by Rhian Ivory
My pleas were met with an awkward silence and embarrassment. The woman shook her head and looked away from me. ‘But you don’t understand! This audition is my last chance! Please, can’t I just have one more go? You’ve got to give me another go!’ I couldn’t convince them that I was worth another chance because I was crying too hard. No one would make eye contact with me.
I don’t know for how long I locked myself in the toilet but eventually Mr Davis found me. ‘Hope, you need to come back into the studio now, they’re going to call names out.’ He paused, waiting for me to answer. ‘At least you did well with your Shakespeare monologue. I’m sure they’ll take that into account.’ I could hear in his voice he knew the answer. Someone might have told him about the utter state his student got herself in, begging like some kind of desperado. I’d been fine singing it at home, on the bus, everywhere and anywhere, because no one asked me why.
*
Pryia reaches out to me but I move away. If she touches me I’ll cry and I’m not crying in a hospital ever again.
‘If you’ll let me help you we can do some exercises to get your voice back.’ Pryia brings me back to the cold hard chair, the alcove we’re hidden away in and the smell of sanitation.
‘I just don’t want to sing at the moment.’ I give myself a little shake and stand up.
‘But the longer you leave it…’
‘Just stop going on at me!’ I raise my voice because she’s not hearing me. She’s on a mission.
‘Sometimes it just comes back, you know, if you let it, if you’re open. I’ve read case studies where vocal recovery can be just as sudden as loss, like the flick of a switch. But maybe you should talk to your mum about this? Does she know you’ve lost your singing voice? She told me you write songs or you used to…’
‘No!Didn’t you hear me? Leave my mum out of this. I’m not one of your loser case studies!’ The suggestion of talking to Mum has me panicked. I walk towards the door but I don’t have a swipe card yet. Only she can open the door. I stand there like a child with my back to her and wait, willing her not to say anything for once. Eventually I hear the buzz. I stand to one side to let her go through first. Neither of us says a word as she pushes past.
On Paddington Ward are four children in cots, babies really. They all have someone by their beds except one. He cries every time a nurse comes near him. I guess that they’ve been injecting him or giving him some medication he doesn’t like. He keeps trying to crawl into the corner of the cot to get away from a nurse he’s looking at like she’s the big bad wolf.
‘He hates this, poor honey. I feel sorry for him but I’ve got to do it.’ She tries to take his temperature again while he screams and cries fat tears which plop down his little face.
‘Where are his parents?’ I mouth to Pryia who is singing to a baby in the cot opposite. She just shrugs. Owen looks confused but he’s not getting involved in whatever this is. Pryia has been off with me for days now, ever since I snapped at her about the audition, so I know I’m not going to get any help from her. I check about – no one is approaching the screaming boy. The nurse’s station is empty.
I creep over to his cot, a small rattle in my hand, and shake it gently. He turns his head and looks at me. His dark eyelashes are soaked. His eyes open wider as I shake the rattle, the silver bells gleaming under the glare of the bright hospital lights. When I stop, he starts crying again. I kneel down next to his cot and poke my fingers through the gap. He recoils so I take them out.
‘Hey, hey, I won’t hurt you,’ I shush him and pass a rattle through the bars. ‘You want this?’
He snatches it up instantly and shakes it quietly at first, then violently. A noise comes out of him, a giggle, which surprises us both. I clap my hands, wishing I’d brought more instruments over with me. There is no way he’s giving me the rattle back now. He drops it and tries to copy my clapping, his pudgy hands banging against each other out of rhythm, then he starts crying again, squirming in pain. There is a poster above his bed with his name on and some information about him. I skim read it quickly.
‘Nico? Are you Nico? Hello, I’m Hope. Can you say hello?’ I whisper to him. His eyes flicker in recognition when I say his name. He has a nappy on and little else, his tummy forming three small rolls over the top of it. I want to tickle him but think better of it. He starts crying again so I whisper the words to a song I heard Owen sing for an upset child a few days ago. It’s a Caribbean folk song. I’m not sure if it will work with Nico, maybe it will make him howl even more, but it’s all I have.
‘Tingalayo, Tingalayo, come little donkey come.’
