Choral Society

by Prue Leith

  Lucy rubbed her hands over her face and again thought this could not be happening. Weaned on Elizabeth David and André Simon, she was in an honourable line of serious authors from both sides of the Atlantic: Jane Grigson, James Beard, Julia Child, Matthew Fort.

  To replace her with a non-writer was bad enough, but Orlando Black was not even a restaurant chef. If they’d sacked her for Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsay maybe she’d have understood. Celebrity is a powerful seller of newspapers, and at least they could cook. But to replace her with an androgynous show-host of vacuous intellect and zero talent …

  Lucy stood at the window, seeing nothing. She still had her hands on her hot cheeks, but now her fingers were wet with tears. Her mind ranted on: was her knowledge, and yes, scholarship, to count for nothing? She belonged to that top echelon of food writers who read widely, who knew the social importance of food, who could cook themselves. Who published good, well-researched and well-tested cookery books that people read and used.

  She started to weep in earnest, and went to the bathroom to bury her face in the bath towel. She carried it to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed, rocking and sobbing in uneven gulps.

  Lucy realised she was crying as much for her dead husband as for the loss of her job. She wanted David. She needed him, damn it, needed to shout down the phone. She wanted his steadying voice, his balance, his ability to make her laugh when she was crying.

  Oh, how could the Globe replace her with a pipsqueak who rose to fame because he dyed his hair orange, wore ridiculous chef’s pants in green checks and pranced about saying ‘Cool’?

  She stared at the carpet, tears running down her cheeks.

  Ten minutes later she straightened up and said aloud, ‘Bloody hell, this is ridiculous.’ She rubbed her face with the towel, flung it in the general direction of the bathroom and strode back to her desk. She emailed her copy to HOT Restaurant, pulled on her coat and stamped out of the hotel.

  She took a taxi downtown to Rivington Street and was greeted by a blast of good smells and convivial noise at ’inoteca. Good, she thought, comforting Italian food is what I need. I’ll have ribollita, that wonderful Tuscan soup with bread in it, followed by pasta. Or maybe risotto. Anyhow, something made of solid carbohydrate.

  Chapter Two

  Rebecca stared at the jumble of clothes on her bed, her fingers raking her hair. Why am I stressing about what to wear, she thought, it’s not as if the place is going to be stuffed full of gorgeous men.

  She pulled on the turquoise T-shirt for the second time, now over her sea-green panelled skirt, which, long and flowing, hugged her hips but flared below her knee. It made her feel jaunty, yet elegant.

  She rummaged in her belt drawer and extracted the string-and-shell affair she’d borrowed last week from her daughter’s bedroom. She felt a twinge of guilt. Angelica minded if her mother took things from her drawers. Of course she does, thought Rebecca, no young woman wants her mother rummaging through her things – think what she might find! But what Angelica did not understand is that this mother would never be shocked: not by purple condoms or tart’s underwear, rude love letters or sex toys from Ann Summers. She supposed a packet of cocaine would disturb her, or a briefcase full of stolen money or casino chips, or half a jack of whisky under the pillow. But there was no chance of finding any of these things in Angelica’s room. Angelica was the most sensible of daughters, with no apparent hint of rebellion in her soul. So presumably she just didn’t want her mother in her room, period.

  Rebecca acknowledged this fact and did not resent it, but she did not understand it. She never minded who borrowed things from her. She loved to lend her friends her clothes, her jewellery, or anything. She liked nothing better than Angelica borrowing from her, which she did less than she used to. It was funny, but when Angelica returned stuff to her, Rebecca always felt a little shaft of rejection. She would have liked her daughter to keep whatever it was, or at least to want to keep it. She always offered, and Angelica always refused.

  When Angelica was little Rebecca would let her play with her jewels (the good stuff as well as the beads and junk), use her expensive make-up as face paint, ruin her Emma Hope shoes by traipsing round the garden in them. She’d never minded other people driving her car, sleeping in her bed, borrowing their flat if they were away. It drove Bill, her ex, mad. He used to say she’d lend a perfect stranger her toothbrush.

