Other Ears

Anouk hadn't put the chairs in rows. Six round a table, two by the window, a few against the wall in case more people came. Blank paper and pencils lay on the table. No harbour photographs, no map to point to with an answer already in mind.

Liv was ten minutes early. She put her bag on the chair beside the extension lead and asked where the speakers should go. Anouk pointed to the windowsill.

‘Everyone can see them there.’

‘I don't need them to be seen.’

‘I thought not. But there nobody's going to put one on their lap because they need somewhere for their bag.’

Liv placed the small speakers on the sill. The lead wouldn't reach the computer without passing a chair. She moved the chair instead of trailing the lead across the walkway. Anouk watched, then pointed out a socket by the door, closer than the one Liv had chosen.

Plenty of time to test. Liv played the beginning of an extract quietly. A faint hum came from the left speaker. At first she thought it was noise on the transfer, but it continued when she stopped playback. She unplugged the cable, connected it again and listened. The hum changed when she moved the cable away from the power supply.

‘Like that?’ Anouk asked.

Liv nodded. She couldn't make it silent at this table. She didn't need to. The voice had to be audible without the hard start of a sentence startling people by the window. She went to the furthest chair and asked Anouk to press play.

Joop began at once with the wrong ships. Anouk looked up from the keyboard, smiled and stopped at Liv's signal.

‘He's not pleased with that question.’

‘No. Or he's been asked it before.’

‘You don't know that.’

‘That's what I mean.’

Too quick. Anouk looked at her, then nodded and indicated the chairs. Could Liv introduce it from the side, so she wasn't between the people and the sound? Liv moved her notebook. She had written three versions of the introduction and disliked each one after reading it aloud.

Before three, four people arrived together. The older woman in the middle introduced herself as Hanneke. She had spoken to Anouk before and went straight to the table. The man beside her tried to pull out her chair, but she said she could work a chair for herself. He laughed and sat on the other side. The other two asked whether they had started. Liv said they were waiting a little longer.

A young woman came in carrying her raincoat over one arm. Noor. She hadn't lived here long and wanted to understand what had been there before the redevelopment. She knew the harbour mainly as somewhere you couldn't cycle through quickly now. Her phone was already on the table when she picked it up and put it away.

The sixth visitor brought a sodden cycling map. He laid it on the empty windowsill, as far from the speaker as possible. Anouk found him a cloth. Then she shut the door and checked that everyone had a drink. Six visitors: eight people with Liv and Anouk. Nobody had to squeeze in.

Liv began by explaining what they would hear. Not the whole collection, not every voice. Two longer extracts, a shorter third one to raise a different question. She named Willem Kooij and Joop van Dijk and explained where the passages came in their interviews. The physical tapes stayed with the collection; she worked on listening copies of the existing digital transfers. These weren't new conversations.

‘What's different, then?’ asked the man beside Hanneke.

‘Some things are clearer. And we choose where to start and stop.’

‘That's quite a lot.’

‘Yes,’ said Liv.

Anouk was watching from the back of the room. Neither warning her nor urging her on. It was the answer Liv had given. Now she could go on from there.

She explained that she kept questions where they were needed, and unclear words didn't become certain because she could reduce the hiss. She didn't want to give them all a lesson in what sound did to people. She stopped and asked whether they could listen first.

Anouk handed round the paper. One thing that stayed with you, she said. Write it down before comparing. Hanneke took a pencil and said she mainly forgot things when someone asked her to remember them.

‘You can write that,’ Anouk said.

Liv played Willem from the question she had originally wanted to shorten. In this room he sounded older than in her headphones, or further away. The background hiss was different here. Someone by the door moved a foot, and his cough briefly overlapped the recording.

She kept her hand off the mouse.

Willem described the grounded boat. He corrected what the interviewer was trying to draw from it, returned to that morning and went on to explain how they had eventually managed to get something done. No neat account of a harbour closing. The man beside Hanneke looked at his paper as though he had begun writing too late.

Liv let the agreed final sentence finish. She didn't stop at the first silence. Then she switched off the sound and looked at Anouk. Anouk said nothing. Only pencils on paper and a glass being set down softly.

Hanneke finished first. She wanted to turn over her sheet, but Anouk asked her to wait for Noor, who had only just started writing. Waiting in this room was a little different from what Liv had known all week. Here she could see what the other person was doing.

