Page 1 of The Tapes
TUESDAY
ONE
It’s underneath a rusty power saw that I find the cassette player. Dad’s inability to throw things out has led to a garage cluttered with everything from used sandpaper – better known as ‘paper’ – to a Danish butter cookies tin filled with small light bulbs he’d labelled ‘dead’. No wonder he always left his car parked on the driveway: the garage is landfill.
Except for the tape player.
It’s about the size of a Kindle, or a mini iPad, though much heavier. There’s a built-in speaker and something delightfully satisfying and retro about the chunky buttons and the way the lid flicks open with a substantialpop. Now with Siri, Alexa, and all the touchscreens, it’s such a novelty to be able to push things.
A shoebox marked ‘cables’ sits underneath and I remove the lid to find a mangle of spaghettified cords woven into one another. There are the obligatory SCART leads Dad kept, presumably in case they ever returned to fashion, but also the short black lead for the cassette player.
Before he died, when Dad did one of his annual clear-outs that’s not really a clear-out, he gave me an old rotary landline phone. My daughter is seventeen, a child of the noughties, who’d never known a world that wasn’t wireless. When I took thephone home for her, she stared at it, baffled by the ancient tech, unsure how it worked.
Ireallywant her to see this.
The cassette player goes into the very small ‘keep’ pile and then I continue rummaging.
It’s going to take a while to clear Dad’s house, to the point that I’m thinking it might be wiser to get the bulldozers in. My father was many things and borderline hoarder was definitely one of them.
God forbid he throw out anything himself.
After a few more minutes of sorting and clearing, I find a box with ‘Ange’ written on the side in faded felt tip. I’m about to dispatch it to the bin, except the name has me momentarily frozen.
Angela was Mum’s name.
Was…
The box has the dust-crusted look of something that’s not been moved in a very long time. I’m half expecting old photographs inside – but the contents are even more of a treasure trove. An old corded microphone has the wire wrapped around the handle – and then, underneath, are two long rows of cassette tapes.
I’m falling through time: sitting on my bedroom floor, a tape in the hi-fi, trying to press play and record and the exact time to cut out the DJ’s voice as I record songs from the radio. There was a time when I’d carry my own mixtapes in my schoolbag and listen to them on my knock-off Argos Walkman while walking to school. As I stare at the tidy stack of tapes, it’s so close, even though it’s thirty years ago.
At first I wonder if some of my old tapes survived, except these all have tidy handwriting on the sleeves.
Mum’shandwriting.
There’s another moment in which I’m blinking my way into the past. It’s such a long time since I saw such neatly capitalised letters. Mum once told me she won a handwriting competition when she’d been at school and, when I was eight or nine, I had been so desperate to be as good as her. It’s impossible not to feel those ancient tugs.
I choose a cassette from the middle of the row: one marked by a simple ‘September 1987’.
The tape inside is a translucent brown, with ‘C-90’ on a thin label that’s slightly peeling from the plastic. I fumble the cassette into the player and push the lid closed with a gratifyingclunk.There’s a plug socket hidden behind something that looks like an old lawnmower engine, so I slot it in – and then press play.
A momentary silence is followed by athunkfrom a microphone, a gentle clearing of someone’s throat, and then more silence.
I realise I can hear my own heart walloping its way through my chest. As soon as the woman’s voice says‘Hello…’a shiver flashes along my spine and I instinctively check over my shoulder, as it suddenly feels as if I’m no longer alone.
I am but I’m not.
Joining me is a voice I haven’t heard in thirteen years.
‘It’s Saturday today and we’ve been at Hollicombe Bay for a week now. The caravan’s kind of small but it’s only Bruce, Eve and me here. Bruce made friends with the couple next door, mainly because he’s found someone who is also happy to talk about motorbikes for hours. I’ve been taking Eve for walks around the campsite. She met her first puppy yesterday. I thought she might be a bit too young but?—’
I stop the tape because it’s too much. I’d have very recently turned two years old in September 1987. The talk of being walked around a campsite and seeing my first puppy…
The last time I heard my mother speak was over a decade ago. If anyone had asked, I don’t think I would have been able to describe her voice – and yet it feels so familiar now. There’s a little more youth than I remember, and it’s perhaps slightly higher pitched – but it’s unquestionably Mum.
She sounds so young.
There’s a lump in my throat, which is gulped away while I remove the tape from the player. I return it to the case, then the box – where there are so many more.
