by Rachel Joyce
‘I could listen to the “Four Seasons” because you told me what you hear. So I wondered—’ She stalled. ‘I wondered if you would give me lessons?’
‘Lessons?’
‘We don’t have to meet in your shop. We could meet in cafés. Or go for a walk. I want to hear you talk about music. I mean, I’m not asking for a date or anything.’
‘A date? God, no!’ He said it again, in case she’d got the wrong idea. ‘God, no. As if. I mean, God—’
He laughed.
She laughed.
He guffawed.
She sent him an askew look.
‘Excuse me. I’m not that bad.’ The pingy circles were back in her cheeks. ‘I’ll pay. For my lessons. You can name your price. We could meet once a week. Besides …’
She twisted her head to glance inside the shop and gave a jump. Kit was right on the other side of the window, his face squidged into the glass above the hardboard; a sort of soft jelly-version of Kit. He waved his hand like a flipper.
She continued. ‘Besides, it seems to me you need all the customers you can get. And you would be helping me.’
Helping her? How could he possibly do that? He had no idea what songs would please her. Frank scooped his hand through his hair but it was like a dishcloth. ‘I can’t give lessons about music. I run a shop. I sell records.’
She nodded, as if this was exactly the answer she expected. ‘Of course. Isn’t that what people call you English? A nation of shopkeepers? Well, I understand. I won’t come again. I’ve made a fool of myself too many times.’ She bowed her head. Tapped the wet pavement with the toe of her wet shoe. ‘Stay in your shop, Frank. It’s a good, safe place.’
She turned and went fast through the rain, clutching tight to her umbrella, as if it were some kind of handle steering her away from him. He watched her all the way to the end of the road until she rounded the corner and – snap – she was gone.
Where would she go? Past the big stores on Castlegate? Towards the precinct, the cathedral? The park? And then the derelict warehouses? Rushing on and on until she reached the docks – where weeds grew as high as your shoulders – and then the river and after that the sea?
Where do you come from, Ilse Brauchmann?
Who are you?
He had lost an opportunity. It was like missing a train, or something more important – something that would never come again. There was no accounting for the grief that suddenly filled him. An old drunk staggered from England’s Glory. Finding the wall, he settled against it and slid all the way to the ground.
‘Wait!’ Frank called. ‘Wait!’
His plimsolls were pounding the pavement, throwing up rain. His lungs pulled in deep, stabby breaths. He was running down Unity Street, past the parade, past the pub, towards the corner. He was breathing in the city.
Something happened that afternoon on Castlegate. Shoppers might have noticed a great big man, lumbering through the rain, no jacket, in pursuit of a smart young woman in a green coat and gloves. Had she stolen something? Forgotten something? Were they friends, lovers, what? Whatever the reason, they were both very wet. They stood opposite one another in the middle of the pavement.
‘Frank?’ she said. ‘Frank?’
Now that he’d finally caught up with her, his body seemed to be on strike. He could barely breathe and he felt in dire need of a chair.
‘I. Changed. My. Mind.’
Her face lit up. ‘You did?’
All around them, the vast shopfronts shone through the black rain like ocean liners. Dolcis, Army & Navy, Tammy, Burton Menswear, Woolworths. People rushed past, heads bowed, umbrellas open, bags of shopping in their hands. Ilse laughed. Frank laughed.
‘So how are we going to do this?’ he asked. ‘I mean, I’ve never done this sort of thing before—’
‘Me neither. This is a first for me too.’
‘We could meet—’
‘Yes?’
‘Somewhere—’
‘Yes—’
‘That we both know—’
‘Like—’
‘The cathedral—’
‘Yes—’
‘And take it—’
‘From there?’
‘Yes—’
‘When?’
‘Next Monday?’
‘Um—’
‘Or not—’
‘Tuesday?’
‘What time?’
‘I don’t mind—’
‘You say—’
‘No. You—’
‘Five thirty?’
‘Five thirty?’
And that was how they planned their first lesson. In words of pretty much one syllable, and without the aid of full stops.
