by Morag Joss
‘Tell me what?’
‘They…Well, your mother…’ Uncle George began. ‘She…I mean, look. Have you ever wondered why she only plays her Turandot records when she’s really angry?’
Lila cast her eyes upwards. ‘That’s obvious! She was singing in Turandot when he met her. Turandot was her big role, or should have been. Anyway, she plays other things, too, now and then. Madame Butterfly, La Traviata, La Bohème—’
‘Yes, all right,’ Uncle George said gently, ‘but Turandot’s the one, isn’t it? But your dad never actually heard her. He didn’t go to the opera to listen to her.’
‘What then? What do you mean?’
‘They were on in Glasgow. It was some touring company from England. Your mother did well to get in. When our father was killed she had to make her own way so she got this chorus job. I was still at school.’
‘I know that. She tells people she was the youngest in the company.’
‘Probably true. It was no great shakes, the company, just a scratch thing in wartime. And frankly I’ve never understood how she came to be even covering Turandot at that age. They were irresponsible to let her, it doesn’t bear thinking about what she would have made of it. Her voice hadn’t the heft for it at twenty, no-one’s has. Could have damaged it, permanently. Turandot’s a role you shouldn’t even consider before you’re at least—’
‘Stop going on about the singing.’
George paused. ‘Your father went round the Glasgow theatres. He was working in a lawyer’s office and studying for his law degree, hadn’t much to live on. Somebody he met via his firm, some kind of merchant…anyway this man put some under-the-counter stuff your father’s way—this was when there was rationing, you couldn’t get nice things on coupons. Your father sold it in a pub. He could have sold anything, he was different then. Plenty to say for himself. Real polish. And he was very good-looking.’
Lila snorted in disbelief.
‘So,’ George went on, ‘he started getting quite a bit of this stuff, it was coming in all the time off boats from Ireland. He sold round the theatres, mainly clothes and stockings. The chorus girls were earning and they liked good stuff and they moved on. Safer for him. Hundreds did it but it was risky, the black market.’
‘Black market? You mean he was breaking the law?’
‘Look, I’m telling you how hard it was. He was studying and working for peanuts, he needed the extra just to live. He never did that much. He wasn’t a real spiv.’
‘So what’s that got to do with my mother?’
Uncle George paused before he answered. ‘Turandot herself doesn’t appear on stage till the second act, does she? On the last night the woman singing Turandot was fine, she always was. Vocal cords like steel cable. Your mother was singing in the chorus. After the first half hour of Act I she wasn’t needed on stage till well into Act II, so she slipped off with Raymond. He’d got a lot of things, more than he could bring backstage with him. She went along with two empty cases to this pub where he was keeping the stuff. She had orders from everybody. He got her back in time for the chorus’s first appearance in Act II but when they arrived the curtain was down, backstage was total chaos.’
‘Why, what happened?’
‘They’d abandoned the performance, people were demanding their money back. Turandot had fallen backstage during the first interval, tripped on something, a stage weight. She was in agony and had to be carted off with suspected broken toes, and there was no sign of the understudy. Your mother was sacked on the spot. They were travelling on to the next venue that night and they told her she wasn’t going with them, they’d manage with the Turandot they’d got if they had to carry her on and off on a sedan chair.’
Lila burned with confusion. The picture of her mother, rejected and afraid, reminded her of herself. ‘Well, so what? It was her own fault,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t she just go and join another company? She didn’t have to go and get married.’
‘Tough luck though,’ George said. ‘Out of a job, nowhere to go, she hadn’t even got digs for the night.’
‘All right. But if she really wanted to sing she could’ve. It needn’t have been the end of it. You said she was young.’
George sighed and fished for his cigarettes.
She said, ‘She just used it as an excuse, if you ask me.’
‘Your father’s a very kind man, a good man. Yes, he is,’ George insisted. ‘He couldn’t just leave her. He took her for a drink. She drowned her sorrows pretty thoroughly.’
