Only Strange People Go to Church (11 page)

As she hurries towards the church hall entrance, Maria’s heart sinks. This is the first rehearsal she’s called and she’s already twenty minutes late. Not for the first time, the bus into Hexton broke down. The front tyre blew out, burst on the shards of a smashed bottle of Buckfast.

Luckily she was able to phone the centre and ask Dezzie to bring Blue Group down here to meet her, but she’s still really late and there are only a few people standing outside.

All the auditions she held, all the phone calls she made, and there’s only a handful prepared to turn up. And where’s Dezzie with Blue Group? Oh well, for the sake of the few hardy souls who have made the effort she’ll have to put on a happy face and make the best of it. She’ll make a success of this show; she has to, she’s already emailed the Kelvin Street Kids the performance date.

But the people standing outside are not even here for the rehearsal, these are the Unemployed that Ray allows to roam around the church building. The young people sit or stand on the church steps smoking, looking disgruntled that they have to share the space with proper members of the community. Maria finds this vaguely satisfying.

As she pulls open the door to the church hall she sees that the place is full. There must be a hundred people here; the orchestra is thirty-strong at least. Marianne Bowman, the all too fragrant headmistress, is here with the school choir. As well as the many individual acts there’s the Hexton Hot Steppers Dance School, the full Autumn House Glee Club complement, the seven Golden Belles and Pastor McKenzie and his Victory Singers. Despite the
number of people here there is no more than a low background hum of noise. Perhaps because it once was a church, each group keep noise down to a whisper amongst themselves.

As Maria enters the church, almost as if it were cued to her arrival, orchestral music starts up. Not loud but audible. But it’s not coming from the orchestra members. The musicians turn their heads towards the source of it, as surprised as everyone else. Ray is playing records again. Something classical, Mozart probably.

Blue Group are here safe, thank God, Dezzie has brought them but he isn’t with them now. They sit in silence huddled together in a corner, obviously uncomfortable, intimidated by the crowd. Brian is sulking as he always does in public, embarrassed by his wheelchair and his body, pretending to be invisible around other young people. They look so innocent and vulnerable. Maria’s heart rushes out of her body, reaching and embracing them sooner than she can get to them across the hall. She quickly makes physical contact with everyone, firmly patting an elbow here, a shoulder there, and then in reverse order spends time with each of them, hugging and making eye contact, bringing them out of their own heads, leading them gently into this scary environment of the rehearsal. Fiona got the first pat and so is last for a cuddle. Fiona doesn’t want a cuddle, she wants to go back to the centre and is threatening to cry.

‘Come on Fiona, you want to sing
Donal
Og
, don’t you?’

Fiona does want to sing, she can’t argue with that.

To make things worse, Brian is pissed off because his dad has turned up. His dad and uncle are here, sweeping slowly and methodically through the crowd. Phil is not here, as Brian suspects, to embarrass his son. Neither does he, as Maria imagines, want to audition in a twin novelty act with his brother. He and Billy are here to see if they can catch the flasher.

‘This is a magnet for perverts: people getting changed, wearing fancy costumes, showing off.’

Phil’s voice trails off in disgust. The idea of someone showing off appears to Phil to be comparable to them exposing themselves.

‘Well Phil, I appreciate your concern,’ says Maria, ‘but I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave. It’s performers only today, this is a rehearsal.’

‘You just give me a shout if you get any trouble, eh?’

‘Oh yes, I’ll be sure to.’

Luckily Phil doesn’t catch the sarcasm in Maria’s voice.

She scans the room looking for Dezzie and her eyes light on a strange sight. Alice has led Ray to another of the Golden Belles, a small grey woman sitting on a chair. Then something very odd happens. Ray puts his hand on the old lady’s shoulder and she closes her eyes. He whispers in her ear and her body goes limp. What the hell is he whispering?

Just then Dezzie crosses in front of Ray and the woman, obscuring her view. He’s spotted Maria and waves. Although she’s delighted to see him, she’s surprised and a little let down that he didn’t stay with Blue Group when they were so obviously miserable.

