The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me (3 page)

‘You shouldn’t spend all your time with Fiona,’ Mum often said. ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, Sally. Find some other friends.’

I ignored her. Fiona was my best friend in the whole world.

Fiona Lane, that naughty, tragic little girl whose father ran off with the theatre, whose mother had gone barmy and drowned herself in the Wolverhampton canal. And Sally Howlett, her chunky, reliable cousin, who never caused any trouble, ever. I did what I was told and kept people happy. I solved problems, never created them, and at all times I was calm and cheerful. As a girl, as a teenager, as an adult, I was one and the same.

On the day that the man arrived at my front door and had pork belly thrown at him, I was thirty years old yet I looked pretty much the same as I had aged seven when I heard my first aria. Dumpy, short and wide of bottom.
Unnaturally thick blonde hair (once described by a hairdresser as ‘coarser than a shire horse’s tail’) and what I thought to be an unremarkable kind of face.

Wherever I went, whatever age I was, people said things to me like ‘You’re a rock,’ or ‘What a calm influence you have on this place, Sally!’

Sometimes I wondered what they’d think if they knew that I sang opera in my wardrobe, and that as the years passed I had continued to listen to it on my Walkman, then my Discman, then my iPod. I found VHS, then DVD, then internet masterclasses of famous singers tutoring eager pupils and used those recordings to teach myself.

There was no denying that my voice was good, however alien self-praise might have been to me. But I could also tell that I had missed some vital stages in my training by going straight in at the top with professional masterclasses. Largely because a lot of the things my video tutors said sounded completely mental. ‘Hold that stentando all the way to the end!’ they shouted. I imagined what a stentando might be and pictured an iron-age weapon.

‘More diaphragmatic attack!’ they’d yell, or ‘You’re being misled by those accents, this is NOT SFORZANDO!’ (A Russian bread?)

But nothing, not even my inability to understand most of what my VHS tutors said, or the fear of what people would think if they ever found out, detracted from the creamy dollops of pleasure I felt at hearing an operatic sound coming from my own mouth. ‘L’ho perduta … Blum blum bluuum blum … ackie saaa duh duuuh duh duh …’ I sang, quietly alight with pride. (I had yet to learn Italian.)

Fiona, aged eleven, was packed off to the Royal Ballet School to honour the request her mother had made before dying, leaving the house suffocatingly quiet. Although I was glad she’d escaped my seemingly emotionless parents, her absence made my life seem beige and pointless, and Mum made it very difficult for us to see each other in the holidays. She encouraged me instead to play with Lisa from next door. But I hated Lisa. She was patronizing and evil and all she ever wanted to do was follow my brother Dennis around.

Singing took the edge off all of that. Nothing on earth felt quite so comforting as that first breath, the feeling of muscles contracting, the feeling of my vocal cords coming together, seemingly without any help from my brain, and producing a sound that was fairly reminiscent of my
Opera Favourites
.

So I became the little girl who sang in the wardrobe. I sang in that wardrobe every day, and when I moved to London fourteen years later I made Dad drive it down the M6 in Pete-from-next-door’s Transit. And nobody ever knew.

‘Our parents are shocking,’ Fiona told me, one evening shortly after I’d moved to London.

We were sitting on the floor of our newly rented flat in the crap bit of Southwark. It featured a Juliet balcony overlooking an illegal rubbish dump where foxes mated, it smelt of Stilton and there was a mushroom growing in the bathroom. It was a disgusting flat and we were very happy. Not least because we had discovered that Mr Pickles, who ran the tired little café underneath us, was also from Stourbridge.

Fiona and I, now twenty-one, seemed still to be the best of friends in spite of our ten-year separation. I was ecstatic. There hadn’t been a day when I hadn’t missed the mad little stick insect, or wondered if things would be the same once we were both grown-ups and could live together again.

We were eating out of takeaway Mr Pickles boxes. As usual I was wearing cheap jeans which showed my bum crack, although it would be the last time I dressed like that.

‘I said, our parents are shocking,’ Fiona repeated, when I didn’t respond. ‘Like,
CHRONICALLY SHIT
.’

Fiona did this often. She couldn’t stand it when things were calm so she’d poke and prod at those around her until someone exploded.

