Beth JellicoeAMARISSometimes after I leave choir in the evenings, I feel like I'm hearing bells. I don't mean I actually hear them in my head, like, I mean I feel them in my body: a deep vibration, radiating out of my heart and up into my ears. If I concentrate, I can almost hear it: like when you open your window, a storm's coming, you think you can hear the wind in the treetops all the way across the park, even if really it's just a train far away. And like the wind rattling the windowpanes, and whistling down the chimney, when I get this way every little nerve and bone in me starts to tremble. Bells? …Bells! OK so what it's like, it opens something in me. It's like the Angelus being struck on Christmas morning in the middle of a double wedding, while all the tills of the town go crazy – ting, ting, ting. It's like standing right next to the tubular bells in the music room while the boys swing them around for a joke, a lark. You can feel the vibration of the clang, the way it opens up the air, before you even hear a thing. The bells are so big, they deafen you. It's the poem about the moth perched on a great big temple bell – is it a moth, or a butterfly? No, it's a moth, light and fluffy. When I walk to the station after choir, I feel like the moth, with its delicate little legs perched right up against the skin of the bell. The way I imagine it, there's still a little music left inside the bell, the tongue of it still swinging oh so slowly. An infinitesimal bit of music, enough to make your fingernail buzz if you pressed it to the bell. To the moth, the whole world is caught up in an earthquake. For ages, I thought it was cathedral choir that made me feel that way. The slant of the music. The height and glamour of it. The living-museum dead-aliveness of it.
"Private school girls have funny names," I told my parents when I joined the choir. "I don't know what their mums are all thinking. There's Clementine Aguilar. Beatrice Klemperer-Chappell. Demi Shaw – it's actually short for Demetria. Demetria's a Catholic, she goes to Good Shepherd, but she's in the choir anyway, I don't know why. Carol-Anne Marlow, Pippa Kendall." My mother snorted with laughter at the names. But, "Go on," said my dad. "Who else?" "Nigella," I said, "I don't know her last name -" "Nigella!" howled my mother. "Joyce Chen. Ruth Williams. Joy Farmer," I said. "That's not too unusual. Amaris, she's got a nice classical name, Amaris Hobbs." "God," said my dad. "Amaris Hobbs! Imagine that!" "Amaris Hobbs is a very private school name," I said. "It's so English, cathedral choir, private school, tea on the lawn. They're in their own little world, those girls. You know?" My mum said, "Do you think you can tell that someone goes to private school just by their name?" I said private school names had a particular colour, texture and musicality. Said the texture of private school names was silkier. The rhythm of them is so bold. Beatrice Klemperer-Chappell. Ruth Williams. Amaris Hobbs. My parents looked at each other. "You're so clever," my dad said.
Tonight we are singing Suscepit Israel, a cappella. It is the second run-through, but Charles expects us all to have memorised it already, he wants us to sing it as the introit on Sunday morning. I always worry about a cappella, because what if you come in on the wrong note and then never find your place again? There's everyone else, knowing what to sing, and there's you. There is nowhere to hide in this piece. It's so taut. Like haiku. Charles interrupts my reverie to ask me a question: "Do you know what suscepit Israel puerum suum means?" Everyone stirs and doesn't say anything. I look at my paper. Back at Charles. Charles knows I don't study Latin. Therefore he must know that I don't know what suscepit Israel puerum suum means. "Think about the word suscepit," he says in his sing-song voice. "What does the word suscepit sound similar to? What does it remind you of? What does it sound like?" The problem is with questions like that is that I do not think I think like other people do. I know that the answer he wants is 'suscepit sounds like susceptible' which means it has something to do with being gullible. I know that puerum is like puerile which is childish/immature, and Israel is the Jewish people. But I can't connect what the words might mean together. All I can really think is that Latin words have a heavy denseness about them. They are like stuffed birds in a museum I went to with my parents once, birds of different colours all trapped in a glass case. They were caught and stuffed in the Victorian era, and the workers who stuffed them didn't know where the birds were from or how they would stand or sit, so they put a lot of birds from different climates together in a glass case. If you touch a taxidermied bird it feels dry, and at the same time tense, as if at any moment it might go pft and turn to dust under your finger. That's how it feels to me. Latin, I mean. I also think suscepit sounds like a tall thin woman in white holding a sceptre, its texture is tense and dry like the stuffed bird. But that's not the answer Charles is looking for. "I do need an answer, I'm afraid," he says. I say, "Is it 'Israel has been saved?'" "No," says Charles, "no, no, um, I don't think you know the answer, I'm afraid. It's actually, er, Amaris, you study Latin. Would you enlighten her, please?" Beatrice snickers. I hear someone sigh, behind me. I am sure it's Ruth, who has never liked