‘I've put mud,’ Hanneke said when they could speak. ‘I could see him standing there.’

Her neighbour had written that the harbour was no longer usable by then. He read it without hesitation. It was what he had heard.

Liv pushed back her chair. She wanted to start with the interviewer's question. Anouk indicated the other sheets. Everyone first.

Noor had written that she didn't know exactly where the boat was stuck. The man with the cycling map wanted to know what kind of boat it was. Another visitor had chiefly heard irritation: he kept having to return to that one day. That was what had stayed with him, a man who didn't want to make his answer bigger.

Hanneke turned her sheet over. ‘I remember how it looked.’

She described the ground after a dry spell. She had been there, but couldn't say which year. The man beside her offered one. Hanneke shook her head. She hadn't been there as long ago as that.

Liv's phone vibrated in her pocket. She didn't know who had sent the message. Her hand was already moving towards the coat over her chair. She kept it on the back, fingers round the cloth.

Anouk asked whether they meant the same part of the site. Hanneke looked at the man, then Liv. ‘Do you know where he was standing?’

‘Not exactly. I know what he says happened.’

Liv asked if she wanted the short section with the question again. This time she could start there. The interviewer asked about running aground. Willem limited his answer, returning to one boat and one morning. Liv stopped after the correction. It was almost uncomfortable to leave so much meaning to one small piece of work.

The man looked at his paper. He didn't cross out unusable. He added a question mark.

‘I hadn't heard it that way,’ he said.

‘Neither had I,’ said Liv.

She didn't need to explain how close her own first choice had come to his. She did explain why the question remained in the listening copy. It made the piece longer; you could hear the interviewer steering towards something, and Willem not quite following.

Hanneke began to speak, then stopped when Noor pointed to her sheet.

‘Without the question I wouldn't know he was going back,’ Noor said. ‘It would just be the same answer, taking longer.’

Liv noted that down, not as praise. Something to check with another selection.

Joop led to a different conversation. His first irritation brought a few smiles. When he offered the interviewer a biscuit, Hanneke laughed aloud. She immediately said she recognised that, then put a hand over her mouth rather than drowning out the rest. Liv looked at her. Hanneke nodded silently.

In the source, Joop had taken a breath before his firm statement about the boats. It was still audible in the version Liv played. That gave the hiss time to draw attention. The visitor nearest the speaker turned his ear slightly away. Liv could have lowered the volume if she made the whole table wait. He kept listening. She waited for the end too.

This time everyone wrote more quickly. Noor put down her pencil, then picked it up. Anouk poured water carefully, so the stream didn't strike the rim.

The man who had written unusable for Willem said the accounts contradicted each other. If boats had come in later, the grounding couldn't have mattered that much. Hanneke turned to him.

‘It mattered to whoever was on that boat.’

‘That's not what I mean.’

‘It's what you're saying.’

The ordinary table seemed to grow larger. Liv needn't referee who was right. But she had to stop one voice pushing the other off the page merely because it had just been brought back more forcefully.

‘Joop means different ships,’ she said.

‘You can make anything fit, then.’

He wasn't angry. He wanted to know whether to trust her when she played two things that didn't lead to the same answer. Liv picked up her notebook, then pushed it back. Two numbers on her list wouldn't help him.

She replayed the question and the start of Joop's answer. He himself limited which ships he meant. He sounded definite, but there was a brief break before he continued.

‘He hesitates there,’ said Noor.

‘He's breathing,’ someone said.

‘Could be that too.’

Liv stopped. In the sudden quiet a door shut in the corridor. She looked towards it, although she knew everyone was in this room. An ordinary door, further away than she would have looked for it at the guesthouse.

Anouk asked Noor what she meant by hesitates.

‘He wanted to say something else. Perhaps. I don't know. He starts twice.’

The man with the cycling map heard no uncertainty. To him Joop was taking his time because he knew the interviewer wanted a simpler story. Hanneke said it could be either. She tapped her pencil on the paper, then laid it down when Liv glanced over.

There was no verdict. The breath didn't prove what Joop thought. Liv shouldn't have expected restored sound to restore someone's intention. It gave them something to disagree about without her having removed the difference in advance.

She briefly explained that she had made this beginning too quiet in an earlier edit. Reducing the hiss had reduced the breath too. She had done it again.

