6  The Sound of a Crash

On the way to his lecture, a lorry nearly wiped Gareth clean off the planet. He’s re-lived it hundreds of times already. His thoughts rattle like loose bearings. Concentrating on the lecture helps him not spiral into ‘whys’ and ‘what ifs’.

Gareth is failing half his modules and only picked philosophy because he thought he could bullshit the long-form exam answers. The reality of reading lists and essay deadlines soon added to the weight of the grey sky pressing down. Perhaps an accident would’ve been easier.

“Sound is embedded in time.” The lecturer enunciates every word like a bell. “It’s the primary way we experience the passing of time.”

The sound of the lorry’s horn will haunt Gareth forever. Even though he’s a second-year student, he still feels like he doesn’t belong. Should he even be in this lecture? The others are gifted. The others are scribbling notes. He gets anxious in seminars, when ordering lunch, and when he shuts the car door and turns on the engine. The only thing that calms him is ambient music channels and noise-cancelling headphones.

“In one of the great historical theses on the subject, St Augustine uses sound to prove that the past, present and future comprise our experience of time.” The professor clicks the controller and religious chamber music seeps out of the wall-mounted speakers. It grows in surround sound and, gradually, the clinical lecture hall transforms into a vaulted, spiritual space.

For a moment, Gareth experiences the calm of a monastery as monks sing long flowing notes. Harmonies rise and fall and intertwine. It’s ominously beautiful. The music has the opposite effect to the blare of the horn which jolted him awake. The melodies fade and retract. Gareth is left stranded where they were.

“To enjoy this sound, we need experience – a memory of the notes which led to the current moment. We need attention to process the present sound, and anticipation of the beat, and forthcoming melody.”

The choir music returns for a few seconds.

Gareth gauges the distance of each of the speakers and senses how the notes travel through the air, reverberating off walls. He knows music. He listens with his eyes closed, for once not an impostor. Time is just sound over distance, and music is time.

Gareth is alive, he thinks. Car tyres hum in the distance, their destinations meaningless. He can’t see; his nose is smashed and his face weeps blood. He tries to imagine the scene. It’s night. Something is spinning. Wind buffets the twisted metal but he feels no chill. His brain is a computer programme, desperately searching for micro noises and data to build a picture in time.

“Alright, mate? If you can hear us, we’re going to get you out. Sit tight, you’ve been in an accident.”

The voice reminds Gareth of his uncle, a train conductor who always knows where he’s going.

The cutting starts and far-off noises mutate into hacking and sparks.

Gareth is awake, briefly. He senses sterile air, distant monitor bleeps, the hospital hum, and the almost imperceptible hiss of the air mattress.

This isn’t feeling, but absence, like when your body stops fighting the shock of a cold pool and you dissolve in the water. With your eyes closed, you listen to the bubbles escape. Sound travels faster underwater.

Footsteps tap. Ten yards, then closer. The sound of curtains drawing, the faint singing of the nurse who turns him, washes him, and changes one plastic tube for another. This is his music now. It is his memory, the focus of his attention, and the expectation of days or months of the same.

Sirens sound in the distance, then the window shuts and they retreat.

Gareth is leaving soon. They’re finally talking about doing it.

“You know, Deborah, we have to think ab–”

“Don’t…”

He’s not sure when his parents usually visit, or if they ever leave. They’ve always shared Gareth’s taste in music, to the point they used to tell him to turn his teenage records up, not down. His consciousness (if that’s what it is) leaves him with the spacious groans and shallow rasps of the night, but sometimes it returns. Sometimes his parents are there. He’s at peace with not being able to communicate. Gareth just listens and his parents just talk.

His dad plays one of his old favourites on the tinny portable speaker they installed. Jimmy Cliff. All the richness of the sound is lost, like it’s travelling from another planet.

“This one gets me.”

Me too, thinks Gareth. When the singer’s voice hits those high notes, the past and the present and future blend into something immense, a feeling worth more than the lives of the three bodies listening.

Gareth hears them shuffle closer. A hand touches his. As the song plays, they make their decision.

Turn the music up, he thinks. Turn it up.