Joseph smiles up at us. I smile back and wave. At this point Stuart always looks at me anxiously, to check I’m not crying, and today is no exception. A few of the mothers always cry, smiling furiously at the same time to make it clear that these are happy aren’t-we-lucky tears, not the kind that are likely to cause problems for the school.
My eyes are swollen, with red-mouthed wound-grins beneath them, but dry. Crying would be too risky. There’s a fiery ball of outrage inside me that would blind me if I were to let any of it pour out. Dr Freeman would only need to catch one glimpse and he would guess that I’m secretly plotting the destruction of his career, Saviour College, its school, its choir, its reputation – everything it has worked for hundreds of years to consolidate.
Joseph’s hair shines. His shoes are scuffed. His face, pale and oval-shaped, draws all the light in the chapel to it and is the only one I see. Beside him, all the other boys look like cardboard cut-outs.
When the chaplain starts to sing the Opening Responses, I tear my eyes away from my son and look up and down the pews to check that Mr Fahrenheit isn’t here. Silly; why would he be?
Because it’s another thing he could do to intimidate you: a variation on a theme.
Some elements of the service are always the same, and these are by far my favourite bits. I am starting to think of them as part of my son. I have no choice but to love them if he’s singing them whenever I see him. Not the psalm: that’s different every time. Today, it contains a line explicitly stating that only he who does no evil to his neighbour will sojourn in the Lord’s holy tent. Hear that, Mr Fahrenheit? No holy tent for you, just a great big theological ‘Fuck Off’ sign at the entrance flap.
After the reading of the psalm, the chaplain says, ‘Let us now offer to God our prayers and petitions.’ Like the Opening Responses, this is a regular feature, but I don’t love it because Joseph isn’t part of it – it’s one of the chaplain’s solo pieces. No tune either.
‘This morning we pray for the sick and the injured. We pray for Betty Carter, Andrew Saunders, Heather Aspinall …’
I block out the names, and pray only for my son to be allowed to come home with me today after the service.
‘We pray for the recently deceased, and in particular, for the repose of the souls of Dennis Halliday, Timothy Laws, Edith Kelly …’
I pray that Joseph will suddenly be found to be tone-deaf, so that he can no longer be a member of Saviour College boys’ choir. So that he can be sent home.
‘… We pray for peace on earth, but also for the establishment of justice, without which there can be no peace.’
‘That’s debatable,’ I whisper to Stuart.
‘Ssh,’ he says.
‘Peace will have to stand on its own two feet, since no one’s ever going to agree on a definition of justice, let alone bring it into being.’
‘Can we discuss this later?’
‘I hate the way he veers from the sad death of a congregation member’s auntie or gran to global misery and … massive abstract platitudes,’ I mutter. I say this every Sunday. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, for variety, I bitch about the words of the endlessly repeated Magnificat: ‘He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away.’ It sounds vindictive, and makes no sense, because those sent empty away will soon constitute the new hungry. Will the Lord feed them then? How hungry would they have to be to qualify? Does God want everyone to be equally well fed, or is he more interested in punishing the privileged for their good fortune thus far? That’s certainly how it sounds, especially in conjunction with ‘He hath put down the mighty from their seat’. Are we to assume God has Bolshevik tendencies?
I’m prepared to concede that whoever wrote those lines of the Magnificat probably didn’t intend them to sound as bad as they do, but still – a quick edit could have solved the problem. ‘He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath pointed in the direction of a Michelin-starred restaurant, knowing they’ll be well catered for there.’
‘Lord in thy mercy …’ intones the chaplain.
That’s our cue. ‘Hear our prayer,’ we all say in unison. I like that bit: saying the same words as my son. I try to breathe in his breath from across the room.
‘We pray for individuals who have asked for our prayers, and for those for whom prayers have been asked by others: Cath and Dan Taylor, Margaret, Elsie …’
Worried he’s upset me by trying to shut me up, Stuart leans over and whispers, ‘I bet Elsie’s the one who’s asked for the prayer for herself. She sounds like a rampant egotist.’
