Summer's Out at Hope Hall

by Pam Rhodes

  With great concentration, the group worked together as a team until finally, as the time ticked round to half past seven and the doors opened, they all looked at each other intently. A silent understanding about how they hoped the evening would unfold seemed to pass between them.

  Sean, the DJ, swept into action, filling the hall with a series of tracks that he knew would get people up and dancing. Mili and Terezka made their way through the hall to their usual table at the front, which the band had reserved for them. They were quickly followed by Nigel’s wife Jayne, and Graham’s partner Ali. The boys came down from the stage to join the girls, hugging them and then huddling into a tight group, where they had a whispered conversation that seemed urgent and slightly furtive. All eyes were on the entrance to the hall as they waited for Carlos to arrive.

  Predictably, their singer strode in only a few minutes before their first set was due to start at eight fifteen. He was far too late to help the rest of the band members set up their equipment, but just in time to be sure that his adoring fans were ready and waiting to greet him.

  Five minutes later, Carlos jumped up on stage without even bothering to say hello to the other players. The last time they’d seen him, he’d marched out of their pub rehearsal room like the prima donna he loved to be. He hadn’t bothered coming to their next rehearsal, and here he was striding on to the stage without even acknowledging their existence. Taking a deep breath, Andy made a slight adjustment to the set-up of the sound system, nodded to the others, and counted them in to the first number, “I’ve Gotta Feeling”. Andy did have a feeling about what a great night this was going to be.

  The band played as usual and Carlos sang as usual, but the audience appeared to be looking curiously in his direction. Carlos showed no sign of having noticed, because as far as he was concerned, it was only important that they were watching him, not the other way around. On went the music, with one favourite dance number following another: “Love Shack”, “Sweet Caroline”, “Mony Mony” and “Thriller”. No one could deny that the band were superb. However, one by one, the dancers began to gather around the stage in front of Carlos, first looking puzzled, then trying to shout out messages to him. Not bothering to look at their expressions, because he simply thought they were standing there to get a better view of him, Carlos carried on regardless – “Don’t Stop Believing”, “Stayin’ Alive”, “It Takes Two” – until everyone in the hall was aware there was a problem. Everyone except Carlos, who seemed to have no idea at all that he was singing painfully out of tune. People actually had their fingers in their ears as they made their way back into the foyer carrying their drinks for a break from the dancing and the jarring sound. It was only as the hall emptied after about twenty-five minutes of them playing that Carlos threw both his hands up in the air and turned angrily to shout at the band.

  “What have you done? You’ve done something! People are leaving. This is not my problem. You have made a problem. Sort this or Carlos will leave!”

  The boys in the band looked at Carlos and then at each other with expressions of complete bewilderment.

  “What do you mean? We’ve just been back here playing as we always do.”

  “And I sing as I always do, but people are leaving. This is your fault. People do not leave when Carlos sings.”

  Nigel on the drums shrugged. “Well, they are tonight. Have you got a bad throat or something?”

  Carlos clutched his throat with alarm. “No, my throat is fine. My voice is fine.”

  Jake shook his head, his face thoughtful. “Sorry mate, but your voice is awful tonight. You’re singing sharp all the time. No wonder everyone’s leaving the hall.”

  “Why don’t you try drinking a glass of port?” asked Graham, sounding really concerned. “I always find that helps me.”

  Carlos did not look amused at the suggestion.

  “Look, Carlos, if you feel ill or want a break, just let us know,” said Andy. “Graham can always stand in for you if you’re not well.”

  “I am fine, I am great! This is your fault. You are in charge of sound. You do not leave this stage until you find my voice again. I am going for a drink.”

  “Port!” shouted Graham as Carlos stomped away. “That’ll do the trick.”

  The group watched him march down the middle of the hall towards the bar.

  “Well then, lads,” said Andy quietly, “as Carlos says, we need to get to work. On to Round Two!”

  DJ Sean leapt onto the stage to take over the music quite a bit earlier than he had expected. He came over to give Andy a high five.

  “Good on you!” he smiled. “That was hilarious. I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in years!”

  Andy grinned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah, right. You’d better take a look at your pitch shifter, then. I think it must be faulty! Like him or not, you can’t deny Carlos always sings in tune, and I bet his voice sounded perfectly normal to him, but that pitch shifter effect made sure the audience didn’t hear it that way!”

  Andy remained silent, a picture of innocence.

  “Well, Carlos sure had it coming to him,” chuckled Sean. “I can’t wait to see what you’ve got up your sleeve next.”

  Half an hour later, as Sean got to the end of his set, Carlos made his way back to the stage with a face like thunder. “Get this right!” he hissed, before turning a smile full of charm towards the audience. “I am sorry, my friends. We had a few technical problems just then that our sound manager was not capable of solving. We are fine now. Carlos is fine now.”

  A half-hearted cheer rippled around the room.

  “So let’s dance!” he shouted as the band began the intro to a dance night favourite.

