If Only I Could Tell You

by Hannah Beckerman

  Audrey savored Ben’s confidence, wondering what it was that made someone like him able to pull a disparate group of people into a choir in such a short space of time. He had an infectious, boyish enthusiasm that made you want to succeed, not just for yourself but for him too. She thought back to the first time she’d met him at the audition just over six weeks before, how relaxed he had made her feel in spite of her nerves. It was as though he looked past the surface to something underneath, something hidden, that you hadn’t yet discovered yourself.

  “So far we’ve been focused on getting you to sing in unison—we wanted you to start feeling like a group, like a choir. Now the hard work begins. Today we’re going to start singing in harmony. Don’t look so worried—I know most of you have never done that before and I promise we’re going to take it one step at a time. If I’m totally honest, I suspect there’ll be moments over the next few weeks when it feels like this thing is never going to come together. But I want you to trust that it will. Because, believe me, I wouldn’t have started it if I didn’t think we could pull it off. So let’s get going, shall we?”

  As Ben began dividing them into sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses—Phoebe to sopranos and Audrey to altos—Audrey glanced around the room, smiling at some of her fellow choir members as she caught their eye: Isabel, thirty-eight, recently separated from her alcoholic husband and locked in a custody battle over their two young children; Binti, twenty-four, the daughter of Somali immigrants who fled the civil war twenty-five years previously; Tim, forty-six, whose story of his fourteen-year-old daughter having recently entered remission after two years’ battling leukemia had reduced Audrey to tears. As she looked around the room, she realized that many of the people she’d got to know over the past few weeks had some painful truth from which they were escaping, some demons they were laying to rest, or perhaps some unfulfilled dream they were trying, in some small way, to achieve.

  “OK, as you know, we’ll be singing just one song in the concert, so we need to make sure it has real impact. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what it should be and I hope you’re going to approve of my choice. It’s Nina Simone’s ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free.’ Caitlin’s handing around song sheets now, but I expect most of you know it anyway. If you read through the lyrics, I hope you’ll agree they’re pretty fitting for this concert.”

  Audrey smiled as she remembered the first time she’d heard the song, sitting on the mustard-yellow rug in Sandra Bailey’s front room nearly fifty years before, Sandra’s eyes luminous with anticipation: Just you wait, Auds. Just you wait till you hear this album. You’ve never heard anything like it. Sandra pulling the vinyl from its paper sleeve and lowering it onto the record player as carefully as a mother placing her baby in a crib. Lifting the stylus, balancing it delicately on her forefinger, gliding it through the air, and lowering the needle into one of the shiny grooves. The familiar crackle of static, the expectant whirring of near-silence before it began: that mournfully optimistic piano introduction, just the lightest accompaniment of brushes from the drums before the decisive finger-clicking. And then the voice, Nina’s voice, inviting you into a musical world of hope and regret, longing and ambition. The lyrics touching Audrey in a way no song ever had before, with its impassioned advocacy of freedom, opportunity, choice. There being a feeling of certainty in that moment, a feeling that anything was possible. And when Nina’s voice had faded away, Audrey and Sandra had turned to one another and, without either of them speaking, Sandra had lifted the record player’s arm and moved it back half an inch, setting it down at the beginning of the song. And the two of them had listened again. They had listened in silence, five, six, seven times, until Sandra’s mum had burst through the living-room door and told them to turn the record off before they wore it out.

  Audrey had only been fifteen, but she had known songs like that were rare: songs that made you understand something you couldn’t otherwise articulate, something you could only feel and were a better person for having felt it.

  Now, almost five decades later, Audrey heard that piano introduction again, and as her diaphragm expanded and she joined in with the opening line, she felt the physical pleasure of singing with nearly a hundred other voices. As they sang through the whole song Audrey wondered why on earth she had left it so long to do something that gave her such joy.

  They reached the end and Ben grabbed at the air with his fist, ninety-three voices coming to a standstill, only the echo of the final note hovering in the air as though it wasn’t quite ready to leave. “Wow, guys, that was really good. A genuinely impressive start. Keep that up and you’re going to be great.”

  Audrey turned to smile at Phoebe, grateful to be spending this precious time with her granddaughters—at choir rehearsals and art classes—that might never have happened had she not known she was ill.

  “Right, given you’ve made such a fantastic start today, there’s something I want to tell you all. I was going to wait until the end of the rehearsal, but I figure you’d probably like to hear it now. I had a call from the organizers of the concert last night. It looks like you lot are going to be on TV.”

  A wave of excitement rippled around the room as Ben filled in the details: plans for the concert to be broadcast live on BBC 2 and about a telethon being organized to boost the money raised from ticket sales. But, hard as Audrey tried to concentrate on them, Ben’s words were hazy in her ears.

  A mental calendar flipped through the weeks in her head. Seven weeks until the concert. That was all she had to manage, just seven weeks. And if the doctor was right, she should still have at least three months ahead of her. As Ben returned to the piano and started to play through the various harmonies he’d arranged, Audrey tried to reassure herself that it was going to be OK. She’d have to be horribly unlucky not to make it.