Tuesday. A week from now. Outside the cathedral, after closing time.
Frank bounced all the way home, flushed and giddy as a child.
18
The Messiah
‘HALLELUJAH!’ SANG THE choir. ‘Hallelujah!’
Frank and Peg lay side by side, listening to Handel on the Dansette. ‘Isn’t it marvellous?’ she whispered. ‘Isn’t it the best?’
Afterwards he lit her a Sobranie as she told him about Handel. How he wanted to write music that ordinary people could understand. Unlike Vivaldi, he died a wealthy man, though like Bach he suffered from cataracts and had two botched eye operations. Three thousand people came to his funeral. She was very moved by that.
‘But what about the Messiah, Peg?’
‘Before the Messiah things were a bit shit for Handel. He had no money and his last few works had been turkeys. Then Handel read the libretto for the Messiah and that was it. Bingo! He saw the light. He shut himself away and he wrote the whole thing in twenty-four days. I kid you not. He didn’t even leave the house to get a sandwich. Finally his servant goes in and what does he find? Handel is holding the “Hallelujah Chorus” in his hand and crying. “I have seen heaven,” he says.’
‘Did he? See heaven?’
‘Maybe. Maybe he was just shit-hot at writing music.’ Her mouth hitched upwards. She was winking beneath those giant sunglasses.
‘He knew, you see. Handel just knew he had got something. It hit the button, Frank.’
The Messiah premiered in Dublin. It was a charity performance and so many tickets were sold the audience were asked to leave their swords and hoop skirts at home to make enough room. The hall was packed. Standing room only. It was a triumph; the first big fund-raiser. It was like George Harrison organizing The Concert for Bangladesh, only Handel was doing it in 1742.
That was why Peg loved the Messiah best of all. Because it showed people they were not alone. No matter about their differences, the music lifted them up and lowered them down, only to raise them even higher. It worked like a spell.
Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
PAUSE.
HAL–LE–LU–JAH!
Peg had been dead fifteen years and it was still the one record he couldn’t bear to play. It hurt too much. Even now.
SIDE B: FEBRUARY 1988
19
Help!
‘US?’ SAID KIT. ‘Us?’
It was past closing time on Unity Street and they were in England’s Glory, all the shopkeepers from the parade, as well as the regulars, old Mrs Roussos, her chihuahua, the man who only liked Chopin, and another stick-thin young man who seemed to have been in the shop all day, though no one knew who he was or what he wanted, beyond tea and biscuits. Earlier someone had fed the jukebox with enough coins to play ‘Eye Of The Tiger’ ten times and then left in a hurry. Kit had tried to unplug the jukebox but given himself a small electric shock in the process – there was nothing anyone could do but wait for the song to end.
‘You want us to help you to help her?’ repeated Kit. He seemed to be having difficulty getting past his personal pronouns. ‘But how?’
Frank messed up his hair. That was the tricky part – he had no idea. He had agreed to give Ilse Brauchmann a lesson about music. That had seemed a very good idea at th
e time. Now – faced with the practical question of what to find for her and what exactly to say about it – he realized he had no clue. He’d barely slept for worry. Beyond the fact she seemed to quite like green and had an aptitude for fixing things, he still knew nothing about her.
‘She told you she has a job now,’ said Father Anthony.
‘She’s from Germany,’ added one of the Williams brothers.
‘She’s new here,’ said the other.
‘And she always wears gloves,’ pointed out Kit. ‘She didn’t even take them off to write a cheque. Did she keep them on when she helped you fix the window?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘It’s very strange.’
There followed an animated discussion about the mystery of Ilse Brauchmann’s hands. Father Anthony said she just seemed a formal kind of person; the Williams brothers thought it might be a question of hygiene. The man who only liked Chopin said she probably had chilblains, the old men at the bar agreed on severe burns, while the man with three teeth threw in a curve ball and suggested they might be false.
‘Oh my God!’ shrieked Kit, so bound up in empathy he forgot how to draw the line between what they knew and what they didn’t. ‘Poor woman! That’s awful!’