‘Oh, they’re not too bad,’ I replied, even though I completely agreed with her. ‘I mean, look what they’re putting up with.’

Fiona snorted. ‘What?
Letting
us live together, pursuing our dreams? As if that wasn’t our
right
?’

Fi certainly had a point. Mum’s reaction to our new jobs had been, at best, lukewarm.

Fi had just been made a soloist with the Royal Ballet after being part of the
corps de ballet
for three years. I had recently finished my degree in costume design so she had been pimping my CV around the wardrobe department at the Royal Opera House, although neither of us expected anything to come of it. But three weeks ago I’d been called in for an interview and had been offered a dresser’s job. AT THE ROYAL OPERA HOUSE! I had been so grateful and delighted that I had burst out into the piazza in Covent Garden and screamed, then whooped all the way back to Stourbridge, where Mum took one look at me and hissed, ‘Pat! Someone in London’s spiked her with them magic mushrooms and Ecstasy tablets! Pat!
Pat!
What’ll we do?’

My job was only a bottom-rung-of-the-ladder affair but it would eventually lead me to my dream, which was to be a proper, senior costume person in the world of opera. A supervisor, maybe even a designer. A job that
kept me out of the limelight but surrounded by my beloved opera? It was a miracle!

And I’d really believed that a career involving textiles and clothes-making would thrill my parents. Aged eighteen they had met at Hall’s, a clothing factory on the Hagley road, and had worked there ever since: Mum had taught me how to load a bobbin even before she showed me how to use the kettle. One of the few times I’d seen pride in her face was when I won a regional dressmaking competition in Dudley aged sixteen.

But my shiny new career hadn’t thrilled them. There had not been even a fraction of the pride there had been when Dennis (who had, of course, married Lisa from next door) started a self-storage company called CrateWorld in Harrow.

In fact, Mum had been really quite aghast. ‘The Royal Opera House?’ she said anxiously, as if I’d just announced that I was off to work at an exotic massage spa. ‘But there’ll be all sorts of people there! Show-offs. Snobs.
Homos
.’

Dad, who rarely took any notice of what anyone was saying, looked up over his glasses. ‘Really?’ he asked. ‘Gays?’

Mum nodded, her face siren red with alarm. Dad puffed harder on his pipe. ‘Well then …’ Even he looked concerned, which was quite a big deal because Dad didn’t do emotions. He cleared his throat. ‘It sounds like a good job, our Sal, but will you enjoy it? All of those singers? I mean, we’re proud and all, but –’

‘But we’re not sure this job is
you
,’ Mum interrupted.

I felt my eyes smart. What did they even know about
me? Mum avoided talking about anything that wasn’t a logistical arrangement and Dad avoided talking about anything full stop.
You don’t know me
, I thought angrily, saying nothing.
You don’t know anything about me
.

‘And it could be dangerous for you, working in the same place as Fiona,’ Mum added, suddenly shifty. ‘What if she causes trouble and it rubs off bad on you? You should keep your distance.’

I should have known. Should have known that anything to do with theatre would be too much for them. Too noisy. Too jazz-bandsy. Too like Aunty Mandy and all the trouble she’d caused, running away from home to have a fling with an actor, then having to return to Stourbridge single, pregnant and disgraced.

‘I guess they were a
little
bit unenthusiastic,’ I conceded sadly to Fiona. ‘About all of this.’ I gestured grandly towards the rubbish dump out of the window, as if it were a premium view of the Thames from a penthouse.

‘A little bit unenthusiastic?’ Fiona replied indignantly. She put her carton of bolognese back in its plastic bag to signal that she had now stopped eating. I ignored her. Fiona rarely ate more than five mouthfuls of her dinner. She could always be relied on to drink, however, and before continuing she took a long gulp of cheap wine direct from the bottle.

‘Sally, our mother –
your
mother, to be precise – is a bitch.’

‘Oh, Fiona, come on …’

‘No! Stop making excuses for her! She should be proud of you! Proud of
us
!’ Her eyes were flashing.

‘She is, underneath it all.’

‘Is she bollocks! She’s ashamed! She’s embarrassed! She’s cross that we’re both working in a
theatre
, even though it’s not a bloody theatre, it’s a world-famous opera house, just because of what my mum did. Why can’t she let it go?’

