The Sound of My Voice: Winner of Prix Millepages and Prix Lucioles, both for Best Foreign Novel - Softcover

Butlin, Ron

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1846974224 ISBN 13: 9781846974229

Publisher: Polygon, 2018

Synopsis

Genuinely subversive, Butlin’s book is a stylistic triumph. A major novel' - Irvine Welsh

Morris Magellan is thirty-four years old and already two-thirds destroyed. By day he is an executive, after six and at weekends the husband of an understanding wife and the father of two. At all times he is a music lover and a drunk.

Of the past he remembers only fear, and of the future he senses even greater terror to come; he is a man struggling from moment to moment to salvage something of himself before that too slips from his grasp.

On one level The Sound of My Voice tells the story of an alcoholic: a frantic attempt by some inner voice to halt an apparent need for self-destruction. More generally it presents the conflict between modern man’s cowardice and cruelty, and a desperate attempt to recover humanity.

About this title

About the Author

Ron Butlin is an award-winning poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer chidlren’s au-thor and librettist whose works have been translated into many languages. He regularly gives creative writing workshops in schools, and was Edinburgh Makar from 2008 to 2014.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Sound of My Voice

By Ron Butlin

Birlinn Limited

Copyright © 1987 Ron Butlin
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84697-422-9

CHAPTER 1

You were at a party when your father died – and immediately you were told, a miracle happened. A real miracle. It didn't last, of course, but was convincing enough for a few moments. An hour later, you took a girl home and tried to make love to her. You held on to her as she pleaded with you: even now her distress is still the nearest you have come to feeling grief at your father's death. You are thirty-four years old; everything that has ever happened to you is still happening.

Whenever you were driven from the village in your father's car you would look out of the rear window to keep your house – a single-storey cottage – in sight for as long as you could. The road climbed a steep hill, and as more of the village, then the surrounding fields and woods, became visible, you strained to fix your eyes on the white walls of the cottage, trying not to blink nor look aside even for one second. There was never a point when the house actually disappeared, only the sudden realisation that it had just done so, as, for a second, though without meaning to, you relaxed your concentration and lost sight of it.

Later, as your father drove back down the hill on your return to the village, you began anxiously to check off each familiar landmark leading to your house: the manse, then the horse-field, the wooden barn. 'It might not be there, it might not be there,' you kept repeating under your breath. By the time you came level with Keir's orchard you had worked yourself into a state of almost unbearable uncertainty. Then, very slowly, you turned in the direction of your home. You prolonged this anxiety, this anguish, for as long as you could. It was, you knew, a measure of the joy that would come as soon as you glimpsed the white colour once more: your cottage at the foot of the hill.

When the car stopped you scrambled out. Your parents got the shopping from the boot, quite unaware of the miracle happening around them: you had left and had now returned to the very same place. Everything you knew about yourself was once more affirmed: your pleasure at making the unoiled gate screech; your fear of the dog in the next garden; your anticipation of going soon to gather the hens' eggs. In returning you home, your father had again restored you to yourself. You looked at the familiar surroundings, silently greeting each aspect of them in turn, then gazed at him in wonder and gratitude. He slammed the boot shut and went indoors.

One afternoon he took you and your mother for a picnic. He drove twenty miles into the Border hills, the windows wide open to let in a draught of fresh air. Every so often he had to stop to allow the radiator to cool. The first time he took off the cap you saw the boiling water shoot into the air. You thought it great fun.

'Will we get another fountain?' you asked hopefully each time the car stopped. You were three years old and still believed he would respond to you.

Eventually he took a small side road and climbed the last mile or so to a disused farm. The car was parked in the yard and the three of you got out.

It was even hotter here and without a breath of wind. The snowcemmed walls of the abandoned buildings seemed themselves to be giving off heat. There were broken bricks and cobbles scattered across the yard like small hillocks, so overgrown were they with weeds and long grass. A harvester rusted in one corner, its paint flaked off at your touch; around it in the grass were several milk-churns, mostly on their sides. The windows and doors were broken, and it amused you to see small birds flying in and out of the house – one even perched on the window-frame for a few seconds and sang.

'That's his house now,' you told your parents, for when you approached him he flew into the room and stared at you from the mantelpiece as you looked in through the window.

It was dark and cool in the byre; there was a smell of hay and the roof had small chinks through which you could see sunlight and the sky. After a few minutes, however, you shivered. It felt chill suddenly, and you stepped back out into the yard.

At first you thought that the ruin and collapse of the farm must have happened all at once. You imagined that the farmer in a fit of terrible anger one day had smashed the windows, torn the doors from their hinges; you could picture him astride the roof, ripping up the tiles, then, standing at his full height, hurling them to shatter on the cobbles below. In fact, you were afraid that he might appear at any moment – and if he himself hadn't done all this, he might very well accuse you and your parents.