‘She wears gloves because she’s cold,’ said Maud. ‘It’s freezing out there. She also has a fiancé in case we’ve all forgotten. I don’t know why we’re so desperate to push Frank into the arms of a woman who’s getting married.’
Maud had a way of saying ‘we’ that made it sound less of a collective experience, and more like a hideous mistake.
‘Of course she has a fiancé,’ said Father Anthony. ‘Of course we know that. We just want Frank to make a good job of his lesson. We’re trying to help him.’
While the group renewed their previous debate about the true identity of the man she was engaged to marry – was he English, for instance? German? Had his career brought him here? Could he really be a film star? – Frank pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. Why had he agreed to talk to her about music? Open a small door and she had moved into his head, taken up residence and unpacked her things; not only that, she had also brought her fiancé, his fast car and all the other sophisticated young people she must surely know. Frank saw them sometimes, swarming into the new wine bars that were beginning to open on the other side of Castlegate, so confident of their place in the world they spoke very loudly as if no one else could hear or understand. Frank felt ill. He had thought it would be easier than this. If possible it was even worse than the prospect of listening to the Messiah, and he had no intention of doing that either. ‘I have a few ideas,’ he said weakly.
That was a good starting point, said Father Anthony.
‘But if I tell you them, you’ll laugh.’
Of course they wouldn’t, said Father Anthony. They were his friends. Why didn’t Frank try out his ideas on them? The old ex-priest put down his pineapple juice and plaited his long fingers into a steeple, the way he did when he wanted to listen carefully.
‘So I was thinking I could write a sort of poem. I could tell her about music and all the things she is missing and then I could recite it.’
‘Your poem?’
‘Hm-mm.’
‘Outside the cathedral?’
‘Quite possibly.’
Everyone listened with a polite but quizzical expression, as if Frank had just grown an extra set of ears and no one knew how to break it to him. The Williams brothers reached for each other’s hands.
‘Have you written poetry about music before?’ asked Father Anthony at last.
‘No.’
‘Have you written any poetry whatsoever?’
‘Not really.’
The group nodded, and in the absence of something to say, they nodded some more. Kit blew into an empty crisp packet and sat on it. Bang. ‘I see,’ said Father Anthony.
‘Or I was thinking I could learn something like the piano, and then I could play for her.’
‘Seriously?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘At five thirty on Tuesday?’
Maud doubled over towards the table, holding her chest, her shoulders heaving, and emitting tiny sobs.
‘Is she hurt?’ asked Frank.
‘She’s killing herself laughing,’ said Kit.
She was not the only one. Glancing from one face to another, Frank realized the entire group was busy disposing of mirth in handkerchiefs, beers and crisp packets. Even Mrs Roussos’ white chihuahua was doing a smiley thing with his teeth. Frank began to grin too, and then halfway into it he thought of Ilse Brauchmann and remembered what he had to do and felt sick with worry all over again.
‘It’s all right for you. I’m – way out of my depth here.’
It was Father Anthony who finally spoke. ‘Frank, when I met you I was in a terrible mess. We all know that. You listened to me and then you found me jazz. You didn’t write a poem. You didn’t play it on the piano. You didn’t tell me everything there was to know. You just listened to me and then you got up and found the record I needed. She said she wants you to talk to her about music. So tell her what you hear when you listen. Be yourself.’
The others concurred. They mentioned the music Frank had found them. You found me Aretha, you found me Bach, you found me Motown. Be yourself, they agreed. But of course that was not so straightforward. They had no idea who he really was. No one did.
When he was about eight, Frank had called Peg ‘Mother’. He was waiting for the school bus when she had turned the corner, luminous in a yellow kaftan. ‘Hello, Mother!’ She marched straight past. He was a laughing stock.
‘I didn’t realize you were talking to me,’ she said later. ‘I don’t know why you’re so upset.’ But he was, he was very upset. It wasn’t the laughter, he was used to that; but he had felt utterly abandoned. Cast adrift.