  Once Carlos was certain from the attitude of the audience below him that his voice was back to sounding as glorious as ever, he decided it was time for his dulcet tones to drown out the idiots playing and singing behind him. He stamped on the floor pedal in front of him so that a resounding echo would turn everyone’s attention to his voice. But there was no echo. In fact, quite the opposite. The more he kicked the pedal in angry frustration, the quieter and quieter his voice became.

  He turned to glare furiously at Andy, who was looking in completely the wrong direction and didn’t appear to notice him at all.

  “Turn this up, you moron!” snapped Carlos.

  “I haven’t changed anything,” mouthed Andy, his face puzzled.

  Carlos turned to the pedals again, this time thumping his foot on the one that added an atmospheric reverb to the vocals. The pedal worked immediately, except that once Carlos had taken the pressure off, the reverb effect kept rising until his voice sounded warped and booming. Once again, the dancers below began to put their hands over their ears, and the mood in the hall became tense with irritation at the sound coming from the stage. They could see the rest of the band were playing normally, but Carlos was behaving strangely, thumping his foot on various pedals and altering the sound in the most random and petulant way. What on earth was he doing?

  As that song came to an end, Carlos spun around to point his finger in Andy’s direction. “Stop! Whatever you are doing, stop it!”

  The band members looked at each other and out towards the audience, shrugging helplessly, seemingly as confused as everyone else in the hall by their lead singer’s irrational outburst.

  “Let’s go into the medley,” suggested Andy. “The one we’ve rehearsed.”

  “I know the medley,” snapped Carlos. “No more funny business.”

  This medley was a dance night favourite. Many popular hit songs were based on a common four-chord pattern, which meant the band could move from one first line to another with ease, and the audience loved joining in with the words they recognized instantly as the songs changed.

  Andy led Friction into the intro and Carlos began the first song, except that while he was singing “Don’t Stop Believing”, the rest of the band launched into “With or Without You”. Co
nfused, Carlos just managed to join in with the right words as they changed song again. This time Carlos led into “You’re Beautiful”, the song that usually followed “With or Without You” in their medley list, while Andy and the others were busy blasting out “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”.

  For five minutes of absolute audience torture, Carlos sang at odds with the band. He found himself singing “No Woman, No Cry”, while the band sang “Beautiful”. Finally, as the singer realized the medley was coming to an end, he led into their usual last song, “Time to Say Goodbye”, just as the band started singing “Auld Lang Syne”.

  The whole effect was so terrible that the audience actually started laughing. They had caught on to the fact that the band was playing tricks on Carlos, but his reactions throughout the evening had been so bad-tempered and spiteful that even his staunchest fans were beginning to see him in a very different light.

  As the medley came to a painful end, the audience roared with laughter and applause while Carlos shouted and swore at both them and the band members in fury. Eventually, he shrieked into the microphone, “This band is amateur! They are not worthy to support Carlos. I quit!”

  And, grabbing his leather jacket from the side of the stage, he jumped down and marched through the parting crowd, heading straight out of the door at the back of the hall.

  Once the furore had died down, Andy stood up to speak into the main mike.

  “Sorry about that, but just so that you can judge for yourselves whether or not the remaining members of Friction are amateurs, let me introduce you to our other great singer… our lead guitarist Graham!”

  As Andy moved back to take his place at the keyboard, Graham stepped up to the mike. The lights dimmed and the hall fell silent as the band led into the familiar introduction of the old Simon and Garfunkel classic “Bridge over Troubled Water”. In a voice with a unique tone that was both sweet and pure, Graham started to sing, quietly and with great feeling at first, but building in power and intensity as the song progressed, helped along by strong harmonies and expert musical interpretation from the rest of the group. As the song crescendoed to a powerful and emotional ending, the hall exploded with cheering and applause that seemed to go on and on.

  “I think,” said Jake, holding out his arm towards Graham in a gesture of recognition, “that from now on this band should be called Friction-less!”

  And with the enthusiastic response of the audience ringing in their ears, Andy grinned as he counted them in to their next number.

  To Sheelagh’s great relief, Michael seemed to have decided to come along to the Hope Hall Food Bank every Monday afternoon. She always looked out for him, with a supply of food and provisions at the ready so she could slip out to sit on the wall alongside him and chat further.

  This week, however, she had a lot to discuss with him. She knew she had to tread carefully, and that she would have to call on her decades of experience as a senior social worker and trained counsellor to get the tone of their conversation just right. The reason she was so anxious was that, following discreet enquiries made through the appropriate channels of the Salvation Army, initial contact had been made with the wife of Michael Ford, the manager of the Basingstoke superstore who had disappeared without trace following many unhappy months in his post there. It had been agreed that local Salvation Army officer Jackie would accompany Sheelagh when she travelled to Basingstoke to meet up with Michael’s wife Anne.

  It had been an intense and emotional meeting during which all three women realized there was no doubt that the scruffy, wounded man who visited the Food Bank was indeed Anne’s husband.

  “Why do you think he ended up in our area?” asked Jackie. “Does he have any connections there?”

  “Not recently,” replied Anne, her eyes red with tears, “but when he was growing up, his grandparents managed a farm just outside the town. He always spoke so fondly about the happy summer holidays he spent there as a boy.”