I smile.
‘On the anniversaries of their deaths, we pray for Nora Wallis, Anne Dobson, Peter Turner, Emma Kobayashi. Lord in thy mercy …’
‘Hear our prayer.’
Stuart says into my ear, ‘ “We pray for the prosecution of Mr Fahrenheit, who has totally asked for it with his crap and inconsiderate behaviour over several months.” I dare you to write that in the big blue prayer book on your way out.’
‘I’d do it,’ I whisper back. ‘Would you?’
‘I might.’
‘I dare you.’
‘All right. I will. If you promise never to tell Joseph. Have you mentioned Mr Fahrenheit to anyone connected with Saviour? By that name?’
‘I’ve not mentioned him at all.’
‘Good. Then there’s no way they can link it with Joseph.’
‘You’re not really going to do it, are you?’
‘Why not?’ says Stuart. ‘I’ll disguise my writing.’
‘There’s no way he’d ever read it out, even if you left out the word “crap”.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Stuart whispers. ‘Once it’s in the big blue book, it’s between me and the Lord.’
I stifle a giggle. Joseph gives me a pointed look: his embarrassing mother.
I love my husband a little bit more than I did when we arrived. For the first time in this chapel since Joseph started at Saviour, and thanks to Stuart, I was separated from my anger and misery for long enough to laugh.
‘Imagine if I murdered Fahrenheit and wrote his name in the blue book under “Recent Deaths RIP”,’ Stuart says quietly behind his hand. ‘That’d get read out. You’d hear the chaplain praying for the repose of the soul of Justin Clay and you’d turn to me in astonishment. Then you’d see the look in my eyes – the knowing glint – and you’d realise I’d killed him, and this was my way of telling you – I’d have used the chaplain as a conduit for my confession, without his knowledge.’
‘And then I’d stand up and shout, “May his soul burn in hell”,’ I suggest, not liking my passive role in Stuart’s story. Which isn’t to say that I don’t like it as a whole; I do. I don’t care if he’s going all out to please me, and only because he feels guilty about the sandblasting and the dust and his ability to sleep through noise. He has a talent for making me want to forgive him.
This is why God, if he exists, will never allocate me a second husband. Donna only got one because her first was so unremittingly awful. That must be the deal: you either get an execrable one followed by a second who is close to perfection, or you get one for life who makes you feel abandoned and let down one minute, and rescued from painful exile the next.
I’m not sure I still wouldn’t rather swap my deal for Donna’s.
The buffet is in Saviour’s cavernous and subterranean Old Kitchen. It’s high-quality boring: the best vol-au-vents and little sausages, the creamiest coleslaw, the most expensive chicken legs, quiches and sliced baguettes, but nothing I couldn’t have predicted, and not only because it’s identical to every other Saviour buffet I’ve attended.
We parents are waiting for our sons again. Joseph and the other choristers and probationers are getting changed out of their cassocks and surplices, into what they call their ‘play clothes’. It’s another part of the routine that I resent. What does it matter what they’re wearing? Give them to us, O Lord, for ten minutes longer.
‘I�
�m not sure I can eat this lunch again,’ I complain to Alexis, whose one useful characteristic is that if you feel like bitching about something, she usually joins in enthusiastically.
‘It’s Groundhog Lunch,’ she says. Dr Freeman is chortling loudly on the other side of the room, through his Groundhog Beard. A circle of parents has gathered round him. It includes my treacherous husband.
‘Next time, I’m going to bring my own supplies from the Botanic Gardens café,’ I tell Alexis as I pick up a vol-au-vent I have no appetite for and put it on my plate.
‘You don’t like it there, do you?’ She wrinkles her nose.
‘I love it. I go most days for lunch. The food’s really different, in a good way. Last time I went, I had sweet potato and cottage cheese salad – it was delicious.’
‘If you say so. Sounds gross to me. You’re making me like the look of those chicken legs a whole lot more.’ She laughs, picks one up with a paper napkin and starts to nibble at it.
