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And just like that, we were away again. The choir launched into the chorus, and the crowd joined in, most of them familiar with the lyrics thanks to this final song being a recent Internet sensation. We repeated the chorus three times, each increasing in vigour, the sopranos entering with a descant in the final round. All the while, feet were stamping, hands were clapping, people were singing, all culminating in one final, euphoric shout.
The applause was deafening. Children screamed, people whistled, and at that moment I knew what it felt like to be on a talent show. I bowed, Petra bowed, then we stepped away and let the choir take a bow.
“Thank you, everybody!” Petra shouted into the microphone, then leapt onto the stage and embraced a beetroot-coloured Cass. It turned into quite a group hug, and I hovered on the periphery for a moment until an arm reached out and hauled me right into it.
When the hug split apart, Petra jumped up and down on the stage with joy.
“Yes, ladies!” she shouted. “Yes, that was it! We did it! You’re all perfect; I’m so proud of you! Now go enjoy the rest of the fete!”
“Thanks, Petra! Thanks, Jean!” was heard from various voices, although they didn’t need telling twice as they hopped off the stage. Petra disappeared into the melee, too, leaving me to clear up the music, take down the music stand and hand out flyers to people who tapped me on the shoulder wanting to join. I did my very best imitation of Petra’s sunniness in my responses to them – like my ‘customer-service’ mode on steroids – and secured quite a few new attendees for the next term. Bonus, I thought.
By the time I’d cleared up and taken the piano in with the help of one of the teachers, the playground had largely emptied. The cake- and drink-stall ladies were busily boxing up the unsold food to take to the food bank, the game stalls were now nothing but a handful of folded-down tables, and all that remained of the coconut shy was one broken coconut, the water long since evaporated.
The crowd had moved down to the beach now. I could still hear them, and I could smell barbeques being lit and food cooking. It felt a lot later than three o’clock, and my stomach rumbled, reminding me that both Petra and I had missed lunch.
Right then, though, that didn’t matter. Because Petra came waltzing up to me, her face radiant and eyes dancing, and bumped her hip against mine.
“Good work, beautiful,” she said.
“You too,” I said, kissing her on the cheek without even thinking.
“Pugliesi’s for dinner? Once we’re done here?”
Pugliesi’s was the restaurant at which we’d celebrated several anniversaries and achievements over the years. It had been taken over by a new owner, and the prices had skyrocketed, so we didn’t go there any more. Today, however, their beautiful little Italianate courtyard seemed the perfect place to be.
“I’ll call ahead and then take the stuff home while you finish up here,” I said. “Six-thirty suit?”
Chapter Forty-Six
The good thing about Pugliesi’s was that while the prices had gone up, so had the quality. We arrived and were shown straight into the courtyard, which had had quite a transformation since we’d last been there pre-pandemic. Our table for two was tucked away in the corner with sheer curtains of wisteria all but enclosing it. The fragrance was sweet but not overwhelming, and Petra’s smiling, glowing face on a backdrop of light blue flowers was a balm to my internal pain. I found myself smiling back at her.
We ordered drinks – both opting for Prosecco quite without discussing it – and food. I ordered caponata, a Sicilian vegetable stew, and Petra ordered egg-yolk ravioli. We were silent for a while – but a good kind of silent, a comfortable kind of silent – until the Prosecco arrived, then we took hold of the flutes and clinked them together.
“To today,” Petra said. “One of the better days of the summer so far.”
“And to Cass,” I said, clinking again. “She really pulled off that solo. The whole thing was exactly as I’d imagined.”
“To the choir in general!” She smiled again. Another clink. “I didn’t like shouting at them, but it clearly worked. I won’t be making a habit of it, though.”
“To shouting,” I chuckled. Clink. “That age-old but best-avoided motivational mechanism.”
“To music,” Petra said, but she didn’t clink. Rather, she put down her glass. “One of the only reasons to keep going, you’d think.”
“What do you mean?” I said. That faraway look had come over her face again.
“I mean… there’s something about it, isn’t there? There’s something about music that… bypasses the brain, and all the shit that’s going on within it, and arrows straight to the heart.”
“That’s… poetic,” I said, taking a sip of Prosecco. My mouth was suddenly dry.
“Have you ever heard of Clive Wearing?”
I shook my head.
“Brilliant musician. Absolutely wonderful. Lost pretty much the entirety of his memory in the eighties because of a virus. But you know what did remain in there? Two things: his ability to play, read and understand music, and his love for his wife. He has one of the most extreme cases of amnesia known to man, with information hitting his brain and disappearing within a matter of seconds, and yet he can still play music. And play it perfectly. If he hits a set of repeat marks, he somehow knows where he is in the music, whether he’s already repeated the bars or not. When every other part of his short-term memory is entirely decimated, how can this be? I was thinking about it the other night when I couldn’t sleep, and the only reason I could come up with is that music is in a league of its own. It is unparalleled when it comes to being processed in the brain. It transcends vocabulary and reasoning. It has its own rules and processes. That’s how it cuts so deeply. And that’s why it takes someone special, someone with that… cognitive makeup, to truly understand it. Like you and I.”
Finally she took a sip of her drink, and stopped to breathe. I was stunned.
“How lucky we are, then, to have found each other,” I said quietly. Because I felt she needed reminding, and because Gemma had said something to that effect, which had stuck in my mind. “To be with each other, and to be able to create music like we do.”