A few minutes later Ray approaches, all big smiles.

‘Hi Maria, and…’ Ray is obviously racking his brains to remember everyone’s names. She’ll be amazed if he does, it’s been a few weeks.

‘Eh, Jane?’

Jane nods yes and smiles. He turns and looks at each person intently and hesitates for a few seconds before saying their name.

‘Brian. Fiona.’

‘Hello Ray,’ says Fiona.

Fiona has remembered his name but that’s not so surprising. It is rare that anyone new comes into Blue Group’s social circle. Ray stares hard at Martin. Martin starts to speak but Ray holds up his hand to stop him.

‘Wait, let me get it. Marty, is it? Martin?’

‘Yay! Hello Ray.’

‘100 per cent recall,’ says Maria, amazed. How the hell did you do that?’

‘Oh,’ says Ray, batting the air with his hand, ‘it’s just a memory technique I learned.’

Now Maria is even more amazed. She’s never met anyone else who uses memory tools. She thinks back to how she stored and filed Blue Group when she first met them: Brian was Brainiac (the Maniac), a moniker that suits him so well she has to restrain
herself from saying it aloud. Jane is G.I. Jane because of her short hair and military neatness. Martin is Martin the Martian but she has long since stopped imagining him with little antennae coming out of his head. Due to her man-eating tendencies Fiona is Fee Fi Fo Fum. Maria wonders what aide-memoires Ray has used and, more interestingly, what he used to remember
her
name. She’d love to ask but now is not the time.

‘This is going to be some rehearsal!’ says Ray, excited. ‘All these people turning up, eh? Well done, Maria.’

‘Thank you, Ray.’

Maria reflects for a moment. He’s right; getting all these people here is an achievement in itself.

‘I should be thanking you for the use of the hall.’

‘It’s nothing. I told you, it’s free!’

‘Well.’ Maria is momentarily stuck for something to thank him for. ‘Well, thanks for nothing.’

Ray is the first to laugh, and then all of Blue Group join in. Maria is particularly pleased with her little off-the-cuff joke.

‘Not at all. An absolute pleasure. It’s exciting having real live performers and musicians about the place.’

‘Are you playing your Mozart again?’ she asks, referring to the music wafting from the speaker system.

‘It’s an Ave Maria,’ says Ray. ‘I put it on to honour you for having set up the concert.’

Maria has to lower her eyes to hide her delight.

‘And to honour the orchestra,’ he quickly adds. ‘And to let people know that, although it used to be a church…’

Now, for Blue Group’s entertainment, Ray changes to an exaggerated stage whisper,
‘they don’t have to be so quiet!’‘
I think you’re right. It’s beginning to work.’

In just a few minutes conversation throughout the hall has got louder and more relaxed. To be heard above the amplified music, people have given up whispering and now speak at normal volume. A hundred voices increase the noise significantly, creating more space, widening the boundaries of what is acceptable noise. The new levels afford anonymity within the general hubbub; people
have lost their shyness and started to warm their voices, tune their instruments and practice their routines. It’s quickly become a madhouse.

‘Do you like the music?’ Ray asks everyone else.

They do.

‘Well, I’d better crack on,’ says Ray, slapping both thighs energetically. ‘I’ll get the tea sorted out.’

He heads off towards the kitchen. Maria looks for Dezzie in the crowd but can’t see him anywhere. People are growing restive, milling around, apparently aimlessly. She needs to get this show on the road. She spots Marianne at the other side of the hall organising people and takes Blue Group over.

Marianne is trying to establish some kind of order but she pleads with Maria to make an announcement. ‘We’ll never get anything done otherwise,’ she says as she bangs a radiator with her baton.

As the crowd quieten Maria clears her throat to speak.

‘First of all, ladies and gentlemen, let me apologise for being late but the bus broke down.’

They whistle and tut dramatically, a collective expression of disapproval, but it’s good-natured.

