by Jean Ure
I’m not sure what I’d have done if Mrs P had been out. She was way the most provoking old person I’d ever met, but at least when I was with her I felt alive and tingling with energy. After two days just mooching about at home, I felt like some kind of slug.
I was relieved when she opened the door but a bit embarrassed, as well, considering how I’d flounced out on Sunday. It never really occurred to me, though, that she might not want to see me any more. I find that odd, as I don’t think I’d have wanted to see me; I had been kind of unpleasant. I think I might have shut the door in my face. Mrs P just very calmly nodded and said, “So there you are. The prima donna returns. I wondered if you’d have the pluck.”
I started stammering out excuses, but she waved a hand, a bit impatiently, and said, “Never mind all that! Come in, come in, don’t just stand there. I presume you’ve come to do some work?”
She kept me at it all morning, and I really enjoyed it. We did scales and exercises and she said I had a very good range. I glowed at that! Fortunately she didn’t ask me if I’d done my breathing exercises. I wouldn’t have liked to lie to her, but I’m not sure I’d have been bold enough to admit that I hadn’t. I just hated it when she gave me one of those beady-eyed looks of hers, like I was totally beneath contempt and not worth bothering with.
At the end of two hours she said that that was probably enough. “We should have some lunch now, and then I must send you on your way.”
I said, “It’s all right, I don’t have to be back till tea time.” I could have gone on all afternoon! “We can do some more exercises, if you like, I’m not in the least bit tired.”
She said, “No, my dear, I’m sure you’re not. But I’m an old lady, and old ladies need their rest.”
I hadn’t thought about that. Of course I knew she was an old lady, far older even than Nan had been, but when she was at the piano, barking out her orders – “Gently, gently! You’re not selling potatoes!” – I tended to forget how ancient she was.
“Can I come again tomorrow?” I said.
“On one condition.” She did the beady-eyed thing, but not like I was beneath contempt, more like she was about to issue some kind of challenge. “You must sing a song for me. Not” – she held up a hand – “not just any old song. The song you would sing if you were going in for the contest.”
She was doing it again! Nagging at me.
“I’m sure you must have thought about it. You must have a favourite song.”
I could feel my face scrunching itself up into a scowl.
“Oh, now, come along, come along!” she said. “I’m no threat, I’m just an old woman. What would you sing?”
Sullenly, I muttered, “Something I wrote with a friend.”
“Splendid! Then please, tomorrow, come prepared to sing it for me.”
“You wouldn’t like it,” I said. “It’s not your sort of music.”
Her pencilled eyebrows rose in a sort of cool disdain, like I’d said something really stupid. “Music is music,” she said. “There are only two sorts – good music and bad music. If you think your song is bad music, then fair enough. Don’t sing it! Do you think it’s bad music?”
I wriggled, uncomfortably. “It’s rock.”
“Yes?” She stood, waiting.
“It’s sort of… loud.”
“So I would suppose. In my experience, rock usually is.”
“But you’ve just been telling me to sing quietly!”
“My dear, that was an exercise! What I’m asking for is a performance. Are you going to sing it for me, or not?”
I shrugged. “Could. I s’pose.”
“I shall expect it. Tomorrow morning, eleven o’clock. Please be punctual. And don’t forget those breathing exercises!”
I spent all that evening in my room, practising Star Crazy Me. Mum banged on the door at one point and told me to “Stop making so much noise, for goodness sake!” but I just stuffed pillows at the bottom of the door and carried on. If I was going to sing for Mrs P, then it had to be as good as I could possibly make it. I don’t know whether the pillows actually did anything to muffle the sound, but Mum didn’t come yelling at me again. Maybe she just shut the sitting-room door and turned the telly up.
Next morning, after Mum had gone to work, I did my breathing exercises. I had this feeling Mrs P had known, yesterday, that I hadn’t been doing them. Maybe not actually known, but she’d definitely suspected. I didn’t want her asking me and me having to lie. Somehow, telling Mrs P I’d done her exercises when I hadn’t seemed even worse than the really whopping great lie I’d told Mum about being in school when I’d spent the day wandering round the shopping centre. Not that I would expect Mum to agree with me; she would certainly go ballistic if she ever found out. But I could cope with Mum’s rage. What I couldn’t face was the thought of Mrs P’s contempt. It just shrivelled me!
She’d said to go round at eleven o’clock. I was so anxious not to be late that I arrived half an hour early and had to kill time looking at clothes in Marks & Spencer. I knew if she’d said eleven, she meant eleven, and not quarter to or quarter past. She was that sort of person. I’d brought my guitar with me so I suppose I could have done a bit of singing, but I wanted to preserve my voice for later. I’d never have thought of such a thing before. Preserving my voice! That was Mrs P’s influence, that was.
I rang her doorbell at exactly eleven o’clock. She seemed pleased. She said, “Good girl! On the dot. And I see you’ve come prepared.” She nodded at my guitar. “Excellent!”
We had such a good morning. We did the usual scales and exercises, and she got me singing a few songs, such as Amazing Grace, for breath control and vowel sounds, and said she was “very happy” with the way things were going.