‘So? After that she could’ve gone and got another job.’
George lit his cigarette and paused. ‘Okay. I might have known you’d take that line. I’ll tell you all of it but you’ve got to be sensible, all right? No attack of histrionics.’
‘What’s histrionics?’
‘It’s what your mother does and one hysteric in the family’s enough. So just be quiet and listen, okay? That night she had nowhere to go so your dad put her up. He sneaked her into the room he was renting. Out of kindness. They hadn’t much choice, either of them.’
‘You mean, they…?’
Lila had never questioned the version of how her mother’s life had been ruined, in which she starred as innocent victim of false hero; such stories as there were in their family never were questioned. There was no telling and retelling of what really happened, no agreeing on the turning points, arguing about consequences, honing the details; only families reconciled to past events can weave tales about themselves. As a consequence Lila had not learned curiosity. With the full-blown egotism of most unhappy children she had not pictured her parents doing much with their shadowy, half-formed lives except waiting for her to arrive and be made unhappy. And yet here they were with things happening all around them, behaving irresponsibly, even dramatically, as if she might never have been.
‘That’s disgusting. They hardly knew each other!’
‘Don’t be such a prig. It was wartime. They’re human.’
‘How could she? Why did nobody tell me?’
‘Look, I thought you were mature enough to cope with this. Your parents aren’t perfect, they’re just human beings.’
‘Of course I know they’re not perfect! God!’
‘The point is your mother had nothing. She had nobody to help her. This happened at the end of August. They didn’t get married then, they only say that to account for you arriving in May. They got married in October once you were on the way. Your father didn’t hesitate.’
Lila sniffed the air and blew out a long, slow breath.
Uncle George said, ‘So none of it was your fault, okay? You’re nearly grown up, you’ve got your own life ahead of you. Don’t let them drag you down. But try not to be too impatient with them, that’s all.’
Lila wasn’t listening. Her face was livid with shame, for all of it, for all of them. She was ashamed even to know. How dare they bring her into being in this way, clumsy and drunk? How dare they regret her? But her indignation was stale, for in some way she had always known. She ought to hate them even more. Yet a fragile, reluctant thread, a single filament connecting her to some notional sympathy for the times, the circumstances, their desperation, was tugging at her. It said, forgive them, it could have been you. Forget it was loveless, forget what you know.
‘So, yes, the baby,’ Uncle George was saying, ‘the baby—you—stopped her career. But you see? They got themselves into it. She missed her big chance because she was off buying stockings. A career over before it began for the sake of half a dozen pairs of nylons. Same thing with him, six months in jail and his future ruined over a suitcase of lingerie.’
Lila gaped while George offered her the cigarette packet. ‘Want one? You look a bit green. Sorry. You won’t know that bit either, I don’t suppose.’
‘He went to prison?’
‘They came down hard after the war on black-market traders. I’m telling you something they’ve kept quiet all this time, so you’ve got to keep this to yourself. I want your
promise.’
‘Of course I promise! Why would I tell anybody that?’
‘Okay. Well, he was prosecuted. Don’t remember exactly when, around the time you were born. And you can’t practise law with a criminal record so after that he got a clerk’s job. There was some connection, I forget just what, the head of the law firm in Glasgow’s wife had been a black-market customer or something, and they knew someone in the firm here. He’s terribly overqualified. It changed him. He’s never been the same since prison, actually.’
Lila waved a hand. Refusing to care was, she had already decided, the adult thing to do and she wanted Uncle George to credit her with that. ‘Well, why should I feel sorry for them?’ she said. ‘Just because she never got up on a stage again, just because he went to prison. So what? It was ages ago, anyway. Worse things happen to people.’ To me, she was thinking. What was worse than knowing all this? What was worse than being stuck here with the people her parents were turning out to be?
‘Of course, you’re too young to sympathise,’ Uncle George sighed. ‘At your age, you don’t make allowances, do you? Mistakes not allowed. You’re made of granite at your age.’
