We went for a walk together in Richmond Park, and I tried to comfort him. At the same time what he told me filled me with an excitement that I found hard to contain; after the fallow period of fifteen years, in which he had concentrated on gardening while Floss got on with her equestrian business, Walter was now hearing music again.
The soundscapes were back. Was Walter now going to return to the music business?
What I heard him tell the woman from the flower shop was that he was doing some creative work at home. Up until that moment he had convinced himself that was precisely what he was not doing. By gardening he had felt he was avoiding creativity and art, dealing only with the soil and the elements.
As Walter began to describe what felt to him like a crash, I began to fly a little. After all, I live by the madness of others, and my own madness had yet to be redeemed.
“I hear what people are thinking,” Walter said quietly as we slowly walked along the sandy bridle path near Richmond Gate, where Floss occasionally rode Dragon, her favorite Highland pony. Not a good horse for dressage, but sporting an extravagantly long “blond” mane, just like she had once worn. And he could jump pretty well.
“Walter,” I reminded him, “you spoke to Nik about all this, not to me. You explained what you were hearing to him.”
“Every morning I walk to the main road to buy milk and a chocolate bar from my friend Hussein,” he said. He smiled his handsome grin and looked at me, pausing for a moment. “Got to keep my energy up.”
He produced a sheet of paper. At first sight it looked like a kind of manifesto with short paragraphs. He handed it to me.
“Is this for me to keep?” I was pleased to be trusted again. It had been a while.
Walter nodded. “My face is familiar enough locally, to people who saw me perform, or know my face from the papers fifteen years back, or documentaries on the telly—whatever—and they chat to me. They seem to feel I am a friend. It’s wonderful in a way. It makes me feel as if I live in a small village. Or I overhear them talking to Hussein. Later, I write down what they say. Sometimes, before they speak, I can already hear and feel what they are concerned about, I can hear it as sound. Everyone is worried, Louis. Frightened.”
“Fear is the normal human condition, Walter,” I said, turning the page over. “So this writing is not a description of what you’ve been hearing?”
“What I hear is much harder to describe. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to compose music that comes close to it; some of these paragraphs connect with what I hear and some don’t.” He tapped the page I held in my hand as he spoke.
We crossed the busy road and walked toward Petersham, and then in Richmond Park sat on a bench that allowed a view of St. Paul’s Cathedral eight miles away in the City, just visible through the haze. I began to read. The title of the page was written in longhand, using an old-fashioned pen: “The people behind the soundscapes”; the rest was printed from a computer.
I worry about the planet, this strange weather.
When I wake up I feel my dreams must have been disturbing, but I can remember so little.
I find it so hard to reconcile the gentle Christian beliefs I know you’ve all been taught with the violent demands of the hardline Muslim clerics at our local mosque. Why should my kids have to face all that intimidation, those threats and censure? They haven’t done any wrong, at least not yet.
How can music and dancing be wrong? Surely they are expressions of the heart?
Where have all the sparrows gone? When I was a child there were thousands of them, everywhere.
Robots will take over the world; I know they will.
Hurricanes. When will this wind cease?
Why can’t things just remain as they were? Why is there always someone who wants to change things?
“It’s incredibly sad, isn’t it?” I looked over to Walter, who was gazing into the distance, his strong, handsome profile belying the fragility of his mind. “Who are they, all these frightened people you have as acquaintances?”
Walter did not reply.
“Do any of these inspire music?” I said, trying to imagine what Nik would have made of all this.
“Read the first one,” Walter said. “Read it aloud, and then close your eyes and see what happens.”
It was a strange instruction, and I felt a little embarrassed as I began. “I worry about the planet,” I read haltingly. I gave a small cough to clear my throat. “This strange weather.”
At this I looked into the sky. It was a bright autumn, a bit of blue, a few clouds, the sun hiding somewhere. I continued reading aloud.
“When I wake up I feel my dreams must have been disturbing, but I can remember so little. I find it so hard to reconcile the gentle Christian beliefs I know you’ve all been taught with the violent demands of the hardline Muslim clerics at our local mosque. Why should my kids have to face all that intimidation, those threats and censure? They haven’t done any wrong, at least not yet. How can music and dancing be wrong? Surely they are expressions of the heart?”
Walter looked at me; I looked back. I understood why a devout and extreme follower of Islam would turn his back on music, even proscribe it, but both of us would find it hard to believe music was an expression of evil.
“Who said this?” I asked.
“Funnily enough it was Hussein himself, who runs the shop.”
“Not a radical, then.” I smiled.
“No, but he is sincere, devoted to God.”
“Worried as much about climate change as he fears the hardline mullahs?”
Walter shook his head, but he was affirming what I’d said.
“What—or how—could hearing such a statement possibly cause you to hear it as sound?”
I was not as incredulous as I may have seemed, but I pressed my godson. “What could it chime within your own heart? Are you afraid of climate change, or of radical mullahs? Do you have a soundscape—as you call them—that evokes what Hussein said to you?”
The singing child is crushed by the fall of a hundred massive rocks that come down from the sky like grossly overgrown hailstones. They are in fact part rock, part ice, and as they smash into the ground—covered as it is by the broken glass, the tangled metal, and the sand and rock pools of the two previous movements—stone and liquid concur to create a new noise. It is the sound of avalanche, and in the midst of it all is the farting noise of a thousand rubber bags being squashed, their putrid contents expelling in globs and gobs. Ice and shit. Or is the burbling, bubbling sound that of lava burping in the heart of a volcano? Introduced now, in this revolting and heartrending scene, is the first violin. Ralph Vaughan Williams in his Lark Ascending used a solo violin in the most perfect impressionistic way possible. Here, the solo violin represents a vile whiff of methane escaping from the cesspit of foul lava. At first a growl, a scrape, then a swoop, a cascade, and then a rhythm that allows the construction of a simple fugue. The soul of a lost daughter, a child never born, will rise, almost like a lark, from the stinking recesses of the abyss.
Chapter 12
Walter had predicted that fifteen years in the garden would be enough. Floss still came and went, always shining, always alive, riding close, riding away, riding here, riding there. She would come home from a day at the stables covered in mud, her blond hair in wisps around her face; sometimes she chewed a plait or scratched her nose, and she’d walk into the garden, which after all his work was in some ways as impenetrable as a jungle. She wouldn’t call him, she would search until she found him, draw him to his feet, put her arms around him, bring his face to her own, and kiss him so tenderly and affectionately that he never had a moment’s doubt how much she loved him, how she trusted him, and how much she appreciated the freedom he allowed her.