THE PURPOSE OF ART

What some people consider as rubbish, others are eager to collect and preserve. And vice-versa. That was what the four students found themselves thinking as they began clearing out the cupboard under Mrs Hawkins's stairs. They didn't actually belong to Mrs Hawkins any more, because she was dead. Carrie's father (who was an accountant) had bought the house very cheaply at an auction, so that she would have somewhere to live during her second and final years at Southampton University. She was sharing it with her friends, though of course they were paying rent, which meant her father was making a nice profit on the deal, but he had plenty of places to hide that from everybody, including his daughter and the tax-man.

The summer term of their first year had just finished, and the four of them were moving in: Carrie, who was doing history, Mary, her best friend from school who was a modern linguist, Charlotte, a musician, who was Carrie's best friend at university, and Jed, the token male, who was an engineer, and had basically been included so there was someone to fix anything that went wrong. 'Not because he's a man,' the girls said, 'because he's an engineer.' Jed didn't tell them the truth about his practical abilities, because he was crazy over Charlotte. For every truth not told, another goes unperceived, and the real reason he had been invited to join the household was because Mary fancied him like mad. He spent two years unaware of this, until - but never mind, because that's not part of our story.

Our story concerns what they found under Mrs Hawkins's stairs: firstly, a load of old newspapers - Evening Echos going back over sixty years; secondly, an old-fashioned wind-up gramophone, with its horn; and thirdly, as was to be expected, a pile of 78s, designed to be played on the aforesaid machine. Carrie, as the historian, assumed immediate control over the newspapers, Mary and Charlotte occupied themselves with the records, some of which had text in foreign languages on their labels, and Jed investigated the clockwork mechanism of the sound reproducer. He was finished first, because he followed the old adage, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it', and just squirted a bit of WD40 over the cogs because it seemed an impressive male thing to do.

Mary and Charlotte finished next, because there were only about fifty records. 'Opera,' said Charlotte, with a certain contempt. 'Italian,' said Mary, who was still reading the labels. 'Most opera is,' said Charlotte. 'What about Wagner?' said Mary, anxious to show off her knowledge. 'Not exactly made for the four-minute side,' said Charlotte, who was endowed with even more contempt than was normal for a musician. 'That fits,' said Carrie, interrupting what might have been the first quarrel in the new house. 'She always rings round the opera performances - '

'Opera in Southampton?' sneered Charlotte.

'Touring companies - that's funny - she's scrubbed this one out - what's it say, Mary?'

'Aida,' said Mary, glad to be consulted, glad to be able to show off her pronunciation of Italian, especially because it wasn't a language she was studying, just one she happened to know a bit of - she felt that linguists should be capable of dealing with any language at all -

'And right at the back,' said Carrie, 'tucked in with these papers from the 1940s, there was another record.' She passed it over for inspection. 'Gosh - look at these pictures - Southampton really suffered in the blitz - '

'Is that why the town still looks so dreadful?' asked Charlotte.

'It's not that bad,' said Jed, who came from Halifax - but he didn't push the point.

'She's ringed round some names in this list of people missing,' Carrie went on. 'Geoffrey Hawkins - I suppose that must have been her husband - and - and - oh, Mary, who was this?'

It was an awkward-looking name - a German first-name, with a Polish-sounding surname. Mary pronounced it convincingly, she thought. 'Probably a refugee,' she said.

'There's so much material here for that special project on the nineteen-fifties!' said Carrie with delight. 'What about the record?'

'Opera AGAIN,' said Charlotte, 'Italian AGAIN. The usual snippet. The usual lollipop.'

'Hang on,' said Mary, 'I think I know this - In questa tomba - '

'And what does that mean?' asked Charlotte.

'In this tomb - '

'Yes, well, it is a bit like that, isn't it?' said Charlotte, looking round at the dark cream walls and the chocolate brown skirting board.

'It's from the end of Aida,' said Mary, 'it's the bit where Radames and Aida, the two lovers - she's not Egyptian, but he is, she's really the daughter of the enemy general, sent to spy, but they love each other, you see - '

'They always do,' said Charlotte, 'that's what opera's like, they love each other and they sing about it interminably - usually with a very boring accompaniment - '

' - The woman that Radames should have married, the high priestess, has them both shut up together in this tomb, so they die. And that's the end of the opera.'

'So how do you know about it?' asked Carrie.

'It's in one of the books I'm studying next year,' said Mary, 'The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann. The hero, Hans Castorp, has this set of records that he listens to - '

'Don't tell us the whole story, please, Mary - it'll spoil it for us when we come to read it,' said Charlotte, sarcastic as ever. 'Jed, if you've got that thing working, then wind it up and put the bloody record on.'

He did. They listened to it in silence. It gave them a kind of shudder. Then they turned it over. The second side contained the Triumphal March, which they all recognised, even Jed, who sang along with it tunelessly.

'That's the one they do in Verona every summer,' said Carrie. 'With elephants. I remember the smell.'

Now you mustn't imagine that these were anything but normal students. They hadn't gone under the stairs looking for treasure trove. Nor did they have any desire to clear out the whole house and make it spick and span. The electricity had gone off, and they had thought it might be a fuse. It was a general power-cut, however, so they were very happy to have a wind-up gramophone and a supply of records, since they were beginning to suffer from noise withdrawal.