me since I accidentally spilled boiling water on her. Amaris Hobbs stirs slightly. She says, "It means God has protected the Jewish people." "Absolutely," says Charles, " suscepit Israel puerum suum – he has taken – suscepit Israel - under his protection, puerum suum, his child or boy, God has taken his child Israel under his protection, and let's stop wasting our time, shall we, and run through those opening bars again, make sure we all come in absolutely together -" I look at my paper, then across the table, and I catch Amaris's classically educated eye. She grins at me sympathetically. For some reason it makes me feel worse. The way that Amaris lifts up one corner of her mouth when she smiles, and the fact that she has too many teeth for her mouth, and her teeth are so large, so white! She's so strange, like a creature from another world, with her bony face and overlarge teeth and big eyes. There's the way she waves her arms when she's talking, and when she's not talking her long fingers play air-piano. She's just so peculiar. I don't know what it does to me, the oddness of her. It makes me feel funny. Amaris's dad teaches classics at the university. Her mother is in MENSA. I start singing but I'm prickling with irritation. At Charles's question. Amaris's smile. The fact that it takes less words to say something in Latin than it does to explain it in English. Is it my fault I don't learn Latin in school? We do French. And German. And we have a cover teacher who's been telling us how to flirt in Spanish. Amaris said once that in two years' time she's going to go for an Oxford scholarship. Choral scholarship. I don't even know how that works. My parents aren't geniuses. They're a teacher and a librarian. I want to take my irritation out on someone, but I don't have time to work myself up into a mood, because we have to finish off Suscepit, run through tonight's Magnificat and then go out to practise in the cathedral proper, joining the men's choir in the choir stalls. In all the rush of collecting up music and walking out, I forget what I'm upset about. …But when we're in the stalls, Charles realises he's got the wrong music for the Magnificat, and he sends the organist's assistant to fetch it, and while we're waiting he decides to start by practising Weelkes's Alleluia, I heard a voice. After we all sing it, our side of the choir sits back and cantoris sings their part separately, so I get two minutes to look critically at Amaris and wonder why or if I hate her. ("Cantoris, um, make sure you pronounce the words clearly - 'I heard a voice, as of strong thunderings.'") I glance over at Joyce, who is fiddling with her phone. Beatrice and Ruth are whispering about something and scribbling notes to each other; they keep trying not to look at John, the blonde tenor. I mentally nicknamed him the angel because when the sunlight shines down from the window, it lights up his hair, it's quite nice. Beatrice and Ruth have had a thing for John for ages, and once they asked me if there was anyone I had a thing for. And I said nobody. At the time I thought I might have a thing about Robbie, the organist's assistant. Not that he's particularly good looking. He just always looks put upon, like he needs a nap, running about with bundles of music under his arm and his hair flying about everywhere. I think that's quite sweet. It makes you want to look after him, as he's always being ordered about and he spends hours practising by himself. He always looks like he needs someone to make him a cup of tea. He also has quite muscly arms and long fingers, which I think is a must for a piano player. But then one day I went to meet my friend outside the conservatoire, and I saw Robbie on his way in the doors carrying music under his arm, and I said, "Oh, that's Robbie." And she looked at me and said "Is that the bloke from your choir? The one you like? God, look at him!" And she went right after him and introduced herself as my friend, and he didn't remember who I was. It was so embarrassing that I put all thoughts about Robbie to one side then and there. I don't want to think about boys right now because I have so much to do. "Make sure your phrasing is correct on alleluia, please." "Any particular alleluia?" says Amaris politely. "All of them, please. I don't want to hear any al-lay-loooo-ya. We're not in a gospel choir," says Charles. Everyone looks at him quizzically and Ruth Williams laughs. Someone mutters "Classic.") Amaris is half-smiling and playing air piano on the top of the stall, moving her hand back and forth. Maybe she doesn't even realise she's doing it. Perhaps it's second nature to some people to play air piano while they're talking or thinking. I rest my foot on the hassock, sliding it in and out of its mildly uncomfortable black shoe, and wonder about Amaris. She's quite…arrogant, isn't she? Always volunteering for solos. Always asking Charles questions, intelligent private-school questions, and answering his questions correctly when he appeals to her. When she's right she gives a satisfied little nod, and when she's wrong she says politely, "Thank you for correcting me." She always acts in this way I guess you could describe as leaderly or noble or maybe just adult, as if she's just decided to show up and assist Charles with choir. I don't think I can stand her. I think I'm on my period. I don't think I like Amaris at all. Oxford scholarship! Suscepit Israel puerum suum. Air piano. Hm.
