The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me (6 page)

From:
Sally Howlett [mailto
[email protected]
)

To:
Fiona Lane [mailto
[email protected]
)

Sent:
Monday, 10 September 2012, 07.03.55 GMT

 

Fi – ARGHHHH! IT’S TODAY! It’s today it’s today it’s today!

You are in a world of trouble, Fiona bloody Lane. This terrible horrible scary opera course at this terrible horrible scary music college is
all your fault
. I didn’t sleep last night. I just lay there going mental and thrashed around and had diarrhoea (NB not in my bed) and pulled big clumps of my hair out and ate a multipack of Wotsits and maybe had a couple of tots of minging dark rum cos that’s all me and Barry have in the house. The main point being that I hate you. Arggh!

I think it’s very rude of you not to come back to London to help me through my first week in this diabolical place. EVERYONE IS GOING TO BE POSH AND AWFUL AND THEY ARE GOING TO THROW ME OUT BECAUSE I WON’T BE GOOD ENOUGH AND THEN I WILL BLOW MY HEAD OFF IN AN OVEN AND IT’LL ALL BE YOUR FAULT.

Right. Breakfast is out of the question and if I have coffee I will FLY THROUGH THE FECKING ROOF so I’m just going to, oh, I don’t know, sit here for another hour and STEW MY FAT ARSE OFF.

How’s New York? Lovely and autumnal? Hmm, I’m sure it is. Damn you, you selfish bugger.

And love you. Lots.

Please come back soon. If only for a quick visit. A day, even! We all miss you. Xxx

The air was brisk but warm when I got off the tube at South Kensington. After a wet summer the trees were confused and their leaves had already begun to curl inwards and make for the ground. They skittered along the pavements, playful dancers in a cityscape of discordant traffic and relentless human momentum. For a few seconds I allowed myself to remember the turning leaves in Central Park, breathtaking in their autumnal technicolour. But I shut down the memory almost as soon as it had started. Stirring up thoughts of New York was not helpful on a day like today.

As I walked up the side of the Natural History Museum, its windows ablaze with a sudden burst of sun, a coach from none other than Stourbridge disgorged a bunch of feral children. I thought how much all of this would have pleased me, were the circumstances different. The leaves, the sparkly new puddles, the noisy children from my hometown.

Not today. ‘Ah wunt to see the dinosaurs noe!’ one of them shouted, and I couldn’t even smile.

They inhabited another world. Their greatest fear probably centred around the potential ratio of horrible fruit to delicious trans-fats in their Natural History Lunchpacks.

‘Hullow. Are you from London?’ one of them said to me. He offered a manly wink and a toothless grin and waited for my response with surprising confidence for a child of no more than seven.

‘Hullow,’ I said to him. I tried to sound jolly. ‘I’m from Stourbridge too, actually.’

‘She’s a liar,’ he reported confidently to his friends. ‘Probably a slag too.’

I carried on, capable of neither amusement nor outrage. It was as if I was being propelled a few inches above the pavement; the momentum of my body coming from somewhere else. But this was not a blissful floaty sensation: it was one of pure, out-of-body terror.

A girl dressed as a giant coffee cup handed me a free flapjack and I tore it open gratefully, only to find myself unable to eat.

God, this really
was
an emergency. I lived to eat. Yet I hadn’t done so in more than twenty-four hours. Last night’s pork belly would never have made it into my tummy even if my unwelcome visitor hadn’t turned up. And this morning’s cereal had gone hard in its bowl. Now a flapjack. A slice of happiness! Not only was I incapable of eating it but, oh, Christ, I’d dropped it.
It had simply fallen out of my hands
.

No food, especially food containing syrup, fell out of
my hands. I looked round for a stray dog, but stray dogs, I realized, were probably few and far between in SW7.

Stately, ostentatious red-brick buildings rose high above me. People walked purposefully and with aggression. A man shouted into his mobile about how it was time to fucking well do something about Marta. And I couldn’t eat. I felt insane. I twiddled my completely OTT ring around my finger and considered throwing up in a dustbin.

Fiona had been singularly unhelpful when we’d spoken last night. No matter how I’d pleaded with her she’d just reminded me, five times, ten times, a thousand times, that I’d promised her I’d go to opera school. I’d given her my word. ‘Seize the day, remember?’ she’d said. ‘You promised me in New York, Sal!’

‘Seize the day,’ I’d repeated hollowly.

And now here I was, my heart in my mouth, a chasm of terror cleaving down my middle.

There were signs everywhere for the Royal College of Music, the Royal Albert Hall, the Skempton Building, the Science Library. I ignored all of them and stared fixedly at the map on my phone, perhaps in the hope that it would direct me to a different Royal College of Music. Ideally the one situated in my wardrobe in Bevan Street, Islington. Although I didn’t particularly want to go home either. I was terrified that last night’s visitor might come back. And if that happened I didn’t know what I’d –

‘STOP IT,’ I snapped at myself. Today was bad enough as it was; I had no mental space for him. I just had to trust that he’d taken note of the high-speed pork belly and would not come back. Ever. The
scumbag
. The bullshit-peddling, weak, spineless
scumbag
.

