by Gill Hornby
‘Can we win the County Championships?’
She was looking at a shortish, fattish white bloke in supermarket jeans, but somewhere inside that shortish, fattish white exterior was a self-image of someone else entirely.
‘Yes we can!’
She cringed and let slip an involuntary moan of pain, but Lewis didn’t notice.
‘And we need you, Tracey. We really need you.’
‘Oh… um… Lewis… I would love to help, obviously, but… but…’
‘We are your local singers…’
‘Oh… OK… I did get that bit… but…’
‘… and we need YOU.’
‘Oh.’
‘Oh what, Tracey?’ He was getting rather demanding now. ‘Oh what exactly?’
Oh hell.
Bennett rolled over in bed, stretched down to the floor and slammed off the alarm with a force that sent his phone skimming across the bare boards. In one movement he swung his legs round, stood and strode across to the clothes rail, straight into a waiting shirt. There wasn’t much to be cheerful about at the moment–this morning felt no more glad or confident than any others of the past miserable month–but he did smile to himself when he felt that clothes rail; it was a new addition to the getting-up process, and one with which Bennett was quietly pleased. The simple act of purchase had seemed like a positive, proactive step in the right direction. For a start, it filled up that gaping hole between the window and the corner of the bedroom. Even better, it had taken him hours to put the thing together: when eventually he had finished it, the whole evening was behind him and it was time to go to bed. But most satisfying of all was this: compared to a wardrobe it cost almost nothing, and yet it did everything that a wardrobe did. Why, Bennett was now desperate to know, did anyone ever buy a wardrobe in the first place? All that wood, all that money, all for nothing. Perhaps he was one of the first people to work this out: a clothes-rail early adopter. Very satisfying indeed, that would be, if it turned out to be the case.
In the old days, his policy was to be fully dressed in under two minutes without making a noise or putting the light on. He’d had to leave for the train so early, and he didn’t want to disturb Sue or the kids. Curiously, in this new life, his routine was, for the most part, unchanged. There was no point in heating this whole house for just him, so he still had to get dressed quickly; it was too cold to do otherwise. And he was back to doing it in the dark, because Sue had come round over the weekend and, somewhat to his surprise and contrary to all previous agreement, removed not only the bedside table but also the light that had for so long sat, rather helpfully, thereon. Bennett had a sort of hunch that perhaps that last confiscation might have had something to do with the new clothes rail in some obscure way. Certainly the sight of it, while she was on her routine inspection of the property–there was a definite Carry On Matron air about his wife these days–did seem to cause a further dip in her already low mood. Quite why that would be the case, though, he couldn’t even begin to explain. Was it envy, perhaps? Was she a bit put out to be in possession of their wardrobe, when all that was required was a simple clothes rail?
He shook his head and tightened the knot of his tie. He did get these little snatches sometimes, of possible motives or plausible explanations, but they were few and far between–hazy glimpses rather than a proper sighting that you could log or record. If he was completely honest with himself–and there was nobody else to be honest with, literally nobody–he was beginning to think that this inability to understand his wife might not be a particularly new development. Sometimes, as he lay alone in the dark–the very profound dark, since the lighting in the house overall had been significantly reduced–and tried to look back over the majority of his twenty-five-year marriage, his overriding emotion wasn’t grief or relief or anything in between, it was just bafflement–as if he was watching a foreign film without subtitles. He could make out what everyone was doing, because he could see them doing it, but any explanation as to quite what on earth could possibly have motivated them to do it in the first place lay somewhere beyond his understanding.
He hooked a finger in the loop of his jacket, slung it over one shoulder and took the stairs, two at a time, down to the kitchen. The toaster had disappeared, without a word, a couple of weeks back, so he slid two slices of bread under the grill, draped his jacket over the door handle and pulled himself backwards up on to the work surface to wait. This was another of his furniture revelations, in direct antithesis to that re the wardrobe: a kitchen table and chairs had several uses, wider than just the eating of one’s meals. Sadly, once again, there was nobody in the immediate vicinity with whom he could discuss it.
