All Together Now

by Gill Hornby

  ‘Um, well. Busy then. Obviously. And all that cheesy stuff, ABBA and all that–it’s not really my sort of thing…’

  ‘Isn’t it? That’s odd.’ Annie clicked at her car and it came obediently to life. ‘You seemed to know it all well enough.’

  ‘Yeah, but, actually I’m more of a rock chick?’ She had the grace to look embarrassed even as the words emerged from her mouth.

  ‘Ooh, that does sound jolly. And we’re happy to turn our voices to anything, you know. By the way,’ she opened the door, ‘I was thinking about Billy in the second half there…’

  ‘Billy?’ Tracey stopped walking and frowned. ‘Really? Why would you do that?’

  ‘I’ve got a few ideas.’ Annie settled herself behind the wheel. ‘I’ll get some options together for the next time we see each other.’

  ‘What? No. Please, don’t bother,’ Tracey called into the car door.

  ‘It’s no bother.’ Annie tucked her coat in. ‘In fact, it’s a pleasure.’

  ‘Eh? A pleasure? Why—’

  But Annie had already shut her door.

  The train pulled away into a dank, colourless Monday morning that promised nothing much. Annie gripped the lapels of her padded jacket with one hand and waved with the other. She seemed to spend half her life right here these days–waiting, for one train to bring James or the girls home; watching, as another one took them away. There was her family pulling off in their exciting different directions–well, they all went off in the same direction really, but then some of them got off at the next stop and changed. It was a very good service. You could easily get to anywhere you fancied from here. And there was Annie, always there–the first and the last thing they saw, at the end of their journey and the beginning. A star, that was what she was. Not a twinkling or a shooting one or anything–ha–but a star of sorts: reliable, steady, the light that an Elizabethan sailor could depend upon to guide him home. Navigational, that was it. Yes. The lodestar of the Miller family was Annie. She waved again.

  The morning rush was over. There wasn’t a soul around now; only their cars remained. She moved through the packed car park and up the steps. The best thing about being out of the house so early on a Monday was there was just time for a nice breakfast before she went in to her job at the library. Normally it took for ever for Annie to walk the length of the High Street, with all the stopping and chatting that was generally involved–it seemed to be the last place on earth where she was not actually invisible–but she couldn’t fit all that in today. Between the station and the Copper Kettle lay a social dodgeball course that many might find daunting: a run of charity shops being opened up for another quiet day, each by a very nice woman whom Annie had known for years. Fortunately, she was a social athlete in peak condition.

  ‘Morning,’ she tossed at the Oxfam shop–head left, body forward, speed up. ‘His cold better?’ A question came flying out of the Red Cross. ‘Just put her on the train.’ She caught and lobbed it back without a break in her stride. ‘Loving it, thanks.’ By the time she approached the café she had learned as much as she needed to–one grandchild had colic, another was overdue, a daughter’s holiday was a rip-off–and done it in record time. She had also nearly bumped into Sue’s ex a few times–clutching what looked like an onion–but fortunately Bennett seemed as reluctant to chat as she was. And at nine o’clock on the dot, she reached for the door and it gave its happy little tinkle that she loved so much, the tinkle that Annie knew to mean ‘coffee and a bun with Sue’.

  However early Annie was, Sue would always be earlier. The two of them had been meeting here every Monday morning for nearly sixteen years–ever since their girls had both toddled off to nursery. There she was, already with a cappuccino, scribbling in a notebook at their usual table under the window. ‘Menopause Corner’, Sue called it–she was extremely gung-ho about middle age, like she’d been waiting for this her whole life. Annie was a good five years her senior and did rather wish she wouldn’t say that sort of thing. It just flagged it all up, somehow. When Annie was with any of her other friends, time just fell away. Everyone she had known since they were twenty-eight still looked, to Annie, as if they were twenty-eight, and when she was with them she felt twenty-eight too. Sue had been a wonderful friend to her in every way for ages, but she didn’t half make her feel every one of her fifty-nine years. Annie moved between the tables, bent to kiss her friend and sat down with a plonk. She felt older already. ‘Oof.’