I ought to drop the subject, but I can’t resist saying, ‘The Botanics café also does soup, pork pie, lovely cakes – do you like any of those? And you can sit and eat with a fantastic view of beautiful gardens. You like gardens, don’t you?’
‘I can look at my own garden for free, thank you very much. Four quid a time, just to get through the gates, when it used to be free? No, thanks.’
Alexis is as predictable as Saviour’s buffets. She can’t admit that the Botanic Gardens have anything worthwhile to offer because they’re in Cambridge. Also counting against them is their proximity to my house and to my office, which reminds Alexis, presumably, that she’s stuck out in Orwell, miles from where she and her husband work, at KPMG. Coincidentally, that’s also very close to the Botanic Gardens: just across Hills Road.
‘She’d be a lot happier if she just admitted she’d love to live in Cambridge but can’t afford to,’ Stuart has said more than once. ‘You should tell her.’
‘Here are the boys!’ a female voice calls out, and then they flood in, running towards their parents. All over the room, small arms fling themselves round waists. Not Joseph’s; he’s heading for the buffet, shouting, ‘Hi, Mum! Hi, Dad!’ with his eyes on the cocktail sausages. I walk over to him and give him a big hug, hardly able to bear the joy and pain that spring up inside me: the way each recoils like the head of a snake as it senses the presence of the other and prepares to fight to the death, having forgotten that this always ends the same way; the winner is always the same – less deserving but stronger.
Does it ever get any easier? I could ask some of the older choristers’ mothers, but I’m afraid to, in case they look puzzled and say, ‘Why, are you finding it difficult?’ and make me feel like a freak.
Perhaps Stuart’s right. Perhaps I’m too invested in Joseph, too dependent on him. Except, in my defence, I’m sure I wouldn’t be if only I had the standard eighteen years in which to learn to let go. No one warned me I’d have to do it in seven.
‘You were brilliant, darling,’ I say, holding on to him. He wriggles free. I never used to do this: crush him against my body at every opportunity and keep him there too long, so that he feels he has to escape. Saviour College School has created the problem of my clinginess; this time last year, it didn’t exist.
‘You always say I’m brilliant, Mum. Because you’re my mum.’ He seems fine. Happy. Exactly as he used to be. No harm has come to him. That’s good; I can use it to console myself later, when he’s gone.
‘You’re always brilliant, that’s why,’ I say. All around me, I hear parents saying the same thing to their sons. I wonder how many of them have wished for sudden tone-deafness to put an end to the brilliance. None as acutely as I have, I’m sure.
‘Mum, you know you said I wasn’t allowed to have high-tops?’
‘What?’
Joseph grabs a handful of small sausages and tries to put them all in his mouth at once. One falls to the floor. I cover it with my foot and crush it into the carpet.
‘Mum!’ Joseph chastises me, looking left and right to check no one noticed. ‘And you and Dad were talking during the service! I saw you.’
‘Sorry,’ I say.
‘I’ll let you off if you buy me some high-tops,’ he says hopefully.
‘What are they?’
‘You know, those trainers I wanted from Sports Direct – you said you’d read somewhere that they’re bad for your feet or your ankles? Well, they’re not. Louis wears high-tops all the time and he says it’s not true. I’ve seen his feet and ankles and there’s nothing wrong with them.’ Louis is Donna McSorley’s son. Like Joseph, he’s a junior probationer.
It would be too easy to say, ‘There’s nothing wrong with his feet and ankles yet, but you watch – he’s sure to be disfigured in later life because he wore the wrong trainers.’ I don’t know if there’s anything dangerous about high-tops and I never did; I added a half-remembered rumour about the lace-up knee-length boots I wore as a teenage Goth to my desire to leave Sports Direct as soon as possible; the ankle-and-foot-damage line was what I came up with. I can’t admit this, so I say, ‘You can probably have some high-tops, yes. Maybe for Christmas.’
‘Really?’ Joseph looks astonished. ‘Epic!’
