by Anita Notaro
Mary leaned over and hugged me. ‘I missed you, Antonia. I know that it’s been hard for you the last few years, with your mum and everything.’
I nodded, feeling the tears come to my eyes. ‘I only realize now that I had no life, Mary. But then I feel guilty because it’s disloyal to Mum.’
Mary squeezed my arm. ‘Don’t feel guilty, Antonia. You gave everything to your mum. But now … well, now you have to have your own life. You deserve it. And look, you’ve already taken the first step, haven’t you? And a pretty big one at that. You should be patting yourself on the back, do you know that? Not giving yourself a hard time.’
‘I suppose you’re right, Mary,’ I managed. ‘I don’t feel very brave at the moment,’ I said. I opened my mouth to tell her about my date with Niall, but stopped. I wanted to hug it to myself for a bit, to get used to the idea. And I couldn’t imagine saying the words: ‘I have a date …’ No. Not Miss Mouse.
‘But you are, Antonia. You are brave, and gorgeous and talented and I want to kill you,’ Mary joked, and we both exploded into giggles again.
In the end, I promised Mary that if I got through the auditions, the first thing we’d do was go and see Colette, because for the next week, I didn’t want a single distraction. I wanted to focus on getting the song just right, so that I wouldn’t let anybody down. I kept hoping that time might slow down, somehow, might magically stop before the auditions, but it didn’t, of course. That’s not the way life works. It just keeps racing past, and you can’t hold it back.
I’d dug out as many versions of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, as I could, including one by Elvis. Mum used to love Elvis, I thought, as I watched him on YouTube. I’d never been a fan, but I had to admit that his version was amazing, so rich and vibrant. That’s it, I thought, as the song came to an end, that’s the sound I want – something big and dramatic, that really grabs you by the heart. Must have been Mum, up there looking down on me. Mum – and Eithne, who made me come to her house every day to practise, going over and over key phrases until I had them pitch-perfect. ‘Fail to prepare, prepare to fail,’ she said darkly.
I spent the rest of the week listening and practising every morning, and job-hunting in the afternoons. I’d been applying for every job I could think of, but kept being told the same thing. ‘You don’t have the right kind of experience, sorry.’ Even the dog-walking service turned me down. How hard could dog-walking be? I’d thought bitterly as I put the phone down. All of a sudden, I felt useless, as if I were chasing some silly dream, thinking that I could emulate Elvis, of all people. Get real, Antonia, I told myself. I even debated not turning up for the auditions, telling myself that I needed to do something sensible instead, something real.
10
BUT THAT FRIDAY morning, I crawled out of bed at 6 a.m., made tea and toast, which I had to force myself to eat, and climbed into my car to drive to the auditions, on an industrial estate to the west of Dublin. I don’t know why I didn’t talk myself out of it – it was like something was driving me on, even though I wasn’t even sure where I was going, and needed to stop several times to consult the map in the glove compartment of the car. It was an ancient AA map of Dad’s, which he always kept in exactly the same place. Dad liked things to be orderly. ‘A place for everything, Antonia, and everything in its place,’ he’d often say to me. If only he could see me now, I thought, as I turned the map the wrong way around, trying to find the estate’s location, searching frantically in my handbag for the address Karen had given me. I’m going to be late to my first ever audition, I thought. Maybe it’s a sign. But then I shook my head. ‘C’mon, Antonia. You’ve got this far, just take it one step at a time,’ I said out loud to myself.
When I found the place at last, it looked completely deserted. ‘It can’t be here,’ I muttered to myself as I drove into the empty car park, but then I noticed a small, printed sign on a traffic cone at the side of the building. ‘THAT’S TALENT! AUDITIONS THIS WAY’, and an arrow that pointed to the rear of the huge warehouse. Maybe nobody’s turned up, I thought, parking the car and following the sign around the side of the building. I was practising my scales, la-la-ing up and down, and then trying out a few bars of the song to relax myself, when I walked around the corner, stopped dead and did a double take.
‘Oh my God,’ I said out loud. The queue snaked ahead of me for at least half a mile, up one side of the building and down another. I gulped and blinked in sheer panic, fighting the urge to run.
