The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me (16 page)

Ten minutes after the start of my first movement class I was hauled out to meet Lord Peter Ingle, the very kind – and presumably very rich – man who was paying one of my scholarships. Although I would have liked more time to prepare to meet a lord I was certainly glad to have got out of movement class. There had been a lot of explanatory stuff about how we needed to learn to ‘embrace the physicality’ of whatever character we were playing, while ‘supporting our breath’, all of which had sounded a bit too drama school to me.

And on top of all of these issues I was deeply hungover after my dinner with Jan Borsos.

The class had started better than I’d expected because today we were just doing aerobics, a proper cheesy nineties workout. Initially I’d been quite pleased, especially given that it might reduce my massive arse. But then I’d discovered that the space in which we were working out was fully viewable from a mezzanine corridor that ran along two sides of the room. Helen, doing ungainly squats next to me, had suddenly hissed that I shouldn’t look up
at the balcony if I knew what was good for me. Obviously, I looked, mid-squat – as if I were settling in for a good long poo – and there above me was Julian. He walked along the corridor quickly, his eyes straight ahead, but I knew what he looked like when he was trying not to explode with laughter. He must have seen me.

‘I told you not to look, you fool,’ Helen said, shaking her head. She handed me a KitKat finger and we both got told off for eating chocolate during workout.

My upbraiding was interrupted by one of the administrators, Sandra, who fished me out to meet Lord Peter Ingle. ‘Without him you wouldn’t be here,’ she reminded me. ‘He’s been so generous!’

I was given no time to change, let alone prepare. He was literally outside the door. He, too, had probably seen me poo-squatting.

‘Sally Howlett,’ said Lord Peter Ingle, tall and confident in those strange mustard-coloured cords that only the aristocracy wear. (Why? Why did they do that? What was it about money and status, conferred on you at birth, that meant you were predisposed to mustard or ruby slacks?) He smiled very warmly and I shook his hand, wincing at the sweatiness of my palms. Sandra from the office showed us into the empty Britten Theatre and we drifted down to the stage making small talk. A brief spasm of fear gripped me: he surely wouldn’t expect me to sing something for him, would he?

I calmed down. He would not. He gestured to the first row of purple chairs in the auditorium and we sat down. I noticed that he had monumentally big ears. ‘I came in to
talk through some
stuff
,’ he said – I nodded knowingly – ‘and thought, what the hell, I’d see if you were around for a quick hello.’

‘Hello,’ I offered quickly.

‘Hello,’ he replied.

I cleared my throat. ‘Thank you so very much for the scholarship, Lord Ingle. I cannot tell you how much it means to me – studying here is my absolute dream.’

Lord Ingle narrowed his eyes. ‘Ha! Bollocks.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Bollocks, Sally. I know you don’t want to be here.’ He roared with laughter.

I started gabbling. ‘Oh, but I do, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime –’

Lord Ingle held a hand up. ‘Bollocks,’ he repeated. Then he laughed again. His ears jiggled. He was like the BFG. ‘Brian’s an old friend of mine,’ he said. ‘It was he who persuaded me to offer a scholarship to this place. I came to see him here in his graduation show, what, forty years ago? Christ, we’re old bastards …’ He drifted momentarily into a happy reverie and I realized I should probably contradict him.

‘Not old!’ I blustered.

Lord Ingle said, ‘Bollocks,’ again, and I decided it was best if I didn’t talk for a while.

‘Brian and I were roommates at Oxford,’ he explained. ‘I loved him from the start. Such a breath of fresh air at that bloody place.’ He crossed his legs and leaned back in his chair, smiling. ‘Brian knocked a lot of shit out of me. I’d been to Eton, obviously’ (
obviously!
I loved it) ‘and he’d been to some God-awful secondary modern and yet he
taught me more about life in that year than I’d learned in the previous eighteen.’

I smiled. Brian really was a very special man. To have come from where he had and now be a renowned baritone, so brilliant that he’d been able to retire from performance when he fancied and take up a job at one of the world’s best
conservatoires
, well, it was pretty cool.

‘Anyway, I lost a few hundred thousand last year investing in some bad stocks, and when I told Brian, he just said, “Peter, stop throwing your money around and put it into a good cause, man!” So I did. You’re my first scholar!’ he exclaimed, beaming.