‘I am not made of granite. I can be sorry for people. When they deserve it.’
Uncle George raised an eyebrow. ‘How magnanimous. Can you really not understand it, wanting to sing so much and there’s nobody to hear you? Can you imagine what prison’s really like? For a proud man like your father?’
‘They brought it on themselves.’ She sniffed and looked away. If she possibly could, she would forget it all; it was going to be too great a burden, to be so ashamed of her parents she could barely look at them.
‘Stand up. Sing me a scale,’ Uncle George demanded suddenly. He gave her a note, the same one, B flat, but two octaves lower. ‘Start there. Go on.’
‘Why should I? I don’t feel like it.’
‘Stop arguing. Stand up and do it. Two octaves. Go on—lah, lah—’
Lila shrugged, stood up, and sang it.
‘Now this.’ He started a semitone higher.
Lila sang that, too, unfolding her arms.
‘And this.’
‘No.’
‘Damn you. Do it.’
This time she took a proper breath.
‘And hold the top note…loud and strong as you can…’
Lila did so.
‘And now…listen. Hold that note but bring it down, not so angry. Make it quieter, gradually, that’s it. Don’t wobble, release the breath gradually, don’t collapse, support the sound, piano, down, pianissimo…’
Lila was finding this more difficult, but she held it through the wobble, righted it, sustained it. The note was thrillingly high. It made her want to sing and laugh at the same time. When she ran out of breath and stopped, Uncle George smiled.
‘Now. Sing me something—some music, a song, something you like. Anything you know.’
‘No! I won’t. I don’t see why I…’
‘For God’s sake, shut up and just do it.’
Lila turned away, her heart thumping. How could she? How could she sing anything that included words, words that Uncle George might think she meant? The words of all the songs she knew from school were absurd:
O’er the ocean flies a faery fay,
Soft her wings are as a cloud of day
It was unthinkable that she should come out with rubbish like that to Uncle George, and the hymns were even worse. He would laugh. But again the elation was almost taking over. Her insides felt watery. What could she sing that would sound right? What would be real? Turning to Uncle George, she sang
Signore, ascolta! Ah, Signore, ascolta!
Liù non regge più!
Uncle George sat up straight, recognising Liù’s first aria from Turandot. He opened his mouth and closed it again. Lila had little idea that, in mimicked Italian barely approximating the real words, she was pleading with him to listen to her because she could bear no more. Glancing at him and then looking away across the beach, she continued.
Ma se il tuo destino doman sarà deciso,
Noi morrem sulla strada dell’esilio!
She would die on the exile’s road, she sang, though her grasp of what she was saying was vague; she remembered only that Liù sounded sad and desperate and that in the end nobody came to her rescue. Long before the end, she abandoned any attempt at the words, finishing on the long, imploring top B flat. She had heard it sung so many times on the record that she was surprised to feel its sadness, still fresh, from her own mouth.
‘I don’t know exactly what it means,’ she said, ‘but I know how it’s meant to sound.’
Uncle George nodded, for once stuck for words. ‘Well, then,’ he said after a while. ‘Well, enough for a first lesson. Come on.’
It was chilly now and they walked back fast across the wavering grass that was luminous and pale in the last of the light. They did not say much more that evening.
at six o’clock Luke rings me. He’s a fast worker, I’ll give him that. He’s got everything arranged and may he call in later this evening to discuss it? He speaks tremulously and is slightly hoarse; sympathy flutters in his throat like a trapped and dusty moth. I tell him there is no need, for it is surely a simple question of jotting down the timings, which he can perfectly well give me over the telephone. Pause. Am I happy then, he asks, with twenty minutes at the crematorium at two o’clock for the dispatch of the coffin (prayers, committal and blessing only, he apologises, though this sounds plenty to me), then allowing a generous forty minutes to get from there to the Evangelical Lutheran Fellowship for a service at three o’clock, all timings confirmed as accurate by the undertakers? I tell him this sounds fine. He is working on appropriate readings from Scripture for the service, and as he says this his voice grows solid. When he mentions that the service will end with grateful thanks that our departed brother has died in Christ, he is practically heaving with belief in life everlasting and I find myself wondering if it is possible to vomit with rapture. Would I care to pray with him now?
