The Choir (16 page)

She hadn’t meant to come down to Aldminster again, not for months. She had meant to stay right away from Leo after he had been so awful to her, and she had attempted very hard to fall in love with a journalist on a rock magazine who seemed really keen on her and had even, to her amazement and no doubt to his own as well, sent her flowers. Nobody had ever sent Ianthe flowers. It made her feel temporarily very romantically inclined towards the journalist, but only, it seemed, when he wasn’t there. When she saw him, she thought about Leo almost all the time, which hardly gave the journalist a chance. She’d tried to talk to Petra about it, but Petra was in the middle of making a pretty marvellous enormous metal horse, rather Greek somehow, and couldn’t concentrate on anything else. It was a commission, too, which was exciting, and in any case Petra, grown weary of her lover’s wife’s depredations in the studio, had thrown him out and was trying not to miss him, so she wasn’t in a very sympathetic mood about love. Fergus’s beautiful Minna wasn’t much help either, because she’d been brought up in America and she believed you must never let a man kick you around. If Fergus treated her, just
once
, the way Leo had behaved to Ianthe, she said, she’d have been out that door like lightning. Ianthe had tried to explain that she had never, unfortunately, been
in
Leo’s door, so to speak, but Minna was much more interested in her own point of view than in Ianthe’s predicament anyway, so she was not a satisfactory confidante either.

Ianthe had thought and thought about what she should do to change things with Leo. One thing was clear: she mustn’t beg him
for anything else; she really had to play it as cool as she could. She also had to show him that she wasn’t yobbish, which he seemed to think. She had a new haircut which was certainly more becoming, though pretty square, and had bought some less aggressive makeup and, because Ikon had, to its own astonishment, signed up a group whose second record was actually in the top fifty, a few new clothes. She also concocted a plan designed to show Leo that she was a responsible human being, as well as to provide Ikon with a dogsbody, which it badly needed. They had all agreed they needed a sympathetic and musical dogsbody, instead of a girl called Sharon, who was only interested in getting back to Brentford on time each night and filed her nails between phone calls. Ianthe had had her brain-wave then and said she thought she could fix it.

When she got to the deanery she found her mother in the kitchen making a salad and Cosmo sitting on the edge of the table picking the bits out of it that he liked.

“Don’t,” Bridget was saying.

“Tomatoes are good for me.”

“They can be good for you at supper.”

Ianthe said, “Hi,” and slung her bag on to the floor and the paper onto the table.

“What a fight seems to be going on around here!”

“You’ve had your hair cut, dear. Very pretty.”

“It’s
not
pretty.”

“No,” Cosmo said, “it’s not.”

“You haven’t been down for weeks,” Bridget said fondly. “Naughty girl.”

“
Work
, Mum.”

“There’s no such thing,” Cosmo said.

Bridget patted his bony black-clad knee.

“Bad boy.”

She came round the table and kissed Ianthe and looked her over.

“You do look nice, dear. What pretty earrings.”

“Mum …” Ianthe pleaded.

“You go and have a wash and I’ll make you a cup of coffee. You smell of trains.”

“I’ve been on one. And I’d rather have whisky.”

“Don’t show off, dear.”

Cosmo cackled.

“I’ve got some duty-free in my room. Brent got it when he went on the hovercraft to France for the day.”

“Cosmo!”

“I haven’t drunk it
all
—”

“Too stupid,” Bridget said. “I don’t know whether you are worse apart or together.”

The telephone rang from the hall. Alert instantly, Bridget put her knife down and went to answer it.

“You’ve come down to see Leo,” Cosmo said.

“No, I haven’t.”

“You’re wasting your time.”

“What do you know about it? You’re only a kid. Anyway, it isn’t him I’ve come to see.”

“Who then?”

“Not telling. Where’s your whisky?”

“In a welly in my room. Who are you seeing?”

“Nick Elliott.”

“
Nick Elliott!
”

“Not like that, idiot. Business.”

Cosmo got off the table.

“If I give you some whisky can I borrow your black T-shirt with the bat on it?”

“OK.”

They went out into the hall and as they passed their mother, Bridget was saying, “Actually, Rachel, we’re quite pleased with the coverage in the
Echo
. Hardly a voice raised in protest, my dear. Hugh really comes into his own over this sort of business.”

