by Gill Hornby
She waited at a pedestrian crossing beside a town sign thanking her for her visit and boasting of its German twin. Some sort of social group drifted out of the Methodist Hall and over to the other side. It was hard to tell what exactly they had in common–they were all walkers or historians or bird watchers or brass rubbers. Why people had to bind together in order to enjoy activities that were perfectly pleasant solitary pursuits was a mystery to her.
The thing about Tracey was that she had always had the opposite take on small-town life. She alighted on Bridgeford, all those years ago, not to meet people or join things or become a cheerleader for some bogus, delusionary civic pride. She had hand-picked it as the perfect place in which to bury herself in anonymity, raise her child without any unnecessary interference. She drove on and without even reading the signpost turned left on to a minor road.
Of course, the thing about the new normal was that she no longer had to stick in Bridgeford. She could live anywhere, do anything. Any of these towns round here would do. It didn’t really matter which one, as it was almost impossible to tell them apart. Or she could fetch up in a city this time, or change her name–she was good at that. Her life seemed so small, looking back on it. Even with the embellishment, the little flourish, of her commute she was still confined to the space of this one little area, just going hither to work, thither to home. If she pulled back a bit, got some distance and perspective, she could now see that she had been enjoying the physical liberation of a battery hen. And all those years–her best decades–they all looked so short: sliced and cubed and shaved as they were into terms and holidays, days and evenings; phases marked by the changes in Billy while she herself remained remarkably unchanged. It could all stop now. She could do what she liked, go where she fancied, be whoever she wanted; fill every hour with more excitement than she was used to in a month. The words ‘free’ and ‘bird’ once again came to mind. But–in the way of real life and its intolerance of metaphor–she was only as free as one of those birds whose fuel light was flashing. Pulling in to a small petrol station, she stopped to fill up.
This was not the right place to lift Tracey’s spirits, but it was exactly the one to prove her point. She looked around her and through the window at the man sitting there in a little booth, in a shabby little shop, on the built-up outskirts of–she didn’t know where she was any more–Nowhere-that-Mattered. Poor, poor bloke: if she was a battery hen, he was a beetle in a matchbox–even lower down the hierarchy of species. How do we end up trapping ourselves like this, erecting unnecessary boundaries and then hiding behind them, making our lives such narrow, scrunched and little things? She returned nozzle to pump and headed in.
The door chimed like an ice-cream van. ‘Hello there,’ called the man from the till. He was one of those smiley sorts of people. ‘Lovely evening.’
Tracey had that sinking, pitying feeling she always got when faced with the blind, wilful misinterpretation of a glass as half full. She handed over her card and for politeness’ sake agreed, although she couldn’t see how he could possibly tell.
‘Summer be with us in no time.’ He passed the machine for her PIN, and she noticed all the photos he had put up around him, of people and activities, sun and sea, a child in a mortarboard.
A homely, middle-aged woman came out from the back, leaned against his chair and called out to a young teenage boy to stop stacking the shelves now and get down to his homework.
‘I’ll sort him out, babe.’ The man tore off the receipt and gave his chair up to his wife. ‘There you go, madam. Have a good evening.’
‘Drive safely,’ added his wife, with a smile.
Tracey backed over towards the door and then hung around the magazines for a bit, observing. A few years ago she would have looked at a couple like that, automatically thought ‘old’–and then thought of them no more. Recently, though, around the time she herself hit forty–funny, that–she had developed a sort of X-ray vision that could pierce through the ageing process to the younger person buried within. She watched as he kissed his wife on the cheek and promised to bring supper through in a bit, and she saw–past the bad clothes and unkempt hair, beneath the middle-aged weight and eye bags–the attractive young couple that they once were. A boy, with the open features of the woman and the height of the man, lugged a box of cat food over and dropped it behind the till. His dad mock-throttled and chided him for being a little devil in that way a parent would only ever do to a child who wasn’t a little devil at all, and together they went through a beaded curtain to the back.
Setting off the ice-cream chime again, Tracey returned to her car. Poor buggers, she said to herself, shaking her head: not just one beetle in a matchbox; there was a whole family of them squashed in there. She sat for a moment, watching the woman and her next customer sharing a joke. And then, because she couldn’t quite think of what else to do, she drove out of the garage and back towards home.