‘Great,’ I said woodenly.

‘I hear you’re of Brian’s sort of upbringing,’ he said, with the unperturbed confidence of those at the very top of the food chain. ‘Which is cracking. Places like this should be all about talent, not money.’

I relaxed a little.

Lord Ingle smiled warmly. ‘I do find it rather splendid that you’d rather gouge your own eyeballs out than be here.’

I blushed guiltily.

‘Brian told me all about you,’ he went on. ‘He told me you kept trying to leave and that he eventually had to throw you into a wardrobe.’

‘Brian’s been very understanding,’ I mumbled. I didn’t think that Lord Peter Ingle was trying to embarrass me, but he was doing a fairly reasonable job.

‘I’m sure he has. Excellent fellow.’ He drummed his fingers on the seat, then looked at me. ‘But, Sally, I do rather
hope that you might be able to get out of the wardrobe and start singing to actual people. Soon.’

I shuddered. Apparently scholarship students often had to ‘thank’ their benefactors by singing at dinners or private concerts: I would rather pay back every penny of Lord Ingle’s scholarship than do that. The very thought of all those privileged eyes trained on me, the smell of roasted game and tawny port from their tables … Urgh. No. Never.

‘Fortunately,’ Lord Ingle continued, as if reading my mind, ‘I don’t want you to come and sing at my Christmas ball. Or at my summer shooting party. Ha, I’m not even joking. I really do those things. Awful, eh?’

I raised a sort-of smile.

‘No, Sally, I think my assignment for you will be a little more to your liking. I want to give something back to the community.’

‘Uh-huh,’ I said nervously. ‘Tell me more, Lord Ingle.’

‘PETER!’ he cried, appalled. ‘Lord Ingle? My God!’

‘Peter,’ I mumbled. The man was like an elephant. Although a charming one with big flappy ears that you’d want to stroke. I didn’t dislike him in the slightest.

‘What I didn’t mention is that I also live in the southernmost reaches of the Black Country,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a lovely estate hidden in the middle of some God-awful hellholes. Miles and miles of beautiful parkland and then, boom, there’s another monstrous factory or a shitty town. My ancestors sold out to the industrial revolution and lost thousands of acres in the process. Terrible error.’

I smiled inwardly. That sounded like my neck of the woods, all right. ‘Anyway, we were saved from an arson
attack a few years ago by some local chap who noticed a gang of hoodies climbing over one of the estate walls. He was just an ordinary bloke on his way back from a shift at Hall’s – the clothing factory where I believe your parents worked?’ I nodded, impressed. ‘And he took them on. All of them. The bleeding little scrotes gave him a beating but he got the police to us just in time.’

‘Wow,’ I said, genuinely surprised. It sure as hell wouldn’t have been Dad who’d rescued Peter’s estate. Dad wouldn’t even take on his own wife.

‘Anyway. We realized we’d been living there all these years, my family and I, and had never taken any notice of the locals. Decided we wanted to give something back to the people, you know?’

I didn’t know but I nodded politely. I strongly suspected that my ‘people’ were about to be patronized.

‘We opened our house to the public a few years ago, so everyone can have a good nose around, but apart from the National Trust anoraks, nobody ever comes. The locals avoid us like the plague. We’ve held fêtes, concerts, all sorts, but they just aren’t interested.’

‘Are you surprised?’ I heard myself snort.

There was a short silence.

‘Sorry,’ I said lamely. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just – well – I can’t see my parents ever wanting to go to a, um, a fête.’

Peter slapped his leg. ‘Of bloody course they don’t! Why the bloody hell would anyone on a council estate want to visit some toff’s country estate for a cup of overpriced tea served in a room full of gilt-framed photos of my ancestors? Dear Christ!’

I laughed.

‘It was my wife’s idea,’ he said regretfully. ‘She knows even less about real life than I do. But I had a chat with Brian about it, just in passing, and he came up with a cracking little plan.’

I waited.

‘What Brian and I want to do is to start some outreach work. In schools.’

Outreach? I wasn’t even sure what that meant.

‘I had a chat with a few head teachers recently,’ he said. ‘They were telling me that they have almost no provision for the arts. They’re badly stretched trying to provide the very basics so they seldom find themselves with money for decent creative extra-curriculars. I wanted to send you in, you and my other scholar, to do some singing with them. You can tell me what you think best – put on a musical, an opera, a concert? Give them lessons? Something like that?’

