The world felt hopeless again.
A few minutes after Kendra had finished with me (‘I’ll be back!’ she tinkled), my phone beeped with an incoming message. From … Dad! This was a turn-up.
Toi toi our Sal! was all he had written. Dad, who had never sent a text message in his life, had somehow found out how to say ‘good luck’ to an opera singer and had managed to send it to me. Toi toi our Sal. I imagined him saying it in his Stourbridge accent. Toi toi. Suddenly tearful, I stared at my phone, at the message and all it symbolized.
In spite of how painful and hopeless it felt to go onstage and be Mimi to Julian’s Rodolfo, there was absolutely no denying it: my life had changed beyond all recognition. Here was I, a trained opera singer, about to perform in front of more than a thousand people. In New York! With my family watching!
I thought about all that had happened since the day that Bea had marched into the laundry room at the opera house, telling me that I was going on tour with the Royal Ballet and that she was buying me proper luggage because mine was made of nylon. All that I’d made it through: so much love and loss; growth and pain. I was a truly strong woman, it had turned out. A talented, strong, brave woman. Who knew?
You’re amazing, you are, I acknowledged silently, to the girl in the mirror. You are ruddy amazing, Sally Howlett!
And that was it. Without pausing to explain or apologize to Kendra, I was off and running. Down the hallway, past a pacing, nervous Hussein and a tearful Hector, past Helen, who, of course, being Helen was somehow outside her dressing room just at the moment that I should sprint past, directly towards a room marked ‘Julian Jefferson’.
‘Get in, my son!’ she yelled, like a football fan. ‘GET IN!’
Scene Five
Julian’s room was empty. His wig was on its block, waiting to be pinned on to his lovely fluffy hair, and his costume hanging calmly on a rail by the door. There was makeup everywhere, a TV playing a documentary about polar bears and a large bottle of water. And no sign of Julian.
I smiled briefly at the sight of a very English packet of Jaffa Cakes on Julian’s desk and decided to nick one while I waited for him. I wasn’t leaving this room until I’d told him.
‘Oi! Who’s nicking my Jaffa Cakes?’ came a voice from within the dressing-room wardrobe. I froze.
‘I know you’re there,’ he shouted. ‘Identify yourself!’
‘Erm …’ I mumbled, opening the door. ‘Erm, it was me.’
Julian was sitting inside the wardrobe in his pants. Even for a major performance at the Met he was wearing the same pair of faded old boxers he’d had on the first time we’d taken our clothes off. I started to laugh but then stopped: there was serious business at hand here.
‘What are you doing in there?’ I asked. I sounded very severe, which hadn’t really been my intention.
‘I stole the idea off you,’ he said easily. ‘I don’t get stage fright like yours but I find it useful to collect myself.’
‘You’re not nervous?’
‘Not really.’
‘You feel sane? Sound of mind? Calm?’
‘Um, well, yes.’
Well, that bloody well proves it, I thought angrily. There’s me all mad and crumpled and anguished, and here’s Julian all calm and smooth and chilled. HE IS SO OVER ME IT HURTS.
I shook my head, as if to dislodge the thoughts. It didn’t matter that Julian didn’t feel the same. I’d come here solely to tell him how I felt because that was just the way I rolled, these days. I was damned if I was going to shrivel and die onstage because I was too chicken to tell this man I loved him.
I took a deep breath. ‘I came here to inform you that I still love you. I know you don’t feel the same …’ I paused, just in case he jumped in to argue to the contrary. He didn’t, he just looked guilty.
‘I know you don’t feel the same,’ I continued, my heart bleeding all over the floor. Focus. ‘But I couldn’t go onstage and not tell you. Not on a night like this. It means too much. And, besides, it’s my policy to say what I think, these days.’
Julian nodded politely.
‘I didn’t realize it was my policy until just now, but it is.’
He stared at his feet, a pulse beating in his temple. He clearly wanted me out of there as soon as possible. ‘I hope you have a good show tonight,’ I continued formally. ‘And I bid you a pleasant evening. Good night. Toi toi.’
I turned on my heel and made to leave the room. But as I did, he spoke. ‘I love you too,’ he said quietly.
