He shrugged. ‘I thought she was, a bit … a bit full on? She’s very … oh, I don’t know. You’ll see. But we’re pros, Lisa, and we’re talking about one concert, not a lifelong commitment.’
‘How do we know her voice will match?’
‘We don’t. But she’s good and it’s worth a go. Persuade Jon, will you?’
‘I’ll try.’
The little bell tinkled as he shut the door behind him.
I fired up the old kettle and equally old PC. I put the cardboard box of names back under the counter, thanked the god of coffee that Robert had embraced cafetières and sat down to email Jon. A minute later I was still looking at the blank screen.
On the back of an old delivery note I made a couple of lists:
YES:
Prestigious gig – could lead to more
Good experience
Will widen our repertoire
Chance to sing in one of the city’s prime institutions
NO:
Not audience-friendly music
Have to get someone in
Jon not keen
Hmm … I twiddled my pen on the counter and wondered about Daniela thingy, with diplomas from Milan and London. Was she Italian? Must be.
Greetings from Robert’s Classical Music Emporium, I began my email, but then the door opened. Stupidly, I clicked send. Oh well. Jon would laugh. I pictured him in my mind, how attractive he looks when singing and how calm, even though he’s usually so lively. Who knows, maybe it’s his inability to sit still that’s stopping him composing the opera he swears will be his masterpiece. It would be brilliant, but a long way from his day job writing advert jingles.
I sold a violin tutor and two Messiahs before receiving a reply.
What?? Sanatorium? Jx
Hah! Robert’s ‘someone’ has very shiny credentials. It’s either her or they’ll get Exeter Warblers – yuck. Say yes. Lx
Click.
He was bound to agree. Jon was the most easy-going person I knew. The other night was a blip, surely. If anything he was almost too easy going.
Ping – an email. Not Jon. Somebody enquiring about Nirvana for easy guitar. I began the reply: I’m afraid we only stock classical … my mind wandered.
There’s something very solid about a quartet. Four is good. Four crotchets to a bar is called Common Time. People like groups of four, they’re not as intimate as two and less dangerous than three; four is a comfortable number. Unlike five. Five is awkward and unbalanced. I remembered as a kid trying to dance to my mum’s vinyl of Dave Brubeck’s Take Five. Hopeless.
After work and on my way to pick up Mollie from ballet, I nipped into the library. I wanted to find out a bit more about Gesualdo and Robert’s computer ran on slug power. I’d read a bit and discovered differing accounts, some really bizarre and others unbelievable, but all were gruesome. Gesualdo lived about the same time as the artist Caravaggio, and apparently was just as crazy.
After the library came Sainsbury’s, so I arrived at the church hall with longer arms than usual. Of course, Mollie had her ballet bag, her PE kit and her school rucksack.
‘How come you’ve got all that stuff?’ she said.
‘This is called “Our Tea”,’ I said, holding up the right hand bag, ‘and this,’ I held up the left, ‘is because I’ve been to the library. Hello, darling, had a good day?’
‘What’s all those books?’ A large frown furrowed the otherwise serene forehead of my daughter. She dumped her stuff on the ground and began to wrestle with her rucksack as if she’d never put one on before.
‘There’s someone I’m interested in, a composer.’ I put my bags down and helped straighten the straps on her back. ‘We’re going to sing a piece of his music. There. Is that more comfortable?’
‘A bit.’
I knew better than to ask how she’d got on at school, so it wasn’t until she was full of pizza and recovered from her earlier grumps that she told me her teacher wanted to see me at the end of the week.
‘Oh? Do you know why?’ I said it lightly, but is there a parent in the land who doesn’t have a twang of anxiety when the teacher calls?
She shrugged and still chewing said, ‘Not necess … necessarily.’
‘What does that mean?’
Mollie slipped from the table, picked up Barbie, who was hanging over the radiator, and sat her on the table facing me. ‘You talk to her,’ she said to it, before disappearing into the sitting room.