I was lost. Peter had obviously assumed that, as a working-class girl now studying at a big posh college, I held the creative solution to social deprivation. ‘Er …’

He watched me keenly, but then his face fell. ‘Ah, you haven’t any idea either,’ he said sadly. ‘Well, please at least think about it, Sally. I spoke to the headmaster from your old secondary school, and he was really very keen, you know. He remembered you.’

I softened, thinking fondly of my mild-mannered head. ‘Oh, well, I’m sure I can think of something,’ I heard myself saying. ‘A workshop, maybe?’

And that was that.

Almost. Just before Peter left, pumping my still-sweaty
hand enthusiastically, inviting me for tea at his country house, I remembered something. ‘By the way, you said you had two students on scholarships here,’ I said. We were now standing in the foyer. Outside it was fresh and sharp as a needle after a night of thunderstorms.

‘Yes, yes! I have two of you. Must arrange to meet the other one – he sounds like a fine little chap.’

‘Who is he?’ I asked, a sinking feeling in my gut.

Peter scratched his head, trying to remember the name, and then his face cleared. ‘Jan!’ he exclaimed. ‘Jan Borsos! Do you know him? Will you be happy to work with him? A great young talent, by all accounts.’

I nodded feebly. ‘I know Jan,’ I said, with as straight a face as I could muster. ‘We’ll be great together. See you soon, Peter!’

I was sunk.

The problem wasn’t that Jan would be hideously incongruous at a school like Stourbridge Grange, or that he would steal the show with his passion for performance being ten times greater than mine. It was that Jan and I had had our dinner last night and, even though he was seven years younger than me, a good three inches shorter and madder than a box of Hungarian frogs, I had spent most of that morning having sex with him.

It had started well. My intentions involved only friendship.

I hadn’t even been sure I should go for dinner, in case he saw it as a date, but Fiona had insisted. ‘Meet him,’ she said. ‘It’s time you knew how beautiful you are to men. Those lovely big soft eyes of yours, all that thick, luxuriant hair. You’re way funnier than you realize and you’re so bloody modest. The perfect package, Sally Howlett! Go and have some fun.’

Fiona had become quite a cheerleader for my self-esteem since she’d gone to New York.

Jan, whose college halls were in Shepherd’s Bush, had chosen the Havelock, a nearby pub that I’d been to a few times. It was a nice place and, more importantly, it did yummy food. It was also close to absolutely nothing else so there was no danger of me getting drunk and agreeing to ‘go on somewhere’ for a late drink. I would have dinner, learn some more about my new friend, then take the magic overground train back to Islington where I would
have a good long night’s sleep and prepare for my movement class the next morning.

Jan had no classes in the afternoon so was already there when I arrived, sitting at a small table by the bread servery. He had changed. He was wearing a suit and tie. No, he was – Oh, God, Jan was sitting in a relaxed gastropub wearing a full tuxedo. With a
bow tie
!

I stopped in the doorway, panicking, then pinched myself and walked over to his table. Why shouldn’t he wear a tux to his local? He was Jan Borsos. A human anomaly. And, really, I would get nowhere in life if I expected everyone to hide from attention as dementedly as I did.

He actually looked incredibly dashing, sitting there amid a sea of trendy rolled trousers and low-key media cashmeres. He also looked ridiculous, of course, but I rather admired him. ‘I am wanting to wear something smart,’ he said simply. ‘This is all I have.’ Which was fair enough. The man had walked across Europe for his place at the Royal College of Music.

I sat down opposite him, taking in the busy clatter and chatter of a pub doing brisk business, and inhaled smells of roasting goat’s cheese, cooking lamb and fresh bread. Jan had already bought me a large glass of red wine, which was exactly what I’d wanted, and as I chinked his glass, I realized that I was ready to enjoy the evening. God only knew I needed to. The torture of having to see Julian every day was brutal. And for that evil
scumbag
to have stood there congratulating me for getting a gig on a ‘sanitary napkin’ advert … It was an insult of agonizing proportions. I deserved a good night out.

