The Orphan Choir (9 page)

I only know three of the mothers by name: Celia Morris, Donna McSorley and Alexis Grant. All of them arrived before me today for the first time. This bothers me. I want to be first into the chapel, always, seconds after the doors open to the public. I want the chaplain to notice that I come earlier and wait longer than anyone else, and I want him to pass this information on to Dr Freeman, who, if he’s ever tempted to release one boy only, like a terrorist holding a room full of hostages at gunpoint in an action movie, might be more likely to choose Joseph if he’s heard about my extended, devoted vigils.

I know this is superstitious rubbish; I might as well believe in elves or fairies. Dr Freeman isn’t as willing to compromise as the average Hollywood hostage-taker, who has his crazed and trigger-happy
moments, true, but who ultimately is usually prepared to set free the occasional frail old man or pregnant woman.

I noticed Alexis Grant smirking as Stuart and I hurried in, cutting it fine thanks to our meeting with Imran. She’s worked out that I like to be earlier than early, and is pleased that on this occasion I’ve messed up.

I knew I didn’t like Alexis ten minutes into my first conversation with her. She asked me where I lived and, when I said Weldon Road, she pulled a face and said, ‘Oh, poor you, stuck in the centre of Cambridge. Have you got one of those big Victorian town houses?’ Without giving me a chance to reply, she went on: ‘Let me guess – a maintenance nightmare? With a tiny garden, right?’ I told her we didn’t have a garden as such – only a small courtyard – and watched the delight spread across her face. ‘We’ve got two acres,’ she said proudly. ‘In Orwell. I wouldn’t swap it for anything.’ I thought, but didn’t say, that I wasn’t offering to swap. When I told Stuart later, he snorted and said, ‘There’s
one
thing you can say in Orwell’s favour. Only one. It’s close to Cambridge. That’s it.’

Celia Morris is less obnoxious than Alexis, but equally irritating. She’s a timid, insecure woman who seems prepared to worship, instantly, anyone
who dares to express an opinion, or, indeed, to do anything. Shortly after meeting me, she got it into her head that I was a brave warrior who feared nothing and no one – I’ve no idea on what basis she formed this opinion – and now whenever she sees me she says the same thing in a new way: ‘Look at me, I’m soaked! I forgot my umbrella. I’m so useless. You probably never forget your umbrella, do you? I bet the rain wouldn’t dare to fall on you even if you did.’ Or: ‘I would kiss you hello but I’ve got a streaming cold. I’m not like you – you probably never get ill. Look at you, you’re the picture of health.’ She makes these absurd pronouncements in a tone of deep admiration, with a fawning smile on her face, and if I try to point out that I’m capable of getting as wet or sick as the next person, she smiles even more adoringly and says, ‘I can’t believe how modest you are.’ I would love to say to her one day, ‘Celia, you know literally nothing about me. What on earth are you talking about?’ She would either burst into tears and run from the room, or giggle affectionately and say, ‘You’re so funny. I wish I had a sense of humour like yours.’

Donna McSorley is by far the best of the three: a plump solicitor with an apparently endless supply of too-tight suits that show a lot of cleavage, and chaotic hair that she always wears not entirely down
and not entirely up, with lots of bands and clips and bits sprouting out at odd angles, like a character from a Dr Seuss book. She has an enormous mountain of a second husband who dresses like an aristocrat-turned-vagrant – expensive but scruffy – and whom she clearly adores. The first time he came to a choir service, she propelled him towards me, one hand on his back and one on his stomach, calling out, ‘Louise! Have you met my lovely man?’ They giggled and kissed while the boys were singing.

I would never admit it to a single soul, but it bothers me that Donna, whom I hardly know, has a new husband that she is so enthusiastic about. I’m jealous of her second helpings. I don’t want to divorce Stuart, but, all other things being equal, I think – no, I know – that I would love to have a second husband I adored enough to introduce to people as ‘my lovely man’, with my hand on his belly. I would like to have the chance to choose a husband now that I’m older and know how expertly I would choose, leaving nothing to chance.

