WORTHY OF AN OPERA
This story is fully based on real life events. None of it is made up.
I'd finished my degree and my teacher-training, and I was 23, a professional teacher. Today was a Saturday morning, and I walked down to the nearest launderette with a bundle of clothes for washing. The first time I used one of those machines, in my innocence I cheerfully put everything in at once, including my rather nice red sweater. I only realised there was a problem when I noticed that the water in the machine had become very red, and so did all the other clothes when I managed to stop it. Idiot!
Anyway, I was always very careful after that, making sure that nothing smuggled itself in that shouldn't be there. I bent double as I put handfuls in the machine, one after the other. As I stood up, I was poked in the back, and a woman's voice said 'It is you! I thought I recognised you from behind.' When I turned round, I was delighted to see it was Olive -- she was an old friend, who had been a couple of years behind me at school, and our families had known each other. She'd come to the same university as me, and was living with Charlie, her boy-friend, in their final year. I hadn't seen her for some time.
Once she'd put her own bundle of clothes in another machine we went off for a coffee. 'I've been wondering how to find you,' she said. 'We're doing our next opera, and I want you to be in it.' I was surprised. l pointed out that yes, I could sing, but it was choral, or individual folk, or jazz or rock, not opera. She laughed. 'No', she said. 'It's a non-singing part.'
'Oh.' I wasn't sure of what I thought about that. 'So -- what's the opera?'
'Pretty straightforward', she said, 'you'll be the devil, the Evil One, The Black Huntsman. Not a big part but a crucial one, and very appropriate for you...' She smiled at me and patted my cheek. So of course I said yes, she told me the time frame, the date of performance, and off we went for the next six months of rehearsal, learning my part, getting the gear I was to wear and so on and so on. And eventually meeting the rest of the cast.
The week of the opera performance was successful and indeed a hit. Every evening there was a decent audience, with the most tickets bought for the last day on Saturday. In the actual week of performance I didn't wander around, or hang out in the Green Room waiting to be called. I sat in the wings and waited for my shocking appearance with music blaring, grim high-lighting illuminating my devilish dress, my wicked make-up and my voice cutting through like a sharp saw as I counted out the evil bullets that were to be the damnation of the hero.
Enough of that. The story I'm telling only really got going during the after-performance party. The main people I had personally been involved with in the last six months were, mainly of course Olive and Charlie, young Rachel, who was a student at the Arts College with her skills at dealing with my costume and make-up, and was very, very attractive, and Rob, who was current President of the opera club, and his wife Meg. I quite fancied Rachel, but she was a bit young for me. As for Rob, he was socially rather awkward, and obviously thought he was very important, though he was the only one who thought that. There were some other people I'd got to know during the six months because they were around during my visible and audible appearances in rehearsal. The post-final show party was on the Sunday after the last concert. So all of us -- something like fifty-odd people -- packed into the house. There were drinks and nibbles, and people were high, still thrilled at the opera and having been in it.
The first 'formal' event was an inevitable President's speech of gratitude from Rob. Everyone crowded in to the biggest room, and he was standing up on a little rostrum. Rob was not an engaging person, and the crowd didn't have high expectations. He was rather stiff, rarely seemed to be relaxed, didn't seem to have a sense of humour, and the closer you got to him, the more distant he seemed to want to be. His speech was inevitably dull, except that fortunately on this occasion he did manage to accurately produce a couple of word-pictures that amused people -- like the fact that one of the characters, who was a holy hermit dressed in a long brown gown with sandals on his bare feet, had drawn the attention of the cast onstage because he beat time as he sang, but did it with his naked big toe on the right foot going up and down in time. This had obviously been noticed by the choral cast, who managed with difficulty to stop themselves from laughing at it on stage, but made up for it now.
The Hermit, who hadn't realised what he had been doing, blushed red at the party, and the loud guffaws went well with Rob, who was delighted to have made people laugh. He also drew attention to the fact that Charlie, the hero, had knocked his musket off the chair it was leaning against during one performance. He had to pick it up quickly, because it would be needed soon to be fired. When he aimed the musket at the sky in character and pulled the trigger, a key moment which would condemn either him or a monster enemy to eternal damnation, the bang noise failed, and so Charlie had to rapidly improvise a gun noise. Which he did by making a noise like 'Kickhhh' in his throat, the least terrifying bang you could imagine. Another successful gag reminder from Rob, who by now was beside himself and convinced he was a small genius.