  Rebecca slid the belt through her fingers. It was a mix of turquoise and orange macramé with two-inch discs of mother-of-pearl. I must put it back before she comes home for the summer, she thought, knowing the chances were she’d forget. She fastened it low over her hips and turned to the mirror, an expectant smile on her face.

  But the smile faded. It would not do: she looked ready for lunch under a beach umbrella, not a singing group down the seamy end of Notting Hill. She took the belt off and dropped it on the bed, followed by the skirt and top.

  She considered her lilac tunic, made of slightly knobbly alpaca. It was months since she’d bought it but she hadn’t worn it yet. She felt the fabric, cool and heavy to the touch. It would hang well and look great with jeans. But she didn’t feel like jeans.

  Don’t dither, she told herself, and put on the navy trouser suit with the pink shirt. Nothing wrong with good classic clothes, and you don’t get more classic than YSL. Turning this way and that in front of the mirror, she smiled gamely.

  Oh God, she thought, shrugging off the jacket, I look like a secretary. Dull, dull, dull.

  She went back to the black dress she’d started with, muttering, That’s it, no more faffing about. Get on with it. Just go.

  Rebecca scooped up the pile of clothes and took them back to the walk-in cupboard. She dumped them on top of the laundry bin, promising herself she’d sort them out when she got back. She could have left them on the bed of course, but she had a rule, never confessed to anyone but firmly held since adolescence: at least leave the bedroom looking good. You never know.

  One more look in the mirror, and this time Rebecca’s smile was real. The thin jersey dress had little cap sleeves and a scoop neck which showed off her tan – fake, but who was to know? – and the combination of black and the cut of the skirt turned her from a size twelve into a ten.

  Hurriedly, she reached for her handbag, the navy Prada bucket, but it was quite wrong with the black.

  By the time she’d transferred everything to the cream Gucci with all the pockets and buckles, and found the black and cream wooden beads from Carole Bamford, Rebecca was definitely, definitely late.

  She hurried along the street, striding as wide as her narrow skirt allowed, feeling good now. She was pleased that she could still put that swing into her gait that made her look more forty than fifty (OK fifty-four), at least from behind. Rebecca was proud of her legs, especially when they were tanned, which somehow disguised any hint of cellulite. And she knew she had a great bum. I should hope so too, she thought: all that puffing and heaving at Pilates must do something.

  This end of Westbourne Grove always struck Rebecca as another country, or countries. The bookshops were Arabic, the butchers halal, the newsagents Pakistani; the restaurants were Thai, Indian, Chinese, Lebanese, Greek. You didn’t hear English spoken for the first couple of blocks, not until you got halfway down, to the organic food shops. From there on to the Portobello Road, almost everyone in the designer shoe shops, fancy beauty therapists and chic cafés was white and loaded. Most were female: yummy mummies in their natural habitat.

  God, she thought, with a stab of longing, I wish I was rich.

  Rebecca lived at the Paddington end of Westbourne Grove, but the Notting Hill end was where she knew she belonged. Getting her legs waxed in Elemental cost her £80 but the reverential attention they paid her calves and knees as she floated off with the whale music made it worth the money. Sometimes she felt guilty, knowing she could pay £17 at her end of the Grove, where Bella did a perfectly good job in her basement room under the mobile phone sh
op. But the cramped cubicles, peeling ceilings and the therapist’s nylon tabard were too upsetting. There, she felt her toes curl in protest as she put her shoes back on, fearful of touching the horrible lino.

  But tonight she was not spending money on what Bill called fripperies. No one could disapprove of educative evening classes. According to the Sing Your Heart Out website, she was going to ‘experience the endorphin rush of deep breathing combined with the emotional satisfaction of singing with others in harmony’. Well, good, she thought, I like singing a lot, but what I want is to meet new people, preferably male. Unlikely, I know, but I have to make the effort.