My daughter may be smart, but Barbie I hung from the door handle by her hair.
Chapter Two
Gesualdo 1585
All day the baby screamed. Our ears wearied of the noise that was surely loud enough to be heard in far away Napoli. My mother fretted, but more so when my youngest sister suddenly stopped screaming and her little arms, that had beaten the air for so long, lay still by her sides. Every breath became effortful, sounding like the rasping of my father’s saw.
He was away on a forest trip. I had inherited my deft fingers from him, although his skill was in wood. He made furniture but his joy came from being with living trees.
‘Go and ask Francesca if you might go to Fontanarosa market with her tomorrow,’ my mother said, as the light began to fade. ‘Say we can spare a few eggs and if you sell anything we will buy some of her honey.’
Even though I worried about the baby, my heart gave a little lift. It would be the first time I had left our village without my mother. Francesca was old and her eyes were veiled with milk. She would not notice my own eyes roving, or mind if I explored by myself. After all, very soon I would be fifteen.
In the dark of the next morning, I found my mother asleep with the baby in her arms. For a moment I thought the angels had come in the night and taken my sister, but when I put the tip of my finger to her lips, I felt warm breath. The worst had passed. My mother stirred and I hurried away. It would not do for her to have a change of mind.
I carried our two baskets, glad they contained eggs and needlework and not the oil from our three olive trees. By the shrine at the crossroads I hoisted them onto Francesca’s cart and prayed her old nag would survive the journey.
We plodded along slowly, but did arrive at last. And what noise! People shouting and singing and all manner of clucks, quacks, bellows and honks from animals. Francesca insisted we set our stall next to the spit roasts.
‘Why here?’ I said, holding my nose.
‘People have to eat,’ Francesca said. She smiled and licked her lips, her face crinkling like the skin of the pigs on the spit. ‘The smell will bring people here soon enough.’
I became sick of the noise and stench, worrying that my needlework might take on the grease that cloyed the air around us. Francesca’s apricots and almonds proved popular and before long we had a little cluster of customers peering into our baskets. My eyes flicked to and fro. I was looking for someone special. Not someone I knew, although I was sure I’d know her when she came.
The sun grew higher, the day hotter and the meat charred. I was beginning to fear that Fontanarosa market was not going to assist in my change of fortune when a woman approached and began looking through my basket of needlework. Yes! I could tell by the way she was dressed. Not in finery, of course, but her apron was white and her cape unmarked, the collar flat and even. She picked up my shirts and aprons, turning them over as if looking for something. Her hands were smooth.
‘I have another piece here,’ I said, reaching under the straw of the egg basket. I unwrapped the silk chemise from an old, but clean piece of sheeting. ‘Perhaps you would like to see?’
The woman sifted the cloth through her fingers, inspecting the seams, the oversewn edges, the invisible working-in of the thread on the reverse. She was no stranger to fine work.
‘Did you do this, child?’
I nodded.
She looked at Francesca, who was picking meat from her teeth, then back at me. ‘Is this woman your grandmother?’
I shook my head.
‘What is your name then?’
I tried to keep my voice steady. ‘My name is Silvia Albana and my mother has stayed at home today because my sister is sick.’
‘And where is your home?’
‘Gesualdo,’ I said. ‘My father is the carpenter.’
The woman reached into her purse. ‘It’s possible you may see me again,’ she said, ‘but for now, I will pay you for this.’
In my dreaming I had not imagined selling the piece, but merely showing it as an example of my work. Now I had no silk but an enormous amount of money in my hand. My father could earn as much but not my mother, even if we had fifty chickens. I turned to Francesca. She had taken the bone pick from her teeth and was looking at me as if I had magic powers.
‘I have to buy more cloth,’ I told her. ‘My mother said so.’ I put the coins deep in a pocket. ‘I’ll be back soon.’