After my first glass of wine I grasped that I was trying to persuade myself to fancy Jan Borsos. This was, first, because he had made it clear that he liked me: ‘You are the variety of woman I want to marry with,’ he announced casually, as my steak
frites
arrived. Second, it was because he was very funny. During a pleasant gossip about our coursemates he had written Violet off as ‘a vagina with legs. She wants the attention only. She is an embarrassing to herself.’

And third, I had begun to think, with the classic egalitarianism of the drunk, that height and age did not matter a jot. Jan Borsos had a very wild, romantic sort of face, and even though he always looked furious I knew now that he was never furious. Or negative in any way. He’d had a tough old life for his mere twenty-three years and yet he was a through-and-through trouper. A pocket rocket. A mad, sweet, funny man, whose use of the English language was divine.

After my second glass of wine I stopped trying to persuade myself to fancy Jan Borsos because it was becoming increasingly probable that I actually did.

We had been talking for a while about our families. His were all dead, save for an angry aunt who lived in a town of many syllables somewhere in rural Hungary. He had been telling me about his father, who had died in the same car crash that killed his mother: ‘He was a man of great rudity.’

‘Rudeness?’

‘Yes. Rudeness.’ Jan broke off to scribble this in his little notebook. ‘When people were saying hello to him in the streets, he was saying, “Fuck off.” It was very effective. Everybody was not saying hello to him eventually.’

‘Why did he tell everyone to fuck off?’

‘Because he liked animals more better than he was liking people.’ Jan Borsos shrugged. ‘He had a pig. He liked his pig. He liked his wife.’

I roared with laughter. ‘I don’t believe you! He did not own a pig! You said you were from a town, not a farm!’

‘My father owned a pig,’ he said. ‘You are thinking he was a peasantry. He was not a peasantry. He had plenty of money. But he liked pigs.’

‘It’s
peasant
, not
peasantry
,’ I said. ‘Peasantry is the collective noun. Either way, I didn’t assume he was a peasant. Trust me, Jan, I’m assuming nothing about you. You defy expectation. I just thought … Well, it’s funny. A man who hates people but loves his pig.’

Jan laughed, his face still in its customary furiousness. ‘YES! That is my father. He hates people, he loves his pig.’ His face fell. ‘Him and my mother. They tell me I can do anything. “Anything you want to do, Jan, you can achieving it,” they told me. I miss them.’

I paused. I simply could not imagine parents who said things to me like ‘You can do
anything
!’ And that felt shocking and sad. ‘I’m so sorry you lost your parents,’ I said eventually. ‘I sort of know how you feel.’

‘But you say your parents are alive?’

‘They are alive. But we don’t have much of a relationship. They didn’t sing to me and encourage me like yours. Nor did they own a pig.’ I tried to smile, imagining Dad, pipe in mouth, staring with mild concern at a pig.

‘Why?’ Jan shoved a forkful of pork loin in my direction. ‘Sorry,’ he said to it. ‘I also like pigs but you taste good.’

I took it – Jan had been feeding me spontaneously throughout the meal, not in a romantic way but in a comical I-must-feed-this-woman sort of a way – although suddenly I had lost any sensation of taste. The rich, warm meat already felt like cardboard in my mouth.

This is why I avoid thinking about my family
, I thought angrily.

One of the many painful fallouts from New York was the disintegration of any forgiveness or loyalty I’d felt towards my parents. Mum was a cold, horrible woman, who seemed not to care about me at all, and Dad was just a weak coward. Their seeming lack of interest in what had happened in New York and all the subsequent loss and agony I’d endured had been the final straw.

‘Ah, we had some trouble last year,’ I said vaguely. I liked Jan Borsos, and I was touched by the honesty of many of the things he’d told me tonight. But to open the can of worms marked ‘Howlett Family’ – particularly over dinner – would be pretty inappropriate.

I tried to explain without actually explaining. ‘There was a bit of a disaster on a work trip to New York, lots of things happened … The family got split up somewhat and it’s all been really difficult since. I mean it’s
OK
, but …’

But what? It wasn’t OK. I had never expected love or warmth from my family but their conspicuous absence since I’d returned was more painful than I could possibly have imagined.

