The Orphan Choir Part 3

Me: A noise problem. My name's Louise Beeston. I live at 17 Weldon Road- Him: Your details are in front of me. Mrs Louise Beeston. Noise disturbance from a neighbour at number 19. Loud music.

Me: Yes, that's right. If Pat's still on duty, I'd really like her to come out to me again and- Him: You first rang this number to report a noise nuisance at 1.45 a.m. Is that correct?

Me: I don't know. Yes, probably. It was around that time. But since then- Him: Is the noise still continuing at an unacceptable level?

Me: If you'd listen to what I'm trying to tell you, you might know the answer to that by now. Will you please let me speak?

Him: I'm trying to establish the current situation, Mrs Beeston. Is the noise nuisance ongoing?

Me: He's not making a noise now this second, but he just woke me up, only about half an hour after I'd fallen asleep. Deliberately. I'd like Pat to come and- Him: It's not possible for anybody to come out to you if there's no noise being made at present. First thing on Monday, I can send a communication to your neighbour to the effect that there's been a noise complaint made against him. Also, if you could log- Me: You don't understand. Yes, I'll log everything and yes, please, send him a letter, but I need someone to put the fear of G.o.d into him now, tonight. Otherwise what's to stop him waking me up again in another hour, even a.s.suming I could fall asleep? This is more than noise nuisance it's deliberate torture.

Him: This is our only emergency line, Mrs Beeston. I'm on duty as the emergency officer. At present there's n.o.body in the office aside from myself. I can't stay on this line talking to you once I've established that you're not suffering an ongoing noise nuisance that needs urgent attention.

Me: If you'd b.l.o.o.d.y well listen to me, you'd find out that it is ongoing. He was playing music before, loudly ask Trevor Chibnall. He heard it, when I rang him at 1.45. Then he stopped when- Him: 'Ongoing' means that the music is playing now. Is it?

Me: No. I've said that. But- Him: Then I'll have to ask you to ring again on Monday morning. I'm sorry, Mrs Beeston, but that's our policy.

Me: You are the least helpful human being I've ever had the misfortune to speak to. Goodbye.

So, as I hope the above script demonstrates, I was not allowed to explain the situation. I will attempt to do so here, where there is no danger of my clogging up an important phone line.

At 2 a.m., when I rang the council's out-of-hours noise number for the first time, my neighbour at number 19 Weldon Road, Justin Clay, was playing loud music which Trevor Chibnall heard. Mr Clay had been playing loud music continuously since shortly after 10 p.m. What I did not tell Trevor Chibnall was that at first he was playing pop and rock music as he always does, but that after I went round to complain and ask him to turn it down (during which conversation he accused me of being a music sn.o.b who only likes cla.s.sical) he turned off the pop and put on loud cla.s.sical music instead. I cannot see any way to read this apart from as a deliberate taunt.

Pat Jervis then came out to my house to a.s.sess the situation, but by the time she arrived the music had stopped. I worked out that she must have parked outside my house at the exact moment that Mr Clay turned off his music, and I believe he timed this deliberately, to make it look as if I had exaggerated, imagined or spitefully invented the problem.

After Pat Jervis left, I went to bed and took a while to fall asleep because I was so upset and agitated. I finally fell asleep and was then woken again at 4.20 a.m. by more music, again coming from Mr Clay's house, except that this time it wasn't coming from his bas.e.m.e.nt but from his bedroom. Previously, he has always confined his musical activities to the bas.e.m.e.nt. His bedroom is right next to mine (our two houses are mirror images of each other), separated only by an inadequately insulated Victorian wall, and he knows this. When he and I first met, shortly after my family and I moved in next door to him and before there was any problem between us, we looked round each other's houses at his instigation. I thought it was an odd thing for him to suggest, since we didn't know one another, but it soon became obvious that he wanted to show off his no-expense-spared interior. So I hope I've proved that he knows very well where his bedroom is in relation to mine.

The music he was playing in his bedroom was choral music. Specifically, it was a boys' choir, singing liturgical responses of the exact sort that my son sings every Tuesday and Thursday evening at Choral Evensong in Saviour College's chapel: another deliberate taunt. Mr Clay played the responses over and over again I don't know exactly how many times because I became too upset to count. How loud was it? I suppose these things are relative. My husband, woken by my distress rather than the music, said that it was barely audible. Yet it was loud enough to wake me.

