The Silver Chain of Sound

This story was inspired by the poetry of George Meredith and a much-loved piece of music by Ralph Vaughan-Williams.

‘Bill — please switch that off!’

We were approaching a junction and I needed to concentrate. ‘Lost your taste for the classics?’ My remark was abrupt, but Mary seemed not to notice.

‘No. Of course not. It’s a lovely piece. Reminds me of …. but they play it at least once every day on this channel. One day they’ll play it to death.’

I could see her point. It was an ‘easy listening’ station that certainly didn’t set out to challenge. I moved my hand to the console and turned it off.

Mary fell silent as I negotiated the traffic at the edge of the town. As we dropped speed on a quieter, country road, I found myself moved to take up the conversation again. I wanted to counter the terseness of my words a few moments before. If anyone needed gentleness at this time, Mary did.

‘Reminds you of something, you say … or someone?’

I sensed her brief nod. ‘Yes. Benbo. It reminds me of a special time with Benbo. So, when I listen to it, I have to be in a particular sort of mood. And alone.’

‘Was it a favorite of his?’

‘Well, yes. But you could say it’s everyone’s favorite. That’s why the wretched station plays it as often as it does. But it was more than that for Benbo. It was the … an association it had for him.’ She paused. It seemed that, for the time being, at least, she did not want to say anymore. Perhaps the situation was not right, focused as we were on the journey.

We said little more for the rest of the drive. We were both lost in our thoughts, I guess, and in our grieving. She for her husband and I for a much-loved younger brother. Ahead of us lay the painful task of going through his papers and other more personal belongings.

He had been a man who loved life and was thrilled by the beauty and mystery of the world. I knew well that what he had left behind him would reflect this. Mary would need all the support I could give her. They had adored one another. Yet the knowledge that he had so little time left had provoked no bitterness in him. His only sorrow was in his anticipation of the grief that lay ahead of her.

We arrived at last at the small cottage that had been their home and lost no time in getting to work. The music on the radio stayed with me as we worked and sorted together in silence. I could only begin to guess the pain it cost her. But she kept her dignity throughout, with no outward sign of her grief.

When at last, she spoke again as we sipped coffee on her patio, it was clear that her mind had been caught up just as had mine. It was as if our exchange in the car had happened only moments ago. She resumed our conversation as if the intervening hours had never been.

‘It was the day you went whale-watching off the peninsula on the southeast coast. Benbo hadn’t the strength to join you. He said the drugs were making him quite sick enough without the effects of heaving around on an open boat.’

‘Yes. I remember. The gale had blown itself out overnight, and it was a fine day. But the sea was wild enough. We did see the whales, just for a very few minutes, and they were miles off. It’s not something I’d do again in a hurry.’

‘I never told you what Benbo and I did while you were out there.’ Her expression spoke of a treasured memory.

I waited. I sensed that she wanted to share something with me. But she didn’t speak immediately. Instead, she went inside her desk and took a disc from it. I had a feeling that it was Vaughan Williams, and I was right. She took it to the player and adjusted the volume. This time we sat together in silence for a quarter of an hour and heard it right through to its last, vanishing cadence.

Mary began to talk again. Softly and lovingly. ‘It cost him such an effort to walk even the half-mile on to the meadows that surround the lighthouse. He was so frail and slight that I could almost have carried him. But at last, we got where he wanted to be. It was a place he’d always loved. In those few years we had together, we never once missed the chance to visit it. It became a sort of pilgrimage. And I think he knew that this time would be the last. I sat on the grass and cradled his head on my lap, running my fingers through the little that was left of his hair.

‘Desperately ill though he was, there was a sense of excitement and anticipation about him. And then we heard it at last. A sound that he thought — we thought — was one of the most thrilling and uplifting in this world. His eyes closed, but the look of ecstasy on his face was something that I will keep with me for always. Dear Benbo — his sight was almost gone then. But even I could not have seen what I knew he would have sought in the sky, so vanishingly small it had become. “Poor old Bill,” he murmured. “He must be as sick as a dog out there. And how could whales — all the whales in the ocean, compare with that?”’

‘He always saw the best in the smallest things. He had a gift for it’.

‘Uh-huh,’ Mary nodded. ‘The smallest of things. And on that afternoon, it was in the song of the smallest of birds that I think he had his first glimpse of heaven’.

* * *

He rises and begins to round, He drops the silver chain of sound.

From George Meredith (1828–1918) The Lark Ascending.