Choral Society

by Prue Leith

  Johnny looked up, his face a childish pantomime of guilt. ‘Oh … I only gave him a few, I promise. And I do like them.’

  Lucy laughed. ‘Good. Let’s see you eat the rest. Then you can get another tick in the box.’ Johnny dutifully piled the remaining prawns on his buttered bread and ate them.

  Clare watched him, rather hoping he would fail. ‘I liked them first go,’ she said. Then she slid sideways off her chair and fetched the pad and pencil from the sideboard. ‘How do you spell prawns, Gran?’

  Lucy spelled it for her and then asked, ‘What’s the score, Clare?’

  Clare read: ‘Thai red curry, broccoli, spinach, black olives – only we both still hate them – fish soup, fish stew, stuffed marrow, lamb stew, spicy couscous, smoked haddock, junket

  ‘Urrgghh. That’s gross. I still hate that,’ Johnny piped up.

  Clare took no notice.

  ‘Beetroot – Johnny likes that but I think it’s disgusting – porridge, mushrooms, corn on the cob, goat’s cheese, and prawns.’

  Lucy smiled at the pride on Clare’s face. She wished Grace could see it, although she feared her daughter would see her efforts as criticism. She took the pad from Clare and studied it. It was a chart, with the new foods she was trying to get them to like listed down the side, and with the vertical columns labelled Eaten by Johnny, Eaten by Clare, Enjoyed by Johnny, Enjoyed by Clare.!

  Every time something was successfully swallowed, a big green tick went into the relevant column.

  But, thought Lucy, her holiday resolution to get the children off pasta, pizza and fish fingers had not been a total success: after one black olive the children had gone on strike, and Clare had greeted beetroot with vomiting noises by way of comment. The fridge was full of the things the children had agreed to taste daily in the belief (their grandmother’s belief anyway) that they would get to like them before they went home. Olives and beetroot were obviously a longer-term project.

  But Lucy was pleased with them, and with herself. The children had tried everything, and even in the Enjoyed columns there were more green ticks than blank spaces. At least they’d got minds, and mouths, slightly more open to new things. It was a start.

  The children had had, thought Lucy, the best possible holiday. She had banned Nintendo and television, and introduced them to the joys of Ludo, Scrabble and Draughts. They had spent happy hours on the cold lonely beaches without another soul in sight. They’d built sandcastles, collected shells, even paddled, though the December water was icy. They had read Swallows and Amazons aloud, which, to Lucy’s astonishment, they’d loved. And she’d given them cooking lessons.

  Tonight’s dinner was to be made entirely out of food the children had resolutely disliked before coming to Pencarrick. The children were as eager as Lucy to show off their grown-up tastes to their parents.

  Because the hotel was closed for the winter they had the kitchen to themselves. Lucy and the children had been ‘prepping’ all day, but when it came to serving the dinner, Lucy sat down with Grace and Archie, while the children ‘did the service’ under Joshua’s eye, and brought it to the table. Then they sat down with their parents to eat it.

  They started with a prawn cocktail made from more of the prawns they had cooked and peeled for lunch, with home-made mayonnaise doctored with a little tomato ketchup, and shredded cos lettuce.

  Then came a green chicken curry with Thai spices they’d ground themselves, steamed rice and broccoli. The last course was a local goat’s cheese served with home-made focaccia bread, and candied orange slices, which had been drying over the Aga for days.

  Dinner was a cracking success. Lucy felt a great wash of pride at the children’s concentration and commitment, and Grace was suitably congratulatory about the children eating everything. If she felt any shafts of jealousy that her mother could get her children to eat things she couldn’t, she didn’t show it.

  Both Johnny and Clare were very excited, competing to tell their parents about the sailing, the shells they’d found, how to develop photographs (the day Lucy went to her rehearsal had been spent with Josh), how to make mayonnaise, how to cook the orange slices in sugar syrup and then dry them.

  With the hubbub of the family supper at its height Lucy sat back, detached and content, as she watched Joshua helping Clare to arrange the cheese, candied orange and focaccia on a chopping board. His photographer’s eye would not allow them to be piled up any old how. And yet the finished cheese board looked wonderfully unarranged, as if it had just happened, with no designer input. He photographed it with professional attention, as he had every course.