"I'm going to leave choir," I told my parents after dinner that evening, when we were watching Midnight in Paris on the big TV. "I think." My mum paused the film on Owen Wilson's face, looked at me skeptically and said, "You think? " I said something about how it was too much, with my schoolwork and everything. "But choir is so good for you," said Dad. "And you know how much you love music," said my mum. "It's such a good opportunity for you. You don't get the chance to do those kind of things round here." "Not since they closed the community centre," my dad agreed. "But even then," my mum said. "Remember that choir they had at the community centre? Free choir? It was painful They were all tone deaf." They started talking about the time they went to a community youth concert at the library. It was all karaoke, which my mum hates, and boys with guitars singing covers out of tune, which gives my dad a migraine. "You get standards, with a real choir," said my dad. "Such a good opportunity," said my mum, circling back round with the subject. "Don't you like it? I thought you loved your choir." I shifted uncomfortably at the 'your'. Something about it sounded so hopeful, but at the same time it irritated me deeply. Did she think I ran the choir or something? I said, "There's too many snobby private school girls. It's not like real life." "Well, we're not in the middle of term yet," said my mum. "If you leave now you'll put everyone in the lurch, won't you? You can't leave now. Wait till the end of term." "Mum…" "Well, you don't want to leave the music, do you? Don't you like the music?" That's the problem. Whenever I've wanted to leave this year, the music has drawn me back again. Like when the voices soar at the end of Alleluia, I heard a voice. And the way they intertwine. And the way the music finds a thousand different ways to say Alleluia and make it sound new. I don't think I can leave it just yet. I just don't see why the music has to be packaged in with uncomfortable shoes and private school names, and Amaris who I think I might hate because she plays air piano with her fingers and she's going to get an Oxford scholarship… * * * I sustain my dislike for Amaris. Like in the poem, I water my dislike and it grows right on up. I don't speak to her. I try not to look at her in choir. (Freak.) (Piano fingers.) I refuse to answer Charles's questions in more than a monosyllable, even when he snaps at me. In choir, I say absolutely nothing most of the time. I maintain a solid defensive silence. Whenever we accidentally catch each other's eye at rehearsal, I shrug non-committally or look away. Every time I see her, I remind myself of the suscepit Israel puerum suum question. I don't know exactly what the resentment is, whether it's about Amaris or Latin or Charles, but it's a lovely resentment - like a little fat baby inside me. Makes me feel good, to feed and grow it. By extension of my dislike for Amaris, I've started to dislike Latin as well. I dislike it so much that I go through a list of phrases online, looking for things to be annoyed about. What are "useful" Latin phrases? Latin is not useful. It's dead. Loquerisne Latine? Ubi sunt loca secreta? Valeo. It's a language for time travellers. I rebel against the deadness of it. I hate its usefulness, how it always knows best. I hate that Charles is always banging on about how such and such a word comes from Latin. I complain to my mum that I hate Latin and she laughs and says, "When have you ever had cause to use it?" "I don't," I said, "but we sing it in choir, and Charles is always talking about it. I hate Latin. It's so up itself." "Don't say up itself," said my mum, "that's not a nice expression." It's Sunday and I arrive early for rehearsal before the service. Amaris is the only one there, apart from Robbie. She's sitting on the table in the corner where everyone usually throws their coats, and she's reading The Odyssey. I get myself a drink of hot water without saying anything, or offering her a drink. I sip it. It burns my tongue, but I keep on sipping it anyway. I don't look at Amaris, or the way she's slouching and fiddling with the corner of the pages. I don't think about The Odyssey, which my parents bought a copy of and neither of them have ever read. (I haven't read it either.) I get out the only book in my bag, which is the English textbook, and I flip through it and think about: William Blake, lyrical ballads, The Passionate Shepherd and Songs of Innocence. I realise I've been staring at the same poem for a minute, "The Poison Tree", so I get a pencil out and make a note in the margin. Some rubbish about the rhyme scheme. I hear Amaris come over. She sits at the table opposite me and asks how I am, I say fine without looking up. "Are you sure?" she says. "I thought you weren't well or something." "No, I'm fine," I say, still without looking up. "You've been awfully quiet." I don't say anything. Now what annoys me is, Amaris doesn't take that as a hint that I don't want to talk to her. She just sits there and waits for a reply. I'm not sure what to say because I think she might