“What do you think?” Ianthe asked Cosmo as they began to climb the stairs. He grinned at her.

“I like the fight,” he said.

Ianthe waited until after Saturday-afternoon choir practice before she went round to Chapter Yard. She washed her hair and put on new black pedal pushers and a big clean white sweatshirt, and when Nicholas opened the door he said, “Wow. Hi,” which was pleasing.
In the sitting room, which she could hardly recognize, Leo was in an armchair with his feet on the piano stool, and he looked at her for quite some time before he said, “How
very
nice.”

Then he got up and kissed her and offered her a chair and said, amazingly, “How very good to see you.”

“I’ve been flat-out,” Ianthe said. “I really think we’re beginning to make it. Who’s been at this room?”

“Mrs. Mop here, alias Nick. I’m scared to dent cushions these days.”

“Then I know I was right to come,” Ianthe said.

“What, what—”

“I’m going to offer your cleaning lady a job.”

“What!”

“We’re expanding. We need a dogsbody, messenger, telephone answerer, someone who knows about music. You said Nick wanted an opening in music—”

“Nick?”

“Oh I do, oh great,
great
—”

“Who’s going to clean the ring off my bath?”

“You are.”

“Perhaps I’ll just have a ring. Ianthe, are you serious?”

“Sure am. We’ve discussed it. Sixty quid a week, free doss on my partner’s sofa—that’s Mike—use of the bike we all share for messages. Can you ride a bike?”

“I can learn!” Nicholas said. He spun a cushion in the air. “This is
great
.”

“What,” said Leo to Ianthe, “has made you so businesslike?”

“I always was. You just never noticed.”

“You
look
different.”

Ianthe wanted to say did he like it but she thought from his expression that he probably did and anyway he was being so amazingly nice she thought she wouldn’t provoke him.

“When can I start?” Nicholas said.

“A week Monday.”

“This is so good!”

“Yes,” Leo said, “it is. It’s the one good thing that
is
happening. Have you heard about the choir?”

Ianthe rolled her eyes heavenwards.

“Makes me sick.”

“In removing Nick, you aren’t only removing my nanny but my lieutenant into the bargain, I hope you know. We’re planning a siege in the choir stalls. Poor Alexander is beside himself.”

“I can come back,” Nicholas said excitedly, “any time you need me.”

Leo got up and went across the room to the kitchen.

“Let’s celebrate with a drink. I’ve even got some wine and these days the odd clean glass—”

“I say,
thanks
,” Nicholas said with energy to Ianthe. “Are you sure?”

She looked airy.

“Company decision.”

“Where
is
the company?”

“One room, seven floors up, the wrong end of the Charing Cross Road. Well, a room and a half really but the kettle lives in the half.”

“London,” Nick said.

“Sure thing. Want a smoke?”

“No thanks. And don’t here. Leo’ll go bananas.”

Ianthe considered bravado and decided the atmosphere was too good to waste, so contented herself with chucking the cigarette packet onto the hearthrug to show that she
could
have smoked if she’d chosen to. Leo came in with the bottle and a handful of glasses and trod on the packet on his passage to his armchair. Nicholas, elated as he couldn’t recall being ever in his life before, got tremendous giggles and began to chuck cushions about.

“Are you sure you want him?” Leo said to Ianthe.

She grinned and raised her glass to him.

“Here’s to the choir.”

He looked at her.

“Thank you. And here’s to a glorious future for you two. May you become millionaires.”

She felt terribly happy, so she got up and kissed Nicholas and then she kissed Leo, and he kissed her back and everything seemed, all of a sudden, just too bloody good to be true.

