The Living (19 page)

‘Fiendish,' said Tom.

‘Quick as lightning,' Matthew said. ‘I missed it the first few times. Then when I came back the next day he recognized me and wouldn't take any bets until I'd gone. Nerves of steel, and a perfect memory for faces. I remember thinking he'd have made a brilliant spy.'

When we got to Belfast Diane insisted on personally herding everyone into taxis outside the train station. I sat in the middle of the back seat, between Joan and Matthew, and saw very little – the daylight was already gone.

The hotel was not far. Shallow steps led up to an imposing entrance in glass and chrome. The lobby was large and bright, dotted with tubs of leafy plants. Diane bustled to the reception desk to begin the process of checking us all in. The choir had commandeered a group of sofas, set in a square round a low table. Cases and rucksacks were banked at the corners. I followed Matthew and Tom over and found a seat.

‘It's a lot swankier than I expected,' said Val, looking around.

‘It's not the choir that is paying for this, is it?' Anja asked.

‘No, not at all,' said Joan. ‘The organizers are putting us all up. Gosh, you don't think Carmina Urbana would rise to this, do you?'

Diane came back with a pack of electronic key cards. She winked at me as she handed me one. ‘Double,' she said, honey-voiced.

Our room was spacious and bright, with a white-tiled, windowless bathroom and a small balcony overlooking the hotel's inner courtyard. It was quiet – sounds muffled by the thick carpet and
curtains. The bed was enormous. I unpacked my concert clothes and hung them up.

Matthew stepped out on to the balcony. I brushed my hair. I didn't know what to say. We were a couple in a hotel bedroom. It was too strange. I went out to the balcony, where Matthew was leaning on the railing, looking down.

‘Matthew,' I said, in my best Mrs Robinson voice. ‘Matthew, I want you to know that I'm available to you.'

‘Shh!' said Matthew, whirling round, and my insides crumbled. He pointed to the balcony above, and went on in a whisper, ‘They'll hear you!'

I rushed back into the room, over to the other side of the bed, where I sank down to a crouch, nursing the sting. I didn't want to talk to him. I wanted to go home. He followed me in. ‘Sorry,' I said.

He didn't seem to notice. ‘What time is rehearsal?'

‘Seven o'clock, at the Waterfront. Dinner at half five.'

He went to his bag and took out his music.

It was all wrong. We hadn't done enough to prepare. We were stumbling over our lines like the worst sort of amateurs. There wasn't time to sort this out before we had to go for dinner, either. Matthew paged through his music, the suggestion of a hum buzzing about his lips. I fished out the novel I'd brought and couldn't read it. I kept looking over at him; he kept not meeting my eye.

‘What's up with you?' I asked at last, fighting the panic.

‘Sorry,' he said, distractedly. ‘I'm just going over this bit of the Daintree.'

He, of all people, surely didn't need extra note-learning at this stage. He must be in a mood. I left him to it, went out on to the balcony. It had started to drizzle, tiny drops skimming by on the wind. The sky was dark. The uplighting in the courtyard had come on. I watched the rain racing in the dim beams.

S
ECURITY AT THE
Waterfront was tight – metal detectors and bag scanners – and we had to wait ages for our sound check. We were the last choir to have access to the auditorium, so we were stuck in a tiny, airless room until nearly quarter to eight. Diane shifted into her bright and breezy mode, which did not recommend itself to me or, as far as I could tell, to anyone else in the choir. ‘Come on,' she said after a while. ‘Let's make use of the time, at least.' She took us through our pieces, despite numerous mutterings that everyone knew them backwards, that singing them in this space was no use – that the purpose of this exercise was to accustom ourselves to the acoustic of the venue, to organize the logistics of walking on and off stage, to see where we'd stand.

‘We can't just sit here doing nothing,' was Diane's response. I wanted to kick her.

In fact, it turned out we didn't know the music as well as we thought. The room swallowed our voices, and we couldn't keep in tune. But the singing gradually calmed me, despite everything. I was putting minimal effort in, not pushing myself in the least, and somehow the deep breathing, the control, the rising and falling phrases, made me loosen my grip on my irritation.