‘Can we hear the difference?’ the man asked.

Liv looked at Anouk. It wasn't in the brief plan. The older version was on the drive, separately. She didn't want an equipment demonstration. She said she could play the two once, if everyone wanted, then they would return to the selection.

She played the few seconds. First the over-smoothed listening copy, then the less clean new one. Not the whole recording, not back and back until everyone thought the same thing.

Hanneke frowned. ‘I lose him there.’

‘Which one?’ Liv asked.

‘The first. He's there, but I don't have time to follow him.’

Noor found it harder to describe. The first sounded easier yet was less clear. The visitor beside the speaker asked whether the second would sound as harsh on his phone. Liv wrote that down. What sounded pleasant in this room might not sound the same through a small speaker.

With the third extract, nobody knew the speaker as a person from Liv's introduction. She only introduced its question. It was shorter. A name was spoken, not entirely clear. Liv hadn't filled it in on the sheet.

They discussed it anyway. Two people had heard different names. Hanneke began to suggest a third, then admitted she didn't really know. Anouk didn't write the alternatives on the board. She asked what question they could still follow without settling that word.

Access to the site, Noor said. Whether people could just walk there. She didn't know whether she meant the same thing as someone who had worked there.

‘I'd like to read that,’ she said. ‘Not just hear it, then wonder whether I'm picturing the wrong way in.’

Anouk looked at Liv. A real task: a short explanation of which part of the route the question concerned, without answering on the speaker's behalf.

They talked for another fifteen minutes. Not everything was for Liv. The man beside Hanneke asked whether a copy of the whole collection would eventually be available. Anouk explained that this was separate work; today wasn't delivery of twelve interviews. She asked to keep their comment sheets. They could add names if they liked.

When the others stood, Noor stayed by her chair. Would the two longer pieces run consecutively later?

‘We don't know yet,’ Liv said.

‘Because now I know both of them. But if I only hear the second at home, I won't know what he's arguing against.’

Liv said it was a good question. Noor didn't look pleased at having done something right. She simply wanted to know whether she would be able to follow it. Liv promised to keep enough of the preceding conversation in the next listening copy, rather than explaining the choice only in a separate introduction.

The man with the wet map thanked Anouk and asked where to leave his cloth. One side was still damp. He held it between two fingers as though it carried something precious. Hanneke was already describing where she used to leave her bicycle. Liv listened without adding it to the interview comments. Hanneke's story, not automatically an improvement on Willem's.

Only after the door closed for the last time did she take her phone from her coat. Els had asked whether the afternoon was going well. No missed calls. The message was almost an hour old.

Liv said she was still clearing up and would call later. She reread it and sent it without asking whether Els was alone somewhere. Roos knew where she was. They had agreed that.

Anouk stood by the pencils. ‘Tired?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good that you let them find their way. You didn't fill every gap.’

Liv gathered the sheets. ‘I nearly spoke a few times.’

‘I saw.’

Before packing, they went through the comments. The context of Willem's question; different boats for Joop; an explanation of access for the third extract. They wouldn't keep restoring until nobody could hear a difference, but would check the harsh edge on small playback devices. The breath stayed. They couldn't establish whether it meant uncertainty.

Anouk wanted to thank the participants tomorrow and explain how their responses would be used. Could Liv send one short paragraph about the versions? Not every decision at the keyboard. Liv promised it that evening and checked her diary before confirming Thursday morning again for the three complete listening copies.

The whole twelve weren't finished because eight people had spent an afternoon in a room. They had a usable beginning and work still to do. Liv ejected the drive and packed the speakers. She kept hold of the cable until Anouk pulled the last plug from the computer.

Outside the sky hung low. Walking to her car, Liv noticed how quiet her head was without the others speaking. Not empty. There were sentences she would find on paper tomorrow, in different handwriting, with question marks. She didn't need to hear them all in succession to know they had been there.

At the car she called Els. After a few seconds Els answered and asked whether the fishermen had agreed.

‘No,’ said Liv.

‘Thought not.’

Liv laughed. Els asked what she had eaten. Nothing since lunch. She should deal with that first, Els said. She had eaten at Roos's and wanted an early night.

Liv didn't ask whether she was sure. She said she would speak to her tomorrow and stood a moment before getting in. No voices reached her through the heritage centre's walls. They had simply left.