be expecting the truth, and how do you tell someone you hate them because they play air piano and they study Latin and they look, well, a bit strange, a bit funny? So I figure it's not acceptable to say that so I'd have to turn it around somehow, and so I look up and open my mouth, and the only thing I can think to say is, "I like that thing you always do with your fingers." "What thing?" she says, looking delighted. "The air piano thing." She laughs and says, "Oh, thank you, yes. Everyone in my family has flappy hands – my parents, my brother -" What a weird way to put it, but it's sort of perfect. Flappy hands. Like birds on the end of your arms, flying about, with a life of their own - alive alive-oh. She said, "It's nice that you said that. I'm rather self-conscious about it, actually." "About your hands?" I say, feeling bad to be playing along all nicey-nice. I feel awful, as Amaris would put it. "Well, yes," she said. "Aren't you?" And I just stared at her, because she'd noticed. I'd been trying so hard to keep it under control at choir, keep my hands still whenever I talked to anyone – at school, too, obviously - I thought I'd had it under control. Just another weird habit to be brushed aside, grown out of and forgotten about. Like collecting toy ponies. Used to do that. Don't do that any more. And then Robbie came back in, and so did Carol-Anne, and it was Carol-Anne's birthday and Amaris made a fuss of her, and we ended up all sitting round the table laughing. It was all right. At the same time I didn't really notice what anyone was saying. I kept looking at my hands, then back at Amaris. I mean, at home it's all right. I can do anything I want with my hands, when I'm home. My parents have never really said anything about it, because they both talk with their hands too. We've never discussed it. It's just another weird family thing. It's just ever since the first day I started secondary school, I noticed people would look at my hands when I was talking. Then at me. They said "Why do you wave your hands around so much?" And so I made a list of things I needed to get rid of, and at the top of the list was: Jazz Hands. But Amaris had noticed it. I must have waved my hands around a bit, or played with my fingers without realising, I do that sometimes. She'd somehow seen that I was like her.
I don't understand why I always make myself hate people. Sometimes it seems so much easier to hate people than actually try with them, because I guess when you hate someone you wall them off. You can think anything about someone who's on the other side of a wall. They won't hear you, they can't hurt you that way. You can't embarrass yourself, when you hate someone. I think it's quite noble. Being able to hate someone, I mean. Being able to sustain it. I really tried to hate Amaris after that. Like, how dare she notice? How dare she say "Aren't you?" like I was self-conscious about my hands? If she was self-conscious about her hands she wasn't showing it, was she? – waving them around, the way she did. More like showing them off. More like her hands were these beautiful bright flamingos, flapping about. And the rings on them, too, like she wanted to draw attention to the movement. I'm nothing like you, I thought later that week, staring over at the side of Amaris's face during rehearsal. I'm absolutely nothing like you. I was thinking it so hard, I didn't notice Charles calling me. "Excuse me," he said, "why don't you sight-read this phrase for us? Show the younger ones how it should be done." I didn't take it in. He wanted me to sight-read? I looked at the phrase on the notice board. A-A-E-C-D. I knew what the notes were, but I can't sing them on sight. I need an instrument. "Um…" "Go on," said Charles. "Sight read it, if you please." I said nothing. Looked at my paper. Avoided his gaze, and Amaris's. I knew she would look agonised. She always did. "Come on," said Charles, with an edge of irritation in his voice. "Can't you sing on sight? You've been in the choir for nearly a year. Come on!" His voice was rising, becoming high-pitched. There was silence while everyone glanced between me and Charles, wondering what would happen. I felt heat rise to my cheeks. I wanted to put the folder down, I wanted to storm out, I wanted to flip a chair or throw it in Charles's smug Latin-learned classically educated face. But I didn't. I don't know why, I just didn't. I pressed my lips together. I stayed silent, looking Charles in the eye. There was a protracted pause. It felt protracted, like it was being measured out to the millisecond with a sharp instrument. "Right," he said at last, and asked Joyce instead. The room breathed a sigh of relief then, but people kept glancing at me like I'd done something terrible. And afterwards Charles took me to one side and asked for a word. He said things like "What is happening to you?" and "Your attitude," and "Your behaviour," and said, "Er, er, completely unacceptable." And I just nodded and didn't say anything. It only lasted a minute, but it felt longer. He said if it carried on he'd call my parents. Then he let me go.
