The Orphan Choir (24 page)

I stand up. ‘Thank you,’ I say. No swearing this time. ‘I need to get home.’

Outside Bethan’s house, there is a boy. He has been waiting for me, barefoot on the wooden bridge: a choirboy in a dark red cassock, tall and thin with a prominent Adam’s apple. His hair is blond and fine, his eyes blue-grey. He smiles at me, then starts to sing the first hymn I ever heard my son sing:

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,

Forgive our foolish ways.

Re-clothe us in our rightful mind,

In purer lives thy service find

In deeper reverence, praise …

As he sings, his skin fades around the black hole of his open mouth.

I should be scared, but I’m not. He is not my son.

He’s nobody’s son. He’s an orphan.

Was. Now he’s gone, his unfinished song is gone, and there’s nothing and no one on the bridge apart from me and a few stones and dried-up brown leaves.

The chaplain of Saviour College, whose last service this is, has a serious cold and should be in bed with a mug of Lemsip, not here in this chilly echo-chamber. He is doing his best, spluttering over some of his words.

Seeing him walk into the chapel reminded me that I didn’t respond to any of Alexis Grant’s emails about the leaving present that she’d decided we were all going to buy him, communally. I didn’t even read them. Ours is probably the only family that hasn’t contributed. I’m not even sure what the present is. A quick glance at Alexis’s first round-robin email on the subject told me everything I needed to know: it was something complicated and partially home-made that involved taking one’s child’s fingerprints and then posting them
to Alexis, having first taken care not to smudge them and made sure the envelope was hardbacked to avoid it getting bent in transit … I stopped reading when it became apparent that more effort would be involved than I was prepared to put in.

It shouldn’t matter. I shouldn’t be here. Neither should Stuart. Neither should Joseph. Part of the reason I ignored and deleted all of Alexis’s emails is because, in my mind, we were already gone: an ex-Saviour family, with no further need to be involved in choir business on any level. We were gone, as far as I was concerned, from the moment I first saw the Orphan Choir and fully understood that Joseph had to leave.

Yet there he is: singing.

Yet here we all are: in Saviour’s chapel, as if nothing has changed, with Alexis beaming her stony disapproval at me from the pews opposite. I try to beam back the words ‘I am not really here,’ but it doesn’t deter her.

Until the last minute – until half an hour before we set off from Swallowfield – I believed that I would find a way out of coming tonight. Then Stuart appeared with his car keys in his hand, and Joseph was standing next to him with his coat on, and I saw that I had misled myself yet again. There was never going to be a way out.

That’s when I realised: maybe we need to go back and face the college and the choir once more, or twice more, before we can sever all ties. If everything happens for a reason – and they say it does, don’t they? – then perhaps it will do me good to sit here, listen to the service, appreciate what’s being discarded. Perhaps this, like the visit from the Orphan Choir, is happening for a very good reason – something to do with the difference between achieving closure in an active way and going into hiding like a coward.

For the first time at a Saviour service, I scan the faces of boys who aren’t my son, as they sing the Magnificat. I steel myself for my least favourite line.

… and the rich he hath sent empty away …

Normally I can’t tear my eyes away from Joseph, but today I am keen to see Alfie Speake and George Fairclough. And the Price boy, Lucinda’s brother.

Except … none of them is here today.

That’s peculiar. Saviour choirboys have it drummed into them from day one that they must attend every service unless they’re seriously ill. I wonder if they have caught the chaplain’s lurgy. Leaning in to Stuart, I whisper, ‘Three boys missing. Not seen that before.’

‘What are you talking about?’ he says. ‘They’re all there.’

‘Alfie Speake and George Fairclough aren’t.’

The Magnificat finishes. ‘Let us now offer to God our prayers and petitions,’ says the chaplain in his cold-muffled voice. ‘Let us pray for all those who are going to be alone this Christmas, those who have lost a loved one this year and will miss them on Christmas Day, those without adequate food and shelter, those suffering in the war-torn parts of the world – in Syria, the Gaza Strip …’

‘Who?’ Stuart whispers.

‘He can’t mention everyone in the Gaza Strip by name,’ I say.

‘No, I meant Alfie … who did you say?’

‘Alfie Speake, and George Fairclough. And … what’s the name of the Price boy?’

‘Who are you talking about?’ Stuart stares at me oddly.

‘Ssh.’ I nod in Joseph’s direction. I don’t want us to embarrass him. This service and one more and then he’s out of here for good. I can’t wait.

‘We pray for the recently and prematurely deceased,’ intones the chaplain. ‘For the repose of the souls of Cordelia Overton, Martin Moss, Walter Hepworth, Carole Waugh, Gary Donald. Lord in thy mercy …’

‘Hear our prayer,’ I mutter. Playing my part for the second-to-last time.

‘Lou,’ says Stuart.

‘What?’ I whisper.

‘There’s no one called Price in the choir.’

I turn to face him. What’s he talking about? ‘Of course there is.’ I roll my eyes at him. ‘I promise you, there is. You never know anyone’s name.’

‘We pray for individuals who have asked for our prayers, and for those for whom prayers have been asked by others – Katie Nally, Felix and Antonia Blackwood, Maureen and Roger. Lord in thy mercy …’

‘Hear our prayer.’

‘I know that there’s no boy with the surname Price in the choir,’ Stuart persists. ‘There’s no Alfie Speake or George Fairclough either.’

‘What are you talking about? Of course there is.’