Jan Borsos, sensing that this was too dark for me to go into, leaned over and touched the side of my face, smiling gently in a way that told me everything would be OK. It was the gesture of a man twice his age, but it touched me.
‘I am sorry too,’ he said. ‘I miss my parents every day but I did always know that they loved me. They were telling me all the time, “We love you, Jan, we are proud of you, Jan, we hail you, Jan.” ’

I smiled sadly. ‘We hail you, Jan.’
I
’d hail Jan Borsos. I’d be proud of him if he were my son.

‘We will talk of other subjects,’ he announced, after a respectful silence. ‘Such as your singing. Sally, why do you hate to sing for people?’

‘My singing. Ah. Well, that’s another matter,’ I bluffed. ‘Um, any chance we could change the subject a third time?’

‘No,’ Jan Borsos replied. ‘The subject of your singing is nationally important.’

I burst out laughing. ‘What?’

‘Ah.’ Jan consulted his notebook, flipping back a few pages. Then his eyes lit up. ‘I think your singing is a matter of national importance,’ he read triumphantly. ‘This is a good phrase, no?’

‘It’s a very good phrase. Who taught it you?’

‘Helen.’

Helen had a very good turn of phrase. The text message she’d sent me en route to my date had read:
You and Jan = the impossible couple I’ve waited my whole life to see. If you mate, I will die happy
.

‘I like Helen.’ I smiled.

Jan agreed. ‘She is the funny woman. She also does not like to sing for people. I think you are both very strange. You both sing beautifully.’

‘Oh, you’ve heard Helen sing?’ Then something dawned on me. ‘Hang on, you’ve heard
me
sing?’

Jan looked delighted. ‘Ha-ha! Yes! Ha-ha!’

Panic. ‘What? How?’

‘A voice like yours can fill a stadium,’ he said. ‘You do not think that the wardrobe stops us listening to you?’

I put down my knife and fork, horrified. The same old anxiety – so familiar it was like the arrival of an old friend – bowled in rapidly and took me over. Suddenly I was seven years old once more, cowering in the bath after shaming myself onstage.

‘Who’s been listening to me?’ I stammered.

Jan looked perplexed. ‘Everybody,’ he said. ‘We stand outside Room 304 and listen whenever you are singing in the wardrobe with Brian. The sound is glorious. Julian Jefferson is listening every time. He has the closed eyes while you sing.’

‘
Fuck
,’ I muttered. I didn’t like swearing but ‘fuck’ barely covered this. Why couldn’t everyone just leave me alone? Why couldn’t Julian just
LET ME BE
? He had no right to hang around being all misty-eyed. It was too bloody late to start caring about me
after
ruining my life.

‘I want you to stop listening to me,’ I said weakly.

Jan shook his head. ‘No. You have the most beautiful, powerful voice that any of us are ever hearing,’ he said. ‘How could we leave you alone? It would be against the law. I would have to telephone Interpol.’

I tried to relax. Perhaps – just perhaps – it was OK for me to sing if people really believed me to be that good.

‘Either singing is or it is not,’ Jan Borsos said. It was an unexpected and rather impressive aphorism for a man with such erratic English. ‘What do you choose?’

Jan Borsos was right. Singing was or it was not. I had
been told by some of the very finest singers that I was excellent. Was it possible that I might actually
try
it?

After all, what else was I going to do? Just leave college again when my four weeks came to an end?

Jan Borsos broke into my thoughts. ‘I will answer for you,’ he said squarely. ‘Singing
IS
. It is, for you, Sally. I do not want to have to collect my pistol and shoot you because of this.’

‘Singing
is
.’ I held out my right hand to shake on it, realizing that I would just have to keep working on my fear. Singing was right for me. The end.

Jan opted to kiss my hand rather than shake it. He pulled my arm towards him and kissed it all the way up to my elbow, which I found surprisingly enjoyable. The pub swayed and shimmered around me. I was drunk and surprisingly happy.

My resolve not to go for an after-dinner drink was forgotten. Jan Borsos took me to a converted public toilet underneath Shepherd’s Bush Green where a hip-hop and rap night was in full swing. Hazy on Rioja and high on life, I danced with that madman – who turned out to be a really rather splendid mover, even within the confines of his tux – and when he stood on a step and kissed me with a Wagnerian passion it felt like the obvious thing to do: I put my arms round his little barrel of a chest and kissed him back. He was young and handsome. He had married a
répétiteur
. He had got divorced. He had studied with László Polgár in Switzerland or somewhere. He had walked Europe. He was a
legend
.