‘OK, OK.’ Edward was holding up his baton like a truncheon. ‘There’s something not quite right in there. Let me listen to all the parts separately. Sops, from the top.’
Pat, Lynn and Katie sang well enough, although in this instance they were completely drowned out by Emma. Edward listened to them, ear cocked, frowning, and then tapped his stick down. ‘It was much better last week. Who are we missing?’
‘Quite a lot of people,’ said Annie in a secretarial tone. ‘But I think it’s probably Tracey you’re thinking of. Very strong mezzo. I don’t know if she’s coming back.’
Edward sighed, pointed at the altos and concentrated as Annie, Maria, Judith and Kerry did their bit. ‘Not bad,’ he begrudged. Maria preened. ‘Especially you,’ he singled out Annie. ‘The rest of you, try and do what Annie’s doing. Remember you’re supposed to be part of a chorus, not drowning each other out. Pat, we don’t need that trill on the D-flat. I think Tavener knew what he was doing.’
And then it was the men’s turn. There were only two of them. Bennett and Lewis began their phrase and were immediately stopped. ‘Uh-oh.’ Edward sucked his teeth. ‘Bennett, you’re fine, but you’–a quick baton-thrust–‘can I just hear you on your own.’ Jonty played the chord again and Lewis started up alone. He tried dipping his voice until it was inaudible, then strengthening it with a false and flaky attempt at confidence. All the time, Edward winced, Katie fought back tears and the rest of them shifted uncomfortably in their seats.
‘Well.’ Edward put his baton down in a gesture of resignation. ‘That was quite something. Are you sure you’re free the night of the Championships?’ He laughed. ‘Nothing on the telly that night?’
‘Yes,’ Bennett spoke up, ‘he is sure he’s free.’
‘In fact,’ said Annie, ‘we’re all sure he’s free.’
‘Hear, hear.’
‘But perhaps,’ added Bennett, chin thrust forward, ‘you would prefer us to vote on it?’
Pat slid down and into her chair.
At the end of the session, Bennett sidled up to Edward as he gathered together his papers. ‘What are we going to do, do you think?’
‘Do?’ Edward stood back while Emma dismantled the music stand.
‘About our numbers. A lot of our best voices weren’t here tonight and they might not be coming back.’
‘What a shame.’ Edward handed Emma his baton. ‘Oh well, can’t be helped. But fortunately I have a long list of singers from far and wide who seem to be desperate to join. I’ll hold auditions at the weekend and perhaps try and fit in a separate rehearsal to get them up to scratch. And there are a few professionals who owe me a favour; I can bus them in if need be. Don’t worry.’ He patted Bennett on the shoulder. ‘Really. I’ve got it all in hand.’
‘Ah. I thought you might have. I wonder, though, if you could explain one thing to me. Why, when you are going to end up with a choir that is nothing to do with Bridgeford, did you ever want to take over the Bridgeford Community Choir? Why not just start your own?’
‘Fair question,’ Edward conceded as
he leaned down to fiddle with the base of his stand. ‘It’s an established name, for one thing.’ He collapsed it at the top. ‘But more importantly, it’s got a back story. Oh, they love a back story, these judges.’
‘And what is our back story?’
‘Well, everyone knows Bridgeford is a right dump, and they love all that stuff. You know, “bunch of losers climbs out of miserable little hell-hole for one night, blinking into the limelight” sort of thing. Can’t go wrong.’ He shuffled his papers. ‘And then there’s old whatsername–er–Permanence, in her irreversible coma.’
‘Constance. Her name is Constance. And where on earth did you get the idea that she’s in an irreversible coma?’
‘Believe me,’ Edward chuckled, ‘they’re going to be absolutely bloody creaming it over Constance in her coma. Ten points to us right there, thanks very much.’ He then gripped Bennett’s shoulder–‘You can stay, though, and that’s a promise. You sound like you come from somewhere else altogether’–gave him a pat and swept out of the hall.
Bennett stood for a moment, looking after him. And then called across the room: ‘Lewis, could you possibly give me a lift?’
