‘I know I’m not staff,’ Julian said amusedly. ‘And, my friend, I wish I could let you just get on with it but nobody else was free today. So, brother, you’re stuck with my ass, yo.’
Bugger off, I thought. Stop trying to make me laugh.
‘Well, I am happy they send you,’ Jan said. He reached forward and helped himself to one of Julian’s shortbread fingers. ‘I think we have fun, these three … we three …’
‘The three of us,’ I muttered, avoiding Julian’s eye. I could do without Jan and Julian becoming friends.
‘Yes! The three of us.’ Jan popped a whole shortbread finger into his mouth. ‘And, Julian, you look very different. Why are you dressing like peasant today?’ he asked cordially.
Julian laughed out loud. ‘My mom often asks me the same.’
‘Well?’ Jan wasn’t going to let this go, which was fortunate because I very much wanted to know the answer.
‘This is how I dress.’ Julian looked down apologetically at his clothes. ‘I’m not really very smart at all.’
‘So why you wear smart clothes at college?’ Jan persisted. ‘Why did you have long hair with grease added to it?’
‘PURGGGH!’
‘Excuse me?’ Julian was looking at me, his eyes twinkling.
‘Sorry. I was just choking on my tea,’ I said. Jan was amazing. Completely amazing.
‘Why do I wear smart clothes and add grease to my hair,’ Julian mused delightedly. ‘Ha-ha! Well, it’s just what I’ve always done as an opera singer, I guess. When I graduated from college and got an agent he had this vision of me as quite a smart, shiny sort of a bloke whom middle-aged women would fall in love with. His idea, not mine,’ he added hastily. ‘On our first photo-shoot he had someone style me like that and it just stuck. That’s what people want Julian Jefferson to look like.’
‘But …’ Jan was at a loss. Conforming was not something he understood. ‘But why? If it is not representing your trueness, then why are you dressing like businessman who has naked ladies in his swimming-pool?’
This time I couldn’t help myself, and neither could Julian. We both roared with laughter and Jan, pleased, joined in. ‘HA-HA-HA!’ he shouted delightedly. ‘HA-HA-HA!’
Just as abruptly I stopped laughing because it didn’t feel right to be laughing with Julian and the churning anxiety returned. This whole trip was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Maybe I should abscond at Hemel Hempstead.
Julian took a slug of tea. ‘This is so minging,’ he said sadly. He turned back to Jan. ‘I asked myself the same question recently. “Why are you still wearing all this smart shit? The college doesn’t require you to look like a smarmy twat.” And I didn’t have a good answer so I just thought, Fuck it, and I went to the Turkish man round the corner who did me a nine-quid haircut, and I got all my old clothes out. Boom.’
‘BOOM!’ Jan repeated, offering Julian a palm to high-five. Julian took it, chuckling.
Then Jan started to smile in an evil manner. ‘And what does Violet say about your new style?’ he asked.
‘Sorry?’ I sensed Julian’s jaw tightening minutely. I felt mine do the same.
‘Oh, Mr Julian Jefferson!’ Jan giggled. ‘You are not fooling us! All of the people in the world they are saying that you are making sexual intercourses with Violet Elphinstone,’ he crowed. ‘Ha-ha!’
The train hummed on. I cultivated a look of supreme disinterest, although my heart was pumping in my mouth or possibly even my forehead.
Julian, on the other hand, seemed somewhat paralysed. ‘Everyone’s talking about us?’ he said nervously.
‘Aha! You confirm it, HA-HA!’
‘Oh. Er …’
My heart plummeted into my chest, then down into my feet. I cursed it. Get a grip. He’s the enemy! He and Violet deserve each other!
‘If you were proper staff it would be very bad, no?’ Jan asked Julian happily. ‘But you are not staff so it is OK, yes? We men of the college, of the world, we bow down to you. VIOLET ELPHINSTONE!’
‘No, it is bad,’ Julian said weakly. ‘Seriously unprofessional. Um …’ He downed his tea and yelped as it burned his throat.
I got out my notebook and pen, feigning nonchalance. My hands were shaking. I had absolutely no idea how to get through the next thirty-six hours. I felt sick, distressed and trapped. Help, I prayed, to a God I’d never believed in. Help?