At last there was a knock on the door, and a suitably apologetic young man led us to the stage entrance.

It was a bigger auditorium than I'd ever sung in before. It was like a vast bowl, with seats stretching outwards and upwards in drifts and tiers. Two technicians in tight jeans and hoodies climbed impossibly high ladders to fiddle with overhead lighting and microphones. The stage was mostly occupied by the orchestra's seats and music stands, with stepped platforms behind them for the choirs. The platforms had chairs on them – apparently we'd be on stage for the entire second half, which would build up to the grand finale of our epic peace anthem. For our own individual section we'd be standing on the stage itself, right at the front. We huddled together, conscious of how few of us there were.

Diane's heels echoed smartly on the wooden surface. She was in charge. She waved us to where she wanted us, then flapped her hands at us to adjust the positioning and make sure she could see each of us properly. ‘Pick a landmark, OK, so you can line yourself up tomorrow night,' she said.

We started singing again, and it went a little better. We were still making stupid errors, the sound was strained and the tuning precarious, but we were more confident than we had been in the airless room. Diane went down into the centre aisle to gauge how we sounded. ‘This acoustic is super!' she announced. ‘I can hear every little mistake!'

That got a laugh. My stomach began to unknot.

We started into ‘Danny Boy', just the backing at first, trying
to get the tuning right. Diane was frustrated, but mostly hiding it well. Eventually, she said, ‘We're not going to get it any better tonight. Let's give it a bash, Matthew.'

I turned to give him a thumbs-up. He was looking white, and when he started to sing it sounded bad. There was none of the breadth of tone that he normally seemed to produce without trouble. He was pushing – trying to increase his volume by increasing the pressure. The result sounded painful and rather sharp.

I imagined what it must be like, thinking that you have to fill a hall like this with just your voice. I didn't envy him.

Diane stopped him after a few phrases. ‘Relax,' she said. ‘We'll be miked up. It'll be grand. Come on, shake yourself out. You're as tight as a fiddle string.'

‘Sorry,' Matthew said, and even his speaking voice rasped.

‘Don't be afraid of it,' Diane said. ‘It sounds great. Right, from the top, with everybody.'

We started again. I felt so sorry for Matthew – he had done this with such ease in Dublin. We had thought him invincible. The rest of us were getting edgy. The tension mounted again. The mistakes returned.

There were many more hitches before we got to the end of the piece. ‘We'll have another run-through of that tomorrow,' Diane said. ‘You'll be fine. Don't worry about it.'

After our sound check we moved back to the choir platforms, where we were joined by everybody else. Things were chaotic for a bit, with members of all three choirs milling about and the
orchestra arriving with their instruments. Both of the other choirs were significantly larger than Carmina Urbana: with the orchestra too, the stage was very crowded. I glanced round for Matthew, trying to catch his eye, but he was miles away. Diane and the other two choir conductors shouted instructions that crossed and cancelled each other.

Eventually, we all got settled. The orchestra stood to attention as – thrill of thrills – Trevor Daintree himself took his place on the conductor's podium. He was a squat, squashy-faced man with buck-teeth and what amounted to a mullet. He looked thirty-five going on sixty. He wore a big brown jumper and mustard-coloured cords. When he began to conduct, his face assumed a manic rictus, and his head jerked in time to the beat.

Miraculously, the rehearsal went quite well.
A Song of Ireland
even began to make a mad sort of sense once the orchestra was added. The wailing of the sopranos was echoed by passages from the woodwinds, and there was a beautiful violin melody above the discordant choral crooning that had drawn such protest back in Dublin. The percussion accompaniment made the men's section sound coherent – even impressive.

We finished at ten. Most of the choir made for the bar as soon as we got back to the hotel. Matthew paused in the lobby to take a phone call, and I waited nearby. He rejoined me and said, ‘Let's go to bed.'

I grinned.

He closed his eyes, shook his head. ‘Sleep, I mean.'

He didn't say a word in the lift or in the corridor on the way to our room. When we got inside he walked to the window and looked silently out.

I sat on the bed. ‘You'll be fine,' I said.

‘Mmm. I hope so. To be honest, I feel rather as though I've bitten off more than I can chew. Foolish me.'

