The Choir

by Joanna Trollope

  Driving back to Aldminster, Sally considered her feelings; it had recently become something of a habit, rather like taking her temperature. She had never valued her mother’s opinion on anything from morals to curtain fabric, so why she should have troubled to ask for it now, particularly when she knew exactly what her mother would say, she couldn’t think. Perhaps it was habit, perhaps it was—and this was a very seductive thought indeed—yet another proof that she didn’t have to ask anyone for anything anymore, that a real independence might be beginning to be hers. Perhaps she’d used her mother as a kind of test to herself. And the test had worked, because they had tied up the broken delphiniums together in the most equable way and Sally had felt she had scored a tiny victory, in the process of growing through being just a daughter into being a person as well. Growing through, growing up, perhaps, at last. She drove through the sloping city centre with much more than her usual dash, and because there was still an hour before she need collect Henry from the Hoopers, she parked the car in the close and went in to Chapter Yard.

  Leo was in the kitchen, standing over a whining kettle. He didn’t turn round when she came in but simply banged a second mug on the table and dropped a tea bag in it and said childishly, “And do I have my future mother-in-law’s approval?”

  Sally’s elation and pride withered in an instant.

  “That’s not why I went and you know it. I don’t want any tea.”

  Leo poured boiling water into both mugs.

  “I don’t know it. I don’t see that you need to talk to anybody but me.”

  “It’s more complicated for me,” Sally said. “I have a husband and child. It’s going to be more of a battle for me.”

  He dredged the sodden tea bags out of the mugs and flung them inaccurately towards the sink.

  “And whose side will your mother fight on?”

  “She doesn’t think I’m right but she’ll support me.”

  “And where does that get you?”

  Sally sighed.

  “Oh, Leo, don’t be cross—”

  “I’m not cross. I’m tense as hell and I’ve had a rotten weekend. You won’t let me anywhere near you. You insist on the battles you will have to fight but you won’t let me share them with you.” His voice rose. “Do you wonder I’m tense?”

  Her throat bunched with incipient tears, not for the row they were heading for but with rage, rage at Leo for ruining the singing free spirits in which she had come to Chapter Yard. She was blind with fury. He was making her feel just as Alan did when she objected to his selfish pleasure-seeking and he treated her with a bland uncomprehending indifference in return. She wasn’t going to be beholden to anybody, man or woman, she wasn’t going to stagger about under her burden of gratitude and guilt anymore, owing the sacrifice of herself to someone in return for any gift, emotional or material. She thumped her fists down on the kitchen table so hard that the tea leaped in brown tongues out of the mugs and splashed across the surface.

  “These are my decisions!” she yelled at Leo. “Do you hear me? Mine! I’ll take them myself, by myself, when I’m good and ready, and I don’t have to account to anybody for them, not my mother, not Alan, not Henry, not you. Sit here and sulk if you want to. I don’t care. It’s just blackmail, the same old masculine blackmail. Well, I’m proof against that now and you can go to hell with the rest of them if you don’t like it!”

  She slammed the front door behind her so violently that Cherry Chancellor, cleaning her front windows, felt the glass tremble under her duster.

  “Fireworks next door,” she said to Martin. “Of course I wouldn’t say anything—”

  “No.”

  “But it doesn’t really seem right in a cathedral close. It’s like living next door to some student hostel.”

  “He’s a brilliant organist—”

  Cherry polished ever more vigorously.

  “Well, that’s not everything.”

  Martin let a small pause fall and then he said, “No. But it’s a very great deal. And you’ve missed a bit in the top left corner.”

