David Gaffney

Do the voice

It began with the door to the balaclava cupboard. Its two note see-saw
creak, in descending thirds, sounded exactly like the uh huh catch
phrase of the disturbed woman in Little Britain. I heard this every time I
changed my balaclava, which was three times a week, and once I’d
noticed it, my house became a polyphony of comedy quips. The moaning
floorboard on the stair said suit you sir, and the bolts on the door went
what a plonker, Rodney. Smothering the cacophony with piano accordion
practice didn’t work either. Underneath the tunes, I could still hear
the wind rubbing a branch against the guttering, going what are the
scores, George Dawes and water curling through the radiator murmuring you
wouldn’t let it lie. The voices insinuated themselves into my sleep, to
be born out into the day with me.

A jittery council man confirmed the infestation, but explained that
eradication was expensive. Instead, he adjusted the noises to make them
sound like songs.

The Balaclava cupboard door plays Hey Jude, the low deep-stretched hum
of the boiler is O Superman, and things are a little better. But I
sometimes miss the fridge clucking stupid boy and the dish washer hissing
you’re my wife now. The phrases had a live, fleshy quality. Now, a
post-modern chill permeates everything. I’m even thinking of changing my
balaclava for a Trilby.

Double digging

Gloria’s face was on the banknotes in Nice-Town. Her smile throbbed
with evil e-numbers. She was never horrible, never mean, and never made
a juicy dig at the girls in promotions. But today dental anaesthetic
had tugged the corners of her mouth into an exaggerated sad-clown face
and, for the first time in Gloria’s life, she looked like mortal sin.
Benjamin didn’t normally register Gloria’s presence but when he
caught sight of her sour, crushed expression he stopped her, and told her
that suddenly he felt a connection. She had a dark, adhesive quality
that beckoned. He scanned his desk and his eyes landed on a tiny fern
growing in a yogurt pot which he picked it up and handed it to her.

‘Come to my allotment on Sunday,’ he said.

Gloria nursed the fern over to her desk. Everyone smiled and offered
words to ease her lonely desperation. Her inbox for the first time
contained the drinkypoos email. She looked from the email to the fern, and
silver voices sang in her head.

On Sunday she watched Benjamin dribble seeds from his curled palm into
holes his big fingers had jabbed into chocolaty soil. He smiled at her,
she scowled back though numb cheeks, and he laughed.

The dentist could offer her daily injections for a limited period only.
It was strictly unethical. But what would she tell Benjamin and the
others at work when her smile returned? How could she go back to happy
when miserable was so much fun?

The half-life of songs

The villagers were waiting for us in The Dog.

‘Bernice, Alan,’ they called out with breathless excitement.

Nora, a delicate, bony woman with tiny hooves for feet, stepped
forward. ‘So nice to see you both. Reg, at the post office told us your
names. This is Miles, The landlord. He is looking forward to Mr Coulthard
becoming one of The Dog barflies. But first of all, about your bijou
house warming the other night; next time you host a social gathering at
Glebe cottage don’t forget to give Miles a little notice. He has his
events to plan.’

I looked at Nora’s shiny gold slippers and ochre, wrinkly skin like a
overdone chicken’s.

‘Events?’

‘Quiz nights, hot pot suppers, sometimes a modern comedian. It all
happens here. Imagine: karaoke booked, but all the villagers chez
Coulthard chomping down on Bernice’s exquisite vol-au-vents. No-one in the
boozer, and I will survive belting into an empty room. This place,
Bernice,’ she pressed Bernice’s arm, as if testing for ripeness,
discovering her environment the way beasts do, ‘is the hub of it all.’

Drinks in hand, we set off towards an alcove, but Nora leapt in front
of us. ‘You can’t go off on your own like that, Bernice and Alan.’
She looked as if she was about to faint. ‘No, no, no. Mr Coulthard
must stand with the men.’ She nodded to a herd of check and gabardine
figures, laughing conspiratorially. ‘And you, my dear, will sit with
us girls. Come.’

A man from a farm told me about a brand of sheep-dip that glowed in
the dark, about the use of un-taxable red diesel, and about the ram with
one testicle who was the best inseminator in the valley, Then he
clapped his broad hands together and called out, ‘Way, hay, hay,
karaoke.’

Nora handed out the song list, explaining that the people who had Glebe
cottage before us did Avenues and Alleyways and Stand By Your Man.
What would our songs be? They’d heard we were modern.

I chose Blowing in the Wind, appropriately quiet, and requiring no
elaborate stage business, and standing there crooning, with the whole room
singing along, I thought about how the villagers would react the
following morning to the PowerPoint slide illustrating the thousands of spent
rods we would bury beneath their floors, half a mile under the surface
of the earth. They would understand. People who sing together have a
positive attitude to change. You learn to listen, and adjust your tone
to the tones around you. You breathe as a group. It’s mainly about
breathing.

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