There but for The (14 page)

We had some luck, Bernice says. It’s not easy to get academic jobs in the same place. Terence had a salary in York, so you might say we’re missing that. But we’re okay. We’re together. We miss York. But we like it here a lot.

You’re the only ones in the whole borough, then, Jan says.

Personally I like it here very much, Eric says sitting down.

It is the first thing he’s said. Everybody turns and looks at him in surprise.

Miles passes his own water glass over to Mark’s side of the table. Hugo watches him do it, then reaches over for Miles’s name card. He holds it in his hands, at arm’s length, as if he needs glasses to read it. Then he puts it back where it was.

What is it you do again, Miles? Hugo says. I asked you before but we were interrupted by your vegetarianism.

Everybody laughs.

I’m an ethical consultant, Miles says.

Ah, Hugo says.

Mm, Richard says.

Ooh, Jan says.

What on earth’s an ethical consultant? Hannah says.

Miles smiles at her.

You’re the brave one, he says.

Am I? Hannah says.

She beams. Then she stops beaming when she sees the look Richard is giving her.

What it means is, I work for firms who want to ensure they’re ethically sound, or who would like to present themselves as more ethically sound, Miles says.

Ha, Hugo says.

Ho, Richard says.

I comb their profiles and make suggestions about where, depending on the brief, they could make themselves greener, or specifically help communities they’re local to, or capitalize on what’s already ethically sound about themselves. Or I highlight potential for all of these. Or, if it’s just presentation we’re talking, I suggest possible rebrandings.

Gosh, Caroline says.

He’s an ethic cleanser, the child says.

Everybody round the table bursts out laughing.

I don’t know why everyone’s laughing, the child says. I’m only repeating what he told me earlier.

Freelance, I take it, Miles? Hugo says.

What’s the per annum on that, roughly? Richard says. Pre-recession, let’s say.

That word, Jan says. Banned at this table.

This is delicious, by the way, Jan, Caroline says.

From the way people keep saying it, Mark gathers that the woman’s name maybe isn’t actually Jan, is maybe more like Jen. He tries to remember what Hugo called her when he insisted to Mark that he come tonight. He panics inside. Has he called her Jan out loud? He tries to remember if he’s said her name to her.

My bonds and shares, Terence is singing. May fall. Downstairs. Who cares? Who cares?

You like to sing, then, Terence? Hugo says.

Gershwin, the child says.

You said it, Terence says.

He and the child high-five. But at the word Gershwin Mark’s head fills with an unexpected music, a blast of Phil Spector production on He’s Sure The Boy I Love, so loud that it drowns the party out for a moment. When he can hear again, Jan or Jen is praising Hugo for something. She’s praising his singing voice.

That song at the end of the first half, Jen says, right before the interval, the one about the war being over in their dreams, do you remember? I’ll never forget it. It was really moving. Wasn’t it, Caro?

Hugo has apparently played Siegfried Sassoon in some kind of play, a play where he had to sing a song at the end of the first half. Mark takes a sip of water. It is new to him, the knowledge that Hugo can sing, the knowledge that Hugo acts in plays. He thinks of himself and Hugo in the bird-watching hut, Hugo behind him, deep inside him, saying, you are coming, aren’t you? Working on it, Mark said laughing, any second now. I mean weekend after next, Hugo said sounding offended even through the effort of love. You are coming to Jan and Eric’s?

Terence Bayoude, it seems, knows a great deal about musicals. Richard says it’s amazing the things people get taxpayers’ money to study these days. Terence tells Richard that his research fellowship is in metallurgy. Richard looks annoyed. Jen tells Terence again that Hugo’s got a great voice and that the Bayoudes should hear him on stage. Mark begins to wonder if Jen is maybe sleeping with Hugo too. He watches the shape of Jen’s mouth and the flick of her eyes for how these respond to Hugo all through Terence talking about how microphones and film changed the shape of the standard popular song early last century by making it easier to sing short notes yet still be heard at the back of the balcony. That actually made it possible, he says, for songwriters to use more syllables. But his real passion, he says, is dancers. Then Jen asks him about the anal imagery in Busby Berkeley, about which there was an article in last week’s Guardian.

