by Gill Hornby
‘I bloody have,’ said Jazzy.
Even Lewis would have to admit that Jonty was an extremely accomplished pianist–worth two Mrs Coles and then some. They hadn’t heard even one of the many wrong notes they were used to hearing by now. But nor could they quite catch any of the emotion that they might hope to hear, either. There was no sense of joy in those hills, no beauty in that edelweiss, no love in the love songs: instead, there was just a deep and nasty sarcasm.
Annie was arranging the cups in their saucers and Bennett was pouring when Tracey came up to the table.
‘Are you all right, Bennett? Couldn’t help noticing you looked a bit tense in there this evening…’ She piled sugars into Lewis’ cup.
‘Well… Actually…’ He offered up the plate of Katie’s brownies. ‘I am getting worried, thank you for asking. I really think it’s time to give the Choir a proper definite structure.’ Annie started clattering the crockery. ‘Oh. Of course,’ he carried on, ‘Constance will be back any day now, and obviously we shouldn’t commit to anything definitely until she gets back.’ Annie nodded and calmed down a bit. ‘But it really is a terrible mess.’
‘Come, come, Bennett, that is a little negative,’ Annie retorted. ‘We’ve got a lot of new members and it’s bound to take a while to settle down. It’s just a bit hit-and-miss, that’s all. Last week, if you remember, was a great hit.’
‘Yes. Yes.’ Bennett seemed to be drawing some moral strength from somewhere. ‘Last week was fine, but other weeks are a total waste of our time.’
‘Bennett St John Parker!’ Annie was outraged.
‘I’m sorry. But it can’t go on like this. Either we go in for this championship and we do it properly or we don’t bother at all. Our opponents will already know their stuff backwards, you do realise that, don’t you? And we haven’t even picked our songs. We’re heading for disaster here. A total wipe-out. What do you think, Tracey?’
‘What do I think?’ Tracey had been watching it all with open amusement. ‘I think I’ll have another brownie please, ta. Katie’s improving. They’re not bad for once.’
As if to prove Bennett’s point, the second half of the evening took the Choir to whole new depths. There was none of that letting their hair down that they normally went in for after the tea break. This Jonty already had control of the piano; he was now determined to seize control of the content. He ran a few arpeggios, asked over his shoulder: ‘Everyone knows this, surely?’ and launched into the waltz from The Merry Widow.
Emma moved around the circle handing out song sheets while she and Edward sang up and along.
‘Oh, lovely,’ purred Pat, putting away her needlework. ‘This is more like it, eh, Lynn?’
‘Gorgeous,’ oozed Lynn. ‘Ah, to be back where we belong.’
‘What? Eh?’ Jazzy was in outrage. ‘What’s going on?’ She flicked her lyrics sheet. ‘Hello? Can someone sort this out, please?’ They all looked down at their words.
Love unspoken, faith unbroken
‘This cannot be happening,’ she shouted. ‘Oi. You. You taking the piss? Jasmine White just does not’–she waved her index finger in front of her face and shook her head–‘do this kind of stuff.’
Love me true
‘I mean, have I gone mental OR IS THIS BY ACTUAL DEAD PEOPLE?’ Jazzy shouted up and alone:
WE’RE UP ALL NIGHT TO GET LUCKY
‘Owph. Dear,’ whispered Judith to Tracey. ‘Is this what true democracy sounds like?’
Let your heart sing this refrain
Emma and Edward warbled.
UP ALL NIGHT TO GET LUCKY
belted Jazzy over the top of them.
‘A Franz Lehar/Daft Punk mash-up?’ replied Tracey thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I should think it probably is.’
‘Sounds to me more like a coup,’ said Maria with authority. She knew a political takeover when she saw one. ‘A violent, bloody coup. There’s a foreign power over there, Lewis my lad, and it’s got its tanks right on our lawn.’
The applause, when it came, was muted and polite. Lewis hardly had to raise his voice to be heard. ‘I hope you’ve all got the Talent Show fund-raiser in your diaries. In the hall at St Ambrose at eight p.m. on the twenty-eighth. All welcome. Plenty of room for all our fans. Be there or be a no-mates. And after that’s over, THEN we,’ he looked angrily at Jonty, ‘we the members will sort out the championship. Goodnight, all.’
