Reggie and me, p.27
Reggie and Me, page 27
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Now take this and go away.’ The housemaster proffered a slip for the Friday session of hard labour.
Hamish took the words from Mr Huddle to heart and managed to coax a reasonable performance from the Iverson House choir, but Naidoo, Piper and all the others remained scarred by their initial trials with Hamish. Come voting day, his name was very far from their minds – perhaps fearing dictatorial consequences should angry Fraser be granted the honour of a blue pin-striped prefects’ suit.
At the Music noticeboard, a few Form IIIs shoved some Form Is out of the way in their quest to see if they too would be part of the Peers chorus, oblivious to Hamish – two years their senior.
There were two names of interest to Hamish on the cast list.
Robert Gumede was appended to the part of the Lord Chancellor, comic baritone. As far as Hamish was concerned, Gumede was the greatest comedian Trinity had ever schooled. Hamish was also fairly sure he’d never heard the fellow sing a note, baritone or otherwise.
Looking further down the list, Hamish’s heart leapt slightly as he saw his name next to the part of Strephon, an Arcadian Shepherd – also baritone.
The first rehearsal was set for the following Tuesday evening. Much to the disgust of the male cast, the first fortnight of practice was going to be an all-male affair. Mr Danhauser and Mr McAdams, who was to be the director, agreed that the music needed to be thoroughly learnt by the boys before they introduced oestrogen to the situation. The lead roles had extra rehearsals to learn their solos and Hamish set himself to the task with great gusto.
For Mr Danhauser, those first rehearsals were a trial. About half of the thirty boys in the men’s chorus were choristers used to singing in parts. The lack of singing experience was nevertheless a small part of Mr Danhauser’s troubles. In 1994, at an all-boys school, the terms ‘faggot’, ‘moffie’, ‘gayboy’, ‘pooftah’, ‘queer’ and myriad others were often applied to members of the choir or orchestra, and the rumour mill was quick to apply such to Mr Danhauser, as an unmarried Music master. Hamish himself was not above using these insulting epithets; he thought, like most of the school and despite his conversation with David Swart five years previously, that homosexuality was a sin, or at the very least not a good idea.
On the other hand, Mr Danhauser was Hamish’s favourite teacher by a country mile – enough for Hamish to pray in chapel on Wednesdays that if Mr Danhauser was gay, then might God make him less so.
Mr Danhauser was entirely used to facing a sea of covertly hostile faces. Any chorus member who felt he might misbehave at rehearsals because of some perceived ‘homosexual weakness’ on the part of the choirmaster was to be thoroughly disabused of the notion by the end of the first practice.
Mr Danhauser stood at six feet and one inch. He wasn’t muscled but was blessed of a naturally slim physique that, had he taken an interest in it, would have gained condition quickly. Such vanities did not bother him, however. He had a full head of slowly greying hair that was parted on the left and always neat. His smile was infectious, because when he was genuinely amused, his whole face joined his mouth in an expression of joy. He also had a vicious temper set off by a short fuse.
Dylan Crane made the first mistake.
The male cast filed in ones and twos into the Green Room for their first rehearsal. They were largely senior boys, because there were no unbroken voice parts. The fifteen tenors consisted of four actual tenors from the choir, five altos and a few surprisingly good non-choir members. The basses were all Form IVs and Matrics.
‘Good evening,’ said Mr Danhauser, walking around to the front of the piano.
The boys, seated on ancient wooden benches, stared up at him as he gave a pile of music to a young tenor and asked him to hand the scores around.
‘Many of you will not have sung in parts before and, much like in sports, you need to warm up your voices before you can sing properly.’ He sang the first exercise. ‘Me me me me me, ma ma ma ma ma, mo mo mo mo mo.’ Then he played a chord and, led by the choir boys in their ranks, the male cast began to sing their warm-up.
All except Dylan Crane, who found the whole thing rather ridiculous.
‘How would this fag know about sports practice?’ He whispered to Bradford York behind his music.
Mr Danhauser stopped playing. He stood up from the piano and pointed at Dylan Crane.
‘What is your name?’
