by Gill Hornby
And it can carry weak voices, with the strengths of the many making up for the weakness of the few. Not all of the new young members were as talented as Frank, but that didn’t matter a bit.
Because what a choir needs more than anything is a united spirit, a communal enthusiasm, a sense of common purpose–and they certainly had all that. And so it happened that, with the weak being supported by the strong, the young dancing cheerfully around the old, the high balancing out the low, that night there was just the merest glimmer of hope that, for the first time in living memory, the Bridgeford Community singers might at last become a proper choir.
Each singer was too carried away with the song to properly notice. But Tracey, she knew. She knew that there was something happening in that hall, and that it was extraordinary. With one ear cocked, she pulled her conducting down a bit, just to test them: they carried on. She stepped away from the front and wandered down the aisle. The tune held; the rhythm bounced along. With a small, secret smile and eyes wide with apprehension, she crept up behind Araminta, whispered, ‘Now!’ in her ear. And the piano stopped. And… ‘Yes!’ Tracey made a fist, hissed to herself: the singing just carried on.
The piano or backing track is, to a choir, like the earth is to humanity: take it away, and there is nothing there to hold you up. Without it, you fall or you fly. And to Tracey’s delight and their own wonder, they were flying. Like skydivers in formation, they were all together; airborne. And the rest of the world suddenly felt very far away.
‘Well!’ Tracey laughed, quite high on the exertions of the past forty-five minutes. ‘That was pretty bloody…’
The Choir held its breath.
‘… BRILLIANT.’
They all cheered.
‘Who knew there was so much musical talent loitering on the war memorial? I’m just glad we got to you before Simon Cowell. So, we just have a month to go before the Championships, and to get us properly up to scratch we are going to do a performance first. Yes everybody, we have our first booking! The St Ambrose School Summer Fête has asked us to do a set at three p.m., right outside the tea tent. Now look, you lot, this is a pretty big deal. We will be singing to people who may or may not want to hear us. And we have to convince them to stay. Sorry, Felix? Did I detect something less than enthusiasm there?’ She pulled her phone out of her pocket and held it up, pointed at the number 9.
‘Nah, miss. You’re all right.’
‘Glad to hear it. So we don’t have very long to prepare.’
There was a bit of moaning and a lot of muttering. Tracey tapped the stand again. ‘Listen: if any of you are worried about anything–parts, lyrics, tune or the moves or anything at all–I want you to know that you can get in touch with me twenty-four/seven. You can come round to my place; I get home from work at about six on a Thursday, and if anyone needs to they are welcome to come round after that. Or you can just ring me up and we can do it over the phone.
‘I will be on call at any time, like a doctor. We all need to be on top of our game.’
They stood, a line of separate individuals, so similar but not the same; arranged in height order like that, the differences between each and her neighbours was so slight as to be meaningless. But set the smallest against the largest, and the margin was huge. Annie stared at the little one–exposed, unprotected, defenceless–until she could bear it no longer. It was torture. She put the phone on speaker and with a practised hand swept along the table at speed, gathering them all up, nestling each within the next so that all but one was now secure, and the smallest was the most secure of all.
‘What’s going on there?’ asked James. ‘Are you chopping onions?’
‘Just fiddling with the Russian dolls, that’s all.’ How hopeless he was at some things; she would have guessed that immediately. ‘I found them in the sitting room. They just bubbled up to the surface for some reason, you know how things do.’
‘I do know. Like dead bodies in a swamp. We have GOT to start chucking stuff out.’
‘Mm, I agree, you know I do.’ She started to unstack them again in a circle around her glass of wine. ‘But not the Russian dolls, obviously. I’m not chucking them out.’
He sighed and was quiet for a bit. There was something going on there that Annie could not immediately identify–a sort of peeling noise; a fleshy, moist, peeling noise. ‘Why are we keeping them, though, Annie? Seriously. Why are we cherishing dolls and children’s books and bibs and beakers and bricks and bears and—’
‘For the future, you know that perfectly well. For our grandchildren, and their children and…’ The little one was on her own again now, set apart from the others, unconnected and alone. ‘What do you want them to play with?’