  Lucy’s eyes drifted to Johnny, earnestly showing Archie how to grind spices in a pestle and mortar.

  This is real happiness, she thought. She considered the possibility that she had somehow negotiated the pitfalls of widowhood, and found a way of being close to her family without making demands on them. And her old fears of memory loss had receded. I’ll chuck going to the Memory Clinic, she thought. What’s the point? If I go mad, I go mad. I refuse to worry about it any more.

  She looked at Grace, bent over Josh’s photo of Clare and her baling out the rowing boat with a Tupperware box and a beach bucket. They were both laughing. Grace looked up and caught her gaze.

  ‘Mum, you’ve given them such a wonderful time. How do you do it? Ten days of them should have reduced you to a wreck, but you look marvellous.’

  ‘I’ve loved it. And I’m really happy here,’ she said. It was true. Pencarrick would give her a home, a business and space to write. And would draw her grandchildren and Grace in a way the Cotswold house could not.

  Somehow, in the past year, she had developed a happy independence. Grace could not control her, and indeed no longer seemed to want to. And she might, or might not, do a telly series.

  But I know, she thought, what has really made the difference – it’s friendship. In a family, it’s the family that counts, but single people need friends. Rebecca and Joanna, and latterly Josh, had been the saving of her.

  She looked up and caught Joshua’s eye. He blew her an almost invisible kiss.

  Late the following afternoon, when the family had left and Joshua had gone back to his studio, Lucy took the rowing-boat out in the bay. It was clear and cold and the sea was calm. Streaky clouds caught the last of the light just above the horizon. High above, stars were beginning to speckle the darkening sky.

  She was warmly dressed with a good few layers under her anorak. She pulled the cowl neck of her sweater up over her ears and jammed her ancient fur hat on her head. She pulled the anorak zip up to her neck, and slipped her hands into David’s old fishing mittens with cut off fingers. She couldn’t bear gloves that prevented her feeling what she was doing.

  She rowed slowly out into the middle of the bay, enjoying the rhythm of the oars and the way the water flashed and glinted in the moonlight. There was very little current and no wind and she could ship her oars and drift slowly towards the shore with the tide.

  I expect Grace would have a fit, she thought. She’d say taking a rowing-boat out in the dark, alone, in a Cornish sea in December without a life jacket, is irresponsible madness. But I will be home long before the tide turns.

  She had the urn between her knees. For the past two years, it had lived on a shelf in her study. She didn’t like the urn. It was ornate and marble, and very heavy. It’s too funereal, she thought. And then smiled. Of course it’s funereal. It contains David’s ashes.

  She had the kitchen bowl from the sink with her too, and now she tipped the ashes, which were surprisingly white and gritty, into the basin and then opened the shoebox on the seat beside her, and scattered its contents on top of the ashes. These were wild flower heads (not many, flowers being rare in December, even in Cornwall), seed pods, small fir cones and leaves the children had collected in their fortnight with her. They had pressed the flowers and the leaves between blotting paper and dried the seed pods over the Aga with the orange slices. There was also the children
’s collection of shells that Lucy had told them they could not take to London and that she’d return to the beach. Well, not quite, she thought, but they will end up on the beach eventually.

  Feeling rather odd, as if it was not her but someone else performing these rites, she gently mixed the flowers, leaves and shells into the ashes, and then scooped them up, handful after handful and tossed them into the sea. They made a pattering sound as they hit the water. She liked the way the ashes and shells sank at once, leaving the flowers and leaves floating on the surface. Goodbye my darling, she said, and realised she’d spoken aloud.

  When she’d turned the plastic bowl over the side to sprinkle the last of its contents into the sea, she tucked it under the seat and reached again for the marble urn. It was too heavy and awkward to hold with one hand and she held it with both as she leant over the side. The boat, tipping with her weight, allowed her to reach the water. She lowered the urn slowly until it filled with water and then she let it go. She watched its white form sink rapidly out of sight. I’m not polluting the sea, she told herself, a few winters of Cornish storms and the urn will be part of the beach, a few hundred years and the beach sand will have an infinitesimal percentage of Italian marble in it. She shifted back to the middle of the boat, feeling it obediently right itself and settle to ride the gentle swell.