The workshop got off to a better start than we’d imagined in that the thirty year-elevens assigned to us actually turned up. They stood in the gym, a depressing space with dreadful acoustics and high, unreachable windows, either ignoring us silently or ignoring us loudly. Most, with a few exceptions, were either centrally or peripherally involved in a flirtatious conversation conducted in a scream.
Things have changed, I marvelled, taking in an assortment of veils, turbans and caps. When I’d been growing up Stourbridge had still been a very traditional white working-class town but today it was a sea of different-coloured faces.
‘WOZNIT? WOZNIT, OH MA GOD!’ one of the girls screamed, just as Jan Borsos bellowed a piercing G sharp.
The gym was suddenly silent. Thirty pairs of eyes swivelled towards us, some surprised, most disgusted. I flushed, horribly uncomfortable and afraid.
I remembered being in that hall when I was a teenager, feeling fat and anguished in my gym knickers, hoping nobody would notice me. What had got me through it? What had carried me through the putrid stink of adolescence? Fiona, of course. She had written to me from ballet school three times a week; week in, week out. She was relentlessly upbeat, egging me on, encouraging me to get up to no good, writing foul-mouthed (and hilarious) stories about our imaginary escapades.
Being Fiona she’d needed a lot of help from me: advice on bullies; reassurance that Mum and Dad wanted her home at Christmas; motivation to keep on polishing her craft. But even though I’d had to act as a parent, our letters had, over the years, helped scaffold my own modest confidence. In our never-ending stream of envelopes and scraps of paper was evidence that I was part of a team. A reminder that to one person, at least, I was important and worthwhile.
My little Freckle. Of course I hadn’t been able to cut off our conversations. Barry should have understood that. She might have been mad but she was my teammate. My mainstay. My foundation.
Stop it, I warned myself. Not here.
I looked back at the kids. Jan and I were practically dwarfs in front of them. Jan with his miniature portly figure and little me, with my large bum and ‘comfortable’ body, stood before this tribe of noisy Amazons and for a moment said nothing.
Then Jan, who was apparently afraid of nothing and no one, began. ‘ORANGES AND LEMONS, SAY THE BELLS OF ST CLEMENT’S. I OWE YOU FIVE FARTHINGS, SAY THE BELLS OF ST MARTIN’S.’
The gym was silent, save for a kid with a comb in his Afro muttering about this man being sick but-not-in-a-good-way-know-what-I’m-sayin’-like.
Jan stopped and looked at the kids. ‘You do not know this song?’
One or two of the stragglers at the back raised tentative hands but put them quickly down. The rest stared at Jan with a mixture of disinterest and hostility.
‘I see,’ Jan continued. ‘Perhaps not all of you are English. Perhaps we have many foreigners here.’ I cringed right down to my core. Why did Jan never think before he spoke?
‘I am also not English,’ he continued cheerfully. ‘But my mother teach me this song when I was child. She tell me every child in England knows this song!’
‘Well, she don’t know shit about England, then,’ offered one boy. He was pale, skinny and badly dressed. His tie was absent and he wore scuffed trainers rather than the uniform black flats. Worst of all, he had what looked like the remains of a black eye.
I baulked, angry for Jan, who should not have had to hear his mother insulted within the first five minutes. Of course, this being my school, I felt wholly responsible. I sensed him next to me, small, stout and clearly taken aback. In Jan’s world all people loved him
. He was laughed at, frequently (and rightly so), but nobody ever insulted him. He was too adorable. I CAN’T DO THIS! my head screamed. I can’t be here in Stourbridge with Julian while Jan gets insulted, no Fiona and no parents worth having and – I CAN’T DO IT.
‘You are right,’ Jan said, cutting through my mental hysteria. ‘My mother did not “know shit” about England. But she did know shit about singing. And that is why I am here today. I am here to show you what my mother was showing me: how to love music.’
The scruffy kid held Jan’s gaze for a few seconds, then dropped it, picking at his fingernails, which were bitten and grubby.