I start humming it in a lower key than Owen did. I’m not sure of all the words so repeat myself a bit but it doesn’t seem to matter. Nico stops crying and his mouth falls open. I shuffle closer to him, thread my fingers through the cot and whisper the next verse. As I get to the chorus he takes one of my fingers and holds it tightly. His hand is hot and sweaty but I don’t move an inch even though I can feel pins and needles building in my foot. He starts to move across the cot towards me, weighing me up and watching me all the time.
‘Tingalayo, Tingalayo, come little donkey come.’
I sing the next verse softly; my throat hurts from lack of use but I carry on. And I hear harmonising behind me and the gentle shake of bells. I can’t break eye contact with Nico. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the bottom of Pryia’s purple Singing Medicine polo shirt. She’s standing on the other side of the cot, singing softly, matching the new tempo I’ve set to the song. But Nico doesn’t take his eyes off me. And he won’t let go of my finger, not even when he lies down and falls asleep, his tummy rising and falling.
‘You sang!’ Pryia squeezes my arm and leads us away, out onto the main ward. ‘You sang, Hope!’
I am worried that if I try to speak my voice might crack or break like it did last time.
‘You did it. I knew you could,’ Pryia says softly, touching me on my shoulder. Her hand is hot but I don’t shake her off. ‘And so beautifully. I had no idea your voice was like that!To be honest, I thought your mum was exaggerating,’ she tells me. The look she gives me makes me feel for the first time that I might not be such an imposter wearing this purple Singing Medicine top.
‘Come on, lunchtime. Let’s celebrate with something from the vending machine!’ Owen suggests. He presses a purple Singing Medicine sticker on to my top. He slings his arms around our shoulders and leads us off Paddington Ward.
My phone buzzes again, ‘You going to get that?’ Pryia asks.
‘No.’ My voice sounds hoarse. My phone vibrates for a third time and we both laugh awkwardly.
‘Someone wants your attention.’ she says.
I smile and shove my phone into my bag. He’ll have to wait until after lunch. Pryia has taken me to Joe’s to celebrate, ignoring Owen’s pitiful vending machine. ‘How’s your throat?’ she asks, pushing the hot water, honey and lemon that she ordered towards me.
‘Alright…’ I croak.
Pryia doesn’t keep the conversation going, she just sips her cappuccino and smiles at me, which of course completely unnerves me. I can feel the babble rising, the drivel, and am saved by our lunch being placed in front of us.
‘You’ve been here for a month now?’ she asks and I nod. I feel like I’m in an interview for a job I haven’t applied for. The smell of fresh lemon rises from my water, I can almost taste it in the air. ‘Your mum’s a maverick. You must be so proud of her rolling out Singing Medicine in other hospitals? Hard to believe she started this whole thing in Shrewsbury with just her and Nikhil. And now she’s got programmes here and maybe Leicester too next year if she wins her bid for a grant. I’m hoping to get involved if she gets the funding. We’ll need new team members too,’ she shares as she stirs another sachet of sugar into her drink.
‘Yeah, she’s been talking about it for a while now but when Dad died…’ I fizzle out.
She subtly moves the subject away. ‘What do you think
you’ll do when the summer holidays finish?’
I almost wish she had said something about Dad, that would be easier. Why is everyone so concerned about my future all of a sudden?
‘Dunno.’
‘Sore point?’
‘Er, yeah, just a bit!’ It feels like she’s opened one of the sachets of salt and rubbed it into my arm. I wrap my fingers around my scar and press it hard, to keep myself together. Her eyes follow my fingers.
‘What did you do to your arm?’ Is there nothing she doesn’t see or notice?
‘Had a fight with a drawer – the drawer won,’ I say flippantly, hoping that will be the end of that.
‘Do you often do that?’
‘Huh? Do what?’ I reply, confused. I’ve lost track of the conversation.
‘Have fights with inanimate objects? Lose your temper and hurt yourself?’ She’s straightfaced and waiting, as if I could tell her almost anything and she’d just sit there sipping her coffee.
‘Yeah, more and more lately.’ I pause, not sure where I’m going with this but she just waits. ‘I used to think it was just PMS, you know like everyone else but…’ I stop.