I believe that Mr Clay waited until he saw Pat Jervis leave my house, allowed me just enough time to calm down and fall asleep, and then deliberately woke me up, using a piece of music that he'd specially selected in order to provoke me. What has happened to me tonight is far more serious than a simple noise nuisance. It started as that, but has turned into something vicious and menacing that an unimaginative man like Doug Minns has no predetermined procedure for. Although there is currently no music spilling from my neighbour's house into mine, the problem is ongoing in the sense that there is basically zero chance of me getting any more sleep tonight. I'm too scared of being woken again, which is precisely the effect Mr Clay must have wanted to achieve. Given his malicious and calculating track record, he might well decide to turn the music back on in another half-hour, and if he doesn't it will be because he knows he doesn't need to he knows he's instilled enough fear and dread in me that I won't risk closing my eyes. So, yes, the problem is very much ongoing, because I'm terrified that he will do this again maybe not every night but as often as he feels like it. He can do it any time he wants, and stop whenever he sees a council officer's car pull up outside my house, so that no one ever hears or witnesses anything. And he knows I know that.

Look, I'm not a fool. I get it. Obviously emergency out-of-hours noise officers can't waste their time rus.h.i.+ng to houses where once, long ago, there was a noise somewhere in the vicinity that would be ludicrous. I understand why you lot have the rules you have, but would it kill you to be a bit flexible? Actually, I'm sure if Pat Jervis had picked up the phone instead of Doug Minns, the response would have been quite different. Pat seems to be properly on my side. I'm sure she'd have bent the stupid rules, come round, knocked on my neighbour's door and told him in no uncertain terms, 'Cut it out right now, or you could end up in court. This is hara.s.sment.'

Maybe I ought to try the police again and tell them that the council's environmental health department has no interest in preventing a gruesome murder on Weldon Road. That would get their attention.

2.

I open my eyes and see wooden slats above me. That's right: I lay down on the bottom bunk of Joseph's bed at about 6 a.m., not for a moment imagining that I might fall asleep. That I did feels like a victory, briefly. Then my triumph gives way to disappointment that I didn't manage to sleep for longer. I feel worse than I did before: as if someone's sc.r.a.ped the insides of my eyelids and scrubbed at my brain with a pumice stone.

What time is it? It's fully light outside, and no darker in here. The curtains in Joseph's room are useless: white and gauzy, thin as tissue paper. I've been meaning to replace them since we bought the house and not getting round to it. Joseph, thankfully, cares no more about daylight seeping in than he minds about the noise Mr Fahrenheit makes every other Sat.u.r.day night. He's completely unaware of both. I'm lucky. Or I used to think I was, until he left home.

Don't say 'left home'. He still lives here. You know that.

Joseph has always been a brilliant sleeper: 7.30 p.m. until 7 a.m., however light, dark, loud or quiet his surroundings. Other mothers think I'm lying when I say this but it's true: he has slept all night every night since he was four weeks old. Even his rare sick spells have always involved the kind of illnesses that have made him need to sleep overtime and more heavily. I used to feel sorry for my friends who had it harder Eniola, who went three nights without sleep when Matthew had terrible colic, and Jenny, with her frequent dashes to A&E on account of Chloe's asthma.

I envy them now, both of them, and not only them. I envy any parent whose child hasn't been stolen by a school for no good reason, which, come to think of it, is nearly every parent I know any mother whose son is too insecure and clingy to settle or be happy away from home. It's my fault that Joseph is as relaxed and independent-minded as he is. As a new parent, I wasn't anxious or neurotic. I regularly left him with babysitters; I believed there was a strong chance they'd be at least as good at looking after a baby as I was, if not better.

If I'd foreseen a conspiracy to take my son away from me, I'd have made sure to be one of those mums who never lets her child out of her sight. I'd have done everything I could to turn Joseph into the sort of boy who believes something bad will happen to him if his mother's not there to protect him.

If I were less tired, I might put the counter-arguments to myself. I would challenge my shameful retrospective plotting, my hyperbolic use of certain words 'conspiracy', 'stolen', 'fault' but at the moment I have neither the energy nor the inclination.

I hear Stuart's voice say, 'I thought you were going to sleep in the study,' and realise I'm not alone in the room. I throw back the duvet, trying not to notice the small blue and red sailing boats on its cover. Joseph chose it himself. He ought to be the one throwing it back this morning, not me.

A cross-section of my husband appears in front of me, blocking out some of the light: part of his legs, his waist and chest. The top bunk blocks his face from my view, but I can imagine what it looks like when he says, 'You'd better get up. Imran'll be here in fifteen minutes. And remember, soon as he leaves we'll have to set off to Saviour, so you need to get properly dressed now.'