In spite of my fragile and fevered mental state, the afternoon got off to a good start. After we’d talked about ourselves and our lives, to prove to the kids that opera wasn’t all about posh fat people, Jan sang ‘La donna è mobile’ which quite a few of them, reassuringly, showed signs of recognizing. We had agreed I would not sing.
There were a few uncomfortable questions and almost all of them refused to get involved with the ‘fun’ vocal warm-up we’d devised (which, we realized only too late, was excruciating) but Jan strode through every hitch with his endearing wit and wild charm. At my suggestion we took them outside into the windy afternoon and encouraged them to sing anything they liked, walking around the AstroTurf courts. Their voices would be lost in the fast-moving air and they would have to look nobody in the eye.
In these easier circumstances, several of them sang. Many whipped out mobile phones and whined along to rubbish R&B or 2-step Turkish, the girls shrieking with laughter to hide their embarrassment. But by the time we moved inside to start on Les Mis, the prospect of full participation had become a real possibility.
Sixteen isn’t too old, I thought. There was still a child in there somewhere, sufficiently uninhibited to enjoy something as primal as music. I wish someone had swooped in when I was sixteen. Taken advantage of that lingering courage.
‘Sally Howlett, you’re doing an amazing job,’ Julian said, at one point. He’d appeared out of nowhere. ‘I don’t think half these kids’d be able to relax and sing without your help. I’m very impressed.’ He smiled right at me, looking nothing like Julian Jefferson and everything like Julian Bell. I tried not to think about the familiar body underneath the familiar clothes. Tried not to think about how much I’d loved him and how desperately he had let me down.
I looked at my watch. Still another thirty-one hours to go in Stourbridge. My stomach crunched and billowed. I couldn’t stand it.
An hour later, Jan and I were weaving through a crowd of kids, who were singing with quite plausible anger about life in a Parisian slum. ‘Look down and see the sweepings of the street. Look down, look down, upon your fellow man,’ they chanted. Some were still messing around, a few others were stolidly refusing to sing but, for the most part, the rest were going for it.
Julian fell into step beside me. We wove through the crowd of beggars and I felt my body tense defensively. ‘They’re doing great!’ he remarked. ‘Just goes to show what happens when you let go, right?’
I blushed. ‘Your point being?’
‘My point being that you can do it too. Let go. Sing without reserve.’
I was speechless. What right did Julian have to talk to me about my fear of singing? What right did Julian have to talk to me about anything? I walked on, giving a thumbs-up to a girl who had begun to sing her first few words. ‘Thank you for your comments,’ I replied. I wanted to cry. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me …’
The boy who’d insulted Jan’s mother was in a corner of the room, ignoring everyone. He was playing a game on his phone and drinking something disgusting and bright blue out of a plastic bottle. He scared me a bit but I felt instinctively drawn to him.
‘Don’t you like Les Mis?’ I asked him, sitting on the floor next to him.
He ignored me.
‘What sort of music do you like, then?’ I tried.
Nothing. Something was brutally murdered on the screen of his phone.
‘We won’t be doing Les Mis all afternoon, we’ll –’
‘I like Les Mis,’ he muttered.
I smiled. I felt so at home hearing that accent. It was like talking to Dennis as a teenager.
Then I realized what he’d said. ‘Really? You like Les Mis?’
He shrugged, continuing with his game.
‘Have you seen the show?’
‘No. It’s on in London.’
‘I just wondered if you’d been down to see it perhaps.’
He frowned witheringly, shaking his head into his phone. ‘We can’t afford to take a horse and carriage to fucking London to see a stupid fucking show.’
I nodded. ‘Right. Of course.’
The game ended; the boy had won. He smiled victoriously, then looked up at me. ‘Me mam had it on tape. She listened to it all the time. I was brought up on that silly shit.’
I smiled encouragingly.
‘It’s quite good,’ he said, scratching his head. He looked over at Julian, who was writing something in his notebook. ‘Who’s he?’
‘One of the coaches at my opera school. He’s also an opera singer. Quite a famous one.’
The boy seemed impressed. He turned back to me. ‘He doesn’t look like one.’
‘No,’ I admitted sadly. ‘He doesn’t. He did, but then he … Well, never mind.’
‘Are you an opera singer?’ the boy asked.
