The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me (9 page)

Our two weeks in Manhattan were the happiest of my life. When we travelled north to Boston I tried to write in my diary but just drew a massive, goon-like smiley face. Then I drew a big knob on it because I knew I was being a big knob and I couldn’t have cared less.

After Boston we headed south to Philadelphia and finally Washington. The taxi journeys from the airport into each city were identical, regardless of where we were. Huge green metal plates suspended above the highways announced turnpikes and beltways and Interstates with giant, iconic American trucks thundering underneath them. For no obvious reason, I loved even the road signs.

And for even less obvious reasons I loved and couldn’t stop photographing those illuminated signs that thrust up into the darkening sky – Denny’s, Wendy’s, IHOP, Duane Reade – announcing our arrival in every single city.

I also found American hotels very comforting. There was always someone wanting to help you, always more food than anyone could eat, always a laundered towel and
a blackout blind and a huge wardrobe in which to sing. I felt strangely calmed by the sterile chatter of infomercials on the hotel TVs, and the hum of aircon frequently sent me to sleep even when I was wired after a mad performance. It was such a scintillating time, brimming with excitement and newness, yet it was marked by anonymous, silent bedrooms. Another American paradox of which I was very fond.

Fiona was a different woman. I couldn’t tell if it was the excitement of the tour or the gradual unfolding of her relationship with Raúl but, to my astonishment, she remained true to her word. Each day she got up, warmed up properly, like the others, arrived in time for rehearsals and performances and occasionally even ate proper meals. She seemed quite genuinely to have stopped drinking, which was a miracle on an unprecedented scale. In a tiny fish restaurant in the North End in Boston, Bea, Barry, Fiona and I shared our childhood dreams, and Fiona said, simply, ‘I just wanted to be like Sally,’ and everyone had a bit of a cry until Bea ordered another carafe of blood-red wine and told us all to shut up.

I didn’t stop worrying about her, of course. I’d never stop worrying about her. I felt uncomfortable that she spent so much time on the phone with Raúl, and her intense chattiness, even early in the morning, was plain weird. I was used to her being hung-over and sullen. One night she and Bea went out dancing and didn’t get back until five a.m. Even though Fiona was still full of energy when she returned I could tell from her breath that she hadn’t been drinking. I had no idea how she’d managed it but I wasn’t about to start interfering.

She was still late and chaotic, at times, and every now and then would become horribly irritable only to disappear off on her own for a while and come back happy. Barry and I decided she had taken up meditation.

Barry had a fling in Philadelphia with a civil engineer called Richard, who was extremely nice and funny and whom I strongly wanted Barry to marry. Barry was more practical. ‘Chicken, I didn’t come here to find me no husband,’ he said sternly. ‘I came here to express myself using the medium of dance. Richard and I had a beautiful time and now it’s over. I’m not gonna lie, he was a fine specimen of a man, but we live on different shores, Chicken. Different shores.’

I had no romance whatsoever.

I found men and relationships very complicated. Deep down I suspected that I was scared of the whole thing, that if I were to embark on anything serious it would generate feelings larger than Sally Howlett could handle. So I typically went for men with whom I had (a) fun and (b) absolutely no connection. Sure, we had to get on, but I’d never had even a whiff of that other-worldly thing that Fiona claimed to be developing with Raúl.

That
sort of connection would be available only with a man I felt to be truly sublime, and the men I felt to be truly sublime were way out of my league. I knew I was nice enough, but I wasn’t special. I’d never be special.

So nothing happened on our tour. I concentrated on work and exploring the east coast and enjoying Fiona’s new, improved, drink-free behaviour. I put Brian’s letter and the whole singing thing out of my mind and felt safe and happy.

A few months later, once Julian had exploded
into – and then out of – my life, and I had gone back to England with the wreckage hanging stone-like around my neck, I would look at my photos of those sunny weeks and wonder what had happened to that carefree girl.

The ballet tour drew to a close in August, and as it did, I became aware of an odd sensation every time I thought about New York. There was something a bit broken and crunchy in my chest when I remembered my fortnight there; something that needed attention.

The sensation became a feeling, and the feeling became a thought: I had unfinished business in New York.

What? Maybe it was just that I needed to eat some more of that amazing French toast in the Noho Star; maybe not. What
was
clear was that the pull of New York was muscling up every day.
Don’t go back home. You were happy in New York. Stay. Stay longer. It’s important. Really important
.