I spring up off the bed and am on my feet before he gets to the door. 'I'm sorry?' I say belligerently. 'Since when do you tell me when and how to dress?'

He looks surprised by the strength of my reaction, and I feel guilty. 'You've just woken up, so I thought I'd ... you know.'

He's right. I have just woken up, less than two hours after falling asleep for the second time. Why would I do something so foolish? I wouldn't not of my own accord. I would do the sensible thing and stay asleep until quarter to ten, which would still give me enough time to leap into the shower before setting off to Saviour College's chapel for Joseph's gig. That's how I irreverently think of the services.

'Did you wake me up?' I ask Stuart.

'Yes. Eventually. It wasn't easy.'

'Thanks a lot. You know what time I got to sleep? Probably about ten past six.'

'Well, I know it was after five-twenty-five a.m.,' Stuart says irritably. 'What should I have done, Lou? Imran's coming all the way from Stamford and he'll be here in-'

'I don't give a f.u.c.k about Imran at this precise moment, Stuart! He's not a visiting dignitary that I need to impress, he's one of my oldest friends. You could have said, "Sorry, Imran, Lou's asleep she's had a h.e.l.lish night and I didn't want to wake her." He'd have been totally fine about it.'

'Right.' Stuart raises his eyebrows. He takes an unsteady step back, as if an unpredictable wind has knocked him off balance. 'Sorry, I a.s.sumed that since we're going to be talking about the work to the house, you might want to be there.'

'Why? You're not going to listen to what I say anyway. You didn't last night, when I asked you to text Imran and put him off. I don't want the house sandblasted! The last thing on my mind at the moment is the colour of the brickwork ...'

'And yet you're saying I should have left you to sleep and given Imran the go-ahead without you,' Stuart points out with infuriating patience. 'It sounds like you, me and Imran all need to be there, since we're likely to have different opinions. Mine's certainly different from yours.'

He tries again to leave the room. 'Wait,' I say. 'How do you know I didn't get to sleep till after twenty-five past five?' As I ask, I realise that there can only be one answer.

'I found your noise diary,' says Stuart accusingly.

And nothing else? I really ought to hide the drugs I stole from Mr Fahrenheit's place somewhere cleverer. It's not inconceivable that one day Stuart might decide the tea towel currently in use needs was.h.i.+ng; it's unlikely, but just about possible, that instead of taking a clean one from the top of the pile in the drawer, he might take the whole lot out and have a look at them all. If he did that, he would spot the small plastic bag full of marijuana underneath and subject me to a horrified interrogation.

'Obviously you were busy last night after I went back to sleep,' he says. 'Much as I'm keen to hear all about what you got up to, we don't have time. Seriously, Lou, since you are now awake and Imran's going to be here any minute-'

'I rang the council, not the police,' I say. Then, with heavy sarcasm, 'I didn't disobey you, Master, if that's what you're annoyed about.' It isn't true I called the police first but Stuart doesn't need to know that. I don't believe that all is fair in love or in war, but I am coming to believe that all might be fair in marriage, which is a combination of the two.

'I thought I made it pretty clear that I didn't want you ringing anyone,' says Stuart. 'But you did, so there's no point discussing it, is there? Though I have to say, if someone told you to keep a noise diary, I'm sure that ... thing on the kitchen table isn't what they had in mind.'

'I was told to keep a record,' I say as neutrally as possible. 'I'm keeping a record.'

'Yeah, well, it reads like the obsessive ramblings of a sleep-deprived neurotic. And while we're on the subject, since you evidently don't care about being ready when Imran arrives ... would you mind sleeping on the sofa bed in the attic instead of in Joseph's bed if you can't sleep in our room? As I suggested last night.' Stuart sighs as if there's no point trying to reason with me. 'Remember? I said why don't you make up the sofa bed in my study?'

While we're on the subject? We weren't. Where I ended up sleeping last night has nothing to do with what I wrote in my noise diary. I am baffled by this until I realise what Stuart must mean. His 'subject' is neither of those things, though both are instances of it. I wonder how he'd define it if I asked him: my dubious behaviour? My insistence on acting in accordance with my own ideas rather than his?

'Don't make out this is that, Stuart, okay?'

Stupid. I should have phrased it differently. There is no 'that'. 'That' is something Stuart believes in that doesn't exist. It's one of the more distasteful strands of his campaign to prove that his specialist subject, 'Isn't Louise Mental, Folks?', deserves a place on our core curriculum.

