by Donald Greig
It was dark outside, the hotel quiet. She’d slept well, stirring in the night only when she’d heard the others come back. There was a vague memory of Allie’s low bass rumble bidding someone goodnight – or had that been a dream? As she padded into the bathroom she saw that a note had been pushed under the door and her heart gave a little skip. She hoped it was a billet doux from Ollie, a response to the one she’d put one under his door saying that she missed him, signed with a jokey heart with an arrow through it. Such exchanges were part of a routine they’d established over three years of touring together, a touching, almost old-fashioned courtship. The heady days of teenager-ish infatuation had given way to a steady and relaxed mutual acceptance, which Emma took as evidence that she was finally in a mature relationship, one in which in the brain was as important an organ as the heart. The frenetic touring provided most of their excitement to which life at home was a quiet counterpoint. When she and Ollie treated themselves to an expensive meal out in London, she would find herself savouring it rather than loving it, and when they made love she was never as uninhibited and wanton as she had been with former lovers. When Ollie’s ex-wife had broached the subject of divorce, Ollie and Emma had talked about living together, an idea they’d approached tentatively after yet another of his frequent moans about the torments of living in rented accommodation with no room to house all his books, CDs and extensive collection of comics. They had never taken that step and nowadays the subject never arose unless, as sometimes happened, it formed the focus of the group’s dry humour, an expression of fondness for them as a couple, which made Emma blush and Ollie wade into the punch and counterpunch of teasing banter. They’d also briefly considered the subject of children, but both had agreed that Beyond Compère’s current unpredictable success was rare in the world of professional music: it was the kind of wave few groups were fortunate enough to ride, and there would be time enough for Emma to engineer a sabbatical, perhaps leaving the group to fend for itself for six months in a few years’ time. At Christmas lunch last year, her mother, who at Emma’s age had already produced three children, had pointedly asked her daughter how old she was, as though she hadn’t been present at her birth. Emma had patiently explained that things were different in the modern day, that more and more women were having children in their middle or even late thirties. ‘You’re not a lesbian, are you darling?’ her mother had asked.
Now, looking in the mirror, Emma’s early-morning inventory revealed lines around her eyes, a reminder that she’d turned thirty last year. Susan, the self-confessed Moisturising Queen, who’d spent many a student summer holiday working on the ground floor in Selfridges whilst staying at her rich father’s pied-à-terre in Baker Street, had promised to act as Emma’s personal shopper in Tours while she was otherwise detained delivering her lecture. The erstwhile perfume seller could speak knowledgably and at some length on the principles of layering, bliss points and anti-oxidants, a script that sounded as rehearsed and polished as her singing, and had developed in Emma an almost junkie-like dependence on Clarins toners and moisturisers. For all her expertise, though, Susan always had a slightly overdone appearance onstage, more mask than face, and Emma preferred her own minimal approach to make-up.
She packed her things, pulled on last night’s clothes, then rang down to reception to check that the cabs were on their way. ‘Aye, lass,’ she was reassured in a warm, Geordie accent. In any other context she would object to being called a lass, but up here in the North East she sensed none of the patronising assumptions that she encountered in the South, only an affectionate concern. She picked up her luggage and scanned the room for anything she might have left behind, then stooped to pick up Ollie’s note. It was a disappointingly short scribble: one large word and then a signature. Susan was emerging from her own room further down the corridor, immaculately made-up as always, her eyes, haloed in eyeliner, eye shadow and mascara, improbably bright for the time of day. They waved at each other, mindful of the ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs on various doors.
Emma glanced at the note.
