The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me

by Lucy Robinson

  I followed Fiona over to the bar, somewhat reluctantly, and we sat down with the man. The crackle of electricity as Fiona drew near him at least reassured me that my services would not be required for long. ‘Hey, girls,’ he said comfortably, as if he were used to summoning women with an eyebrow. ‘What are we drinking?’

  I thought this was a bit unnecessary, given that it was a free bar. ‘Diet Coke,’ I responded stoutly. Fiona grimaced, embarrassed by me, and murmured something about cognac.

  ‘Raúl,’ he said, staring at Fiona in a sexy sort of a way. ‘Raúl Martinez.’

  ‘Off of the Branchlines,’ Fiona said excitedly. Then she dropped her voice an octave. ‘Cool.’

  Raúl looked pleased. ‘The very same,’ he said, forgetting to be smooth. ‘I didn’t think English girls liked our music!’

  And that was that. The gauntlet was thrown squarely on the carpeted floor of the onboard bar. Fi, chemically unable to resist a challenge of any sort, took it and ran.

  ‘Actually,’ she began, ‘I used to be in a band. Our music wasn’t that dissimilar to what you guys play …’

  She had been in a band. A diabolical band called Summer of Love that bore no resemblance whatsoever to anything that the Branchlines had written. The calibre of their lyrics could easily be inferred from their signature song:

  Tell me I’m terrific

  Tell me I’m no pranny

  Tell me that you’d let me put my

  KNOB RIGHT UP YOUR FANNY.

  When one of the dinner ladies had overheard this, my parents had been called in and our house was like a ghastly war zone for days afterwards.

  I broke off from my dark reverie, realizing that Fiona and Raúl were looking at me expectantly. Fiona was already sipping coyly while Raúl held a Scotch in the flat of his hand in a way that said, ‘Hi, I own a Scottish distillery.’

  I looked back at them.

  ‘You sing,’ Raúl prompted me. Fiona blushed ever so slightly behind her cognac.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be shy.’ He laughed easily but I couldn’t. I knew instinctively that something was very rotten here. ‘Fiona was just saying that you sing opera,’ he clarified.

  I felt sick. How did she know? Had she heard me? When? Oh, God, oh, God. Opera had been my secret for twenty-one years now. Or had it? Oh, God!

  ‘Oh, I don’t,’ I said vaguely. Panic wound itself tightly round my stomach. ‘Not really. Just a little bit when I’m in the bath or whatever …’

  ‘She sings in her wardrobe for some reason,’ Fi said, smiling. ‘And you know what, Raúl, she’s really bloody good! You should get her in as a backing singer or something!’

  ‘So you don’t have lessons or perform?’ Raúl asked, signalling to the waiter for another brandy. Fiona had finished the first already.

  ‘Jesus, no!’ I trilled, getting up off my stool. Fiona knew. She had heard me. All these years. ‘No, I just mess around. I’m not a proper singer …’

  I was close to tears.

  ‘She is,’ Fiona insisted. ‘And she does nothing about it. I mean, I’m meant to be a good dancer and I’m trying my best to make it, even though my bosses are doing their best to hold me back, but Sally, she’s not even trying!’ It was a crummy, self-pitying dig, which Fiona instantly tried to soften by smiling encouragingly at me.

  ‘Well, don’t you waste your raw talent.’ Raúl sounded like an X Factor judge. ‘My best friend wasted his opera-singing talent and, man, I think he’s a dick.’

  ‘I’ll have to be a dick, then.’ I laughed hollowly. ‘Ha-ha! Night!’

  I slunk off to my flat bed and felt tears of panic build in my eyes. Why was she doing this to me? Why bring it up now if she’d known all along? And who else had she told?

  It didn’t occur to me to wonder why it mattered so much. It just did.

  My singing is my business, I thought shakily. Mine and mine alone. Fiona can bloody well move out if she’s going to start causing trouble.

  Singing was the best thing I had. And it was private.

  Scene Two

  I took a sleeping tablet but I was horribly awake and still pumping adrenalin two hours later. The drowsiness the pill caused simply made my sleeplessness more offensive.

