Audrey and Phoebe walked arm in arm down a narrow Notting Hill street until they arrived at a 1960s low-rise building that looked unprepossessing from the outside. It was grimy and architecturally at odds with the surrounding Georgian terraces.
‘Are you sure this is the right address, Phoebe? It doesn’t look very salubrious.’ Audrey stared at the peeling paint on the windowsills and the brown water marks streaking the walls like the tears of a giant.
‘Oh, it’s fine. Come on, stop stalling. We’re probably the first ones here.’
As they entered the building and followed the black-and-white signs up the stairs towards the second floor, Audrey wondered – not for the first time in the past fortnight – whether she was being brave and intrepid or simply foolish. She still couldn’t believe she was actually going to go through with it.
It had been just under a month since she’d found her old diary. When she’d mentioned it to Phoebe a week later, during Sunday lunch at Lily’s, her granddaughter’s reaction had taken her by surprise: But don’t you see what finding that diary means, Gran? It means you’ve got a second chance to do all those things. You could sing. You could do a part-time university course. You could travel. This could be awesome.
It was Phoebe who’d come up with the idea of Audrey joining a choir, Phoebe who’d gone online and searched for one that sounded perfect. And now it was Phoebe who was accompanying her to the audition, insisting she wanted to join the choir too, although Audrey found it hard to believe it was how any seventeen-year-old really wanted to spend their free time. But even with Phoebe for moral support, Audrey’s heartbeat still stuttered each time she tried to imagine singing in front of a complete stranger.
As they walked along a dimly lit windowless corridor, Audrey recalled the online advert she’d read so many times she’d committed it to memory.
Choir members wanted for a one-off-performance. No experience necessary – just passion, commitment and a love of music. Gala concert at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday 25 June in aid of Save the Children’s Syria campaign. Concert to feature the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra and further performers TBC. Open auditions: Wednesday 23 March and Thursday 24 March at West11 studios, 17.00–21.00. Nearest tube: Ladbroke Grove. For further information contact Ben Levine, Musical Director.
‘Come on, Gran. Deep breaths. It’ll be fine.’
Audrey followed Phoebe into a large room where light fractured through metal bars to form splintered stripes across the floor. Orange plastic chairs lined the walls, only a few of which were unoccupied – at least thirty people were there already. Glancing around the room, she noticed a man of about her own age with thick-lensed spectacles that made his eyes seem to pop from his head like a cartoon character’s; a woman in her early thirties, headphones clamped to her ears, drumming on her thighs with her fingers; and underneath the window, a woman in her late forties who glanced up from her book and smiled briefly before settling back into her story.
Audrey willed some confidence to rise up from where it had sunk into the pit of her stomach as Phoebe led her to the far end of the room where a young man was sitting behind a trestle table, beaming at them.
‘Hello there! Are you here for the audition? It’s super to see a younger face, although all ages welcome, of course. If you take a seat and fill out this form, Ben will be with you as soon as he can. There’s quite a few ahead of you in the queue – we’ve had rather a better turnout than we expected – but hopefully it shouldn’t be too long a wait.’
As Audrey took a seat next to Phoebe and dug a pen out of her bag, she scanned the room once more, wondering whether anyone else was trying to rewrite the script of their life before it was too late.
‘Audrey Siskin? Ben’s ready for you now. Do you want to come up?’
Audrey’s stomach lurched as if making its own bid for freedom as she lifted herself from the chair, urging her legs to stop trembling. She glanced at Phoebe before following an earnest-looking young woman up the stairs.
On the floor above, striding across the audition room, hand outstretched, was a tall, attractive man of about forty, his dark hair thick and shiny as though he’d just stepped out of a shampoo commercial. He was beaming at Audrey with a warmth she hadn’t expected. ‘You must be Audrey? I’m Ben Levine. It’s great to meet you. Thanks so much for coming along today.’
His American accent took her by surprise. As Audrey shook his hand, her stomach nudging against the belt of her trousers, she tried not to think about the tumours in her liver making her tummy swell as though she were in the early stages of pregnancy in spite of all the weight she’d lost.
‘Don’t be nervous. This is all totally informal. All we want to do today is sing a song, have a quick chat and figure out whether you’d be happy in this choir we’re putting together. So what brings you here today?’
Audrey thought about her teenage diary, could taste a residue of that adolescent optimism. And then she thought about the future that was arriving far too soon and felt the truth dissolve under her tongue. ‘I always loved singing when I was young but … I don’t know … I’ve barely sung at all since I was a child. And now … now I’m getting on a bit, so I thought it was time to put that right.’ The half-lie fizzed on her lips.
Ben hadn’t seemed to notice her awkwardness and he sat down at the piano, smiled at her, gestured for her to stand next to him. ‘Well, that seems like a pretty good reason to me, though I don’t think you’re getting on a bit. The oldest person I’ve had audition so far today was ninety-two, so from where I’m sitting you’re a veritable spring chicken. What are you going to sing?’
Audrey hesitated, still unconvinced of the answer to a question that had kept her awake for the past fortnight.
‘“Dream a Little Dream of Me” by the Mamas and the Papas. I’ve got a CD here of the backing track. My granddaughter downloaded it from YouTube – I hope that’s all right?’
As soon as she’d spoken, the words tripping over one another, Audrey prepared to apologise, to say that she’d made a mistake, to tell this nice young American man that she couldn’t possibly sing that song. It was a song she’d studiously avoided for almost three decades, one that had habitually prompted her to switch off the radio, flick television channels, beat a hasty retreat from shops, restaurants, cinemas. It was a song she hadn’t dared listen to in full since they’d played it on a portable cassette recorder at the funeral almost thirty years before.
But before she had a chance to speak she heard the opening notes of an introduction that tugged at her heart in a way no other musical sequence ever could: a gentle lilting refrain that caught in the back of her throat and threatened never to leave.
‘No need for a CD. I know it. G major should be good for you, I think. Does that sound about right? We can go half a tone lower if you like, but I think this should work.’
Audrey nodded as Ben played, unwilling to tell him that she didn’t know her G major from her A minor, that she’d never learned to read music, that there’d never been enough money for lessons. She’d always learned everything by ear, picking out melodies and harmonies instinctively, singing lower or higher depending on what her vocal cords required.
‘I’ll run through a four-bar introduction and then you come in, OK?’
He was smiling at her with an affability Audrey found disconcerting though she couldn’t understand why. And then it dawned on her. Ben wanted her to do well. He was quietly urging her to succeed. And hard as she tried to remember as she waited for her cue to begin, Audrey couldn’t recall the last time anyone had encouraged her to do well at anything.
Audrey filled her lungs and waited for the introduction to end.