by Gill Hornby
The neighbours started slow-dancing, and so did lots of other suddenly close couples whom Annie was not aware were even previously acquainted. And so did Judith and Kerry. Pat and Lynn were either side of Annie like a shot.
‘Well, well, well,’ one bellowed into her ear, ‘are you seeing what I’m seeing?’
Annie ignored her.
‘I wonder what her’–she made inverted commas in the air–‘“fiancé” makes of it?’
‘Just as well he doesn’t exist, really, isn’t it? Otherwise he might be a bit put out.’
They cackled at each other and Annie removed herself to the kitchen.
At about 2 a.m. the dancing stopped and the singing began. Araminta had, like her father, a talent for the piano but, unlike her father, she also had a working knowledge of popular music. While she banged away at Beatles classics, the rest of them gathered around, arms linked, heads leaning on the shoulders of others, and belted them out. When they were halfway through ‘Hey Jude’, Tracey–who had been down on the floor and singing along with the rest of them–leapt back on to the occasional table and took control. Within seconds she had them all divided into three groups, doing their own parts while she improvised over the top.
La, la, la, la-la-la laaaa
Min kept changing key, going higher and higher and louder and louder, and the singers spiralled up and up on to a plain of delirium that many of them had never known. They danced, they beamed, they hugged, they swayed. Bennett’s front room was a bubble of ecstasy, until someone said, ‘Shit. It’s three o’clock in the bloody morning,’ and popped it.
There was the normal clapping and cheering–but this time, for once, it was actually appropriate–and appreciation of Min on the piano. And then the spotlight turned to Tracey.
‘Wish you were our leader.’
‘We’d actually be in with a chance if it was you.’
‘Never mind that, we might even enjoy ourselves again.’
‘Well, I voted for her.’
‘So did I.’
‘She should have won.’
Bennett, his forehead damp and his eyes large, stood up tall and raised his voice above the crowd.
‘Yes. She should have won. And she did.’
‘Dad. You and your wild parties. Is it like this every Saturday night?’ Araminta had folded herself into the large armchair, like she used to do at the end of the school day. ‘Women all over the place. It’s like the Playboy Mansion.’
There was just the one woman, but his daughter had inherited her mother’s talent for wild exaggeration–it was possibly her only flaw. They both stared at Tracey, out cold under a blanket on the sofa.
‘So what’s the full story with her, then? She’s a bit too cool for Bridgeford. Where did you find her?’
‘I found her at choir, but that’s not how I know her. I know her, it turns out, from when she had that album out years ago. She was in the Eurovision Song Contest, you know.’
‘No. Dad,’ she wailed and thrashed about in pain, ‘don’t. It was bad enough that you owned it, but I was hoping it was nothing to do with stupid Eurovision. You’re breaking my heart. So she’s not cool enough even for Bridgeford. She’s actually as lame as you?’
Bennett pondered for a while, trying to ascertain how that lameness might be quantified. ‘Quite possibly,’ he said after a moment’s reflection, ‘even lamer. She wasn’t just sitting at home with a pencil and a score sheet and a file with the records of all previous years—’
Araminta buried her head in her hands. ‘That’s it, as much as I can take. Somewhere out there must be my real birth father.’
‘—she was actually in it.’
They both stared at the sleeping beauty with the tongue stud and the leather jacket over her feet. ‘So was she very famous?’
‘Well, yes and no.’
Bennett lowered himself on to the piano stool and told Araminta what he knew. And as he told her, he reflected on the extraordinary turns that life takes if you give it long enough; how even if you have a full cast list of all the people who are ever going to appear in the story of your life, you can never really predict who is going to have a minor part, who will never even make it into the final cut, and who will, eventually, take the lead.
‘Tracey Leckford isn’t famous, no. It seems to me she’s gone to great lengths to be as anonymous as possible. But Teresa V–of the eighties girl band Teresa and the Miracles–well, she was really getting quite well known. There were a few of these bands back then–schoolfriends from provincial towns, going to London, making it big.’