On the telephone? I say.
God will hear you, Lila, he insists.
Not convenient, I say. I’ve got something on the stove.
As soon as I get rid of him I run myself a hot bath that fills the bathroom with steam so I cannot see too clearly the dark grouting of dirt that grows between the tiles and the black blossom of mould on the ceiling. Afterwards I sit by the gas fire with a glass of whisky and eat toast and butter. These are the comforts I have found to be the reliable ones. Moderate sensual pleasures can, with practice, assuage intangible miseries. Temporarily, of course, but then there are always more warm baths to be had, more drinks and scents and tastes. It’s a knack.
Later, though, I am in danger of big feelings so I fish out my counted cross-stitch. I never travel without it. On the continent, cross-stitch is not the seedy Laughing Cavalier footstool kind of thing it is here. The Queen of Denmark does it. A lot of people in my business take it up, either that or knitting; it fills gaps in rehearsals and stops you eating. Knitting’s not for me. I always feel there’s something improbable about a single strand of yarn evolving into a garment. Trusting balls of wool to become cardigans leaves too much to chance. By contrast, there is no leeway in cross-stitch. A piece of cross-stitch is a transparent promise. There are rules. The pattern is counted out and waiting. The threads are coded, a symbol for each colour. No interpretation is required and nothing is hidden. All I have to do is count and stitch and if I do I will suffer no surprises, no colours will stray across the boundaries, no shapes will distort. As regular and contained as a pulse, the needle in my hand bestows its tiny stabbed kisses—criss-cross, criss-cross, criss-cross—not a single one more nor less than is predetermined. Enid’s mother would be pleased at my liking for needlework. She might think I got it from her. It is true that I like thread; I pull and it follows, laying its colour down obediently in the track allocated to it. It doesn’t spill.
I enjoy the sigh
t of my finished stitches. A visual pleasure, simply enjoyed; why look for more? Balm for the eyes and balm for the soul should not be confused.
When I’m singing to Uncle George on the beach that summer night long ago, is that the mistake I make? Do I begin to fancy in myself a rare and finely tuned sensitivity that sets me apart from the likes of Enid and Senga? Beautiful, says Uncle George, of the sunset. But it is a sunset, nothing more. It was a sunset just as tonight’s was, and an aria. Not a symbol or portent but the end of another day and that is all, with a bit of Puccini thrown in. A flash of pink or mauve in the sky is not a glimpse of higher meaning. A top B flat does not reveal a spotless soul. Be dazzled, but do not let bright colours or pretty songs lead you anywhere.
But after Uncle George and I get back that evening I go to my room and stand looking out, wishing I could see the patch of beach where we have been sitting. The sun is going down with that final, burning desperation, and it strikes me how all my old days of the week colours were bland or cold. Monday is pale green. At the time they were the right colours for my days, the colours I saw around me, but how could I have overlooked the sky? I somehow missed the reds, pinks and silvers. I was in no mood to be caught up in their exuberance. I suddenly feel less separate from them, less drab in comparison. That evening a brightness seems to be growing, a flame glimmering below the horizon, and it includes me. Anything can catch and burn.
Oh, this is the wisdom of hindsight. It must be an illusion that I had a sense of what was coming for if I had, could I have stood at the window and not been terrified? Would I really have wanted all our lives to change, to be refined the way they were into something perhaps more honest but no purer, something clearer but also worse? I am uncertain. I do know that I took the days of that summer and threw them like sticks into a fire that drew everything to it until the air was tight with heat. Everything flared and was gorgeous for a moment. All of it glittered with significance until it expired in flames and now only I am left, blinking and blinded and giddy.