The Last Voice You Hear (12 page)

The trouble with this scenario is that the perception is always
true.

He wishes it were not so. If he could believe in a world that
allowed women to be happy, content with their lot, he’d have few
problems with that world. The other stuff – the Big Stuff: famine,
floods, genocide – is always going to happen, and there’s not a lot
anyone can do about it, but the Women-Being-Happy thing –
that’s always struck him as within our reach. But what do you
do about heartbreak?

What you mostly did was, you watched it happen every day.
Here was something else about women: they were all beautiful,
young or old; the ones who’d had heartbreak happen, and the
ones with it yet to come. It didn’t take significant technology to
tell them apart. Heartbreak was inevitable, even for those who
thought they’d found their happy ending. Because a happy
ending demands an ending. The key to happy-ever-after is keeping
eternity short.

And now, meanwhile, here’s a new beginning . . .

She has black hair, which makes her pale face paler, or maybe
it’s the other way around, and her eyes are also dark, and look
like they’ve seen secrets, and kept them. The creases at their
corners used to be laughter lines, but it seems they no longer
recognise humour in the situation. And this is one of the things
he means by heartbreak: it’s not just dancing partnerless, it’s no
longer hearing the music . . . She dresses well: she knows what
suits her. Forty-four, he thinks. That’s something he’s always been
good at: knowing the age, the range of ages; both the one they hope
they’re passing for, and the one they’ve really earned.

And he already knows what he’s decided, but says it aloud
anyway, as he has done twice before, just to hear the words break
into the air around him and stain it with their promise.

He says:
She’s the one.

Chapter Three

Kamikaze hearts

i

The aisles were full of music – boombox beats, longhair rock; the migraine thump of techno – and up and down them Zoë wandered, recognizing the odd band she’d assumed long dead and gone to nirvana (Heart; Love): were they really still around, or was this CD repackaging; old whines in new bottles? There was no chance she’d summon up the interest to find out. But meanwhile here she was, trawling the local record fair, belaboured on every side by noise; all of it with roots, she supposed, in the rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

Never underestimate the power of cheap music, somebody once said.

Never underestimate its volume either, she appended.

Earlier, she had spoken to Terry Hill, Caroline’s sister, who was married, lived in Darlington, and had three children, who were audibly staging an extinction-level event in the vicinity.

‘I’m sorry, who did you – will you
stop
that!’

‘Zoë Boehm. I’m working for Amory Grayling.’

‘I’m not telling you again! I’m sorry about this. Who – enough!’

(This was perhaps a recognized syndrome: maternal Tourette’s.)

‘Grayling,’ she repeated. ‘Caroline’s boss.’

There were clearing-away sounds; the noise of the end of a rope being reached. Zoë wondered how she’d have coped, and doubted she’d have found the resources. There were many – Zoë sometimes among them – who acted as if the mothers of young children had had their IQs shaved in the process, but that was the idiot view. When it came to patience, strategy and multi-tasking intelligence, child rearing was like running a small country single-handed.

She was back. ‘I’m sorry. You want to know about Alan?’

‘Whatever you can tell me.’

‘Not a great deal. She mentioned him, of course, but – well, she thought the phone was a business instrument. She wasn’t one for long chats.’

‘Did she tell you how they met?’

‘If she did, I don’t remember.’ She was quiet a moment. Zoë realized Terry Hill was weeping. ‘She was older than me, you know. This man, he might have been the best thing ever happened to her. I should have taken more notice.’

Because it was probably the right thing to do, and because short of hanging up, there was little to prevent it, Zoë let Caroline’s sister grieve. Barring the odd lunch, the occasional letter, there had not been enough contact: there had not been enough
time
. It was a grim perspective, the one found over your shoulder. Terry knew that: everyone did. And Caroline had left her her house and its contents; everything, in fact. Which counted for something.

‘When did you last speak?’

‘A week before she died.’

Zoë asked if Caroline had sounded different.

‘She sounded happy. I don’t mean that was especially different. She’d sounded happy a lot lately.’

‘Because of Alan.’

‘Nobody likes being alone, do they? Oh
do
stop that!’

Chaos was flexing its muscle again, up in Darlington. Zoë, glad she was alone, was ready to ring off when Terry said: ‘I’ll tell you one unusual thing. She was talking about going to a record fair.’

‘Where?’

‘Oxford, I think. Some place they sell CDs. Rock and pop and whatever. That must have been Alan’s influence. Caro grew out of pop years ago, she only listened to classical.’

And ‘This Old Heart Of Mine’, thought Zoë . . .

It was difficult to live in Oxford and not know about the record fair. First Saturday of the month, Town Hall: there were posters on most available spaces. Zoë had never been. This being a Saturday, though, and the first of the month, it seemed, from a distance, like a lead – maybe she could stand in the lobby, and pick Alan Talmadge from the queue. The number of times his name had echoed through her brain, she’d know him by his shape in a crowd . . .