‘Jesus. Jesus.’ He sounded distracted; she wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or not. There was some sort of exertion going on which, annoyingly, she couldn’t quite identify.
‘I mean, I can’t throw out the Frances Hodgson Burnetts, can I? My mum read them, I read them, the girls read them. They’re our heritage, our family tree.’
James stopped whatever he was doing and sighed. ‘Annie. Should there ever be any grandchildren, they probably won’t turn up until books are about as relevant as the Rosetta bloody Stone—’
She gasped. She revered the Rosetta Stone. Was he actually trying to break her heart? ‘Excuse me, I know we don’t see each other as much as we used to so you might have forgotten you are talking to A LIBRARIAN.’
‘They’ll just be–oh, I don’t know, eating a story pill or putting on a story hat or sticking a story bogey up their nose…’ Unlike everybody else’s husband, hers was not technologically minded. The truth was that he was as lost in the twenty-first century as she was, but he bluffed his way around it, just like he did when they were lost on the road.
‘STOP IT. And anyway, if they do then that’s all the more reason to leave them A Little Princess with the proper cover and not—’
‘And in the meantime we will be dead of asphyxiation under a heap of My Little Ponies.’ He had returned to whatever he was up to. Some sort of fleshy pummelling sort of…
‘Well, you’ll be all right, won’t you, as you never bloody come home any more? Perhaps you might dig me out next time you’re passing.’
‘Bloody hell. I do miss you, love. Even though you’re a bloody bonkers old bat.’
Peace broke out. They never could row, not properly. They might push each other to the brink of it sometimes but they could never quite follow through. So they carried on chatting for a few minutes more–about the girls and the weekend and how Constance wasn’t getting any better and his case was dragging him down. It was all a bit bleak at the moment and yet Annie couldn’t help but notice how contented James seemed; excited even. And all the while, the sound effects got a little more bizarre. There was sipping and slipping and lip-smacking and slurping. And if she was on a panel right now, and the quizmaster put the question to her, she knew what she would have to answer: that it sounded rather like them, back in another lifetime, in a whole other world. When James couldn’t keep his mouth off her, let alone his hands. When he would lay her down and stretch her out and kiss and lick and suck at every part of her. When her body was one firm, strong, beautiful wonder instead of a loose connection of just-functional parts strung together by threads of slack skin. In the days before her flesh had started to slip the anchor of its frame and her breasts to glide steadily down her ribs.
‘Anyway…’ he began. He clearly wanted to get on.
‘Yes,’ she said. She really did not want to listen. ‘I’ve got Book Club for the Visually Impaired in a minute.’
They said their goodbyes; Annie put her phone down on the table and saw that the baby doll was once again on her own. She picked it up and stroked it, watching with dampened eyes the back of her brownish, blotchy, cracked and crevassed hand.
On Thursday evening at 6.15, Tracey was still stuck on the motorway, in the midst of the commuting herd, proceeding home at an infuriatingly
gentle pace. She didn’t really expect any of the Choir would be moved to come to her house and go over the song parts with her, but still–she had said she’d be there. And anyway, she needed to get home. There was still so much important work to be done for the Championships–like the small matter of selecting and arranging their second song; it made her quite giddy with nerves just thinking about it–she resented her tedious office work for getting in the way.
The volume was turned down on her now constant companion, Drivetime Dave. He had left her with no choice. Life was anxious enough without the added downer of having to listen to a load of moaning and groaning. She didn’t know what Dave was thinking of. Did he actually want her to slash her own wrists on his watch?