‘I know, crazy isn’t it?’ The voice beside me made me jump, and I turned to see a girl of around my own age standing beside me. She was an absolute knockout in skinny black jeans and a faded grey T-shirt, tossing her flame-red hair over her shoulders. She extended her hand to me. ‘Amanda, from County Meath. Thought she had a chance until she heard you. Not a bit bitter about it.’
I laughed and shook her hand. ‘Antonia from County Wicklow. Feel as if I’m about to die of panic.’
Amanda laughed, revealing perfect white teeth. ‘It’s the biggest talent show in the country, baby. Everyone, but everyone, wants to get on That’s Talent!’
‘Oh,’ I managed, my confidence plummeting to my boots. How on earth had I ever thought that I even stood the slightest chance? There was nothing for it, I decided. I’d just have to turn around and go home.
‘I know. It’s tough, isn’t it?’ Amanda said, having seen the expression on my face. ‘I’m going to slink off now, my tail between my legs.’ She grinned.
‘That’s just what I was thinking,’ I said.
‘Well, from what I just heard, I think you should hang in there a bit. Even your scales sound good.’ She laughed. ‘I’m not sure I’ll even get past the door.’
‘What is it that you do?’ I asked shyly. Normally, I wouldn’t chat to a complete stranger like that, but there was something about Amanda that put me at ease, something about her self-confidence, her poise.
She shrugged and flashed that grin again. ‘I’m a singer too, rock numbers mainly. I’m a big Metallica fan.’ She smiled. ‘Not that I’ll be trying them out for this audience, mind you. “Total Eclipse of the Heart” is more the style here. You know, some big ballad that gets the mobile phones waving.’
‘Oh,’ I said, feeling like a complete fool. ‘All I’m doing is a cover of “Bridge Over Troubled Water”.’
‘That’s a great song,’ Amanda said enthusiastically. ‘That Elvis version really rocks.’
‘You’ve heard it? Isn’t it just fantastic?’ I said.
‘It sure is,’ she said. ‘And if you sing it anything like you sing your scales, you’ll breeze through the auditions, believe me.’
I shook my head. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Well, I do. Believe me, I’ve been to enough of these things to know.’ And then she paused, as the queue inched forward. ‘So what’s the big plan?’ she asked, pulling her hair into a ponytail and then letting it fall loose again over her shoulders, so that it spread out like a curtain of red over her tiny leather jacket.
I smiled, ‘Ehm, well … I don’t really have one. I thought I’d try the auditions and then see what happened.’
Amanda looked at me quizzically. ‘Oh, so you’re one of those, then.’
‘One of those what?’ I shook my head, puzzled.
‘One of those dark horses, who says she can’t sing a note and doesn’t want to get anywhere in the competition, and then ends up winning the thing.’ She was smiling, but there was something about her tone that unsettled me. Was she joking, I wondered?
But then she flashed that grin again. ‘I’m joking, you know.’
‘Oh. Right. Well, I really am just taking it one step at a time. Honest. My mum died recently and …’
Immediately, Amanda’s expression softened and she reached out and patted me on the shoulder. ‘Hey, I’m really sorry to hear that. I didn’t mean to be catty, I apologize.’
‘Don’t worry. It’s just, well, she always wanted me to do something with
my voice, and I thought I’d do it for her.’
‘That’s sweet,’ Amanda said softly. ‘I really hope you do well, then.’
‘Thanks.’ I nodded as we inched forward again another few feet.
‘Tell you what, why don’t I help you out with your make-up while we’re waiting? It’ll pass a half an hour or so. And everyone else is doing it.’ She pointed to a gaggle of teenage girls in the queue ahead of us, who all had their mirrors out and were applying thick slicks of foundation and dark eyeliner, giggling all the while. It looked fun, and they were clearly enjoying themselves, as if they were at a party, not an audition. Maybe I could relax a bit, I realized.
I shot back, ‘A half an hour – am I that bad?’
‘Well, you’re lovely, of course, but … unfinished. You have a raw natural beauty,’ she added tactfully.
I burst out laughing, and she looked at me, surprised. ‘You’re not the first person to say that,’ I explained. ‘Perhaps you could work some of your magic on me.’
‘Sure thing,’ she agreed, opening up the large, expensive leather satchel she’d brought with her, and bringing out a very impressive-looking selection of bottles and jars.