I've started to arrive early, every Sunday. It's been happening for the last three weeks. I don't understand why, but it feels like I've got to be early, otherwise how will I get to see Amaris? Last week she was talking to me about the Odyssey and all I could do was watch her hands move and think how free, easy, elegant the movement was. I even wrote a haiku on the train about hands being like instruments. I don't know what's happening to me. Today the first thing she said was "Look, I wanted to ask you about something," and I said, "Charles?" "Yes," she said, "the thing is with him, he doesn't, um, he doesn't really understand anybody who's not like him. I'm afraid because you haven't been to private school, he's a bit…you know." "I know," I said. "Well," said Amaris, "what are you going to do?" "Don't know," I said. For some reason, I didn't tell her I was planning to leave at the end of term. "Let me help with your sight singing," said Amaris. She sat me at the piano, put a piece of sheet music in front of me, and said, "Play a C, sing a C." I hit a C, and sang it. "Now sing it without music." I did. "Try singing a C scale without music." I did. She said, "Your tone is excellent," and her hand did a little spidery thing that made my fingers twitch. I think my fingers wanted to copy hers. I said, "It's just putting the notes in a sequence I can't do." She rested her elbow on top of the piano, and her hand did an odd thing, thumb tapping finger, like it was miming a hungry bird. "Perhaps it's just confidence," she said. "The more you show confidence, the more Charles will think you have potential." She went on talking, but I was watching her eyes and hands so when she paused, expecting a reply, I stood up and said, "The thing is, I'm leaving choir at the end of term anyway. So -" A look of disappointment crossed Amaris's face. "Oh, gosh," she said, "don't let Charles scare you away." "I'm not scared!" "So why are you leaving?" "I don't know," I said, opening my hands out. "I just want to." "You want to? That's not a reason!" said Amaris. I said, "It's all the Latin. And..." I rested my elbow on top of the piano with my palm up and my fingers, without being prompted, did a little wave. Like a sea anemone. Amaris saw it, and laughed, and flicked all her fingers up. And since then we keep doing this thing in choir where we look over at each other and she waggles her fingers or flicks them up, and I do the same thing. Nobody else notices, not even Charles, not even Joyce who sits next to me. And if they do, I don't mind, because they wouldn't understand. It is like a secret. Sea-anemones rippling their tentacles, blossoming and closing, blossoming and closing. Two people in separate towers, waving flags at each other. Two trees in a park, waving our branches in the same wind. I guess what we might have is a common language, a living one, a language that is more hand gestures and expressions than words. We're in our own silent play and we understand each other perfectly, even if the audience does not.
I've been putting it off all term, but tomorrow I'm going to do it. After choir I'm going to catch her on her own, maybe as she's putting her coat on or walking out the door, or as she's putting her music away, I might even take her to one side as she's chatting to Robbie. And I'll say, "Amaris, do you want to see a film with me?" Or I'll say, "Amaris, do you want to get a coffee?" Even though coffee involves more talking so it might be awkward, but I think it will be okay. And we'll go out and talk and it won't matter that her parents are geniuses and mine are not, or that she goes to private school and I don't, because our hands will be flying together like alive birds, or trapeze artists going loop-the-loop at a million miles a minute. Because it's Amaris evensong or noon, Amaris late or early, and I can't believe I didn't realise before that it was always Amaris who the bells were ringing for.
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