by Gill Hornby
Some enchanted evening
That was Maria, crashing through the door, still in her green carer’s uniform, her preternaturally short arms outstretched towards the room.
You may meet Lew Stanford
Now Maria did come for the singing. That squat, square body was perfectly designed to produce the sort of rich, round sound that could fill the upper circle in a noisy matinée. Had she not spent her formative years in an Eastern European war zone, she might even have ended up a stage professional. Of course, she was never the leading lady type, but musical theatre had, over the years, provided enough nurses, nannies and maids to keep a performer like her going into a ripe old age.
You may meet Lew Stanford
Somehow–as if Fate had got the memo but hadn’t quite read it properly–Maria found herself cast in the role of real-life carer instead of the fictional version. She brought to it the various skills and weaknesses, charms and irritations of every nurse, nanny and maid in the history of musical comedy, and sang her way through happily enough.
Across a crowded room
Although her name was not in lights, she was most definitely one of the most well-known characters on the Bridgeford stage. And that, after all, was a fame of sorts.
‘Pass me my revolver, would you, Lynn love?’ Pat cut in loudly–on top of modernists and secularists, Pat had it in for soloists too–but the hall was filling up now and nobody took much notice. A scattering of basses were noisily settling themselves into the seats on the left; the altos were all arranged in the front seats in the middle; the sopranos were huddled in a group, giggling. Annie looked about her, aghast. Either the rest of the Choir didn’t know how to behave, or they really didn’t know what had happened. She found Lewis and whispered behind her hand. ‘You know, I don’t think they can have heard.’
He stood up and hitched his waistband over the protrusion of his tummy. ‘We need an announcement,’ he said, with grim pleasure.
‘Yes. Will you?’
‘Annie, I think this is one for the both of us.’
They walked in an important sort of way to the front of the hall. Annie coughed and Lewis began: ‘I’m afraid I have some terrible news. Last week, the night in fact that we were singing outside Budgens—’
‘No need to apologise. But I’m never doing that again,’ muttered a soprano.
‘—our beloved Constance was in a terrible accident on the motorway.’ He paused. The Choir was stunned. Then, ‘No,’ they started to say; ‘Not Connie…’, ‘Of all of us, not her…’ Constance they knew to be the best of them. Constance was what held them together. Constance was why they came.
Annie opened her mouth, thinking it might be her turn to speak.
Lewis continued. ‘I’ve been in touch with her family a few times, and I spoke to them just this evening. Everyone is very hopeful that she will make a full recovery.’
Annie looked out at the hall, serious, concerned, mute–the female half of the nightly news anchor at one of those moments of national emergency that require the particular gravitas that, it is generally believed, only a man can bring.
‘And the message is: she is still determined that we are not only still going to the Championships, we are going to WIN! She just needs to get a bit of strength up, and then she will decide what songs we will be performing and let us know.’ Annie nodded some more. Lewis continued: ‘Of course, I know you will all join me in wishing her the speediest recovery.’
‘Hear, hear.’
‘Poor love.’
‘But until she is back with us, there is now at the very heart of the Bridgeford Community Choir A POWER VACUUM.’ He thumped the fist of one hand in the palm of the other. Fifteen years as an Independent on the council had not dulled his enthusiasm for public speaking. Annie gave up, ducked and tiptoed to her place in the altos.
‘Well, fancy that,’ said Lynn.
‘Don’t tell us’–Pat was unravelling her knitting. It was going to be a Homer Simpson for a grandchild, but it could just as easily be a bed-jacket if Connie could take the yellow–‘you’re the man to fill it.’
‘No!’ Lewis began to stride around the hall. ‘On the contrary.’ He jabbed a finger. ‘There is no one in this room who is worthy of Connie’s throne. She is an impossible act to follow. There is not even a likely regent who can carry us through this crisis.’ Annie wriggled in her seat, looking a bit put out. ‘Without her, we are all equals. Until she returns, we will behave as such: equal power, equal choices, equal respect. No longer shall we sit in rows and face the front. From now on, we face each other in a circle.’
‘Ooh. The circle of trust,’ said Judith. ‘I like it.’ She jumped up and started to rearrange the chairs.
