The Orphan Choir (25 page)

‘She’s dead, Lou. Which means she didn’t turn up to our house in the middle of the night, and you didn’t meet her and speak to her. So … is there anything you want to tell me?’

‘You think I’m
lying
? Why would I make that up?’

‘You tell me. While you’re at it, why don’t you tell me who Alfie Speake and George Fairclough are?’

‘I …’

‘Saviour choirboys, are they?’ Stuart says, his voice leaden with sarcasm.

‘No. I … I thought they were, but … no. They belong to a different choir.’

‘A
different
choir? Jesus Christ, Louise …’

‘They belong to the Orphan Choir.’

‘Oh, orphans now, are they?’

I don’t understand why he’s being so cruel to me.

‘Shall I tell you what I think?’ he says. ‘I think you’ve developed some kind of … twisted obsession with death. You
knew
Pat Jervis was dead. How much time do you spend on the Internet, Googling macabre deaths?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘If I look at the browsing history on your laptop, I wonder what I’ll find,’ Stuart says knowingly.

‘Whatever you suspect me of, you’re wrong,’ I tell him. I’m exhausted; I need to stop, to sleep for ever, but I can’t stop. I must carry on. It isn’t up to me.

‘Alfie Speake was a Cambridge chorister, like Joseph, except at King’s, not Saviour,’ Stuart says. ‘There was a documentary about him on telly two months ago. As if you don’t know all this.’

I don’t.

‘Tell me,’ I say.

‘Do we really have to go through this charade?’
Stuart sighs. ‘All right, then. Alfie was a composer – a musical child prodigy. He died in 1983, aged nine: his father accidentally reversed his car over him.’

Oh, yes
. I remember this now. Stuart’s right about Alfie.

‘George Fairclough died in 1979 of leukaemia, aged twelve,’ I say, not knowing how I know this – only that I do. ‘George was a brilliant singer too, though he wasn’t in a choir. He wasn’t well known, wasn’t any kind of celebrity apart from in private, where he was, very much so.’

He was picked for the Orphan Choir because his was one of the best voices. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t famous and had never been a chorister at an Oxbridge college.

Stuart stares at me, confused.

‘George’s parents used to invite all their friends round for musical evenings,’ I tell him. ‘His mother would play the piano while George sang. It became a regular thing – everyone looked forward to it.’

‘How do you know that, if he wasn’t famous?’ Stuart asks quietly. ‘I couldn’t find any useful Google results for George Fairclough.’

‘And Lucinda Price – she died last year, aged ten. In Prestatyn. Her uncle raped and murdered her.’

‘Right, just … stop this now!’

‘He was supposed to be babysitting. She was a
brilliant singer, Lucinda was. Won the Eisteddfod two years running.’

‘The … what?’

It doesn’t matter. A warm calm settles over me as I let the knowledge sink in. I was wrong before, so wrong, but it doesn’t matter. I see it all now and there’s no point fighting. There’s no avoiding it.

The Orphan Choir
. They’re all dead. Children who were talented singers. Children who, wherever they are now, have no parents because their parents are still here: in this world. That’s why they’re orphans. Their parents, still alive, are lost to them.

Boys and girls. Saviour College choir, with its archaic traditions, excludes girls. The Orphan Choir excludes no child who can sing as beautifully as Alfie and George and Lucinda.

And Joseph. And the boy who sang to me outside Bethan’s house …

I shiver. Wrap my arms round my knees. Stuart is saying something but I can’t hear him. I’m consumed by my own thoughts, and I’m so close now. I can allow myself to remember, to know, to see.

Pat Jervis, pressing her fingertip against the glass of my light-blocked lounge window … Me, looking at my reflection in the same black window later, feeling strongly that something was wrong, but it wasn’t – not then. It was wrong before, when Pat looked, when
I saw her looking, saw what she saw. That’s what I half-remembered when I stood where she had stood: the lounge was reflected in the window, everything in the lounge but her. She didn’t see herself there.

She wasn’t there.