You were about to leave when you noticed a large trough set on the ground near the byre doorway. It was like a wash-hand basin, but almost big enough to be a bath. The water in it was filthy, with a greenish scum on top. Although you felt frightened of leaning over the basin, of placing yourself so close to the green slime, you reached forward to turn on the tap. The handle was very stiff.

You kept trying, but still it wouldn't turn. You used both hands and stood with your legs apart – your whole weight and strength concentrated on opening the tap. You could hear your mother shouting for you to come but you wouldn't give up, and kept tugging at the handle. Standing there in that hillside farm you could see across the entire valley; it was a clear summer's day. You shut your eyes to make an extra effort.

And suddenly it gave. The water gushed out at full force, splashing you, and giving you such a fright you stepped backwards – straight into your father.

'Will you come when you're told?' he said angrily, taking you by the shoulders. 'What are you playing at?'

'I —' you began.

But already he had turned away from you and was closing the tap. A small trickle was left running, however – you tried to point it out to him but he paid no attention.

'Can you not leave things alone?' he continued. 'Your mother's been calling you. Come on, we're going to have the picnic.'

Over by a gap in the yard wall stood your mother, dressed in a billowy summer frock. She had the picnic basket at her feet; she was waving, beckoning. She is dead now – and so is your father, but they were there with you in that farmyard over thirty years ago. You walked across the fields with your father at your left, your mother at your right. You had given them each a hand and were keeping up as best you could: three steps to your father's one, two steps to your mother's.

After a short walk you stopped on the slope of the hill. The rug was spread on the grass. Your mother unpacked the basket and then began laying out sandwiches, a tea-flask, lemonade and some fruit, while your father smoked a cigarette. The hill overlooked the main road, and after a few minutes you asked if you could go and play with the toy car and caravan parked in the layby below.

Your mother laughed, saying that it wasn't a model but big and full-sized. You didn't believe her – you could see quite clearly that it was no larger than your thumb-nail.

You got up and began running down the hill.

They shouted after you to come back, to watch the road. Even now, over thirty years later, you sometimes sense your father stumbling after you, still trying to catch up with you. So you ran faster.

The car and caravan are not far away now – and you can't wait to begin playing with them. The car is blue and the caravan is white with a step at the door. Almost there, you run with your hands stretched out in front.

The ground is levelling now – you are only a few yards away when all at once the car and caravan become full-sized.

You stop in astonishment. Then you go back a few yards – and forwards again more slowly. Again they change size. A woman carrying a pail comes out of the caravan and, seeing you, halts on the step. She asks if you want anything.

You stare at her, then retreat until everything has become small again. You pause briefly before approaching once more. Then retreat. Back and forwards you blunder along this critical distance until, by the time your father arrives, you are nearly in tears. You are too distressed to speak.

Firstly, he goes and talks to the woman for a few moments; they glance over at you and laugh, then he takes your hand and leads you up the hill.

You looked back only once – everything had returned to being small again. At the picnic place you sat on the rug, lemonade in one hand and a sandwich in the other, staring down at the layby and trying to understand what had happened.

You ate and drank without enjoyment, staring straight ahead. Your mother, meanwhile, began a series of explanations – and although you didn't understand the meaning, you repeated the words she said inside yourself like a charm against your disappointment.

'Things far away from you seem smaller than they are – but really they are the same size all the time,' she told you, adding, 'just like that farm you were in. See.' She pointed back up the hill.

You turned round, knowing already what you were going to see. You had walked across the courtyard, stood in the barn and the byre; you had been hardly able to reach through the broken kitchen window – and yet there was the entire farm in the distance, as small as the car and caravan below.

'When I go away from here will I get smaller?' you asked.

Your father lit another cigarette and said that you were stupid.

'Will I?' you repeated anxiously after a moment.

'No, of course not,' your mother answered.

But there was the farm you had explored, where you had turned on the tap – a full-sized house, sheds, harvester, a large yard – now a model farm. The tap was still running, you remembered, and for some reason, knowing this made you feel very sad, desolate. You continued your picnic, and whenever the memory of your disappointment became unbearable, you repeated your mother's explanation, that charm, into yourself: 'Things far away from you seem smaller ...'

Quite casually she then went on to tell you that the sun was really a thousand times bigger than the whole world – it looked small just because it was very far away, she remarked. After a few moments you asked: 'Do people ever go to the sun?'

'No,' came the reply, 'it's much too hot.'

So, you reasoned, the sun would always be far away and never get to its right size. Never. You were filled with a sense of injustice: some things would always get to be their right size, but the sun – never.

'It's not fair!' you cried out. 'It's not fair!'

At this your father laughed out loud, but you were so upset that you ignored him.

'How big is the world?' you asked after a few moments.

'As far as you can see,' he replied, 'and then there is always more. Go further and you'll always see more of it ahead of you.