'Three things,' I say. My voice is an ice sculpture. 'One: at six in the morning, on no sleep, why would I choose to make up a sofa bed when there's an already-made bed in here, nearer and warmer than the attic? Two: I didn't sleep in Joseph's bed. He always sleeps in the top bunk. I slept in the bottom bunk, where he never sleeps, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with me sleeping there if I want to. Three: all this is irrelevant in this instance because I didn't plan to fall asleep in Joseph's room or anywhere. I'm amazed I was able to after all that stress. I only lay down because I was too knackered to stand up-'

'In Joseph's room, which you haunt like a f.u.c.king-' Having cut me off mid-sentence, Stuart does the same to himself. He turns away and stands still with his back to me, as if we're playing 'What's the Time, Mr Wolf?' and he's counting.

'Haunt?' I say.

'That was the wrong word. You know why?' Angry Mr Wolf turns round. 'Because no one's dead! You're not dead, Joseph's not dead, I'm not dead! We're among the most fortunate people on the planet, in fact. So why do I keep finding you in here, moping around your son's ever-so-tidy room as if you're ... mourning him or something? It's creepy, Louise. Can't you see that?'

The doorbell rings.

'And now there's Imran,' Stuart snaps, though the emotional charge of his words is And now look what you've done. Even though I never wanted Imran to come round this morning and asked for him to be put off.

Your son's ever-so-tidy room ...

Most people would zoom in on the references to death and mourning, which I agree were pretty unforgivable, but the 'ever-so-tidy' was worse. Subtler, but more potent if you take the time to unpack it.

'This feels a bit like a witch-hunt,' I say calmly, thinking that the defendant always dresses presentably for a court appearance, and this is my feelings doing the same. 'I'm not mourning Joseph in this room or any other because, as you point out, he's very much alive. There's another word that begins with an "m" that fits much better missing. I'm missing my son, who's only seven and who isn't here. Is that all right with you?'

Stuart walks over to the sash window and opens it. 'We'll have to talk about this later. Imran!' he shouts down to the street. 'Hang on. I'm just coming down.'

I consider tearing out two smallish clumps of my hair, to demonstrate my frustration. In my current mood and predicament, hair doesn't feel like something I need each individual strand of. I'd still have plenty left after my grand gesture. 'Don't ever talk about death and mourning in connection with Joseph, ever again,' I say. 'And don't say that his room is ever-so-tidy, because that's a death reference too. Don't ... yes, it is!' I'm not interested in hearing him deny it. Tears sting the insides of my eyelids, bitter, like a wash of acid. 'Joseph's bedroom is tidy because, since he's not here at the moment, he hasn't had a chance to mess it up since I last tidied it. It's a tidy room that's all it is! Call it that!'

Stuart is thinking only of Imran: closing the window so that he doesn't overhear.

'Lou, you're ma.s.sively overreacting to something completely innocuous. I-'

'It wasn't innocuous! "Ever-so-tidy" I know what that means! Parents whose children die and they meticulously keep the room exactly as it was while they were alive. Like a shrine!'

'I didn't mean that at all.'

'Don't lie to me!' I yell in his face. 'If you didn't mean that, why didn't you just say "tidy"? Why the "ever-so"? Well? You've got no answer, have you? Because I'm right you were trying to make the point that Joseph's room's too tidy, like some kind of ... museum-preserved bedroom of a dead boy!'

Stuart flinches. He backs away from me. 'I'm going downstairs to talk to Imran,' he says. 'Please don't join us if you're going to be like this. I wish I'd listened to you and cancelled him, to be honest.'

'So do I,' I say. 'Cancel him now. Send him away.'

I know it isn't going to happen.

Imran smiles at me as I walk into the kitchen. I wave at him and mouth 'h.e.l.lo' but say nothing, not wanting to interrupt Stuart, who is sitting with his back to me and is in full flow: 'If I could afford to pay you to do all my neighbours' houses too, believe me, I would. So far I've managed to focus my dissatisfaction on our house looking knackered and let's face it, at the moment it's the grottiest by some distance but as soon as you've worked your magic and it looks brilliant, I'm going to start minding the way all the other houses look.'

'Losing battle,' says Imran, his eyes still on me. He is trying to include me because it would be rude not to. I hang back, not yet ready to be part of the conversation. Several sections of this morning's Sunday Times lie before Imran in a neat rows-and-columns pattern that makes me think of a card trick. I can guess what's happened: Stuart left them scattered messily on the table as he always does, and Imran felt the need to impose some kind of order.