‘Night.’
‘Night,’ called Annie from the kitchen, where she was gathering up all her stuff. ‘Don’t lose hope, everybody,’ she called through the hatch, in her cheerful voice: ‘Everything has a habit of turning out for the best.’ Her phone was trilling from the bottom of her basket but as soon as she found it, it stopped. She pulled down her reading glasses from the top of her hair and held the screen at a distance. ‘Hmm. Jess. That’s very odd.’ The humans had all gone now, but she often talked to the tea urn. ‘Jess never calls me these days. What can that be about…?’
Bennett emerged from the butcher, twisting the plastic bag around the primary ingredient of that night’s supper. He was thoroughly preoccupied this morning. He had promised Annie he would go to the Talent Show, and actually he really wanted to go to the Talent Show. The problem, though, was that he had sort of, somehow or other, given Annie the impression he might perform something himself and he really was not sure whether he did in fact have a talent. He could sing, of course, but only really in a choir, and best of all in harmony. Bennett had never been one of nature’s soloists; he was pretty sure about that. He was rather rusty on the piano, though he had started playing again for the first time in years. So what else was there? He was unusually strong at mental arithmetic and his sweet peas always came up a treat, but neither of those was really a performance art. Of course, it was always hard living without his loved ones but he especially felt it when he could do with some trusted, caring counsel on tricky intimate questions like: what was particularly special or entertaining about Bennett Parker? Because the more he turned it over in his own mind, the more he was starting to suspect that the answer was: not much. He turned towards home, and there in front of him was Sue.
‘Oh. It’s you.’ She raised an eyebrow, gave a little smirk then gushed a quick, warm ‘How are you, love?’ over her shoulder to someone else. ‘Lamb chops, then?’ she snarled at Bennett; a kinder ‘Aw. How’s he getting on?’ oozed towards an elderly lady tottering out of Boots.
Bennett looked down at the bag. They were lamb chops, indeed, but would a ‘Yes’ be the right answer, or might she, in this instance prefer, a ‘No’?
‘I’ve been thinking of you, all of you.’ Sue gripped the arm of yet another complete stranger. ‘How did it go?’
He suspected there was no right answer to the lamb chop question; he was on a straight course to unpopularity either way.
‘Look at her!’ She chucked an unknown baby under the chin. ‘That cannot be another tooth!’
‘Yes,’ he declared. ‘They are. I am having,’ he held up the twisted plastic, lamb chops.’
‘Gorgeous! Are they new?’
‘Well, I hope—’ Oh. Someone was showing off her shoes. Eventually, Sue turned back to him.
‘So suddenly we’re Masterchef.’ She gave a glint of smile.
It was the wrong answer. ‘Hardly—’
‘What a fascinating insight into how the other half lives.’
He knew from experience not to join in, and yet: ‘There are only four of them.’
‘Only four?’ She laughed. ‘Well, I’m so glad I bumped into you. Now I know that you’re a gastronome to whom money is no object, I think it might be time you had us to Sunday lunch. It’s not easy for me, coming up with anything decent in that poky little kitchen we all have to squash into. So let’s say next Sunday, twelve thirty.’
Annie was, for once, the first to arrive. She sat trembling under the window in Menopause Corner as Sue thumped open the door and stomped over towards her.
‘Oh, thank God yo
u’re here. She’s pregnant,’ spluttered Annie. ‘She’s gone and got herself bloody pregnant.’
‘Ooh-ooh-ooh.’ Sue was instantly cheered. ‘Clue?’ She sat down with a force that made the floor shake.
‘Jess. My Jess. She’s having a baby.’
‘Little Miss Perfect?’ It sounded to Annie like the beginnings of a hoot coming out of Sue before the gravity of the situation hit her. ‘I mean, not Jess of all people? Golly.’
‘All that work,’ huge dollopy tears rolled down Annie’s cheeks, ‘to get to that university and she goes and throws it all up in her second term.’
