Silent Song (Ghostly Rhapsody) (3 page)

The board, or the school council, or whatever name you wanted to give them, called the shots on what could or couldn’t go on stage. They did it because they had the stage and the money to buy the stage props. They didn’t like scandals. They didn’t like original takes on anything. They didn’t like much emotion, either.

I suspected they were behind our continual rehearsals of Romeo and Juliet during our director’s “Elizabethan frenzy.” The play is famous and all, but after four times in five years, I could recite the lines of Juliet in my sleep and that’s too much—no matter how you look at it.

Mr. Hedford looked like he’d been anticipating the question and his eyes gleamed in pure, unadulterated and wicked pleasure.

“Ah, no, it is not merely ‘okay.’ It is ‘a superb choice,’ as per their own words, and we do have all the permissions needed to bring this drama about infidelity, lies and betrayal under the limelight!”

“How?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it… much less after hearing the succinct pitch line the professor had thrown in.

“Sponsors, my dear Ms. Thorne, sponsors,” he replied with an air of mystery about him. The fact that he didn’t scold me for blurting out my thoughts and that he acknowledged my question at all, spoke volumes of his good spirits.

The class fell into a sudden flurry of activity as soon as the words left the professor’s mouth. People were excited. Folks started arguing about which roles they wanted to play. The sound of leafing pages drowned out the usual chatter.

This year’s project had turned cool.

“Quiet!” Mr. Hedford called out, clapping his hands. “Silence! We must discuss the essence of the play before rushing into pointless details such as who is who.”

Collective groan. Only a Lit professor could decide that waxing poetic about the whys and hows of a play was somehow more important than landing the leading roles.

The shy girl raised her hand again and asked without waiting for a prompt, “Professor? Who are the sponsors?”

And how did we get them?

Mr. Hedford sighed and let his booklet flop onto the table. He smiled, a fake façade of resignation when he burned with the need to tell us the one thing we wanted to hear.

Gossip.

“Private funding from an outstanding family of our community,” he started, looking smug. “A representative of Mr. Nightray’s approached me regarding the possibility of having this very play produced. At first, of course, I was reticent. Such sponsorship was unheard of, and we are a proud theater group that has never allowed anyone to choose our representations before.” No one except the school board, he meant. “But I’ll admit that the idea of
Lady Windermere’s Fan
resonated with me, and as I gave it more thought in the following days, I decided to contact our benefactor again about his support. This play offers some risqué ideas mixed with the comedy and drama, as you’ll find out when you read your booklets, and its potential was huge… More so”—and this, I realized, was exactly what he’d wanted to say from the beginning—“when the creative freedom knows no bounds!”

“So… the council won’t ban us, no matter what?” said someone in the front of the class.

“They most certainly won’t. When Lady Windermere takes the stage, there will be a generous donation toward the improvement of the school grounds.”

“Shouldn’t that money be for us, for the play?” said Anna, always pragmatic.

“What would we want it for?” Here it was—Mr. Hedford’s
coup de grace
…

“I don’t know. Stage props? Costumes? The kind of things the council usually holds over our head?”

“We shall not be needing props this time. No decor, no fake furniture…” the professor said with a smile.

“Are we turning to modernism?” My voice rang with skepticism.

“No, we are using real decorations. Real clothing with all due arrangements. Real Victorian ambiance.”

If you’d dropped a pin in the room, you’d have heard it. Mr. Hedford looked pleased and smug. “All of it, genuine from Mr. Nightray’s own mansion.”

The idea quickly caught on. This could be the best play in our history! Judging by the excitement running amok in the room, and by the way people tried to read their booklets with renewed interest, everyone was already thinking of how to make it unique.

“There’s a ball!” shouted Jack, the only other senior guy besides Dave. “Will we have to learn the waltz?”

Lena, who sat by his side, smacked his head with the booklet. “Of course you’ll have to dance, idiot! Everybody could dance in Victorian society!” Then she gave a small squeak. “Dance! Ball! Music!”