‘Yes! Well, I’m training to be one.’
‘I couldn’t do that shit.’ He shuddered.
‘I understand. I feel like I’m going to be sick every time I prepare to sing. Once I open my mouth it’s OK, though.’
The boy looked at me as if I was mad, which was probably a reasonable response.
‘Do you sing at all?’
The boy jammed his phone into his fraying pocket. ‘Sometimes.’
He stopped talking. The other kids sang on in the background, accompanied by a tinny CD player that Jan had up on his shoulder like a beat box.
‘I like singing Les Mis actually. Only in the bathroom. My brothers’d rip the shit out of me if they heard.’
I beamed. ‘You don’t like people hearing you?’
‘Fuck, no. Singing’s for twats. Proper twats. Sorry, Miss.’
‘Oh, swear away,’ I told him. ‘Do you have a favourite song, then?’
He shifted awkwardly and I wondered how far I could push him before he clamped down. ‘ “Stars”? “Empty Chairs”? “Bring Him Home”?’
‘ “Empty Chairs”,’ he muttered, cheeks glowing red. ‘Fucking wicked song.’
Scene Twenty
Twenty minutes later, the workshop was over and, for the first time that day, I felt calm. It had been an unprecedented success and several of the kids had asked if we could fiddle it for them to come back tomorrow, when a different class was scheduled. In spite of the tangled mess in my head of grief about being in Stourbridge without Fiona, fear about seeing my parents that night and some other messy feelings about Julian and Violet that I didn’t want to look at just yet, I was rather exhilarated.
But the best was yet to come. Jan had removed everyone from the hall at my instruction – even our chaperone, who had agreed to wait just outside the door – and I stood now in the empty, echoing gym with the boy. His name was Dean and he lived on the same estate as my parents. The afternoon was growing darker and his face was bleached a deathly white by the huge strip-lights hanging from the ceiling.
‘How’s about you give it a go in the locker room, if the gym’s too big,’ I was suggesting. ‘I spent years singing in a wardrobe, where everything sounds awful. The first time I sang into an actual room it was a revelation. It sounded amazing!’
‘Mm.’
‘The problem was, someone came in and heard me. But I can make sure nobody comes and interrupts you. Go on, you’ve got nothing to lose. This could be your only chance to sing that song in a proper room!’
Dean snorted. ‘You’re weird
, Miss. You want to be a singer and you don’t like singing?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘Don’t believe you, Miss.’
‘Ask the receptionist at the Hagley Premier Inn.’ I grinned. ‘He knows we’re singers, and begged us to sing … Jan sang about four songs and I was just like a silent weirdo in the corner!’
Dean laughed. ‘You’re proper weird.’
‘Yes. Although no more weird than you. Go on, give it a go. Even if it’s the only time in your life you hear yourself sing properly! Trust me, it’ll be worth it!’
Dean was fidgeting. He wanted to sing, I could tell. Jan had performed ‘Empty Chairs’ for the group earlier and the kids had been spellbound, save for the worst of the troublemakers. Dean in particular had been rapt. Watching him was like watching a ghost of myself.
Without further ado I started ‘Empty Chairs’ and put the CD player on the bench inside the locker room. ‘Go on,’ I said, gesturing towards the room. He went in, swearing a bit, and I closed the door behind him.
He let the accompaniment play and he didn’t sing. Even though I’d hardly dared believe he would, my heart sank a little. It had been a stupid idea anyway, I supposed. It had taken weeks of intensive help to get me out of a wardrobe and I was a lot older than that boy.
‘Can’t do it, Miss.’ He opened the door a crack. ‘Feel like a twat.’
I looked at Dean, at the delicate greeny-yellow skin around his left eye, and imagined what his home life must be like. I was just like you, I thought. Paralysed by fear and awkwardness.
Before I knew it, I’d started the track again and begun singing it myself. I walked back out into the gym, which – now empty – carried my voice beautifully. The song was below my bottom range, but even in those conditions I could feel that warm, rushing freedom opening up in my chest again. I walked slowly around the gym, sensing Dean watching me by the locker-room door. I didn’t look at him, partly out of embarrassment, and partly in the hope that he’d sing too.
The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me Page 27