Broken Voices (A Novella)

Faraday looked up. ‘They chucked me out,’ he said. ‘It’s not fair.’

At the time I pitied only myself. Now I realize that all of us in that house deserved pity for one reason or another.

Faraday’s voice had betrayed him. His greatest ally had become the traitor within. He had lost not just his place in the choir but also his sense of who he was. Mr Ratcliffe must have loathed the necessity to share his house with two boys, disturbing his quiet routines and upsetting his cat. It didn’t occur to me until much later that he was probably very poor. He must have received some money from the school for housing us. Perhaps he had felt in no position to refuse. After all, he was old and alone; he lived a grace-and-favour life in a grace-and-favour house.

Faraday and I went to the verger’s house at six in the evening, where Mrs Veal gave us Welsh rarebit, blancmange and a glass of milk. We ate in the Veals’ parlour, a stiff little room smelling of polish and soot. On the mantelpiece was a mynah bird, stuffed and attached to a twig, encased in a glass dome.

On that occasion we saw only Mrs Veal, apart from near the end of the meal when Mr Veal came in from the Cathedral, still in his verger’s cassock; he wished us good evening in a gruff voice and opened the door of a wall cupboard. I glimpsed two rows of hooks within, holding keys of various sizes.

‘Enjoy your supper,’ he told us, and went into the kitchen, where we heard him talking to his wife.

Faraday rose from his chair, crossed the room to the cupboard and opened the door.

‘Dozens of keys,’ he whispered. ‘And all with labels. It’s the keys for everywhere.’

I pretended not to be interested. ‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘Or he’ll catch you.’

That night I heard Faraday crying.

I remember in my first term at school I would lie in bed, listening for other boys crying and stuffing my handkerchief in my own mouth in an attempt to muffle my tears. There were about twenty of us huddled under thin blankets in a high-ceilinged dormitory, the windows wide open winter or summer. Sometimes one of the older boys would round on one of the weeping children.

‘Bloody blubber,’ he would whisper, and the rest of us would repeat the words over and over again, like an incantation, lest we be accused of blubbing as well. Little savages.

But that had been years ago. I wasn’t a kid any more and nor was Faraday.

‘Faraday?’ I murmured.

There was instant silence.

‘Are you crying?’

‘I’ve got a cold.’

It was the usual excuse, transparently false.

‘What is it?’ I said. And waited.

‘Everything. Bloody everything.’

We lay there without speaking. The room was not quite dark – the curtains were thin and the light from a High Street lamp leaked into the room.

‘But it’s my bloody voice really,’ he went on. ‘Everything would have been all right if it hadn’t been for that.’

‘That’s rot,’ I said, with the loftiness of fourteen to thirteen. ‘Everyone’s voice has to break sometime, unless you’re a girl. You don’t want to be a girl, do you?’

This was an attempt at comfort but it seemed only to make Faraday start crying again.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You can’t just blub.’

‘You don’t understand. I was going to sing the Christmas anthem. There’s a solo, you see, and it’s usually the head chorister that does it, and the Bishop gives him a special present afterwards. Some money.’

‘How much?’ I said.

‘Five pounds.’

I whistled. ‘For a bit of singing? That’s stupid.’

‘No, it’s not.’ Faraday’s voice rose in volume and, suddenly, in pitch. ‘It’s a tradition. They’ve been doing it for hundreds of years. Some old bishop left money in his will for it. And now Hampson will do it instead.’

‘Don’t talk so loud. The Rat will hear you.’

‘It’s lovely, too,’ Faraday whispered.

Lovely was not a word we used much. ‘What is?’

‘The anthem. It’s for Christmas Day. It’s called “Jubilate Deo”, and we only sing it on Christmas morning.’

Rejoice to God. Both of us had enough Latin to translate that.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘It’s beastly to lose five quid. But is it that bad? I mean, it was never yours in the first place.’

Faraday started crying again. I was spending Christmas with a cry-baby. I curled myself into a ball to conserve heat and thought how perfectly miserable everything was. Or rather, how perfectly miserable I was. Boys are selfish little brutes. While I was wallowing in self-pity, however, my curiosity was still stirring.

‘Look here,’ I said, ‘I can see it’s a shame your voice is broken and all that. But why are you like this about it? And why are you here?’