‘… and that was Coldplay there with “The Hardest Part”, to help you on your way home…’
And that was no doubt why the traffic was so slow: everyone was too depressed to press the pedal; their heartbeats had dropped beyond trace; they were sunk on to their steering wheels in a coma. ‘Dave, Dave, Dave,’ Tracey shouted at the radio. She now talked to him regularly, rather as if she were a mad old lady–or perhaps even because she had become a mad old lady. ‘You’ve got a job to do. Now do it.’
‘And now straight into “News from Your Neighbourhood”.’
Tracey turned it up and signalled towards her exit.
‘… and as I’ve been promising you all afternoon, we have a pretty big story for you tonight. Over to Chrissie, who is at the London Road site in Bridgeford.’
That woke Tracey up. The very mention of her town’s name got her own heartbeat back up again.
‘Thanks, Dave. Our main headline tonight is of course the shock collapse of the Bridgeford superstore development, and I am here tonight with all these Davids who have beaten off the multinational Goliath they thought was going to kill their town. First of all, the man who has been credited with turning the campaign around. Ben Parker, you…’
The name didn’t register with Tracey at first, although the protesters cheered loudly at its very mention. When she heard the sound of the voice, though, she was quite overcome. Moving down the slip-road, she turned into a lay-by and stopped.
‘All the credit must go to the people who have slept out here, night after night, through one of the wettest winters in living memory…’
In isolation like that, Bennett’s voice had an extraordinary, almost overwhelming charm that was not quite there when Bennett himself was in the room with it. It was a soft, light, moist muscovado sort of a voice, not too deep, smooth rather than crunchy, sweet–so sweet–to listen to.
‘… a joint effort by the whole Bridgeford community and I think, and hope, we have now learned our own strength…’
It was the perfect speech of a conquering hero–modest, inclusive, free of gloat or triumph. He was the Abraham Lincoln of the M4 corridor.
‘… not finished yet. We now have to reinvigorate our own High Street, so that we never face a threat like this again.’
What a wonderful man: graceful in victory, honourable in battle, caring to all, with a beautiful voice. Tracey thought about the last time she had properly seen him, when he had made his declaration and she had practically kicked him down the stairs. She realised just how rude she had been to him ever since. And, for the first time since she was a child, she found she was blushing.
‘Thanks, Ben. So, Dave, that’s me signing of from the Bridgeford protest for the very last time. And I can tell you, there’s quite a party just starting up here. I hope the neighbours have got their earplugs.’
‘And they’ve got a lovely summer’s evening for it, too. Thank you, Chrissie. Tonight’s weather…’
Well, there. So many of the Choir members had been sucked into the cause, there would be no visitors at Tracey’s place tonight–they would all be whooping it up with the eco-warriors. Suddenly, she had the whole evening to herself. She could get to work on the second song. She could also find Bennett, say sorry, make it up to him. Her mind was already exploring the possibilities when she turned the corner into her own street and saw a crowd that–at this distance–looked quite close to being outside her own front door. She could only fear the worst. Fire? Flood? Was there a body on the pavement in the middle of them there? There was no time to fiddle about with the garage. This was an emergency. She abandoned the car on a single yellow line and belted up the road.
It was her place, she could see that now: her front door, with a good half a dozen people gathered outside. She panted along the pavement, knocked into a passer-by, went over on her ankle, stopped and swore. And then she heard the music: the three parts of ‘Lean on Me’ in delicate harmony, being repeated over and over. She bit her lip. Her eyes were damp. And she stayed still for a while to look, and just listen. Lewis was there, with Maria and Judith, but the rest of them–and she could see that there were four more now–were in hoodies, and the long, untied laces of their trainers were streaming over the pavement. Tracey thought she might be listening to the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. Not because the sound was perfect–there was something not quite right going on in the altos–but because it was made with such care. That was a great musical lesson being learned over there, and one that so many musicians who really quite fancied themselves failed ever to learn: it isn’t just the singing, it’s the caring about it, too. And that lot, out on the pavement there, well, she only had to look at them: they really, really cared.
Tracey rubbed at her face and jogged along to them, waving her keys. ‘Hi, guys. So sorry I’m late. I wasn’t expecting so many of you. Have you been waiting out here long?’