  ‘How was your weekend?’ asked Sue. ‘How was that brilliant daughter of yours? List her latest triumphs. Share them with us, the mothers of mere mortals.’

  ‘Er…’ Sue always talked about Annie’s girls like this, and Annie never knew quite how to respond. Jess wasn’t brilliant at all, if she was honest, but it rather went against the grain to reject compliments directed towards one’s own offspring, however undeserved.

  Sue leaned across the table, looking closer into Annie’s face. ‘Oh. Not so good?’

  ‘Of course, it was lovely.’ Annie sat on her hands. It had not, in fact, been one of Jessica’s better visits home, but she didn’t want to go over all that now. And anyway, it was just a phase, Annie was sure of that. ‘She’s on great form.’

  ‘Something’s up.’ Sue put the lid on her pen, closed the notebook–full of lists, Annie noticed–and put both back in her bag. ‘What,’ she put her elbows on the table, linked her fingers and rested her chin, ‘is it?’

  ‘I’m worried about choir,’ said Annie, staring out of the window. It was true, actually: she was. Jess was just having a bit of a blip; choir, though, seemed to be in its death throes. ‘I just don’t know if we’re going to survive while Connie’s out of action. We were supposed to do all our protest songs down at the superstore sit-in on Saturday, and only Lewis and I turned up. And the night before that, we were doing the hot-soup stall and that was me on my own for hours on end. I didn’t get home till about two. It was bloody knackering. Nobody turns out for anything and we’ve got this competition coming up and that’s a huge thing for us. Absolutely crucial. We’ve reached crisis point. It’s like the decline and fall of the Roman Empire all over again.’

  Sue looked a bit bored.

  ‘Well, all right then, it’s like the BAAS.’ That made her sit up. ‘It’s the Bridgeford Art Appreciation Society all over again.’

  ‘Blimey.’ She gave a low whistle. ‘Not that bad, surely.’

  ‘OK,’ Annie conceded. ‘But if it doesn’t grow, it’s going to die, and that would be heartbreaking. We’ve been going for years. Every member is supposed to deliver a new person tomorrow and, I tell you, I’m stumped.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ There was an awkward pause. Sue looked lost in thought; Annie held her breath. Please, she thought, please don’t offer your own services. Sue and a good tune were, famously, strangers. Her voice was the last thing they needed. But then suddenly, Sue grabbed her notebook and pen, wrote CHOIR??, threw them both back in her bag and Annie was able to breathe again. This was exactly Sue’s favourite sort of problem. She was diverted, energised.

  ‘What about that woman–oh, you know, whatsername, lives near the school…’

  They were both becoming slightly forgetful at exactly the same time–which was rather cosy in itself–but even more comforting was the fact that they tended to forget completely different things. They were like two radar, positioned either side of the same area, which together combined to give total coverage and which had their own secret code of communication, limited to a sequence of blips and bleeps.

  ‘Clue?’

  ‘Big.’ Sue measured a width with her hands.

  ‘Jackie.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Moved.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Quite—’

  ‘—vile.’

  Annie unwrapped her scarf and shrugged off her jacket. ‘We have already got one newcomer.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Sue took a gulp of coffee and put the cup back in the saucer with both hands. ‘Who?�
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  But now that she was out of sight, Annie had forgotten her name already.

  ‘Clue?’

  ‘Legs.’

  Sue took one foot from its shoe and rubbed her bunion reflectively. She shook her head. ‘More…’

  ‘Hair.’ Annie made a cutting motion round her ear.

  ‘Tracey.’

  ‘Well done, old girl! After all, we haven’t even glimpsed her for years.’

  ‘Still got it…’ Sue tapped her temple. ‘What was it with her, can you remember? There’s some reason she sticks in the mind. What was the rumour…?’

  They both sat for a moment, raking through the fallen leaves of their autumnal memories, and then gave up.

  ‘It’s gone,’ said Annie. ‘Now, who else can you think of?’

  Sue gave a little jump. ‘I know! I do believe I’ve got it: what about Bennett?’

  ‘Bennett?’ That one came out of nowhere. ‘You mean, your Bennett?’

