Inventory is a story of childhood, political conflict, the subjectivity of memory, suicide, urban space, trauma & resistance. It’s also a book about the magic of maps, bric-à-brac, mixtapes, hidden places and Street Fighter II. It is told through objects and was inspired by Georges Perec who wrote in ‘Approaches to What’ (1973), “How are we to speak of these ‘common things’… how to give them a meaning, a tongue, to let them, finally, speak of what is, of what we are… Describe your street. Describe another street. Compare. Make an inventory of your pockets, of your bag. Ask yourself the provenance, the use, what will become of each of the objects you take out.”

The following excerpt is from the opening chapter of the memoir.

The current whereabouts of the radio are unknown.

Radio.

In the daytime, I would lie there listening, sprawled on a mock-Persian carpet, threadbare but as detailed as any medieval manuscript. The music I found on the strange, exotic channels fascinated me more than anything on Top of the Pops. I would listen to the songs in foreign languages, without ever knowing what they were called or who sang them or what they were about, aware that I would never hear them again. The transience and mystery made them seem precious, as if they ceased to exist upon finishing, or were lost forever and I’d have to walk the entire earth to chance upon them again.

[…]

Tuning in, I would occasionally pick up police and army exchanges, quite by accident at first and then intentionally. There were invisible voices in the air. I would listen in to foot patrols, to the armoured Land Rovers, perhaps even to the omnipresent helicopters droning high above our rooftops. Often the voices were calm, but sometimes they were frenzied. Gradually I became frightened of what I might be listening in to, for fear perhaps that it could listen back.

I was listening in on the world of adults and slowly trying, slowly learning, to translate. At times it felt dangerous, especially when, as I knelt there hearing the patrols of soldiers speak among one another, I’d see their silhouettes walking past, ghostly through the net curtain. I would exhale only after they’d passed.

My mother noticed me once listening in —“Look at you, eavesdropping”—and, embarrassed, I immediately turned the radio off. No sooner had her head turned than I sidled back, tuning in again, trying to catch the transmission, but it was once again lost. I did not yet know that glimpses were not complete access or revelation, that sometimes you uncover what they want you to uncover or things that are best left unheard.

I was not the only person listening. My father listened in too. My mother would tell me so, years later.

“It was a Sunday,” she began. “Your grandmother Needles used to come down for company. I’d keep her a bite to eat. She’d sit you on her knee. She was a sharp woman, no doubt about it, but affectionate, especially to you. I was waiting for her . . . we were waiting for her, and she didn’t come. I don’t know why, but I had this sinking feeling, like something was wrong —badly, badly wrong. She had no phone we could call, and neither did we, come to think of it, so . . . I don’t know, I just had this physical feeling. Not telepathy or anything like that, more a horrible rush. Like the start of a panic attack… We’d no TV at the time. Instead, we listened to the radio a lot. And someone realized you could tune into the army’s frequencies.”

Until this point I had been listening absentmindedly, but at those words I turned to look at her directly.

She continued, “You could get the gist of what they were saying if they were close enough by, and there was that watchtower, of course, up the street. That’s how your father found out. Secretly listening to the radio. That’s how he heard they were searching for someone in the river. That’s how we found out she’d gone in. His mother. Your grandmother. And that she was gone forever.”

Excerpt published courtesy of Chatto & Windus

Photo by William Kelly.

You can purchase Inventory here: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1112803/inventory/9781784741501.html

 Darran Anderson is the author of Inventory (Chatto & Windus) and Imaginary Cities (Influx Press).