During the last bit of applause something very unexpected happened to me. I've mentioned Meg, Rob's wife. I hadn't noticed her or talked to her at all in the last six months, had no idea what she actually did, and I was surprised that they should be married at the early age they were -- they were both only 21. She was always very quiet, short, around five foot tall, and she rarely talked.. She turned out to be standing just in front of me in the crowd. Now, as Rob's talk came toward its end, and Rob was preening himself firstly about his big toe story and then about the un-bang of the musket, everyone standing up swayed with laughter and pleasure, and the whole crowd moved around laughing.
Meg, standing just in front of me, glanced round at me, then leaned back and wriggled her whole body from her shoulders down to her ankles against my chest and lower body. It was a sensationally unexpected moment. I jerked backwards, and apologised -- Ooh, sorry, er, er ... She turned her head again and smiled at me, and her eyes widened and seemed to twinkle, but she didn't say anything. After a moment, she turned her face away again.
I felt pretty guilty about it, and also rather worried that some people would think I had done something deliberately, and might have chucked me out. After all, I never felt I was one of the crowd, and I thought I wasn't regarded as a member of the gang. So I hastily withdrew from where I stood behind her. The packed room was splitting up anyway because the speech had finished, and people were making their way to food and drink in various other rooms. I looked behind me as I went. Meg was watching, and wrinkled her nose at me.
I couldn't make sense of what had just happened. Well, what exactly had happened? This person so dull, so quiet, so plain and invisible, very unattractive I thought, though I'd never really met her or even looked at her. Her party clothing today was a sort of thin cotton top and a long skirt down to the floor, both dull colours. What the hell had just happened? She was married. What was going on?
Come on, I thought to myself, let's forget it. I'm 23, and no longer part of university life, but I'm a working professional. So I shrugged, went off looking for food and drink, and ate and drank, and chatted to a few people I did know.
Another event started now, because someone had brought their guitar and was playing it and people were singing. The man was playing his guitar rather badly, and suddenly Olive appeared next to me, rolled her eyes and made a face, grabbed my wrist, and said 'Bloody hell, he's useless. Come on' She dragged me over to where he stood with his guitar, which was slightly out of tune. She tapped his upper arm and said 'Hey,' to him when he turned round, 'Let him have a go,' pointing at me. He looked at me and frowned, but after all she was the Big Cheese, and she obviously knew things about me, so he handed me the guitar.
He really wasn't very good, and Olive knew I happened to be a semi-professional guitarist. I played classical guitar with considerable skill, having studied with a genius local man who had himself very impressively studied with the great Segovia and was a friend of Julian Bream and John Williams, two other international greats. I also played guitar in folk groups, and electric guitar in jazz and dance bands. So I stepped forward, quickly tuned the instrument, performed, got everyone singing various popular stuff, and I sang them a couple of funny songs. After twenty minutes or so the owner of the guitar was scowling and was very pissed off at me. He demanded his guitar back and snatched it from me.
I shrugged, and thought I really ought to go. It was getting late, and I would have to get up at 7 am in the morning to get to school in time, so I started to make my way out, bidding farewell to those I knew. Half way there on my way to the front door, one of the older girls ran up to me, took my arm and dragged me over to Rachel -- remember her?
She pushed us together face to face and said 'Here you are, you two -- come on, and get on with it!! Have a good kiss.' Rather embarrassed, we did. I enjoyed it, but didn't know what I was supposed to do about it. It appeared that she had rather fancied me but was shy about approaching me. She was only 18, and we'd never really talked to each other.
We kissed and hugged a bit, and then separated. I turned round to go, thinking I wish I'd talked to her more, including how to make contact with her outside rehearsals, and then found myself face to face with Meg again. 'Don't I get a kiss?' Meg said loudly, flung her arms round my neck, pressed herself against me and pushed her lips at me. Her kiss was demanding, and I still didn't know what to do about it all. Was Rob going to appear and attack me, perhaps hitting me with the guitar? What was I supposed to say or do? Her arms tightened round my neck and she whispered in my ear 'I'm not wearing any knickers.'