  Chapter 23

  Lily

  Lily glanced around her boss’s office. The desk was empty except for a laptop and a pair of mobile phones side by side. The glass wall had a more expansive view of the Thames than Lily’s office, and the shelf of industry awards held more than Lily’s but only two more: Lily had counted.

  She looked down at her phone and put it on silent just as Nisha came back into the room.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting. And I’m sorry to drag you into the office on a Saturday afternoon. I hope I haven’t disrupted too many plans.”

  Lily crossed her legs and shook her head, thinking of the empty house she’d left behind. An image flashed in her mind of Daniel strolling through Central Park, takeout coffee in one hand and phone in the other, reading her latest email and not finding time to respond.

  “It’s fine. I need to do some work on the strategy paper this weekend anyway, so I might as well do it here.” She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, could feel it trying to edge loose again.

  “So, the reason I wanted to have a quick chat, face-to-face, is to give you a heads-up. The US office is planning to make some changes—streamlining operations, merging some roles—all part of the drive to make the company more efficient. It’s likely that marketing is going to be one of the affected departments. They’re keen to centralize it in the States, which doesn’t mean there won’t be any department here in London, but they’re looking to keep a skeleton staff, possibly just junior roles. Nothing’s fixed in stone yet so there’s always room for discussion, but obviously I wanted to let you know before the announcement. There’s going to be an all-staff conference call with the US office on Monday afternoon.”

  A heavy silence slipped into Lily’s ears, and she felt untethered, as though she might tip forward out of her chair onto the gray-carpeted floor. She was aware of a need to fill the silence, aware that it was her turn to speak, but she couldn’t grab hold of the words spiraling in her head, couldn’t navigate them toward her mouth and out through her lips.

  “I do realize this creates a lot of uncertainty but let’s not jump to too many conclusions until we’ve had this
call with the US office.”

  Nisha smiled with unnerving warmth and Lily looked at the floor, not wanting Nisha to see the heat she could feel in her cheeks. She waited for Nisha to say more, but when she looked up, her boss was standing by the office door, poised to open it, glancing at her watch.

  “We’ll catch up again on Monday, OK?”

  Lily managed to nod, understanding that the meeting was over and it was time for her to leave, but for a few disconcerting seconds she wasn’t able to communicate those facts to her legs. She sat pinned to the pale blue sofa wishing that she could somehow be spirited back to the privacy of her own office without needing to move a muscle.

  “Lily?”

  “Yes, of course. I . . . I’ll see you on Monday.”

  Humiliation throbbed in her cheeks and she managed to push herself to her feet, walk toward the door, and glance only briefly at Nisha before heading out into the open-plan office where banks of desks sat empty, computer screens blank, telephones silent. All the way through the maze of desks, Lily kept her eyes fixed firmly forward until she reached her own office, stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

  Blinking away the tears, Lily looked around the space that had been her second home for the past eight years. The room seemed to sway in front of her and she grabbed at the back of the sofa to steady herself, needing to hold on to something solid while her future spun out of reach.

  She tried to order her thoughts, tried to imagine how her life might look in six months’ time, but couldn’t. Slumping into the chair at her desk and burying her head in her hands, Lily felt her life begin to unravel, like a loose thread on an old sweater, a feeling she had first experienced almost thirty years before and which she had spent the next three decades trying to ensure she would never feel again.

  Chapter 24

  Christmas Day 1988

  “Will you two be OK while I make a start on lunch?”

  Her mum sips the lemon and ginger tea that she has been drinking all morning, trying to fend off the winter cold that is threatening to ruin a Christmas Day already in jeopardy.

  Lily nods and tries to smile in response but it is a question, all three of them know, that cannot be answered neatly.

  She glances at Jess, but her little sister is sitting cross-legged next to the fire in the living room, looking at her new Jackie annual, and does not raise her head to reply.

  “OK. Well, if either of you want to come downstairs and give me a hand peeling potatoes or preparing the sprouts, you know where I’ll be.”

  Her mum’s voice sounds strange, as though someone has flattened it with an iron and put it in a box for safekeeping. She glances between Lily and Jess as if searching for something, before turning and leaving the room, her slippered feet padding down to the basement kitchen.

  Lily grabs a bin liner and starts tidying up the wrapping paper that litters the sitting room floor. From downstairs she hears the opening bars of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” on the radio and her eyes smart with her mum’s efforts to pretend that this Christmas is like any other, even though they all know it bears no resemblance to normality.

  It is thirteen weeks and five days since her dad committed suicide. Sometimes Lily still wakes in the morning to a brief spell of amnesia before remembering what has happened, and the realization is like someone scooping out her insides and dumping them unceremoniously on the floor all over again.

  “Are you going to help tidy up, Jess?”

  Her sister’s eyes remain glued to the magazine resting on her knees.

  “Jess, will you help? Or you could go downstairs and give Mum a hand?”

  Jess says nothing, does not even turn to look at Lily. It is as though Lily has not spoken, does not exist.