  As she swung down Ledbury Road she tried not to be distracted by the designer clothes so artfully displayed in the shop windows. She kept her mind on the task in hand: to find a new man. She’d been on the hunt now for quite a few years. She wanted a permanent chap. Of course she would never admit it to anyone: she was terrific at pretending the single life was just fine and dandy, allowing her to play the field, have fun, stay young. But lovers were getting harder to find, and she wasn’t made for celibacy – too withering and lonely. It hadn’t been so bad when Angelica was at primary school and took a lot of her time, but the last ten years since Angelica had gone to boarding school had been hard.

  Her married friends were no help; they’d written her off as far as men went. If they asked her to dinner these days they never invited a man for Rebecca, but stuck her next to Gran or between a couple of gay blokes or at best, twinned her with some old boy whose wife was in hospital.

  They probably thought she was beyond desire, too old to even think about love, or sex. Or maybe they thought she couldn’t sustain a relationship? OK, she had to admit her record so far wasn’t great, but she’d been really unlucky. Her first marriage, to Kieran, had been a mistake from the start. They’d both been too young, and at least they’d sensibly given up on it as soon as they realised the relationship was going nowhere, and before they had children. Lots of people make a disastrous first marriage. She didn’t think it really counted.

  And she’d stuck with Bill for thirteen long years, hadn’t she? Even though he drank like a fish?

  And then, she thought, a little lick of anger echoing a long-ago fire, I’d have made the thing with André work if he’d had the guts to leave his wife. She’d wasted six years of her life waiting for him to do the deed, but of course he never did. Men are such hopeless wimps.

  And then the divine Israeli, Joseph, had turned out to be a world-class con-man. Any woman would have fallen for him. They’d married within three weeks of meeting and Rebecca had gloried in the recklessness of it, the romance of a whirlwind courtship and flying off to Tel Aviv where he’d showered her with gold necklaces and lovely clothes, and returned with armloads of presents for Angelica. He’d been wonderful with Angelica. She’d really believed he would be the perfect father. Now her jaw tightened at the memory of her bank account emptied and the trail of debts she’d had to honour.

  None of those disasters were my fault, she told herself. Some women are just unlucky with men and I’m one of them. But, hey, that doesn’t mean I’ll always be unlucky. Somewhere, sometime I might meet the perfect man. Maybe tonight, who knows?

  Chapter Three

  Joanna sometimes took visiting colleagues from the States down the Portobello on a Saturday. They found its mixture of real antiques, tat and rip-off merchants quaint. But otherwise she seldom ventured this far north, and certainly not at night. And never, until now, alone.

  So she was suspicious, and a little scared, of the young black men in hoodies and puffa jackets slouching in the hall doorway. She hesitated on the bottom step, forcing herself to smile at them and say good evening. One lad, who looked more fearsome than the rest with a black bandana round his head and wraparound dark glasses, replied, ‘Good evenin’ to you, lady’ and opened the door for her. Relieved, and a little ashamed of herself, she smiled her thanks and walked in.

  Joanna was early. Anxious about the singing session, she’d determined to check the lie of the land in advance. She hated not being on top of things.

  The internal door to the main hall was open, and she went in. The room (tall Gothic windows, wooden stage at one end, plastic stacking chairs, neon lighting hanging a long way down from the high arched ceiling) had the sad look of community halls the world over.

  She lifted one of the grey chairs off the stack and staked her claim with her suit jacket over the back and her briefcase under. Then, thinking that the jacket was too expensive to lose, she put it on again. Irritated with herself, she thought, do you really think your fellow singers are going to nick your jacket? But she kept it on.

  It was not like her to be so nervous, but she knew without a shadow of doubt that she was about to make a fool of herself. She would be the one unable to make a sound, any sound, come out of her mouth.

  Joanna was not used to failure and in an effort to bolster her confidence she ran through a quick list of her upside: head girl at school, a First at Oxford, still a club-standard tennis player for all that her legs, now screened from view under white trousers, were fifty something. Pretty stylish on the ski-slopes, she was also a good public speaker who could acquit herself creditably on television. For pity’s sake, she lectured the timid non-singer inside her, I’ve managed hundreds of people, bought and sold businesses, made large amounts of money – still do. I’m a grown up, confident woman: I’ve even been given a gong by the Queen, for God’s sake. I should be able to handle my downside. So, I can’t sing. Big deal. Lots of people can’t sing. But the difference is, I’m dealing with it.