Sam-boo-kah!*
Love you
O
X
She had no idea what Sam-boo-kah! meant, and the asterisk, which referenced a tightly written footnote at the bottom of the page telling her to pronounce the word ‘in a Geordie accent’, didn’t help. She presumed that Ollie was talking about Sambuca, the clear Italian liqueur often served flaming with three coffee beans floating on the top. The reference to alcohol didn’t surprise her; after rugby players, she reckoned that the hardest drinking culture was to be found amongst musicians, both ancient and modern. When she spoke to an audience she would often throw in stories of infringements of decorum at choral foundations, of which she had over the years collected extensive, humorous examples, most of them provided by academics willing to share their archival research. Thus she had a ready stock of stories about singers running off with money collected for parties, of drunkenness in church, or being paid in wine rather than cash. It seemed that fifteenth-century singers were just as likely to get drunk as their twentieth-century counterparts, and she would deliver these anecdotes to audiences with a raised eyebrow and a wry look upstage to the men of the group.
The exact details of how Ollie and the others had been drinking Sambuca would doubtless emerge. They’d visited Italy only two weeks before, and after the concert the tenors and basses had tried unsuccessfully to recreate a drink called a Zombie by layering several Italian liqueurs on top of each other. Maybe this was a continuation of that tradition?
The group were slowly assembling in the lobby, some talking animatedly, over-compensating for the early start, others moving carefully with sheepish grins, caught between residual inebriation and an emergent hangover. Of the men, only Craig looked awake, almost feverish, a radio clamped to his head, parroting information about the England cricket team’s progress against New Zealand in the Second Test Match in Wellington to anyone interested. Emma hadn’t really been aware that England played cricket in the winter until she’d travelled with Craig, whose sleep was disrupted more than most by his steadfast commitment to his beatified sport. In the summer months, he would scurry from rehearsals across the road to the local pub to watch a few overs, or stand looking gloomily up at the skies if rain threatened to disrupt a day’s play. He approached Emma now, a stern expression on his face, and she thought for a moment he was about to tell her he’d lost his voice.
‘Play delayed. New Zealand put themselves in. Not much happened yet, but they’ve brought Caddie back. He’ll sort them out.’
‘Oh. Thanks, Craig,’ she said, despite understanding only the vaguest implication of his report, and he nodded like a soldier pleased to have delivered a message to his senior officer.
She found herself in a taxi with Allie, Ollie and Susan, which she knew would be awkward for them all. When Susan started asking her what she needed in the way of Clarins, Emma caught Allie rolling his eyes theatrically and Ollie responding with a grimace. The two basses had little time for Susan, thinking her shallow and superficial; though the accusation was not entirely unfounded, Emma often found herself taking the other woman’s side in both private and public, pointing to her abilities as a singer and her command of languages which far outstripped that of either of the basses. In fact, they delighted in their ignorance, an obvious enough defence for their affected laziness, and often giggled like overgrown schoolboys at words in foreign languages. Emma had some sympathy for Susan, who lurched from one amorous disaster to another and demonstrated a quite staggering capacity for self-delusion in the short time that her unsuccessful relationships lasted. The soprano had variously gone out with her car mechanic, the man who repaired her boiler and – much to the delight of Allie and Ollie who competed over suitably obscene puns – her plumber.
Emma and Susan chatted about eye creams and lipsticks and ignored the men’s silent, resentful communication. They were taciturn at the best of times but now they seemed to emanate host
ility. Perched in the back seat between Ollie and Susan, Ollie seemed to shrink from Emma, avoiding the flirtatious press of her knee on his thigh, gripping the overhead handle with both hands so that his body was angled away. She knew from experience that Ollie was at his most guarded early in the morning, sensitive to bright lights and loud noises or any extrovert behaviour, including his own. When Susan searched in her handbag for a lipstick, the colour of which she thought would suit her, Emma took advantage of the pause to enquire about the previous night.
‘Short night, boys?’ she asked, looking at both of them in turn.
‘Short. And sweet,’ said Ollie, speaking for both of them.
‘Sambuca?’ she quizzed, hoping one of them would elaborate.
They both laughed. ‘Tell you later,’ said Ollie, continuing to stare out the window. At least on the plane she and Ollie would be seated together and would be far enough away from the rest of the group for him to disclose the full story without having to worry about sparing Allie’s blushes.