  At breakfast next morning Henry said could they have a puppy, the Hoopers had two, called Mack and Tosh, did she get it, Mackintosh. Sally said no, who’d look after it and Henry said Hooper’s mum was at home all day doing the cooking and things, and Sally burst into tears. This was puzzling and distressing, but it was also ten past eight so Henry put his books into his sports bag and gave Sally a hurried kiss and went off to choir practice, where instead of Dyson’s “Magnificat in D,” which they were were all expecting, Mr. Beckford made them go through some of Vaughan Williams’s “Mystical Songs” and nobody could get the mood right and he got furious and shouted at Henry, who hated being ticked off at the best of times and went white. They trooped over to school in a subdued straggle after this, and Leo caught up with Henry, who was trailing dismally at the rear, temporarily outlawed by the others because they did not know what to do about him, and said, “Sorry to bark at you, old fellow.” This was altogether too much for Henry, who dissolved into tears of humiliation and had to be walked up and down the cloisters until he was sufficiently composed to bolt, late, into assembly and receive a look of the sternest reproof from Roger Farrell, who was his form master. Farrell took him aside after assembly to admonish him and Leo arrived in the middle of this to say it was he who had detained Henry and tempers flared publicly in the main corridor, so that Felicity, coming in to look at the week’s engagements in Sandra’s diary, remarked that some things didn’t seem to have changed at all.

  “Mr. Farrell’s thrilled the choir is going,” Sandra said. “I’m afraid most of the common room are. You can’t persuade Mr. Farrell that anything’s any good unless you have to run about to do it.”

  “And Leo?”

  Sandra looked prim.

  “Well, between you and me, I think Mr. Beckford’s just being a bit temperamental. I mean, I know his job’s safe at least, but it would only be half a job without the choir and he knows that really.”

  “I feel as if everyone is playing musical statues on the whole issue. And the cathedral is humming with lighting engineers; there’s a Harvey’s van outside this morning. It looks like a dozen splinter groups to me, all refusing to speak to one another.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Troy, you know what people are like—”

  Felicity went in search of Leo but found he had fled to the organ loft and was extemporizing thunderously. Coming out of the resounding cathedral, she met Bridget Cavendish with her well- ordered shopping basket, all forgiving smiles.

  “Now don’t forget, my dear, the invitation is always open. You have only to pick up the telephone. Supper any day this week except Thursday or next week except Wednesday and Friday.”

  Felicity said, “Bridget, don’t be obtuse. And don’t patronize us either.”

  “This is a very unfortunate attitude to take I must say—”

  “Thank Hugh for the wine, would you? It was delicious. Much more delicious than we’re used to. But unless you want a full-scale row in your dining room, supper is out of the question just now and I think you know it.”

  Bridget went back to the deanery and comforted herself by saying indiscreetly to Mrs. Ray, who was washing the kitchen floor, that Mrs. Troy clearly hadn’t had much of a homecoming, poor dear, she was in such a strange mood this morning. Mrs. Ray, who travelled in to work on the same bus as Mrs. Monk, merely remarked that it took all sorts and saved Bridget’s indignation up to tell Mrs. Monk the following day. Felicity went across the close towards the Lyng, and was briefly intercepted by Janet Young, who embraced her warmly and said she was so thankful to see her.

  “Robert and I simply cannot discuss it, so of course we have been sent to a kind of Coventry. I think you are exactly what the close needs. It’s like having a window opened to let good fresh air in on a particularly quarrelsome party—”

  Felicity looked at Janet’s worn attractive face and thought, as she so often had before, that being a bishop’s wife m
ust be one of the loneliest jobs in the world, since there was an unavoidable and unwanted elevation above other mortals, coupled with an equally unavoidable isolation in the heart of the very community you were forced to inhabit, the close being the kingdom of the dean and his wife. She kissed Janet Young with enthusiasm, and walked down the Lyng amidst the morning shoppers and the strollers and the green litter bins to Brewer Street and Quentin Small’s bookshop. Sally Ashworth, in a big blue skirt and a T-shirt, with her hair tied back with a ribbon and no makeup, was standing on a stool with a duster in her hand not dusting. She looked round when Felicity came in.

  “Goodness,” she said, and then, clumsily, “Henry said you were back. I think the whole school knows.”

  She got off her stool.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve come to buy a book.”

  “No.”