It was one of those baking hot days that often strike Southampton when you don't want it and can't enjoy it, so they went out into the garden to see the sun, taking the gramophone and a bottle of red wine with them. Carrie would have preferred white, but with the power-cut they couldn't chill it. Charlotte was happy with red, because she thought it was more sophisticated. Mary would have preferred orange juice and Jed beer, but nobody was asking them. They went to the bottom of the garden, where a large mound raised them high enough to see into all the other gardens behind their row of terraced houses. Most of them were student-houses now, the older inhabitants having died or moved away to quieter neighbourhoods, while newly-weds never had as much ready cash at their disposal as student landlords did when it came to house purchase in this kind of area. Normally, the air would have been thick with pop-music from a dozen ghetto-blasters and loudspeakers given an outing, but instead it was quiet. You could hear the birds sing, and the lorries on the Portswood Road. All the other students similarly engaged in moving in had gone down the pub. They'd only been taking over from other students, so there was nothing interesting under the stairs as far as they were concerned - just empty bottles, dead hi-fis and reams of computer-paper.

They filled their glasses and put on the Triumphal March at full volume. Before it was halfway through, Charlotte was uncomfortably aware that being high enough to see also meant that you could be seen. An old woman in the garden next door was staring at her. As the music stopped, the old lady spoke.

'Bit of a change from what you students normally play, ennit? I mean, I don't mind too much, 'cos I'm going deaf, so it doesn't matter to me, you see - and I understand why you do it. Oh yes. You play your music loud, 'cos there's other things you don't want to hear. That's the purpose of art, that is, to take your mind off things you don't want to think about. Sometimes, of course, it puts your mind on them, but that's different. You've got escapism, see, and you've got tragedy. Well, the thing about tragedy is, it isn't your tragedy - I mean, it may be exactly the same events, but it's not you suffering' 'em, is it? That's what art does, you see, it takes you out of things, or it takes things out of you. That's what Gladys always told me. Gladys Hawkins, you know, the lady as lived there before you. Good friend of mine was Gladys. We went to all the operas together. Specially after she lost her husband. Mostly when you say that, you don't mean it. You mean he died. Mine died. Russian convoys. But she just sort of lost Geoffrey. Missing. Never found. And that poor little refugee girl they took in. Pretty little thing. Very sweet on her, Geoffrey was. He fixed it all up, you know, being in the Labour Party and that. Imagine - escaping from Germany and then getting bombed in Southampton. Not a lot of luck, eh? Quite took me back, that did, hearing that music. Gladys's favourite, that used to be. Well, the other side, really. Played it all that summer, she did, sat out there in the garden, on top of her air-raid shelter, till all hours of the night, just playing her record. Never used the shelter, right through the bombing. Well, I thought maybe losing Geoffrey like that had made her go funny, you know. I didn't want to interfere - well, you don't, do you? You never could ask Gladys a straight question. I mean, take that music - she played it all that summer, then she just took against it. Wouldn't go and see Aida with me, no - maybe it had memories - associations. And then there was the air-raid shelter - the one you're all stood on. All the rest of us had 'em took down after the war. Thousands of reasons. Harboured rats, for one. And then the kids and the cats were for ever getting stuck in 'em. Doors closed ever so easy, and they were hard to open from inside. Kids shouted loud enough, so they got out, but the cats - Anyway, as I say, you play your music - and I wouldn't mind hearing the other side, for old time's sake - and if you do have a party any time, you don't need to invite me - but I wouldn't say no if the odd bottle ended up in me milk-cooler - red or white, I don't mind. Ta! I'll be off for me afternoon nap, then - too much sun don't agree with me. Enjoy yourselves!'

It was Jed who had had the grace to give her the half-empty bottle of red. She gave him a cheery wink in return and toddled off back indoors. It was Jed, too, who rewound the gramophone and put on In questa tomba. The rest of them seemed stunned. Until they heard the noises. Not scratches. Not rumble. Not hiss. Groaning. Moaning. Shouting. Screaming. In a high voice. In a low voice. Sometimes both together. Scrabbling. Banging. Carrie leant across and lifted the needle.

'It didn't make that noise when we listened to it indoors, did it?' she said. Nobody answered. She put the needle back down on the still-revolving record for the space of three or four grooves. Jed was poised, listening intently, staring into the horn like the little brown and white dog on the record label.

'It's not coming from the record,' he said.

'No,' said Carrie, 'I didn't think it was.' The day was hot, but they all felt a chill inside them. Up here, everything was warm and bright, but under them it was all dark and cold.

Jed, who might have done physics if he'd got a better grade at A-level, suddenly remembered a piece of quantum theory they'd dangled in front of him at school. Schrödinger's cat, he said to himself. Things don't happen until they're observed: the cat isn't alive or dead until you open the box and find out. The more he thought about it, the happier he felt that he was just an engineer. Pure science didn't seem to have that much to do with the way things really were.

'Art,' said Carrie decisively, 'has its limitations. And where art stops, the police take over. I'm going to call them now.' And she pulled out her mobile.

20th December 2000 11.30 a.m.to 4 p.m.