The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me (8 page)

The girls were giggling and tutting crossly.

And then Violet said – and I would probably remember this for the rest of my life – ‘Oh, now, I think I know who that might be …’ She gave a coy little laugh and looked at me. I waited, excited, hoping that this might be her attempt to draw me into the circle of friends.

And then she didn’t say anything, but kept on smiling at me, and I realized that she was accusing me of being the mystery pooer. Because of that business on Monday when I’d done a terrified noisy one in the toilets upstairs while she was in the cubicle next to me.

She started to giggle. ‘Anything you want to share, hon?’

As we filed into the Britten Theatre soon after, to watch the masterclass, I was still burning with shame. I was not the mystery pooer, of course, but the more strenuously I’d denied it, the redder I’d gone and the harder Violet had laughed. She had actually given me a show-hug and told me my secret was safe with the girls.

I was beaten already, and it wasn’t yet lunchtime.

Hugo Dalton came onstage to offer us an enthusiastic welcome. ‘And without further ado,’ he said, ‘it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you someone very special indeed. As I’m sure most of you will know, Julian Jefferson – one of the most exciting lyric tenors to emerge in the last ten years – graduated from our opera school back in 1997. We’re incredibly excited to have him joining us as a vocal coach for this academic year and are thrilled that he’s agreed to take our first masterclass of the term. For this man really is a master. Ladies and gentlemen, Julian Jefferson!’

What’s the point in bringing a world-famous tenor here?
I thought, clapping listlessly. I knew vaguely of Julian Jefferson, of course, although I’d never seen him in anything.
I don’t want to watch a bloody international success. I want to watch someone who’s as terrified of singing as I am
.

I watched the back of Julian Jefferson heading for the stage and, sighing, committed to listening and learning. What else could I do? I got out a notebook and pen and took a proper look at him as he took his place downstage centre.

And my vision tunnelled slowly. The sound of the room compressed until there was just a soft ringing in my ears.

It was Julian.
My
Julian. With the same bizarre long-shiny-hair-and-ultra-smart-clothing combo that he’d worn when he turned up at my house on Sunday night.

He stood there on the stage, smiling and nodding at the raucous applause and cheers and, once again, time stood still.

Shock and confusion made my head soupy. He wasn’t called Julian Jefferson. He was called Julian Bell! And he wasn’t a
singer
! He lived in New York and worked on a stupid trendy newspaper called the
Brooklyn Beaver
!

And he had been my boyfriend. I had loved him so much I’d hardly been able to breathe with it.

My thoughts came slowly, like heavy waves with distorted sound. What did they mean, world-famous tenor? I tried to pull off the ring on my finger but it was stuck. Everything was stuck.

The applause continued.

Like a drunk trying to string a sentence together, I tried to search for any clues from New York.

At first, nothing came. Our relationship had ended a year ago when I’d fled the city and the ensuing pain had
been so black that vast sections of my New York memory bank had been deleted, like corrupted computer files.

But then a few smudged scenes curled up like smoke: Raúl telling me, at the first-class bar on the Delta flight, about his opera-singing friend who’d ‘wasted his talents’.

And then Julian and I, a heap of limbs on his bed one summer morning. The sound of a neighbour singing drifting in on the warm breeze, and Julian saying – what? Something about singing being a favourite hobby of his?

No
, I thought angrily.
None of these was enough! This isn’t real! He isn’t an opera singer! He just ISN’T!
The Julian I’d fallen in love with had been the scruffiest, sleepiest, most forgetful, bumbly, shambly man on earth. He’d worn dog-hair-covered jumpers and constantly missed editorial deadlines and lost his mobile phone every five minutes. He always had bad overgrown hair because he never remembered to get it cut; moreover he had
fluffy
hair because he never remembered to use hair gloop and he was no more likely to own smart suits than – than, well,
me
. He was lovably useless! A scruffball! A big handsome bear!

Not this. Never this.

But as Smart, Snappy-suit Julian smiled and bowed to the continuing applause, I was punched in the stomach by another memory. The evening we’d met, and that spontaneous song, and how good Julian had sounded.