  Sally said, “It’s such a relief you’re back, we’ve all got so stuck. Do—do you know about everything?”

  Felicity sighed.

  “Yes. I wasn’t going to come so soon and then there was a complication in school this morning and Leo and Roger Farrell were bellowing at each other and Henry was crying—”

  “Henry—”

  “Leo shouted at him and then said sorry.”

  “And I cried at breakfast because he wanted a puppy and a homey mother.”

  “He doesn’t really.”

  “I screamed my head off at Leo last night. I can’t bear to climb out of one box and into another.”

  “You don’t have to climb into another—”

  Sally said defiantly, “He wants me to tell him everything.”

  Felicity looked calmly at her.

  “That isn’t the same thing at all.”

  A young man came in off the street and asked very quietly if there was an ancient-history section. Sally took him upstairs and when she came down, Felicity was sitting in Quentin’s desk chair and holding an airmail letter addressed to Alan Ashworth in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

  “I wrote it last night and twice more this morning,” Sally said. “This is a very peculiar conversation! I ought to be asking you if you’re all right.”

  “Oh yes,” Felicity said, putting the letter down.

  “You want to mend things between Leo and Alexander. I can’t help just now. I’d like to but I can’t. I expect I’ll see Leo in a few days.” She gathered up four stray books on the desk into a pile. “I have to see Alan’s father next.”

  Felicity looked up.

  “Have you any money?”

  “No. Not serious money.”

  “Could you find somewhere to live alone for a while?”

  “I might manage something.”

  “The only person one is really stuck with all life long is oneself—”

  “I’ve only just realized that. Was Henry all right?”

  “I think so.” She stood up. “I shall go and see Leo.”

  “Please do.”

  Felicity moved to the door.

  “I don’t mean to be churlish,” Sally said, “but I have to have some space.”

  “Oh yes. I know about space—”

  The young man came elaborately quietly down the stairs.

  “Is there no cheaper Gibbon than the ten-pound one?”

  “Yes, yes, there’s an Everyman I think, hold on—”

  “I’ll see you soon,” Felicity said.

  She went out into the street and the unenthusiastic sunshine. She hadn’t gone more than a few steps before Sally came running after her.

  “Look, I haven’t mentioned Leo in my letter to Alan. Leaving Alan is something quite separate, that’s very important. That’s what I shall tell his father, too. It’s the truth.”

  “I know,” Felicity said.

  There were people pushing on the pavement round them.

  “Leo made me wake up to what was so wrong, not by anything he said but by his attitude. I knew it inside all along, l’d known for ages—”

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “I do,” Sally said. “I must be realistic.”

  “If it’s true, you don’t have to tell anyone.”

  “I don’t want to be misunderstood.”

  “It’s inevitable. People interpret actions as they wish to. Just don’t apologize for anything.”

  “Thank you for coming.”

  Felicity smiled.

  “Good luck. As long as you know what you want—”

  “Oh,” Sally said, laughing, “oh—” and shaking her head, she retreated back towards the shop, where the young man waited politely by the empty desk to pay.

  “Look,” Mike said. “Frankly, old son, I’m not in the business of doing favours.”

  They were in Mike’s sitting room, Nicholas on the sofa, Mike behind his barrage of equipment, Ianthe on the floor with an ashtray and a bottle of mineral water in front of her.

  “It isn’t a favour,” Nicholas said, “it’s a business proposition—”

  “You’re not going to sell a single one, I’ll tell you that for free. It’s a no-win gamble.”

  “What’d it cost?”

  Mike screwed up his eyes and sighed a lot and did a great many calculations on a piece of paper. Ianthe kept Nicholas fixed with a gaze that dared him to open his mouth again at this delicate juncture and put his foot in it. After five minutes of scribbling and muttering, Mike said that it wasn’t economic, even with a no-hoper like this, to make less than a thousand albums, so they were looking at a bottom line of three thousand pounds and a top one of five.

  “Christ,” Nicholas said.

  Mike shrugged.

  “It’s what it costs.”