‘You poor darling.’ Sue took a manky tissue out of her pocket and wiped Annie’s face. ‘That’s tough–especially as she’s never given you a moment’s trouble till now.’
‘Huh. Apart from the tattoo, of course.’ Annie sniffed. ‘Let’s not forget that little drama.’
‘Tattoo?’ Sue cocked her head and froze, a squirrel at the crack of a twig. ‘I didn’t hear about a—’
‘Sorry. I couldn’t face telling anybody. I thought it was just a blip.’ The tears rolled out again. ‘I didn’t know it was part of a whole new lifestyle package.’ Annie was waiting, damply, for some wise counsel or calm comfort. She blathered on: ‘One week a law student, the next an inked-up single mother.’ Normally Sue’s mental weather was on display all over her face, which, for some bizarre reason, was looking rather sunny. ‘What next, do we suppose–drugs? A cult? Terrorism?’
‘Humph.’ Sue had at last accumulated enough dark thoughts for a cloud to cross her features. ‘But the point is: you’re all sorted, aren’t you?’
‘What do you mean,’ Annie dabbed at herself, ‘sorted?’
‘I mean, this might not be the best thing for Jess, but it’s great for you, isn’t it? Like a promotion, or being fast-tracked at the airport. Oh, yes, typical Annie Miller.’ She reached into her bag and took out her reading specs. ‘Fallen on her feet again. Everyone else munching on the happy pills, moping around their empty nests, searching high and low to find where they might have left their own identity… And there’s you, straight into grannyhood without passing Go.’
‘Are you mad?’ Annie whispered. ‘She’s not even twenty. This is not what I wanted for my daughter.’
Sue studied the menu through the glasses on the end of her nose. ‘Well, it’s her life. She’s got to make her own choices…’
‘Choices? Choices? The only choice she seems to have made is to get herself so thoroughly rat-arsed that she was incapable of making any proper choice at all.’
‘Tea for two, please, Jasmine. And who is he, the father?’
‘He’s not a father. He’s, I don’t know, some passing bloke at a party–facing the right bit of wall at the right time, as far as I can tell. No question of him having anything to do with it.’
‘See? Miller’s Luck. I can’t think of anything worse than having to share my grandchildren. I worry about it all the time. Can’t get to sleep some nights. Especially now we’re in our own little economic downturn. Supposing we stay broke and the in-laws are loaded? Then where would we be? The other day, I bumped into, oh, what’s her name…’
‘Clue?’
‘Porridge.’
‘Tina.’
‘… and she’s a terrible case. Her other one gets called “Granny Big House” and she’s saddled with “Granny Fish Tank”.’
‘Granny Fish Tank?’ Annie shuddered.
‘It’s not even an aquarium.’ Sue squirmed out of her jacket. ‘She’s only got a bowl.’
They held a moment’s silence.
Sue started up again: ‘And as for that every-other-Christmas lark… Our little sproglets tucking into some stranger’s turkey purée? Absolute hell. From here on in you and James will have total, unimpeachable grandparental control. Granny and Grandpa Big House, always and for ever. No competition.’ Sue shook her head. ‘Bastards.’
Jazzy unloaded the tea tray on the table in front of them. As Sue poured, Annie turned towards the window and set about repairing her face.
‘What does James think about it all?’
‘Well, desperate, obviously. Completely desperate. I mean, I haven’t seen him since she told us—’
Sue let the teapot down with a thump. ‘Haven’t seen him?’
Annie jumped and turned back to the room. ‘Well, he’s in London all week these days—’
‘Is he just? And what’s his excuse for that, exactly?’
‘Oh, you know, it’s this case… been going on for ages…’ She took a sip of tea.