  Jess has been like this ever since it happened. For months she has been cold, abrupt, aloof, as though she cannot stand being in the same room as Lily. Lily understands that her little sister is grieving but she cannot help feeling resentful that Jess doesn’t seem to care that she is not the only one in mourning. Every time Lily enters a room, Jess becomes tense, rude, monosyllabic, and Lily doesn’t know what she has done to warrant Jess’s hatred, but she knows that it seems trivial to make a fuss about it. Ever since the events of the summer, Lily has felt as though her family is held together by spider silk and that one strong gust of wind will blow them all apart forever.

  She hears the whisper of a page turning and stands behind her little sister, looking down at her slim shoulders hunched over the magazine. She cannot imagine what Jess has been through, cannot adequately put herself in her little sister’s shoes to know how the events of the summer have affected her. The thought of all that has happened melts her irritation and she crouches beside Jess, feels her voice molding into something warm and comforting. “Jess, I know it’s hard today. I know it doesn’t really feel like Christmas, but it’ll get easier in time, I promise.”

  Lily doesn’t know if she believes the platitude about time healing—she has only just turned sixteen and sometimes feels as though she doesn’t really know anything at all—but people have said it to her so frequently and with such conviction that she is hoping if she repeats it often enough it may come true.

  Still Jess says nothing. Impatience inches toward the surface of Lily’s skin.

  “Jess, come on. I know you’re upset, but you’re not the only one. It’s hard for all of us, today especially.”

  Jess turns to her and there is such fury in her expression that Lily feels it sting her cheeks as fiercely as if she has been hit. The same cold dread she has been feeling for months creeps down her spine. She knows that Jess blames her for everything that has befallen their family over the past six months but every time she feels close to asking the question directly—every time she is on the verge of pressing Jess for an answer—she finds her courage abandoning her.

  The music on the radio downstairs changes and Lily hears the first verse of “In the Bleak Midwinter.” She leans forward, wanting to find some way of soothing Jess’s anger, not just for her own sake but for their mum’s. She reaches out and places a hand gently on her sister’s elbow.

  “Jess, please—”

  “Don’t touch me! Don’t ever touch me. I don’t want you anywhere near me! I hate you.”

  Jess pulls back her arm with such force that her hand swings through the air, clipping Lily’s chin. Lily staggers to her feet, steps back, and touches her face where the skin is hot. Then she turns and flees. She closes the sitting room door behind her, slumps onto the bottom step of the stairs, and buries her head in her hands.

  Plenty of times, in the heat of the moment, she and Jess have said that they hate each other but Lily has never believed either of them actually means it. She has never believed it until now. Lily cannot help feeling that if Jess were given a choice as to which of her family members would no longer be alive this Christmas, it would be Lily she’d willingly sacrifice, a feeling that compounds Lily’s grief. After they have already lost so much, Lily misses Jess and craves being close to her, a need Jess has repeatedly rejected. Now Lily can only hope that when Jess’s grief begins to fade, so too will her rage, and that Lily will eventually be permitted back into her sister’s life.

  What are you up to for Christmas?

  Lily hears the echo of a question that had been asked again and again during the final week of term. It was all anyone had talked about at school. All the endless chatter about family get-togethers, parties, presents. Lily had tried to avoid it but when someone had asked her directly, the lie had tripped off her tongue before she’d even known it was inside her head: a story about a parallel fantasy Christmas. A big house in the countryside—the Cotswolds, she’d said, even though she’d never actually been there—with a large extended family who existed only in her imagination.

  Lily presses her palms to her head, wondering what people would say if they found out the truth. But she knows the chances of anyone asking about her holidays when she returns to school in Janua
ry are remote. Over the past term she has managed to distance herself from everyone with whom she used to be friends. It has been easier than she imagined to cut herself off: after the reports in the local newspaper and the rumors on the grapevine, Lily’s friends have been only too glad to steer clear of her, as though her family’s adversities might be a contagious disease they are in danger of catching. Lily has buried herself in her studies, not just because schoolwork is the only activity that allows her to forget, but because she knows that studying is her only route out: away to university and toward the possibility of becoming someone new, someone different, someone better.

  Lily turns her head and looks up the stairs. She can’t imagine ever going up there again without the ghost of her father dangling from the rafters, daring her to walk past him. She can’t imagine ever tiptoeing across the landing without remembering what she saw in the bedroom that morning, three months before her father’s suicide: the hummingbirds on the wallpaper, the figures on the bed, the bittersweet smell she had never known before and hopes never to know again. The sound of crying that still rings in her ears if she does not make a conscious effort to block it out.

  From the kitchen below Lily hears a muffled cry. She clamps her hands over her ears, knowing she should go downstairs and comfort her mum, but she does not move. She fears that, faced with the intensity of her mum’s grief, she will reveal things she knows must be kept hidden. Instead she sits alone, palms pressed to her head, aware of the huge empty cavern that the events of the summer have left behind, an abyss she fears may never be filled.

  Chapter 25

  Audrey

  “Are you sure you don’t mind giving me a lift today, Ben? It’s more than enough you driving me home after Wednesday rehearsals. I’m not going to make you late for any plans, am I?” Audrey watched as Ben shuffled some sheets of music on top of the piano and threw a stack of discarded plastic cups into the bin.