The Sound of Now

I hear what I think are the children whispering to each other in their bunk-beds at a time when they know they should be going to sleep. It is the boy's voice I hear, his energy coiled like an inductor or electromagnet attracting only insomnia. The artist is lying in the bath and if I listen carefully enough to her I think I can hear her turning the pages of whatever it is she is reading, a novel perhaps, or magazine. I can also hear the cars and buses on the major road outside, their drive muffled only slightly by the thin wall of trees. The fridge is making a noise, too, as the refrigerant is pumped through the coils of tubing at the rear. Earlier, all I could hear was the sound of the artist's materials enjoying the surface of paper on board, a sound interjected every now and then by the dissatisfied sigh of the artist, or her attempt to hunt opinion. A motorbike rips past. It could be riderless for all I know. Where we lived before, which was just next door, the young man's motorbike was always being stolen. A large truck would pull up, usually at about four or five in the morning apparently, and crack the code and with several people hoist the machine into their vehicle and spirit their hot-wheeled booty away. I can still hear whispering. My curiosity gets the better of me and I step across the wooden floorboards and peer like a nurse into a ward of whispers. It is only our son who is whispering, as our daughter is asleep. (I can hear the reassuring filling and emptying of her 8 year old lungs.) When I ask our son what it is he is doing he looks up at me from the thick shopping catalogue on the bed and says, 'I'm ticking what I want.' Bunk-bed shopping: it's like window shopping only you can't shout about it. On my way back to the laptop I can hear the central heating. It is a slow hum and how I imagine the sound of monotony to be. I listen to my fingers tapping the keys again. It is the sound of a galloping horse whose hooves have been made tiny, and replaced with leather padding. Silently, most silently, I look across at the artist's two pieces on the wall. The figures within each stare back. On this night of many sounds they are the non-conformists. One of them looks at me with precisely the kind of perseverance we need in order to ensure the work is shown. On cue, the artist reappears, bathed and dried and wanting to make some tea. Moments later, I can hear the water in the kettle begin to boil. 'I'm hot,' says our son.