The auditorium became hushed for a moment as Professor Oakley pointed to the screen filled with diagrams showing the human ear and the movement of sound. “Sound begins with acoustic energy.” He said. “Then it approaches the ear drum where it becomes mechanical energy. Every sound has a unique imprint, no different than your hands and even your feet. “He raised his voice distinctly as he spoke. “Your ear flap funnels sound waves into your outer ear canal. The waves travel along this passage until they hit your eardrum and cause it to vibrate. As a result, your ossicles start moving.”
He paused lifted the glass on water on the desk and took a sip. He stared at the group of students that were watching him with quiet reverence. He wondered if any of them were actually taking in what he was saying but he doubted it. Still there were always the few that paid attention. Those he supposed made it worthwhile. But the truth was he’d become uninterested in what he was teaching. He tired of the petty politics that went on behind the faculty of the university. He’d reached the top of his profession but he hadn’t been content for a long time. He let the days pass, the months fly by and yet his mind seemed perpetually lost as if only part of him was teaching. The fact was he’d worked to get into this position and he didn’t enjoy it.
He put the glass down and carried on the lecture.
“Vibrations are then passed to the oval window as you can see in diagram A. This movement of the window sets off wave like motions in the fluid of your cochlea. We recognize sounds and some sounds are more important to us than others.” He gazed around the room at the young faces. “I’m sure we can all recall the voice of the people we loved in life, or the one love of our life, as babies we respond to the sound of our mother’s voice. As adults we respond to the person we love the most, some people believe that the voice of the love of our life is forever imprinted inside the brain.”
“Can you recall the love of your life Professor Oakley?” A bemused, bespectacled student shouted from the third row.
A ripple of laughter ran through lecture room A101.
Professor Oakley smiled politely for a moment, and dipped his head in contemplation, his mind instantaneously searched his past and present trying to come up with the voice that stood out, the one he could remember the most. He could hear the name pushing up from deep inside him, like a diver who after being immersed in the sea finally pushes his head up to the surface. So many of the voices of people he’d loved, crowded inside his mind like congested traffic, honking for attention. But only one name popped into his mind as if it belonged there, pushed up from the murky depths into the bright fluorescent light of the lecture room.
“Lena.” He murmured.
“Sorry Professor I didn’t hear you?” The boy hollered.
“I can’t recall one in particular.” He lied.
Another ripple of laughter filled the room.
“Now let’s get back on track.” He spoke firmly into the microphone. “We are now going to talk about sound waves. A pleasant sound has a regular wave pattern. The pattern is repeated over and over. But the waves of noise are irregular. They do not have a repeated pattern. This is very important to remember.”
Inside his mind he could already hear Lena’s voice, the lightness of it, soft and light as a butterfly flittering in the sky, feathered and tender that was how he’d describe her voice. As if someone had torn a pillow and thousands of feathers had floated into the air, this was what it was like hearing her talk at times. Lena had a gentleness that tiptoed inside you whether you wanted her to or not. You could do everything to put her at a distance but still you would feel her tiptoeing on your skin, leaving a pattern like a complicated tattoo design that would never disappear. At the end of a word she’d often add a soft oooh and sigh like the lost breath of someone caught in a moment of passion. He remembered holding the phone when she made these delightful sounds, and the feeling he had of needing to be close to her. But often he hid his feelings and never told her what he was thinking. When she was heated her voice would rise in its passion, she could be as unruly and fervent as a wolf in the woods, but usually there was a good reason even though he’d deny it to himself. Just thinking about her winded him, as if a stone had been flung at his chest and was stuck there unmoving, constricting.
Lena, Lena, Lena, he called her name over and over in his head. Sweet Lena.
He looked up; the students were staring at him curiously. He realised that he’d stopped his talk in mid flow. He carried on repeating his well rehearsed speech but their faces had become blurs, his voice repeated the words to his lecture automatically, but his mind was no longer in the room.
After all the students had filed out he gathered up his books and stepped into the corridor. The lights were low. He glanced at the geology stones and rocks in the glass cabinets on one side of the aisle. He took a sharp left and hastened down the circular stone stairway running his hand over the white ornate banister that felt cold on his skin. Then on the lower floor he arrived at level B where his office was located.
Unlocking the office door he hurried inside the darkened cluttered room and placed his books neatly at the bottom of the over flowing bookcase. His answer phone had nine messages. They can wait, he thought. He took a deep breath, and sank into the leather computer chair propping his legs up on the edge of the desk. He didn’t switch the light on. He was overcome with a feeling of sleepiness that he didn’t feel like fighting. He could hear clacking of shoes and drifting voices moving up and down the aisle outside his door. Rain spattered against the windowpanes as if it were performing its own melodic beat. The rain brought a rush of old memories. He could see Lena standing in a garden full of bluebells. She was wearing a silk loose crimson dress that clung to her body. She was drenched; her face turned towards the sky to catch the rain in her mouth, her expression was reverent as she savoured the wetness on her skin and hair. Tiny raindrops poured down on her cheeks, falling down her neck like small pockets of tears. Lena had always savoured the beauty of simple things because that was all she’d ever had in her life.