‘Oh, Dad. Like you would know. Are you telling me you used to follow that kind of stuff?’ Araminta was sceptical.
‘No, of course not.’
‘Course not.’ She nodded and held out her hands, palms uppermost. ‘Too lame.’
‘Far too lame. But I became aware of her when she did her Song for Europe, and did all my usual mugging up.’
‘OK. So did Teresa and the Miracles do Eurovision?’
‘No. Just Teresa. Teresa V, she was called. She was very pretty–I mean, still is, but in a different way. She had this full fair hair that came past her shoulders and she wore this sort of floaty sort of, pastelly sort of… Well, you saw that photo.’
‘Dad. Stop. Hopeless.’
‘Sorry. Anyway, some big-shot producer persuaded her to dump the group and do his song. It was called “The Island Was a Dream”.’
‘Sounds dodgy. Is that famous?’
‘Only for being one of the worst things we’ve ever entered, and getting one of the lowest scores in British history.’ He still shuddered when he remembered that dark night of the national soul.
‘And was that the end of her?’
‘Hey.’ Over on the sofa, Tracey was coming round. Groggily, she raised herself on to an elbow. ‘Don’t mind me, you lot. “The end of her”? That’s a bit much…’
‘Oh,’ Araminta was out of her chair and kneeling beside her, ‘you’re crying. I’m so sorry. Did we upset you?’
‘Talking about me like I’m a corpse? Of course not. Carry on.’ She sniffed a bit. ‘Probably a bit pissed, that’s all.’ Then she fell back on to the cushions and the tears came in a rush. ‘It’s just that I haven’t heard my life story put together like that before. It’s sort of a bit shit, isn’t it?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Araminta soothed. ‘I’m sure it’s not. I mean, that was all a while back. When was your Eurovision? Like thousands and thousands of years ago, surely? What happened after that?’ She stroked Tracey’s hair. ‘Loads of good stuff…’
‘Well,’ Bennett had passed Tracey a tissue and she looked down at it as she chose her words, ‘the rest of the group wouldn’t have me back. So I went solo. And that was a disaster. And then I got pregnant. And my parents wouldn’t have me back either. And that, looking back on it, was a bit of a disaster, too. And, apart from Billy, I’ve been basically solo ever since. And now he’s buggered off and left me so I’m completely solo—’ Self-pity overcame her.
‘Hang on.’ Min made a wind-it-back gesture with her fingers. ‘Billy? Billy Leckford? As in Famous Dopehead Billy Leckford?’
‘The very same.’ Tracey blew her nose. ‘See? A bit shit or a bit shit?’
‘Well, er…’ Min screwed her face up.
‘… yes.’ Tracey finished for her.
‘OK. Yeah. Defo. Quite a bit shit.’
As one sobbed and the other comforted, Bennett went over to his album collection, found the one he wanted without needing to look, and put it on.
You were on the island
But the island was a dream
Araminta was holding her nose. ‘Blimey, what a stinker.’
‘Yeah,’ said Tracey, groggy but almost sober. ‘Bloody terrible.’
‘Well the funny thing is,’ said Bennett, beating time with his finger and singing along, word-perfect, ‘I absolutely love it.’
‘She lost it.’ Annie looked down at her Danish t
o avoid Sue’s eye.
‘Oh, love, no.’ Sue sounded genuinely sad, as if something had been stolen from her personally too. ‘What happened?’
‘She just came home at the weekend and told us.’ Annie shrugged. ‘She lost it. It’s perfectly common, after all.’
‘What a shame. So no point asking about your weekend, then. It must have been grim.’
‘Not entirely, no.’ Annie looked up. ‘I went to Bennett’s party on Saturday night and that really took my mind off everything.’ She leaned in conspiratorially. ‘Didn’t get home until silly o’clock. That shocked them all, I can tell you.’ The truth was, nobody had even noticed. She had slipped into a sleeping house, beside a sleeping James, and the next day nothing had been said.
‘Silly o’clock? God help us.’ Sue rolled her eyes.
‘It was fantastic. Best I’ve been to for years. Singing. Dancing. It was a complete blast.’