S
ANDRA NOTICED THAT THE HEADMASTER HAD LOST WEIGHT; QUITE
a lot, really, for such a big man. It was unfair for him to do it just now, to do something poignant like lose weight out of unhappiness, because Sandra’s boyfriend had recently proposed to her, and although she knew that she and a man like Alexander Troy lived in different worlds and that she would be much happier and more natural with Colin, she could not help her yearning. She liked Colin, loved him even, and certainly approved of his decently acquisitive way of life, but Colin wasn’t admirable or uplifting and certainly never gave her heady seconds of excitement at the set of his shoulders or with particular gestures or inflexions. She had known the proposal was coming for weeks and so, playing the game by the same rules of proper delicacy, had said she would think about it and tell him on Friday. That meant that on Saturday they could buy a ring and announce the engagement ten days later on Sandra’s mother’s birthday. What she must not do, she told herself, was to spend the time until Friday in fruitless anguish for what could not be, nor in bringing in homemade prawn mayonnaise sandwiches—which she knew Alexander loved—to try and persuade him to eat. She was, instead, very businesslike all week, thereby earning from Alexander the warmest gratitude, which did her resolve no good at all.

It was Sandra who suggested he should go and see the bishop.

“Remember Mr. Beckford. He’d never be here if it wasn’t for Bishop Robert. My mother disapproves of him because she says you never know which way he’s going to jump, but I think that makes him modern. And he’s really keen on music.”

She rang the palace and spoke to Janet Young, who said the bishop was free about five. Then Janet said that if the school had any boys who needed to do something for the good of their souls, the palace herbaceous border would be pleased to see them, and Sandra laughed and said she was welcome to the whole of the fifth year at that rate. At five to five, accompanied by three boys who had been caught smoking with unnecessary defiance in the common room garden under a lilac bush, Alexander crossed the close to the palace and despatched his charges to the border and the bishop’s wife, who, though universally known to be kind, was also universally known to be intolerant of skimped work. From the bishop’s study window, the bishop and the headmaster could watch the culprits weeding away under an eagle eye.

“She terrifies me in the garden,” the bishop said. “It’s like being a very small boat commanded by a ferocious skipper. Perfectionists can never understand that the rest of us are mere mortals.”

“They are very lucky to get away so lightly. It exasperates me how much they
must
show off. As day boys, they have hours and hours in which to misbehave when we have no power to prevent them, but they have to break the rules not only in school but as close to the seat of authority and as publicly as they can.”

“Perhaps a spell of gardening at the command of a woman is a rather fitting retribution for a display of macho swaggering. Ah, look. They’ve seen us. Poor fellows, spied upon from all sides. Are any of those choristers?”

“No. Too old. Our oldest is fourteen and that’s about the top limit, really.”

“I imagine,” the bishop said, guiding Alexander away from the window and towards an elderly chair upholstered in much-washed linen union, “I imagine that the fate of our poor choir is why you have come.”

“I would only say this to you,” Alexander said, casting himself
into the chair, “and in fact it is a huge relief to have someone to say it
to
, but really I am rather in despair. I don’t quite know where to turn for support. The dean and chapter are apparently five to one in favour of the plan, my common room are twenty-seven to four in favour because it does away with the choir practice priority they all hate so much, and I fear the next governors’ meeting, where the dean and chapter will be present, and so will three city councillors, including Frank Ashworth. It seems to me that unless we make the choir financially self-supporting, we must lose it, and if we lose it, we lose something so precious with it that it hardly bears thinking of.”

“Is the notion of its being self-supporting impossible?”

“We aren’t a first-rate choir, we aren’t a Wells; we can’t command the national and international attention they do. Give Leo Beckford enough time and we might be first-rate, I think, although he will always be a better organist than he is a choirmaster, and he is a marvellous organist. But we haven’t got any time. If the choir goes, we will never get it back, certainly never in this ancient, irreplaceable form.”

He looked across at the bishop, who was swinging his spectacles by one earpiece.

“Could I—what I want to do is to ask you if you will lend your support to our cause to defend the choir. It would make all the difference.”

There was a long pause and the bishop put on his spectacles. Then he took them off again and said gently, “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“Can’t—”

“No. I can’t. I would like to—this is in the strictest confidence—but I can’t. Like you, I believe in the unique power of choral music in our cathedrals, but you see, my prime duty and desire is not to this cathedral or to the form of worship in it. It is to the Church. I cannot, you see, provide the spectacle of a divided close at Aldminster for the press to fall eagerly upon. To come out in open opposition to the dean would be the selfish gratification of personal opinion, and would undermine the Church as a whole. We must stand united,
for the sake of the people we serve. We diminish the Church in the public eye if we are seen to squabble and wrangle.”