I stopped.
‘I love you too,’ he repeated.
‘No, you don’t.’
‘I don’t?’
I turned round and faced him. ‘No. If you loved me you wouldn’t have gone back to New York at Christmas. You wouldn’t have told me not to contact you. And you would have replied to my email. I’m afraid, Julian, that you don’t love me.’
I marvelled at the confidence of my voice. It bore no relation to the storm inside me. I leaned against the wall of his dressing room, suddenly wobbly.
‘But I do,’ he said stubbornly. ‘I’m telling you right now. I do.’
‘No, you don’t!’
‘Yes, I do!’
I sat down next to him by the wardrobe. The world was moving with exaggerated slowness. Did he love me? Of course not. Why not? I asked myself angrily. You are worth being loved! Stop being a twat!
I turned to look at him, hardly daring imagine what might happen. Julian gazed at me, his eyes warm and unguarded. Deep, dark pools of honour, kindness and humour. I loved his eyes. I loved all of him.
‘Sally,’ he said eventually, in that dear, crazy accent. ‘I do love you. And I’m sorry I went back to America. It was a mistake.’
I wanted to say a million things but found myself saying none of them. I just stared at his face; so familiar, so precious.
Julian ran his fingers through his hair, which, in preparation for his wig, had no product in it at all. It was as fluffy as a long-haired cat’s. He smiled gently. ‘Sally, you seem to think I’m this really sorted, mature sort of a person, who’s like really poised and never gets things wrong. But I’m a penis, Sal. It’s not just the glasses and the hair and the holes in my clothes, it’s everything. I make mistakes. Violet, for starters! I mean, she was hot but – come on!’
‘Oh.’
‘I’ve made mistakes all the way through my life,’ he said. ‘I made the mistake of letting you go back to England after Fiona died, sick with grief, and I didn’t tell you the truth about that night because – I dunno, I thought it would hurt you even more.’
I traced my hands along my shin bones. I felt strangely detached, as if I were watching this conversation unfold between two strangers.
‘I made the mistake of arriving at your house with that Post-it note rather than calling or emailing or doing fucking anything, really, other than arriving at your door with a Post-it. I made the mistake of letting you get on with your relationship with Jan rather than fighting for you, like I wanted to.’ He laughed hollowly. ‘I thought I’d lose.’
I exhaled. Even the most amazing men on earth struggled to believe in themselves.
‘And finally I made the mistake of running back to America, being all Oh, this is for the best, I must let you go, I must set you free, rah rah rah … Bollocks! Total bollocks! You were growing and changing with or without me! You didn’t need me to disappear out of your life for you to heal. You had healed! Because you’re amazing!’
I wondered why I wasn’t crying. I had dreamed every day of a conversation like this, yet I felt strangely calm.
‘I got it wrong yet again. Because I’m as rubbish and imperfect and malfunctioning as the next person. But thank fuck you’ve become this amazing strong woman who can just march in, help herself to a Jaffa Cake and tell me she loves me. You’ve changed so much, without actually changing at all, Sally, and I love you even more than I did five minutes ago. I don’t care about anything else, and I’m sorry I wa
s such a moron. I’m sorry we were both such morons. I just want to be with you.’
He took a deep breath and stopped talking. His hands were trembling. His hair was trembling because his hands were trembling.
‘Thirty minutes to beginners’,’ murmured the tannoy. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the orchestra and the cast, that’s thirty minutes to your beginners’ call. Thank you.’
After a strange, empty pause, during which my brain caught up with what was going on here, a smile began somewhere in my middle. It spread outwards, calm and magnificent, until every part of me was in glorious sunlight. Of course I was calm. Of course! There was no drama now. We’d got through all of that, the pyrotechnics, the furies, the despair. All that was left was the two of us. And all of that love.
‘Hello,’ I said, touching the side of his face. ‘Hello, you silly thing.’
Julian turned and kissed my fingers, then slid his arms round me. He buried his face in my hair and I didn’t care what Kendra from Makeup or Julie from Hair might have to say. I let my whole body go, wading out into a warm, safe place. ‘I love you,’ I said happily. ‘You are my best person in the whole world.’
