by Morag Joss
So here she is in the yellow cutting, a smaller picture underneath the first one. She’s not unlike Callas in colouring but more nipped in feature as well as smaller in spirit, leaning in towards the camera in an off-the-shoulder frock. She looks feverish, young, tremulous. The twin points of the lipstick bow of her mouth reach up towards her nostrils and her hair is folded over her temples like smooth, painted wings. She is gazing through oily-looking eyes towards, what, Parnassus? Not, certainly, 5 Seaview Villas with Raymond Duncan and a baby. The caption reads:
Soprano Fleur Pettifer in her heyday: Known locally as Mrs Florence Duncan (36) Burnhead’s own prima donna will soon be delighting audiences again. Those with highbrow tastes need not go far for she is lending her talents to a local venture as grand opera comes to Burnhead. The Burnhead Association for Singing Turandot (BAST) needs your support (see details page 18). Mrs Duncan’s career began with the Cercle de la Lune Touring Opera Company in 1944 when aged just 20 she understudied major roles. ‘I was exceptionally young but I was thought to have enormous potential,’ she admits. When marriage and family came along Mrs Duncan settled in Burnhead with husband Raymond, legal clerk with local firm Kerr, Mather & McNeill.
Don’t forget BAST’s inaugural meeting on 9th July (see page 18) and join in with this exciting new artistic venture. ALL WELCOME.
By Staff Reporter Alec Gallagher
Poor Alec paid for that ‘in her heyday’, I remember. For days my mother flared her nostrils at the mention of his name but she forgave him before the next edition was out.
They entrance him from the start. He just falls for them both; they are so elegant and shiny-eyed and attractive and English, and they must make a change from the Burnhead Bathing Belles and the presidents of bowling clubs receiving memorial shields and town councillors’ wives opening Coffee Mornings. Alec particularly loves all George’s vision talk and says it’s in short supply round here and exactly what the place needs. He says the place is full of philistines and he isn’t planning on staying that long himself, only with his fiancée Veronica’s mum not so well it’s a bit up in the air where they’ll settle. He personally needs to be around like-minded people.
As the Turandot story unfolds in print through July and August the whole undertaking will acquire a glamour that all three of them like. Everything Alec writes will frame Uncle George and my mother in their preferred version of themselves as artists—instinctive, refined, unembarrassed—and they will encourage Alec to take a similar view of himself. If he regards them as demigods, albeit small-town ones, they return the compliment. As well as persuading him that he can sing, they will egg him on as ‘a writer’. Before long Alec will be complaining that his editor is a philistine with no vision. He really will think he is in with some sort of élite.
Meanwhile they, after this first meeting with ‘the press’, are skittish and elated.
Poor Alec Gallagher, how you were captivated. I can still see you, your pale eyes smarting and pink with devotion and your hands studded with sun spots and short ginger hairs like a piglet’s back. You are ready to do anything for the vision, as you guide your stubby pencil with surprising elegance over your notebook, spinning out in shorthand a tale that even George and my mother, before you began to write it, scarcely believed in themselves.
It’s tempting to claim it was the way the paper has it. Even now, the idea of doing Turandot like that doesn’t seem so very ridiculous, given how we look in the picture. The reasons George gives Alec Gallagher sound plausible enough. If only matters could just be left like that.
Yes, it’s tempting. It’s tempting to look at myself in this photograph and think, look at me, I must have been happy after all. One day more than forty years ago—not even a day, only an afternoon fragment—trapped in a photograph, and I want to remember us just as the picture has us. Caught by the camera and look, here’s how we are: the lips curled in a smile just so, a scarf lying across a shoulder, a watch on a man’s wrist, every detail stands clear. Here’s the evidence you want, you can’t argue with it. Here is the very moment untouched by the hours and the days that surround it.
If I have to think of the Turandot time at all I wish I could remember it as a succession of days like that: single days of one dimension, no leakage from one into the next, each one free to be spent and let go, and on the next I wake up complete and wiped clean. Not a shadow of yesterday will cling, no cloud is forming over tomorrow. There’s no binding in of what came before and no hankering in me for the yet to be, and nothing is missing. But time never is like that, like a newspaper report. Days are not like photographs, in which we imagine we felt just as we looked. The real reasons for what we do never are explicable in a carefree paragraph or two, and seldom are there simple words for all that needs to be said.