Everybody laughs.

What’s anal, again? the child asks.

Caroline blushes.

Oh God. I’m so, so sorry, Jen says to Bernice. I didn’t think.

Terence tells the child that anal is the adjectival form of anus and that the anus is the opening at the end of the alimentary canal.

I knew that, the child says. But then what’s the problem with saying the word?

Then Terence tells everybody round the table that Busby Berkeley wasn’t a choreographer to start with, but came to it via the First World War, where he’d been a drill inspector.

I’m not musical at all, Richard says.

He hasn’t a musical bone in his body, Hannah says.

Brained by the musical bone of an ox, the child says. Ha ha. St. Arpeggio St. Alfeggio.

Her father laughs.

Where did you get a word like arpeggio from? her mother says. As if I didn’t know.

Is it stage musical or film musical you’re keen on, Terence, or both? Jen asks.

I just don’t get music, Richard says again.

Tell us some more facts like that one about Busby Berkeley, Terence, Eric says.

Everybody turns and stares at Eric.

Don’t encourage him, Bernice says. He’s anal enough about it already.

The whole table falls silent again.

Woah! Bernice says and hoots with laughter.

Well, Terence says. James Cagney and George Raft and John Wayne. The tough guys of Hollywood, well, they were all trained as dancers first.

That’ll be the day, Richard says.

Discipline, yes, Hugo says, it’s a very particular discipline.

And Fred Astaire, Terence says, had it written into his contracts that if he was being filmed dancing then his whole body was to be shown at all times, never just his feet or hands or head, never anything but the whole body.

Richard drops his knife. It hits the side of his plate quite hard.

Fascinating, Jen says nodding.

Hannah yawns out loud.

And Ruby Keeler, you know, the early tap dancer? Terence says.

No, Hannah says like a teenager, we don’t.

Keeler was the first really famous tap dancer, Terence says ignoring her. And when we see footage of her, dancing, these days, and we compare her to someone like Astaire, it’s easy to think she’s not very good, quite clumsy, because she’s so all over the place and clunky-looking. But in reality her dancing style came direct-descendant from the Lancashire Clog Dance. In fact it made Astaire’s possible. She was the first popularizer of the form.

How do you know stuff like these things? Hannah says.

I read them, Terence says. In books.

No, but
why
do you know them? Hannah says.

Why? Terence says.

I always think it’s so funny what people know and why they do, Hannah says.

Why does anybody know anything? Terence says.

I never know why anybody knows anything, Hannah says. But I’d have thought you would know about, you know, your own culture, before you knew other things about cultures like Lancashire and places like that, I mean.

Have you not met any or very many black people before or are you just living in a different universe? the child says.

Silence thuds down round the table.

No, Hannah says, I didn’t mean it like it sounds, like that. I was just surprised that he knew so much, knows so much about music and, and when his job is metal, and musicals.

All art aspires to the condition of music, Bernice says. That’s Walter Pater. All art aspires to the condition of musical. That’s Terence Bayoude.

Jen and Caroline and Hugo make knowing noises.

And I didn’t understand any of that last comment at all, Hannah says.

She looks desperate.

That was lovely, Jen, Bernice says. Thank you very much.

Miles, Jen says, there’s couscous as accompaniment to the tagine, and I can have a look in the fridge and see what will go with it, but it might be a bit haphazard, I hope you won’t mind. Or would you like me to make you an omelette?

Anything vegetarian will be really lovely, thank you, Jen, Miles says. Please don’t go out of your way for me.

I’m only concerned that I’ve still got enough eggs, Jen says. But please don’t let that concern you for a moment. Eric?

Jen and Eric stand up and start gathering plates. Then Eric comes back from the kitchen and fills everybody’s glass with red, except Mark’s, probably because Mark’s white glass is still full and it looks like he isn’t drinking. Mark can’t think how to ask, and then the moment when he could have asked is gone.

The internet, Hannah is saying. If I need to know anything. That’s what’s so great about being alive now. But if it was just me, on a desert island, with just myself. Sometimes I have this dream, I’ve had it loads of times actually, it keeps coming back, where I’m at school even though I’m too old to be at school—

Are you naked in it? Richard says.