‘Wow,’ was all I could manage. ‘All I have in my make-up bag is five-year-old mascara and an ancient jar of moisturizer.’
‘Well, look and learn, baby.’ Amanda grinned, unscrewing the lid on a tube of foundation. For the next fifteen minutes she rubbed and patted make-up on to my skin, until at last she declared herself satisfied. ‘There. All done. Want to look?’
I nodded. ‘I’m nervous.’
‘Don’t be. I’ve just enhanced your natural assets.’ She smiled, handing me a small jewelled compact with ‘Chanel’ written on it in discreet diamonds.
I snapped it open and gasped at my reflection. I still looked like me, only better – my eyes looked bigger, my lips fuller, and my face had a golden glow to it. ‘I look …’
‘Amazing?’ she added.
‘Well … yes,’ I said, staring at myself for another bit. ‘Wow, thanks, Amanda. If I get through this audition, it’ll be down to you.’
‘Nonsense,’ she said crisply. ‘If you get through, it’ll be thanks to your own talent. Not that it’ll do any harm if you look good, mind you.’ She glanced at me appraisingly. ‘Fake it till you make it, that’s what I say.’
I looked down at the pair of navy-blue jeans and plain scoop-necked navy T-shirt Mary had lent me – ‘so you don’t appear too middle-aged’ – and wondered why I couldn’t be trendy, like Amanda, why I couldn’t wear skinny jeans and leather jackets. ‘Well, thanks anyway, Amanda. I really owe you one.’
She shrugged her shoulders and gave a toss of that beautiful red hair of hers. ‘You can repay me some time when I really need it, OK?’
‘Sure thing,’ I said. ‘I won’t forget.’
We stood there for another hour in the chilly autumn wind, chatting like we’d known each other for ever. By the time a young woman with a huge set of earphones on her head and a clipboard in her hand finally approached, I felt that I’d made a real friend. And it was great to know that I could go out into the world and talk to someone my own age – that I wasn’t a completely lost cause. The young woman lifted a megaphone to her lips and yelled, ‘Right, this section of the crowd, we’ll take you in groups of five at the back entrance there.’ She indicated a red door with a handwritten sign taped to it, reading, ‘Group P’. So just line up and we’ll call you then, OK?’ She smiled briskly, before disappearing again.
And then we all shuffled into the door, and turned left on to a long corridor, which was thankfully warmer than outside. ‘Here we go,’ Amanda said, bending down to touch her toes, then stretching her arms as high as they would go. ‘The moment of truth. Break a leg, Antonia.’
‘You too, Amanda,’ I said, trying to focus on my breathing, to keep it steady and even so they wouldn’t hear the tremor in my voice.
The girl with the earphones appeared again and introduced herself as ‘Karen, the production assistant.’ So this was Karen, I thought, recognizing her cheerful tone, and that was what ‘PA’ meant. She was tiny, with bright blue eyes, a mop of blonde curls and a preoccupied expression on her face. No wonder, I thought, looking down along the line at the various contestants fidgeting and jigging around, practising dance moves, or humming under their breath. How on earth did she manage this lot? There was absolutely no way I could have.
‘OK guys, I’ll take you in fives into the audition suites, and then we’ll call you in one by one to listen to your pieces, and we’ll be letting you know straight away if you’ve got through. If you haven’t, we’d ask you to leave promptly to avoid a squeeze, all right?’ There was much nodding from the contestants, all of whom seemed to have done this before, but I had to resist the urge to scream. Keep calm, keep calm, I kept telling myself, but my palms were sweaty, and my heart was pounding.
When she called us into the ‘suites’ as she’d called them, we sat on orange plastic chairs outside a green-painted door and waited for our turn. Amanda went in before me, and just five minutes later she breezed out, a broad grin on her face. She gave me the thumbs up. ‘I’ve made it to the next call-up, can you believe it?’
‘The next call-up,’ I squeaked. ‘You mean, we have to go through this again?’ But then Karen was calling my name and Amanda grabbed my arm and squeezed it tight.
‘You’ll ace it – I’ll wait here for you, OK?’
I nodded silently, and walked in through the door, into the tiniest room I’d ever seen. It was more like a broom cupboard, with nothing in it but a health and safety leaflet on the wall and a Formica-topped table, behind which sat Karen and a man of about my age, dressed entirely in black, a pair of huge black glasses perched on his nose.