‘“Case”? Is that what he calls it…’
‘Sue. Stop it.’ Annie gulped too quickly, scalding her throat. ‘You are ridiculous sometimes…’ She had forgotten what a risky business it could be, confiding in Sue; how sometimes you could end up with your troubles doubled rather than halved. ‘Just promise me you won’t tell anybody any of this. Please.’ She would give the Church Fête Committee meeting a miss on Wednesday and call James; they could have a proper chat about the whole business. He would know what to do and say. And while they thrashed it out, she might just set about spring-cleaning that doll’s house…
The banknotes beneath her crinkled as Tracey rolled back on to her duvet and pulled her pillow over her face. They had found her out; her sins had finally found her out. She had counted her money several times now, yet the total stayed the same. She had to face the truth. The safe, her own private safe, the safe that had been buried beneath her old maternity clothes for the last twenty-odd years, had been raided. There was nearly three hundred quid missing, and while she was going in for this truth-facing lark, she might as well accept another thing: this had happened before. In fact, for a while now, since–coincidentally–around the time that Billy’s dope-smoking moved from occasional to habitual, money had been somehow escaping from the only private place she had in her house.
Tracey’s world of deceit–that sounded like a theme park; perhaps they would open it one day, in honour of her spectacular crapness–was a multi-layered thing. Once the basic sin had been created–the original, as it were, big bang, ha ha–the lies had then been deposited upon it like the geographical layers of the crust of the Earth. What she needed to work out was: once he had broken into the safe, how many layers had he excavated? How much did Billy now know?
If, as she strongly suspected, he had been going in there quite often, he could know the following:
1. That cash appeared in there on a frequent but erratic basis.
2. That cash was then taken out on a regular-as-clockwork monthly basis.
3. This always happened about twenty-four hours before the same amount fetched up in Billy’s bank account.
4. That amount was, or was at least what he had always understood to be, his allowance from his father.
But did he? To get from points 1 to 4 would require methods of deduction–not exactly Holmesian but still active and reasonably sharp. Billy could not, at the best of times, even by devotees such as Curly, Squat and his dear old mum, be described as particularly active or especially sharp. So if, as was possible, his approach to the safe was like his approach to most things–that is, employing the memory and perception of the average goldfish–well then what could he know?
1. That cash appeared.
2. He helped himself.
3. He got away with it.
Tracey took the pillow from her face and started to sit up. That was all, wasn’t it? He may only know that—
‘Aaaargh.’ She shoved the pillow in her mouth and flung herself back down on the bed. How could she not have noticed this before? Every time he had opened that safe to get to the cash, he had to actually pick up and actually move her actual vibrator.
It took a while, but Tracey did gather herself together. She was being silly. So what? It was no big deal. Sex toys were not a sin. She wasn’t a nun in the Vatican; she just happened to have the sex life of a nun in the Vatican. Who knew what was stashed under Billy’s bed?
She had never had the nerve to look. And on the matter of her lies, all was not quite lost. Billy hadn’t quite got all the way down. There was still, at the bottom, the final layer, the Mariana Trench of deceit that nobody had quite reached, not yet. But he had picked up enough material to be going on with, that was for sure.
The doorbell rang. That would be Annie, come to collect her. She flung up her window, signalled that she would be right down, bundled up the money and returned it to the safe. Perhaps this was her penance, she thought, as she placed the Magic Wand back on top of the cash. There were all her sins, and there–in Annie, the Choir, the Sound of Music medley–was her penance. She sighed and grabbed her coat. At least she didn’t have to get the car out.
Hell is gone and heaven’s here
The Bridgeford Community Choir Talent Show was an annual fund-raising event that had been a fixture in the social calendar for many, many years–possibly more years than its public demanded. The need for funds, of course, had not diminished–it is a fundamental economic principle that in local civic life the need for funds can never diminish–but the talents on offer seemed, sadly, never to change. The St Ambrose Primary School hall had seemed quite buzzy at the beginning of the evening, but now that the singers were up on stage for the opening act, the paucity of the audience was more apparent. The Choir had an unbroken view to the crayoned frieze of THE FOUR SEASONS displayed along the high back wall.
And step and click.
Maria had insisted on free entry for all senior citizens, under-eighteens and the unemployed; the scattering of people out there on the chairs seemed to consist only of senior citizens, under-eighteens and the unemployed. Other members had argued that they ought to pay at least something for a decent show, but Maria had been firm: she knew this lot and if they didn’t get in free, they wouldn’t bother coming at all.
Now SCREAM