She reaches her hand across the table and lets hers fold around mine. Right on cue my phone starts ringing. I look at the screen. Riley. I can’t believe he’s ringing me. We don’t do that, we don’t speak to one another. That’s not how this thing works. Not now, not when I’ve started saying something,
finally
finally
finally
started this conversation with someone. I pick up the phone, swipe it open without looking and shout into it.
‘Just fuck off!’
The tables either side of us fall silent. I’m stood up, I’ve knocked over my chair and something from our table has landed on the table next to us. A woman is on her feet, soup and possibly coffee dripping from her skirt. I just want to disappear.
‘You stupid girl!’ she shouts. ‘Look at me! This stain will never come out. You’ve ruined it!’ Her partner, who is on his feet, passing her napkins, glares at me as if I’ve stabbed his wife instead of splattering her with soup.
‘I’m sorry.’ I am. I can’t look at her and her once white skirt. I want to die.
‘And language like that, too! You should be ashamed of yourself! I knew we shouldn’t have come in here, full of students,’ she carries on to her partner at the top of her voice.
I was sorry about her skirt and I would have apologised again, but not now.
‘It’s just a skirt,’ I tell her, ‘just a skirt, you stupid, stuck-up cow! Get over yourself!’
All the conversations have stopped, even the waitresses are paused mid-order. Pryia takes me by the arm, leading me out of the coffee shop as if I’m a bomb that’s about to go off and detonate the whole place with my foul mouth.
‘Have you talked to anyone about all this?’ Pryia says in a normal voice, not at all embarrassed. We’re sat on the benches outside Joe’s. She’s been back in to apologise to the woman and offered to pay her dry-cleaning bill. The snotty woman refused. I guess I’ll be barred from Joe’s for life now. Not sure how I’ll explain that to Mum. ‘Have you?’ she asks again. ‘Have you talked to anyone?’
‘About what?’ I’ve lost track of what she was saying. She places one finger softly on my arm, right on my scar. I pull away from her. ‘No.’
She takes out a box from her bag. It is a small white box with a printed name and address on it. Pryia Arif.
‘I’ve got PMDD. Have you heard of it?’
I shake my head.
‘That’s alright, most people haven’t,’ she carries on. ‘It stands for Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder and I think you might have it too. I could be completely and utterly wrong – I’m not a doctor obviously – but you’ve got lots of the symptoms. I thought it was just because of your audition or your dad…’ She waits but I don’t say anything. ‘But it’s more than that, isn’t it?’ She reaches into her bag and hands me a crumpled leaflet.
‘What’s this?’ I ask her, not opening it. I look around. She’s acting as if it’s okay to say words like premenstrual and disorder out loud in a public place.
‘My doctor gave it to me. Read it, see what you think and then let me know if you want to talk more. This isn’t going to go away and you aren’t managing it by yourself and you don’t have to.’ She waits for me to say something. I’m holding the leaflet in my hand. I don’t want to open it. I don’t know what the hell PMDD is. It sounds scary. Just those big letters on their own are frightening enough to know that whatever this thing is, I don’t want it to be a thing that’s wrong with me.
‘We’d better head back,’ she says, getting to her feet. I screw the leaflet up in my hand and, when she’s not looking, drop it into the nearest bin, among the takeaway cartons and empty coffee containers.
‘Any golden moments?’ Mum asks. ‘Golden moments’ are written down and collected for grant applications. I hold my breath, wondering if Pryia will talk about Nico. I know she won’t mention the leaflet or what happened in Joe’s – at least I hope she won’t.
‘Hope had her first golden moment today. I tell you now, Nikhil, you’ve never heard anything like it,’ Owen declares. I take my glasses off and clean them in a very detailed and thorough manner, not looking up once. ‘She’s a cross between Nina Simone and Tracy Chapman with a bit of Beyoncé thrown in, isn’t she, Pryia?’