Julian melded even closer to me, even his legs pressed against mine. ‘Snap,’ he said. ‘You’re my best person. Ever.’
The tannoy was saying something about us but I ignored it.
He leaned forward and rubbed his nose against mine. I was so happy I could hardly breathe. ‘I’m going to kiss you.’ He grinned.
‘Let’s wait,’ I said. ‘Let’s wait till we’re onstage! How magical would that be?’
Julian pulled back, thinking about it. Then: ‘No way!’ he said. ‘No fucking way! I’m not waiting a moment longer. Kiss me right now, you moron.’
He kissed me and everything in the world was good. We kissed and kissed, cuddled and kissed, and only stopped kissing when Terrance the security guard physically pulled us apart and told us he’d been mandated by Kendra to apprehend me and return me immediately to my dressing room.
‘Let’s go sing some stuff,’ Julian said, kissing me one last time. ‘For Fiona. And for us.’
I grinned. ‘Mr Jefferson. I’ll see you onstage.’
Julian bowed. ‘Miss Howlett.’
Scene Six
When I was a teenager watching Dirty Dancing and Bridget Jones on repeat, I believed that the actors were truly in love with each other and that they would be having it off constantly when the cameras stopped rolling.
It had come as a terrible shock to learn that they were not frotting and shagging and singing love ballads to each other in their dressing rooms. How could they possibly be so convincing? Surely you had to love your co-star for it to be truly magical.
My first major performance as an opera singer vindicated all that I had believed as a teenager. Rodolfo and Mimi gave ‘… an ebullient display of quite magical chemistry that sets a new standard for La Bohème.’ (New York Post) They were ‘touchingly in love. Jefferson and Howlett were spellbinding together.’ (Metro New York)
The Brooklyn Beaver gave the performance five stars and declared that while they as a magazine might have lost an invaluable editor the city had regained a world-class singer and discovered a ‘truly exciting young talent in the magnificent Sally Howlett. It is hard to imagine a Rodolfo and Mimi more happily, devastatingly in love.’
Everything I’d believed about actors had happened. After our first duet together we left the stage and kissed until my dresser forcibly wrenched me off Julian to get me changed. And by the time I was meant to have died tragically in my bed in Act Four, I was so happy that my corpse found itself in real danger of snogging Rodolfo when he flung himself on Mimi’s lifeless form.
The applause was thunderous. I held tightly on to Julian’s hand and laughed and cried. I kissed him on the mouth, not caring what anyone thought.
‘We were the best!’ Julian shouted. His face was pink with excitement. He hugged the life out of me and the audience loved it. ‘I love you,’ he told me, again.
‘YESSSSSSSSSS!’ Helen screamed. ‘MEGA!’
Scene Seven
Three days later
‘We really shouldn’t be doing this,’ Mum said nervously. She checked over her shoulder for the millionth time, and dug further into the ground with her little trowel. She looked like a demented mole.
‘Mum, we’re in Williamsburg.’ I laughed. ‘Nobody here cares. They’re all too busy trimming their beards and making artisan beer.’
Mum smiled. ‘I’ve never understood trendy people, me,’ she said, digging away.
‘Me neither, Mrs Howlett,’ said Julian.
‘You scrub up nice enough,’ Dad said, smiling bemusedly at Julian’s (admittedly odd) T-shirt. I watched my man, tendrils of love and pride sprouting out of me, as he passed the little tree to Mum, who, for all her fear of being caught digging a totally illegal hole in the East River State Park, had now dug deep enough to bury a treasure chest.
Clouds scudded briskly overhead as she eased the tree out of its pot. ‘Let’s all put it in,’ she said, quieter now. Julian nodded, moving away to a respectable distance as Mum, Dad and I knelt down in the bright green grass. ‘She’d love this,’ I said. ‘Us planting an illegal tree. The Howletts, of all people! And in Brooklyn too!’
Mum smiled bravely. She was smiling a lot more, these days. ‘Naughty little bugger, our Fiona.’ She grinned. I knew now that this was the closest Mum could get to saying, ‘I loved that girl.’ I put a hand on her back and she didn’t even look uncomfortable.
