The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me (25 page)

Fiona was perking up again, although in a nasty, chemical sort of a way. ‘Fine, fine! But only if you promise to sort your own shit out. And become, like, an opera singer!’

‘OK,’ I agreed wearily. ‘I’ll try some singing, if you get some help. Please, let’s just go.’

Fiona folded her arms across her chest, suddenly righteous. ‘No, Sally, I’m not just talking singing lessons. You’ve got to train to be a professional. A proper singer!’

‘Come on, Freckle,’ Barry murmured, moving in quietly. ‘You heard Sally, she’ll do it.’

Fiona started crying, her face screwed up in an ugly, painful knot. ‘No, you have to PROMISE ME, Sal. I’ve wasted my life and I can’t let you waste yours too. You
have to go to college and stuff, you have to become famous …’

I was bewildered. Why did this matter so much?

‘It’s important,’ she said, reading my mind for once. ‘It’s important to me. It’s
my
fault you’ve always been so scared of singing. My fucking stupid fault. If it wasn’t for me and my stupid mum,
your
mum wouldn’t have spent her whole life trying to make us all invisible. You could’ve enjoyed your life.’

‘But I have!’

‘No! You’ve been hiding! All because of me and my fucking useless slag of a mother.’

She was howling now. Great wrenching sobs that tore through me.

‘You’ve spent your whole life looking after me, trying to do what your parents wouldn’t do, and you’ve never once thought about you and what you might want to do … Please, Sally, just seize the fucking day,’ Fiona wept. ‘Be brave. Seize the day for me. My life is fucked but you’ve still got a chance. I love you so much …’

I hugged her and we both cried, gulping for air. Of course I’d do this for her, if it meant that much. I’d do anything.

I left the hotel and walked. My arms were folded tightly across my chest as if to protect me from pain and my head was buried deep in the scarf Barry had handed me as I left. I looked only at the uneven pavement below my feet.

‘Are you going to top yourself?’ Barry had asked suspiciously.

‘No.’

‘Certain?’

‘Yes. I just need some air. Fiona needs to sober up a bit. I’ll put her into a taxi when I get back and we can all go home.’

‘OK, Chicken.’ Barry looked grey. ‘Don’t go too far, now.’

I couldn’t hear anything beyond my own shallow breathing. Cars passed occasionally, picking their way across the uneven cobblestones; strange other worlds on wheels. I skirted central Williamsburg and found myself passing La Superior, where I’d talked so openly with Julian about my secret love affair with singing.

I walked on.

Julian was no longer a factor in my life. Julian had sold drugs to Fiona. The agony of this was not something I could go anywhere near yet. Instead I concentrated on Fiona. Fiona was willing to go to rehab. And in return I would be willing to train as a singer.

Would I?

I’d have to be. What
I
wanted didn’t matter if it could save my beloved Freckle. And, anyway, she’d probably have forgotten about it when she sobered up.

I walked on.

I remembered what Fiona had said about my life. How it was her fault that I’d learned to avoid attention at all costs. Was it true?

I walked on.

After an hour, I started heading north towards our apartment. I texted Barry, asking him to bring Fiona home. The party could survive without me and I didn’t want to be anywhere near Julian.

Except I did. And that was the problem. Julian, liar, drug dealer, scumbag, had helped wreck my Freckle, yet I longed with every cell in my body to find him and curl up with him in a warm bed somewhere far away from all of this.

How? How was I supposed to stop loving him at a moment’s notice? Love was a densely woven cloth. It couldn’t be unpicked just like that.

I trudged on north. I would leave New York tomorrow. I had to get away from him.

A tear passed slowly down my face as I imagined a
London that Julian would not visit. A future in which he was not present, as bright as a filament, as precious as gold.

Perhaps I should go and say goodbye. Try to leave things on a civil note.