‘Um, because she lost her sister in a really awful way and she decided to blame it all on –’

‘On what?’ Fiona snarled. ‘The performing arts? She can’t cocking well hold the performing arts responsible for what happened! My mum was a mentalist! She shagged an actor who didn’t care about her! Whatever! It happens all the time! Why are we being made to feel guilty because we’ve happened to work in a vaguely similar industry?
Jesus!
’ She glugged at the wine with accomplished venom.

I glanced round the room as if to seek help, but found only the reflection of my half-exposed bum in the mirror; paper-white and bashful.

‘Your mum,’ Fiona continued, her voice now wobbling like a drunk ballerina, ‘is about as warm and loving as a dishcloth. And she’s made you feel shit, yet again, for taking a job that isn’t in a bloody textiles factory. Even though nobody in England works in a textiles factory any more. Why do you keep on defending her?’

‘She just doesn’t understand my job …’ I began lamely, then petered out. Everything Fiona had just said was true. When I thought about my own childhood, I felt quite resentful. But when I thought about Fi’s, I felt the twisting ropes of rage. I needed to change the subject.

‘I bet she hates you living with me,’ Fiona said quietly.

‘Of course not! Look, Freckle, you’re right. They’re shit, properly shit, so let’s just agree on that and move on.’

‘Humph,’ she said darkly.

I swallowed a mouthful of bolognese without chewing and burned my mouth. Damn Fiona. She was so good at winding me up.

‘Seriously, let’s not talk about them.’ I sounded laid-back, even though that wasn’t how I felt. ‘We can do what we want, Freckle, with or without Mum’s blessing. We’re adults now.’

Fiona took another swig of the wine and I watched her deciding whether or not to push it a little further. She decided not to. ‘S’pose so … But I’m not so sure about this “adult” thing, Sally.’ She grinned eventually. ‘This morning when I walked into your room you were telling Carrot that he was a big handsome boy.’

‘He is!’

‘You’re a twonk.’ She sighed. ‘But, teddy bears aside, we
are
adults, and there’s no reason why working in the theatre is going to turn us into mentalists like my mum. SO THERE.’ She stuck her fork into my spag bol and twirled it round. (It didn’t count if she ate extra food from someone else’s plate.)

Clinking our forks against the bottle of wine, we made a pact. From now on, we would be proper grown-ups.

We got really drunk and choreographed a contemporary ballet in our empty sitting room, then got a bus into Soho where we staggered around looking for somewhere cool and grown-up to dance. Somehow we got sidetracked and ended up buying vibrators and going for tea and cake at three thirty a.m. It was one of those blissful nights when Fiona fell asleep before she got drunk enough to start causing trouble.

I was happy.

The next day was my first at the opera house. I smelt like methylated spirits. I was collected from the stage door by my new colleague Faye, who wore écru slacks; she smelt of organic oat bran and west London. Immediately, I regretted my cheap outfit.

Following Faye through the endless corridors, I wondered when my first tea break would be. My head was doughy and my brain full of dense fog. I desperately needed a lie-down and a high-fat snack.
Balls
. Why had I gone out drinking the night before my first day here? Did I have to do
everything
Fiona suggested? I was a moron of desperate severity.

But then I was rescued by the most wonderful sound, a tannoy announcement made by a woman with a silky voice: ‘Mr Allen and Miss Jepson, this is your five-minute call. That’s your five-minute call, Mr Allen and Miss Jepson.’

It wasn’t the names or the announcement that excited me: it was the sound of music in the background. The announcer must be practically on stage herself, within metres of what I immediately identified as
Così fan tutte
.

‘
Così fan tutte!
’ I exclaimed at Faye and her écrus.

She looked pleased. ‘Yes, well done!’

An extraordinary sensation of relief flooded me, rolling away the filthy waves of hangover. Finally.
Finally
I was somewhere where it was impressive to know about opera.
I need never hide it again
, I thought dazedly.
This is amazing!

A man was walking towards us in a suit and I presumed he was some sort of executive until he started making zooming noises with his voice.

‘ZzzeeeeeeeEEEEEeeee,’ he zoomed, suddenly breaking off and making a speedboat sound through his lips. He was wearing heavy makeup.