So when the Metropolitan Opera’s wardrobe mistress emailed me out of the blue asking if I’d be interested in a four-week sickness cover job on their new production of
Turandot
, I just said yes. Even though I had no visa and would have to do it as an unpaid intern. Even though I had no idea where to live. Even though Mum was stoutly silent when I told her on the phone.

Three days later, in mid-August, I waved goodbye to the Royal Ballet at Washington Dulles International Airport and took the train back up to New York.

On my first morning before work I went to SoHo for a bagel and sat in the sun, watching kids shooting hoops in Thomson Street playground. And I knew, with absolute certainty, that I was in the right place. New York had brought me back for some reason and I was listening.

I settled in quickly to my job at the Met. Being there the second time round did nothing to lessen the fantastical scale of the place. It was, simply, awe-inspiring. Even down in the bowels of the building, far below the stage, where unseen machines hummed and men did technical things in workshops that I couldn’t have hoped to understand, I found it ridiculously exciting. When I wasn’t on duty I would stand quietly in the corner of a subterranean rehearsal room or sit in the auditorium during a set changeover, watching with wonder as upwards of two hundred people hammered, screwed and unscrewed, lifted, shouted, abseiled, adjusted; a factory of humanity assembling the next stage set in bafflingly few hours.

Turandot
was an epic production, and although my role was minor, I was working at full steam. Tiredness didn’t register. I was high on New York. ‘YEAH!’ I shouted at myself in the mirror each morning, and I wasn’t even being ironic.

The very best thing about my return to the city was that
my friends had come too. All three had been so jealous of my month-long extension that they’d found ways of doing the same. Fiona and Barry weren’t needed in rehearsals for a little while and Bea had decided to take another month off because she was Bea and nobody messed with her.

On Fiona’s absolute insistence, we rented a vast warehouse conversion in Raúl’s building on the north edge of McCarren Park, Brooklyn, somewhere between Williamsburg and Greenpoint. ‘Cool people live in that area,’ she told us, without any irony. We grimaced. ‘And Raúl owns the building. He’s renting the apartment to us for almost nothing.’ We stopped grimacing.

Barry and I didn’t much care where we lived as long as it was affordable, which Manhattan was not. Bea, of course, was disgusted at the idea of living in Brooklyn but came round quickly when, on visiting it, she bumped into an ex-conquest in the entrance lobby. He had recently moved over from Chelsea. ‘He is worth millions.’ She sniffed. ‘If Brooklyn is good enough for him, it is good enough for Beatriz Maria Stefanini.’

The apartment was sensational. The ‘central space’ (as Fiona called it) was big enough for her and Barry to perform complex ballets and there still be enough room for me to have a nice cup of tea on the massive horseshoe-shaped sofa in the centre of the floor. Plus space for Bea to hold wine tastings with her old shag from upstairs and Raúl to prance around singing old Branchlines hits. Which was what, on more than one occasion, we were all to be found doing. We had privately agreed that it would be wise to have Raúl nearby: his Fi-calming properties were too useful to be overlooked.

We were on the ground floor so our views were of a jungly courtyard. Bea’s ex-shag (who had quickly become her current shag) was two floors above us and his view was a lot more exciting; from there you could see quite a bit of Manhattan. But the very best view was from Raúl’s apartment, which was on the fifth floor. From there, Fiona told us, you could see for miles in each direction along the East River and across to the most iconic buildings in New York.

It was indeed a cool area, in a slightly twatty sort of way. The men just loved to team their big bushy beards with tiny little ironic ponytails and tight, knee-length shorts. I found them hilarious and appalling. So did Barry. Bea probably couldn’t even see them, they were so far under her radar, but Fiona thought they were all extremely trendy and aspirational.

‘Raúl’s just so cool!’ she gushed one day. ‘I’m learning so much about fashion and stuff, he’s really changing my perspective!’

‘Fiona,’ Barry interrupted loudly, ‘you sound like a twat. Pull yourself together, girl. You’re from Stourbridge.’

Fiona giggled. ‘Actually, I was going to go vintage shopping. You know there’s loads of it round here? Raúl said he might take me to some warehouses out past Bushwick where they have LOADS more stuff. I mean, I don’t want to wear smelly old eighties stuff but who’s to say I wouldn’t find a rare Vivienne Westwood? It could be AMAZING, don’t you –’

Barry interrupted: ‘Fiona, will you slow down? And maybe lower the volume of your voice? We’re only over here.’

‘Agreed, my darling,’ Bea said sweetly, from her table. A Brazilian man had come in to massage her. ‘Relax.’

‘Oh, my God, guys, I was just saying … Chill out, yeah?’