  ‘How many other Bennetts do you know?’ She took a sip and wiped the foam off her top lip.

  ‘Fair point.’ Annie couldn’t quite tell if this was a serious suggestion or just an excuse to get on to her pet subject. Divorcing couples were always like this, in Annie’s experience: couldn’t live with each other, couldn’t stop talking about each other either. She and James had lived in quiet contentment for over thirty years, and his name hardly came up from one coffee to the next. Sue had moved out because Bennett was boring her to death, yet she had been a tiny bit of a Bennett bore ever since. ‘But isn’t he terribly busy?’ He’d looked very busy this morning, striding across the street. And, desperate though they were, Annie couldn’t quite picture Bennett fitting in, somehow.

  ‘Busy? Busy?’ Although their separation was, as Sue kept saying–over and over–very amicable, Annie thought that Sue didn’t always sound all that amicable when she talked about him. ‘Busy being redundant, you mean?’

  ‘Well, more busy looking for a—’

  ‘Busy living on his own?’ Sue laughed a not very amicable laugh.

  ‘I suppose that can—’

  ‘Busy watching me and the children move out into a squalid little rental while he stays behind in the house?’

  ‘You’ve all been so amazing about that. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: you’ve been too generous, Sue. I don’t know how he dares—’

  ‘I think he’s got time. Also, you know, he used to be a cathedral chorister. He might even be an asset.’

  ‘Gosh, eek, he’s probably too grand for us.’ They’d had classically trained singers in the Choir before, with what can politely be called ‘mixed results’. ‘I mean, is he terribly good?’

  ‘Extremely. Highly trained. Over many years.’

  Annie felt a desperate need to head this off. ‘Really, honestly, I think we’re beneath him. We don’t even sing in harmony these days. In fact, quite a lot of us don’t even sing in tune.’

  Sue looked even more determined, delighted almost. ‘I think it will do him good.’

  Another tack: ‘Why do you even want to do him good? After everything he’s done to you? You’re an absolute saint. I wouldn’t bother putting any fun his way.’

  ‘Well, you can’t be married to someone for a quarter of a century and just stop caring about them.’ She took her pen and notebook out of her bag again. ‘I’ll be cosseting and worrying about him and running around after him for ever, I should think. He seems to expect it of me.’

  Annie watched as she wrote TELL BENNETT HE’S JOINING THE BLOODY CHOIR!!! and underlined it three times. She was pressing so hard, the pen pierced the paper.

  ‘He’ll be there.’ She sighed. ‘Now. What else is bothering you?’

  At that moment, the waitress came to their table. And, oh good, it was Jasmine White–her little favourite. Annie had a passionate interest in her children’s generation. She felt a bit responsible for all of them somehow, not just the three she had brought into the world. And the newly grown-up whom she had known and watched and cared about since infancy were a source of endless fascination. She valued every glimpse of them, like an instalment of a long-running drama serial. Especially Jazzy, for some reason. Even though everyone else had given up on her years ago–she did have her tricky moments, that was certainly true–Annie still had that soft spot.

  ‘What can I get you, Mrs Miller?’ Jazzy leaned over and wiped the oak table, readjusted her mob cap, took her order pad out of the pocket of her long flowery apron and waited.

  ‘I think I’ll have a cappuccino and…’ Annie shut the menu and looked up, ‘I might have a Danish, please, Jazzy. Special treat. What about you, Sue?’

  Annie watched as Jazzy wrote down 2 x cappuccino, 2 x Danish and then sketched a plump little woodland creature on her pad while she waited.

  ‘Oh, go on then, I’ll have the same, thanks. Two old bags like us. Who cares if it goes straight to our hips?’

  Jazzy took their menus and let through a flicker of irritation.

  ‘How are you, love?’ Annie just felt sorry for the poor girl, that was what it came down to. She had watched in horror as the mother had left and come back and left–over and over, the whole time Jazzy was at primary school. It was quite touching to see her now holding down a job at the Copper Kettle–putting on that dreadful uniform–when she could be out of her head in some dive somewhere like her feckless parent. ‘How’s your grandmother?’