8
Who is this person again, George?’
Less than two days into his visit, George was smoking too much. When he answered a question in the tone Fleur expected, an unkind, barely tethered part of him was composing mentally the reply he thought she deserved. He wondered if his sister’s voice—so high and spiritless, as if grievance sent it up in pitch—had changed, or if he had just forgotten how irritating it was.
‘Because Calaf’s not a role for just anybody. I won’t do it with just anybody.’
When she spoke he could feel a tightening in himself, like a key turning, locking fury into a cell inside his head.
‘Joe Foscari, Italian family. One of the best students.’ I’ve told you this a hundred times.
They were sitting at the table while Lila cleared around them.
He lit his third cigarette since breakfast. ‘After National Service he decided to do something with his singing. See if he could make a go of it.’ Why can’t you just listen?
‘That doesn’t sound very serious.’
‘He is serious. He had to leave school young and work in a draughtsman’s office.’
Fleur murmured a sound of disengagement, and watched George smoking. Lila chinked the dirty crockery and cutlery together, preferring any noise to the silences during which she feared, even with Uncle George here, that the day could slide to a halt.
‘A draughtsman?’ Fleur said, pushing out her bottom lip.
‘I’ve seen some of his work,’ George said. ‘He’ll be good with sets and costumes, he’s done a bit of stage design at college.’ Oh, you snob. Who do you think you are?
‘And what was it you said about the family?’ she said lazily. ‘They were dukes or something? He’ll be far too grand for us.’
‘Not dukes, doges. Of Venice. The last doge of Venice was a Foscari.’ Too grand for you? You don’t think that for a minute. Florrie, what happened to you?
He said, ‘They’re almost certainly descended but they’re not grand now, all that’s past. I told you.’ You’re still not listening. ‘Joe says they actually started off in Glasgow but they’re all down south now. They had restaurants.’ I told you this a hundred times, too.
‘What kind of restaurants?’
‘Fleur, I’ve told you. Italian ones. Foscari’s.’ If you ask me to tell you again that Foscari’s was one of Glasgow’s most famous Italian restaurants I shall slap you.
‘Hmm. Wasn’t Foscari’s one of the smarter ones before the war? Smart for Glasgow, I mean,’ Fleur said.
Raymond appeared in the doorway, bicycle clips in one hand and a paper bag in the other. ‘Well, that’s me away,’ he said, folding his trouser bottoms in place under the clips. ‘Monday morning. No peace for the wicked.’ He scraped outdoor shoes on the threshold. ‘Okay for some.’
‘What’ve you got there?’ George asked.
Raymond seemed surprised to have the bag in his hand. ‘Oh, just runner beans, few carrots. There’s a woman I work with’s fond of them. She was saying. She doesn’t grow vegetables. We’ve that many. So she’s doing me a favour.’
‘John Mathieson does grow vegetables. He’s got a greenhouse. Last year we had some of their tomatoes,’
Fleur said.
‘Aye, but…well, he’s maybe just not brought so much on this year, maybe that was it.’
‘Ahhh, Raymond’s runners and carrots! She’s in for a treat,’ George said, foolishly. ‘So, off goes the legal eagle, eh?’ Don’t you ever smile? No wonder your family’s cracking up round you.
‘Aye, right you are,’ Raymond said. ‘Well, that’s me away. Cheerio.’ Hesitating with his hand on the door, he said, ‘This, er, this wee opera you’re to be at—Chinese, is it? I’ve got that right, set in China, is it?’
Fleur looked at the ceiling. ‘Well, obviously.’
George said, ‘That’s right, China.’ Where have you bloody been? Your fifteen-year-old daughter knows the whole thing off by heart. ‘Actually, the libretto says “in Peking in legendary times”.’
