Anna Smaill - The Chimes

After a while my memory falters and I’m back to standing where I was all along, in the main amphitheatre with the network of tunnels spreading out their mystery around. Listening blind for the tune that will be our thread through the dark.

At last the melody comes to its end and we stand and smell the tunnel’s cool breath, waiting for the sounding to settle in our minds. Then the run begins.

The way is hard at first because the tunnel is narrow and low. I run with Clare. Our hearing fits well. She has a good recall for rhythm, which means she can keep the distances in mind. We’re in water halfway up our shins, and there’s the shock of the cold as it makes its way through my overshoes. Then it warms and the warmth is trapped in the layer of wool and leather and we settle into a good half-jog.

The tunnel is as Lucien sung it, and the tune keeps us following straight for a good while until the first cadence comes upon us, and we follow the tune he gave us sharp west. There are no steps upward to the mouth of the new tunnel, and I have to pull myself up first and then turn to give Clare an arm up. This tunnel is wide and dry with a bricky, sandy smell. We take the twists and turns that the tune tells us, and before long we are running straight again. And then we’re just waiting for the first tunnel that will lead us toward the fourth chord.

We’re closer to the surface and every few beats there’s a small crack of light above us. Not sunlight, but a softer, grainier darkness. We’re running now, and past a knot of openings to the east Clare starts counting out the beats that give us the exact distance: 8, 2, 3, 4… 7, 2, 3, 4… 6, 2, 3, 4… and so on, hearing the tune underneath. And right on time the next cadence appears, as Lucien sang it, and I see the right-hand tunnel that will lead us northeast, right onto the spot that Lucien sounded. Clare is a few paces ahead and gestures to me as I join her, so I drop to a walk and stand close. We both wait for our hearts to stop thudding so we can listen and see if we’ve dropped down on the right tunnel.

Ragged breath in the still, close air, and the scritching sound of the feet of small creatures, mice or rats, scurrying in the sandy tunnel. I stand and wait. My breath slows. Then a long silver blink, a pale ellipsis of silence. Husssh , it whispers, like a pulled-back tide. I feel my thumbs prick and I can hear Clare’s slow smile in the darkness. I imagine the sharp white of her teeth. ‘It’s clean, and close,’ she whispers. And I nod. She speaks from a distance, though. Like her mind is clouded with some worry.

We can hear her now, but it’s needful to keep the tune still. Follow the Lady and lose the tune, and though you’ll have her, she’ll not show you the way back. They say there are pactrunners who have died down here, lost forever in the tunnels.

I lead now, and the Lady’s call gets stronger. The tunnel narrows again and curves downward. It rejoins the floodwash of another drain. There is a grille to the outside that drops stripes of early morning light onto the small rush of waters.

I hold my breath and go to a crouch and use both hands to sluice through the debris at the grate below. Leaves and old stickwrap bags, wads of old wet papermoney. Then I lift my hands and hold them out and Clare’s breath makes a small, wondering ‘Ha!’ in the silence. On my palm is a nugget of Pale. About three ounces, and shined with soapy, idle gleam in the thin light, as beautiful as anything I’ve ever seen. It pulses with silence. With a brisk few steps Clare’s next to me and we look at it closer and I give her shoulder a squeeze, in gratitude for her hearing and the glow of her triumph. I slip the Lady into my back jeans pocket and grin.

‘Not bad for a morning’s work,’ I say.

Following our path backward is harder. You need to remember the tune and turn it inside out. But by that time we’ve been down long enough that my ears have slowed and sharpened and I can hear some way ahead. The cooling shift of air around a tunnelmouth, the echoes bouncing clipped and clean in concrete. I hear something else too.

Behind me, Clare’s breathing has a halted rhythm. Pent up, then every few minutes an irritated burst of breath. I slow, let her set the rhythm and judge what distances she needs. Running with Clare is all quick conflagration and offence. Keeping away from her temper is like balancing on a wire.

Sure enough, after a while her mood flares. She lights her words with it and flicks them at me.

‘What are you and Lucien doing?’

I almost slip on one of the pipes underfoot. I had expected some imagined slight. A courtesy not supplied, some overstep or understatement.

‘What do you mean?’

‘At night,’ she says, presto. ‘I hear voices.’

‘What do you mean, voices? Saying what?’

‘I don’t know. Just voices. Someone asking questions, like downsounding. Singing.’

‘When? Was it just the once?’ I have a sliding feeling. A feeling of blur. Our jog is lento now, half bent under mettle girders. There’s water to our shins and the current tugs against us.

‘You tell me.’

Grey light through a grating to the street above. A noise that must be the blood in my ears. I force myself to hear the inverted tune, sound it through. I have no idea what she is talking about. We must be nearing the amphitheatre now. Two phrases or so off. Two tunnel changes. Soon we will rejoin the others and be folded back into the quiet hum of the successful run and the rest of the daily rhythm.

‘He asked about your memories,’ she says. ‘Why?’

And that is when I stop. We don’t speak of memories. Remembering is done solo. Each of us keeps them. But glimpse a box or bag in someone’s quarters with that guarded look and you look askance so as not to see. There is a problem with these questions. And not just with the questions, but with Clare asking them. Clare keeping something that I have forgotten at just a day’s distance.

‘How did you remember?’

‘You mean, how did I remember when you didn’t?’ I hear her shrug. ‘I might not keep them close like you, but I’ve my own ways of remembering. Anyway, sometimes stuff just comes up from nowhere, doesn’t it? What’s the point spending all that time putting your memory into objects? You can’t get something back if it doesn’t want to come.’

She is right. It happens to me too, the sudden bubble that pops on the surface and subito there’s a clue to what’s hidden that you don’t know. It’ll come up in its own time or not at all.

‘What’s so special about your memories, then?’ Clare asks.

‘Nothing,’ I say. But there is another part of me that stands separate and watching. A part that says maybe there is something special about my memories. And a tugging feeling. Something I am meant to do.

After the run is over, Lucien leaves with a curt salute and quickstep down a side alley, off to his own blind business. Abel back to the storehouse to practise. Clare splashes down to the strand. As she goes, she swings the long mettle bar she uses for mudlarking. Iron for raking the river.

I follow her, walking a few steps to her side. Every few moments she throws a look at me that flicks out sharp, then back. I keep my own counsel and my gaze fixed ahead.

After a while she stops. Pulls her gingerish hair back and knots it behind her head. So tight it makes her cheekbones more than ever like knives. She stands widelegged and gouges a narrow gulley into the mud’s surface. I site a spot nearby and dig also. Something has opened inside me like hunger, but not for what’s hid in the rivermud.

We dig in silence. When she discards the spot and moves off, I follow.

‘What are you looking for?’ I ask.