‘Secondly, I’d like to thank you all for coming. I must say I’m overwhelmed by the turnout. There’s a tremendous amount of talent in this room and I know we are going to have a show that Hexton will be proud of.’

Everyone cheers and claps. Maria feels quite emotional but she must keep her business head on.

‘Miss Bowman, the lady here at the desk, will register you all and if you give us a few minutes, we’ll organise a running order of rehearsal.’

As the crowd surges towards Marianne’s desk another voice is heard.

‘Anyone fancy a cuppa?’ shouts Ray above the noise. ‘I’ve filled the urn and left out tea bags, milk and sugar, just help yourselves.’

The crowd cheer enthusiastically.

‘There’s no biscuits,’ Ray adds.

‘Aww!’ they say with one voice.

‘Bring your own biscuits!’ Ray shouts to general laughter.

Community spirit is tangible. It is rowdy and warm, exciting and fun, but it is not all inclusive. Blue Group still sits outside the throng.

She sees Dezzie again, he’s chatting to an older man and he gestures for her to come over. She shakes her head no, she can’t desert Blue Group and she waves him to her. He doesn’t understand her gesture and turns back to continue chatting with the older man.

‘Right,’ say Maria to her clients, ‘we’ll have to go and register as well, everybody ready?’

No one answers, they look scared again.

‘I don’t want to. They’ll laugh at us,’ whines Fiona.

The rest of the group, in tacit agreement, say nothing. Maria gives them an encouraging smile but they refuse to meet her eye.

‘They’re not going to laugh, I promise you. They’re just the same as us.’

‘No, they’re not. Look at them!’ Fiona gesticulates aggressively. ‘They’re like celebrities.’

Maria sighs and hunkers down beside Brian’s chair, speaking quietly so that only Blue Group can hear. Everyone crouches or leans in to listen.

‘Those old men there with the violins, do they look like celebrities?’

All of Blue Group take sneaky looks at the violinists then discreetly shake their heads.

‘And those girls there, what about that one with the spots on her face, is she a celeb? I don’t think so.’

Despite her Machiavellian scheming they are still hesitant, all except Martin, but they do want to be in the show and, with a mixture of rumour-mongering, cajoling and nagging, Maria finally gets them up to the desk.

While they tell Marianne their names and what their act is Dezzie rejoins them.

‘All right, guys?’

All of Blue Group smile broadly, they think Dezzie is great.

‘All right, my man?’ he says to Brian, mock punching him on the shoulder.

The clients might think Dezzie is great, as does Maria, but he still has a lot to learn about life at the centre. She doesn’t believe in singling any one client out for too much praise, it encourages jealousy and paranoia. In her experience clients should all get equal attention or it leads to trouble.

‘Hey Maria, I’ve just been talking to Spencer, you know, the orchestra leader?’‘Oh yeah? I talked to him on the phone but I haven’t met him yet.’

‘He was pretty excited when he saw the church has bells. Says they’ve been working on some overture or other. They want to use the bells in the performance. He’s asked me to ring them for him. Cool, eh? I’m in showbiz!’

He makes an exaggeratedly overjoyed face and everyone laughs.

Maria knows from past experience that Blue Group don’t always get Dezzie’s jokes. She knows because they sometimes shyly ask her later what he meant. They want to understand him. But his face is so expressive and they are so flattered that he includes them in his jokes that they always laugh.

She wonders if Dezzie realises they’re laughing to please him. Probably not. But his, and Blue Group’s, intentions are good and everyone’s happy. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of harmless hero worship, and after all, church is traditionally the place for it.

Meanwhile at the other side of the hall, devotion to hero is rife. Ray is performing card tricks for Alice and the other Golden Belles. The women crowd around him, laughing and pushing in close. They’re obviously enjoying this girlish fun, having the nice young joiner all to themselves. Although none of them are quite as glamorous as Alice, they are all trim, well-dressed women: Jean McKee, Margaret Cameron, Margaret Wallace, Nancy Smith, Jean Anderson, Margaret Kennedy.

