Betsy Burke - Performance Anxiety

Betsy Burke

“Burke’s debut is frothy fun and definitely worth a spin.”

—Booklist

“Pick up a copy of Lucy’s Launderette and give yourself time to enjoy it…you can’t help but fall in love with Lucy.”

—Writers Unlimited

“Burke’s story charms with a shower of witty and wry introspection. A tour de-light!”

—BookPage

was born in London, England, and grew up on the west coast of Canada. She has a Bachelor of Music from the University of Victoria. Among the many jobs on her résumé, she includes opera singer, dishwasher, guitar teacher, nurses’ assistant, charwoman, mural painter, salesclerk, puppeteer, English teacher and most recently, freelance translator. She currently lives in Italy. Her interests include art, music, books, rejection-slip origami, turning the planet into a garden rather than a toxic waste dump and trying to convince her four-year-old daughter that chocolate is not a breakfast food. She is also the author of a murder mystery set in Florence.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Sara and Salva and music-makers everywhere.

Thanks to Yule Heibel, Jean Grundy Fanelli, Katie, David and Susan Burke, my extended Canadian family, Helen Holubov and a very special thanks to Elizabeth Jennings and Kathryn Lye.

Vancouver

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

London

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Vancouver again.

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

The collision was all my fault.

It had happened on the day I was making my big move. I’d walked into the travel agency that gray Monday in early October and booked my ticket. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. Vancouver to London—Heathrow.

The woman at the agency is a big opera buff. She always asks me about my career progress and gives me special treatment. That day, she let me leave a deposit for one percent of the fare. There was no need to tell her that I still had to earn enough to pay for the rest of the ticket, because I knew I’d find the money somehow. How else could I justify all those menial jobs and forty-eight-hour workdays?

It felt so great when she printed out that little piece of paper, handed it to me and said, “Here’s your flight itinerary, Miranda. I sure do envy you. I love London at Christmas.”

I took a big breath and said to her, “This’ll be my first time there.”

Although it wouldn’t feel like it. I had Londontown.com on my browser. I could tell you what was going on in every concert hall and theater in the city. I could already imagine myself strolling through Covent Garden, or grabbing a bite to eat at Bad Bob’s or Café de Paris before the opera, maybe a Carmen, a Tosca, or a Nixon in China. I can even tell you what the weather is in London on any given day. That Monday, London had drizzle with the prospect of heavy rain.

“I’m going over for an important audition,” I said.

“Oh, wow. Really? Who’s it for?”

“The English National Opera. I got the letter a couple of days ago. I’ve got my time slot. It’s January the tenth at 3:30 p.m. In the theater itself. The brand-new beautiful renovated Coliseum.”

Peter Drake, the two-hundred-ton tenor who was singing Pinkerton in our current production of Madama Butterfly, was good buddies with everyone at the ENO, so I took advantage of his buddydom and asked him to get me an audition. And he did. Although Peter acts like a diva, he’s really a very nice man. His generosity is as vast as his costumes, which could probably double as pup tents in an emergency.

“How exciting,” said the travel agent, “and a little bit scary too, I’ll bet. What are you going to be singing?”

“Some Handel and some Mozart. And if they want to hear more, Rossini.”

“Oooo. Sounds good, Miranda.”

I pulled my pink cashmere scarf tighter around my throat. “Yeah. I’ll have my fingers crossed the whole way. Recycled airplane air can be hell on your high notes. And my pieces have a lot of high notes and runs. But I know it’s going to be fine. I have a great teacher and I’ve been doing a lot of performing lately to work up to it, and I even have a technique for handling the stage fright.”

“You do? What’s that?”

“Well, I learned it in my Centering Group. You see, you have to give the fear a shape. So mine’s a nag. An old, swayback, dirty black plug of a horse with a voice like Mr. Ed’s. And whenever it says, ‘Miranda Lyme, you untalented half-wit, what makes you think you can sing this piece? Who do you think you are anyway?’ I just try to push the old nag as far back in the theater as I can get it. Try to get it out through the exit doors. Although, sometimes, it’s right there on the stage with you, but as long as it still has its shape, and isn’t stepping on your toes or anything, the anxiety isn’t too bad.”

“That’s a new one on me.”

“It was on me, too. Four years ago.”

“Well, then…I really wish you luck, Miranda.”

I yelped, “No, you can’t say that. It’s bad luck to wish me luck.”

“Sorry.”

“In opera we say toi, toi. Or mille fois merde.”

“Toi, toi then. And mille fois merde.”

“Thanks. I’m so excited about being able to do the audition right there in that theater. There’s nothing like standing up on a real stage where the great stars have sung and letting it rip into that huge space. It’s the most incredible feeling. It’s electric. It’s better than sex.”

She opened her eyes wide. “Really? Maybe I should give it a try.”

We both laughed, then I said, “I’ll be back in a few weeks to get my ticket.”

I was tempted to stay and tell her about the other things that were taking me to London. Like my father, the baritone Sebastian Lyme. And Kurt Hancock, the conductor/composer who was suddenly cutting into my practice time.

Kurt hadn’t been part of my strategy, but when he’d strolled into the rehearsal hall two weeks earlier to conduct the Madama Butterfly, all the chorus women were immediately in heat.

To be honest, he wasn’t really my type. I prefer darker, heftier men. Kurt is slim, blond and blue-eyed. But there were women in that chorus ready to poison their families and run away with him, and I guess, in trying to figure out what it was about him that was making them all unhinge, I let myself be carried away by the Kurt Hancock psychosis, too.

After that Butterfly rehearsal, everybody went out to Mimi’s, a Gastown restaurant where opera singers often showcase their talent. The place is decorated in Chocolate Box Gothic with rich dark heavy drapes and tablecloths edged with a fatal amount of flounce. It’s a home away from home for the opera bunch. Sometimes the singing is really fantastic, the performances glow, and sometimes the singers leave you feeling that it might be more fun to be slapped in the face over and over with a fresh cod than to have to listen to their talent. But I guess it’s a question of how everybody’s feeling.

That night was a fresh-cod night at Mimi’s, my fellow chorus singers all trying too hard to impress Kurt.