Sue had definitely been more demonstrative in their early years; he could see that quite clearly. When they were courting colleagues, and then living together… And a few years into that, when she had said–rather sweetly, he had thought at the time–‘OK, don’t worry. I can take a hint. We’re never going to get married. Obviously. Excuse me while I just bloody bugger off,’ and they had of course got married forthwith. It had seemed, at the time, rather rude not to. He smiled. Looking back on it, that was one of their key romantic moments.
It had continued like that for a while and, as Bennett remembered, he found it very helpful. Yes, things could be a little uncomfortable. There was that evening when, in his commuter’s boredom, he had read the daily recipe in the evening paper and gone through the back door waving it in a cheerful way: it looked so simple, he had said, and so delicious. Why didn’t they spare themselves anything too complicated and have that for a change? He genuinely had had no idea that there was any possible cause for offence. But when she picked up first one saucepan then the other, scraped the contents of both into the bin, flew out the door and drove off up the road very fast in first gear–shouting back at him to cook his own bloody dinner and shove it up his arse–then he understood that she had taken offence anyway. He didn’t completely understand it, even when she explained her position at length, but he certainly never did it again. The system might have had a certain inherent violence, but it worked.
All that had been replaced in subsequent years, although Bennett couldn’t quite put his finger on when or how. She had given up the swearing once the children started to talk, he knew that much. It was a shame, from his point of view: swearing seemed to work with him somehow, like writing in bold or illuminating in neon; his brain lit up in response to it–though quite right for the children, absolutely; quite right for the children. But then, something else crept in in its place, some sort of subtlety–at least, he could only suppose it was subtlety–and that didn’t work at all. Bennett’s brain did not, he was pretty sure, respond to subtlety: he had a dim sense that it remained firmly dark while the subtlety went right over it. Recently, when he was negotiating his settlement with the firm, she started to say things like ‘Yes, so courageous of you, to leave in this particular economic climate,’ and ‘Of course I’m thrilled but it might be tough for you, being home for a long stretch. We’re terribly boring, you know. For such a clever chap. Used to such an interesting life.’ And frankly Bennett found it all most disconcerting. He was pretty sure she didn’t really think he was clever, he knew she thought his job the dullest thing on earth, and he couldn’t believe that she didn’t think he was a bumbling fool to get himself squeezed out of a company he’d worked with for decades–it was certainly his own view. So why, these days, did she always say the complete opposite of what one was expecting to hear? Baffling. ‘Stuff it up your arse’ may be neither pleasant nor elegant, but it did at least have a certain clarity.
He was drumming his heels against the cupboard door as he pondered. Then he heard himself and stopped short. That thumping, on the wood: that meant children. It was the noise of his children. He could see them clearly, sitting up there, swinging their legs from the knees, swigging juice straight from the carton, moaning about homework, laughing about their day. Then his own voice came through to him too, lecturing th
em about paintwork, pointing out the rubber marks on the door, and he chewed his lips. So he didn’t understand himself either. He jumped back to the floor and ran his hand over the cupboards. There wasn’t any real damage, and anyway, who would care if there was? Not Bennett, he was almost positive. And yet he definitely told them all off about it, he could hear himself doing it. What did he do that for? How did that happen?
He seemed to understand himself as little as he understood Sue. He could hear himself shouting at Casper about a B in Maths but he couldn’t imagine that he was really bothered about a B in Maths. And why was he even living here in this house? He could see himself sitting in the solicitor’s office, signing the separation agreement, helping his family move out to that funny little house the other side of Bridgeford, but he couldn’t say why all that had happened. It certainly wasn’t because he wanted it to. None of it. On no account did he ever want to live here for a day without them, and he desperately didn’t want them to leave. At the end, when he begged her not to do this right then, pleaded that redundancy and separation all at once was more than he could bear, all he got was her shaking head and ‘No, no, no. It’s your house’–when of course it wasn’t just his house–and ‘You want your fresh start. We all understand that,’ when he had never wanted a fresh start in his life. The fresh start had always been anathema to him. Sue knew that better than anybody. Every life change–however minor, however obvious–had caused him some sort of deep psychic pain. He wasn’t entirely sure that he had ever quite recovered from the shock of leaving prep school. Yet he had apparently signed a piece of paper drawn up by his lawyer, and they had gone.