‘Crane,’ mumbled the teenager with practised, oafish insolence.
‘Speak up,’ snapped Mr Danhauser, the corners of his mouth turning down.
Eager faces looked on – all the boys had seen teachers bested by classmates with quick, cheeky wits, their insolence dissolving the class into ripples of laughter.
‘Crane,’ said the boy, undeterred. ‘Dylan Crane.’
‘Why are you here, Crane?’ Mr Danhauser raised his voice.
The boy shrugged his shoulders.
‘Does that mean you don’t know?’
Dumb insolence.
The choirmaster’s temper snapped. ‘You will speak to me when I ask you a question!’ he roared, smashing his hand down on the piano lid. A clay vase of nasturtiums leapt up and then shattered on the floor.
Crane’s eyes widened.
‘WHY ARE YOU HERE?!’ bellowed the choirmaster.
‘To be in the play, I guess,’ the boy mumbled.
Mr Danhauser launched himself across the room, his face stopping inches from the teenager’s. Crane’s head smacked into the sill behind him as he tried to avoid the teacher.
‘If you have to GUESS why you are here, then I don’t want you here!’ Saliva flecked Crane’s startled face. ‘You can go and GUESS somewhere else. Get your arrogant foulness out of here and don’t you dare come back.’ The teacher remained with his face precisely where it was until Crane had no choice but to wriggle out from under Mr Danhauser’s nose.
Thus ended Dylan Crane’s brief foray into the world of operetta.
Mr Danhauser returned to the piano and straightened his tie. ‘Would anyone else like to say anything?’
‘Yoh!’ said Robert Gumede, who was reclining in a chair near the back of the room. ‘Not after that, sir. I think we’ll just sing, if you don’t mind.’
Mr Danhauser’s face cracked a slight smile and the rehearsal continued without incident.
An hour later, Mr McAdams arrived to check on progress. He cast his eye around the room as the boys groaned through the first Peers’ chorus.
‘Where is Crane?’ he asked as they burped the last note.
‘He’s guessing, sir,’ said Robert Gumede, quick as a flash.
‘What? What’s he guessing?’
‘That was the very question Mr Danhauser posed to Crane, sir, and the answer was unsatisfactory.’
After two weeks, Mr McAdams finally announced a combined rehearsal, along with a stern warning.
‘You will all behave like gentlemen next week,’ he began. ‘The girls are going to be much more nervous than you boys – coming here will be intimidating for them.’
Hamish thought this a strange pronouncement. Terrified at the thought of singing in front of girls, he considered that if they were more nervous than he, they must be virtually catatonic.
‘I expect you to act with chivalry, boys – as gentlemen to ladies.’ He said the word ‘ladies’ with an exaggerated ‘a’, a wistful look glazing his eyes. ‘You must remember to stand when the laaydees come into the room. Make sure they always have somewhere to sit and speak to them in a soothing manner – a laaydee loves to be soothed.’
The great day finally arrived. For the first time in most of their lives, the male cast was on time to a man – but for Hamish Fraser, who was delayed by a riding lesson. He walked into the hall ten minutes late, just as Mr McAdams launched into an in-depth treatise on the traditions of Gilbert and Sullivan. Mr Danhauser sat at the piano looking like he’d sooner be subjected to the rack than hear about the supposed virtues of Messrs G and S. So it was that the girls and boys were primed for a distraction.
Fraser provided it.
He opened the creaky hall door and strode in wearing a grubby pair of jodhpurs, spurs still fixed to his ankles. All eyes turned.
Mr McAdams turned to the latecomer.
‘Fraser! What the hell are you wearing? This is not a ballet, boy – it’s an operetta!’
The cast sniggered.
‘They’re my jodhpurs, sir,’ said Hamish.
The sniggers turned to laughter.
‘Your jodhpurs?’ McAdams stared. ‘Your jodhpurs? Have you taken to riding your horse to school? Is he tied up outside?’
Hamish opened his mouth to answer.
‘Not a word!’ snapped the headmaster. ‘There are no horses in G and S, so make sure you don’t pitch up looking like a jockey again.’