‘You're not foolish.'

‘I never should have agreed to do that solo.'

‘You can do it,' I said. ‘It was just nerves.'

He spun round with a sudden energy and strode back to the bed. ‘Cate, I honestly don't know if I'll be able to do it.' The harshness of his tone surprised me.

‘You'll get out there tomorrow night, and the audience will be there, and there'll be such a buzz – it'll be great.'

‘If I get that far.'

‘Oh, don't be silly.'

He shook his head. ‘I wish I were being silly.'

‘Come on,' I said, and I took his hand in both of mine, ran my thumbs over the knuckles. ‘Let's forget about it. Sufficient unto the day be the solo thereof.'

He softened at last. ‘Sweet Cate.'

A
T BREAKFAST ON
Saturday morning we discussed what we'd do with our free day in Belfast. We were not due to meet until five, for a last rehearsal in the hotel. The day outside looked dull but dry. Joan and some of the others were keen to visit a museum. Val
wanted to go shopping. I, silently, wanted to go for a long wander with Matthew, find lunch somewhere, see what there was to see. Talk, maybe. He'd been stern and monosyllabic all morning.

Last night had been the first time we'd shared a bed without having sex. Oddly, I felt as though this had made us more intimate.

Nicky Fay's phone number nagged at the back of my mind. I'd bring Matthew along when I went to meet him. That would be fine, surely. I was only picking up a document …
for George
. Who wasn't exactly Anglophile. From a Belfast county councillor who didn't want to trust it to the electric mail.

All right, then, maybe not. I'd work something out.

I left the breakfast table early, and Matthew followed me into the lift. I leaned against him, clasped my hands behind his back. His body was unyielding. His arms swung slowly – almost half-heartedly – round my shoulders.

‘All right?' I said.

‘Hm.'

‘Matthew, what's got into you? I've never seen you like this.'

‘There's a lot you haven't seen.'

That stung, but for once I managed to keep a grip. I reached up and squeezed the back of his neck. ‘We're on your side,' I said.

‘Yes.' He looked down at me, dark-eyed, frowning. ‘I believe you are.'

Perhaps this was why he had originally been reluctant to share a room with me. Maybe he always got like this before a big performance. Why would he be in such a state about his solo, though? It
wasn't even complicated – he was hardly going to fluff the notes.

I hadn't washed yet. As soon as we got back to the room I made a beeline for the shower, stood under the firm needles of water, letting them crash on to my scalp, deafen me, merge and run down my body in hot ribbons. I sang some scales, then a couple of phrases from our programme, enjoying the way my voice bounced off the tiles. I turned the heat up as high as I could bear.

When I came out of the bathroom, it took me a moment to register that Matthew was gone. I started towards the balcony, hugging the towel around me, but the glass door was closed, and I could see that there was nobody out there. I was disoriented, standing damp and barefoot at the end of the bed.

His note was on my pillow. ‘Cate, I'm sorry, but I need some headspace before the gig. I'll see you later. 990'

I made the best of it. I should not take this lunacy personally. I dressed as calmly as I could and went down to the lobby. If I met any of the others, I would defend his honour. They didn't need to know that he was being a prima donna.

A
T LEAST THIS
gave me the chance I'd been looking for to contact Nicky Fay. I marched out of the hotel into a bright, cold day and walked along in the approximate direction of the Waterfront until I saw a payphone. As I got closer, however, I saw that the phone had been vandalized, its receiver ripped off. The next one had chewing gum stuffed into the coin slot, and the one after that was smashed.

I decided to use my mobile. The tune I'd learned from George played back in my mind as I dialled the number.

‘Nicky Fay's office, hello.' The voice was male, flat, bored. Or guarded, perhaps.

‘Oh, hello,' I said, heart thumping, ‘I wonder is Mr Fay available?'

‘Who's speaking?'

‘My name is Cate Houlihan – I work for Bell Books—'

‘George Sweeney, is it?' The tone had changed completely, the pitch of the sentence swooping upwards, like song.

‘That's right,' I said. There was a brief silence. ‘Is that … Mr Fay? I'm in Belfast for the day, and George asked me … to meet you.' I was trying to be guarded too.