Oh, God, oh, God. I gulped for air. Julian Bell was not Julian Bell at all. He was a famous tenor called Julian Jefferson, and I’d never had even the faintest idea.

How? How had I not recognized him?
I scrabbled dementedly for an explanation. Of course I was aware of Julian
Jefferson; everyone was. But had I ever seen him perform live? Actually, no. Had I seen him on telly? Maybe. I couldn’t remember. But even if I had, he’d have been wearing a full wig and beard and God only knew what else. AND HE WOULD HAVE BEEN CALLED JULIAN JEFFERSON.

I gripped the armrests on either side of my seat, fearing a blackout. Two faces, moonlike and hissing, turned towards me.

After a febrile pause I realized they were whispering to me. It was Helen and Jan, my two new friends. I couldn’t hear them. I found myself staring vacantly at the stage as Julian raised his hands to bring an end to the clapping. He was nervous. And being able to see that – to read him so effortlessly, after all this time – was frightening. Nobody else in this room would spot it – the slightly flatter smile, the hand jammed in a pocket, the slight twitch of an eye – but I had once loved Julian Bell so very much that I knew every movement in his physical repertoire.

Yet I now hated him so completely that I felt bile in my throat just looking at him. He’d destroyed me. Destroyed my family. Blacked out every patch of colour that had begun to flourish in my life.

‘ARE YOU OK?’ Jan hissed. He was gripping my hand and staring at me with a filmic intensity that begged for shafts of moonlight and a howling wolf. ‘DO YOU NEED MEDICAL ASSISTANCE?’ His face looked as furious as ever.

His features swam slowly into focus. I didn’t know why, but I smiled and shook my head, mumbling something about a dodgy cheese sandwich. What else could I do?
Then I turned to Helen, who was watching me with some alarm, and whispered, grinning frighteningly, ‘You see that man on stage? Julian? I used to go out with him. Can I have some beta-blockers now, please?’

Helen gaped. ‘Piss OFF! Are you for real?!
Julian crapping JEFFERSON?
’

‘I’m for real.’ I smiled, teetering on the brink of something dreadful. ‘Can I have some drugs?’

Helen said no, but offered me a Chewit. ‘I’m sorry, I just don’t believe you, Sally. The whole
world
wanted to sleep with Julian Jefferson. You’re delirious.’

Then Julian opened his mouth, thanked the room and introduced himself, even though there was apparently no need. ‘… And as some of you may know I recently had to take a long break from singing. So it gives me great pleasure to be starting here as a coach, not least because …’ His voice sliced me into limp shreds. I couldn’t focus on more than a few sentences.

‘WHAT IS HAPPENING?’ Jan Borsos hissed. ‘WILL YOU BE DYING IN THIS MOMENT?’

‘My singer today is a rising star of the opera school,’ Julian was gushing. ‘And I’m really thrilled to be working with her. Ladies and gents, Violet Elphinstone.’

Of course he kissed her cheek, then withdrew behind the piano, smiling encouragingly as she told us what piece she had chosen to work on today.

I hadn’t known he played the piano.

Violet loosened her shoulders in a very unnecessary and self-conscious way, smiling confidently at Julian. But his eyes were scouring the auditorium. They found and locked on mine and time stood still.

After a pause as tiny as it was catastrophic, Julian smiled and shrugged apologetically – a tiny gesture, visible only to me – as if to say, ‘
This
was what I was trying to tell you …’ I felt silver darts impinge on my vision and the tunnelling became acute.

Then Helen whispered, ‘Holy mother of shite, you’re telling the truth! He just smiled at you!’

I gave up and fainted in my chair.

New York was like a blow to the head.

Sirens, dry heat, neck-craning wonder. DON’T WALK in red, the 6 Train in green, taxis in yellow. A mesmerizing cross-stream of feet and wheels; subway trains rumbling below, planes whining above. Delivery boys darting through the crowds with their brown-paper bags and steaming cartons. The steam vents, the beeping, the echoing sirens. At every corner a new, breathtaking view sliding into focus; another scene stolen straight from a film set.