She’d been in his life such a short time compared to others. He pondered. He’d been married twice, once for eight years and the second time for seven years and yet Lena was the woman he thought of when he was asked. How could this be? As he recalled her voice, the image of her became less cloudy. He remembered how restless she’d be in a room, always moving and lounging and curling up like a cat in his arms, those sad grey eyes always questioning. His body responded to her presence in a way it never had before or since, he’d never had a moment in his life quite as compelling as he had with her. Lena when she bit her lip till it bled because she was afraid her cat was going to die, how she’d clung to him. The way she’d curled up to him at night and told him strange wild stories of faraway places and creatures from other worlds that she’d never visited. Lena who lived in a world of her own that you somehow wanted to climb into and be part of, as if she were behind an isolated gated mansion full of mysterious tales. He remembered how she’d gently rub her thumb along her bottom lip when she was anxious, the little scar across her knee that dipped in and would throb sometimes if she bumped into something. The loose buttons on her dresses that she never fixed that would often fall because she was always pulling at them. The way she'd become shy in company, her voice faltering, her eyes widening in nervousness. The little notes she'd put into his pockets when he wasn't around declaring all her feelings, letting them spill out leaving puddles everywhere. How he missed her, and if he thought about it, he’d been doing everything possible not to think about her. Not to have her in his mind, because since she’d left, since she’d gone his life had become as still as a glass of water left in a room for months on end, stagnant. Oh the days went on, they endlessly charged forward. His life was full in many ways but it wasn’t the same. She was gone. Right now she could be anywhere, with anyone. It had been two years ago when he’d met Lena. They had dated for ten months and then she’d left him.
The telephone stirred him from his reverie. It was his friend Peter; he’d arranged to meet him at the University library. Hauling himself from the chair he grabbed his tweed jacket from the coat stand and shrugged it on. He locked the door and strode to the car park.
At the library Peter was frantically putting some information for a lecture together on his laptop; he was a man who forever had his head buried in a book either at home or here. The place was eerily quiet at this time of the evening with only a few people sitting silently at the tables.
“Let’s go to the back of the library.” Peter said, gathering his laptop and notes.
They disappeared behind the library counter; a librarian was stamping books with a surly expression, she glanced up at them disapprovingly. In the back room were the cloakrooms and the coffee machines. Behind them endless stacks of rare books disappeared into the distance. This is where the librarian would come if you ordered a rare book. There was a musty smell in the air as if the windows had not been opened for years. One could easily get lost in this place, he thought. In a corner they found a couple of chairs and a rickety table that people used at break times. Peter disappeared and returned with two mugs of hot coffee.
“She had a lovely voice.”He said, explaining what had happened during his lecture. “I’ve never heard anyone that affected me that much. Sound has always been important to me. And her voice lingered with me long after she’d gone.”
Peter was silent but he listened intently his brow furrowed in concentration. Peter was good at listening. In many ways they were opposite people, Peter was more of a risk taker; he pushed the boundaries whereas Michael always toed the line like his father before him. Peter wasn’t interested in any more promotions, it would curtail his freedom and that would ruin his carefree nature, Michael realised.
“I loved her more than all the others, but the problem was I did nothing about it. And then she saw something in me that devastated her.” He said.
“What?”
“Cruelty I think. I wasn’t the kindest person to her in the end. I thought of nothing but myself. I was moving up the ranks of the University following in my father’s footsteps. Lena got left behind. I never thought about her and one day I came home and she was gone, no note nothing just gone. “
“But you still remember her voice.”
“I don’t have to remember it. I have her voice recorded, at the time I was conducting research into the sound of voices and the differences in tone and tempo, she volunteered to put her voice into my machine. “
“Where is it?”
“On a computer file at home, it will still be there with the other voices I recorded. But I’ve spent the two years avoiding listening to that particular tape.”
“Why don’t you try and find her?”
Professor Oakley swallowed his coffee and looked ahead into the distance, as if there was something in the books that surrounded him that held the answers to his dilemma. “I wish I’d have met her earlier in life but I didn’t. I don’t think there’s anything I can do now. But today what that boy said made me think of her and I was devastated. I’ve missed her the whole time. I miss her voice.”
“Well what do you want to do?” Peter asked, drumming his fingers impatiently on the tabletop. “If it was me I’d go and see her.”
He always looks so boyish even though he is approaching forty, Michael pondered, staring at Peter’s messy hair and his soft hazel eyes.