‘No. There isn’t.’ There are tears in my husband’s eyes. They scare me, and I don’t want to be scared, not after believing and hoping that I was well on the way to leaving fear behind. That solitary orphan choirboy on Bethan’s bridge, outside The Hush … As we drove to Cambridge, it suddenly dawned on me what he meant. One choirboy, not lots. Singing softly, not screaming out the words. And he faded almost immediately. Another warning, but a milder one – more of a gentle reminder: ‘Don’t forget. I know you won’t, but just in case …’

‘Look,’ Stuart says, bringing me back to now.
‘Everybody’s here – all the choristers. Count them. How many boys are there in Saviour’s choir?’

No. I don’t want to do this.

‘How many, Lou?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘And how many are here this evening? Count them.’

I don’t want to.

‘Do it,’ Stuart insists.

One, two, three. Four, five, six
. Joseph is number seven.
Eight, nine. Teneleventwelvethirteenfourteenfifteensixteen
.

‘But … I don’t understand,’ I whisper. Alfie and George aren’t here. Where are they? How can there still be sixteen choirboys?

There were hundreds. In the Orphan Choir. Hundreds. I saw all their faces.

Only sixteen in Saviour’s choir. Only ever sixteen.

I gasp at the shock of this revelation as the chaplain says, ‘On the anniversaries of their deaths, we pray for Adele Nolan, Jared Pazdur …’

‘Lou? You okay?’ Stuart grips my arm. ‘You’ve gone pale.’

I’ll be fine. I’ll work out what it means and then I’ll be okay.

‘… Tamsin, Fluffy Heywood, Damian Cricklade …’

I’d be better if the chaplain would stop listing dead people. It’s macabre. Did all of them really die on 21 December, or have some people rounded their
loved ones’ death anniversaries up or down to the nearest Saviour chapel service? Is Fluffy Heywood a person or a former pet rabbit, for Christ’s sake?

‘… Agnes Barrow, Patricia Jervis and Gillian Voss. Lord in thy mercy …’

Hear

our

prayer

I press my eyes shut.
No. No. It’s not true
. He can’t have said it.
Patricia Jervis
. I open my mouth, not sure if I’m going to breathe or scream.

‘Lou – what is it?’ Stuart asks.

He must be talking about a different person: someone who’s been dead for at least a year, not someone who works for the council, who came to my house twice.
Pat isn’t dead. She isn’t dead. She’s Pat, not Patricia – short for Patricia, but she said everyone calls her Pat. This is a terrible mistake
.

‘Out,’ I say, standing up. ‘Now.’ I have to get out of here, away from this endless remembering of death. Have to get back to Swallowfield, back to safety. Stuart tries to pull me down. I shake his hand off my arm and run across the black-and-white tiled floor of the chapel to Joseph, with my arms stretched out in front of me. ‘Mrs Beeston?’ Dr Freeman says. ‘What …?’

It feels like hours before I am close enough to grab
my shocked son. I hug his warm body against mine. ‘We’re leaving!’ I shout. If I can make it to the door and out into the courtyard, we’ll be all right.

Run. Run.

‘Where did you take him?’ I call out when I hear the front door close. I yell it twice more before Stuart appears in the lounge. He’s taken too long; that must mean he’s taken Joseph far away, irretrievably far. I’m sitting on the floor at The Boundary, in the corner of the room, my knees drawn up to my chest, pressing the sides of my back into a right angle of walls. Sitting on a chair or on the sofa I would feel too exposed. I’d like someone to wrap my whole body in a blanket, round and round, so that I can’t move. That would make me feel safer.

‘Where did I take him?’ Stuart snaps. ‘Where do you think I took him? To Bethan’s house, like we agreed.’

‘No! I don’t agree.’

‘But … you were the one who rang Bethan and asked her if she’d have him overnight!’ My husband’s face is grey. I am destroying him. It’s not me, though; I have to make him see that. It’s not my fault, none of it. If I rang Bethan – and Stuart’s
right, I did – that must mean I want Joseph to be there, with her.

‘I don’t think you took him to Bethan’s,’ I say slowly. ‘I bet you took him back to Cambridge, didn’t you? Handed him over to Dr Freeman!’

‘Lou, I’ve been gone forty minutes. To Cambridge and back’s two and a half hours. It’s a bloody nightmare finding Bethan’s place in the dark. I also—’

‘Get him back!’ I sob. ‘I want Joseph! I want my son!’

‘Lou.’ Stuart sits down next to me on the floor. ‘We discussed this. Remember? The drive home was bad enough – do you want to traumatise him permanently? We need to talk, and Joseph needs not to be within earshot … Look, he’s fine with Bethan. He’ll be asleep by now.’

‘Bury me behind the walls,’ I say. ‘Bury me under the floorboards. Let me die. I can’t bear this any more.’

‘Stop it! You sound crazy.’

‘I
am
crazy!’

‘Look, we’re going to try and make sense of all this, all right? All of it. Even though it makes no fucking sense whatsoever. Pat Jervis – the Pat Jervis you claim to have met twice, in our house – is dead.’

‘No!’

‘
Yes
, Louise. I’ve been sitting in the car with my phone for the last quarter of an hour, doing a bit
of research. Patricia Jervis, worked for Cambridge City Council’s environmental health department. Murdered on the twenty-first of December 2009. She was investigating a noise complaint, went to the house in question to try to reason with the party animal who lived there. He pushed her off a fourth-floor roof terrace.’

I need him to stop talking. I can’t breathe while he’s talking.

‘She broke her neck and back.’

Which is why she walks funny, rocking from side to side
. I think back to my telephone conversation with Doug Minns. I asked to speak to Pat. He didn’t tell me she was dead.

He must have been being tactful. Easier, less shocking, to say, ‘Let me help you instead,’ or words to that effect, than to say to a stranger, ‘I’m sorry, my colleague was murdered some years back. Can I help you at all?’