ghost in the machine

P shares a flat with a young cellist who is studying at the Royal Academy of Music. Sometimes, when I speak to P on the phone, I can hear the young cellist playing in the background. P told me about the phenomenon of the young cellist in performance, his intense physicality, how he plays so hard that sweat drips onto his cello and strips the varnish, how one time the young cellist (known for his amazing bow technique), actually snapped his bow halfway through a piece and he told me too about the faces he pulls - I almost can't bear to look, P said, at the young cellist when he's playing. He looks retarded.

Then P made me listen - through headphones - to some of the music the young cellist had introduced him to, pieces by Bach and Beethoven. What was shocking was the presence of the performer in these pieces: in one you could hear the hard slap of fingers on strings, in another the cellist breathing so heavily he was almost snorting and wheezing like a horse. And then P played me the Goldberg Variations recording where Glenn Gould could be heard humming to himself in accompaniment. But it was a strange, unearthly humming that did not seem to exist on the same plane as the music, unlike the noises from the other performers which were very much part of the playing: it sounded like those recordings made by ghosthunters, interference from the spirit world.

When M was dying everything we watched or read or heard carried unbearable significance - it was a lot like falling in love for the first time, except that the significance was ironic rather than sincere. Once, in the kitchen, I found a Jamie Oliver recipe-card from Sainsbury's encouraging us all to Try Something New Today when I was roasting a butternut squash: M was sick of mashed potato so I was going to mash this for her instead (afterwards remembering that squashes contain a compound which help to maintain lung health). What's that? she asked, tasting it. I told her. She had never eaten it before. It's delicious, she said, I love it.

She and I were alone in the house together. She was too tired to watch television or read but not tired enough to sleep. Some music, I thought. I remembered that Radio 3 were playing Bach's complete works over that Christmas period, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of his death. I knew M had most probably never heard any Bach before. I remembered her telling me, the first time I met her, how on a trip to Glasgow with her husband one time she had lain in bed fully awake while he snored drunk beside her, listening to a saxophone player in the street, telling me how haunting it was and how it was all she could do to stop herself from leaving the hotel and following the sound of the music. I thought about that and I thought about the butternut squash and I decided I could not bear to play her the Bach.