‘I think that’s what we were advising
you
to do, my cupcake,’ Barry replied. ‘Seriously, let go of this vintage shit already, know what I mean?’

Fiona shrugged haughtily as if we were all dicks, then jumped up and started marking out some ballet on the floor while texting someone and fiddling with her hair. It was odd to see her up and active all the time, not slumped around being moody.

I carried on with my work, keeping an eye on her. It was Saturday and I had the afternoon off, but to save time next week I’d brought home a beautiful Oriental gown that needed some work.

‘So, guys,’ Fiona burst out, breaking the silence, ‘on the subject of being a bit of a tosser …’

She took a deep, self-conscious breath. Barry put down his crossword eagerly.

‘Raúl wants us all to come out tonight, to this bar in the East Village. It’s, um, a poetry slam,’ she added bravely.

‘I’m sorry,’ Bea murmured, to the Brazilian masseur. ‘Please excuse me.’ She got up, naked, and walked over to where Fiona was sitting, hands on hips.

‘Fiona, my darling, did you just invite us to a poetry slam?’

Barry hopped up and handed Bea her Chanel robe. She wasn’t very good at wearing clothes and often needed reminding. ‘Put it away, babe, right?’ he whispered. Then he, too, turned to Fiona and crossed his arms. ‘Are you for
real, my friend?’ he asked her. ‘Or did you just make an error? I think you made an error.’

Unable to help myself, I was giggling. Only a few weeks before, Fiona would have been furious, but today’s Fiona glanced at me, then started giggling hysterically.

‘Oh dear, I know, I know! But Raúl’s got together with his oldest school friends tonight, cos one of them’s got the anniversary of his wife’s death, and they’re like
artists
and
philosophers
and stuff and they really want to go to this poetry café … Raúl doesn’t want to go either but he loves them. And I love him. And if you love me, you’ll come …
Please?
’

‘Oh, my days,’ Barry muttered dazedly, taking off his glasses and polishing them on his T-shirt. ‘Oh, my days.’

But I’d already forgotten about the poetry café. ‘Freckle, did you just say that you
love
him?’ I put my sewing to one side.

Fiona blushed. ‘Maybe.’ She grinned.

There was a pause. All eyes were on her.

Bea put her hands on her hips, forcing open her poorly tied robe.

‘PUT YOUR MUFF AWAY,’ Barry shouted ferociously. ‘Sorry about her,’ he mouthed to the Brazilian masseur, who shrugged. He was a lot more interested in Barry than in Bea’s manicured muff.

‘Well?’ Bea said, tying up her robe. ‘Is this true? You love this strange bohemian man? With his widowed friends and poetry? Hmm?’

Fiona fiddled embarrassedly with the button of her shorts. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, with a nervous giggle. ‘I
reckon so. I think it’s really serious. Like, I’ve
never
felt this way before, we just
get
each other, he’s so amazing, he really is one in a million, so lovely and gorgeous, and he’s mad about me too … I … ARGGH!’

‘Champagne,’ roared the Brazilian masseur, marching over to our gigantic fridge. He had been massaging Bea for a week now; he knew how she rolled. Sure enough, three bottles of Dom Pérignon were chilling inside.

‘
Preziosa!
’ Bea cried expansively. ‘I am happy for you! Of course we will come to your poetry café then!
Santé!
’

Barry looked a bit put out. ‘Now hang on a minute,’ he began. ‘I mean, I’m happy for her an’ all that but, seriously, did you not hear what the girl said? She wants us to go to a poetry slam! Do any of you actually know what a poetry slam
is
?’

‘Do
you
, pumpkin?’ Bea asked him, popping the champagne cork.

‘Well, not strictly, but –’

‘Then be quiet,’ Bea said graciously. ‘We go to the poetry café. We listen to some poems. We give the couple a blessing. And I tell Raúl that if he upsets our little girl I will make mincemeat with his penis.’

Fiona laughed nervously. ‘He’s very lovely,’ she pleaded. ‘I really don’t think that you’ll –’

‘Ignore her.’ I got up to give her a hug. ‘We won’t let her anywhere near his penis. I’m really happy for you, Freckle!’

And I was.

Fiona, who should have been tired because she’d been up all night, exploded into a mad dance, chattering at Barry, who was squarely ignoring her. After a while Bea
joined in and I watched them curiously, wondering what I needed to do to get that much energy into me on a sleepy Saturday afternoon.