And besides. She was remembering leaving Caroline Daniels’ house, and the car door that clunk-clicked without the courtesy light showing. There was a simple explanation: lights, like everything else, could be broken. But the question still insisted: had he been watching the house? This was where Caroline Daniels had lived, where Alan Talmadge had loved her. The reason for loitering lay deep in their story’s bones – lovers, like murderers, return to the scenes of their crimes.

Zoë had walked home tired that night; tired and buried in thoughts. She’d not have noticed if she’d been followed.

It was possible that Alan Talmadge had found her before she’d found him.

On a stall playing Smokey Robinson were two men in their twenties, looking more like weekending City-types than Motown fans. There probably wasn’t a law said you couldn’t be both. They were at opposite ends of their operation, both in chinos and collarless shirts. The one she addressed wore rimless spectacles.

She said, ‘I wonder if you could help. I’m looking for somebody.’

‘We’re more a record store than a dating agency,’ he said. ‘But I’ll have a bash.’

‘Do you know an Alan?’

‘An Alan?’

‘An Alan Talmadge?’

He called to his companion. ‘Do we know an Alan Talmadge?’

‘I don’t believe we do.’

‘Sorry.’

‘He might not be going by that name,’ said Zoë. ‘Which complicates it a bit.’

‘Not really.’ He called out again: ‘Do we know anyone not called Alan Talmadge?’

‘Loads.’

‘There you go.’

‘You’ve been a help.’

But he said, ‘What makes you think we’d know him, this Alan? Or not-Alan?’

‘He likes music,’ said Zoë. ‘Your kind of music. And he was planning a trip to the fair.’

‘Are you Bill?’

‘No. And he’s not in trouble, or not with me. I’m just trying to find him.’

‘What’s he look like?’

Good question. She said, ‘He has this thing he does with his hair. He plays with his hair. Runs his fingers through it.’

‘That’s it?’

She shrugged.

He laughed. ‘Well, I see that happen, I’ll send up a flare.’

She moved on.

It was busy, mostly a young crowd, but there were plenty of fortyish men around, any one of whom could have been Talmadge: how would she tell? There were marks life laid on you when things went wrong, and she knew about these, but wouldn’t recognize them on a stranger’s face. Would Talmadge have collected himself enough to come here anyway? Death wasn’t a twenty-four-hour thing. You didn’t shake grief overnight. Or did you?

There were no other golden-oldie stalls, and the stuff assaulting her ears wasn’t likely to achieve the status. She did another circuit anyway, studying people with the glazed stare of the collector pasted on to their faces; a visible junkie craving for rare material. There were some who’d waited all month for this – it was in her to wonder what sad lives they led. But she found herself wondering about her own instead, absent passion of any kind for longer than she could tell. So which was worse: a misdirected energy, or an energy that wasn’t there – energy she’d spilled somewhere, and hadn’t found since? She’d come to a halt; had picked up a CD; was examining it minutely as if it held the key to survival . . . This was what her body did: it covered for her mind. Made her look ordinary, rational, just another collector, while her thoughts peeped over the abyss. She put the CD down without registering what it was, and moved on.

This was what her body did for her, when it wasn’t plotting her destruction.

But there had been no envelope that morning; there was no possibility of an envelope before Monday, now.
What
can’t be cured must be endured
was the stupidity that floated into her head.
What can’t be cured is likely inoperable
. . . Shut up, she told herself. She shut up.

Back at the corner, she was hailed from the Smokey stall: ‘Three Rodneys and a Derek. No Alans yet.’

‘Right.’ Her voice crashed like static in her ears, as if she’d been gargling electricity. ‘This stall of yours. Do you run a shop?’

‘God, no. We do a couple markets a month, weekends.Some Internet selling. Rest of the time, we write software.’

This was not as big a surprise to Zoë as he thought it might be. ‘Do you know of any shops?’ she asked.

‘Record shops? You kidding?’

‘Specializing,’ she amended, ‘in Motown. Soul.’

‘Oh.’ He glanced at his companion, who was schmooz-ing a customer: Al Green in one hand, Marvin the other. ‘London, of course. And there’s one in Reading.’

‘Anywhere nearer?’

‘Not desperately.’ He stroked his shirt cuff. ‘You’re keen on finding this bloke, aren’t you? Does he owe you money?’

‘Something like that. This market, it moves round, right? Is it always the same stalls?’

‘Mostly. There is a shop, you know. Soul Driver, I think it’s called.’ An abstract look occupied his face while he thought about it. He was used to gazing into a screen for solutions, Zoë surmised. Part of a generation for which large slabs of everything crumbled into digital format. He looked to his friend again, who was tucking folded notes into a tin box. ‘Soul Driver? There’s a Soul Driver Records, isn’t there?’

‘Soul Rider. Wallingford.’