Tracey was now wildly enjoying her avian liberty on the front stairs, with the vacuum cleaner. It was high time, really, that she gave it a going-over–once every twenty years seemed about right for a spring clean. And if she was going to put the property on the market, it needed to look its best. And also, if she was completely honest, she had found herself by the middle of the evening at something of a loose end.
She wondered vaguely, as she ran the brush along the stair rods, if the Bridgeford Community Choir might have noticed her absence–after all, much to her own surprise, she had to admit that her attendance had been unbroken all year. Still, they couldn’t have been expecting her to turn up, after that ghastly election nonsense. Not that Tracey gave a damn about it, of course; she had spent a very busy and profitable week not caring two hoots about any of it. She smacked the wood-attachment along the skirting board. Why, at this juncture in her life, when she was at last at liberty to do whatever she wanted, would she saddle herself with a load of provincial losers and gallop headlong towards humiliation? If there was one thing that her self-esteem could reasonably do without, it was to enter a singing competition and face certain defeat; to emerge from two decades of grief and try to lay her own ghosts by creating a few more. She must have been mad to even put herself forward; that was hardly the right approach to her new freedom. And whatever was she doing spending her time with people like Bennett Bonkers Parker and the like? It was obviously a temporary madness at a time of great upheaval.
She now felt a bit sorry for herself that she was ever dragged into that terrible underground world. It was only to be nice to Lewis–there you go, Tracey being nice again, and where did it get her?–that she ever went in the first place, and it was only ever a timid politeness that kept her going along at all. So there was that one strange week, when she had led them in ‘People Get Ready’ and had allowed herself to somehow believe that what they were all feeling was something along the lines of the real thing. Of course she should have known better. It felt like a beautiful moment, but even as they were at it they were all planning to dump her. It was nothing but a one-night stand, followed by the boot. And wasn’t that just the story of her life?
She was quite sure they would not be thinking of her; she would no longer think of them. Unwrapping the new feather duster she’d bought on the way home–oh yes, Tracey Leckford still knew how to enjoy herself–she smacked a generation of cobwebs from the ceiling.
Bennett took a pace back from the doorstep and looked up. Annie had dropped Tracey on this road, and Lewis had said this was the right number, so it must be. He had of course driven past thousands of times–and spent a significant percentage of his life waiting for the lights to change right outside–but the house would have held no significance for him then. It wasn’t the kind of place he expected Tracey to live in. The paint on the window sills was peeling and the gutters could do with a good clear-out. The black front door, though, looked hardly used. He rang the bell and reflected on how a woman like that could end up in a place like this. What, he wondered, and not for the first time, could possibly be her story?
A cloud of human form took shape behind the frosted glass but the door didn’t open.
‘Who is it?’ demanded Tracey, in the manner of a border sentry at a war-torn frontier.
‘It’s Bennett,’ he shouted at the door, feeling rather self-conscious in front of passers-by. He leaned in a little further. ‘I say, might I possibly come in?’
‘No,’ she snapped back. ‘You can’t.’
‘But I need to talk to you,’ he pleaded through the keyhole. ‘I can’t shout it out here in the street.’
She put the chain on and opened the door a crack. He saw half a snub nose, a bit of a full mouth and one reddened eye.
‘OK. Say it. And then go.’
Bennett pressed himself up against the doorframe and began. ‘It’s amazing news: you did win the election after all.’
‘Bennett, for God’s sake, do I look like a person who gives a toss about your stupid bloody election?’
‘Um, I can’t really answer that. I’m not looking at you. You’re behind a door.’
‘I meant’–she did sound jolly cross tonight; the whole conversation was starting to resemble a scene from his marriage–‘in general. Do I in general look like the sort of person who gives a toss?’
‘Well…’ It was rather a philosophical question, that one: the importance of appearance in the reflection of character, the old book/cover debate. ‘I don’t know how—’
‘Sorry. My fault. Forget I asked. Tell me whatever it is you have to tell me and then leave me alone.’
‘You won.’
‘No. Edward won. Goodbye.’ The door started to close. Bennett, much to his own surprise, stuck his shoe-tip in it.
