Modifications

a short story from a while ago

A new newsletter with five Maps stories and more coming by end of this week.

In the meantime though, here’s a short story I wrote some time back. I’m dropping some of my back catalogue out every now and then as a thank you to the paid subscribers, but this one is for everyone. A micro-version of this appeared as a Maps vignette at one point, if long-time Maps readers are feeling a touch of deja-vu.

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For the first six months that he lived at Water Street, Taylor heard nothing from the room above. When he had first arrived in the city he’d stayed a few days in one of the dusty hotels that lined the narrow back streets behind the station. Greying net curtains filtered out much of the light and made the air of his room seem thick, like water. Many aspects of his new job suited him - being able to work at a place and time of his own choosing, not having to make conversation with an office full of people - but the pay was not extravagant and the city was expensive. Even so, the job had taken him hundreds of miles from the city where she had died to a place where nothing was familiar, where there were no memories waiting in ambush on every street, so he persevered and eventually a curling card behind the dirt-streaked glass of a newsagent’s window brought him to the room on Water Street.

Although the name conjured up an image of low cottages huddling companionably along a tranquil riverbank, or stately townhouses throwing their angular reflections into the still waters of a canal, the reality was more prosaic: a row of anonymous five storey brick buildings. Some were offices, some were apartments, some appeared to be nothing at all. Opposite lay a row of hunched concrete buildings which squatted behind metal fencing, occasionally emitting a deep bass hum. The elderly caretaker who showed Taylor around the building told him that this was the municipal waterworks which gave the street its name. Taylor was satisfied with the room, it was clean and quiet and available immediately, and it was a world away from the small rented house he had left in the suburbs of the other city, a house with memories in every creaking stair, in a handprint on the kitchen door, made before the paint had dried, in a chair which sagged as if still occupied.

The room on Water Street became both his home and his office, and he spent almost all of his time there, working on the report that he was being paid to write. His employers sent round a taxi full of pink and beige cardboard files, which Taylor piled up next to the cheap veneered desk. He went to the local shops when necessary, walked in the small overgrown park three streets away, sat at his desk and looked out of the window over the ugly windowless buildings of the waterworks, and days passed, months passed.

If someone was living in the room above him during that time, Taylor didn’t notice. He paid little attention to the other tenants of the building, made no effort to get to know them and considerable effort to avoid being placed in a situation where he might have to do so. But then the noises began, and for the first time Taylor became aware of the room above. At first it barely registered on his consciousness while he worked: distant sounds of wooden furniture being shifted, the sound of heavy boxes being slid across a floor, an occasional indistinct voice calling out muffled instructions. After a while though, it began to disturb his concentration. The sounds of moving and scraping increased and an occasional burst of hammering would rap violently for a few seconds before falling silent again. It was after a few days of this that Taylor first met Mr Bentley.

Taylor had passed the short, rather plump man a few times on the stairs. His murmured greetings and polite smile distinguished him from the other tenants, who usually lowered their gaze and walked past in the pretence that they were alone. The thought eventually struck Taylor that this man was in some way associated with the room above him, although he couldn’t decide whether this was as tenant of the room, owner of the building, or foreman of the men who must have been working in there. One morning Taylor was unlocking the door to his room when he heard footsteps in the corridor behind him, and then a polite cough. He turned and there stood the man from the room above, wearing a rather old-fashioned checked suit which accentuated both his absence of height and presence of girth,.

“It’s been terribly impolite of me,” the man said, looking as if this fact gave him physical pain. “We’ve passed each other several times and I still haven’t made my introduction to you. Mr Bentley.” He walked towards Taylor, and held out a hand. Taylor shook it, trying to remember how one did so, how brief was too impolite, how long too boorish.

“Mr Taylor,” he replied, matching the other man’s formality. Bentley’s hand was very dry and quite warm.