‘I’m not a jockey, sir. I’m a show jumper,’ replied Hamish as he scuttled to the stage and sat down next to Robert Gumede.
The boys and girls roared.
‘Fraser, you sure know how to make an entrance,’ Gumede whispered, shaking his head.
‘Right, now that Muis Roberts has joined us, we can continue …’ Mr McAdams resumed his speech. When his lengthy history of G and S at Trinity was complete, he picked up a leather-bound notebook and fountain pen. ‘Let us go through the plot of this great story and the players,’ he said with great excitement. ‘When your name is called, please stand up so that the rest of the cast can see who you are.’
As Mr McAdams droned on, Hamish’s concentration drifted towards the line of females sitting on the stage. The first girl he noticed was a waif with lank, mousy hair, hunched shoulders and a severe case of freckles. Hamish thought she looked like a frightened rabbit. The next one to catch his eye, and that of many others, was a young woman leaning back on her hands. Angelica Constable would be playing the part of Celia – a fairy. Her shapely legs were covered in black tights, her high-arched feet in red dancing shoes. She wore a pale-blue T-shirt and the way she sat accentuated her extravagant bust. Her red lips were slightly parted below a thin, small nose and wide hazel eyes, her hair a mass of strawberry-blonde curls that reached down to the stage behind her. As Hamish stared at the apparition, he heard his name.
‘Hamish Fraser – or Muis Roberts, the jockey over there – will be playing the part of Strephon, the Arcadian Shepherd. Stand up, Fraser.’
Hamish did as he was bid. He had failed to actually read the story or the plot of the comic opera, and while he had made a concerted effort to learn the music, he had no idea how the cast tied together. Mr McAdams’s next words were therefore something of a surprise.
‘Strephon is the son of Iolanthe and the Lord Chancellor – he is, consequently, half man and half fairy.’
‘We can see which half is fairy!’ blurted one of the older girls, and the rest of the cast laughed at him once again.
His humiliation thus complete, the rehearsal continued.
Eventually, some actual acting did happen. Iolanthe, Strephon’s mother, played by a girl with a balletic disposition and kind smile, was sitting in a bucolic meadow as her son entered for his opening number. Frolicking across the stage in his jodhpurs, Hamish made his entrance from stage right, playing a make-believe flute.
The audience of cast members’ giggling ceased as Strephon began to sing.
At seventeen-and-a-half years old, Hamish stood at five feet and five inches. Acne (not appalling, but unattractive) flecked his cheeks and his dark hair was unruly. But his voice had finally broken and the rich baritone that emanated from his bird-like frame was incongruous. The audience watched, captivated briefly by the straight-backed and powerful confidence with which Hamish embraced his effeminate role – a confidence that was entirely absent when he wasn’t performing.
‘Good morrow, good mother!’ he boomed.
For the next rehearsal, the cast was split into two groups: the lead parts went through their scenes with Mr McAdams on the stage, while the rapidly ageing Mr Danhauser took the chorus to the Green Room, where he set to banging the piano until every note was engraved into the brains of the peers and fairies.
It was during that Thursday night that Hamish was introduced to the woman who was to play Phyllis, and with whom he would have to feign a mutual love. On sighting her, Hamish knew this would require a Tony Award-winning performance.
In the scene, Phyllis emerges from stage left blowing on a flageolet and dancing lightly over to where her betrothed stares wistfully into the golden light, contemplating a life of marital bliss. So soft is her entrance that Strephon is not supposed to notice her until she begins singing.
This, with the best acting in the world, was impossible because Natalie Smith thundered onto the stage with all the grace of an enraged bison, shaking the very foundations of the old school hall. Her massive lungs forced air into her flageolet at such a pressure that half the dogs in Northcliff set to mournful howling. She came to a halt in front of Hamish, a full two inches taller and at least a stone heavier, and adopted a pose resembling Wayne Johnson just before he smashed an opponent to the ground in a rugby match.