‘We will have no programme, but just sing according to our own moods. We will learn no more harmonies, just sing the same notes. We shall operate in a state of pure democracy until Constance returns restored.’
‘God, whatever…’ The sopranos had had enough.
‘Oh, do sit down, Lewis,’ bossed an alto.
The door slammed yet again and their regular accompanist waddled past with her head down. ‘Evening, Mrs Coles.’ Mrs Coles was the local piano teacher, credited with annihilating the musical enthusiasm of the children of Bridgeford for generations. ‘Have you heard?’ She did not reply. She never did. Mrs Coles spoke to Constance, or she did not speak at all.
The next ten minutes were completely taken up with the democratic process: Maria was shouted down for asking for ‘Summertime’–no more solos; Lynn’s request for ‘Oh Happy Day’ was thrown out–absolutely no more Jesus. After a lot of noise and in an atmosphere of unhappy compromise and profound ill-will, they all agreed that the first half of the evening should be spent on early folk. Most of the hall was disgruntled; Lewis was triumphant.
And, then, as always happened, once they started to sing their divisions were forgotten. By the end of ‘Scarborough Fair’ they were all smiling at one another across the circle of trust.
They were on the second verse of ‘The Skye Boat Song’ when the door opened and a new woman slipped into the room. Tall and narrow with short-cropped, very black hair, she crept quietly across the hall towards them. She was dressed for comfort–boyfriend jeans, T-shirt, black buttoned-up blazer. And with her shoulder-bag strapped tightly across her person and flat sporty shoes, she came across as not so much a local coming to a community centre, more a tourist out on a very quick day trip who didn’t quite trust the natives. She slid into a seat between Judith and Lewis. He smiled and held out his songbook for her to share. She nodded and read along, but did not really sing.
And then it was time for the break. Even before the applause had quite finished, Lewis was on his feet again and holding up a hand.
‘Just one more announcement, everyone, before you get your refreshments: I would like to introduce you to our newest recruit.’ He pointed to the woman sitting on his right. ‘Everyone, this is Tracey. Tracey, this is everyone. We’re neighbours,’ he added, with a swagger. You could see it was a big thing for Lewis: not only had a seriously cool person chosen to live in his fifty-yard radius but that seriously cool person had turned up at his choir and at his bidding. He looked around with a self-satisfied smile–as if he too was somehow now seriously cool. Or a bit cool. Or, come on, surely, at the very least, not as uncool as some had previously thought him to be…
Tracey looked uncomfortable at the great gush of welcome.
‘Blimey.’ She pulled a face. ‘I feel like a mail-order bride.’ The gush stopped. Ooh dear, that was awkward–a mail-order-bride joke in front of Lewis, of all people. Just that bit too soon… Annie jumped up and stepped across the circle with her hand extended. ‘Great to see you again. We’re old friends,’ she told the group, steering Tracey towards the tea table.
‘I don’t think so.’ Tracey looked nervous.
‘Annie.’ She put her hand to her chest. ‘You remember. Rosie’s mum.’
‘Um… No…’
> ‘They were in church choir together.’ Annie started pouring from the catering pot; Tracey stood and watched her. ‘Rosie and Billy… You must remember. Little cassocks… Tea?’
Parenting–with its open-door policy to such a wide age range–can often cause this sort of social confusion. After all, women can be born twenty or thirty years apart, yet have children at exactly the same time. And just because they are in the same mothering boat, some of them sometimes can make the mistake of thinking that they are together in all sorts of other boats too: the boat of age, for example; the boats of clothes or food or interior design; the boat, disastrously, of a good night out; sometimes even the boat of life. Or at least, the older ones can. The younger ones tend to be all too aware of the differences between them.
‘Ah, yes. The church choir… sorry.’ Tracey was coldly polite. ‘I’d forgotten that little phase.’ She held cup and saucer with both hands, tense with subdued hostility, then very deliberately stepped back a couple of metres and looked at the floor–a physical representation of the vast generational divide between them.
