention. He had plenty of time to kill, and for want of anything better to do, he decided to join the pieces together so that he could play them to Kaminsky. When Christopher had accomplished his task, he listened to the voices through headphones. None of the utterances were very clear, so he used filters to attenuate some frequencies and strengthen others.

The first voice was female and spoke in French:
‘Désolée. Elle est morte la nuit dernière.’ I’m sorry, she died last night.
The second voice was male, and spoke two phrases in German:
‘Ich bin hier fremd’
and
‘Wo treffen wir uns?’ I am a stranger here
and
Where shall we meet?
There was then a faint whisper in a Slavic language that Christopher was unable to translate, then a phrase spoken by a woman in what Christopher guessed to be Hungarian. The final voice spoke in declamatory English: ‘Come, Tommy. Fate! Come, Tommy. Fate!’ The speaker was male and he pronounced his words like a drunken aristocrat.

It was all very curious.

By manipulating frequency levels, Christopher was able to produce an engineered version of the tape that, although still lacking definition, was much ‘cleaner’ than the original.

When Kaminsky arrived, Christopher explained how voices had started to appear on his recordings.

‘No more knocks?’ asked Kaminsky.

‘No,’ Christopher replied. ‘But this is just as bad.’ He pressed ‘play’. ‘Listen. The first voice says,
“Désolée. Elle est morte la nuit dernière.”‘

Kaminsky tilted his head and asked: ‘What does it mean?’

Christopher stopped the tape. ‘I’m sorry, she died last night.’

‘Weird. Do you mind if I smoke?’

‘
Providing it’s legal. The next voice is German.
“Ich bin hier fremd.”
It means I am a stranger here.’ Christopher started the tape again.

When the Slavic whispering came through the speakers Kaminsky guessed that it might be Polish.

‘Do you speak Polish?’ Christopher asked.

‘My dad never bothered to teach me,’ Kaminsky replied, his admission tinged with regret.

They listened to the Hungarian and English voices, before Christopher rewound the tape and played it a second time from the beginning. ‘Well, Roger, what do you think?’

‘Have you been using old tape?’

‘No.’

‘If the record and erasing heads aren’t exactly aligned, some of the things you thought you’d wiped can still be there, albeit faintly. Sure it’s not old tape?’

‘Positive. Besides, I wouldn’t have forgotten making recordings like these, would I?’

The young man exhaled a cloud of smoke. ‘Could be radio interference – something here acting as an aerial.’

‘Why now?’

‘Change of weather conditions. A new transmitter, maybe. My old guitar amp picks up radio signals.’

‘But there’s nothing here that would do that.’

‘I don’t know. A mate of mine swears that his dental fillings pick up radio programmes. When he clenches his teeth together, he can hear voices, like vibrations in his skull.’

‘Then we must suppose that this friend of yours has smoked one joint too many.’

Kaminsky drew on his cigarette. ‘I’ll take another look at your set-up, but I was pretty thorough last time and—’

‘You might have missed something,’ Christopher cut in.

‘We’ll see. Give me a couple of hours.’

Christopher went downstairs and began reading a book in the drawing room. Laura had gone out with Faye, so there was little to distract him. He became absorbed by the narrative and when two hours had elapsed he returned to the studio. Kaminsky was sitting next to the mixing desk, deep in thought and massaging his chin.

‘Roger?’

Kaminsky stirred from his reverie. ‘Chris.’

‘Well?’

The engineer shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

‘What do you mean, nothing?’

‘I couldn’t find anything wrong.’

‘But the voices . . .’

‘Yeah,’ said Kaminsky. ‘The voices.’ He lit a cigarette and nodded silently to himself. ‘I’ve been listening to them, and if you think about it . . .’ He hesitated and seemed uncertain as to whether to proceed or not.

‘Yes?’

Kaminsky continued. ‘They don’t sound anything like radio broadcasts, do they?
She died last night; I’m a stranger here; Come, Tommy. Fate.
In French, German, English. I mean, what sort of stations are we picking up here?’ It was true. The voices didn’t appear in an ongoing stream of interference, and it was difficult to imagine them in the context of an ordinary radio programme. ‘And why no music?’ Kaminsky added, foreshadowing Christopher’s own thoughts. ‘No records, no jingles, nothing.’

‘What are you suggesting?’ Christopher asked.

The engineer studied the smoke rising from his cigarette. ‘I don’t think these voices are radio transmissions.’

‘Then what are they?’

‘I don’t know, but . . .’

‘But what?’

‘You’ll just say I smoke too much Mary Jane.’

‘If you think you know what’s going on, say’

T don’t know what’s going on. Not really. It’s just a thought.’

‘Tell me.’

‘I don’t think they’re transmissions. I think they’re communications.’

The two men looked at each other and the quiet seemed to congeal around them. Christopher was surprised to discover that he felt uneasy. With cautious deliberation, he said, ‘You think these voices are ghosts?’

‘Well, they aren’t radio interference, that’s for sure.’