“It’s a pleasure working with you! Now, let us break for a bite of lunch, then you shall sing me your song.”
And that was where it all started to go pear-shaped. Not the actual song. I gave it all I’d got…
Star crazy me
Floatin’ free-ee-ee
Into the ether of
Eternity…
I did all five verses. I was really flying! I knew, whatever she said, it wasn’t her kind of music, but I was up there, on stage, in the spotlight, with everybody going wild. I almost half expected, at the end, to hear applause. Thunderous applause! What I didn’t expect was silence.
Defensively I said, “I told you you wouldn’t like it.”
“Oh, my dear, quite the contrary,” she said. “I am impressed! I asked for a performance, you gave me a performance. To sing like that, for an audience of just one old woman, is no mean achievement. And didn’t it make you feel good? Didn’t it make you just long to get up and sing in front of a real audience?”
She was doing it again! She was going to start nagging.
“Well?” She gave me the beady eye. “Didn’t it?”
Why did she always, always have to go and ruin everything? It had been so lovely up until then! Resentfully I said, “I’ve sung in front of a real audience. You’ve heard me sing in front of a real audience!”
“Oh!” She waved a hand. “The denizens!”
I wasn’t sure what denizens were, exactly, but if she meant the old people, then I thought it was extremely rude and ageist of her. I mean, what did she think she was?
“It’s still singing,” I said.
“Oh, to be sure! Show tunes for the grannies! All very sweet, and you sang them very well, but it’s not where your heart is, is it? Follow your dreams, my dear! Go for it, I believe, is the modern expression. Be brave! Confound the lot of them! Sing your song and prove what you can do.”
How many times did I have to tell her? I was not going in for that talent contest.
“Well?” She barked it at me. “Cat got your tongue?”
I stood there, tugging at a bit of broken fingernail, and all the time feeling her beady gaze fixed on me.
“I can see we are not going to get anywhere. That being the
case” – she moved across to the piano and began briskly stacking sheets of music – “it is obviously time to take action. Broaden your horizons. Tomorrow I am going to the opera. I had intended going with a friend, but she has had to back out. That means I have a spare ticket. I think perhaps you had better come with me.”
To the opera? She had to be kidding!
“Don’t worry, it’s nothing frightening. As a matter of fact, it’s your opera – Carmen. Very tuneful! Up in town, so we wouldn’t be back until late… eleven, eleven fifteen. But that’s all right – I’ll send you home in a cab, or you can stay the night here, whichever you prefer.”
In a weird sort of way – I mean, considering I didn’t like opera – it was actually quite tempting. The thought of going up to town, to a real theatre. A posh one, probably, if it was opera. Then coming back late and getting cabs… that was what rich people did! But how could I explain to Mum? I couldn’t! I’d have to tell so many lies. It would just get too complicated.
“What’s the matter?” She turned to look at me. “Cat actually bitten your tongue right out?”
I pulled a face. The childish sort of face you pull in Reception when a teacher tells you you’ve been naughty. I said, “What would I want to go and see an opera for?”
“Well…” She smiled sweetly at me. “Since you manifestly don’t have enough backbone to pursue your real ambition, you should maybe cast your net a bit wider and try something different… find something new to aim for. A new ambition!”
“I don’t want a new ambition!”
“So what do you actually intend to do with your life?”
“Not sing in opera!”
“No…” She nodded, slowly. “Upon reflection, you are probably right. I doubt you’d get very far in that world, either. It’s a cut-throat business – you have to be prepared to take a lot of knocks. It probably wouldn’t suit you.”
“I don’t want it to suit me! I don’t want to be an opera singer.”
“No, you don’t,” she said, “you want to be a rock star. You have the voice to be a rock star. You have the voice, you have the talent – all you lack is the determination. How was it your song went? This crazy gal will reach the top? I’m sorry, but I don’t think so! Not with that attitude. It seems a shame to waste the gifts you’ve been given, but unless you’re prepared to stand up and fight you might as well stop dreaming right here and now and admit that you’re going to end up as just another nobody.”
Furiously, I retorted, “There’s nothing wrong with being a nobody!”
“You’re right, there isn’t – if you have no other ambition. But I think you have! Haven’t you? Oh, now, for heaven’s sake, if you’re going to sulk you’d better go. Go home and think about things. You can come and see me again tomorrow, but only if you feel like talking.”
I snarled, “I can’t come tomorrow, I’m doing things!”
“Well, whenever you’ve had a chance to stiffen that backbone… you know where to find me.”
I went off in a huff, banging the front door as I did so. Arrogant, ugly old bag! Telling me I hadn’t any backbone! I had backbone. I could stand up for myself! I’d told Marigold Johnson a thing or two. How dare she? How dare she?
I hurtled down the steps and out into the square so blinded with rage that I went barging straight into someone walking past. As we bounced off each other, I realised it was Stacey Kingsley, from my class at school. She seemed as surprised to see me as I was to see her. She said, “What’re you doing here?”
I said, “What’re you?”
She told me she had come to visit her nan.
I said, “What, she lives in the flats?”
“Nah!” She shook her head. “She’s in the old people’s home. D’you actually know someone who lives in this block?”