‘And this is definitely my Bennett we’re talking about?’
‘How many Bennetts do you know?’ Annie took a sip of cappuccino, then shook her head and laughed. ‘I went round the next morning to get my car–I’d had far too much to drive home–and there were still bodies on the sofa in the sitting room. It was like being a young person.’
‘Bodies! Whose bodies?’
‘Well, Araminta was one’–she watched as Sue tried to swallow that down without choking–‘and Tracey was certainly in there…’ Much to Annie’s fury. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of that one, staying over. Perhaps, just possibly, if she hadn’t come home at all, someone might have picked up on that.
‘Hang on. Tracey? What Tracey? Clue.’
‘Hair.’
‘Ah. Yes. Hair. And legs. Hair AND legs.’
‘Oh, yes. Legs. Definitely legs.’
‘More coffee, ladies?’ asked Jazzy. ‘Laugh on Saturday, wasn’t it, Mrs M? Tell you what, though, got some dirty looks going home in my pyjamas.’ She and Annie giggled together. ‘Do you think Lewis has even come round yet?’
Sue, reddening, charged in and took the conversational lead.
‘So how’s your mum settled down this time then, Jazzy?’
Annie winced. Sue had a certain approach towards those less fortunate than herself that could often lead to conflict. She couldn’t help it. This imperious Justice of the Peace/lady on the board/pillar of the community/expert without portfolio manner had been bred into Sue as herding is bred into a collie. Generations of ladies in hats had peered over mahogany desks at generations of wastrels, pointed out to them the errors of their ways and directed them towards the better path. Sue just happened to be the latest in their line. The fact that, these days, there was a whole class of highly educated caring professionals to save her from poking her nose in did not seem to have occurred.
‘Brilliant, thanks.’ Jazzy leaned over and wiped the table, hard. ‘My mum’s doing great.’
‘Well, it’s nice she’s made a positive start, but it’s a bit early to say that, don’t you think? She’s hardly been home five minutes.’
‘Two months,’ snapped Jazzy. ‘She’s been home nearly two months and…’
This was not going to end well, but there was nothing Annie could do about it–she was no match for either of them. So she tuned out, and then in to the conversation on the table next door. If she knew her Bridgeford social classifications–and Annie certainly did know her Bridgeford social classifications–that was the St Ambrose Summer Fête Committee, meeting yet again. They did take it seriously, this lot. Annie couldn’t remember exactly, but she was sure that they had done all those things without any committees at all; it had just been a question of Annie and Sue getting on with it.
There was clearly some huge issue going on; voices were starting to rise. ‘So do we have the Elvis impersonator or don’t we? It’s a perfectly simple question.’
‘But Melissa, I definitely booked him,’ said a pale and nervous creature. ‘I know I did. I’m just not sure he’s actually going to come.’
‘Does anyone know a Colonel Tom Parker impersonator?’ drawled a skinny woman with a beautiful toddler on her lap. ‘He’d be able to sort it out.’ She laughed at her own joke, and her little girl giggled with her. Nobody else did though.
‘Shut up, Georgie. This is serious.’ The woman with the schedule in front of her slapped the table with impatience. She was so puffed up with the importance of her job, and the importance of herself, that Annie couldn’t help but smile.
They all looked perfectly ridiculous, sitting there so steamed up about such a silly little thing that didn’t really matter. And as someone who had spent decades of her life getting steamed up about silly little things that didn’t matter–fêtes and events and schemes and lunches and now the Choir–she was jolly well entitled to think that. If you pulled back from it, pretty much everything looked meaningless and inconsequential next to the bigger things around it. There was always something more important to worry about than that which was costing you your sleep. Their little fête–just one afternoon, with or without Elvis–looked absurd next to the Choir. The Choir, after all, was a permanent fixture–open to all generations, of any class. Yet the rest of Bridgeford did not care whether it lived or died. But then Bridgeford was just a tiny, inconsequential dot on the landscape of Britain; Britain looked so small next to America; America was dwarfed by Asia. Perhaps somewhere out there in the universe was a world much greater than ours that even now was looking down upon us, shaking its head and smiling a patronising smile.