That’s why she presses her finger against panes of glass and mirrors. She can’t see her reflection. She touches to check that the surface that ought to reflect her presence is there. Wonders why, if it is, she can’t see herself in it.

She doesn’t understand that she’s dead. Not fully. I’m the same.

No. I’m not dead. I’m still alive.

Think, Louise. Think hard.

The Orphan Choir didn’t mean what I thought it meant: it wasn’t about dead parents – that wasn’t why the children were orphans. I got it the wrong way round. I saw dead children singing above the lake. Dead, like Alfie Speake. Dead, like …

No.

‘What’s that noise?’ Stuart asks. ‘Someone’s playing …’ He stops to listen, frowning.

‘She warned me.’

‘Who?’

‘Pat Jervis. She told me not to buy a house here. She knew the danger wasn’t in Cambridge.’

I replay her words in my mind:
I know you shouldn’t drive to the Culver Valley. Don’t do it, Louise. Stay here
.

‘Louise! What’s that singing? I can hear boys singing.’

‘It’s the Orphan Choir.’ Who else would it be?

Slowly, Stuart walks towards the French doors. Opens them.

There’s no hurry. It’s all much too late.

The children are brighter tonight, glowing gold and silver, huge radiant eyes and endless black mouths like tunnels to purest nowhere. They’re singing their favourite: ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’.

‘Joseph,’ Stuart whispers. He looks tiny beneath the enormous jagged moon of children. Powerless. As we both are and have always been. ‘Joseph’s there.’

I join him on the terrace. My feet are bare, as I need them to be. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘And Ed, look, next to him. Ed’s his best friend in his new choir.’ The blond boy I saw on the bridge that leads to Bethan’s house, with the prominent Adam’s apple.

‘Ed?’

‘Bethan’s son.’ Somehow, I know what happened to him too, just like I know all about Alfie Speake and George Fairclough.

Murdered by his father, Rod. Strangled with the lead of a laptop computer after Bethan said she wanted a divorce and really meant it this time. It wasn’t enough for Rod to be his son’s primary carer; he had to punish Bethan, had to deprive her of a son altogether.

I’m not angry that she didn’t tell me. I understand. I would never have let Joseph go anywhere near her or her house if I’d known the truth.

‘Lou, we’ve got to get Joseph. I … I don’t think he’s safe at Bethan’s.’

‘Joseph’s dead,’ I tell him. ‘He’s dead because Ed needed a friend.’ I wonder if Bethan understands why she did it.

‘No!’ Stuart says. ‘Don’t say that!’

‘You know it’s true. You just don’t want to face it.’

‘Shut up! I’m going to get my son back!’

I remember that I used to say that. Used to think it, all the time. Had no idea what it might come to mean.

Stuart disappears round the side of the house. I hear him unlock the car.
Good
. I want him gone. I can’t do what I have to do with him here. He would stop me; he’s still in denial. I need it to be just me and the choir. They know what has to happen next.

My son is lying on the bottom bunk of a bed that once belonged to a murdered boy. Poisoned, not strangled; Bethan’s a coward.

Eyes closed. Pale skin. Wearing his favourite pyjamas: the ones with a grey smiling shark on the top.

And Stuart is driving, and crying. Soon he’ll be running …

I don’t want him to see what I see, but how can I stop him?

Across the bridge, pushing past Bethan, up the stairs, second door on the left; he’ll be drawn to the room Joseph’s in. He will turn on the light and be blinded by pain.

I don’t want him to fall to his knees and howl, but he will. I can’t stop it.

My son is a murdered boy, lying on another murdered boy’s bottom bunk.

But. The Orphan Choir would not still be singing to me if there was nothing I could do. They are showing me, Joseph is showing me, that he doesn’t need to be an orphan. Not at all. I can join him if I want to.

How could I not want to? He’s my only child.

I walk through the bodies of long-dead children to the edge of the lake. Descend the steps that one of Swallowfield’s gardeners cut into the bank, one by one. The children sing to me as I go down.