It looked bad, even Bennett could see it looked bad. He could tell, from the way his neighbours responded to him, that living here alone was something of a public-relations disaster. Outsiders could take one look and feel justified in leaping to the conclusion that he was somehow the bad guy in this whole miserable situation. Sitting here in the family home, amid the spoils of war, he did not look, to the untutored eye, like the injured party. Yet he certainly felt like the injured party. And what was more–he shifted uncomfortably on his buttocks–he was injured; deeply, horribly injured.
The toast was burning. He flicked it out from under the grill and on to a plate–black on one side; white on the other was, on average, at his reckoning, a golden brown. It should taste just right. He added butter and marmalade, propped himself against the counter, tucked in to his breakfast and drew up the timetable for his day.
Typical Bridgeford. Of all the glorious moments in British history to commemorate, it had to pick the 1953 coronation–all austerity and post-war struggle; pebbledash and dodgy taste; the only regal pageant in centuries they’d had to knock off on the cheap. The stolid, mixed-material, mongrel-architectural Coronation Hall sat back from the corner of Church Street in an apron of its own car park and stared out at the town like a plain and disapproving old aunt. It eschewed comfort–its windows were high, its floors dull and dusty, its walls a distempered cream–and offered only the basic barrier to the elements. A bit of weather, in its opinion, never hurt anybody; if it could talk, it would tell you to put on a vest. In the summer it was too hot in there, the rest of the year it was too cold, and on this particular winter’s evening–one of those that before Christmas might have been romantic but now, in January, was simply de trop–it was almost freezing.
The heavy door groaned open, and a gloved hand poked in and felt down the wall for the switch. As the strip lights clicked on, Annie came in and stood for a while, watching the cloud of her warm breath catch in their beam. She was a nice-looking woman, Annie: slight build, fair hair worn in that no-nonsense bob of the frightfully busy. She dressed well–always keeping it politely age-appropriate and, on the whole, looked pretty good for her fifty-nine years. She would probably look even better if she spent less time on others and a bit more on herself, but if she did that–well, then she wouldn’t be Annie. Her face was broad, its smile semi-permanent, it made reference to neither mood nor ego and as a result never quite got the attention it deserved. If people were to notice her at all, it was for her eyes. They were a bright hazel and flickered about her in an urgent sort of way, like there was too much human warmth building up in there and if she didn’t find another human to warm up asap she might just self-combust–those sort of eyes. In a better world, perhaps, judged by a different set of criteria, Annie Miller would be thought a beauty. In this one, no one thought about her for long enough to form a view.
Annie was first to this evening’s choir practice, as she was first to every Tuesday evening’s choir practice. She kicked the door shut with her low-heeled boot, tucked her wicker basket in the crook of her arm and slipped off her gloves as she trotted across the hall to the little kitchen.
La-la-la-la, lo lo lo
They always began their sessions with an exercise like this–drifting down the tonic scale and then up again, C to C, changing the syllable when changing the note–each singer joining in as soon as they walked in the door. It was one of Lewis’ many, many team-building ideas.
Tea-tea-tea-tea, toe toe toe
Tonight, though, Annie’s voice was a little wobbly. For once, she was singing a mournful minor scale, and she sang it as if unsure whether anybody should be singing at all.