  Fi knew I sang, and the worst of it was that she wasn’t the only one. Someone else knew. I had a letter in my handbag to prove it. Between them, Fi and this other stupid, interfering person could make sure that everyone in my carefully protected world knew that I was the girl who sang in her wardrobe.

  I tried to steer myself back to sense. Surely it didn’t matter that much.

  But it did. It mattered more than anything else.

  The worst of it was that it was my fault that the other person – Brian the baritone – knew about my singing. My stupid, clumsy, self-indulgent fault.

  I had gone to work at seven thirty yesterday morning to make sure I got everything finished before leaving for America. It had been a beautiful day and the air was milky when I got off the 38 bus at Holborn. Walking along Drury Lane I felt as if I’d been suspended in a pleasant sepia bubble. Things moved calmly, gently; even the vans disgorging coffee beans, wooden boxes of lettuce, stacks of croissants seemed to belong to another time when people moved slowly and worried less.

  As I often did when I got to work super-early, I headed for the empty auditorium. Even now – after all these years – it gave me a greater high than any drug I could imagine.

  The front-of-house door shut softly behind me and the red, velvety silence reached around and hugged me. I exhaled happily, looking up at tier after tier of boxes, exquisite little treasure chests of gold, red velvet and marble. The candle lamps were dimmed and the beautiful gold roof arched up away from me, like a great shell, staggeringly high above the stalls.

  I sat in a seat and closed my eyes, breathing gently, imagining this same air tonight: warm and swollen with hundreds of voices, thick with the smells of old-fashioned powder and the sharper, sexier perfumes of the young. I imagined the orchestra tuning up in their pit, all long, low blasts and high-pitched squeaks, like a ship’s dockyard. The stage managers buzzing around with their headsets and tiny Maglites; the makeup team pinning wigs and powdering faces, my wardrobe colleagues sliding things off hangers with the quiet, unfussy efficiency on which we prided ourselves.

  And finally I allowed myself to imagine the singers waiting behind the safety curtain. Dressed in a hundred different colours; warmed up and ready; simultaneously relieved and frustrated not to be in the spotlight tonight. Somewhere among them would be the two stars, still nervous after all these years, breathing, stretching, humming. Ready.

  ‘Keith!’ someone yelled offstage. ‘They’re craning the La Bohème set out of the workshop. Move your fat arse.’

  Smiling, I slipped out of the auditorium and took the lift up to Wardrobe, thinking about La Bohème. This coming autumn, once I was back from New York, we had a cast change and I was overseeing the costumes for the incoming singers.

  It would be an honour: La Bohème was my favourite opera of all time. A love story that managed to be both beautiful and devastating, unfolding against a musical score that (to me at least) had no equal.

  Mimi and Rodolfo’s duet in the first act, in spite of being one of the most famous and overplayed in the world, was utterly perfect. As Barry had once pointed out, ‘It’s bollockin’ mental, the idea of two people meeting in a sitting room and declarin’ their undyin’. Unnatural, Chicken. Unnatural.’ But the melody of that duet somehow made it believable. Made it totally acceptable for two people to meet and say, Oh, hello, I’m Mimi, I’m Rodolfo, oh, your hands are cold, sit down, you pretty little thing, and tell me about your life … Oh! What the hell is this? I’m in love with you! I will love you for ever! And you’ll love me for ever! Awesome!

  When you heard the music, it just made sense. Listening to that duet was the best way to use six minutes that I knew.

  As I’d progressed through my twenties m
y ability to sing it had improved and, as I’d gone about my work in the workshop yesterday morning, I had found myself humming it.

  Normally I didn’t let myself so much as whisper opera when at work. It would have been mortifying if someone had heard me and concluded that I was some frustrated out-of-work singer.

  But nobody was due in for hours; it couldn’t have been a safer time.

  I started to sing softly, pleased by the sound of my voice. It filled a small part of the room and did so rather well. ‘ “You love me?” ’ I sang, raising the volume another notch. I imagined the sensation of falling in love as deeply and totally as Rodolfo and Mimi.

  ‘ “I will be yours for ever,” ’ I sang, allowing my voice to curl outwards.

