Courage Consort Three Novellas

The Courage Consort To all those who sing lustily and with good courage, and to all who only wish they could ON THE DAY THE GOOD NEWS arrived, Catherine spent her first few waking hours toying with the idea of jumping out the window of her apartment. Toying was perhaps too mild a word; she actually opened the window and sat on the sill, wondering if four storeys was enough to make death certain. She didn't fancy the prospect of quadriplegia, as she hated hospitals, with their peculiar synthesis of fuss and boredom. Straight to the grave was best. If she could only drop from a height of a thousand storeys into soft, spongy ground, maybe her body would even bury itself on impact. 'Good news, Kate,' said her husband, not raising his voice though he was hidden away in the study, reading the day's mail. 'Oh yes?' she said, pressing one hand against the folds of her dressing gown to stop the chill wind blowing into the space between her breasts. 'The fortnight's rehearsal in Martinekerke's come through.' Catherine was looking down at the ground far below. Half a dozen brightly dressed children were loitering around in the car park, and she wondered why they weren't at school. Then she wondered what effect it would have on them to see a woman falling, apparently from the sky, and bursting like a big fruit right before their eyes. At the thought of that, she felt a trickle of mysterious natural chemical entering her system, an injection of something more effective than her antidepressants. 'Is . . . is it a school holiday, darling?' she called to Roger, slipping off the sill back onto the carpet. The Berber plush felt hot against her frigid bare feet, as if it had just come out of a tumble dryer. Taking a couple of steps, she found she was numb from waist to knee. 'School holiday? I don't know,' her husband replied, with an edge of exasperation that did not lose its sharpness as it passed through the walls. 'July the sixth through to the twentieth.' Catherine hobbled to the study, running her fingers through her tangled hair. 'No, no,' she said, poking her head round the door. 'Today. Is today a school holiday?' Roger, seated at his desk as usual, looked up from the letter he was holding in his hands. His reading glasses sat on the end of his nose, and he peered forbearingly over them. His PC's digital stomach emitted a discreet nirp. 'I wouldn't have the foggiest,' he said. At fifty-two years old, a silver-haired veteran of a marriage that had remained carefully childless for three decades, he obviously felt he'd earned the right to be hazy on such details. 'Why?' Already forgetting, she shrugged. Her dressing gown slipped off her naked shoulder, prompting one of his eyebrows to rise. At the same moment, she noticed he wasn't in pyjamas any longer, but fully dressed and handsomely groomed. Hitching her gown back up, she strained to recall how she and Roger had managed to start the day on such unequal footing. Had they got up together this morning? Had they even slept together, or was it one of those nights when she curled up in the guest bedroom, listening to the muted plainsong of his CDs through the wall, waiting for silence? She couldn't remember; the days were a chaos in her brain. Last night was already long ago. Smiling gamely, she scanned his desk for his favourite mug and couldn't spot it. 'I'll put the kettle on, shall I?' she offered. He produced his mug of hot coffee out of nowhere. 'Some lunch, perhaps,' he said. Determined to carry on as normal, Roger picked up the telephone and dialled the number of Julian Hind. Julian's answering machine came on, and his penetrating tenor sang: 'Be-elzebub has a devil put aside for me-e-e . . . for me-e-e . . . for meeeeeeee!'-the pitch rising show-offishly to soprano without any loss of volume. Roger had learnFaber, Michel is the author of 'Courage Consort Three Novellas', published 2004 under ISBN 9780151010615 and ISBN 0151010617.