The thought of one last hug, one last kiss, however wrong, forced me sharp left into 10th Street and back across to the hotel. I had to say goodbye. I had to see him one last time. And then I would take my beautiful, emaciated little Freckle home and get her well.

The street flickered with blue light coming from near the back of the Brooklyn Brewery. As I neared the hotel my heart quickened in my throat and I imagined the feeling of a last hug. A last kiss. A last goodbye.

I looked up from the pavement, dimly aware that something was not quite right. Why was there a flashing light? Why did the air feel so charged?

Instinctively, I speeded up. A sickness was building in my stomach. The blue lights were emergency lights. I couldn’t see the cars but I knew.

As I turned right into Wythe Avenue the world shimmered before me, narrowing into a tunnel. There were maybe a dozen emergency vehicles outside the hotel. One was an ambulance. Maybe two. Somewhere, police tape strained against the brisk wind that was coming in off the river. Walkie-talkies crackled and the air carried sickness and horror.

I was running. Strange noises came from my throat as I sprinted towards the hotel; adrenalin gave me a speed I’d never had.

‘What’s happening? What’s happened?’ I was screaming. Someone in a uniform had taken hold of me, and was joined quickly by another. They held me fast and I screamed. ‘WHAT’S HAPPENING LET GO WHERE’S FIONA WHAT’S HAPPENED?’

‘Ma’am, please step back,’ one of them was saying. I clawed at his arm like an animal.
I have to find Fiona. Where is she? Where is Fiona?

‘Sally.’ It was Barry, lurching towards me from the crowd of cars. ‘Sally …’ He was crying, sobbing, creased with pain. He hurled himself at me and I knew the worst.

‘Fiona,’ I screamed desperately. Barry shook his head in my shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry, Chicken, I’m so, so sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. A stupid accident. She wasn’t even that drunk. She’d calmed down, she …’

I heard myself cry. I heard myself scream. I started to black out. And then I saw it. A stretcher on wheels with a body bag.
A stretcher on wheels with a body bag
.

Bea was being restrained by a police officer. She was howling. A man pushing the trolley looked wretched. And in my ear Barry was trying to tell me something but he could barely speak.

‘She was showing off,’ he cried. ‘She was up there being all silly on the wall and she just disappeared, Chicken, she just went, she just went …’

‘No. No, please, no, Barry, please, no, not my Freckle, not my Freckle, not my Freckle. Oh, God, no, not my Freckle. JULIAN! I want Julian! Where is he, Barry, where is he?’

Barry cried even harder. ‘Did a fucking runner.’ He wept. ‘Oh, God, Chicken, oh, God …’

He clung to me and I clung to him until the noise and lights stopped and in their place came nothing.

Bed, Islington

October 2012

My beautiful Freckle

East River State Park

Brooklyn, New York

 

Hello my darling
.

I tried to email you but your account’s been closed down
.

I’m afraid, Fi. Your voice has got quieter and quieter when we speak. It’s like you’re taking yourself away from me. Please don’t, my little one. I’m not ready to say goodbye. I did what you said, Freckle. I’m at college, and I’m staying at college, and I will be a singer. But, my darling, you have to stay with me! I can’t do it on my own. I love you, Fiona, I love you so very, very much
.

I can’t just let you wander off into Heaven or whatever’s there. We’re a team, Freckle. Carry on talking to me. Please, my love
.

It’s just over a year since you went. I’ve been thinking about it constantly. About how dead I felt, and how strong and alive Bea was, getting us on to the plane. I miss her. I know we’re all dealing with it differently but I feel so lost and sad that she’s moved to
Glyndebourne and just shut us all out. One minute there were four of us and then there were two
.

I’ve been thinking about the inquest and how awful it is that Julian got away with it. He shouldn’t be allowed to just rock up to England and teach singing and have all these people act like he’s God. Can you imagine what the college would do if they found out? I keep wondering if I should say something – you know, tip them off. But I feel paralysed. Like I hate him but a part of me still feels some sort of … I dunno, loyalty, I guess
.