According to Alexis Grant, Donna’s first husband was a disaster: violent, alcoholic, unfaithful, racist. All the bad things. ‘Did she add “unimpressed by Orwell”?’ Stuart asked when I relayed this information. I smile as I remember laughing at the time. My first husband is witty and clever and loves
me. He doesn’t drink too much, doesn’t cheat on me, isn’t violent, isn’t racist, seems always to be in the same stable good mood. He has a steady and important job that I’m in awe of: Applications Group Manager for the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre. Alexis didn’t like it when I told her that. Her own fault: if she hadn’t demanded to know why we’d chosen to live in the noisy centre of the city, I wouldn’t have been forced to mention Stuart’s two-minute walk to work and what that work was.

The organ starts to play. My heart springs up in my chest. This means Joseph is here: outside, in the antechapel. We wait. The minutes feel like weeks. Then the doors to the main chapel open and Dr Freeman walks in, with his carpet-beard, smiling an I’ve-got-all-your-sons smile. Two columns of sombre-faced boys follow him in, dressed in red cassocks with white surplices over the top and holding black files full of today’s hymns, songs and prayers. I am desperate to catch a glimpse of Joseph, but I know it will be a while before he moves into view. As a junior probationer, he is at the back of the line. When he finally appears, I gasp. He looks healthy and happy. Radiant. Stuart puts a restraining hand on my arm.
It’s okay
, I want to say to him.
I’m not going to do anything crazy
.

Joseph smiles up at us. I smile back and wave. At
this point Stuart always looks at me anxiously, to check I’m not crying, and today is no exception. A few of the mothers always cry, smiling furiously at the same time to make it clear that these are happy aren’t-we-lucky tears, not the kind that are likely to cause problems for the school.

My eyes are swollen, with red-mouthed wound-grins beneath them, but dry. Crying would be too risky. There’s a fiery ball of outrage inside me that would blind me if I were to let any of it pour out. Dr Freeman would only need to catch one glimpse and he would guess that I’m secretly plotting the destruction of his career, Saviour College, its school, its choir, its reputation – everything it has worked for hundreds of years to consolidate.

Joseph’s hair shines. His shoes are scuffed. His face, pale and oval-shaped, draws all the light in the chapel to it and is the only one I see. Beside him, all the other boys look like cardboard cut-outs.

When the chaplain starts to sing the Opening Responses, I tear my eyes away from my son and look up and down the pews to check that Mr Fahrenheit isn’t here. Silly; why would he be?

Because it’s another thing he could do to intimidate you: a variation on a theme.

Some elements of the service are always the same, and these are by far my favourite bits. I am starting
to think of them as part of my son. I have no choice but to love them if he’s singing them whenever I see him. Not the psalm: that’s different every time. Today, it contains a line explicitly stating that only he who does no evil to his neighbour will sojourn in the Lord’s holy tent.
Hear that, Mr Fahrenheit? No holy tent for you, just a great big theological ‘Fuck Off’ sign at the entrance flap
.

After the reading of the psalm, the chaplain says, ‘Let us now offer to God our prayers and petitions.’ Like the Opening Responses, this is a regular feature, but I don’t love it because Joseph isn’t part of it – it’s one of the chaplain’s solo pieces. No tune either.

‘This morning we pray for the sick and the injured. We pray for Betty Carter, Andrew Saunders, Heather Aspinall …’

I block out the names, and pray only for my son to be allowed to come home with me today after the service.

‘We pray for the recently deceased, and in particular, for the repose of the souls of Dennis Halliday, Timothy Laws, Edith Kelly …’

I pray that Joseph will suddenly be found to be tone-deaf, so that he can no longer be a member of Saviour College boys’ choir. So that he can be sent home.

‘… We pray for peace on earth, but also for the establishment of justice, without which there can be no peace.’

‘That’s debatable,’ I whisper to Stuart.

‘Ssh,’ he says.

‘Peace will have to stand on its own two feet, since no one’s ever going to agree on a definition of justice, let alone bring it into being.’

‘Can we discuss this later?’