Everybody laughs except Hannah.

—and all the kids are much younger than me, and the exam paper is put down in front of me, she says, and all the little kids start writing the answers, and I sit there and I look at it and my mind goes completely blank, like an empty space, like the empty blank page I know I have to fill, you know, cover, with things I don’t know, and I’m sitting there and it’s not just that I don’t know how to answer any of the things in the exam, it’s that I
don’t know anything.

She looks close to tears. Miles jogs her elbow gently.

The next time you have that dream, he says, and you’re sitting in front of that exam paper, tell yourself in your head that you
do
know. Sit at the desk and look at the paper and tell yourself about, uh, tell yourself you know—

A song, the child says.

Yes, a song, Miles says.

But I’m not musical, Hannah says crossing her arms and shaking her head. I haven’t a musical bone—

Yes, but you’ll know a song, there must be a song you like, Miles says.

I don’t know
any,
Hannah says.

What’s a song everybody knows? Miles says to Terence.

Everybody knows Somewhere Over The Rainbow, the child says.

Oh yeah, I know that one, Hannah says, from the film and everything.

Right, Miles says. When you’re in that exam room the next time, say to yourself, I’m all right, I know Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

But I don’t know anything
about
it, Hannah says. And if I look down at the exam paper, it’ll say, like, who wrote the rainbow song, and tell us everything you know about the rainbow song, and all I know is that it was from a film and I still won’t be able to answer anything right.

This is what we’ll do, Miles says. Terence is going to tell you three facts about that song. And the next time you have that dream, you’ll know three things about it and you’ll be able to instruct your subconscious to write them down.

Hannah sniffs, blows her nose.

I probably don’t even have a subconscious, she says.

Okay, Terence says. Three things about Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Uh. Right. It was written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, Arlen did the music and Harburg the lyric. There’s two things.

There’s no way I’ll be able to remember that when I’m asleep, I can hardly remember it right now when I’m wide awake! Hannah says.

Okay, Terence says. Okay—I know. The first two notes form an octave leap.

He sings them.

Fucking pansy, Richard says under his breath.

And the way they do that, Terence says, makes the word
somewhere
leap right into the sky, out of hopelessness to hope.

Hannah’s face fills with panic. She turns to Miles and shakes her head.

Something more anecdotal, Miles says to Terence.

Anecdotal, Terence says.

He widens his eyes.

What’s anecdotal? the child says.

Like when you tell a story, Terence says.

There’s that really good story about it, about the little dog that always runs away, the child says.

Yes, Terence says. Yes. Good one, Brooke. So. Listen. You know the middle bit of the song? The bit about some day I’ll wish upon a star?

He hums it. De da de da de da de da.

Hannah nods.

Terence tells her that Harold Arlen, the man who wrote the tune, had written the first part, the over the rainbow part, but couldn’t think of a melody to link each verse, or to act like a bridge between them.

And Arlen had this little dog, Terence says, like a fox terrier or that kind of dog, who was quite badly behaved and kept running away and getting lost.

His name was Pan, the child says.

So, there was Harold Arlen, Terence says, standing there and rubbing his forehead, worried, one minute saying, I can’t think what to do with this tune, then the next minute whistling for that little dog to come back—

Terence whistles the tune of the some-day-I’ll-wish-upon-a-star part of the tune exactly like he is whistling for a little dog to come back.

Everybody at the table laughs out loud, even Richard.

I won’t ever forget that! Hannah says. That’s brilliant! Tell me another one like that.

Okay, Terence says. Brooksie. What else? Something else.

The man who, when they were boys, sat next to the other boy in school because of the alphabet, the child says.

Yep, Terence says. Yip.

Yep yip! the child says. Yip yip yooray!

She claps her hands above her head. Bernice laughs.

Yip Harburg, Terence says. The man who wrote the words. He wrote the words to so many songs we all just know, just like that. He was born a poor Jewish kid in New York, his parents were sweatshop workers, and he grew up in a house where he and his sister slept on chairs pushed together at night, they were so poor.