Mutt’n

Everything was grand till he got the hearing aid.

Up to that, he’d almost grown accustomed to his worsening disability. Sure, the ever-encroaching silence saddened him but he usually managed to make light of it. He’d invariably wheel out the story of how he first found out he was going deaf to anyone who’d listen.

The consultant had apparently explained to him that his hearing loss was progressive and that the frequencies he was losing most quickly were the ones most likely to be in the female voice range.

That tickled him no end! ‘There must be scores of married men out there who’d pay good money for a doctor’s note like that!’ he’d chuckle. He didn’t have a wife so it was kind of wasted on him.

Not that he didn’t at least try to make the best of his handicap. Take his living arrangements for example. His flat was cheap because it was teetering over a busy railway line and anyone of more acute hearing would have balked at the noise levels. By all accounts, an environmental health officer had told the landlord that it was’ acoustically unhabitable’ or something similar.

But he didn’t mind. His little garret flat in the rafters of a bricked-up boozer would rattle and sway every time the inter-city roared through but its passing was only announced to him by a deeply muffled rumbling which had long since ceased to be novel or troubling.

Infrequent visitors however would start violently as the steel wheels of speeding express trains howled past the kitchen window without warning and almost within reach. Nobody stayed long but that didn’t bother him either. Conversation had become such a chore. Straining to hear people had made him irritable and the drone of his own voice bored him. Alone, he didn’t feel so deaf.

Only after it became a problem at work was he forced to do something about his worsening debility. As a steel erector, he spent most of his working life dozens of metres above the city pavements. Out of earshot and using sign language or a handset with earphones, he was, by and large, able to hide his infirmity.

The funny thing was that the incident which forced him to confront it happened not in the higher reaches of a skyward straining tower but down on terra firma. He’d just come off the frame, and was heading for his breakfast in the works canteen. 

He ignored the men crowded at the entrance of the loading yard and walked about ten paces into the open space before he became aware of shouting, with people on all sides pointing frantically upwards. It was an air conditioning unit, about two tonne’s worth, three storeys up and twisting on the crane’s hook by one hawser, three having failed.

The fourth wasn’t far behind and the unit slammed into the deck close enough for him to feel the sudden breeze. The site safety officer, who’d seen the whole thing, sent him home and told him not to come back till he’d sorted out his hearing. While he was no stranger to danger in his job, that particular glimpse of mortality felt different. Against his better judgement, he decided to take it as a sign that maybe he should get a quack to take a gander at the lugs after all.

The consultant had indeed told him that his deafness would steadily worsen but he did offer the hope that electronic assistance could improve the quality of his life. He was sceptical but again, against his better judgement, he let the doctor convince him and he was duly sent down the hall to be fitted.

When the audiologist gave him his hearing aids, she explained the settings and maintenance, advising him to use them only for short periods initially. Under her guidance, he slipped the clear tube into his left ear (by far the deafest), fitted the microphone behind it and then, between thumb and index finger, he pushed the battery home.

He was shocked. Not by what he heard but by just how much had become suddenly audible. It was overwhelming. As the noise began to coalesce into context and sound, he had a vague impression of some huge, thankfully unseen beast pounding giant footsteps up and down the corridor outside the consulting room.

A battery of ringing telephones shrilly insisted on being answered. Distant cutlery clanked, plaintive, tinny and distinct. Skulking in the sonic undergrowth were mischievous legions of crackles, squawks, honks and hisses.

Obscure hallway conversations drifted spectrally across the murky, unfolding soundscape. Like a rich tidal bloom, all was carried along in a throbbing rush of ambient murmuration.

He was dizzy as he tried to hang on to the audiologist’s clear, comforting Spanish accent. She assured him he’d get used to it but that it might be a little disorienting at first. He luxuriated in the warm throatiness of her voice and found himself agreeing as the world roared around them.

After thanking her profusely, he left the hospital in a bit of a daze, blinking uncertainly in the sunshine as he listened to a world he’d barely heard for nearly a decade. He needed a drink and he knew somewhere close by.

He was already on a stool at the bar with a pint and a paper before he was struck acutely by the recollection of his previous visit to the Rising Sun.

His round that day had been four pints of Guinness; one each for his brothers-in-law and himself and one for his ex-wife.  They were still married at the time. 

When the pints arrived on the counter, they all took their glasses and the oldest brother spoke. ‘It’s only an hour since Josie passed but I just wanted to say I’m glad we were there to watch her go, she wasn’t alone, so let’s raise our glasses to our sister, her suffering’s over.’

There were no tears, everyone was still too numb. Just deep draughts as they swallowed stout to steady themselves. Poor Josie. He’d taken his shifts by her bedside like the rest of them as she’d wasted away; watched her cling to life, that light still blazing in her eyes as she fought to hold onto a consciousness that by then only reached her through gradually closing apertures. And all that rather than surrender to an Almighty by whom she’d always set such store.

‘Yours was the last face I saw, you know.’

The voice that jolted him from his reverie seemed to come from behind him but when he turned in his stool, it was to view a deserted bar. Instinctively, his hand went to his earpiece. He whipped it out and the blessed muffle resumed.