Nobody wasted time sitting still. Men sipped sexy energy drinks and conducted phone conferences while they traversed the streets; women drew up sugar-free vats of Frappuccino through straws and typed furiously on their BlackBerrys. The city wore sunglasses, wispy dresses, sweaty suits. It was boiling hot or crisply air-conditioned. It was fired, wired, smartly attired.

Every day I emerged from our hotel into the electric glow of Times Square and quaked in wonder as if I was
seeing it for the first time. How could a city like this have risen from marshy wasteland? How was such an outrageous tessellation of humanity possible on a daily basis? And how was it that so many people wished me a great day and seemed actually to
mean
it?

‘You’re
certainly
welcome!’ they trilled, when I thanked them for being so nice. No amount of suspicious staring on my part persuaded them to drop the smiles.

‘They actually
care
,’ I breathed to Bea. ‘They actually care if I’m having a good day!’

‘Of course they do not.’ She laughed. ‘They do the smiling and the cordiality as easily as you English do the angry and the awkward. But they do not mean it.’

‘They bloody well do,’ Barry interrupted. ‘THEY ARE THE NICEST PEOPLE ON EARTH AND I SWEAR THAT BY MY HAT.’

He was not wearing a hat but he looked very ferocious, so nobody questioned him.

If I was in awe of New York I was literally dumbfounded by the Lincoln Center, home to the Metropolitan Opera House and now the Royal Ballet for the next two weeks. The wardrobe department alone was bigger than my parents’ council estate but ten times more welcoming. I felt comfortable the moment I walked in there.

The wardrobe staff were mad and friendly and they owned two cheeky little rats that had been part of a previous production. They treated me and the other Royal Opera House wardrobe girls like old friends; they took us out for cocktails in Chelsea, to gay piano bars in Greenwich, to secret restaurants in the East Village. Bea received an equally warm welcome from the Met’s wigs people,
and the dancers were given carpeted dressing rooms with chaises longues.
Everyone
was happy. Especially the audiences, who gave standing ovations for
The Rite of Spring
.

I loved those first two weeks. They were like starting my life again. Being born aged twenty-eight into a noisy, intoxicating, beautiful world where things just didn’t seem to matter so much. One morning I actually caught myself skipping like some oversized lamb along the ‘sidewalk’. It was not typical Sally Howlett behaviour and I couldn’t have given a flying arse.

I discovered early on that Fiona was seeing someone. She claimed to be very happy but the whole thing made me nervous.

‘Oh, it’s that guy from the plane,’ she said off-handedly. It was coming towards the end of our first week in New York, and Barry, Fiona and I had just had dinner at Café Select in SoHo. Fi, having picked at her delicious potato
rösti
, had just airily announced that she was off to see a man about a shag.

‘Raúl, remember? At the on-board bar? We exchanged numbers. He’s really interesting, actually. He lives in
Brooklyn
.’ She waited for us to express admiration, even though none of us had ever been to Brooklyn.

‘Shut up, you knobber,’ Barry interjected calmly. ‘Fiona, I’m from Barry Island. And she’s from Stourbridge. Why, I ask you, would we know
anythin
’ about Brooklyn? Do you know what I’m sayin’ here, babe?’

Barry had always been good at plucking Fiona out of whatever lofty fantasy she was floating on and depositing her rudely back in the present.

‘Ah, shut up yourself,’ she replied warmly. ‘Well,
Brooklyn,’ she mused, taking a chug of her Manhattan. (We’d been unable to resist.) ‘Well, it’s … it’s cool and interesting and alternative.’

Barry snorted. We both knew that someone else had put these words into Fiona’s mouth. ‘Lots of … um, vintage shops and cultural initiatives,’ she continued. Barry was now openly laughing. ‘Raúl went halves with a friend on a derelict warehouse, about fifteen years ago, and he lives on the top floor and rents the rest out for a fortune. I think some of his tenants are artists. Oh, shut
up
, Barry.’ She fiddled with her hair self-consciously.

‘Sorry, girl,’ Barry said, clearly not meaning it. Fiona patted his hand, forgiving him without a moment’s hesitation. Like me, she let Barry get away with basically anything. ‘You’re just jealous that you stayed in economy class and didn’t get to pull fit blokes at the bar like me.’