  Ianthe said with infinite nonchalance from the floor, “S’pose we found the money? I don’t say we can, but if, you know—would you help? I mean would you produce it for us. Just an idea—”

  Mike got up and tried to prowl around in the tiny spaces left by furniture in the room. He was loosely made and dressed with throw-away carefulness and hated anyone to know that his parents lived in Sunningdale. He said, “Let me think. I’d be giving up most of a week, because I imagine you could only record at night, three three-hour sessions, a weekend’s editing. It’s a lot to ask, frankly. And I don’t know about Ikon’s name. I don’t know at all. We have our credibility to think of.”

  Ianthe said, “You should come down and hear them. They’re cool.”

  Mike shook his head.

  “It’s just not my kind of sound.”

  “If we could raise the money,” Nicholas said, with far too much earnestness, “would you come then? Can we do a deal? If we can raise three thousand pounds, will you at least come down to Aldminster?”

  Mike squatted down to take a cigarette from Ianthe’s pack. Usually she would have jumped on him. He said, “OK. But no messing. It’s got to be for real.”

  “Yes,” Nicholas said. His heart was pounding. When Mike got up and turned away, Ianthe grabbed his hand and squeezed it hard. Mike turned back.

  “It isn’t going to work. You know that, don’t you. It can’t. Who’s gonna buy it? A bunch of old ladies, and they don’t buy from us. Three grand doesn’t grow on trees either.”

  The next weekend, Ianthe and Nicholas went down to Aldminster. They were both going to stay at the deanery—Nicholas was extremely apprehensive about this—and they were going round to see Leo. Bridget put Nicholas in Fergus’s room—the walls were hung with immense fierce posters of the drawings of William Blake—and terrified him with hostessy instructions about bathwater and which lavatory to use. Ianthe had sworn him to secrecy about their mission and said he was particularly not to tell Cosmo, who would reveal it to his father out of sheer bloody-mindedness. Cosmo was back on form, having been found out distributing a pamphlet he had concocted inciting the Asian boys at Horsley Comprehensive, of whom there were many, to wage covert war on the West Indians, of whom there were few. Cosmo’s greatest friend for years had been West Indian, which left the exhausted Mr. Miller with h
is usual difficulties in pinning down Cosmo’s undoubted but elusive malice.

  It did not promise well, as a weekend. Meals were a fearful strain, though Nicholas was weak with gratitude for Bridget’s robust cooking, and Leo was beastly when they telephoned and said he could only see them for half an hour on Saturday evening because he was going out. He sounded really cross. Ianthe bravely said take no notice and put on her new tiny skirt and a drenching of scent, and she was quite right, because when they got there, Leo opened the door, looking exhausted, and said he was so sorry he’d been a bear but the strain was really getting to him.

  “That’s why we’ve come,” Ianthe said.

  It took a bit of time to explain but he really loved the idea. He smiled properly for the first time. He even said he thought he could put a couple of hundred into the record fund and when they said heavens, two hundred, he just said he was sorry there wasn’t more. Then he said, “Have you suggested this to the headmaster?”

  “No—”

  “Go over now. Go on. There’s always a lull after cricket on Saturdays. And Felicity’s home—”

  “Felicity!”

  “She’s been working in some hospice. She’s raring to help over the choir.”

  “My parents never said—”

  Ianthe and Leo exchanged glances and laughed.

  “To coin an immortal phrase, she wouldn’t, would she—”

  “Watch it, Leo, my mother—”

  “All yours, honey child. And that’s a very fetching little attempt at a skirt you’re wearing.”

  Ianthe towed Nicholas across the close at high speed. She wanted to sing. It was working and Leo’d been—oh, she’d save that up to think about later. And it went on working, because the Troys were thrilled with them and Felicity rang her brother in London then and there and he promised them five hundred. He said he’d had a tax rebate.

  “You might not get it back,” Felicity said.

  “That’s what I thought when the tax man had it. At least I don’t begrudge it to the choir.”