‘Couldn’t I call you that sometimes?’ he had asked. ‘Everyone else calls their mother “Mother”.’
She pulled a face as if she had just eaten something off. ‘What’s wrong with calling me Peg? That’s my name.’
He had suggested some alternatives. Mum? Mama? Mother Peg? (‘What the fuck?’ she said.) He explained he thought it might be nice.
‘Why do we have to be the same as everyone else? If I call you Frank and you call me Peg, it shows everything is fair and equal between us. No strings attached.’
He had tried it, though, when she was out of earshot. ‘Good night, Mother.’ ‘Thank you, Mother.’ To his shame he discovered he rather liked it; and he wasn’t convinced, when it came to mothering, that he wanted to be on fair and equal terms. Once in a while, it would have been comforting, he had thought, to be – well, looked after. Cooked a hot meal. Called ‘Darling’.
To have strings, like everyone else.
The night before the first lesson, Frank pulled out armfuls of records. There was only one solution. Since he had no idea what music would please Ilse Brauchmann, he would have to do the next best thing. He would have to give her the music that pleased him. Bach, Joni, Miles, Bob … all those records he had learnt to love. He spread them on the floor all around him, and it was like a pleasure garden, he thought, a pleasure garden of fairground attractions – this one slow, this one fast, this one so wild it could turn you upside down. It was good looking at them. His friends. He fell asleep feeling very happy and sure of himself. Excited.
So what happened in the six-hour period while he was unconscious? When Frank woke, he was a different man. The moment he thought of the day ahead, his body began to pound. Not only that, he discovered his hair had put in an appearance as a halo. He tried dampening it with water and that only made things worse. Now it was a halo with spikes. He cooked eggs but hadn’t the stomach for eating. When he went down to open the shop, his hands were shaking so much he dropped the keys.
‘Oh my God. You look awful,’ said Kit, bounding inside.
What Frank needed was a plan; some changes were requ
ired. If he didn’t want to meet Ilse Brauchmann looking like a terrified shop assistant with bad hair, he needed to fix a few things. So he went to a proper barber. He asked if the man thought he could do anything with his fringe and the barber said with hair like Frank’s, what you needed was a good-quality styling wax. Frank went to the chemist and bought a pot of Dax.
While he was there, he made the mistake of asking the assistant if she had any advice about aftershave. Her opinion was that a big man like Frank needed a big smell like Jovan Musk; it was dead sexy. Frank was about to explain that really he didn’t need to smell sexy, he just wanted to smell normal, when she whipped out a tester bottle from beneath the counter and shot him with a scent so powerful it penetrated his nose with the force of paint stripper. It wasn’t just sexy, it was obscene. All the way home, he tried to dodge the smell, but it seemed to have infiltrated his skin and bones. He took a shower and it was still with him. So now his hair was wet and no longer looked the way it had looked when the barber cut it; it was back to doing the halo thing, just a shorter version.
Frank made a stab at fixing his hair in the exact way the barber had shown him. It looked even worse. After that he tried on several jackets along with several pairs of shoes but ended up with his regular plimsolls and beaten-up suede jacket. He had an appointment at the bank before he met Ilse Brauchmann. On the way out he ran into both Kit and Maud.
‘Oh my God, what’s that foul smell?’ said Maud.
And Kit said, ‘What happened to your hair?’
‘Does it look awful?’
‘It looks. It looks.’ Kit straightened his Ilse Brauchmann tie. He seemed to have run out of adjectives. ‘It looks neat.’
‘In a bad way?’
Maud said nothing; she just sucked her molars. Sometimes, Frank thought, you had to be grateful for small things.
‘A loan?’ repeated Henry. ‘Why do you want a loan?’ His office was heated to the point of tropical, and he swung slowly left and right on his chair. Frank was on the other side of the desk on the very small seat where he had sat fourteen years previously. Either the chair had got smaller, or Frank had got bigger. In either case, the only way to maintain a respectable position was to balance on one buttock. So, less of a chair, more of a perch. And the aftershave was still with him. If possible, it was inflating with the heat.