  ‘Same as last time, thanks, Mrs Miller.’ She picked up a dirty cup. ‘No better, no worse.’

  ‘Well, she’s lucky to have you…’

  Jazzy was staring at them both. The sun was coming out, and the light wasn’t doing anybody any favours. Annie was pretty sure she was in decent repair but Sue was looking particularly furry there this morning. And the badger-like white stripe down the parting of her black hair… Annie could see the horror and fascination on Jazzy’s face. That’s it, she thought with a tug of sympathy, not just for Sue but also for herself and every other woman who might one day find herself approaching the age of sixty. That’s our choice: total invisibility or being gawped at like something on Nature Watch. ‘Oh, it’s all much better than it used to be. We’ve got great carers now. I don’t have to do anything like as much any more.’ Jasmine turned to get their order.

  ‘Aha. And do you still sing, love? I will never, ever forget your solo in that nativity play at St Ambrose as long as I live. Do you remember, Sue?’

  Jazzy turned back slowly.

  ‘Oh, we all blubbed, the lot of us. Every single parent. “Away in a Manger”, wasn’t it? You were brilliant. So much better than my useless lot.’

  Jazzy’s mouth was gaping. She shut it.

  ‘Yes, and you had a veil that slipped further and further down your nose and all we could see was your little mouth.’ Both the women were laughing.

  ‘But it didn’t matter because your singing was so mesmerising,’ said Annie.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Jazzy joined in, although Annie could tell she couldn’t remember any of it and knew there was nobody else to remind her. Not one member of her family had ever once turned up to watch Jazzy in anything at all. The rest of them had all clapped her twice as hard, to make up. ‘What year was that again?’

  ‘Now, let me see…’ Sue began.

  ‘Year Two.’ Annie did not particularly want to keep all the information for the Official History of Bridgeford Schooldays in her own head, but it seemed to lodge itself in there anyway. She remembered everything about everyone. Her total recall of the exam grades of others was particularly freakish, as well as being completely useless. She was just like one of those men who could spout every result from every football match from the past fifty years. Except the whole world seemed to revere a bloke for his sports statistics; everyone thought they were so clever, so witty, the height of some incomprehensible cool. Nobody admired a person for knowing the sort of stuff Annie knew. She didn’t even admire it herself. She wouldn’t mind at all if she was not the sort of person t
o be having that conversation right there, right then. She would love not to say what she was about to say, but there was nothing for it. The information had bubbled up. If she didn’t let it out it would burst out anyway. ‘Definitely Year Two. Pat did the costumes. The wise men had nits. Rosie was a donkey.’ There. She’d said it.

  ‘My little darling just sang like one!’

  ‘I’ll just get your coff—‘

  ‘Anyway,’ Annie burst in, seizing the moment. ‘How would you like to join our choir?’

  ‘Your choir?’ Jazzy looked at her like she’d suddenly started spouting Swahili. ‘Choir? Oh, hang on, was that what that thing was the other evening? All those old people outside Budgens?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Annie was polite, although Sue was snorting away. ‘Yes, we were outside Budgens.’

  ‘So that’s a choir?’ Jazzy had a sudden coughing fit. ‘Tempting, very tempting.’ Then she tucked the menus under her arm–‘I think I might just stick to the solos, though, thanks, Mrs M’–and sped over to the coffee station.

  There was a chap in the office, back in the days when Bennett had an office, who went off on his stag night with his friends one day and the next woke up alone on a roundabout in the middle of a foreign city he couldn’t quite recognise, with no wallet, wearing only his underpants and with no idea how to get home. He had stood, this chap–he was in Marketing, Bennett seemed to remember, and not a particularly serious sort of person–in the middle of the department on the Monday morning telling them all about it as if it had been the most brilliant, hilarious joke. Bennett had thought that a trifle odd at the time. How could anything so obviously unpleasant be considered even vaguely amusing? And looking back, he found it even odder. Now that his every day was spent in a place he didn’t recognise, since his own life had turned itself in to a never-ending replay of that one, terrible stag night, he was qualified to declare that there was nothing about the situation that could be passed off as comedy at all.