I wrote that your address is the East River State Park. It feels right. I see us there sometimes, sitting on that log in the sun. I think about your pale skin breaking out in freckles and you telling me how hopeful you felt about the future
.

I’m going back up to Stourbridge today and I can hardly bear the thought of being there, knowing you’re not in the world any more. All of our games in that dead end on the estate. Cola bottles from the Happy Shopper. Dancing with rotters at Millennium’s. Saturday-night takeaways. You and me, always giggling
.

If only I’d known. If only I’d seen what was coming. I’d never have let you out of my sight. I still feel like someone’s ripped me in two. I’ve been jammed back together and I walk round as if I’m whole but it’s still there. A split all the way through my life
.

Barry says I have to stop talking to you but he doesn’t understand. He’s still a whole person. I’m not
.

I miss you so very much, Freckle
.

Xxxxxxxx

I’d been getting better and better at pretending Julian Jefferson was just another vocal coach at college, rather than a drug-peddling liar. It helped that he had moronic
clothes and that people practically fainted when they walked past him in the corridor, because none of those things bore any relation to my ex-lover Julian Bell, who looked after a dog called Pam and had fluffy hair and broken glasses.

But this self-deception became harder when Julian turned up at Euston station ready to accompany Jan and me to the school workshop in Stourbridge, with his newly cut-off hair in disarray and now his horrible posh clothes gone. He was wandering around looking for us with a bacon roll and an air of warm absent-mindedness; indistinguishable from the Julian Bell I’d loved so much. He made my heart stop.

I ducked behind Paperchase and stared at him.

It was all there again. That slow, shambolic gentleness. That air of disarray and warmth. That lovely –

What is he doing? Why has he changed his clothes? And why the flaming KNOBS is he wearing my favourite of all his jumpers? With that lovely old dog-eared shirt collar poking out over it? Does he smell like he used to? Does he –

‘Be quiet,’ I told my head furiously. ‘Be quiet and leave me alone. It doesn’t matter. He’s a turd.’ It was only seven fifty-five a.m. but I was already full of anxiety.

And as the day passed it would get much, much worse.

Five minutes later I was cramped around a narrow table with Julian and Jan, heading north out of Euston. I was feeling fairly dreadful anyway, returning to the town where I’d grown up with Freckle. Where resided my parents, who blamed me for her death. Julian’s presence – Julian’s low-key, familiar
Julian Bell-
like presence – in this mix was not dissimilar to a firebomb for my fragile state of mind.

‘Why are you here?’ Jan asked Julian, in the way that only Jan could. We were speeding through the tangled mess of train tracks at Hendon, sipping weak tea.

Julian, who’d been picking at the cuff of his shirt, grinned at Jan’s bluntness. ‘All new outreach projects need to be supervised by someone from the college. Apparently. So here I am.’

‘But you are vocal coach! You are not in the staff,’ Jan persisted. He’d had three espressos that morning and was already quite mad. His eyes darted excitably from Julian to me. He was blithely unaware of the hornets’ nest he was in.

‘I know I’m not staff,’ Julian said amusedly. ‘And, my friend, I wish I could let you just get on with it but nobody else was free today. So, brother, you’re stuck with my ass, yo.’

Bugger off
, I thought.
Stop trying to make me laugh
.

‘Well, I am happy they send you,’ Jan said. He reached forward and helped himself to one of Julian’s shortbread fingers. ‘I think we have fun, these three … we three …’

‘The three of us,’ I muttered, avoiding Julian’s eye. I could do without Jan and Julian becoming friends.

‘Yes! The three of us.’ Jan popped a whole shortbread finger into his mouth. ‘And, Julian, you look very different. Why are you dressing like peasant today?’ he asked cordially.

Julian laughed out loud. ‘My mom often asks me the same.’