They refer to themselves as
the girls
, girls who were married in the 1950s, and led the secret double life of the full-time housewife. A life of rollers and hairnets, of unhitched suspenders and stockings rolled down to doughnuts around their ankles while hubby was at work. Girls who exercised discretion with sanitary products and fiddled the housekeeping, who washed the flour off their face, applied lipstick and threw their apron under the sink before their man came home.

These are the lucky ones, the generation whose husbands had jobs and left them well-provided for, probably the most affluent people in Hexton.

Although elderly, these ladies still maintain high standards: leather shoes and matching handbags that will be carefully returned to tissue paper-filled boxes at the back of the wardrobe when they get home.

‘Pick a card, any card,’ Ray says as though it were a brand new expression. ‘Are you girls here with your Mums?’

Margaret Wallace and Jean McKee give his shoulders playful slaps. They push at his side, warm and affectionate, like cows nudging in for barncake.

‘I need a few good looking volunteers to help with the tea things. But, be honest with me, are you strong enough for these big tea trays? You look like awful delicate wee things to me.’

Rolling up her floral sleeve Alice flexes a taught bicep but despite workouts with the new equipment at Autumn House she has not entirely banished bingo wings. Her loose underarm flesh dances before Ray but he doesn’t seem to notice. He concentrates on giving the girls a magic show. Suddenly he reaches inside Alice’s rolled sleeve and produces the Queen of Hearts.

‘Is this your card?’

No one is wearing their reading glasses and so they have to squint but, yes, they verify that this indeed is the card. Holding on to each other for support against the onslaught of his dazzling magic, the girls laugh and hoot like teenagers.

Just behind them, the clock whizzes back half a century. The teenage all-female choir of Hexton High are dressing each other’s hair, swapping scrunchies and clips, talking about boys and giggling. Today, because they are representing the school and required to wear full uniform, they design hairdos that are individual and radical. Miss Bowman, otherwise engaged with registration, allows the girls a bit of leeway as long as they keep it quiet and don’t let the school down.

Other singers, the Hexton veterans of TV shows and Karaoke competitions, take a much more professional approach. They sip at honey in warm water from flasks and practice vocal exercises: me me me, ma ma ma. Their professionalism allows them to zone out the amateurs: the Victory Singers murdering their Sunday School songs, and Hexton Hot Steppers clumping out a number on the wooden floor.

Gerry, Bob and Aldo arrived an hour ago, not for the rehearsal but because the church has become their regular hang-out. They walked out, silent and sullen, outnumbered by the freaks and weirdos who invaded the space. Now, nosey to find out what all the noise is about, they’ve moved back inside.

None of them is aware who took the decision to go outside or move back in, it just happened. Hypersensitive to the delicate
balance of power within the trio they anticipate and pre-empt each other’s every action. They move and react like one organism.

But this is not to say that they are perfectly in tune. For a bit of sport Gerry and Aldo will sometimes gang up on Bob. Or Aldo and Bob will have a go at Gerry. They will call the victim’s mother a cow or, mock riding him from behind, they’ll call him a homo or take his mobile phone and play games on it until the battery dies. The victim must accept his fate and take it on the chin, that’s the rules.

It’s rare that the other two will join forces against Aldo. He’s more than a match for them. Although Gerry is good looking and smart and Bob’s parents still live together, what gives Aldo the edge is that he simply does not give a fuck. With little self-esteem and nothing to lose he will often do and say admirably mental things that Bob and Gerry just don’t have the balls for.

Although they’re too cool to show it, even to each other, they are quite excited by this event. This is the biggest thing in Hexton since the Tree Huggers Demo. They sit on the sidelines, crouching low in their seats, attempting invisibility. They silently observe people, mostly old cunts who should be dead by now, cavorting around in a stupid and embarrassing way. After a sniggering and whispered consultation, they appoint top candidates for ridicule and list the girls they would shag.