‘Wallingford. There you go.’

‘Thanks,’ she said. Her voice sounded normal; her volume fine.
Thanks
was what you said when somebody did you a favour.

He was looking her in the eye: a little amused, maybe a touch concerned too. ‘And you’re heading there on the off-chance, right? In case he shops there? This guy you’ve never met?’

Zoë said, ‘It’s what I do.’

It was what she did, but she wouldn’t have given it serious consideration if he’d not said that.
The off-chance
. You played the odds, but waited until they were halfway sane, generally. She went, though, because it was what she did.

And driving, found herself thinking – it was an image hard to relinquish – of the pale vibrator under Caroline Daniels’ bed. A trespass – being dead must be like having the world go through your handbag. And what had it cost Caroline to procure it? She couldn’t have gone mail-order, risking her name on God knew what ugly list. It would have been a cash deal: a face-to-face in one of Soho’s female-friendly sex outlets. Zoë could just about picture this: Caroline’s two (or four, or eight) feints, until the shop was empty . . . It was another world to the one she’d inhabited of alphabetically arranged CDs, of matching sets of pans, but one she’d had a right to experience. And how many men had there been? Not many, was Zoë’s guess. This wasn’t relying on Amory Grayling’s estimate. Men based such appraisals on what they hoped the answer to be. But Zoë felt she understood Caroline Daniels. There had not been many men. There had been dreams and desires, fantasies and fictions, even something like desperation, and then Talmadge had come along, and maybe all the dreams had come true. The vibrator had been tucked away, its spare batteries carefully preserved. You hoped for the best but prepared for the worst. Yes: Zoë Boehm understood Caroline Daniels.

So maybe the worst had happened.

Maybe there was no sign of Man in Caroline’s house because Man had left: packed razor and toothbrush, the clothes and paperbacks Zoë hadn’t found, and carried them back to his life. Maybe, even – Zoë hated to think this. Maybe, even, the vibrator had been his parting gift, wrapped in pity and contempt. And this version left no room for accidents: if this were halfway true, Caroline Daniels had fallen from no platform. If it were halfway true, she’d jumped.

But it was speculation, and there were missing facts. How had they met? Not at work, or Grayling would have known; not in a pub or club – Caroline Daniels was the wrong age, the wrong sex, the wrong
person
to fall in love in a crowded room. But they might have met on the train. Dozens of relationships kicked off that way; more than a few of them irregular. It had to do with the everyday, she guessed; the establishing of patterns inside a sealed environment, apart from home or work. Domestic routine calcifies. Picture hefty deposits of plaque encrusting a tooth. But friendly habits tenderize: when the first kind word of the day comes from a companion on a railway platform, it would be an easy thing to grow to rely upon. Caroline had no domestic partner, of course, but it would explain a lot about ‘Alan Talmadge’ if he had a wife back home. Explain, for a start, why it wasn’t his name.

. . . Once you had the frame, you could arrange the details inside it. That was the thing about speculation into other lives: other lives were always simpler – moved in cleaner directions, with more obvious motivation – than your own. Everybody was a mess, it was true. Everybody else was doing okay, though.

So what had it been like for Caroline, falling in love in her forties, maybe for the first time? It would have been full of the same sensations first love ever was; the same lies, the same mining for significance in every passing comment – even Zoë remembered the thrill of the phone ringing. Even a phone she didn’t pick up in time. Love was kidding yourself, mostly. And first love came with built-in obsolescence: one minute you were a couple enflamed; the next, you were a spent match.

A shiver crawled up her spine. But it was history, that was all; history trying to nudge part of her back into life. It wasn’t going to happen. Zoë bit down hard on nothing at all, and wiped her mind clear of everything but the road.

Soul Rider Records was tucked into an upstairs nook in a barn of a building whose interior had been hived into individual shops the size of kiosks: selling antiques mostly, or stuff that could kindly be called antique. Old junk. Framed prints of dead pheasants were stacked twelve deep in the corridors, between dangerously tilting bookshelves crammed with dusty paperbacks. Zoë wove past trays of mint-condition coins and piles of stamp albums and found it on the second floor:
Soul Rider
painted on a bit of driftwood nailed above a doorway. This gave on to twenty square foot of floorspace, into which the history of popular music had been condensed, with enough room over for a man with fifteen inches of grey beard, and bright green eyes behind thick black glasses. He wore a painter’s smock and sat on a stool, talking into a mobile phone. This was incongruous. He looked like he ought to be wielding peace pipe or crystal ball. Everywhere Zoë looked, stacks of CDs wobbled: music was filed in alphabetical rows in plastic troughs, but was also thrown higgledy-piggledy wherever space allowed, and a few places it didn’t. It was the sort of arrangement, you could sneeze and have a week’s work putting everything back together. She’d bet he knew where it all went, though: it was that sort of outfit. He was that sort of bearded man.