“I don’t know.” Michael answered forlornly.
“You can’t just sit there looking as if the world has come crashing down, try and find her. Find some peace. There must be some answer.”
“But what if she won’t speak to me?”
“At least you’ll have tried. It’s better than all this speculating. What’s really holding you back?”
“I’ve never been like you Peter you know that. I’m a coward. I come from a family of cowards” He answered.
After they parted he made his way home to his house in Cheltenham. He was tired. Turning on the lights he briefly went into his study and turned on his computer. He opened one of the files from two years earlier. For a moment there was silence, and then he heard the hiss and static of the tape he’d used at the time.
“Are you going to say something Lena?”
She sighed. “Ohhhh.....I could quote something.”
“Okay.”
“The darkest day is when you are away; the brightest sun is when you are close.” She laughed softly.
“Is that it?”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“Your voice is beautiful.” He said.
She laughed again. “My voice will always be with you now.”
“Always, yes.” He said.
“Do you know what I like the most?”
“What?” He asked.
“Hearing your voice, it’s so soothing, it fills me with warmth and I’d never feel safe without it.” She whispered.
“Tell me something you like?”
“Carousels, rain, music, books, art, cats, the colour blue, the sea...... music..........I could go on and on.”
“What do you like about carousels?”
“I like the sound of the carousel, watching the horses go round and round, it’s like the horses take you to another place, another world. A place of innocence that is so perfect it could only be a dream. I’d like to end my days on a carousel.”
He stopped the recording.
He’d forgotten she’d said that about the carousels, he remembered how whenever she’d see one she’d stop and watch the horses going round and round, her grey eyes mesmerised. It was as if she was already somewhere else, in another place. And wherever it was she was unreachable at these moments. He could only watch her closely and wonder what was going through her mind.
He lowered his head as the recording ended. There were more recordings, short snatches of conversations he’d tape. Why had he saved them? Because he knew that he couldn’t bear to rid himself of anything belonging to her, or anything with her words. Oh he tried to in the beginning but he couldn’t. She was too close to everything he’d ever wanted. Where was she? He wondered. What was she doing right now?
He put her name into the internet and found nothing. What had he expected? Two years was a long time. Things change fast in this modern world, he thought. Why had that damned student asked that question? That night he struggled to sleep, tossing and turning he couldn’t stop thinking about her. And that’s when he knew that something was wrong. He had to do something. He climbed out of bed and checked the time. It was three 0’clock in the morning. It was unlikely that she’d kept the same mobile number but there was still a small chance. He dug into his papers, at the bottom of his desk he pulled out an old diary; in the back her mobile phone number was written. He dialled the number. It was ringing, he was surprised. His breath came fast.
“Hello.” A sleepy voice answered. He couldn’t quite tell if it was her or not.
He was silent. The silence seemed to go on for the longest time. “Hello? Is someone there? Are you going to say something?”
He put the phone down. He’d recognized the voice, it was Lena. He was surprised and elated. For half an hour he sat there in his study wondering what to do next, and then he plucked up the courage to dial her number again.
“Lena.” He said, when she answered.
“Yes.”
“It’s Michael Oakley.”
“Michael...................Oakley.” She repeated his words quietly. “What do you want Michael?”
“I want to see you. Will you see me?”
She was silent.
“Lena, answer me.”
“Michael I search for you everywhere....in books and writing when I’d find a passage that moved me, in films that stilled my heart, in silences that lasted too long, in pillows where I put all my dreams. But I never found you. I looked and looked. I could not go a day without a thought of you in my head. You were everywhere. But it’s too late now I’m not the person I was two years ago. And you hurt me.” She started to cry, and then the phone went dead. He tried to ring back but only received her answering message.
“Damn it.” He said, slamming his hand onto the desk.
In the bathroom he showered and dressed. He didn’t know what to do, should he phone her again? Should he leave it? He stormed around the room. Just hearing her voice had been marvellous. He remembered something, something he’d forgotten about that was in the attic. He tugged the squeaky stairs down from the attic and climbed up them. Inside he switched the light on, and found a box of old toys, he blew the dust from them. In the bottom of the box he found a vintage musical carousel that had been his brothers as a child. He took it out carefully and went downstairs. In the kitchen he cleaned it up gently with soap and water until the colours came out bright and vivid, there were a few light scratches but nothing too damaging. He turned the key on the side and listened to the light melodic sound as the horses moved around in circles. He sat in his study for an hour and thought about the situation. At five thirty am he picked up the phone he dialled her number again.
“You have to stop phoning Michael.” She rebuked him.
“I just want to meet you once.”
“I’m with someone, in a relationship.”
“Do you love him?” He asked.
“I don’t want to talk about love. You have no right to ask.”