I realized it was Thomas Allen and nearly passed out. Thomas Allen was dead famous. So famous that I owned a DVD masterclass with him. I goggled at him and he smiled back in a very pleasant manner. ‘Hello,’ he said, breaking off from his speedboat noises.

I stared like a moron for a few more seconds, then remembered that people liked me because I was as cool as a cucumber. In fact, that had been one of the major pieces of feedback from my successful interview.

I smiled, and said calmly, ‘Oh, hi, Thomas.’

He nodded and walked on, still smiling pleasantly.

I grinned. I might be as drunk as a stoat and smelly as a ferret but I was going to love this job. And I was really going to nail it.

And, as it turned out, I did. Unfortunately on that first day my vibrator went off in my bag (I had forgotten to remove it because I was still drunk) and it rattled so loudly that one of my colleagues asked Security to open the
locker. And the next day my inexperienced dressing was responsible for a bass’s trousers falling slowly to his feet during a duet – but, minor mishaps aside, I took it on quickly. I kitted myself out in soft, tasteful fabrics that smelt of Cornish crops and felt like peach skin (and then didn’t have enough money to eat anything other than cheap bread for the first month, but that was fine).

I became Sally Howlett the Rock. I knew what I was doing when it came to clothes and costumes. Things involving fabrics and scissors and measurements. Boxes of buttons, safety pins, hooks and eyes, spools of thread and ribbon and piping. Notions, those bits were called. I’d wander through the stores, piled high with boxes of scraps and swatches of material, and I’d wish desperately that Mum and Dad would one day agree to come and visit because they would bloody
love
this place.

As a dresser I had what was called a plot for each opera performance: an important list of instructions that told me whose costume to change and when. The plots at first sounded mental – ‘
Take Marchesa Act III dress to SR quick change area; ***ORANGE BRA!!***, strike Café des Amis stuff
’ – but I learned quickly how to decipher them.

Once again I became popular because of my unflappable nature and ability to problem-solve. I got on with everyone I met, massaged the egos of singers whose egos needed massaging and settled into a routine of unthreatening friendship with the rest. To my surprise, many of them were very normal. And even the grandiose ones who referred to ‘The Voice’ in the third person seemed to enjoy my Black Country accent and matter-of-fact world view. They liked that I had a bum as big as theirs, and that
I’d managed to call a singer named Regina Wheatley ‘Vagina Weekly’.

There was a delightful baritone called Brian Hurst, whom I particularly loved. He was from Huddersfield so his accent was as out of place as mine. We ate chips from Rock & Soul in Covent Garden. Sometimes pies. He was heaven. He was quite a star, and sang in opera houses across the world, but he drank dandelion and burdock and never tantrumed, and often I’d find him smiling at me as I sprinted past with a bum patch for a singer who was tantruming because someone had just dared spray hairspray near The Voice.

‘You’re a good influence on us loonies,’ he told me.

And there was the music. All day, every day, through the tannoy, on the stage, in the dressing rooms, in the rehearsal rooms. Scales, arpeggios, arias, recitatives. Big, booming choruses that made me want to punch the air and bellow through a theatrical beard. For the first time in my life, I felt I was at home.

The wardrobe staff, who had originally seemed so alien to me, with their cool casual trousers and elegant crops, must have appreciated my hard work because they offered me a wardrobe assistant’s job after only nine months.

The first day I hung up my coat amid the hanging rails and steamers I felt a thrill that was rivalled only by mastering a difficult aria in my own wardrobe.

After two years in that job I got a further promotion and after another year I’d saved enough money to contribute a small deposit towards a tiny new-build flat by the canal in the southern reaches of Islington. On
my twenty-sixth birthday I opened the door to my dream hidey-hole: extremely clean, orderly and carefully designed. Clever storage space. A car park with a gate. A pristine white bathroom and gentle, humming stillness.

It was heaven after the cramped, paper-thin-walled house of my childhood, decorated with an impossible combination of austerity and tack. Or the squalid flats that Fiona and I had rented since moving in together.

Fi, who had not saved so much as a penny in the last four years, moved her chaos to my little second bedroom and paid me a pathetic rent. Mum grumbled sporadically about me needing to separate myself from her: wasn’t it enough that we worked together?

I ignored her and carried on being Fiona’s unofficial mother. It suited everyone perfectly and we had a lot of fun.