The antechapel is cold, as I knew it would be. Grey stone everywhere. Behind the closed wooden doors, I have no doubt that the chapel proper is colder. I have never seen or sat inside it; this is the first time I have been here, at the invitation of the choirmaster.

I don’t know who decided, and when, that religion and central heating were incompatible.

Actually, it was more of a summons than an invitation. I had no choice but to attend at the given time. He’d have come for me if I hadn’t.

It’s odd that I don’t know his name.

Still, it is better this way round. I can afford to let things happen as they will, knowing I’ll get the outcome I want. With Dr Freeman there was so much resistance; I had to make such an effort, had to
hatch plans and strategise. Today, a new choirmaster will offer me what Dr Freeman never would have, however long I’d waited, and I will have to make no effort at all.

The wooden doors open with a creak. He is on the other side of them and stays where he is; doesn’t walk towards me. ‘Mrs Beeston.’

‘Yes.’ I approach. Close as I can. I want to catch a glimpse of Joseph inside. I can hear him singing the Nunc Dimittis. I hear all the voices – Alfie’s, Ed’s – but especially Joseph’s.

‘You know why I asked you to come?’

‘I think so, yes.’

‘Joseph’s voice is exceptional and he’s a hard worker. We’ll be very sorry to lose him, but … he has you now. He no longer meets our eligibility criteria, and there are other boys … And girls,’ the choirmaster adds, as if he’s surprised to have remembered this detail. I would like to ask him if, before, he led a boys-only choir like Saviour’s, but I would feel inappropriate if I did. There’s a lot that no one talks about. Ever.

‘I’m only sorry to lose Joseph so soon,’ he says. ‘Obviously all the children have to move on eventually when their parents come, and it’s always a blessing for a parent to arrive, however unexpectedly, especially a mother, but … well, Joseph’s very special. As you must know, of course. I’ll be sad to see him go.’

‘Thank you.’ I smile at him.

‘Mum?’

I look down and find Joseph standing next to me. ‘Darling,’ I whisper. ‘I missed you.’

‘I missed you too,’ he says. ‘Can we go home?’

‘Yes, of course.’

It is true. I am going to take my son home. Finally, there is no one who can stop me.

The scaffolding is still up, the plastic sheeting still wrapped around our house on Weldon Road. Inside, though, it’s brighter than it’s ever been: a silver-white glare. So bright that, at first, I can’t see Joseph. I have to let my eyes adjust. I squeeze his hand and he squeezes back. I will never let go of him again. Everything will be all right. Everything has to be all right now, because now is for ever.

‘Mummy?’

‘Yes, darling?’ He hasn’t called me Mummy for a long time. It was Mum, as soon as he started primary school.

‘Will I still see Ed, now that I’ve left the choir?’

How do I answer him? I have no idea how this kind of thing works, no idea where to go or what to do.

Perhaps, because this is home, there will be no more going and doing. I will have to work it out.

‘I don’t know, darling. Maybe. I’ll know soon. I’ll sort it out, I promise.’

‘Will you ask Ed’s mummy?’

‘Ed’s mummy?’ I have no idea what to say to this.

‘She’s coming soon, you know. Ed told me today.’

I nod, distracted, as the shine from the window pulls me towards it. When Pat pressed her fingertip against it, it was black. Not any more. I put my finger where hers was and, for a second, the brightness clears and I see my reflection in the glass. There’s someone standing behind me.

It’s Bethan. She opens her mouth as if to tell me something, then fades to a pinprick of movement in the surrounding stillness before disappearing altogether.

‘Mummy?’ Joseph tugs at my sleeve.

‘Yes, Joseph?’

‘When will Daddy come?’

‘I don’t know. Soon, I hope.’ I wonder, as I say this, if it’s true.

Give us light in the night season, we beseech thee, O Lord,
and grant that our rest may be without sin,
and our waking to thy service;
that we may come in peace and safety
to the waking of the great day;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Let us bless the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

The Lord Almighty grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.

Amen.

All remain standing.