  ‘ “For ever!” ’ Slightly powerless now, I felt myself build momentum. I was aware that I should stop singing – or at least take it down a few decibels – but I couldn’t.

  ‘ “I will never leave you!” ’ It rushed out of me and filled the entire room. I stopped singing, shocked. Sound waves snapped and fizzled around me.

  I sounded like a proper singer.

  ‘Oh,’ I said to the empty room.

  ‘Sally?’ It was Brian the baritone, appearing suddenly through the door like a very unwelcome genie from a lamp. He was ‘popping in’ sometime this week to be measured for his La Bohème costume next September. I’d been really looking forward to seeing him. Until now.

  ‘Was that you?’ He looked stunned.

  ‘No.’

  Brian’s brow furrowed. ‘Oh, I heard someone …’ His eyes scanned around for someone to pin the blame on but came back to me. ‘No, it was you,’ he insisted. He peered at me over his half-moon glasses. ‘You were singing Mimi. And it sounded ruddy amazing.’

  I wasn’t much of a blushing type because I never got myself into a situation where blushing would be necessary. But blush I did, so intensely that I must have looked like I’d been at the crazy tomato festival that Fi went to every year in Spain. This is why you never sing outside your wardrobe, I thought furiously. Too many interfering –

  Brian interrupted my rising anger. ‘I cannot tell you how good you sounded,’ he said quietly. ‘Are you a singer? Have you been wasting away all of these years, Sally?’ He was looking at me far too intensely for my liking.

  I squirmed, wishing I could vaporize. Horrible memories of Mum’s panicked face during the school concert hung in the air around us. I shook my head.

  Brian smiled. ‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ he said. ‘Quite the opposite, in fact. Carry on! I’d love to hear you!’

  I muttered something about having come in early to order a load of knickers and disappeared into the laundry room, adding that Tiff would take care of his costume measurements. Brian must have known that I couldn’t order many pairs of knickers in a room full of washing-machines but, thankfully, he left it.

  My heart was racing for a long time after the incident, but by lunchtime I’d managed to get a lid on it. It was OK. I was going to New York tomorrow, he’d be away all summer, and by the time we saw each other in September he’d have forgotten about it.

  Only he hadn’t. When I left at the end of the day to go home and pack, Ivan from stage door handed me a letter. From stupid, horrible, interfering Brian. Whom I had stopped loving until further notice.

  It had burned a hole in my bag for the next twenty-four hours and had somehow managed to get on the plane with me:

  I’m retiring [he’d said]. The wife’s had it with me running off round the world every five minutes. I’m in the middle of interviews for a contract teaching singing at the Royal College of Music starting at Easter 2012. They have an internationally renowned opera school there. If you were even a fraction as good as I thought you were, you have to audition, Sally. Don’t bury your light under a bushel. YOU WILL REGRET IT!

  The plane jolted as we passed through a tiny patch of turbulence but, unlike my mind, it quickly straightened out and resumed its calm, low growl through the black silky sky.

  It went without saying that I would never audition for an opera school. But if Brian was going to start hassling me – Fiona, too, for all I knew – I could be in deep water.

  I’ll leave, I thought angrily. I’ll leave that job before I allow people to start gossiping about me.

  Finally, at about three a.m., I closed the door on my head. You have a choice here, Sally, I told myself. Drowsiness rolled over me, gently repeating like a wave. You can wallow in the fear of something that’s not yet happened, or you can go and enjoy America. What’s it to be?

  I was asleep within minutes, only to be woken by the lovely Henk bringing me perfectly scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and toast. When we started banking into New York an hour later, and Barry forgot that he was afraid of flying, galloping into Business to scream excitedly at me and Fiona, Henk somehow found him a seat to land in and Fiona told me she was a dick and would never mention my singing again cos she knew I was ‘weird and private’, like my folks, and then I saw those buildings thrusting elegantly into the sky, reigniting memories burned into me by a thousand films, and I finally gave up and burst into tears. Happy tears.

  I couldn’t believe it. New York. City of dreams! The most exciting thing I’d ever done. The beginning of my Act III; the greatest adventure of my life.