“My singing teacher,” I said.
“Your singing teacher?”
“Mrs P. That’s what I call her. She used to be famous in opera. She’s got this huge flat – that one there.” I pointed. “It’s all full of precious antiques and stuff.”
“Wow.” I could tell Stacey was impressed. So she should be! “You gotta be rolling in it to live there.”
“Yes, she’s stinking rich,” I said.
“And she teaches you singing?”
“Every day, she gives me these lessons. She’s taking me to the opera tomorrow. Carmen. That’s my opera.” I couldn’t resist a bit of boasting. “What my mum called me after.”
“You’re called after an opera?”
“Yup. Spanish, cos that’s what my dad was.”
“D’you like opera?”
“’S all right. The best bit’s going up to town. We’ll probably have a meal somewhere, some posh restaurant, cos we’re going to be really late back… eleven o’clock, maybe later. She’ll get a cab to take me home. Cab’s nothing to her.”
Stacey said, “We got a cab all the way to the airport one time.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Mrs P gets them all over the place.”
“Is she old?” said Stacey.
“Pretty ancient. She’s got pots of money, though. She was a really big star, way back.”
“So how d’you get to meet her?”
I was about to say that she’d heard me singing, but then it suddenly struck me: Stacey’s nan could have been one of the old people who’d put money in my doggy bowl. I wouldn’t want Stacey finding out about that.
I said, “I didn’t exactly meet her, I—” And then I glanced at my watch and gave an exaggerated yelp. “Omigod, look at the time! I gotta go!”
“OK,” said Stacey. “See ya.”
“Yeah!” I galloped off across the square. “See ya!”
It wasn’t until I went to bed that night that I realised: I had left my guitar behind…
CHAPTER EIGHT
I couldn’t have gone round to Mrs P’s next day even if I’d wanted, which I didn’t, except that some time I was going to have to face her, just to get my guitar back. But Friday was Mum’s day off, and she’d already made arrangements for us to go and visit my Auntie Angela. She insisted that I had to go with her.
“We hardly ever do anything together! Of course you have to come.”
Mum could never understand why I didn’t want to, and there wasn’t any way I could explain to her. Auntie Anje is Mum’s sister; she’s slim and gorgeous-looking, just like Mum. She has two daughters called Tiffany and Bethan, and they are slim and gorgeous-looking, too. I would like to be able to say that they are also mean and vain and spiteful, but in fact they are none of those things. They are quite good-natured and friendly, which just makes it all the worse as it means I have no excuse for not wanting to see them. It’s entirely my own fault if I always end up feeling totally inadequate and dissatisfied with myself. No one ever says that compared to Tiffy and Beth I am gross and fat and lumpy. No one even hints at it; they are too kind. But I know that is what they are thinking, and I know that Mum is envious of Auntie Anje for having produced two such teensy tiny delicate little creatures while all she has got for her trouble is a great sack of lard.
Auntie Anje said she was pleased we’d come over as Tiffy wanted to ask Mum something. She wanted to know, next year when she had work experience, whether she could do it in Mum’s salon.
“I really, really, really want to be a beautician!”
Mum, needless to say, was delighted. I could see that for her it would be an opportunity to do a little bit of showing off, for a change. She might have a great ungainly lump of a daughter, but at least she could lay claim to a beautiful niece. I didn’t blame Mum, not one little bit, but it’s no use pretending that it didn’t hurt, cos it did.
Bethan piped up to say that she was going to be an air hostess. Mum cried, “Yes! You certainly have the looks for it.”
I didn’t know air hostesses needed looks, but I guess it’s something to distract the passengers and stop them thinking about crash landings and hijac
kers. They are really just waitresses, though; I wouldn’t want to be one. When Auntie Anje turned to me and asked, “What about you, Carmen? What are you planning to do?” the words came bursting out of my mouth before I could stop them: “I certainly wouldn’t want to be an air hostess!”
There was then a long, awkward silence, which Mum finally broke by pointing out they weren’t called air hostesses, these days. “They’re flight attendants.”
I could see everyone thinking, Yes, and they don’t have fat ones. This is what I mean about it being my own fault. Auntie Anje did her best to patch things up. She said, “What about your singing? Nan did so love it! She used to tell everyone about her granddaughter… going to be a second Judy Garland.”
I said, “That was when I was young and didn’t know any better.”
“Any better than what?” said Mum.
“Being a second Judy Garland. I don’t want to be a second anybody! I want to be me.”
“Well, hoity toity!” said Mum. “There’s gratitude for you! Your poor old nan thought she was paying you a compliment.”
“She was always so proud of you,” said Auntie Anje. “It used to make my two quite jealous, didn’t it, girls?”
They nodded solemnly.
“Anyway” – Mum said it in the no-nonsense voice she uses when she reckons I’m getting above myself – “being you isn’t exactly what I’d call a career move. You’ll need to think of something a bit more practical than that!”
I was glad when at last we could go home. I felt so angry with myself! I always swore that this time I would be cool, I would be sophisticated, I wouldn’t let feelings of inferiority push me into making sour and bitter remarks. When would I ever learn???