“Pleased to meet you Mr Taylor, I am very pleased.” Bentley was well-spoken, but there was a formal precision to his accent which made Taylor wonder if English was not the man’s first language.

“You’ve moved in upstairs?” Taylor asked.

“Moved in, not exactly, no - but I am responsible for upstairs. But please - “ he waved his hand towards the stairwell, and Taylor noticed two other men standing there. One was tall, lean and pale, his shoulders hunched up towards his ears, his eyes bright and watchful. He reminded Taylor of a heron that he had once seen. The other man could have been Bentley’s brother: he was short, round, and flushed in the face as if recently embarrassed.

“Mr Taylor, my associates - Mr Ventlos, Mr Henry,” Bentley said. “They are being kind enough to assist me in my modifications upstairs.” Henry smiled warmly, said something which Taylor did not catch. Ventlos dipped his head in an approximation of a brief bow, but did not speak.

“Well, well,” Bentley said, rubbing his hands together as if he were trying to start a fire. “Much to do and not the time to do it which we would desire. Very pleased to have met with you Mr Taylor, very pleased.” He disappeared away down the corridor and then up the stairs, followed by the other men. Taylor smiled, amused by the man’s eager sincerity. As he let himself into his room, it occurred to him that it was the first time he had smiled in weeks. Months.

He didn’t see any of them for a few days after that, nor were there any sounds from the room above. Towards the end of the week he was sitting at his desk, checking through a complex calculation, when something broke his concentration. At first he thought that it was the building’s ageing hot water system, but it quickly became clear that the persistent clanging came from only one direction: above. No sooner had he realised this than the sound stopped. Taylor’s room filled up with silence again, but it was broken a few seconds later by the noise of an engine turning over and what sounded like the workings of a large piece of machinery. Something dragged dully across the floor and then there was a tearing noise, as if large sheets of silk were being ripped in half. These noises repeated themselves for around half an hour, and then Taylor heard no more that day.

And so it went on. Long periods of silence were interrupted by sounds of an almost industrial quality. Sometimes there was a fierce hissing, like a thousand kettles boiling at once. At other times there was a quiet but persistent banging, just on the threshold of audibility. Most of the noises were not loud, but they intruded on Taylor’s solitude enough to disturb him profoundly. When the sounds were there, they distracted him from his work. When they were not, the anticipation of their restarting distracted him equally. He began to sleep badly at night, even though the noise never came then. He started to take longer walks in the shabby little park, and to visit shops that lay a little farther afield. Twice, he left his room with the intention of going upstairs to complain, but each time the noise stopped before he had reached the stairs. He stood in the corridor for a few moments, and then returned to his room, feeling that it would look foolish making a complaint when there was nothing but silence. He wasn’t the complaining sort, and the thought of Mr Bentley’s concerned and friendly face somehow made it all the more difficult.

An opportunity to make his feelings known came by chance when he was returning from a walk, wet from the autumn mist that clung to the narrow streets. As he climbed the stairs he heard footsteps hurrying down. Mr Bentley rounded the corner of the stairwell, looking flustered. He stopped briefly to say good afternoon and was about to hurry off again, but Taylor seized his chance.

“I’m sorry Mr Bentley. I don’t wish to sound rude, but I really must ask. What on earth is going on in that room?”

Mr Bentley’s face took on an expression of deep concern. He tilted his head to one side, like an inquisitive blackbird.

“Oh Mr Taylor - I am so terribly sorry. Have we been a disturbance to you? Oh, I am sorry. I shall have to have words with Mr Henry and Mr Ventlos, this won’t do, this won’t do at all. I am afraid that they are not here at the moment, and I have to conduct a most urgent errand or I would repair this matter now, but you have my assurance, as soon as I see them again I shall raise this with them, I can assure you of that. I really must apologise. We shall not disturb you again, we will we take steps to make certain of that. I had not realised - I thought that they had done this - oh, you should have said sooner. I cannot say how sorry I am.” He appeared to be genuinely upset, and Taylor began to wish that he had never raised the matter.