Raymond cleared his throat. ‘Aye, well, I’m thinking, this woman I work with, Mrs Mathieson, Audrey. See, she knows China, she was brought up there from a girl. Her parents were missionaries. She’d maybe help, you know? She’s the helpful kind.’
‘Ooh, goody! What’s she got?’ George said. He pounced on the pen on the table and scribbled down the name. ‘Anything in silk? Costumes, jewellery, shoes? Or even furniture, or swords or…Has she got a gong? Any cutlasses?’
‘I’d need to ask. I think maybe. But I was thinking more Audrey herself. I mean, she’ll know a lot about it. She’s lived in Shanghai. Before the war.’
‘For God’s sake, Raymond, what has Shanghai before the war got to do with ancient Peking in an opera of a fairy tale?’ Fleur snapped. ‘Anyway, it’s not meant to be realistic. Is it, George? This is opera. Audrey Mathieson probably knows as much about opera as you do. Which is damn all.’
Raymond cleared his throat. ‘Och, Fleur. I’ll ask, will I?’ he said, looking to George. ‘I’m sure she’d be only too pleased.’
‘Thanks, Ray,’ George said, winking. ‘You ask her. Mrs Mathieson, we want your Chinese treasures and your fact-filled mind. Don’t we, Fleur?’
Raymond backed out of the dining room, nearly colliding with Lila coming back in with a tray.
‘So, this Joe whatever his name is,’ Fleur said, glaring at the closing door, ‘when’s he coming? You say he’s got family in Glasgow?’
George mashed the end of his cigarette into the ashtray. ‘Joe Foscari, and his family’s all down south, Bedford area. He’s just finished his second year. And he’s very good, potentially.’
She shook her head. ‘Potentially? Calaf’s not a role for just anybody.’ She lifted her elbows from the table to let Lila gather up crumbs.
Conversations since yesterday had been circling and retreating around Fleur’s doubts about the grand idea, but Lila could tell that her mother’s energy was lessening. Uncle George was wearing her down; the cadences of her replies were growing relaxed. Now she was objecting in a way that made Lila think of someone making up new verses for a song, keeping an endless duet going for the sake of it. She carried on tidying around them. She liked the warm secret inside her that Uncle George was doing all this for her. Already some of his brilliance was rubbing off his hands and on to the idea itself; it was growing too bright ever to have been hers.
He said, ‘Well, yes, he’s young, but between us we know how to take care of a young voice. Fleur, it’s quite straightforward. All I need to do is ring him up.’ Jesus! Will you shut up and let me get on with this?
‘It’ll be one more to cater for,’ Fleur said listlessly. ‘I hope he’s not fussy.’
‘I’ll tell him he’ll be appearing opposite the best Turandot he could hope for, so why don’t you get some work in on your voice today?’ Get it moving, for God’s sake. You’ve got ground to make up, God knows.
Fleur sighed with the burden of her talent. ‘I’m tired. I don’t want to get stale. And Eliza singing Liù? For God’s sake, George, I never heard anything so ridiculous. Singing Liù at fifteen?’
‘Well, you just wait,’ Uncle George said, ‘till you hear her sing.’ He smiled at Lila. ‘Could you squeeze another cup out of that pot for your old uncle?’ Christ, she is only fifteen, poor little witch. I wonder if she’ll be up to it.
Lila skipped off with the teapot.
‘And you, conducting? Georgie, this isn’t the Mikado. Come on, what’s the biggest show you’ve ever done? Something at college—Orpheus in the Underworld? Die Fledermaus?’
‘Of course it’s a challenge,’ George said tightly. ‘I know Turandot inside out. Thank you for your faith.’
Fleur gave a bitter little laugh and reached for George’s cigarettes. She said, ‘It doesn’t matter a damn if you can conduct it or not or if Eliza can sing it or not because we haven’t got a venue.’
‘You,’ George said, pulling the packet away from her, ‘may no longer smoke. I’m telling you, I’ll have a venue and a tenor lead by lunchtime.’