  It was so still and peaceful in the bay that Lucy was tempted to stay. She took her flask of Macallan out of her jacket pocket and took a gulp. The whisky ran a fast warm path down her body. It felt good and Lucy smiled. Then she tucked the flask back in her jacket and rowed slowly back to shore.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The Tabernacle’s tiered seats encircled the central stage on three sides, and the audience was sandwiched between the tenors and sopranos on one wing and the altos and basses on the other, with the orchestra occupying the stage in the middle.

  Lucy fiddled with the purple pendant at her neck. She was wearing her ‘Rebecca suit’ in honour of the occasion. It wasn’t strictly blue – the choirs had been told they must wear blue – but it was blue-ish, and she felt good in it. She’d not worn it since her appearance on Orlando’s TV programme last month and before that it had hung unmolested in its dry cleaner’s plastic for months. Pencarrick did not require smart clothes, and besides, she’d regressed into her former unfashionable ways since she’d met Josh.

  But she still loved the suit. It represented the turning point when she stopped feeling useless and wretched and started to feel human again. Until then, grief had leached all the joy from even the things that used to give her such reliable pleasure: opening the curtains to a sunny day, her cat trampling her thighs, stripping redcurrants from the stalk with a fork, even the act of singing. This summer has restored all that to me, she thought.

  The lights were still up and the audience was shuffling and bumping into their seats. She was pleased to see Rebecca’s daughter, Angelica, arrive and Nelson beckon her to come and sit next to him. Angelica was coming to stay at Pencarrick after Christmas with a friend. And Lucy was going to fulfil her promise to teach her to cook.

  Josh was on Nelson’s other side and Grace and Archie just in front with the children. She caught Clare’s eye and the child’s excited wave was quickly brought to heel by Grace’s restraining hand.

  Josh noticed the exchange and smiled across at her. Nothing changes, the smile said.

  Lucy ran her eyes over the two blue blocks of choir. We must be a hundred strong, or near it, she thought: the audience hardly outnumbers us.

  The musicians were tuning up, shifting their plastic chairs a fraction to right or left, adjusting the music on their stands, and producing a medley of discordant noises. Lucy had always liked this cacophony before a performance: it stirred a familiar anticipation of pleasure to come. You only got that thrill, she thought, with live concerts: no recorded CD, however good, no televised Prom, could produce the buzz. She was just old enough to remember when theatres dropped a solid fire-curtain before the start of a play or panto. It was the sure signal that soon a magic world would envelop her. The frisson had not lessened.

  There was a small stir on the far side of the auditorium and Lucy looked up to see their now familiar conductor from the Maida Vale Male Voice Choir, Bryn Jones, walk, or rather bounce, on his thick-soled shoes from the side of the stage to his podium.

  The conductor bowed to the audience, turned to the orchestra and raised his baton. And then they were into the sinfonia.

  When they stood to sing the first chorus, Lucy thought, this is going to be wonderful. You sing better when you are happy. But then she reminded herself, don’t let the beauty of the music get to you. You cannot sing when all choked up.

  His back to the audience, Bryn Jones coaxed and commanded his players and singers. He jumped on his small feet, swivelled and swayed, his eyes sometimes closed with concentration, sometimes wide and demanding, his tiny baton a never-ceasing encouragement and goad.

  Joanna looked across at Lucy, and envied the ease with which she could just open her mouth and sing. But Joanna was determined that she would not end this evening in tears of frustration. This was her chance to prove she could sing before an audience like she sang without one. She sang carefully and quietly at the start, gingerly testing herself. Her contribution to ‘And the glory of the Lord’ was at best tentative, and she was still more nervous than happy in ‘And he shall purify’, but by the time they were into the third chorus she knew she was going to be all right. Her throat was fine: relaxed and without a hint of strain or pain. The words were as wonderful as the music. ‘O thou that tellest good tidings’ was just thrilling. She relaxed and sang.