The budget wouldn’t stretch to the expensive tickets that would take them directly from Newcastle to Paris, so the route was to take them via London. Flying these days had none of the glamour that had attracted Emma as a girl and which had caused her to announce confidently at the age of seven that she wanted to be a stewardess when she grew up. It was the faded picture which her mother kept as a bookmark that did it: a super-slim young woman in a pencil skirt walking down the aisle of an aircraft with one arm on her hip, the other holding a silver tray of martinis above her head, a mythical image of independence and sophistication that spoke of an earlier, more optimistic age. Flying these days was purely functional: time to grab some food and read the paper, or do some work.
By the time they’d boarded, a tapestry of overheard conversations had provided a rough outline of the previous night’s events but Emma heard the full story about the Sambucas from Ollie on the first flight. Allie, Ollie and Charlie had gone to the pub straight after the concert and worked their way diligently through three pints each of Newcastle Brown. ‘When in Rome…’ was their motto, and, though they all thought the beer overrated, they shared the same unspoken concern that they would get called soft southern Jessies if they didn’t drink the city’s famous brew. They needn’t have worried. The locals took to them, the more so when Allie, generous as ever, bought a large round. His instincts rarely failed him in such matters and he had picked a pub that regarded licensing laws as a fluid social experiment. Later, Marco and Craig had joined them after a quick pasta at an Italian restaurant around the corner. Having drunk a bottle of red wine between them, Marco had no intention of changing to beer and, when offered a drink by one of the group’s new-found drinking partners, he’d panicked and blurted out the drink he would have ordered had he still been in the Italian restaurant.
‘Sambuca?’ he asked in a quavering tenor voice.
‘Sam-boo-kah?’ cried the Geordie. ‘Sam-boo-kah? What the blazes is that?’
Marco quickly tried to change his order to something less obscure, but the Geordie was already asking the landlord if he had any ‘Sam-boo-kah’. The word was picked up all around the pub and suddenly the singers were surrounded by a chorus of ‘Sam-boo-kah’ chanted in broad accents. After that Marco had little choice but to drink the seemingly endless pints of ‘Newkie Brown’ that came his way and they’d ended up getting to bed some time after two.
Now the late-nighters were sound asleep. Emma had no concerns about their performances later that day – they all had the constitution of oxes – but sleep would help, and she told Ollie to get forty winks while she checked through her papers for the day ahead.
The first flight arrived in London on time at 09.05. It was then a hop on the Tube to change terminals, followed by a wait of about an hour and a half. They’d all agreed that what they needed then was a fry-up: a good old-fashioned British breakfast, their due reward for an early start.
At Heathrow, Allie led The Breakfast Club (as Ollie insisted on calling it after a film that only he had seen) to his chosen restaurant. Over years of touring, Allie had sampled breakfasts in most airports and provided expert guidance to those who required it. Emma almost expected him to ask for his customary table. Reverently he intoned a mock grace – ‘Praise the Lard’ – before tucking into his cholesterol-laden plate as if he hadn’t eaten for weeks. Emma would have been quite happy with a coffee and a croissant, as would Susan (who’d chosen the more healthy scrambled-eggs-and-smoked-salmon option, much to Allie’s disgust), but there were times when individual preference was overridden by an unspoken demand for collective conformity.