Examining the instrument minutely in his hands, which were by now trembling slightly, he tried to convince himself he hadn’t recognised the voice. He decided he must have imagined it; after all, Josie had been dead for knocking on ten years.

It was the fright of his brush with the air-con unit, he told himself. It was bound to have had some kind of effect; these days, they called it post-traumatic stress didn’t they? Throw in getting a new hearing aid and you’ve got a perfect storm.

Having talked himself around, he settled into his pint. And another one after that. By the time the evening news came on, he’d been joined by some other punters and he was getting brave enough to put the earpiece back in. If Josie wanted to talk to him, she’d have to let him watch the news first.

And so it was. As he acclimatised to the wall of sound, a warm hum of conviviality surrounded him.  He basked in the glow of the big screen and marvelled at the anchors’ brittle enunciation as they dispassionately announced the usual roll call of death, corruption and heart-warming human interest.

While he was trying to earwig on the conversations around him, he became aware of a vague muffled rasping. For a full five seconds, he listened to the noise, trying to source it. And when he did, he burst out laughing.

A couple of decorators drinking nearby looked up quizzically and he found himself pointing to his head and explaining: ‘It’s these new hearing aids innit? I kept hearing this noise and I just couldn’t place it and do you know what it was?’ They both shook their heads obligingly. ‘It was me, scratching my own arse! Would you fuckin’ believe that?’

And as he pantomimed it, the two painters sniggered before returning to their own conversation which sounded a lot like it was about burgling the house they were decorating. He couldn’t say why but he knew that as he turned back to the bar, Josie would resume their conversation. At least she waited till he’d ordered a fresh pint.

‘You’re looking well, considering.’

‘Considering what?’ he asked sharply, again drawing glances from the painters in the bar mirror.

‘The rough bachelor life,’ came the disembodied reply.

‘You didn’t come here to give me marriage counselling Josie and if you did, you’re a bit late.’ He’d lowered his voice by now.

‘Oh I know that, you were never one for listening anyway, even before you went deaf,’ and Josie allowed herself a little chuckle.

‘So go on then, explain to me why I’m not losing my mind,’ he countered.

‘I wish I could. What I’m here to tell you is that this is only the beginning. This conversation we’re having? Expect a lot more of them in the future and not just with me.’

‘Is it because of the hearing aids?’

‘Kind of. Remember when I said you were the last person I saw?’

‘Go on.’ Bathed in a glowing dawn, Josie’s eyes had flickered from one family member to another and he’d spent years trying to forget that fading gaze finally coming to rest.

‘I’m only guessing here but what you’re hearing now is probably what you’d have been hearing the whole time since I crossed over if you hadn’t been as deaf as a post.’

‘I see. So if I’ve got this right, pretty soon I’m gonna start hearing dead people because I just got a hearing aid.’

‘Not just dead ones, live ones too, you’ll start hearing what they’re thinking.’

‘Jesus wept.’

‘He sure did. It’ll get easier,’ Josie didn’t sound so sure.

‘So if I didn’t wear these I wouldn’t hear any of it?’

‘True, but aren’t you just a little curious?’

Josie’s question was left unanswered. Toasting the job’s success with smiling lips and gimlet eyes, he could hear each of the decorators resolving to turn the other in if they got arrested for the burglary.

On his way home, he took a route that circumvented the hospital morgue but even so, the empty streets were full of calling voices. He was glad to slot his key into the steel door of the old Tyburn Martyr and shut the world out for the night.

Well, that had been the plan but Josie had been right. It turned out that down the years, his little flat had collected quite a few stories. Now they had a listener and they clamoured to be heard. Long into the night, he obliged, only occasionally catching himself on to wonder at the improbability of what he was doing.

There were no great revelations, no unsolved murders nor buried treasures; just the ordinary tales of love, regret and loss, of lives interrupted. Like a prompting confessor, he patiently drew out the narratives of potmen, undertakers, bricklayers and butchers. There was no absolution at the end of it and there were no errands from beyond the grave either, they asked for nothing.

It went on for hours. Dawn had broken and he was about to call a halt to proceedings when the first express train of the day screamed through; with the earpiece in, the noise was so intense he passed out.

He missed the second and third – still in a faint – but the fourth brought him to again like a dose of salts. It was only then that he took out the hearing aid and embraced his deafness like an old friend.

He didn’t put the infernal instrument back in his earhole for a full three days after that, by which time he’d gone back to the audiologist.

But when he heard himself trying to explain what had happened, he was thankful he couldn’t understand what the lady was thinking in Spanish, at least judging by the look on her face as her ‘how to handle a nutter’ training kicked in.

He left the hospital. Unsure of what to do, he went back to The Rising Sun, looking for answers from his dead sister-in-law. He ordered a pint, fitted both earpieces and settled in to wait for Josie's arrival. But she never showed.  He drank till closing and didn’t hear another dicky bird from the living or the dead.

As he roused himself in disgust to begin his uncertain journey home, he whipped out the hearing aids theatrically and announced; ‘I’m taking these out now so ye can all go to hell!’ And off he went into the balmy evening.

The barman, who’d been out having a smoke on the pavement, was coming  in as he barged out the door.

‘What was all that about?’ he asked the solitary painter at the bar.

‘Pay him no mind mate, he’s Mutt’n.’