I didn’t wait for a reply but left her with the rest of the eggs and two shirts. She would be honest in dealing with them but not too honest with my mother if I bought her a little wine. It would be a coin well spent. How I would explain my newfound wealth to my mother I didn’t know, but once it was converted into cloth she could only give it to me to sew. Once, I looked back, but the fabric of the market had already fastened around me.
I hid the length of crimson silk bought for my next garment, a nightgown that would be even finer than the last. My needle flew faster than a flame licks a stick. I prayed at the crossroads shrine too, but not for the forgiveness of my sins. I put all my faith in a woman with an unremarkable face but whose collar lay flat and even all the way round.
Chapter Three
I was soaked by the time I arrived for Noteworthy’s next rehearsal after leaving Mollie at her dad’s. Michael and I maintained a delicate truce, but I imagined he would already be interrogating her for anecdotes to add to his Bad Mother file.
Robert’s kitchen table was too small for five so he put us in the dining room.
‘Is there anything I’ve forgotten?’ he asked.
‘What about another lamp?’ I said looking round. ‘It’s a bit dim in here.’ The ceiling shade, brown with beige fringing, cast a frilly circle of light on the table. ‘Are we having a séance?’
‘Perhaps we should,’ said Robert. ‘We could call up Gesualdo and ask him how he’d like us to sing Ite sospiri.’
‘Oh don’t,’ I said, shoving my fingers in my ears. ‘He’s the last person I’d want to get in touch with. He was completely nuts.’
Robert laughed. ‘I’ll see if I can find another light.’ He said it as if the contents of the house were a mystery to him.
My jeans were still clinging to my legs having got soaked on the way. Oh well. I sat down, and slid about trying to get comfortable on the leatherette seat. I wasn’t comfortable on the inside either. Why the creeping trepidation? As I flicked through the pages of the Gesualdo madrigal, all sorts of negative scenarios began presenting themselves in my mind: the concert would go badly, nobody would come, our reputation would be in tatters.
I took a deep breath and told myself not to be stupid.
Reading the old square notes would have been more than challenging, so I’d played through the parts on the keyboard then printed them out in modern notation. The original contained five separate parts. We’d just have to contend with having no score to read from. Not having all the parts written on top of each other would make it much more difficult to keep together but we’d manage.
As for the sound, my experience at the keyboard left me thinking that if I’d picked a handful of notes, like Scrabble letters from a bag, then hung them on the five lines of the stave at random, it might have been more tuneful. Maybe, when we were all singing, it would be better.
The doorbell chimed something lengthy and portentous.
‘Can you get that?’ Robert called down from upstairs, amidst much thumping. ‘I’m just finding an extension lead.’
I could see through the stained glass panel in the door that two tall people stood on the step under one umbrella. The figure of Jon, I knew immediately. The other had to be Daniela. I set my face to smile mode and opened the door.
Jon gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. ‘I met Daniela looking lost.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said, brightly. I looked at the woman before me: shiny coat the colour of Victoria plums, pillar-box red silk scarf and long black hair, that in spite of the wind and rain retained its knife-like edge down the side of her face. I also took in large sparkly earrings, sparkly brown eyes and equally dazzling teeth smiling down at me. This isn’t a woman who gets lost, I thought. This is a woman whom the world turns to find.
‘Not lost,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘But it is hard when there are no numbers on the doors. Hello, is it Lisa, I think?’ She held out her hand.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Hello.’ I added some sort of platitude as well. Nice to meet you, it might have been, but I’m not entirely sure. My mind was taken up with the image of my nail-bitten hand in hers. The painted nails. Coordinated accessories. Make up. Groomed, that was the word, with added shed-loads of style. She turned away and her padded shoulder grazed my nose.
Robert’s hall isn’t very big and the parquet flooring and brown floral wallpaper combination make it very dark. When he came down stairs carrying an old bedside lamp I found myself trapped in the corner by the hat stand.
The doorbell clanged again an inch from my left ear. ‘Can we all move along, please.’ I shooed them into the dining room, not meaning to sound quite so like a bus driver.