‘What’s epic?’ Stuart asks, joining us. He ruffles Joseph’s hair: a typical ‘affectionate father’ gesture that could have come from a manual. I want a demonstration of my husband’s passionate love for our son, not something that looks as if it’s been inspired by a building society advertisement.
Alexis Grant tugs at my sleeve. ‘You’re number nineteen Weldon Road, aren’t you?’ she says.
‘No. Seventeen. Why?’
She taps the screen of her iPhone. ‘Christmas card list,’ she says.
I don’t believe her. If she wanted to send me a Christmas card she could hand it to me after a choir service any time between now and 25 December.
‘Well, if you’re delivering by hand, there’s no number on the door. Just look for the dirtiest, most pollution-stained house on the street.’
She perks up like a dog at the mention of walkies, eager to hear me list more of my house’s faults.
‘Still, not for long.’ I proceed swiftly to my punch-line: ‘We’ve having the brickwork cleaned, starting a week tomorrow. It’ll look amazing once that’s done.’
‘My mum says I can have some high-tops for Christmas,’ Joseph tells Nathan and another boy who has wandered over: Sebby, I think. I don’t know his surname.
‘Epic,’ they both say in unison. Then Sebby turns to Nathan and says, ‘Jinx padlock!’
‘You’ve been padlocked,’ Joseph tells Nathan, as if this is something serious and final that cannot be revoked.
My son has become bilingual in the languages of school and home.
I see Dr Freeman approaching and feel my skeleton stiffen, as if its hardness can protect me from the inside. Instead of saying, ‘Hello, Mrs Beeston,’ or ‘Hi, Louise,’ he says, ‘And here’s Joseph’s mum,’ as he sidles up to me. I would so love to reply, ‘And here’s Joseph’s choirmaster.’
‘The boys did well this morning,’ I say instead.
‘Didn’t they?’ Dr Freeman beams. ‘I think it was the best service so far this term. They’ve made amazing progress in only a few weeks – it’s incredible, actually.’
I wouldn’t go that far. They sang a few songs. Nicely. How hard can it be?
‘Our junior probationers are quick learners this year. It makes a big difference. Joseph’s coming on in leaps and bounds.’
‘That’s great to hear,’ Stuart gushes. ‘Working hard, is he?’
‘I could probably work harder,’ Joseph says.
‘He’s extremely committed,’ says Dr Freeman, and my son looks relieved. ‘All the new boys are. It’s wonderful. Don’t let all this praise go to your head, young man.’ He pats Joseph on the shoulder, then turns to me. ‘I know it’s hard for parents at first, but I hope you can see there’s no need to worry, Mrs Beeston. Joseph’s
blossoming.’
‘Yes, he seems …’ This is the most I can manage, and it nearly chokes me. It will have to do. In order to avoid looking at Dr Freeman, I turn to my left and stare at Alexis’s back instead. She’s talking to the organ scholar, Tobias, about something he has applied for or is about to apply for.
Blossoming. He could have said ‘getting along fine’ or ‘settling in nicely’, but he chose to say ‘blossoming’ instead: a word that brings to mind a flower suddenly bathed in light and water, with plenty of room to grow after years of confinement in suboptimal conditions. The arrogance takes my breath away.
‘Oh, I can Google it for you,’ Alexis says to Tobias. Before she has a chance to key anything in, I see the screen of her phone over her shoulder. On it is my address, the price Stuart and I paid for our house and the purchase date. I read the line beneath and see that number 27 Weldon Road sold in November 2011 for £989,950. To the Shamirs. It doesn’t say that on Alexis’s phone, but I know Salma Shamir; we go to the same yoga class.
It takes me a few seconds, but I get there in the end: a sold-house prices website. I’ve heard about them, but never seen one before.
I tap Alexis on the shoulder blade and she turns round. ‘We’d have gone up to one point five million if we’d had to,’ I say in a matey, confiding voice, nodding at her phone’s screen. Since she seems at a loss for words, I help her out by saying, ‘In your shoes, I’d still send me a Christmas card, however embarrassing it might be. Not sending one’d be worse.’
The Orphan Choir Page 7