We lowered the lively little tree into its hole, patting the earth down around it. Nobody spoke.
Dad sat back on his heels, admiring our handiwork. ‘Should we say a few words?’ he asked.
Mum immediately looked anxious. ‘Oh, I’m not sure about that,’ she began.
I sat back. ‘Let’s all just have a quiet moment. To say goodbye.’
Fiona’s tree swayed shyly in the breeze as we sat around it, each of us suspended in a bittersweet memory. I could feel it, the intense, wrenching sadness, yet I knew it wasn’t as strong as it might have been. Borne alone, the pain had been too much for us all; borne together, it was softer.
To my amazement, Mum broke the silence. ‘Actually, I think I would like to say something,’ she announced. Her face was taut and nervous but full of determination. She took Dad’s hand and he took mine. For a few moments we sat, hand in hand, as a family. For perhaps the first time ever.
There was a band playing somewhere nearby, and the chug of the Williamsburg ferry coming into the port. And yet a wonderful peacefulness had sprung up between us.
‘Fiona,’ Mum began. Her voice wobbled, and I sensed Dad squeezing her hand. ‘Fiona, I want to say sorry. I don’t think I ever told you I loved you. But I did, you mad little thing. I loved you, all right?’
‘Me too,’ Dad muttered. ‘Me too, our Fi. Rest in peace, pet.’
He sniffed, wiping his eyes. Mum breathed out, as if letting go, and a sad smile crossed her face.
‘Me three, Freckle,’ I whispered. ‘I hope you’re up to no good wherever you are.’
I stared at the tree until it blurred through the stinging procession of tears coursing down my cheeks. For a few sad, lovely moments, the Howlett family held hands and cried. Nobody got embarrassed.
Cloud shadows sped over the grass and the river lapped lazily behind us. Fiona’s tree swayed more confidently in the gathering breeze, and a ladybird began to climb it.
Later on, when my parents had gone off to have lunch in ‘one of those poky little places’ that Mum had taken a shine to, Julian and I sat on a log by the water. He had promised to take my dad to Coney Island later (Dad had, rather worryingly, bought a New York guidebook and discovered an adventurous spirit that had lain dormant for most of his sixty-three years), but for now he was mine. As every second passed I loved Julian Bell more.
I smiled up at him, pulling him closer to me. ‘Yo.’
‘Yo yourself. You
OK?’
I nodded, staring out across the river. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be completely OK, but I’m all right.’ Julian nodded.
‘Really, I’m just grateful,’ I said. ‘Without the singing and the … well, everything, I’d be stuck in the grief. Nothing would have changed. I’d be mad and frightened and hopeless.’
Julian chuckled. A low, cheeky rumble through his T-shirt. ‘You were never hopeless. Deffo a bit mad, though.’
He slid his arm around me and we sat, side by side, looking beyond the river to the giant theatrical spectacle of the New York skyline.
‘You’ll have to start rehearsing for the British Youth Opera soon,’ he said. ‘That’s so exciting!’
‘I know! I can’t believe it! And that agent calling me too! What the hell is going on?’
He squeezed me. ‘The world has just caught up with me, that’s all. Discovering how amazing you are.’
I craned round to look up at him. Julian was smiling down at me, those lovely laughter lines around his eyes creasing proudly. ‘Although I’m still the only one who knows that you’re a total dick.’
‘True. But … I don’t get it,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m just a girl from a depressed council estate. The whole thing just seems … insane.’
Julian pulled me in and kissed me, a long, happy kiss that made me forget everything else. Eventually we stopped and looked at each other, our eyes so close they almost touched. ‘Doesn’t matter how small you started,’ he told me. ‘You still get to have big dreams. And a rich, happy life.’
A seagull landed near to us, just like the one that had been there on the day of Fiona’s birthday party. He looked at us irritably, then took straight off again, dropping a big disdainful turd.
‘I mean, look at him.’ Julian grinned. ‘He’s an eighth of my size but he still sees no reason why he shouldn’t be king of the world.’
I smiled. ‘I don’t want to start crapping on everyone just yet. But I see what you mean!’
The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me Page 37