‘You did win. He only got twelve votes, you got all the rest. You won.’
The door opened a little bit more.
‘And how do you work that out?’
‘I’ve seen all the votes, and counted them.’
‘Oh, right. So, like, some Deep Throat sent them to you in a brown envelope? Or did Julian Assange put them on Wikichoir?’
‘No. I found them. In Pat’s wheelie bin.’ Bennett was so proud of this; he had been longing to share it.
‘And you just happened to be ferreting about in Pat’s wheelie bin, did you? Or is that a routine thing with you–going through all the bins of Bridgeford on a regular basis?’
‘Oh no,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Just that one, just the once. I knew she was lying and I had to prove it.’
‘Oh, Bennett.’ She sounded a little sad as she unhooked the chain and opened the door. ‘You are such a monumental twerp. Supposing someone had seen you?’
‘It was fine. I was wearing Casper’s balaclava!’ He didn’t want to show off–that would go quite against the grain–but it was jolly hard not to. Going through that wheelie bin in the dead of night in heavy disguise had been peculiarly enjoyable. And the fact that he had uncovered such a monstrous case of electoral malpractice made it even more so. The only thing that could have made the whole enterprise more exciting was if someone had been there to enjoy it with him. That was why he was so desperate to tell Tracey.
‘Hang on. So you dressed up like a bank robber and climbed into an old lady’s wheelie bin to take out a few bits of paper to find out who really won the election to be leader of’–she gave a trumpet fanfare and raised her voice like a town crier–‘the Bridgeford Community Choir?’
‘YES!’ he carolled. ‘I DID!’
In his head, that had been the point at which Tracey had flown into his arms and he had swung her around and, well, various other bits and pieces. But she didn’t.
Instead she said, ‘Wow!’ but in a voice heavy with sorrow and regret. She shook her head. ‘Bennett.’ She gave a h
eavy sigh. ‘How…? Who…?’ She stopped, thought, tried again. ‘What do you think you can do with this information?’
‘Tell everyone, of course.’
‘And when they ask how you found out, what will say then?’
‘I’ll say,’ he started to explain again, patiently, slightly surprised that Tracey hadn’t grasped the whole narrative the first time, ‘I climbed into Pat’s wheelie bin wearing a—’
‘But you can’t do that, though, can you, Bennett love, hm?’ She sank against the door jamb, seemingly depleted and defeated.
‘Why not?’ Were there legal implications that he had failed to consider?
‘Because they’ll just think you are a total weirdo.’
‘Ha!’ Was that all? ‘Ha!’ Bennett began to laugh. That was what she was worried about? ‘Ha ha!’ Tracey thought Bennett might worry about being thought a weirdo? ‘Ha ha ha!’ One day, he might tell her his life story, starting with his butterfly collection and the boy next door. ‘I promise you, if there is one thing that I am really quite used to—’
But the front door had closed–gently, firmly–in his face. Which was doubly annoying, because he had really wanted the chance to remind her about his party.
Annie put a tray of home-baked biscuits in the middle of the table and sat down. The five of them had not been in the same place together since Christmas–she could hardly believe it of them, they were once all so tight–and before proceedings properly started she just had to take a moment to savour it. She always enjoyed looking at her family as a whole, rather than individually; they were much more impressive with their resources pooled, in Annie’s view. All three girls had made it to the same level of good university, which sounded like a great achievement. After all, what were the chances? But the truth was that none had done quite as well as she should. Individually, they were all nice-looking girls rather than beautiful–each with her similar cut of straight, light brown hair; round, friendly face naturally given to cheerfulness; expensively regulated teeth. En masse, though, they seemed so much more. Somehow they bounced off one another, were amplified by each other. It was as if the very volume of them created a sort of optical illusion–a con-trick on the beholder. Anyone would look at them and think: Well, if three separate lots of DNA have all chosen to fall like that, then who are we to argue? OK, we’re convinced: they’re lovely. That was how Annie had always thought of it anyway, from her position as an only child. She had long thought that siblings gained some sort of knock-on from each other that she was missing out on. And that people looked at her and thought: Hmm, medium height, slight build, general air of beigeness… yes, all right, we get it: one was enough.