‘WILL YOU JUST
STOP IT
!’ I told myself, louder. I meant it this time. The college was drawing closer and I needed to start pretending to be calm.
Seize the day. Seize the day. Seize the day
.

And there, resplendent opposite the Albert Hall, it was. The Royal College of Music. A terrifyingly grand, turreted red-brick Gothic affair with a Union flag flying above its fussy glass portico. Grand steps leading up to heavy ornate doors through which I had not been bred to pass.

This building had been designed with great people in mind. ‘For more than 125 years our students have gone on to international stardom,’ the brochure had said. I swallowed. I didn’t want
any
stardom, let alone that of the international variety. Any more than I wanted to study at a place that was so posh it needed a French name. For this, I had been told by a worryingly trendy undergrad who was helping at the auditions, was a
conservatoire
. I hadn’t looked up the word but I knew that its definition would have something to do with
exceptional and talented
people who did not speak with Black Country accents. In fact, it was probably designed for people who hadn’t even
heard
of the Black Country.

I felt fat as I cowered at the foot of the steps, painfully aware of the stone I’d put on since New York. Although I was by no means enormous, I felt grossly unsuitable for something that called itself a
conservatoire
. Barry had done nothing to assuage this fear. ‘Maybe I’ll blend in,’ I’d gabbled earlier. ‘Opera singers have always been on the chunky side.’

‘But not
your
kind of chunky,’ he’d countered,
squidging my stomach fondly. ‘They’re aristocrats and stuff. They eat goose fat and fine imported meats. You mark my words, Chicken, those opera singers don’t buy four-packs of steak and kidney pie.’

Sodding Barry. Sometimes I found myself thinking that living with Fiona had actually been easier. She had been madder than a mushroom but she’d at least pretended I wasn’t fat.

I glanced furtively along Prince Consort Road, which was surprisingly quiet. There was a madman hobbling around vaguely at the far end of the street but there were certainly no music students in view. I could, if I did it now, still run. Tell them I’d been attacked and my vocal cords stolen, and explain that I hadn’t yet touched the scholarship money and could pay both of my scholarships back without delay. (How had I got
two
? It made things so much worse. I was accountable not just to the Associated Board of Something but also to some bloke called Lord Peter Ingle, who probably wore a cape and a monocle.)

The hobbling man had decided to hobble in my direction now.

And I knew it was time to go.

I turned and ran, away from the hobbling man, back towards the tube and freedom. Engaged in an activity that actually made sense, my body responded with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.

As my muscles pumped, my head cleared. Of course I couldn’t do it. Of course I couldn’t go and study for a performance diploma in opera or whatever the stupid course was called. It didn’t matter a monkey’s bollock that I could sing:
I was not a performer
. Standing in front of panel after
panel of poshos for my auditions – including bloody Brian from the opera house – had been the hardest thing I’d done in my entire life: I’d had diarrhoea constantly and had been anguished ever since. I’d been fighting with Barry, whom I never fought with, I’d been fighting with my brother Dennis and his wife Lisa, whom I always fought with, and I’d even been trying to pick long-distance fights with Fiona, an activity made all the more infuriating by her uncharacteristic refusal to engage.

It was settled. I would pay back the scholarships, I’d apologize to Brian and the other folk at the college, I’d beg the opera house for my job back and I’d return to a life in which I felt very comfortable and perfectly happy. Fiona and her seizing of days would have to lump it.

‘MUHHH!’

‘Paaaaah!’

Two bodies colliding hard.

Obviously it was Brian. Of all the people who might have been turning off Exhibition Road. And obviously, being Brian, he looked extremely jolly, rather than extremely furious.

‘Oh dear!’ he exclaimed, as if I had just dropped a pencil, rather than galloped into his chest, like a charging rhino. ‘Forgotten something?’

‘Only my mind,’ I muttered. ‘Brian, I’m very sorry, but there’s been a mistake. This is not for me, it’s –’

‘No,’ he said lightly, and without the faintest hint of surprise. ‘You don’t get away that easily, Sally. Do you have any idea what the competition is like for places here? More than thirty people were turned down for your place alone.’

I wondered if he was serious. How was that an argument?

He was serious, by the look of things. ‘Well, then, you’ll have twenty-nine brilliant singers to choose from,’ I told him, picking up my bag.

‘No.
You
are the brilliant singer we picked,’ Brian said firmly, taking me by the elbow and turning me back towards the college. He started walking; I didn’t. So he pulled my elbow until it came with me behind it.

