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Screeches in the night
The walls of some apartments in Australia are wafer thin. With a little imagination, one can work out what's going on with the neighbours.
- By Kevin Martin, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 22:52 July 1, 2009
The walls of some apartments in Australia are wafer thin. With a little imagination, one can work out what's going on with the neighbours.
Before we bought a house, we lived in a block of flats. Adjoining ours was one inhabited by a young couple who, every weekend, would put on a show of domestic disagreement so spectacular I can only liken it to those Woodstock-era Who concerts where, at the culmination, a lot of equipment was smashed with abandon. The police would inevitably arrive, gate crash this performance, restore order and then depart to the sound of muted weeping (in two voices - two-part harmony). Peace would reign supreme until another Saturday arrived and the cycle reasserted itself.
Given that background, the events related to me by a friend the other day seem perfectly plausible. The episode in question concerns a somewhat elderly couple - Meg and Tom, for anonymity - both semi-retired, living in Unit 3. Unit 5, right next door, is the domain of - let's call him Joe - a young, blue-collar worker who somehow, in these days of global recession, manages to maintain a flat without sharing it.
Meg and Tom feel they know Joe so well it's like they live in the same unit. They know the kind of music he loves (Rihanna and the Pussycat Dolls, with the volume at 10/10). Their olfactory senses have sampled his attempts at cooking; they can tell when he's dining on nothing more than canned baked beans and toast. Meg has sized Joe up as a bashful youth - because he washes and dries his clothes indoors, refusing to use the common clothes hoist in the backyard.
"Youngsters have so much to hide these days. Everything's awarded the status of a mystery," Meg tells Tom and Tom's friend, who told me about 'the event'.
When you live from day to day with the thought that your neighbour is not 100 per cent normal, it's easy to awake in the dead of night, sit bolt upright in bed and find yourself covered in a film of cold sweat. Meg it is who hears it first. The thin scream.
In the first instant of disoriented wakefulness she initially thinks it's the remnant of a dream. Beside her, Tom slumbers on. There it is again. Faint but clear. Through the wall, emanating from Unit 5. Somehow her petrified muscles find action and she nudges Tom grumblingly awake. For two minutes they listen. The screams rise and fall, then rise alarmingly again.
"He's a young man," says Tom, falling back into bed.
"Yes, but that's not a young man. It's a woman," reminds Meg.
"Not our business. Go back to sleep," Tom suggests, when a terrifying shriek, long-drawn-out, is heard and he too sits bolt upright.
"I'm calling the cops," decides Meg. "Something unsavoury or unsafe is taking place behind that wall."
When the cops arrive, they are two rookies on night shift. They too listen to the strangulated noises, now emanating with metronomic regularity. They call for backup.
Meg is shaking like an aspen leaf. Tom sits her in the kitchen, prepares a hot cup of cocoa. The officers leave on silent feet to investigate Unit 5, creeping forward like caterpillars in blue. Minutes pass. Many minutes. Tom is tense; Meg, taut as a guitar string. In this razor-sharp atmosphere a car suddenly starts up, startling the couple. Tom glances out the window. It is the police car. The officers are leaving!
"Rush," urges Meg. "Determine the details."
Tom rushes. One young officer, red of face, perhaps from exertion, sticks his head out.
Before Tom could ask, the officer says, "Mate, it was only Maria".
"Maria?" asks Tom, trying to remember if he's heard of a Maria in connection with the neighbour next door. "Maria who?" he enquires.
"Sharapova. The guy was watching Wimbledon, for goodness sake."
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
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