'Not a battle,' says Stuart. 'A positive-spirited campaign, that's how I like to think of it. Leading by example. Hopefully people'll see how stunning our house looks and think, "Hey, why don't we do that too? It's obviously possible." I think that's it, you know: people a.s.sume that if they buy a soot-blackened Victorian house, there's nothing they can do about it that's just the way it is. It's crazy. They think nothing of ripping out the innards, but getting the outside cleaned? Doesn't seem to occur to anyone, even those who wouldn't dream of letting dirt pile up anywhere else in their house they're happy to leave more than a hundred years of the city's belched-out waste smeared all over their brickwork. Which ought to be, and once was, yellow! Our voluble next-door neighbour's a perfect example.'

'Of someone who ought to be yellow?' Imran chuckles at his own joke.

'No, of a t.o.s.s.e.r,' I chip in.

Stuart turns. 'Oh, hi, love. Come and join us.'

I have always admired my husband's optimism, his willingness to leave the bad stuff behind. If only Imran were able to sandblast the crust of dark thoughts and memories off the surface of my brain.

'Do you want a cup of tea?' Stuart asks me.

I nod.

A new day. A new start. Light pours in through the kitchen's two large windows.

If I sit down at the table with Imran, will he notice what's happened to my face? The swollen patches under my eyes have burst and torn the skin. I now have two semicircular red slits, like tiny lipstick grins, one beneath each eye. If I touch them, they start to bleed. And the swellings have not subsided. I've tried to cover the marks with concealer but it hasn't worked as well as I hoped it would.

'I a.s.sume Stuart's filled you in?' I say to Imran. 'Our noisy neighbour woes?'

'He has. I feel for you. It's got to be up there in the top five nightmare scenarios.'

Imran likes ranking things. He has ever since university, where the three of us met. One of the first things Stuart and I learned about him was that courgettes are his number one vegetable. I asked him why and he said, 'Isn't it obvious?' Stuart and I still laugh about it.

'You've got to be up there in the top three wild exaggerators,' Stuart says, filling the kettle. 'Noisy neighbours might be nightmare number thirty-five if it's lucky.'

'I knew you'd say that,' Imran crows. 'You're wrong. Top five for sure. Maybe number five, but a solid five nothing's going to knock it off its spot. And before you start listing murder, torture, rape, fatal illness '

'Dinner with vegetarians,' I mutter, sitting down opposite Imran at the kitchen table. 'At their house or yours.'

'Right.' Imran nods enthusiastically, as I knew he would. 'Of course all those things are qualitatively worse, but they're not as widespread. You have to take that into account. Not everyone I know's been murdered. Not everyone I know's had a fatal illness '

'You mean "got" a fatal illness,' says Stuart. 'Because-'

'If I were a political party and I wanted to get elected or re-elected, you know what I'd make my number one policy?' Imran talks over him. 'Any more than three complaints made against anyone for noise that affects neighbours, bang, they're out on the street. No appeal, no due process, nothing. If you rent privately, if you're on housing benefit out you go. If you own your own home sorry, it's not yours any more, it's been repossessed.'

'Superb idea.' Stuart winks at me as he hands me my cup of tea.

'You think?' Imran sounds surprised.

'No. But I'm not going to waste my time attacking an opinion you're pretending to hold just to provoke me.'

'I suppose it's too open to abuse.' Imran frowns, criticising himself instead. 'Anyone could pretend their neighbour was noisy just to get rid of them. It would lead to innocent people being culled.'

'You think?' Stuart echoes, teasing him. 'Actually, if someone wants to get rid of a next-door neighbour that badly, chances are the neighbour's an a.r.s.e, like ours is. I was chatting to him the other week about the sandblasting warning him there'd be some noise and mess. Know what he said, the pompous sod? "It's your decision, obviously, but I'd never have that done. I bought a Victorian house because I love the history, you know? If I'd wanted something s.h.i.+ny and clean, I'd have bought a new-build." As if centuries of grime all over your facade's some kind of period feature, like a ceiling rose or cornicing! I said to Lou, "I bet he'd do it like a shot if he could afford it, but he's spent every last penny on his flash interior." '

Imran opens his mouth to respond, unaware that he's interrupting. We haven't quite reached the end of the story. I know this because I've heard it several times already. The hammering home of the moral is still to come, and it's Stuart's favourite bit. Now, seeing Imran poised to break into his flow, he's going to have to rush it. 'The fact is, this will still be a Victorian house once you've buffed it up,' he says. 'It'll look the way it looked the day it was built an unspoiled Victorian house, restored to its original glory.'

Record time, and word perfect.