There she stood, dressed in tight-fitting black running shorts, her legs set wide apart like two pillars that even Sampson would have failed to shift. Bulging quadriceps exited the shorts and almost enveloped her kneecaps. Hockey socks rested around a set of elephantine ankles only marginally narrower than the powerful calf muscles above. Affixed to the size-nine feet was a pair of hockey boots. Much like Hamish’s, Natalie Smith’s teeth were covered in steel. She had, however, failed to remove her supper from them, and Hamish wondered if his betrothed was perhaps still mid-meal.
At her approach, Hamish took a step backwards and lifted his arms reflexively in defence. As she bared her chompers in preparation for her first line, Hamish’s first attempt at demonstrating lust failed.
‘Fraser!’ yelled Mr McAdams from his seat in the front row. ‘What are you doing, boy? Stop backing away like a startled puppy. She won’t bite!’
‘Don’t believe him, Fraser,’ hissed Gumede from the wings just behind Hamish. ‘She’s going to eat you.’
Natalie Smith, thankfully, did not hear this as she stomped back to the wings for a second go.
‘A little less blasting on that whistle, I think, Natalie,’ suggested Mr McAdams. ‘In fact, this time just pretend to play it.’
The second time round, Hamish held it together marginally better – until Gumede whispered, ‘Yoh, she’s hungry for you,’ which made Hamish start to giggle.
‘Fraser! What is so bloody funny?’ yelled Mr McAdams, thoroughly irritated.
‘Sorry, sir. Nothing, sir,’ replied Hamish.
The headmaster stalked up to the stage in time to see Gumede disappear behind a curtain. He needed no further evidence.
‘Goomeedee!’ he yelled. ‘You and Fraser can enjoy two hours of hard labour on Friday – see how funny you find that!’
On the third attempt, it became apparent why it was that the least fairy-like member of the female (or male) cast had been chosen to play the part of Phyllis, the most difficult female singing roll. Hamish’s tight-jawed expression went slack as the first note escaped Natalie Smith’s cavernous buccal cavity. The voice of a La Scala-quality soprano blasted the hair on his forehead backwards.
Hamish looked forward to the thrice-weekly rehearsals as much as he looked forward to rugby practices. They began with supper in the dining hall – the quality of which had nothing to do with Hamish’s enjoyment. Mr Aaron, the Trinity caterer, produced more sweat during an afternoon cooking session than a herd of horses galloping the Durban July. This he dripped liberally into the serving trays of rubbery beef, frozen vegetables and semi-mashed potatoes, which were slopped onto plates with the care one might devote to the disposal of sewage. While the quality of the food belied the august school’s reputation, the company at supper was excellent.
Hamish made sure to sit near Robert Gumede, because all the interesting girls in the play, including the divine Angelica Constable, found themselves drawn into the confident young man’s ambit. The atmosphere was accepting, and the cast an eclectic mix that allowed the half-man, half-fairy to add the odd off-the-wall comment without causing offence.
Hamish seldom lingered at the table, preferring to arrive in the hall while it was still quiet. He loved the smell of the stage – the paint, the old curtains, the dusty gangways and balconies, the rough, unplastered stone walls and the bits of old props left from countless productions. While he had no real love for G and S, Hamish appreciated the sense of history – even if it wasn’t particularly relevant to the lives of the boys and girls performing it.
Being around the girls of the cast also filled him with a sense of delight, though he seldom managed to hold anything but the most perfunctory conversation with any of them. He was, like all of the other boys, fascinated by the figure of Angelica Constable, who knew full well her effect. Initially, Hamish couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t been cast as Phyllis – he’d have had no trouble at all pretending to be in love with her. But her voice was thin, nasal and raspy, and she’d probably have been better off saying her words than attempting to sing them.
Eight weeks into the rehearsals, the play was beginning to take shape. Everybody had a vague understanding of where to be and when, and the music was coming along relatively well – the chorus of young men tended to bellow out the bass part and ignore the tenor bits, but there was still time to rectify that.
There were seldom more than three staff members at rehearsal, and all were fully occupied. Mr McAdams directed, Mr Danhauser banged on the piano in a state of frustrated disgust and paid little heed to the cast not directly involved in each scene on stage, and the backstage-manager Mr Morris’s sixty-a-day nicotine habit necessitated his absence from the building on a more or less permanent basis.