‘Hi there!’ Karen said brightly, then looked down at her list. ‘Toni! Good to see you.’ She stood up enough to lean over the table and shake my hand. ‘Right, you’re going to sing for us, aren’t you?’
I willed myself to open my mouth, to speak. ‘“Bridge Over Troubled Water”,’ I managed finally, a hoarse rasp. I cleared my throat nervously, hardly daring to catch her eye.
‘Well, that’s great!’ she said enthusiastically, shooting the man beside her a glance.
He nodded. ‘Yeah, great.’
Oh, God, I thought. I can’t do this. I felt the panic mount, and I had to fight the impulse to make a run for it. And then Karen said, ‘Off you go, Toni.’
I opened my mouth, which was as dry as sandpaper, and croaked the first notes, before stopping dead. ‘Sorry,’ I muttered. ‘I’ll just try again.’
Karen nodded, her expression less enthusiastic now. She was probably well used to people drying on her, I thought. And then a voice in my head said, ‘Well, not me.’ I didn’t know where the voice had come from, but this time, when I opened my mouth, the first few bars came out true and strong, and then, just like every time I sang, the song just took over. As I got into my stride, I could see Karen’s expression change.
She began to relax, leaning back in her chair and grinning, and when I got to the end, she jumped up and said, ‘Bravo!’
Even black-glasses man looked enthusiastic, mustering a ‘Yeah, great.’
‘Toni, that was just wonderful,’ Karen enthused. ‘You have a lovely quality to your voice. Well done – you’re through to the next call-up.’ She beamed.
‘Well, that’s great,’ I said, feeling my breathing slow. ‘Ehm, what’s the next call-up?’
Karen smiled at me, and I felt about five years old. ‘We have so many contestants that we have to whittle them down over the day by having more than one audition. So, you’ve got through here, and then you’ll see Sandy, the producer, and she’ll make a decision, and then the executive producer will take a look. And then we’re all done!’ she said brightly.
I could have cried with distress at the very thought of going through this one more time, let alone twice, but I gritted my teeth and nodded and sm
iled. ‘Thanks a million, Karen. I look forward to it.’ Even though it feels like a long visit to the dentist, I told myself.
Amanda screamed so loudly when I told her I’d got through, I thought my eardrums would burst, grabbing me in a bear hug and twirling me round and round in the corridor. ‘We’re through, we’re through,’ she kept yelling. I was mortified.
I wasn’t used to this kind of thing, so I just shushed her gently and said, ‘It’s fantastic, I know, but we’ve got to do it again … twice.’
‘Twice, schmice.’ She yelled again. ‘We are going all the way, baby!’
‘That’s great, Amanda, but can we take it a bit easier, please?’
She looked at me as if I was a complete spoilsport, then shrugged her shoulders. ‘Cool. We’ll wait and see, then.’ Something in the tone of her voice told me that I was being just too uptight, but I decided to ignore that for a bit, and focus on the next call-up, singing and warbling the notes as loudly as I dared in the crowded corridor. Amanda jogged up and down on the spot beside me, occasionally blasting out a few bars of ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’. She had a real rock chick’s voice, loud and raw.
‘Wow, you sound amazing,’ I said.
I was surprised at the look of sheer pleasure on her face at the compliment. ‘Thanks, Antonia. I’ve really busted my balls on this one, to get the sound just right. I think it’s OK, but …’ She chewed her lip and I thought, my God, she’s nervous. There was I thinking she was totally cool, and inside she feels just like me.
I reached out and squeezed her arm. ‘It’s more than OK, Amanda. It’s great, believe me.’
‘Thanks, baby.’ She grinned. ‘Here goes.’ She nodded as another production assistant came towards us, clipboard in hand.
The next call-up went just fine, as Sandy was a lovely woman, who told me that I was ‘amazing’, but the third one was the one I knew really mattered. As I waited outside the tiny meeting room once more, this time for the executive producer, my teeth were chattering with nerves. I can’t do it. I can’t do it, I kept telling myself. Then, I can do it, I can, over and over again, until eventually, the door opened and Karen stuck her head out. I jumped with fright when she called my name.
