Rebecca Lim - Mercy

‘You’re so two-faced,’ Tiffany hisses angrily, before turning a cold shoulder on me.

Conditions in the rehearsal space are almost as arctic, and the prospect of having to enter this room and start all over again the following Monday makes even me groan out loud.

Mr Masson continues, deliberately upbeat. ‘Today, Miss Dustin and I will take the general chorus ladies — choirs one and two — in the assembly hall.’ The

‘ladies’ in question roll their eyes and bitch loudly among themselves. ‘Mr Barry and Miss Fellows will take the general chorus men in the seniors’ rec room.’

‘Over my dead body!’ snorts one wag loudly, to accompanying laughter.

‘ I solisti,’ Mr Masson says in a hammy Italian accent, ignoring the joker with a fixed smile, ‘will have some special one-on-one time with Mr Stenborg. He’s had a few good ideas about how to sharpen up the boys’ entry into Figure 30. You have to admit it’s still pretty sloppy. I’ve asked him to work on individual entries and exits with each of you.’

‘Spencer, Spencer, Spencer,’ someone interjects, to more laughter.

I scan the room and pick out Spencer easily in the thin line-up of tenors. He’s blushing a fiery red as usual, and dressed again like a mail-order-catalogue model, which does him no favours.

Mr Masson frowns. ‘Now, now, we’re not singling out anybody for punishment here. From where I’m standing, everyone could use a little work. Carmen excepted, of course.’ He beams again my way when he says this, the stupid idiot, and plenty of people begin to whisper, craning their necks to see my reaction.

‘She’s been note perfect and unimpeachable since she “rediscovered” her groove,’ he says, ‘which is more than I can say about the rest of you.’ His tone is light, to keep the sting out of his words, but Tiffany flushes an unbecoming maroon, because, let’s face it, she’s been right on the money, too. Only no one’s noticed lately, and that’s got to be a first for her.

‘Crush alert,’ someone hisses maliciously behind me, and people around me roll their eyes and laugh.

The expression on my face doesn’t change. I don’t even turn around. Because, unlike the real Carmen, I don’t care what people think.

‘Soloists, follow Paul, if you please,’ Gerard Masson finishes. He stumbles slightly against the microphone as he steps away from the conductor’s podium, but only I seem to notice it.

Tiffany’s the first to her feet, hugging her music to her chest and chatting animatedly to Paul Stenborg’s clean, Nordic profile before the rest of us have even gathered our things. The seven of us follow the handsome choirmaster into the same room the sopranos occupied the day before, and draw up seats close around the piano — Tiffany front and centre as usual; me out on the margin, nearest the door; Spencer settling in shyly beside me.

He raises his eyebrows wordlessly as if to say: Here we go again. I return the gesture.

I’ll have to get to Gerard Masson during one of my ‘special’ rehearsals. It will almost be worth being stuck in a practice room with the guy just to know for sure.

‘Now, isn’t this cosy?’ says Paul Stenborg gravely, but with a twinkle in his eyes, as he plays a loud piano chord with a flourish and turns half-around on the piano stool to face us, sunlight glinting off his steel frames, his artfully tousled hair.

He works patiently on the entry to Figure 30 with the boys, drilling them on their individual weaknesses, before attending to the handful of entries that are led off by a bass or an alto.

‘ Lumen accende sensibus,’ — kindle our senses with light — he sings at one point, shadowing Delia note for note during a difficult passage around Figure 33.

I sit straighter in astonishment. His voice is like liquid amber — light, pure, supple. Itself wholly remarkable and more beautiful by far than Delia’s pedestrian instrument.

A countertenor’s voice, an angel’s voice, a complete show stopper. The man is a mystery box. Clearly, more than just great window dressing. I wonder again how he could be content with all … this.

‘ Amorem cordibus,’ he corrects Spencer gently a moment later, rolling his R s extravagantly. ‘Your vowels are far too flat. This is a romance language, Spencer Grady. The mother of all romance languages. The phrase is literally begging you to put some heart into it.’ He laughs at his little joke. Only I get it.

Strangely, Paul does not look my way all morning.

Instead, he’s incredibly attentive to Tiffany, the other girls; at times, he’s even almost kind to Spencer, who hardly wriggles in the seat beside me. It’s like I’m invisible again. Is he angry with me? I can’t catch and hold Paul’s gaze, and I’m intrigued, almost piqued.

Maybe he means for me to be. Whatever, I’m happy to play along. It’s giving me time to think. I don’t enjoy being the centre of attention, never have. Though I can handle it. There’s a distinct difference.

‘Time’s almost up, children,’ Paul says eventually, swinging across the back of the piano seat to face us.

‘I know that some of you are interested in pursuing a career on the stage beyond high school, and are more than competent to do so …’ He looks directly at Tiffany and Delia and smiles. And the girls — cast-iron bitches both — actually blush with pleasure. ‘So since that’s the case,’ he adds, turning back to face the keyboard, ‘let’s see how much of our good work this morning has actually sunk in. I’m going to take it from the top and you’re really going to have to keep up. The weak will fall by the wayside,’ he warns with a soft laugh. ‘And there will be no mercy.’ I flinch at the word.

Flinch again as Paul strikes the first chord of the piano accompaniment. He’s true to his promise, working his way through the piece at a flying tempo, only stopping occasionally to beat in Tiffany, Delia, Spencer, the other two boys, with his right hand while his left continues to dance across the keyboard.

He doesn’t extend me the same courtesy, merely barking ‘Figure 7’, ‘Figure 10’, ‘Figure 12’ and so forth whenever a phrase begins with my part, the First Soprano. There is no let-up, no time to breathe, and even I’m being taxed to my limits.

‘Good,’ he mutters from time to time, head bent over the keyboard. ‘Good.’ It’s Mahler on speed. And it’s great that I know the music sideways, because I need to. The others — save for Tiffany, who sees only what she wants to see, hears only what she wants to hear — follow our interplay with uneasy awe, turn the pages furiously, struggle to keep time, maintain focus, especially in the places where I am absent from the score.

Near the end, near my last crazed Gloria around Figure 91, even Tiffany’s about to break down, has a suspicious sheen in her eyes as Paul roars at her, ‘Double forte, girl. This is no time to run out of steam. Do that in concert at Carnegie Hall and you — will — never —work — again.’ The final Patri — Father — rips through the room, all nine bars of it, and when we’re done, breathing heavily like we’ve just run the race of our lives, we look at each other in amazement. Spencer wipes his mouth with the back of one pudgy hand, Tiffany’s face is high with colour and Delia is audibly puffing.

‘Now that’s a rehearsal,’ Paul grins, slamming his score shut with satisfaction. ‘Let’s head back to the others now and give them hell.’ A little shakily, we rise from our seats, clutching our music. I’m about to lead everyone from the room when Paul says quietly, almost as an afterthought, the question in danger of being lost in the scrape of chairs being pushed back, ‘Carmen? A word. Walk with me?’ Tiffany shoots me a hard look and sweeps out of the room, Delia at her side, Spencer glances back at me and Paul a little uncertainly as we trail the group back to the assembly hall.