Fa-fa-fa-fa, foe foe foe
Putting her basket on the counter, she reached up to the cupboard and took down the chipped and stained cups and saucers. It had long been her job to organise the refreshments for the break, because there was no one else left in Bridgeford with a working knowledge of that kitchen. She would be running the Evergreens’ Lunch Club for the rest of her days simply because she alone knew how to get the urn to boiling point. Word was that yoga on a Wednesday were having to bring their own flasks. If anything untoward were to happen to Annie, there might never be a communal cup of anything in that town again.
Ma-ma-ma-ma—
The door banged.
—moe moe moe
At last, more voices were joining in with hers. The altos had arrived. She darted back into the hall, wringing a tea-towel in both hands. ‘Oh,’ she cried, running towards them, ‘girls!’ Of course, they were nothing of the sort; it’s just how females–be they six, thirty-six or a hundred and six–always address one another. It’s like shouting, ‘More or less direct contemporaries!’, only not such a mouthful. ‘Girls, thank God you’re first. It’s all so awful. You do know, don’t you? You have heard the terrible news?’
There were all sorts of reasons why the regulars belonged to the Bridgeford Community Choir and, interestingly–some might say regrettably–singing was not always among them. Take Judith, for example, who as soon as she arrived went straight across the hall to use her solid bulk and strength to collect and carry all the chair stacks. In her late thirties, she was a junior in the altos–in fact, when set against the rest of them, she was more like kindergarten–and music was not, as far as anyone could gather, her first love. Still, she never missed a Tuesday with the Choir, like she never missed any of the other local classes and groups that she went to every evening and most weekends–from Indian Head Massage to Construction. There was a general assumption that she was less a polymath, more a saddo on the hunt for a mate. Of course, that was rather sexist and not really fair, but then that was the current batch of Bridgeford sopranos for you: rather sexist and not really fair.
‘Shame she can’t find an evening for Weight Watchers.’ Pat and Lynn were just tipping into their seventies now–way too old for their voices to reach the high notes–but they stuck with the soprano section anyway, for emotional rather than vocal reasons: it was their spiritual home. They watched Judith move all the furniture and then sat down with a sigh, Pat getting out her knitting and Lynn her new catalogue. They never seemed pleased to be there–where Judith was always trying to engender team spirit, they were all for killing it stone-dead–but they still had good reasons to turn up every week. For a start, they came out of habit–they ha
d been coming, after all, for thirty years. In addition, they came to spend time with each other. But above all they came to obstruct any form of choral progress. They came to protect the role of classical music and religious song. They came, most importantly, to stick out their aching feet in front of the march of modernism and watch it go arse over tip.
‘Evening, Lewis,’ called Pat, eyes on her knitting needles, thumbs pushing up the wool. ‘Got something nice for us there, have you?’
Lewis wheeled Katie towards the refreshments area. Every Tuesday afternoon, she baked something for the group. The results were a little hit and miss, but she didn’t have anything else to do on a Tuesday afternoon so she carried on regardless.
‘God, we need something to cheer us up,’ called Lewis, parking Katie at the table and watching her unload. ‘Nice bit of shortbread—’
‘Dad. Cupcakes…’ Katie corrected.
‘Doh, my eyes… Nice lot of cupcakes. Just the ticket.’
Lewis, almost uniquely, couldn’t sing or dance or even click his fingers. And any song that made no reference to either the history of the English peasantry or the international labour movement seemed to render him temporarily deaf. It didn’t even count as music as far as he was concerned. While he could–almost–hold the tune of ‘The Red Flag’, give him a line from a Disney song and he was all over the shop. But then, he was a keen member of the Bridgeford Players and he couldn’t act; he was a member of the Chamber of Commerce and he didn’t have a business. He was Bridgeford Man, was Lewis–he just had to be part of everything–and he was also Katie’s dad. And when you’re nineteen and a half and in a wheelchair and all your mates have gone off to uni and you’ve missed a couple of years of schooling, there’s not a great range of things you can do with yourself on a week-night. Katie loved choir and that, to Lewis, was more important than anything.