Yes, I think they must be…’
‘But isn’t your husband still working nights? Won’t they disturb him?’
‘No. That’s…It’s fine, honestly.’
Elen stood up – slightly flustered – and went over to close the door. Then a few minutes later, while she was refreshing the pot, she casually turned on the oven’s extractor-hood.
All subsequent extraneous sounds were expunged by its whirr.
She’d gently questioned Fleet about his ‘project’ (this matchstick structure now took up the best part of their dining table – his bedroom having long since been evacuated because of the leak). She was especially interested in why it was that he hadn’t completed the cathedral itself before moving on to some of the surrounding buildings.
‘But what about this section?’ she’d asked, standing on the cathedral’s south side, where a large hole still gaped, unattractively, at the entrance.
‘It’s not finished,’ Fleet had murmured.
‘Then finish it,’ she’d said.
He’d scowled up at her. ‘It’s not finished,’ he repeated, as if speaking to an imbecile. ‘They haven’t built it yet.’
Steven had the most beautiful voice, and once he’d been set off, there was literally no stopping him (although he only ever really sang one song, and he sang it in what appeared to be a foreign tongue). When he did sing, though, his usually jumbled pronunciation sounded smooth and unhalting.
His speech therapist claimed that she’d seen this happen before (that it was relatively common, even). ‘Remember Gareth Gates,’ she’d said, ‘with his terrible stutter, who finished up second on Pop Idol? Steven’s like him…’ she paused, speculatively ‘…although perhaps a little…uh…’
One of the volunteers in Steven’s class was a member of Ashford Church’s prestigious choir. With Mrs Santa’s encouragement, she took Steven – and his mother – along to meet the choir master. Steven sang for him. In fact he sang – his shoulders back, his hands clasped, his tiny face all pinkly beatific – for upwards of half an hour.
The choir master had been both charmed and bemused.
‘It’s an early Madrigal,’ he told them (over the continuing sounds of Steven’s vocalising), ‘in a kind of bastardised Latin. Or maybe Welsh or Cornish. Definitely not a tongue I’m especially familiar with…’
‘D’you think he made it up?’ his mother asked.
‘I simply can’t answer that.’
‘D’you think you could make him sing something else?’
‘I’m sure I could try.’
But when the choir master sat down at his piano and began to play, Steven put his hands over his ears, began rocking and screaming.
The instrument, the rhythm, the tempo, the pitch. They were all wrong. They were vile and cacophonous.
Modern.
He found it disgusting.
Elen couldn’t help wondering why.
Why Albi?
At first she’d considered the actual place – its geography; its historical background – tales of religious strife were certainly legion; the basilica had been built by a cruel bishop –
Blah blah
Uh…
– Toulouse Lautrec had been born in the town, they’d built him a museum…
Hmmn
But after a while she decided to simplify things. She went back to basics. She began by considering the word itself, the name; its linguistic ramifications; the actual semantics (to do so, she’d found – in her extensive experience of problems of this kind – could often pay dividends).
Albi?
Al – bi?
Hang on…
If you inserted the ‘I’ (placed yourself in the picture), you got ‘al-i-bi’.
Alibi
In Latin (she looked it up in a dictionary) that meant ‘elsewhere’. I-am-elsewhere.
This funny little riddle just lodged in her head. And it stayed there.
Soon Steven was actually speaking – was chatting away, and with an amazing fluency – in this extraordinary new language of his, but only – Mrs Santa noted – when he was in (or around) Fleet’s general vicinity. It was almost as if he felt Fleet might respond (but Fleet never did), as if he thought Fleet might actually understand.
And while Fleet wasn’t ever aggressive (it wasn’t in his nature to be), it was plain that he found the boy (and his language) both stupid and exasperating. He would turn his face to the wall, or simply walk away. He made his contempt quite obvious. Everybody noticed.
Eventually the home visits were gently discouraged.
Two weeks after Steven had entered the Special Care stream, he completely abandoned his strange, new tongue. He began to stammer and to falter again. He lost his curiously ecstatic air. He recommenced his relationship with the Gameboy (head cocked, mouth open, fingers jabbing), but he’d only ever play with the sound turned off. He was almost ludicrously punctilious on that point.
He took no interest in Fleet any more.
A while after that, when the dust had finally settled, Mrs Santa caught Fleet staring at Steven during break one morning.
‘Is anything wrong, Fleet?’ she’d asked.
Fleet’s eye-line didn’t alter. It remained fixed on Steven as he answered her.
‘Steven should stay hiding behind the shapes,’ he murmured, ‘inside that funny little play-box of his.’
‘Really?’
Mrs Santa tried her best to draw him out.
‘Yes.’
‘And why do you say that, Fleet?’
Fleet glanced up at her, a look of mild surprise in his impish eyes.
‘Because that’s where he’s safe, Mrs Santa. All alone. In the quiet.’
‘But of…of course.’
Mrs