She sounded breathless, and we all turned to look at her, professor included.

“Yes, Miss Brighton? Excellent proof of ‘association of ideas’ and ‘stream of consciousness,’ but did you have a point?”

“Yes, I did! We could have our own original, live music written for the play! It’d be the thing! What other theater group could say that?”

There was whispering in the class. Lots of it. I clasped Anna’s hand and grinned so wide that my face was about to split. That would be the epitome of cool!

“I wasn’t aware of your musical talent, Miss Brighton.”

Lena waved her hand. “Not me. None of us can really play or anything here. But there’s someone in school who can!”

That got Mr. Hedford’s attention. “Who, if I might ask?”

“Keith Brannagh!” And with those words, all merriment flew from me. Confusion marked the faces around me.

“What? That freak?” a voice whispered to my right.

“He won a regional prize or something back in primary school, before he decided that he was too good to take classes,” she insisted. I was surprised she knew. “I’m sure he still plays or remembers how to do it.”

“Besides, he doesn’t need a wig! I’m sure we could talk him out of the crappy streaks and into bleaching his head. Isn’t white hair trendy in Victorian times?” said Jack, warming up to the idea.

“That’s the France of Louis XVI. Do you even listen in class?” Lena shut him down and turned to the professor again with a wide eager smile. “Can’t we ask him? If you do, Professor, I’m sure he’ll agree. And we’d have our own unique soundtrack, and it’d add a touch of originality to our version! A smidgen of the 21st century blending perfectly with the 19th!”

And that sold the idea. The words “original version.” Everyone wanted our play to stand out, and if having the resident freak, emo, goth, or whatever he was as part of the cast would help, then Keith would be received with open arms.

“I shall ask him tomorrow,” said Mr. Hedford, and the class cheered and prepared to go home.

I stole a couple furtive glances at Lena. She grinned and skipped around, sharing the general enthusiasm. I should be grateful for her idea, because it meant I’d get to listen to that beautiful music not only in my nightly marauding, but at school, but… I didn’t like it. There was something else to the whole project. Lena was hiding something.

I should know the symptoms. I had been hiding Keith for years, after all. 

Two exact weeks after that session, our interest had failed to die down and the class felt like a henhouse while Mr. Hedford called out the names of the cast.

I was Lady Windermere, which was not surprising. Dave would be my Lord, with Jack as his rival and Lena being my fictional mother. No idea why the professor thought she could pull off a scene where she took the fall for someone else, namely me, but I’d gotten the lead and that was what mattered. Mr. Hedford would hear no complaints from me.

I looked at Anna in between the rounds of cheering and “Silence! Silence!” that followed every new appointment. She had gotten a smaller role, which sucked. I’d have wanted her to be Mrs. Erlynne instead of Lena, but she didn’t seem to be bothered by the cast. I got a super bright smile from her when I turned to her with concern. She started to mouth something, but then someone knocked on the door. 

By some miracle, Professor Hedford heard it over the din and managed to quiet the unruly body of students before telling whomever it was to come in.

The door opened and Keith entered, lugging his guitar around. Combined with his longish, dyed hair and black painted nails, it made him look like a rock star wannabe. However, he hardly lifted his gaze from the floor, and his bony shoulders were too hunched to be the real thing.

“Professor Hedford,” he said, that gravelly voice sending the class into silence at last. “I have started working on the score and would like to hear your opinion before I go ahead to compose the full piece.”

He offered a few sheets of paper, with letters and lines and scratches, and the professor stared at them with a raised eyebrow.

“And… what might this be exactly, Mr. Brannagh?”

“A nocturne. Minuets were more common during the social soirées of Victorian society, but the rhythm marks them as being more upbeat than a nocturne. I believe we could use the contrast to highlight the tragedy in the making, even while the public is still lost in the comic relief of the situation. I’d also need three movements for the minuet, which would make it run over fifteen minutes, and the scene is not long enough to support the full performance.”