‘I hate the way he veers from the sad death of a congregation member’s auntie or gran to global misery and … massive abstract platitudes,’ I mutter. I say this every Sunday. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, for variety, I bitch about the words of the endlessly repeated Magnificat: ‘He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away.’ It sounds vindictive, and makes no sense, because those sent empty away will soon constitute the new hungry. Will the Lord feed them then? How hungry would they have to be to qualify? Does God want everyone to be equally well fed, or is he more interested in punishing the privileged for their good fortune thus far? That’s certainly how it sounds, especially in conjunction with ‘He hath put down the mighty from their seat’. Are we to assume God has Bolshevik tendencies?

I’m prepared to concede that whoever wrote those
lines of the Magnificat probably didn’t intend them to sound as bad as they do, but still – a quick edit could have solved the problem. ‘He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath pointed in the direction of a Michelin-starred restaurant, knowing they’ll be well catered for there.’

‘Lord in thy mercy …’ intones the chaplain.

That’s our cue. ‘Hear our prayer,’ we all say in unison. I like that bit: saying the same words as my son. I try to breathe in his breath from across the room.

‘We pray for individuals who have asked for our prayers, and for those for whom prayers have been asked by others: Cath and Dan Taylor, Margaret, Elsie …’

Worried he’s upset me by trying to shut me up, Stuart leans over and whispers, ‘I bet Elsie’s the one who’s asked for the prayer for herself. She sounds like a rampant egotist.’

I smile.

‘On the anniversaries of their deaths, we pray for Nora Wallis, Anne Dobson, Peter Turner, Emma Kobayashi. Lord in thy mercy …’

‘Hear our prayer.’

Stuart says into my ear, ‘ “We pray for the prosecution of Mr Fahrenheit, who has totally asked for it with his crap and inconsiderate behaviour over
several months.” I dare you to write that in the big blue prayer book on your way out.’

‘I’d do it,’ I whisper back. ‘Would you?’

‘I might.’

‘I dare you.’

‘All right. I will. If you promise never to tell Joseph. Have you mentioned Mr Fahrenheit to anyone connected with Saviour? By that name?’

‘I’ve not mentioned him at all.’

‘Good. Then there’s no way they can link it with Joseph.’

‘You’re not really going to do it, are you?’

‘Why not?’ says Stuart. ‘I’ll disguise my writing.’

‘There’s no way he’d ever read it out, even if you left out the word “crap”.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Stuart whispers. ‘Once it’s in the big blue book, it’s between me and the Lord.’

I stifle a giggle. Joseph gives me a pointed look: his embarrassing mother.

I love my husband a little bit more than I did when we arrived. For the first time in this chapel since Joseph started at Saviour, and thanks to Stuart, I was separated from my anger and misery for long enough to laugh.

‘Imagine if I murdered Fahrenheit and wrote his name in the blue book under “Recent Deaths RIP”,’ Stuart says quietly behind his hand. ‘
That’d
get read
out. You’d hear the chaplain praying for the repose of the soul of Justin Clay and you’d turn to me in astonishment. Then you’d see the look in my eyes – the knowing glint – and you’d realise I’d killed him, and this was my way of telling you – I’d have used the chaplain as a conduit for my confession, without his knowledge.’

‘And then I’d stand up and shout, “May his soul burn in hell”,’ I suggest, not liking my passive role in Stuart’s story. Which isn’t to say that I don’t like it as a whole; I do. I don’t care if he’s going all out to please me, and only because he feels guilty about the sandblasting and the dust and his ability to sleep through noise. He has a talent for making me want to forgive him.

This is why God, if he exists, will never allocate me a second husband. Donna only got one because her first was so unremittingly awful. That must be the deal: you either get an execrable one followed by a second who is close to perfection, or you get one for life who makes you feel abandoned and let down one minute, and rescued from painful exile the next.

I’m not sure I still wouldn’t rather swap my deal for Donna’s.

The buffet is in Saviour’s cavernous and subterranean Old Kitchen. It’s high-quality boring: the best vol-au-vents and little sausages, the creamiest coleslaw, the most expensive chicken legs, quiches and sliced baguettes, but nothing I couldn’t have predicted, and not only because it’s identical to every other Saviour buffet I’ve attended.