“Damn it Lena why don’t you just answer the question? Give me an address so I can meet up with you.”
She sighed. Neither of them spoke for a long time. “What do you want from me?”
“An address.”
“Flat 2, Edward gardens, look it up.”
She put the phone down.
It took him an hour to drive there. The whole time he was driving he wondered if she’d actually answer the door when he arrived. At the flat he rang the doorbell and a woman in her fifties with curly hair and a belligerent expression flung open the door. She was still wearing a housecoat and looked flustered and put out.
“You must be Michael. She’s gone for a walk in the cemetery; it’s just across the road.” She pointed exasperated. “I don’t know why she goes for walks in there, it’s a morbid place if you ask me.”
“Thank you.” He said.
She nodded and slammed the door in his face.
Inside the Cemetery gates the statues of Angels stood serenely, their faces looked towards the sky as if they were appealing for something, yearning for something. The bedded plants and posies cried out in cheery bursts of colour, yellows, reds and blues. The trees rustled softly as he moved past them, as if they were speaking in their own secret language. A squirrel jumped in front of him and scampered away holding a nut between its teeth. He found her five minutes later at one of the benches under an apple blossom tree. Tied to the tree were little wind chimes that made a tender childlike call in the breeze, there were also wooden painted birds that had been tied to the branches and coloured ribbons.
“There for the little boy buried there, his name is Oliver.” She said. “Pointing to his grave.”
He sat down next to her. They both stared ahead but didn’t look at each other.
“I wanted to see you. Just to sit with you for a moment. Is that okay with you?” He asked.
She didn’t answer but nodded her head.
Just being next to her he felt a kind of relief, he thought, all the tension inside him seemed to dissipate. It felt as if it had been coiled inside him for the longest time.
“Are you dating?”
“Yes.”
“What’s he like?”
“He’s the opposite of you.”
“I see. I suppose that’s a good thing.”
“Perhaps it is.” She said.
“Can you talk to him? Do you love him?
She closed her eyes as if she were in pain.
“You need to leave. I’m not the Lena you knew I’ve changed.”
“Changed into what?”
“Into someone else. I’m a different person now.”
“You mean you don’t like carousels anymore.”
She turned to face him and he was glad. She looked exactly as he remembered her, those questioning grey eyes still held the same power, the same thirst they always had.
He reached into the bag he was holding and passed her a box; she took the box from him and peered inside it like a curious child. She blinked, her eyelashes were thick and black and in the sun they seemed so delicate. Under the tissue paper she pulled out the antique carousel. She ran her fingers over the horses gently, he stared at her small thumb and pale hands wanting to reach over and touch them.
“It’s beautiful.” She said. A smile flickered across her face. She gazed up at him and he reached over and pushed the dark fringe from her face as if time hadn’t passed, they never could stop touching each other. She closed her eyes when he touched her and a moment passed between them. It wasn’t something that he could express in words, but he knew that she felt it as well. The sun was warming their faces but the breeze was cool. Nobody else was around here. Lena had always loved quiet places and the cemetery was one of the quietest places you could go for a walk. It was kind of fitting that he’d found her here. This was just one of the things he’d missed about her; the places she chose to spend her time.
“It belonged to my brother. Turn the handle.” He instructed.
She touched the handle and turned it slowly. The horses began to move around and around, dipping and rising, a soft tune played as they moved, it was a delicate haunting melody. She was entranced, her eyes moved with the horses and it was as if she were already going on a journey herself.
““I’m never happy when you’re not around. I’m not myself, with you I could be myself.” He said.
“I never told you why I liked carousels.” She spoke, ignoring his confession.
“No. You didn’t.”
She sat there peacefully for a moment. “When I was a little girl I always wanted to go on the carousel, but we were poor and my mother refused to let me go on one. So I saw all the other children find a horse and they all seemed to be happy. The white horses looked so majestic, the gold around their necks almost glowed. The colours were rich and I thought that if I could go on that carousel everything would change in my life. That my childhood would be different, it would become magical just like the carousel. Of course this was a stupid thought, but when you are a child you still believe in foolish dreams.”
She reached for his hand and it tightened over his.
“What should we do?” He asked.
“We can start by going for a walk Michael.” She answered, tugging at his hand.
“I didn’t like your flatmate.”
She laughed delightedly. “I don’t like her either, but it was the only place I could get close to here for a reasonable sum.”
“You can always stay with me.”
She squeezed his hand. “Thank you.”
“Lena.” He said, touching her cheek with his hand. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“I know that.” She said. “I know.”
They walked hand and hand through the Cemetery but they didn’t speak again. There didn’t seem to be a need to talk. It was as if they were simply enjoying the feeling of being next to each other. And that was all he’d really wanted, to be with her, he thought.