‘When you say
communications,
what do you mean precisely?’

‘Look, Chris, I don’t want to get into some big, heavy scene here. I was just saying, that’s all. My wife’s into all sorts of stuff. You know, spiritualism, auras, meditation . . .’ The engineer’s sentence trailed off.

‘And . . .’ Christopher rotated his hand in the air.

‘There’s a professor,’ Kaminsky began again, haltingly, ‘who’s written a book about voices that appear on tape. You know, a serious book. Scientific’

‘And he thinks they’re the dead trying to communicate with us?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’ve worked with tape all my life and the dead have never shown any interest in me or my compositions before.’

‘Could be the house.’

Christopher scowled. ‘So what am I supposed to do now?’

‘I don’t know, Chris,’ said Kaminsky. ‘But I promise you, there’s nothing wrong with your gear.’

That night, Christopher found it difficult to concentrate on his work. He kept on thinking about Kaminsky. It seemed a ludicrous idea, the dead communicating with the living through the medium of magnetic tape, but at the same time Christopher’s mind was not entirely closed to extraordinary possibilities. During the late sixties, under the influence of a lover who had travelled around India, he had developed a voguish interest in eastern mysticism, and he was not opposed, as a matter of principle, to belief in the supernatural. The voices
were
very strange. Their presence on the tape was inexplicable. Furthermore, Christopher was now obliged to reconsider the very first instance of the phenomenon, which had been a German speaker intoning the words
How sacred for us dead.
This otherwise obscure phrase was now loaded with new significance.

There was a knock on the door.

He called out, ‘Come in,’ and Laura entered carrying a mug of tea.

‘How’s it going?’ she asked.

‘OK.’

Laura placed the mug on the splicing table. ‘I made you some tea.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Will you be working late?’

‘I don’t think so.’

She turned to leave, but Christopher called out: ‘Wait a minute. I want to play you something.’ Laura looked at him quizzically. He had stopped playing her his compositions a long time ago. Christopher read her expression and said, ‘No, it’s not a piece of music. Take a seat.’ He offered her his chair and found the spool labelled ‘voices’. As he threaded the tape around the tension pulleys, he said, ‘You’ll hear people speaking – a French woman, a German man—’

‘Who are they?’ Laura interrupted.

‘I don’t know. They just appeared. I’ve manipulated the recordings a little to improve the sound quality, but it’s still quite difficult to make out what they’re saying.’

‘What do you mean, they just appeared?’

‘Exactly that. One minute the tape was blank, then a few minutes later it had voices on it.’

‘How could that happen?’

‘I don’t know. Nor does Roger. There’s nothing wrong with the equipment, no faults. Just listen. The first voice says
I’m sorry, she died last night
in French. The second says
I’m a stranger here
and
Where shall we meet?
in German. Then there are some east European speakers before someone says
Come, Tommy. Fate!’

‘It’s gibberish.’

‘Just listen, OK?’

Christopher pressed ‘play’. The spools revolved, the slack tape became taut and the voices began their odd recitation. Christopher couldn’t see his wife’s face, because her head was bowed. When the Englishman’s inebriate drawl filled the room, Christopher noticed her shoulders tensing. She leaned forward in her chair. It was as though she had recognized the speaker.

‘Laura?’

‘Play that last one again.’

‘Why?’

‘Just play it again, will you.’ An increase in volume betrayed her impatience.

Observing the counter, Christopher rewound the tape. The wheels ran backwards and the number in the perspex window got smaller. After a beat of silence, the English voice repeated its demand, ‘Come, Tommy. Fate! Come, Tommy. Fate!’

‘Jesus,’ Laura hissed.

‘What?’

‘Can’t you . . .’
She looked up and raked her hair back. Her eyes narrowed.

‘What?’ Christopher asked again.

‘Who are these people?’

‘I don’t understand. Why are you getting so agitated?’

‘What did you say you thought he said? Tommy . . . what?’

‘Come, Tommy. Fate!’

‘Well, he isn’t saying that, is he?’

‘Yes, he is.’

‘No, he’s not. He’s saying . . .’ Laura paused for a moment before continuing: ‘Come to me, Faye.’

Christopher shook his head. ‘No, no, no.’

‘Come to me, Faye. That’s what he’s saying. Who is he?’

‘Just a second.’ Christopher rewound the tape and put the headphones on. ‘Let me hear it again through these.’ He was sure that his wife was mistaken. Even so, he decided that he should at least appear to be taking her assertion seriously. The voice started and Christopher listened. He closed his eyes and was surprised to discover that he was now less sure about what he was hearing. Simply knowing that the speech could be interpreted differently seemed to introduce a subtle shift of emphasis. The consonants softened as he strained to clarify the
words. Another replay failed to resolve ambiguities. Christopher realized that he hadn’t cleaned the tape up quite as much as he’d thought. There was still a lot of hiss and rumble to confuse matters. He opened his eyes. ‘Yes, I see what you mean.’