Having been asked by the Guardian to write a piece on the touring life of musicians, Emma had recently read Freud’s analysis on group psychology, hoping to find something with which to anchor her first paragraph. She’d been amused to discover there the contention that one of the characteristics of communal behaviour was that mental ability was reduced to the person of the lowest intelligence. Looking around the table now, it was difficult to say who could lay claim to the dubious prize, for each had different strengths. Allie and Ollie would have nominated Susan, though her skills as a linguist argued otherwise. Others might deem Allie’s silence as evidence of ignorance, but his chosen reading was Nietzsche and T.S. Eliot and, had he not married so young, he would have done a Ph.D. on Auden. Neither of the tenors – Marco or Charlie – had gone to university, instead attending music college where they had respectively specialised in Italian madrigals and German lieder. Marco, born of an Italian mother, was bilingual and well versed in Renaissance architecture; Charlie was drawn to the Gothic cathedrals of Northern Europe. For both, travel represented a chance to indulge their passion and many a tour saw them organising cultural excursions for anyone who expressed an interest. Peter and Craig, the altos, had both studied music at Oxbridge colleges – Peter at King’s College, Cambridge and Craig at Christ Church, Oxford – examples of perhaps the most common template for English choral singers. On the face of it, they were the most erudite, though Emma thought them in many ways the least motivated, as if the map laid out for them from the time they were choirboys – at Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s respectively – had led to premature success and left them directionless after graduation. Certainly they contributed least in rehearsals to debates on the meaning of text and musical interpretation. Susan and Claire were chalk and cheese in many ways, Susan the glamour puss to Claire’s plain appearance. They had been mistaken on more than one occasion for a lesbian couple, which made Susan blush and Claire angry. Claire, the oldest in the group, was happily married and the most domestically oriented of the group, mother to a boy of eleven and a girl of seven. At university she had studied biology and played for the hockey team, and her naturally competitive instincts were now exclusively channelled into her children. It was wise, the members of the group had learned, to ask after them; otherwise Claire could become morose and withdrawn, sometimes sitting on her own, looking at photos and crying. Given the opportunity, pictures would be produced, even photocopied school reports, and her mood would instantly brighten.
Emma felt that Freud should have focused more upon the ritualised social behaviour of eating and drinking. If there was any surrender of individual standards to the lowest group denominator then it was probably manifest in culinary expectations, here represented by Allie for whom food was, more often than not, merely an accompaniment to drink. He was chomping on a piece of fried bread loaded with mushrooms and tomato ketchup, gesturing to Claire, who was playing ‘mother’, to fill his mug with teak-coloured tea. Emma was struck by the contradiction: in twelve hours’ time he would open that same mouth and out would come a resonant, rounded, controlled, intimate expression of faith that would combine with the voices of his fellow breakfasters and create a moment of sheer sonic beauty. And then, half an hour after the concert had ended, he’d have one of his trademark roll-ups in one hand and a glass of beer in the other. Touring life, thought Emma, was an end
less roller-coaster of descents from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again, from the dull demands of travel to the realms of high art: one minute they were careering down an escalator to catch a flight, the next pondering the mindset of an arcane fifteenth-century composer; breakfast was egg and chips in England, and dinner would be chased down with fine champagne in France.
Allie was mopping his plate with a piece of toast when Marco arrived. The tenor had skipped breakfast on account of his hangover and now had considerably more colour in his cheeks and a smile on his face. He was waving a copy of The Gramophone above his head like a newspaper seller.
‘Read all about it,’ he cried.
‘Feeling a bit better, then?’ asked Charlie.
‘Getting there,’ his colleague replied.
‘What’s it like?’ Susan asked eagerly. The soprano was intent on sharing her excitement with others who hadn’t, like herself and Emma, already seen the review of the new album in galley proofs. ‘Read it. Read it,’ she instructed, clapping her hands.
Marco read the review out loud, occasionally interrupted by one-liners and the odd cheer when obvious praise was offered.
‘He could have mentioned us by name.’ Craig looked up from his cricket magazine.
‘You know him?’ asked Susan.
‘Sang together at Oxford a few times. Nice guy. American.’
‘Reviewers never mention singers.’ Allie winked at Emma. ‘Only conductors.’
Emma stood up and took a small bow to show that she’d taken no offence. ‘I mentioned everyone by name, but they don’t always print these things,’ she said – but already the subject had moved on.
‘What’s his problem with new repertoire?’ Marco asked, passing the magazine around the group so each of them could read the review. Porter had begun the piece by saying that there was no new music here, something that, out of context, sounded like a criticism of the group rather than an observation about music history.