Christ. This is bloody mad. Joe—you’ve got to come. Say you’ll come. It’s for you.
now I’m tired. I have a sore throat, as if my voice has been under strain although I have spoken to nobody. I’m sitting by the gas fire in the empty back room and I’m back at the boxes, looking at papers. Rubbish, all of it, I could just burn it but as it’s been here all this time I owe it—or somebody does and there is nobody else left—at least a look-through.
I have George’s notes in my hand. Even rough jottings on torn-off scraps of paper are here, silly faces drawn inside the rings left by coffee cups on the edges of notes, doodles on pages from the telephone pad. On one page interspersed with telephone numbers and names in George’s writing are his sketches made that first day: a ceremonial sword, a helmet studded with points, a suit of armour with metal wings coming off the shoulders like blades. I am watching him as he works over them in ballpoint. He also writes this:
Town Hall seats how many ?? stage how wide? Lighting rig?
Norrie’s Marquee and Banqueting Hire (Glasgow) no!
Mr?? clerk to the whats?—keep trying.
He is waiting for the telephone to be answered, drawing quickly and jerkily. His mind seems set on something far away; I think he is imagining the hoard of Chinese artefacts that he intends to charm Mrs Mathieson into lending him.
He whispers to me as he scribbles, Here look, this is how it’ll be—Calaf’s tunic. Like this. He carries a sword, something small, a dagger will do as long as it looks Oriental, a curving blade. Something for his head…
He etches the drawings over and over until he nearly goes through the paper.
Now the empty house fills with sound, in broken snatches. In the music room my mother puts herself through a succession of ascending and descending scales, singing every vowel on each note. Her sound is not constant. Filling the air for an instant it is then borne away, now it returns. I hear it in random waves as if it is carried on a wind that is always changing direction; no, I hear it as if I am moving from room to room. I suddenly have an idea of myself roaming through the house and half-singing as I go, a soft mewing noise that seems, even though it is coming from my lips, to be following me. I wonder, fleetingly, about my sore throat. My feet were dirty again this morning.
Now my mother’s voice again. She is singing more elaborate exercises involving leaps, changes of pitch, consonants, staccato and legato notes. She even sings through her nose, she hums, she sings arpeggios to yo and yah and bow-wow-wow and brrr. Now she is laughing. She plays a few chords at the piano, rests for a minute, and off she goes again.
I hear the roar of the electric coffee grinder that Uncle George has brought as a present along with proper coffee beans from Soho. He sets it going while I clamber up on a stool and pull our coffee percolator down from the top of one of the kitchen cupboards. I smell the greasy metal as I scrub at it, and now the wood and spice of real coffee rises as the pot makes its plocking sound on the Rayburn. George pours, and then our kitchen is exciting in the way I imagine his London kitchen is: it smells foreign, a place of grown-up ease. I taste my coffee and it needs a lot of suga
r; it is a little like the wine, better as an idea than as a drink. Bring those, George says, nodding at our cups and striding into the hall, where he pulls the telephone and the directory down from the hall table and onto the linoleum. I join him on the floor with my back against the wall and look up the numbers of all the halls I can think of, which he writes down. I sip my coffee and think that for once I am more like somebody in a book than the real me. Not madly Bohemian perhaps—not living in a castle or enduring hardships cleverly and talkatively—but it is enough for half an hour or so to be living in a way that is verging on the unusual, sitting on the floor with a cup of real coffee and looking up telephone numbers.
Uncle George is on the phone to the Town Hall. I shuffle up closer and he tilts the receiver so that I hear everything. I sit, waiting and tingling.
Oh, good morning. I have an enquiry about the Town Hall.
I listen, picturing his voice floating like fairy dust around the person at the other end and setting him a-sparkle with competence, cooperation, awe.
Name?
He gives it. He adds, And I would need to know the charges involved, of course, but my main query is how big is the stage?
Aye, but who’s it for? I mean what organisation’s wanting it, because it’s only organisations can get it. And then it’s at the Town Clerk’s discretion, or his designated officers.
Oh, I do beg your pardon. Uncle George lifts his eyes and smiles at the wall, then turns and includes me. I’m calling on behalf of BAST. The Burnhead Association for Singing Turandot.
We listen to the whispering of papers being leafed through at the Town Hall.