‘What is this place?’ I muttered. This place where people saw into my soul and guessed my deepest feelings, and somehow I was still safe to feel them?
Melody laughed, a deep, rich melody. ‘This is the house of grace.’
Following the warm-up, where Hester insisted we stand, breathe and start to think and sound like singers – ‘chins up, lungs open, shoulders back!’ – we moved on to the piece the choir had been working on last time. I had heard some of the alto part, but not all and had no idea what most of the words were, my knowledge of Latin being non-existent. Hester asked Melody to coach me through it for thirty minutes, and I did all right until we moved back to singing all together. The sopranos, who sang the main tune, kept confusing my brain and knocking me off course. Hester rapped her knuckles on top of the piano.
‘Faith! Stop being distracted by women you cannot compare to and were not created to be like! You are an alto – learn from other altos. Listen to them, tune in to them. Focus, focus, focus! You spend too much time worrying about the wrong things, eyes and ears wandering. Find your tune, lady and hold on to it. From the beginning, last time!’
I tried. I tried to ignore the sopranos with their trills and piercingly beautiful dipping and soaring, focus, focus, focusing in on the depth of the rich, resonant voices around me. And for a moment – maybe a line, a little longer – I got it.
Wow.
Wouldja believe it?
I helped create something beautiful.
And I would not start crying about it. We’d had enough of that for one day, thank you.
Rehearsal over, nobody mentioned my earlier ‘moment’ during coffee time. Neither did Hester mention a vote regarding Marilyn, once she’d eaten a tiny, perfectly square piece of her scrumptious cake. Dylan appeared a couple of minutes later, and I tried to ignore the uncomfortable urge to go and check my face for blotches in the women’s toilets. Many years of struggle had drummed all potential vanity out of me. I didn’t want my new millionaire-fiancée lifestyle to start pumping it back in. I certainly didn’t want to feel the need to impress the chapel caretaker, like a desperate housewife swooning over every handsome, rugged man who pays her attention and looks her in the eye when he asks her how she is, as if he actually means it. I fiddled with my engagement ring until the urge scuttled away back where it belonged, deep in the corner of my imagination.
After a couple of minutes of small talk, Dylan asked me about the wedding.
‘Did you make any decision about using the chapel?’
‘Um, no. Not yet.’
‘I suppose your fiancé wants to have a look at it.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Do you have any more questions? I could show you around again, if that helps.’
‘No, thanks. I do need to see the minister though, to see if it’s okay to get married here when we don’t actually come to the church. And if the date’s free.’
‘You’ve set a date?’
‘Yes. August.’ I still wasn’t quite ready to declare the actual day.
‘Next year? Not long, then. And the middle of wedding season. You might want to get in there quick.’
‘Well. If the minister shows up, as Hester said he always does after choir practice, I’ll ask him. Although he wasn’t here last week. Unless I didn’t spot him. Not known for their charisma, generally, vicars, are they?’
Oh dear. I seemed powerless to prevent the torrent of awkward wedding-related verbal diarrhoea…
‘Usually quite mousy. Sort of hunched. A bit insipid, like watery custard.’ I was, in fact, merely describing the minister who showed our class round the chapel fifteen years ago. I didn’t actually think all men of the cloth fitted the soap-opera stereotypes, but I couldn’t stop. Dylan made me nervous, looking me in the eye like that. Talking about my wedding made me nervous. When I get nervous, my brain gives up and my mouth takes over. ‘All polite and bland. Maybe he blended into the background. Like a chameleon! A watery, hunched…’ I stopped as Dylan raised one eyebrow and a horrible realisation dawned. ‘Oh no. It’s you, isn’t it?’
Dylan looked at me. His eyes were a Celtic blue – bright and clear in contrast to his pirate’s stubble and shaggy, black hair. A muscle jumped in his jaw as he clenched it.
For a brief moment, I hoped the combined heat of my hideous embarrassment and Dylan’s steady gaze would cause me to melt, so I could ooze between a crack in the floorboards.
‘I am so sorry. I didn’t actually mean that. I mean, I know not all ministers are like custard.’ Did I really say that? ‘I’m suremost aren’t. Hardly any. None! I bet no ministers even slightly resemble custard. At all…’ I petered off into a mortified squeak.
Dylan took his eyes off me and stared hard at his shoes. Navy-blue Converse. Now, surely nobody would guess that a man in those shoes could be a minister? Aren’t they supposed to be on a higher plane, above all earthly things like designer labels?
‘I suppose you won’t want me getting married here now. Totally understandable. You don’t want to be marrying someone who’s prejudiced against ministers. Ministerist. Shouldn’t let them in the chapel, really. And what would God think? You’re like, his man on the ground, and I’ve just called you insipid. I’m a bit scared, actually, that I’ve offended God. I think I might see if Marilyn’s ready to go home.’
I craned my neck, making an exaggerated display of looking for Marilyn.
‘Having said that, the tool belt and overalls would have fooled anyone. And you had plenty of opportunity to tell me who you were, instead of all “call me Dylan”, not Reverend Dylan or Pastor Dylan. And aren’t people like you supposed to wear dog collars and black shirts, not ripped jeans? Right. Well. I’m going to shut up and leave now. Nice meeting you. I probably won’t be seeing you again.’ I scurried a couple of steps away, before looking back at him. ‘And you’re not, by the way. Insipid. At all.’