And then Annie looked at her own family: smaller than any of it. How much time and worry and thought and love and caring–days and weeks of desperate, non-stop caring–had she squandered on silly little Jess and her non-baby? And what wider resonance did any of it have? None at all. If Annie, or any other member of the Miller family for that matter, were to flap their wings in the jungle it would have absolutely no effect on anything, anywhere, ever. All the hours she spent in the service of others and yet the world simply refused to change. Perhaps she had been missing the point all along; living with the wrong end of life’s stick.
Jazzy was stomping off and Sue was very red. ‘Some people just need to face reality, that’s my view. And some people need to show them how.’
‘What about you?’ she asked casually. ‘Will you and Bennett be getting back together again, do you think? Is it all still on trial or is it permanent?’
‘Permanent. Definitely. We’re getting divorced. I’m never going back there. God, it’s a relief to be out of it.’
‘But, do you mind me asking, because you’ve never really told me: why?’
There was a pause while a different waitress came over with their new cups of coffee, and Annie reflected for a moment. From the point of view of her own sterile marriage, she had been studying Bennett for the last few weeks and had started to wonder why any sane woman would ever want to let him go. He could sing, he could dance, he was a wonderful dad and had the manners of a nineteenth-century gentleman. She spent a lot more time enjoying the company of Bennett these days than she did that of the absentee James. She had even developed a rather illicit envy of married life with him. Was he really such a terrible mate? At least he came home.
The waitress left them.
‘I mean, it’s not going to be easy in the long run. It’s a tricky age to suddenly find yourself on your own again.’ It was something Annie seemed to dwell on rather a lot at the moment: how she was soon to be sixty, and how much she did not want to be on her own again.
‘Are you joking?’ Sue spluttered, mid-gulp. ‘I can’t wait. Cannot bloody wait.’ The cup thumped back into its saucer. ‘It will be such a relief. You have to remember: I made the big mistake of marrying a younger man.’ She shook her head in self-pity. ‘He’s not like us, Annie.’
‘How do you mea—’
‘He’s not all old and fat and wrinkled and falling to bits…’
‘Oh.’ Annie gasped and brought a hand to her throat.
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‘… he’s all,’ she made a moue of distaste, ‘I dunno… frisky’–the word shot out like spit–‘and… Well, you said it, don’t you even listen to yourself? Energetic. I mean, singing? Dancing? Bodies? Really, God. Help. Us.’
Annie was aghast; chilled by the horror of what she was hearing.
‘As soon as he started talking about redundancy, that was when I realised: I don’t want some younger, energetic bloke hanging around, tarnishing my golden years. I want to eat what I want and when I want it. I want to go to bed at eight o’clock. I want to sleep in a fleece.’ With each point, she banged on the table, as if demanding a new charter of basic human rights. ‘I want to watch Countdown and I want watch it ON MY OWN.’ She polished off her Danish and, through the mouthful, let out a bitter laugh. ‘Of course, it’s not that much better now, with the kids. They seem to have inherited his energy. Still, they’ll be gone soon. Can’t think why you’re always moaning about your empty nest; I’m counting the days. Where’s that bloody girl got to? I want another bun.’
The heavy door was wedged open. It was a beautiful spring evening, one of the first since the clocks had changed, and nobody wanted to shut it out. Inside, everyone was in their place already, and feeling fraught. It was like those last few minutes before a surprise party–exciting, yes, but not without its tensions. They had all arrived at choir early so that when they challenged Edward they did so together as a united front. And now they sat in their rows, too nervous to talk.
Jonty, tinkling on the piano, sent sideways looks over to the singers; he could sense something was up. Pat, though, was quite unaware of what was about to break. Insensitive as ever to the emotions of others, she sat with them, stitching her tapestry, chatting away.
‘Quite some party that was, Bennett.’
Nobody else spoke, but she didn’t seem to notice.
‘Lynn and I didn’t leave until nearly one, did we, love? What happened after that? Did I miss anything?’
Nobody replied.