It was clear that Mr. Hedford was impressed. Just about as much as everyone else. Now they could believe Lena’s claim that he had studied music, in spite of his looks.

I had to smack down an inappropriate surge of pride for accomplishments that weren’t my own.

“Why not a sonata, then?” the professor asked, as if it was a surprise test in Lit class.

Keith’s head jerked up and he allowed himself a small smile, just an invisible curve of the corner of his lips. “No way, Professor. That is reserved for romance, and I think
Lady Windermere’s Fan
is about everything but that. Before you suggest it, sir,” he added, tongue in cheek, “Rondos are out of the question as well. Too much frivolity and good nature.”

And just like that, our pompous professor laughed. “You seem to know a lot about our play, Mr. Brannagh,” he said.

“I know a bit about Wilde.”

“So I see. More than my precious literature students, methinks. But I must confess that I’m at a disadvantage, because I can’t claim to know ‘a bit’ about notation.”

“It’s not notation,” Keith replied, taking a step forward to point at something in the sheets of paper. “Here, I wrote the name of the notes so that they don’t have to be interpreted. The lines are tempo… ah, just the length of the sounds.”

“And I still can’t figure out how this piece of paper is supposed to sound. Why don’t you show us?” He motioned to his guitar and then to the rest of us. “The full group should premiere this piece. Then we’ll see what the majority thinks about its appropriateness.”

Keith bit his lip, his eyes scanning the silent crowd that stared at him with too much curiosity. He nodded after a long pause.

“Is there a sound system here?”

“Does it look like we have guitar amps around?”

Lena silenced Jack, a.k.a. the Big Mouthed Idiot, with a dirty look. Keith shrugged off the rude comment, though, as if he hadn’t even noticed the scorn behind the words.

“I just need a speaker with a jack.”

Professor Hedford motioned him over to the sound system, which wasn’t much beyond a mic and a couple old speakers. Keith nodded, unplugged the mic and plugged in… something small and red. Not an amp, like the ones you see on shows or TV. Just a small device with knobs and a LED screen. He played a bit with it, adjusting the dials, and only then did he connect his own guitar.

I’m not much for musical instruments, but I liked it the moment it was out of the gig bag and in his hands. Solid, rounded and compact, opposite to his own build, and lacquered in black, just like his nails. Not shiny new, but well cared for. It suited him.

“It’s a partial and still unpolished,” he said as an excuse, bending his head low.

Suddenly, a pick had appeared in his fingers and the guitar was playing. Those old speakers had become a concert hall.

The sound of his electric guitar blared, familiar and alien at the same time. I had heard it so many times before, but this time it was different. The sound wave didn’t have to travel through concrete walls to reach me. It enveloped me, hugged me… And, while I watched him, it pulled me under right into Lady Windermere’s house.

No one but Keith could have done what he did. It was incredible. I was listening and still I could not believe the kind of emotional strength he delivered.

I had thought, as I’m sure everyone else had, that Keith would show us the basic melody on guitar, so that it could later be arranged and played properly on a piano or something.

Not true.

His fingers danced, flew over the strings. And it might be a guitar, an electric guitar at that, but it sounded right. The key laid in the feeling. When he played, it was not just rhythm and harmony and whatever else musicians might use as their tools. It was feeling, and through it, he told us all a story.

At first, it was a tale of anxiety about the upcoming event. It was a birthday party; everyone who was anyone would be there, and it would be fabulous.

But then, just as we all started to smile, the notes faltered. They came muted, trembling. Just a few of them wavered in the air, almost unnoticeable among the fast string of their siblings… but it was there. The doubt. Suddenly, Lady Windermere remembered her husband, and his petition to invite a woman who might be his lover, and though she had felt secure and comfortable among her admirers, now she worried. Would he invite that woman himself, as he had threatened?