  ACT FOUR

  Scene One

  Monday, 10 September 2012, fifteen months later, London

  From: Sally Howlett [mailto howler_78@gmail.com)

  To: Fiona Lane [mailto fionatheballetlegend@hotmail.com)

  Sent: Monday, 10 September 2012, 07.03.55 GMT

  Fi – ARGHHHH! IT’S TODAY! It’s today it’s today it’s today!

  You are in a world of trouble, Fiona bloody Lane. This terrible horrible scary opera course at this terrible horrible scary music college is all your fault. I didn’t sleep last night. I just lay there going mental and thrashed around and had diarrhoea (NB not in my bed) and pulled big clumps of my hair out and ate a multipack of Wotsits and maybe had a couple of tots of minging dark rum cos that’s all me and Barry have in the house. The main point being that I hate you. Arggh!

  I think it’s very rude of you not to come back to London to help me through my first week in this diabolical place. EVERYONE IS GOING TO BE POSH AND AWFUL AND THEY ARE GOING TO THROW ME OUT BECAUSE I WON’T BE GOOD ENOUGH AND THEN I WILL BLOW MY HEAD OFF IN AN OVEN AND IT’LL ALL BE YOUR FAULT.

  Right. Breakfast is out of the question and if I have coffee I will FLY THROUGH THE FECKING ROOF so I’m just going to, oh, I don’t know, sit here for another hour and STEW MY FAT ARSE OFF.

  How’s New York? Lovely and autumnal? Hmm, I’m sure it is. Damn you, you selfish bugger.

  And love you. Lots.

  Please come back soon. If only for a quick visit. A day, even! We all miss you. Xxx

  Scene Two

  The same day

  The air was brisk but warm when I got off the tube at South Kensington. After a wet summer the trees were confused and their leaves had already begun to curl inwards and make for the ground. They skittered along the pavements, playful dancers in a cityscape of discordant traffic and relentless human momentum. For a few seconds I allowed myself to remember the turning leaves in Central Park, breathtaking in their autumnal technicolour. But I shut down the memory almost as soon as it had started. Stirring up thoughts of New York was not helpful on a day like today.

  As I walked up the side of the Natural History Museum, its windows ablaze with a sudden burst of sun, a coach from none other than Stourbridge disgorged a bunch of feral children. I thought how much all of this would have pleased me, were the circumstances different. The leaves, the sparkly new puddles, the noisy children from my hometown.

  Not today. ‘Ah wunt to see the dinosaurs noe!’ one of them shouted, and I couldn’t even smile.

  They inhabited another world. Their greatest fear probably centred around the potential ratio of horrible fruit to delicious trans-fats in thei
r Natural History Lunchpacks.

  ‘Hullow. Are you from London?’ one of them said to me. He offered a manly wink and a toothless grin and waited for my response with surprising confidence for a child of no more than seven.

  ‘Hullow,’ I said to him. I tried to sound jolly. ‘I’m from Stourbridge too, actually.’

  ‘She’s a liar,’ he reported confidently to his friends. ‘Probably a slag too.’

  I carried on, capable of neither amusement nor outrage. It was as if I was being propelled a few inches above the pavement; the momentum of my body coming from somewhere else. But this was not a blissful floaty sensation: it was one of pure, out-of-body terror.

  A girl dressed as a giant coffee cup handed me a free flapjack and I tore it open gratefully, only to find myself unable to eat.

  God, this really was an emergency. I lived to eat. Yet I hadn’t done so in more than twenty-four hours. Last night’s pork belly would never have made it into my tummy even if my unwelcome visitor hadn’t turned up. And this morning’s cereal had gone hard in its bowl. Now a flapjack. A slice of happiness! Not only was I incapable of eating it but, oh, Christ, I’d dropped it. It had simply fallen out of my hands.

  No food, especially food containing syrup, fell out of my hands. I looked round for a stray dog, but stray dogs, I realized, were probably few and far between in SW7.

  Stately, ostentatious red-brick buildings rose high above me. People walked purposefully and with aggression. A man shouted into his mobile about how it was time to fucking well do something about Marta. And I couldn’t eat. I felt insane. I twiddled my completely OTT ring around my finger and considered throwing up in a dustbin.