  When they sat for the instrumental interlude Joanna listened to the orchestra with a feeling of pleasure and relief. They had got this far, and so far so good. She so badly wanted the performance to go well. Not just for her, or even for the choir: if she shut up altogether they’d probably do better without her. But Stewart was in the audience somewhere and she wanted to end the evening happy and elated. If he thought they were rubbish, she would mind. She didn’t know where he was sitting and she made up her mind not to know. Just think about the music, she told herself.

  She hoped that if Stewart was impressed with them, then maybe he would agree to sing with them. Nelson’s little group was not, of course, as impressive as this amalgam of four choirs, and probably not as good as Stewart’s old Wakefield choir, but, she thought, they were not half bad. And it would be so good to have something regular to do together, which would bring him down from Yorkshire every week.

  As they sat down after the first part, Joanna looked across at the sopranos and smiled. In the middle of the second row stood Rebecca. All the female members of the choir wore blue, but that did not stop Rebecca standing out in a crowd. Her idea of blue was a brilliant turquoise dress, beaded and sequined with a pattern of silvered discs like fish scales. It clung like a bathing suit and was skilfully cut and boned to hold and lift her ever-tanned breasts from underneath, displaying their swell without wrinkling the skin above them.

  The dress was sensational, a showstopper all right, but there was nothing vulgar about it. Rebecca looked, Joanna thought, like the top half of a mermaid. Her hair, currently highlighted with blonde and russet, was pinned back from one side of her face but fell straight to her shoulder on the other. And even across the Tabernacle’s central stage, Joanna could see that her make-up was perfect, dramatic slanting eyes emphasised with shimmering shadow. She was unquestionably overdressed: most of the choir were wearing simple blue tops or blouses, and even the evening gowns of the soloists were modest in comparison. But Becca didn’t care. She liked to be the centre of attention, and her obvious enjoyment of it somehow stopped anyone minding.

  Joanna returned to the score in her lap, still smiling. She and Lucy would probably grow old more or less gracefully, but Rebecca would turn growing old disgracefully into an art form. And good luck to her.

  No one could bear to break the s
ilence after the last ‘Amen’ with anything as crude as clapping. But then Nelson gave a sharp couple of claps and unleashed a torrent of applause from the audience. In seconds they were on their feet, and the singers were grinning at the audience and each other. Even the professional musicians smiled at each other briefly as they lowered their instruments and closed their music. As Bryn left the stage, one of them touched his back in congratulation. It had been a good Messiah.

  Grace and Archie had to take the children home as they couldn’t get a babysitter. Stewart had to catch the train back to Wakefield for a meeting first thing, and Josh was driving down to Cornwall, so what had originally been planned as a party, turned out to be the three women, Rebecca’s daughter Angelica, and Nelson at Carluccio’s in Westbourne Grove.

  Rebecca clicked her glass of Tinto against Nelson’s and then lifted it towards the others. ‘Nelson,’ she said ‘don’t you think leading the applause for your own choir was a bit rich?’

  Nelson barked a short pleased laugh. ‘That audience was catatonic. They were going to stay silent and mesmerised all night. Besides, it wasn’t my choir. It was Bryn’s, and it was good, baby. Really good.’

  ‘It was, Mum. It really was,’ said Angelica. ‘I was just so jealous. I spent the whole time mentally singing along and wishing I was allowed to open my mouth.’

  Rebecca basked in her daughter’s praise as if she had achieved the Messiah single-handed.

  After the penne al pesto and the osso bucco, Nelson turned to Rebecca.

  ‘You’re not going to have a hissy fit if I take your daughter off to meet some young fellas half my age? I promised Bryn I’d meet him in his local pub, which will be full of Welshmen. They all sing, or play rugby. Some do both. How about it, Angelica?’

  ‘Cool. Love to.’

  Rebecca met Nelson’s eyes and smiled broadly. ‘Of course I don’t mind. Just keep an eye out for a suitable middle-aged one for me, OK?’

  Nelson stood and leaned over to kiss Rebecca’s cheek.