‘I thought I heard a bit of Billie Holiday in there,’ Pryia adds. ‘She sang to Nico, a little boy on Paddington. She sang Tingaleyo but dropped it down a key and sang it to a different tempo, really quietly, really deep. She got Nico to stop crying and the best bit was the nurse crept in to give him his last meds of the morning and he didn’t even notice. He was holding Hope’s hand, just staring at her, and then he fell asleep,’
Everyone claps and I feel my skin flush. Mum comes over to me. She wraps her arms around me and whispers in my ear so that no one else can hear, ‘That’s my girl,’ and that means more to me than all the well dones in the world. As she sits back down, she’s beaming at me and it’s infectious, I can’t stop the smile spreading across my face. I wanted to tell her what’s been going on with me, that I’d lost my voice, but I didn’t, I just couldn’t. My voice has always been the one steady and solid thing between us. She’s always been so proud of it: it’s the thing she loves best about me. I couldn’t lose that as well as everything else.
On the way to the airport, Mum’s concentrating on driving, so I text Callie. I’m refusing to text Riley. Even though I know I should apologise, I’m still annoyed with him for interrupting me in the coffee shop. For the first time I was going to talk about it, I even started saying the P words, but he just couldn’t leave me be. He’s such an attention seeker.
Help!
What’s up?
Told Riley to fuck off.
Already? Why? What he’d do?
Just been annoying and so the host of the Riley show.
You weren’t talking about yourself again were you? Did you shove your face in all his me, me, me limelight? Ah, the mens, such delicate and sensitive sunflowers.
Cal, don’t go off on one. Anyway, it’s all wrecked now.
That’s the spirit, Hope. You go, girl. Positive Mental Attitude all the way.
He rang me. In the middle of Joe’s. Can you believe it?
No, it’s like he’s got a phone and he knows how to use it. Utter bastard.
Shut up. I need cinema & pick n mix but can’t go until Sunday cos Nonno’s coming.
Nonno visit! Cannot wait to see him, I’ve missed him. What do you want to watch?
Don’t mind, you choose.
Meryl it is then. Sunday is a go. You got me, sweets, and I’ll even throw a half an hour rant on why long distance relationships don’t work session into the mix. Checking out times now CX
‘He flew from Fiumicino directly this time,’ Mum starts talking. I nearly drop my phone.
‘What?’
<
br /> ‘I said he flew directly this time.’ She doesn’t need to explain this detail to me. When Nonno and Nonna flew over, they always stopped off somewhere along the way. Nonna said it was her chance of a bit of culture and sightseeing and Nonno always went along with it. When Nonna was alive…
‘What time does he land?’ I ask.
‘19:35. We should be there in about half an hour, depending on traffic.’
19:35 sounds weird. Airport mode. It’s nearly been a year since I saw Nonno. I’m nervous about seeing him, waiting in an impersonal airport lounge for our public reunion. I know Nonno will not let the environment of passports, security guards, customs, arrivals and departures curb his emotions. He will shout, he will laugh, he will cry while trying very hard not to. He will take his hat off and put it on my head and he will call out our names like he’s been waiting to say them forever. And they will sound right. Then he’ll kiss us twice and hold us so tight that I’ll find it hard to breathe. And in some ways it’ll feel normal, it’ll feel like nothing’s changed, except Dad won’t be there. It’ll be three of us instead of five – no Nonna.
And no Dad.
‘It looks the same, nothing change!’ Nonno declares, setting his bags down in the hall after a quick tour of the house which of course hasn’t changed because it is a three-up two-down house, there isn’t any room for change. Then he notices the table.
After a while Mum and I stopped sitting at the big dining table together, it was too painful. We started eating in front of the TV, searching for something to watch that would fill the empty space. I was glad when Mum sold the table and replaced it with a small one. A table for two.
‘I like it! Piccolo, cosy!’ He is trying too hard.
Mum busies herself in the kitchen prepping vegetables, determined to cook a decent meal for the Antonio Carluccio of the family.
‘So, my Hope, come and sit and tell me things, piccolina. And you have turned into a woman since I last saw you. You remind me of your Nonna when I first met her, bellissima!’ Nonno pats the sofa and I sit down next to him. His skin is crinkled, like a peach left out in the sun too long but still sweet, and he smells reassuringly of tea-tree oil. It’s familiar and comforting. His whiskers are expertly clipped and still mostly black, but the hair on his head has thinned and lightened a little. I can see the delicate brown skin of his scalp in places. It makes him look vulnerable so I try not to notice.