‘I know.’ Annie chirruped on regardless. ‘Sometimes, looking back, I think that’s all my girls did in their first eighteen years: take things up with a passion and then drop them again with a thump. Rock cake? At least, I think it’s a rock cake. Rosie’s twenty-two now. I guess Billy’s the same.’
‘Oh no,’ said Tracey emphatically. ‘No, he’s… Well, yes, I guess he is. Twenty-two! Sort of, technically, twenty-two. Not actually. I never think of him like—’ Tracey took a nibble of the bun and tucked the rest under her cup.
‘None of us does, with our own. She’s living with her boyfriend already.’ She sipped her tea, dropped her voice–‘Tastes a bit better if you dunk’–and went on: ‘Yes, one of the Williams boys: have you come across them?’
‘Er, no.’
‘Very nice family, but I still can’t quite believe she’s “shacked up”. Always our babies.’
‘It’s not that so much. More, well, he’s spent a long time lying on the sofa and it feels like that ought to be factored in. They might have stopped the clock for that bit.’ Tracey looked over her shoulder for someone else to talk to.
Annie carried on. ‘Is he on a gap year? Thanks, love. I’ll do the washing-up.’ She took a cup from Maria.
‘Less a gap, more a ruddy great hole.’ Tracey scanned the room. Everyone else was deep in conversation. She surrendered. ‘He’s working now, though. Just started, actually, in a bar…’
‘Oh, Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality,’ Annie approved. ‘Excellent industry for young people. Is he on a trainee scheme?’
‘Nope…’
Annie went back into the kitchen and started filling the sink. ‘Have you come across the Hendersons at all, over in Priory Lane?’ she called through the hatch. ‘Nice couple. In hotels.’
‘And no again. Look–er, Annie–I don’t really know people. I never actually come across anyone. Just to save you the bother of asking. It’s just not how I roll. So, general rule of thumb: if you know them, I don’t. OK?’
‘Oh dear, that is a shame. Well, you’ve got us now.’
‘It’s not—’ Tracey started, and then shook her head. ‘Never mind. Anyway, Billy’s not in the “industry” as such. More running the bar down at the Square for a bit—’
‘But it’s just getting on that ladder, isn’t it?’ She was back in, wiping down the Formica tabletop. ‘Might be worth getting in touch—’
‘—with two mates.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Annie perked up.
‘Mm. Curly and Squat? Lovely boys. Now I don’t know if you’ve come across them at all?’
‘So, let’s get back to it.’ Judith clapped her hands. Still chatting together, they all drifted back to the circle of trust.
‘What do we fancy to finish up with?’
‘I know.’ Annie, shaking the water off her hands, was the last back to her seat. ‘Something a bit modern–end on a high. Let’s show Tracey here what we’re made of.’
‘How about some ABBA?’
‘Judith’s favourite.’
‘Go on then.’
Mrs Coles began, they started up. They hadn’t done this one for a while and while Judith was particularly audible, and quite heartfelt, on being ‘nothing special’ and ‘a bit of a bore’, the rest were a bit rusty. The sopranos were horribly warbly and the altos, having forgotten the words, were sharing their reading glasses and losing their places. Tracey sat with her arms crossed, rolling her eyes, flaring her nostrils, very clearly having nothing to do with any of it. Towards the end of the first verse, they were starting to lose their way al together. Even Lewis seemed to be aware that something was amiss.
And then it happened.
So I say…
As the volume began to build and Mrs Coles’ fat fingers bashed out the first chords to the first chorus:
… thank you for the music
Tracey–despite herself–started to sing. It didn’t seem to be a particularly joyful or even a voluntary act. She looked quite shocked, almost violated, as if her voice was forcing its way up through her chest and out of her mouth, like sudden vomit or an alien baby. She sounded strong from the first, but soft, like she was keeping a hold of it, still had some control. But then her sound started to build and that full, distinctive throaty mezzo filled the whole hall almost at once. And then it built some more. And suddenly it burst through and up and out at the top of its own strength and the sound of the Choir was at once transformed. Lewis held out his lyrics for her, but she couldn’t see them. Tracey had stopped fighting; she was possessed, lost, somewhere inside the song. Her eyes were closed, her fingers were snapping, she rocked in her seat. Her mouth was so wide that the light kept catching her tongue stud. All the others could do was cling on for the ride.