‘Well?’ Jan wasn’t going to let this go, which was fortunate because I very much wanted to know the answer.

‘This is how I dress.’ Julian looked down apologetically at his clothes. ‘I’m not really very smart at all.’

‘So why you wear smart clothes at college?’ Jan persisted. ‘Why did you have long hair with grease added to it?’

‘PURGGGH!’

‘Excuse me?’ Julian was looking at me, his eyes twinkling.

‘Sorry. I was just choking on my tea,’ I said. Jan was amazing. Completely amazing.

‘Why do I wear smart clothes and add grease to my hair,’ Julian mused delightedly. ‘Ha-ha! Well, it’s just what I’ve always done as an opera singer, I guess. When I graduated from college and got an agent he had this vision of me as quite a smart, shiny sort of a bloke whom middle-aged women would fall in love with. His idea, not mine,’ he added hastily. ‘On our first photo-shoot he had someone style me like that and it just stuck. That’s what people want Julian Jefferson to look like.’

‘But …’ Jan was at a loss. Conforming was not something he understood. ‘But why? If it is not representing your trueness, then why are you dressing like businessman who has naked ladies in his swimming-pool?’

This time I couldn’t help myself, and neither could Julian. We both roared with laughter and Jan, pleased, joined in. ‘HA-HA-HA!’ he shouted delightedly. ‘HA-HA-HA!’

Just as abruptly I stopped laughing because it didn’t feel right to be laughing with Julian and the churning anxiety returned. This whole trip was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Maybe I should abscond at Hemel Hempstead.

Julian took a slug of tea. ‘This is so minging,’ he said sadly. He turned back to Jan. ‘I asked myself the same question recently. “Why are you
still
wearing all this smart shit? The
college doesn’t require you to look like a smarmy twat.” And I didn’t have a good answer so I just thought,
Fuck it
, and I went to the Turkish man round the corner who did me a nine-quid haircut, and I got all my old clothes out. Boom.’

‘BOOM!’ Jan repeated, offering Julian a palm to high-five. Julian took it, chuckling.

Then Jan started to smile in an evil manner. ‘And what does Violet say about your new style?’ he asked.

‘Sorry?’ I sensed Julian’s jaw tightening minutely. I felt mine do the same.

‘Oh, Mr Julian Jefferson!’ Jan giggled. ‘You are not fooling us! All of the people in the
world
they are saying that you are making sexual intercourses with Violet Elphinstone,’ he crowed. ‘Ha-ha!’

The train hummed on. I cultivated a look of supreme disinterest, although my heart was pumping in my mouth or possibly even my forehead.

Julian, on the other hand, seemed somewhat paralysed. ‘Everyone’s talking about us?’ he said nervously.

‘Aha! You confirm it, HA-HA!’

‘Oh. Er …’

My heart plummeted into my chest, then down into my feet. I cursed it.
Get a grip. He’s the enemy! He and Violet deserve each other!

‘If you were proper staff it would be very bad, no?’ Jan asked Julian happily. ‘But you are not staff so it is OK, yes? We men of the college, of the world, we bow down to you. VIOLET ELPHINSTONE!’

‘No, it
is
bad,’ Julian said weakly. ‘Seriously unprofessional. Um …’ He downed his tea and yelped as it burned his throat.

I got out my notebook and pen, feigning nonchalance. My hands were shaking. I had absolutely no idea how to get through the next thirty-six hours. I felt sick, distressed and trapped.
Help
, I prayed, to a God I’d never believed in.
Help?

The workshop got off to a better start than we’d imagined in that the thirty year-elevens assigned to us actually turned up. They stood in the gym, a depressing space with dreadful acoustics and high, unreachable windows, either ignoring us silently or ignoring us loudly. Most, with a few exceptions, were either centrally or peripherally involved in a flirtatious conversation conducted in a scream.