'See that farm,' he pointed, 'if you went out through the front door and kept walking in a straight line for long enough, you'd walk in through the back door – now d'you understand?'

You could sense his pleasure in deliberately confusing you – but one thing at least seemed clear: 'There'll always be some bits that are far away then, and not their right size?' you asked.

He smoked his cigarette and said nothing.

You hesitated, then prompted him a moment later: 'Always?'

'Yes, always,' he replied abruptly.

If only, you thought to yourself, you could be everywhere at once so that nothing was ever far away but was its right size. Even for one moment.

Suddenly you remembered the running tap in the farmyard, and knew that when you went back to the car you would have an opportunity to turn it off. Also, it would be its right size when you were there.

A sense of joy began to fill you as you sat anticipating this. You gazed out beyond the road, across the Borders landscape as far as you could see. It was as if you had already turned off the tap, as if you had reached out and briefly were touching everything in sight – even the furthest hills.

However, during the thirty years since then you have learned to reason much better; these days, in fact, you rarely feel sadness or even the slightest disappointment. Soon you will be able to reason well enough to feel nothing at all.

Fear. Standing on the bottom step of the hall stairs while grasping on to the wooden banisters, 'frozen' as in a game of statues. Alert. Listening outside the lounge door, trying desperately to make out the tone of his voice or the quality of his silence, as though your life depended upon it. Which, of course, it did – and has done ever since. Terrified to enter the room he was in – and yet quite unable to go away.

You wanted to approach him where he sat in his armchair – just to say 'Hello' and perhaps touch the back of his hand lying on the armrest. But even to imagine that as having been an actual event in your childhood, if you thought about it now more than thirty years later, would make you catch your breath in fear.

Had he glanced at you, smiled and replied to your greeting; had that commonplace event ever happened, even once, it would have been the miracle to change your life. One moment of certainty that for all the years to come would have been yours to recall at will, saying to yourself: that was me.

Instead you spent your entire childhood in the corridor, as it were, knowing full well that if you dared to enter the room and address him or touch the back of his hand – if you dared, that is, to make the slightest demand upon him – he would ignore you. Or, at best, he would turn in your direction without speaking one word, his glance saying quite clearly: 'Well, and what could you possibly have to say to me?' Any affection you showed, he withdrew from. Any love you expressed, he crushed utterly.

One evening when you were in the kitchen cleaning your shoes for school the next day, he came into the room. You would have been about twelve years old and had long since learned to tense at his approach, but, as your back was towards him, you continued singing a sentimental pop song to yourself while brushing your shoes in time to keep the beat.

You have never forgotten the anger in his voice: 'What could you possibly know about love?' he shouted.

You turned to see him standing a few feet away, his arm pointing accusingly: 'I said, what could you know about love?'

His hand was trembling violently and his expression so full of rage that you had to look away. He repeated the word 'love' over and over again, with scorn, with disgust. Then he left.

Afterwards you remained standing at the kitchen window, holding your shoe in one hand and the brush with the polish still on it in the other. It was dark outside, pitch black. You felt, as you looked out into the night, that if all the darkness covering the village, the surrounding fields and woods, were taken into you, it would not be enough to hide the sense of guilt and shame that was there now.

But you were wrong. By your own efforts you have managed to keep these things hidden from the world – and from yourself. Quite forgetting their existence, in fact, until recently, when, while standing at a railway station on the way to work one morning, you were once again brought face to face with them. In that one moment the restraining force of over twenty years was suddenly released – tearing apart the darkness and yourself.

CHAPTER 2

You'd decided to make a night of it, to get lushed and laid. At the first party you'd dived into the punch: gin, orange juice, wine, cider, plus some ethyl alcohol left over from what were described vaguely as 'Mike's experiments'.

'After three glasses of this you will be anybody's!' the hostess stated as she filled the glasses.

'I'm anybody's now!' you replied with a laugh. There was no sense of loss in your voice, not then – a Friday night all those years ago.

A party was a few paper cups, a towel wrapped around the pink bulb in the main room, loud music from speakers the size of bathtubs, three other people in the toilet and ash in the sauerkraut. The average was four parties a night – Friday and Saturday. Other people went to parties and got drunk, you got drunk and went to parties. There were bars like market places where addresses were swapped, routes planned – though, of course, if you heard Mick Jagger through an open window as you walked down the street, there was no harm in trying. Your father's death was announced at the third party that night.

Ring the bell so merrily, the two of you. I used to live here, you explain to the girl you'd met and brought along from party number two. Ring the bell again – the music's loud – and in you go. Hand in hand. Into a corridor of coats, rolled-up carpets and empty carry-out bags. Into the pink light and the boom-boom music. Boom in the stomach, boom in the groin.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Sound of My Voice by Ron Butlin. Copyright © 1987 Ron Butlin. Excerpted by permission of Birlinn Limited.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Polygon
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1846974224
• ISBN 13: 9781846974229
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 160