For gi-ving it to… me.
The rest of them leapt to their feet, cheering and whooping, but there was no time for any of that stuff. Without any sort of democratic discussion whatsoever, Tracey had gone back to the beginning of the ABBA Gold track list. She was off, unstoppable. Nothing was going to get in her way until Waterloo had been fought and lost.
At the end of it, they bellowed for their own encore, roared their own appreciation. ‘That was amazing,’ called Maria.
‘Just what we need,’ Pat muttered to Lynn, ‘another bloody diva.’
‘Tracey, before you go, we must get your email,’ shouted an alto over the din.
Tracey, who was sitting still, stunned by the sound of her own voice, slowly came blinking back into the room. ‘Oh… no… Christ, no… I don’t think…’
‘Don’t worry. We know where you live. Well done, Lewis, for bagsying this one. Why don’t we say that everyone has to bring a new person next week: friend, family member—’
‘Total stranger dragged in off the street.’
‘Unsuspecting passer-by by means of a sack over its head.’
‘—to double our numbers. And need I remind you: we are DESPERATE for MEN!’
‘Speak for yourself, love.’ Some of those sopranos–so predictable you could set your watch by them.
And the basses were no better. ‘Am I not man enough for you any more?’ That was, of course, absolutely hilarious. On some obscure historic point of principle, basses were required to find everything said by basses to be absolutely hilarious.
‘You’re all too funny for words. Just a few notices before we go…’
Everyone got up. There was a loud scraping of chairs.
‘We’re singing at midnight on Saturday at the anti-superstore protest on London Road,’ Annie shouted over the noise. ‘Usual protest programme–the one we did when they demolished the cottage hospital, closed the youth club, “We Shall Not” etc., etc. Sign-up sheet here.’
The Choir were picking up their bags, shoving in their lyrics, making plans for the week ahead.
‘We’ve also–do you all minding waiting until I’ve finished, please? Not muc
h more. Thank you–we’ve also been asked to run the hot-soup stall for the sit-in for the protesters on Friday night, ten p.m. onwards. A big issue for everybody–excuse me, Lynn, if I could just get to the end of the sentence–an honour to be asked. I’ve done a rota of half-hour slots. All who can come, put your names down. Thank you.’ Annie waved two sheets of paper at the hall and went to put them on the table by the door.
‘Can I just add,’ bellowed Lewis, even though the hall was nearly empty now, ‘we’re just weeks away from the Talent Show–our major fund raiser of the whole year. I hope you’re all perfecting your acts.’
‘Night,’ called the last ones to leave.
‘Night.’
And the singers drifted out into the darkness, huddled into their coats, clutching music to their chests, bracing themselves against the cold air.
Outside on the pavement, Tracey stood awkwardly watching Lewis as he steered Katie towards their specially adapted car. ‘Can I help you there?’
‘We’re fine, Tracey, thanks.’ Together they pressed a series of buttons and made a sequence of moves–like well-trained synchronised swimmers–at the end of which Katie and her chair were tucked up in the back. ‘Just turn up next week, that’s all you have to do.’
‘We’re both so thrilled you came,’ said Katie, quite firmly. ‘We know you’re going to love it,’ she added, in a manner that would brook no possible argument. ‘Night, all,’ they both called out, and drove away.
Annie, always the last out, turned off the lights and locked the door. ‘Oh, good,’ she said to Tracey, who was staring after the car and chewing her lip. ‘So glad I caught you.’ They fell into step together. ‘You’re a terrific addition to the team, I must say.’
‘Oh, ha, very kind.’ Tracey still seemed distracted–altered–by the last hour. ‘Yeah.’ She was seized by a shiver of retrospective pleasure. ‘Thanks. But I shouldn’t think I’ll be taking it up again any time soon…’
‘What? You’ve already taken it up!’ Annie laughed. ‘You’ve just got to wait till next week, that’s all. Don’t worry, it’ll fly by. And there’s Saturday midnight, too, don’t forget.’