singing

Daphne Housall , or Ne, as she was known to her friends, was packing her trolley shopper in the supermarket as the cashier bleeped through the last of her shopping.
“That’s £14.73. Do you have a loyalty card?”
Ne, who was thinking of something else altogether, turned to the cashier and instead of answering her, started singing “Don’t Cry for me Argentina” she raised her hands to the ceiling and pumped out the whole of the first verse, before she felt someone touching her arm. It was a harried looking store manager. The magic stopped. Ne looked around and in every queue, as every isle, everyone was looking at her. And with a growing sense of horror, like a bruised drunk waking up in a prison cell, Ne started to realise what she had just done.
She related this tale to her competent looking GP and he prescribed her a course of Fleneltac. They came in a little flat pack with the days of the week on the front and she had to take one every morning.
After that, although she often had the urge to break out in song, with the help of the tablets, she kept the urge at bay. For Ne this was a huge relief, she was a retired school teacher, and was well respected as a woman with a serious frame of mind. Ne believed she was put on this planet to straighten out that which was bent. For 43 years she had kept the young on the straight and narrow. She took an interest in the council’s plans for the library, the cleanliness of the streets and appropriate parking. Ne was a respected member of society. What would people think if she started break-dancing in the street? Perish the thought!
Ne managed to keep a lid on the singing but sometimes it was a real struggle. The songs seemed to rise up right from the core of her being so they were incredibly difficult to put the brakes on. Of course she sang when she was doing the ironing or the washing-up but the real problem was that some part of her brain had started to misfire so she would want to sing in answer to a question. Instead of speak like a ordinary person might her first impulse was always to break out into song. She had a range of mental tricks he could use to try and keep the singing at bay. But more often than not the first words she spoke would have a sing song quality to them as if the words were shallow and the melody was close below the surface. You could hear it causing her words to bubble.
She had been dealing with the affliction for several year now. But Ne never ever said the first thing to come into her mouth, and it could, at times, be wearing.
It was about this time that a terrible accident happened in her little town. Two small boys had gone missing one Friday afternoon and being a small town word spread until just about everyone was out, including Ne, looking for them. The search went on through Saturday with no results. The parents went on tv asking, tearfully, for information and everywhere there were police going from door to door. As Sunday came and went people started to realise that excuses were running out, they started standing in groups, no longer looking but not wanting to go home. Whenever the police asked for help they were inundated with volunteers. It was against this backdrop the Ne started to fray. She had taught both parents of both boys. She knew their families and friends, they still said hello Miss Housall when they saw her in the street. Ne was hurting. And to keep the pain at bay she just had to help, she had to keep looking, keep motivating people to keep looking, had they checked their garages? The storm drains, the river? And she sang. If you asked her how she was? She would sing “How can I Live without you?” If you asked if anyone had checked the gardens on Port Street, she sang “Oh Danny Boy.” She was in trouble and just didn’t seem able to pull the words into focus. And yet, strangely, at this painful time it seemed that she made the most sense. People wanted to hear her sing because they understood just how close they were to running out of reasons to say anything too. It was as if Ne’s breakdown and Ne’s singing was somehow expressing their collective pain.
It was in Wednesday that the boys were found. They had “borrowed” a small boat and been washed out to sea. They were both alive but suffering from hypothermia and dehydration. They were brought in by the coast guard and before they had even got them into the ambulance text messages and phone calls were sparking across the town.
By a strange coincidence Ne was once again in the supermarket when one of the employees grabbed the tannoy and announce that the boys had been found and were well. After a fraction of silence a huge cheer went up, followed be clapping but as the noise died down they could hear singing coming from aisle three and right there they all gravitated to aisle three and sang together.
It was one of those never to be repeated moments; when society forgot itself. When the people who weren’t there wished they were and those that were couldn’t believe that they stood in a group and sang together whilst still holding a bunch of bananas and a bottle of wine. After, when they saw each other in the street, they weren’t sure whether to talk about it, or not, but they told their children and they in turn would tell theirs.
Ne, of course, was never the same again. She had gone through a dark tunnel, but she was softer, she had discovered that her singing wasn’t some aberrant part of her, it was important. And the truth was, sometimes she really did express herself better with song. She joined a choir, she sang quietly as she shopped, and louder if she thought no one could hear. She hummed in council meetings and, and when she spoke, if you were lucky, she would sing a little. Ne was and always would be a singer, and she realised that when she sang, she spoke a better language.