  “Are any of the family still there?”

  “His grandparents both died long ago. They didn’t own the farm, so I suppose it was just handed over to other people when they left. I guess that was probably the best part of twenty years ago now.”

  “What was the name of the farm? Do you remember?”

  “I do, because it struck me as so charming at the time. It was called Apple Tree Farm, because it had a large orchard that stood just inside the wall that ran along the road at the edge of the property.”

  “Michael told me he was staying somewhere that had a lot of ‘unintentional ventilation’,” said Sheelagh. “Can you think of anywhere like that near or around the farm where he might have headed? Perhaps a place that’s fallen into a state of dilapidation or disrepair?”

  “Yes, I can,” said Anne thoughtfully. “He always waxed lyrical about an old caravan that stood somewhere on the farm. When he was a teenager, his grandparents let him take it over and make it into a den for himself. He even slept there overnight. He really loved it. I have no idea if it’s still there, now that the farm has new owners, but if it is I can imagine he would feel safe there, even if it was falling apart.”

  “We’ll find out about that,” said Jackie, making a note on her pad.

  “But how do you feel about all this?” asked Sheelagh. “How do you feel about Michael? It can’t have been easy for you since he disappeared.”

  Anne’s eyes filled with tears again. “It’s been hell. Not knowing, being frightened for his life, fearing the worst. Most of all, I feel so sorry and hurt that he couldn’t turn to me and let me support him. We’d always been such a strong couple, but when this all happened I guess the embarrassment and humiliation over the way he was undermined and then replaced brought him to some kind of emotional and physical breakdown. I knew how stressed he was. I mean, he’d talked to me endlessly about it in the early months because he was so determined to bring the whole project together and make it the success it should have been. But then so much went wrong – some of it coincidental – but a lot of it was quite vitriolic and hurtful.

  “Michael has always been a sensitive man, especially where the welfare and needs of other people is concerned. I know he was upset at how bad workmanship and lack of professional behaviour in others had caused delays he had no control over, and he was genuinely upset about the implications for the workforce, because he could see it had made their jobs so much harder. But the man at the top always gets the blame, doesn’t he? And Michael took that blame squarely on his own shoulders. He just worked around the clock. He rarely came home before midnight and then was off again soon after seven the next morning. He looked dreadful. His skin was grey, there were huge black bags under his eyes and he lost a couple of stone in weight. I suppose that only gave ammunition to his attackers, who judged him by his physical appearance rather than by his work achievements.”

  “And he hasn’t been in touch with you at all since the day he disappeared?”

  “There’s been nothing. But I need you to understand that Michael was a wonderful husband. Ours had always been a really loving family. This behaviour is so out of character for him. That’s why I’m convinced he had some sort of mental breakdown that made him believe flight was the only answer. I wonder if his dismissal made him feel like such an utter failure that he thought everyone would be better off without him, even the family who loved him unconditionally and he adored without question. I think he decided to run away – away from the problems, away from the embarrassment, away from a world that had become unbearably hostile towards him, and sadly away from those of us who simply love him.”

  Her voice had become shaky and Anne’s despair was palpable as she bowed her head, her shoulders heaving with quiet sobs. Sheelagh moved along the settee to put an arm around her, saying nothing, simply offering compassion and support. By the time Anne had recovered a little, Jackie had returned from the kitchen where she’d made another round of tea.

  “I need to see him. When can I see him?”

&nbs
p; Sheelagh smiled at her. “We were hoping you’d say that. The answer is, we’d like you to come as soon as possible.”

  “We need to work out the best way to plan that meeting,” said Jackie. “I’m hoping Michael will feel reassured in the face of your obvious love for him. Let’s pray, Anne, that you can lead him home.”

  That conversation replayed in Sheelagh’s mind the following Monday afternoon as she hovered anxiously around the main door of Hope Hall, hoping for a glimpse of Michael in his usual place behind the large oak tree at the far end of the old school playground wall. She glanced down at her watch once again, dreading that something may have happened to prevent him from coming. As she busied herself serving food parcels and then got caught up chatting to a group of mothers who were hoping to persuade their children to try on some clothes that might fit them, she was on the verge of deciding he wasn’t going to come that day at all.

  And then she saw him. He had been brave enough to come out from behind the tree and was sitting on the wall looking at the door, as if he was waiting for her to come. She immediately excused herself from the group she was with, quickly poured out two cups of tea, and picked up the food package she’d prepared before walking out to sit down beside him.

  “It’s good to see you, Michael. How have you been?”

  He shrugged, then reached into the bag of food to see what was there.

  “Have you found a bed at all this week?”

  “I’m okay where I am.”

  “And where is that?”

  He sank his teeth into a sandwich without giving a reply.

  “Could it possibly be at Apple Tree Farm?”

  He looked up with a start.

  “What a lovely place that is,” Sheelagh continued, “especially in the summer months.”

  He didn’t answer for more than a minute. He just kept eating, although his eyes were clouded with suspicion.

  “I’ve got a place there. I’m okay.”

  “Don’t you find it lonely?”

  “I find my own company better than the presence of most other people.”