‘Phew,’ Sophie said, when I let her in. ‘I thought I’d never get here. The builders say I need a new roof and the guttering done. There’s something up with the boiler and …’ She shook the rain off her coat, gave her hair a rake through with her fingers and groaned. ‘Oh, stop me, please.’
In the reflection of the hall mirror, I pointed towards the dining room and mouthed. ‘She’s here.’
Sophie stopped raking and mouthed back. ‘And?’
‘Think goddess.’
‘Oh dear.’
We both sighed. The mirror, pink-tinted and slightly distorting, didn’t do either of us any favours.
‘Salute.’ Daniela nodded at each of us as we clinked our glasses in welcome. ‘Thank you for having me.’
Jon coughed. Had he been closer I’d have kicked him. Sophie caught my eye.
‘So where’s home?’ Jon asked.
She leant towards him. ‘Novara. It is halfway between Milan and Turin.’
Milan and Turin. That’s what she said, but it felt like Here and the Bedroom. Bloody hell. How did she do that?
‘See what you think of this.’ I handed round the copied Gesualdo.
‘How thrilling it is,’ Daniela said, breathily, and she sort of quivered all over. A nicer me would not have thought: a bit like a spider when a fly lands on her web.
‘Are we sure it’s unknown?’ asked Robert, glancing through the copy as if it might say so somewhere.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m still trying to find out. One of the books I’ve borrowed has a reference to a bass line being the only surviving part of Ite sospiri ardenti. But we’ve got the whole thing here.’
It was both a marvel and yet a mountain to climb. We all went quiet, frowning as we each tried to make sense of our own part.
‘Shall we start with something else?’ I suggested. ‘Daniela, I don’t know whether you’ve ever sung any of these.’ I handed her the Oxford Book of English Madrigals.
‘Why, yes!’ she said. ‘I used to sing them at school.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, I remember them very well. We all loved to hey nonny nonny as children.’
Had I offered Egon Ronay a chicken nugget, I would not have felt quite so patronised. Daniela’s English was good but the inflection is everything. Be nice, I told myself.
‘How about Weep, O mine eyes?’ said Sophie. ‘Oh no, not that. The next one. Weep, weep mine eyes. That’s got five par
ts.’
We all turned to the page. I glanced at her and she twitched an eyebrow. There were no hey nonnies in that one.
The opening of John Wilbye’s poignant madrigal is quite low for the alto and the second soprano, so it wasn’t until about halfway through when Daniela reached higher notes with the words, weep eyes, weep heart, that I could hear the quality of her voice. When she sang, a thousand deaths I die, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck and for the rest of the evening they absolutely refused to lie down. Perhaps that’s why I was so rubbish when we tackled the Gesualdo. Actually, none of us were brilliant. We had a number of false starts, and some of the harmonies were so discordant that we had to stop and check each part to see if we were singing the correct notes. It was hard to tell. In the end we agreed to take it away and get to grips with it on our own. I wasn’t convinced that would help, having already tried it, but I was outnumbered, and it was decided to leave it till next time.
Robert was positively perky the next day but I brooded. It wasn’t just the Gesualdo. Five is not an easy number to sit round an oblong table even if it is big enough. Sophie and I sat at either end while Robert and Jon looked directly at Daniela. Which, of course, they did. All evening. And who could blame them?
When I got to the bridge, on my way home, I saw how much the river had swollen from all the previous day’s rain. The subway on the far side was flooded so I climbed back up the steps. It had happened before, I guessed the drain had blocked …
I heard shouting suddenly, a man and a woman. Over the noise of the traffic and the river too. I couldn’t make it out. More shouting, cars braking. I carried on up the steps, the sun in my eyes. A prang probably. There, a car hooting, and another. The junction was busy, buses were nose to tail … but then a shadow was cast, in between me and the sun. A man? No, a boy, really … more shouting, and not a prang at all.
‘Hey! Hey, stop him.’ The man’s voice, booming, and a rather screechy female. ‘Look out. Look out!’
Secret of the Song Page 2