“Thank you - I don’t wish to sound like I am moaning - some of the time it’s really no bother - sometimes it is a little disruptive, yes, but other times...and I am sometimes out. Could I ask though, what work are you doing in there, is it repairs, or...?”

The short man smiled. “Merely some essential modifications, Mr Taylor, that’s all. We have full permission of the owner, if that is of concern to you - “ Taylor made gestures meant to indicate that nothing could be farther from his mind “ - he is an associate of mine, and has given us full liberty in our modifications.”

Modifications? They had been working in there for at least a month, Taylor thought. He was about to enquire further, but Bentley bobbed his head and said something more about how sorry he was, but that he had a critical piece of business to attend to, most urgent, and he hurried off down the stairs. Taylor stood on the landing, listening to the footsteps receding. He felt, rather than heard, the dull thump of the heavy front door being swung shut by its automatic mechanism. He stood there for over a minute, and then peered up and down the stairs. There was no-one there. Taylor hurried up the stairs to the floor above.

The door to the room above was identical to his own. It was painted the same dirty shade of cream, had the same worn brass handle. Taylor looked up and down the landing. Still no-one there. He took a step forward and listened at the door. He couldn’t hear any voices, any footsteps, any clue to the events of the past few weeks, just a distant sighing hiss which he took to be the rushing of the blood in his ears. Disappointed, he turned to walk back towards his room, but then he remembered Bentley’s rush down the stairs, the air of distraction which lay behind the undoubtedly sincere apologies, the words about urgent business elsewhere. Taylor looked up and down the corridor again, and then knocked at the door. There was no answer. He knocked again, and when there was no response he tried the handle and it turned, the door was unlocked, the room above was open to him. He opened the door a little way and slipped through into the dark of the room, feeling an obscure excitement, the most genuine emotion he had felt since the day he had opened the door expecting his love and instead saw a young policeman, twisting his peaked cap in his hands and looking uncomfortable. Taylor closed the door behind him, and slid a hand up the wall to try and find a light switch, but then his eyes began to adjust to the dimness and his hand froze in mid-air.

He was standing on a small wooden platform made from floorboards. Beyond the platform should have been a plain and dull rented room, a room like his, like a thousand others in a hundred other cities, decorated with fading floral wallpaper, skirting boards painted a variation of the same bland colour as the door, fourth-hand furniture, cheap reproductions of second-rate paintings. But beyond the platform there were no sagging beds, no lampshades thick with dust, no thin beige carpets. No room. A space stretched out in front of him, above him, below him, every direction an endless dizzying drop.

Where the walls of the room should have been, nothing. Where the peeling polystyrene ceiling tiles should have been, blackness. Instead of the faded and worn carpets there was an emptiness which stretched down through where his own room should have been, the room below his, the basement, on and on into darkness. Taylor felt scared that he might fall, not just downwards, but outwards. Far away in the darkness, distant smudges of red and yellow light pulsed sluggishly, giving out the faint illumination which barely held off the blackness. There was a constant soft noise like the sound of waves dragging the shingle back from a beach, and every now and then Taylor felt, rather than heard, a deep bass humming which shook the platform. Some of the distant glows disappeared from view and then reappeared seconds later, and it struck Taylor that something very large was moving slowly across them.

He heard a noise behind him, and turned to see Mr Bentley step into the room. The man wrung his hands in embarrassment, shaking his head.

“Forgive me, I ought never to have left the room unlocked. A thousand apologies.”

Mr Bentley walked to the edge of the platform, half-turned back towards Taylor, and held out a hand.

“You could not go back,” he said.

Taylor hesitated for a moment. He thought of his room, the routine of his life, stretching out day after day, alone, he thought of a handprint on a door and an empty chair and then he reached out, took Mr Bentley’s hand, thought once again how warm it was, how very dry, and then they stepped out into the blackness.