Because I had a bit of a hangover and had been mostly useless all day, I stayed behind after they’d gone to the East Village so I could finish off my Oriental gown. It was gone eight now and darkness brushed our jungly courtyard with soft fingers. The nights were getting shorter and cooler, after a sweltering summer, and I found myself looking for a cardigan for the first time in weeks.

As I sewed, I pondered Fiona’s news. Certainly, Raúl seemed like a nice chap. He was a bit too concerned with cool things but, really, he could have been a hell of a lot worse. Earlier that day I’d been waiting for Barry in Bagelsmith when a man in hi-tops, eighties satin running shorts and a string vest had walked in. He’d been wearing a sun visor and flying goggles and was definitely not on his way to a fancy-dress party. (I knew that because Barry had asked him.) Raúl was not even a tenth as bad. In fact, if I hadn’t looked him up on the internet I’d never have believed he was in a band. He seemed to spend most of his time playing Angry Birds on his phone or taking Fi on lovely dates. The Ferrero Rocher behaviour on the plane must have been nerves.

And he definitely liked her. A lot. He called her all the time and even when they (occasionally) decided to ‘have a night apart’ he inevitably cracked and came down to our apartment. He held her hand in public and called her Freckle, which I liked. He also seemed to buy her a lot of
things, and she was letting him, which was unlike her. Fiona was crap with money but infuriatingly proud.

And best of all was the effect that Raúl seemed to be having on Fiona’s drinking. I hadn’t seen her so much as sip a beer and she mostly seemed to have a lot more energy. And far greater interest in talking to us. She still flew off the handle but forgot about it more quickly. Generally, she was a lot better to be around.

I stabbed my thumb with a needle and swore into the darkness. How had it become almost pitch black without my noticing? I reached over and switched on one of the industrial steel Anglepoises that were dotted round the apartment. Nothing happened. I got up and switched on the main light. Nothing happened.

‘Oh,’ I said, to a dark room. ‘We have a power cut. A power
outage
,’ I added, in my very bad American accent.

I considered abandoning my Oriental gown and going out to find the others, but remembered I was wearing a nightie and a cardigan and had not yet washed my hair. A poetry café, I reflected, was quite likely to contain people with similar issues, but my unwashed hair had the added disadvantage of smelling of smoke and beer after an alfresco pizza-binge at Roberta’s in Bushwick last night.

I set about trying to find a torch in the ‘utility’ cupboard but found nothing.

Oi! Where are you? Come come come! NOWWWWW! XX
, Fi texted me. Dammit. I wanted to be there for her tonight.

I fumbled my way out to the corridor to see if the
power outage
was everywhere. It was. Although there was light on
the top floor where Raúl lived. Flickering light. It looked like someone had left a candle outside his door.

Artists.
Weirdos
. Why on earth did they need to leave a candle lit in the hallway when they’d gone out drinking and poeming?

I ran up the stairs to borrow it for a few minutes.

It was in a long glass tube and actually looked rather lovely on the big industrial landing, casting soft shadows from the banisters on to chipped, whitewashed brickwork. Whoever had left it out had circled it with stones.
Those artists aren’t all so bad
, I conceded generously, nicking the glass tube. Then I paused. Here was I, mocking artists, while simultaneously stealing their candle?

I should at least
check
that no one was still there.

‘Um, hello?’ I called, knocking gingerly at the door. Knowing my luck, the mad artist who was dealing with the anniversary of his wife’s death would be inside, chanting woefully and doing naked interpretative movement on the subject of loss.

‘Hello?’ called a man’s voice.

I froze. ‘Oh, sorry,’ I replied. ‘I was just stealing your –’

The door opened.

‘– candle,’ I finished guiltily, holding it out in front of me. I started to babble: ‘I mean, I wasn’t
stealing
it, I was borrowing it because my hair smells and I’m trying to go and meet the others in the café, and – Hang on, why aren’t you with them?’

The man at the door was almost certainly an artist. There were no fisherman’s pants or bandannas or anything, but his T-shirt was on inside out and back to front and his flies were undone. Plus his hair was only just the
right side of monster. In spite of all those things he was very nice-looking.

‘Um, what?’ he said, after a pause. ‘
What
was all of that you just said?’

He had the strangest accent I’d ever heard. He was also amused.

I put the candle back on the floor. My face and neck were scalding with embarrassment.

I straightened up and faced him.
Always own up when you’ve done something wrong
, Mum used to say.
Don’t you wait one minute longer, Sally! Do you understand?

I cleared my throat. ‘What I said was, I was borrowing your candle and I apologize.’ I paused. ‘Except I wasn’t borrowing it, I was stealing it, really, because knocking on the door was an afterthought.’