Barry started to say something about Fiona hitting on dark times if she thought that snogging a twat on a plane was something to be jealous of, but I interrupted. She could only be pushed so far. ‘Well, as long as you’re happy,’ I said firmly.

She looked grateful. ‘Thanks, Sally.’

Then something tricky started to take shape in her face. ‘Um,’ she began. ‘Sally, I want to talk to you about something. I …’

I blanched. Please, no trouble. I was enjoying myself so much …

‘Actually, Bazzer, can you give us some privacy?’ she asked, after a meaty pause.

Barry laughed out loud and said lots of things like ‘What next?’ and ‘Priceless.’ He kissed us both on the cheek and
said it was time for bed. ‘See you tomorrow, you weird family of weird people from a weird part of England.’

‘Night, you Welsh wazzock,’ I replied.

Fiona smiled faintly and composed herself. ‘I’ve been wanting for a few weeks to say sorry to you,’ she began carefully. ‘For … well … for being a nightmare. I know I’ve been even worse in the last year. I’m sorry, Sally, I really am.’

I was too surprised to speak, so I finished my Manhattan and signalled to the waitress for another. Fiona usually apologized quickly for her indiscretions but had never, in her whole life, acknowledged how difficult she was to live with.

This would be a good time to get honest. To tell her that I
was
tired of the way she behaved; that I was fed up of having to be responsible for her. And that actually, yes, she
had
been more difficult than ever. The drinking had worsened and it had been a dreadful shock to find her with a bloody silver straw up her nose.

But she knew. ‘I know,’ she said quietly, before I was able to say a word. ‘I really do know. I see what I do to you and I detest myself for it. I’m just a bit mental, you see. Ha, ha. You know. Abandonment issues. Tragic orphan stuff.’

We both smiled tiredly; I was on the edge of tears. My heart ached for Fiona, all the loss and loneliness in her life, yet I knew I was approaching the end of my capabilities as her carer. I couldn’t do it any more. I needed to focus on
me
and my life. New York had infused me with an energy and bravery I hadn’t known I had; I wanted to invest in that little spark. I wanted to nurture and grow it.
Not run round after Fiona, her unpaid bills and neurotic outbursts.

‘I’m not sure I want to be your mum any more,’ I heard myself say. My voice was full of nervous splinters but it held. ‘I worry about you so much I feel sick at times.’

There was a long silence. She looked upset but I didn’t crumble. I had a duty to myself that I’d been neglecting for a long time.

‘I just want to be your friend. Your cousin,’ I told her.

She nodded, processing this. ‘God,’ she muttered. ‘I really am awful.’

A further silence.

‘You do know that it’s all because I hate myself?’ she asked.

I winced painfully. I didn’t want to hear this, largely because I couldn’t bear it.

‘Difficult, arrogant people,’ she continued, ‘like me, they always hate themselves. Deep down.’

‘You shouldn’t hate yourself,’ I muttered. She looked so lost and tiny. ‘You really have nothing to hate. Look at you, Freckle. You’re beautiful. You’re funny. Clever. And you’re a mesmerizing, glorious ballet dancer. Aunty Mandy would have been so proud to see you on this stage. She …’ I ran out of words. The sadness and injustice of Fiona’s circumstances were as raw now as they had been twenty-one years ago.

Aunty Mandy
would
have burst with pride seeing her daughter dancing at the Metropolitan Opera House. She’d have been yodelling in her seat at the curtain call. Unlike Mum, who would have refused to come to New York in the first place.

Tears stood in Fi’s eyes and she nodded, perhaps seeing the same image of her mother cheering and whooping. Seeing her cry set me off and for a few minutes we sat in silence, tears coursing down our two very different faces. But while our grief might have been painted in different colours, it came from the same place. Now, as ever, we were more like twins than cousins.

Our drinks arrived.

Fi pushed her cocktail away. ‘I’m stopping drinking for good,’ she said, wiping at the lacy patterns of mascara on her cheeks. ‘I’m getting it all under control now. That’s what I wanted to tell you. Since meeting Raúl I’ve realized I don’t need booze or diets and I certainly don’t need drugs. I’m ready to be a grown-up!’

And, as usual, I believed her. Raúl had cured everything. Of course he had.