Fictitious Force magazine

issue #2 published May 2006

from the short story NA/578934 by Clare O'Brien

The first time I didn't hear all of it. I'd turned on the radio just to fill up the silence, the way I did in those days when Jamie was at work and the jobs were all done. I meandered up and down the dial until I heard something that wasn't too loud, and I poured myself a long drink. The window seat was my favourite place, with its view of the hills and the loch beyond our garden wall. I drew up my knees and sipped the fruit juice, and the music just seemed to slip under my guard. Cold, it was, cool and smooth as the ice cubes clinking in the tumbler. It made me think of the sea - not the grey sea of my English childhood with its piers and pleasure gardens, but a clear blue northern sea where light stuttered and sparkled and icebergs moved past each other like rudderless ships in the night.

I couldn't have told you what kind of music it was. I didn't even know which station I was tuned to. Two presenters were handing over between programmes, and their voices babbled and rolled over the smooth surface of the music until there was one of those annoying segues into an ad break. Somehow after that I didn't want to listen any more, and I turned the radio off and went to see if the washing was dry. Jamie would be home soon.

I didn't hear it again for weeks. I'd almost forgotten about it when it came on under a link on TV, a trailer for some new show or other. It was only a brief extract, but I knew it at once.

"Jamie, listen, that music….what is it? Have you heard it before?"

"What music?" The notes had already faded.

"That snatch of tune under the trailer, didn't you hear?"

"Sorry, Ruth, I wasn't listening."

Like a stubborn sliver of food stuck between my teeth, I couldn't leave it alone. Feeling ridiculous, I phoned the BBC and asked for the name of the music. The girl wasn't sure, no-one else had been phoning, she said, and often they'd get a rush of calls if some tune seemed to strike a nerve with viewers. But in the end she found the schedule or cue sheet or whatever she had, and told me what I needed to know.

It was called Winter, she said. A piece of what she called "library music", bought by the yard, copyright-cleared and used all over the place wherever a mood needed to be created or a space filled up. It had come from an agency, she said. "You might hear it anywhere. Television, radio, on the net…advertisers use a lot of this kind of stuff." I asked for the name of the agency; a few Google clicks later, I was reading their blurb.

"We provide music for a whole range of corporate and educational multimedia projects," it said. "We can supply sample clips to suit your needs and budget…"

I was careful about how I worded the e-mail, inventing a new business start-up and asking about music clips for our multimedia pack. "Our company designs and manufactures water-coolers for the modern corporate environment," I typed. "We're looking for music which expresses the clear impact of pure iced water - something which conveys the pristine feel of a frozen winter." I had a pretty good idea that whoever processed the request would put some combination of ice, water, frozen and winter into their search engine and come up with what I was looking for. I knew the drill. I'd had a pretty good job in marketing before we'd moved out of London so Jamie could come home, take up his first job as a GP in this quiet crofting township near his family.

That night he brought up the subject of kids again. "Ruth, are you sure you don't want me to run some tests? Just to be sure nothing's wrong?"

"There's no need yet, is there? We've not been trying long…"

"Yeah, I know. It's just that I'd rather have some idea so we can get onto a fertility programme as early as possible. There's no point in leaving these things any later than we have to."

I fought down my irritation. "Look, Jamie, the one thing that'll stop it happening is you going on and on about it. "

He shrugged defensively and switched on the TV. "Look, I'm tired," I said. "I'm away to run a bath and read for a bit before bed." I picked up a couple of glossy magazines as he switched from MTV2 to VH-1 and back again, pushing up the volume on Franz Ferdinand. "Night…"

He didn't respond, and by the time my bath was cold he was already asleep.

The next morning I checked my e-mail every hour until a response arrived. They'd sent me links to half a dozen mp3s, too low-fi to be used for real, but quick to download and good enough to make a choice. Northern Lights, Ice Floes, Pole to Pole, Snowblind, Alaska. Then two just called Winter, but with different catalogue codes. I clicked the mouse, saved them both to my hard disk and ran the virus checker, just to be sure - or perhaps to delay the moment. Then I opened the first of them.

It was nonsense, worthless, a riot of sleigh bells for a special Christmas offer. The second was a bigger file. I closed my eyes.

The music rose from the speakers, haughty and pitiless, sharp as frostbite. I hadn't heard this part before; it was beautiful but reeked of pain, an ice-palace pulling itself into shape and form as I listened. The sounds were muffled, distant, but I could hear enough to know its utter cold, its complete and splendid inertia. I listened, motionless, spellbound. And then I heard him.

It was a cry, or something like a cry; the sound of someone lost inside the abstract architecture of the ice palace, his breath misting the transparent walls and balustrades as he wandered through its endless rooms. He was lost, and as the music went on I heard his mounting panic as his search grew more desperate. My hand flew to my mouth. He was crying, sobbing now, and the frozen walls were closing around him, confusing him, the corridors twisting, the doors and windows changing places as he moved.

It was a child. Somewhere inside the music there was a child, calling for help, trying to find his way out. I was sure of it.

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