Elsewhere in the hall the musicians take their instruments out of black plastic cases. They begin, unhurriedly, to tune up. There’s no rush. Orchestral musicians are used to sitting around waiting. Once they’ve tuned they’ll sit with their instruments on their knees or by their sides awaiting further instruction. They’ve not yet been allocated a seating position in the orchestra because their conductor, Mr Spencer, hasn’t yet been able to ascertain where and when they’ll rehearse. So they sit in groups, in random twos and threes, sprinkled throughout the hall amidst the young and old, the amateur and professional, the ridiculous and the shagable.

The music on the sound system has changed. Despite the noise in the hall, Graham Thornton, lead violin since Angus McKay died last year, recognises something from their repertoire. It is the overture from the Marriage of Figaro and he begins to play along.
He plays from memory, knowing it, as most of his colleagues do, from playing it a million times throughout his long and faintly distinguished career. This church hall in Hexton is a long way from the opera houses he used to play in Europe. Perhaps it is the enthusiasm of these people or the refreshing exposure to so many young women but he plays as loudly and as vigorously as his worn fingers are able.

During the opening bars Graham energetically saws his violin, as though he’s furious with it. It responds by singing back at him like an angry bee. At first he is simply playing, across the miles and the years, along with the musicians who recorded the track, some of them no doubt known to him, most of them dead probably. But as loud as it is, his violin is inviting a response from the other instruments that sit redundant between their owner’s knees. Then Graham hears a reply from across the hall, a clarinet and then another violin somewhere behind him. Being removed from the other instruments is an unusual experience for him but as the overture proceeds he hears more musicians take up their instruments. Momentum builds.

People gather around him. This too is an unusual experience. He has never before performed so close to an audience, never been without the buffer of his colleagues. He cannot see any of the other musicians; he can only send musical smoke signals and hope they are picked up. Fortunately the replies are getting louder and stronger. The entire orchestra must be playing by now. They’re no longer playing along with the track, Graham can’t hear it anymore, they’re drowning it out with real live music.

Everyone seems to have caught the buzz of the music. All through the hall people are standing amongst the musicians, listening hard, eyes shining, cheeks flushed. The sound is all inclusive, wrapping everyone together in the posh, complicated, exhilaration of the busy violins.

Martin, always an uninhibited music lover, stands waiving an imaginary baton conducting two violinists and a man playing a bassoon. A few kids follow suit. Fiona hops from side to side, a way she has of expressing joy, while Jane stands behind her preparing
to catch her if she falls. Brian smiles. Dezzie has apparently disappeared again.

The members of the orchestra, for no other reason than the pleasure it gives, practise their long-practised art: Liver-spotted hands caress wood and metal, nobbly fingers fly across fretboards and keys. Sweat breaches foreheads wrinkled with time and concentration. Off the peg jackets, practical and uniform, take the strain of the idiosyncratic activity inside them. Hair falls dramatically across wizened faces as the music climaxes in a whirling rush of violins.

The crowd’s appreciation is warm and sincere. Each musician gets applause from his own audience, who clap and whistle long and hard. Musicians’ thin bony backs are subject to patting. Long thin loops of damp combover hair are replaced on balding scalps.

The orchestra’s performance has a galvanising effect on everyone.

‘Right,’ says Marianne to Maria, ‘that’s everybody registered, only three no-shows.’

Marianne’s face and neck is slightly pink, a very becoming girlish flush is upon her.

‘I’ve organised a rehearsal rota, the hall’s going to be in almost constant use but for now I’ve sorted out a running order for this afternoon. I think it’ll be better if we get the young ones done and dusted first, the others won’t mind waiting on the kids. So, first up are my choir, then the Hot steppers…’

‘Oh Marianne, you’re brilliant! What would I do without you?’

Behind her bifocals, Marianne’s eyes are shining as she gives Maria a sardonic stare.

‘You’d get lynched. Now, let’s get this show on the road.’