  But that cringing twelve-year-old was still there. The girl who, fresh from junior school and with all the self-confidence she’d imbibed with the constant praise of teachers and proud parents, had wanted to be in the senior school choir. As soon as she’d seen them processing into church in their red tunics and white surplices she’d wanted to be one of them.

  It wasn’t just the choir-boy costumes. The choristers wore special school blazers that set them apart as better than the other students. And they had a common room with a piano and a radiogram in it, and they had a permanent ‘town pass’ because they were trusted to walk to the cathedral without a detour to the shops.

  No doubt about it, the choir was the key to status, privilege and a red velvet collar on your standard-issue grey flannel jacket. The school orchestra won prizes and several ex-students were successful musicians, but it was the choir that was the pride of the school – events in the cathedral were always packed out and they had even made recordings which were on sale in the high street music store.

  The head of music (and choir master), Mr Randall, was a legend in the Melbourne music world and everyone was in awe of him. But when Joanna and a bunch of other hopefuls from the new year’s intake at the Peter and Paul Academy of Melbourne appeared for their choir audition, she’d never spoken to him, nor he to her.

  Now he did so. Squinting myopically at his notebook, he had barked,

  ‘Joanna Carey, you first.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Speak up, girl. If you cannot project your voice so I can hear you talk, how do you think you are going to be able to sing?’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ Joanna had mumbled.

  Mr Randall rolled his eyes to heaven in a gesture that even the child Joanna recognised as theatrical, God give me patience. ‘Joanna, what have I just said?’ he asked.

  ‘You said to speak up, I think, sir.’

  ‘You think? You think?’

  She felt the hot blush rising up her neck and cheeks as Mr Randall ordered her to stand next to him at the piano. Then he addressed the rest of the class.

  ‘Right, we will start with Joanna. The rest of you can sit down and listen.’

  As the class settled on the floor, Joanna felt herself, tall and awkward, being abandoned to her fate. Now the only one standing, she felt peeled of the protection of her peers, exposed to the terrifying Mr Randall. Oh, why
had she ever thought of being in the choir?

  Mr Randall now ignored her as he instructed the rest of them.

  ‘What you are listening for are two things: is she in tune? And if she is, then do you like the sound she makes? Being in tune is good, but there are plenty of singers who hit the note but sound unpleasant, if not atrocious, and they will not be in my choir.’

  He made her stand up straight, feet slightly apart, head up, hands by her sides. And then he hit Middle C a couple of times and told her, ‘I will play a note, and you will sing it, loud and clear. OK?’

  She nodded, really frightened now.

  He played Middle C again, and sang Aaaaa, long and strong. ‘Right, your turn.’

  Joanna took a deep breath, her chin up, determined to do her best, and sang the note. She managed a steady sound and held it for as long, she hoped, as Mr Randall had done. Then she dared look at Mr Randall’s face, hoping for encouragement. But he just frowned, and struck D. Joanna followed the piano, singing the notes with increasing confidence. He then played a short phrase, the first three notes of ‘Three Blind Mice’, and she sang that too.

  The group sat silent, conscious of their own ordeal to come.

  Eventually, Mr Randall turned to the class. ‘So, was she in tune or not?’

  Waiting for a steer from the master, no one dared venture an opinion. Impatient, he snapped, ‘You have ears, haven’t you? Well, was she in tune or not?’

  Finally a gangly lad with glasses said, ‘I think she was flat on the high notes, sir.’

  ‘Well said, young man. Too right she was. Flat as a pancake. And did you like the sound she made? Was it pleasing to your ear?’

  Again, he got no answer.

  ‘Heavens above, has the cat got all your tongues? It’s a simple question. Did you like it? Did you like the sound? Do you like notes sung flat?’

  Heads reluctantly shook, and Joanna burst into tears, her face aflame.

  Mr Randall turned to her.