‘You’ll be OK, kid,’ he said, more gently, and I heard his soft Huddersfield accent. ‘Just come and register, OK? Get to know the place. You won’t have to sing today.’

‘I won’t?’ A slender ray of hope.

‘Nope, no singing,’ he confirmed. We were nearing the entrance again and I noticed that the hobbling man was walking directly towards us. ‘Jan!’ Brian cried merrily. ‘My fine fellow! You made it!’

Jan was a short, angry-looking man with hair swept forward from the crown of his head into a dramatic curtain around his face. He looked like something from my VHS recording of
La Bohème
actually; one of the smelly art students in Café Momus during Act Two. He was wearing a long torn coat and what looked suspiciously like nineteenth-century trousers. His collar was cravated (no! No no no!) and a grubby handkerchief poked out of his front pocket alongside a fat old Nokia. Oh, and he was wearing only one shoe. In fact, as he bounced forward to shake Brian’s hand, I realized that he wasn’t hobbling. He was simply wearing one shoe and so was completely unbalanced.

For real?
my head thought. ‘For real?’ my mouth said,
before I knew what was happening. Fortunately my rudeness was lost in Brian’s effusive greeting.

‘Welcome!’ he enthused. ‘Welcome to the Royal College! To London! To England! Excellent work getting here, Jan!’

‘Thank you, thank you,’ said Jan, in a strong Eastern European accent. ‘It take me many days. Now I am here! I am student!’

‘And so you are!’ Brian cried. They shook hands again. Jan’s face still looked furious, even though he was clearly very happy. I learned quickly that his ‘furious’ look covered a wide range of emotions.

I stood like a fat moron on the edges of Brian and Jan’s greeting ceremony and wondered if I could sneak off.

Brian was having none of it. ‘Sally Howlett, meet your classmate Jan Borsos,’ he said, stepping back to allow us to shake hands.

I decided on the spot that I liked him. Jan Borsos was even more out of place than I was, standing lopsidedly outside that vast, Hogwarts-like building. I held my hand out to him but he rejected it, choosing instead to bow deeply towards his shoeless foot.

‘Mrs Sally,’ he said respectfully. ‘Jan Borsos. I am from Pzjhkjhkjbjbjkbhjb in Hungary.’

‘Hi, er, Mr Borsos,’ I replied, with what I hoped was the right amount of respect. ‘Call me Sally. I’m … I’m, er, from Stourbridge. In the West Midlands. Where did you say you were from?’

Brian ushered us through the door, the cunning bastard, while Jan repeated himself. ‘I am from Pusztaszabolcs,’ he said very slowly, ‘south of Budapest. I studied at the
Budapest Opera School until the age of sixteen when I married with beautiful Russian
répétiteur
. I was young and stupid and I pause my studies for love, but we divorced ourselves one years later and I did study opera at the St Petersburg Conservatory. I wrote letter to the great master László Polgár and he said, “Yes, Jan, I will teach you in Switzerland, you come to me soon.” I did study him for two years before he was dying.’

Jan stopped talking and his face clouded with sadness. I stared at him in amazement. I hadn’t been expecting a life story but I was impressed by it: it sounded like an opera in itself. ‘Wow,’ I said brightly. ‘So what have you been doing since then?’

‘It was a small two years ago,’ Jan whispered. ‘László did die and then I travelled to Budapest to grief. I sing for two years in church for no money but I knew I must continue my study. So I come here to London. I hope not to fall in love with any more beautiful
répétiteur
. For me they are dangerous. Today is my twenty-three birthday.’

Before I had time to wonder what a
répétiteur
was, or to panic about being on a course with a twenty-three-year-old, I realized I was now standing in the reception area of the Royal College of Music. Auditions had been so terrifying that I’d barely looked beyond my own feet last time. Now I gulped, scanning around me with fresh eyes, while Brian loped off to talk to a tall, beautiful woman in a leather jacket.

Two kids, who seemed no more than fifteen, were strolling past with big cello cases strapped to their backs. They both wore cool duffel coats, short skirts with thick tights and hi-top trainers. They were carrying lattes. I
didn’t understand. In these lofty environs, with busts of Mozart on the walls and glass cases containing priceless old manuscripts, would the musicians not have pointed beards and cassocks? ‘Did you know that Adrian’s been banging Chen all summer?’ one reported to the other.

‘Fuck off!’ was the reply.

I nodded respectfully. No cassocks here, then.

On either side of an old wooden staircase were doors to the college’s famous concert hall. I thought about what this hall meant and tried not to throw up. I’d been told that we would be ‘lucky’ enough to get to perform concerts and take masterclasses in this ‘unparalleled’ performance venue throughout the course. Catching a glimpse of a high ceiling and a long, large balcony, I thought that performing in there would be among the most unlucky experiences I could possibly imagine.