Things have changed
, I marvelled, taking in an assortment of veils, turbans and caps. When I’d been growing up Stourbridge had still been a very traditional white working-class town but today it was a sea of different-coloured faces.

‘WOZNIT? WOZNIT, OH MA GOD!’ one of the girls screamed, just as Jan Borsos bellowed a piercing G sharp.

The gym was suddenly silent. Thirty pairs of eyes swivelled towards us, some surprised, most disgusted. I flushed, horribly uncomfortable and afraid.

I remembered being in that hall when I was a teenager, feeling fat and anguished in my gym knickers, hoping nobody would notice me. What had got me through it? What had carried me through the putrid stink of adolescence? Fiona, of course. She had written to me from ballet school three times a week; week in, week out. She was relentlessly upbeat, egging me on, encouraging me to
get up to no good, writing foul-mouthed (and hilarious) stories about our imaginary escapades.

Being Fiona she’d needed a lot of help from me: advice on bullies; reassurance that Mum and Dad wanted her home at Christmas; motivation to keep on polishing her craft. But even though I’d had to act as a parent, our letters had, over the years, helped scaffold my own modest confidence. In our never-ending stream of envelopes and scraps of paper was evidence that I was part of a team. A reminder that to one person, at least, I was important and worthwhile.

My little Freckle. Of course I hadn’t been able to cut off our conversations. Barry should have understood that. She might have been mad but she was my teammate. My mainstay. My foundation.

Stop it
, I warned myself.
Not here
.

I looked back at the kids. Jan and I were practically dwarfs in front of them. Jan with his miniature portly figure and little me, with my large bum and ‘comfortable’ body, stood before this tribe of noisy Amazons and for a moment said nothing.

Then Jan, who was apparently afraid of nothing and no one, began. ‘ORANGES AND LEMONS, SAY THE BELLS OF ST CLEMENT’S. I OWE YOU FIVE FARTHINGS, SAY THE BELLS OF ST MARTIN’S.’

The gym was silent, save for a kid with a comb in his Afro muttering about this man being sick but-not-in-a-good-way-know-what-I’m-sayin’-like.

Jan stopped and looked at the kids. ‘You do not know this song?’

One or two of the stragglers at the back raised tentative hands but put them quickly down. The rest stared at Jan with a mixture of disinterest and hostility.

‘I see,’ Jan continued. ‘Perhaps not all of you are English. Perhaps we have many foreigners here.’ I cringed right down to my core. Why did Jan never think before he spoke?

‘I am also not English,’ he continued cheerfully. ‘But my mother teach me this song when I was child. She tell me every child in England knows this song!’

‘Well, she don’t know shit about England, then,’ offered one boy. He was pale, skinny and badly dressed. His tie was absent and he wore scuffed trainers rather than the uniform black flats. Worst of all, he had what looked like the remains of a black eye.

I baulked, angry for Jan, who should not have had to hear his mother insulted within the first five minutes. Of course, this being my school, I felt wholly responsible. I sensed him next to me, small, stout and clearly taken aback. In Jan’s world all people loved him. He was laughed at, frequently (and rightly so), but nobody ever insulted him. He was too adorable.
I CAN’T DO THIS!
my head screamed.
I can’t be here in Stourbridge with Julian while Jan gets insulted, no Fiona and no parents worth having and – I CAN’T DO IT
.

‘You are right,’ Jan said, cutting through my mental hysteria. ‘My mother did not “know shit” about England. But she did know shit about singing. And that is why I am here today. I am here to show you what my mother was showing me: how to love music.’

The scruffy kid held Jan’s gaze for a few seconds, then
dropped it, picking at his fingernails, which were bitten and grubby.

In spite of my fragile and fevered mental state, the afternoon got off to a good start. After we’d talked about ourselves and our lives, to prove to the kids that opera wasn’t all about posh fat people, Jan sang ‘La donna è mobile’ which quite a few of them, reassuringly, showed signs of recognizing. We had agreed I would not sing.