They greeted her, the crowd parted and her locked front door was revealed to be already wide open.
‘We’re not waiting,’ laughed Judith. ‘We just can’t get in.’
‘Why, what’s going on?’ She went in and moved up her own stairs as bodies pressed against the wall to let her through.
‘Hi, Tracey.’
‘Evening, Tracey.’
‘Can I get you anything?’
‘Oh, Trace. It’s you,’ said Jazzy, coming out of the kitchen with a spoon and the peanut butter.
‘Yeah. Funny that. Who were you expecting?’
‘Pizza bloke. Not much food in here so we’ve sent out for some. Don’t worry.’ She stuck spoon into jar. ‘I found this. You needn’t feel bad.’
‘I don’t.’ Looking around, she saw the faces of pretty much everyone she had ever had dealings with in Bridgeford, plus a few she had never seen before. The only person missing, she realised with a twinge, was Bennett. ‘How did you get in?’
‘Curly,’ said someone, pointing at him with a beer bottle. Curly, slightly shame-facedly, waved his own key.
‘Christ almighty!’ shrieked Tracey. ‘How long have you had that?’
Curly frowned and pursed his lips. ‘Let me see now. OK. Well. You remember when we started that band with Billy?’
‘No!’ She was still shrieking. It might be a very long time before she did anything else. ‘As you were about three at the time.’
‘Trace, Trace, hair on.’ He held up a halting hand. ‘We was definitely at least twelve.’
‘But that’s ten years ago. Ten. Whole. Years.’ She shook her head. ‘Unbelievable. And tell me, do you come here often?’ A nasty thought then struck her. ‘Oh my God. What about bloody Squat? Where is he?’
‘Squat?’
‘Squat?’
‘Anyone seen Squat?’ The happy cry undulated through the crowds in the living room and up the stairs to the bedrooms like a summer wind through high corn.
‘Says hang on, he’ll be down in a bit,’ someone–Squat’s chief of staff, perhaps–leaned over the banisters and shouted down from above.
‘What? Why?’ Tracey demanded. ‘Why must I hang bloody on?’
‘He’s just having a quick bath.’
She staggered over to the sofa. Maria and Lynn budged up quickly before she fell on them. ‘Who are all these people?’
she muttered. ‘Where have they come from?’
‘You’re the victim of your own success, I’m afraid,’ smiled Annie, coming over with a tray full of cups of tea. ‘By the way, you’re nearly out of milk. All our recruits have been recruiting and half the town suddenly wants to join. It’s really rather wonderful.’
‘But I can see you might feel a little bit invaded,’ added Lynn.
‘Oh, just a bit…’ She wondered idly whether Bennett might hear about all this and pop in later–after he’d done the media rounds, of course.
‘By the way,’ added Annie, ‘the solo in “Lean on Me”…’
‘Yeah. Do you want it?’ asked Tracey, lifting a cup.
‘GOD, no!’ Annie went a bit pink. ‘Not me! Huh. At my age!’ She gave a little shriek at the thought. ‘Jazzy, of course. She’s our star, and I’m sure it’s occurred to you already but I just wanted to back her up…’
‘I made some brownies if you fancy one,’ Katie chipped in.
‘But now they’re all here we should probably just have a rehearsal. Unless we actually want to make a total hash of it all, in which case let’s just crack open a bottle.’
‘Or, of course, we could do both.’ The longer she kept it going, the more chance there was of Bennett turning up. Despite the numbers it seemed rather incomplete without him. Tracey stood up, did a quick head-count and assessment of the best use of the space available. If she stood on the table in the outside corner of the living area, she would get a decent view into both ends of the L-shaped room as well as the upper stairs. ‘OK,’ she called, heading for the fridge and taking out a bottle. ‘Sopranos in the kitchen, altos in the sitting room and basses on the stairs: let’s turn this chaos into a choir that will make Bridgeford proud.’