The weeks following the ghastly episode of the Duggy tour were
to prove very arduous for Dorothy and Laura, despite their new-found mutual
understanding. Part of their troubles lay in the nature and personality of the
petulant and temperamental Mr Morgan who having been allowed to set free some
of his Celtic enthusiasm was now getting on everybody's nerves with a surfeit
of it.
Mr Parsnip was mystified by the whole business. Surely a choir
competition was simply a matter of getting people to sing with a bit of
ambition and a lot of enjoyment.
What then followed fooled them all.
Mr Morgan stood up importantly, brushing the crumbs from one
of Edith’s cheese scones off his tie.
“I think we should make the festival truly international,” he announced.
“What does that mean?” Cleo inquired.
“Every choir should sing something in a foreign language.”
Laura and Dorothy exchanged glances. They both had the same
premonition.
The vicar nodded approvingly.
“Ah, Latin!” he declared.
“Well, Latin, too,” said Gareth Morgan.
Laura decided he must mean English.
“After all,” she reasoned, “you are from over the border, so
English is a foreign language to you, isn't it, dear Mr Morgan,” she said, putting
so much such heavy emphasis on the 'dear' that even the organist winced.
Without telling Cleo, who was supposed to be doing the
correspondence, he had written to everybody he thought could be useful to his
own ambitious plans, inviting all the choirs in the region to come and compete
in what he declared to be an Eisteddfod. The alternative title of TUGFOM had
been buried under the weight of Welsh tradition.
As a result of Mr Morgan’s fieldwork, so many choirs contacted
him personally because they were anxious to take part that he was obliged to
hand over a pile of applications to Cleo to deal with.
“Where did you get all these from, Mr Morgan,” Cleo asked.
“Here and there. I know a few people.”
“Bravo Mr Morgan for taking the initiative!” Mr Parsnip was
relieved that things were moving along without any effort on his part.
Mr Morgan secretly hoped that Laura's experienced choir and Dorothy's
newly formed scratch choir would knock each other out. Laura was not pleased
that Dorothy had gone to the lengths of forming a choir herself and kept it a
secret until word of it got round via postman’s knock, which declared it to be
a chorus of some 60 singers.
Cleo was exasperated about not getting a word in edgeways at
the meeting. In view of the squabbles now brewing between Dorothy and Laura, Mr
Morgan felt that the Eisteddfod spirit was getting lost. The English were
clearly incapable of understanding the Welsh soul and even less capable of
agreeing on anything.
To avoid further bickering, Mr Parsnip, chivvied by Mrs
Parsnip next morning at breakfast, came to a momentous decision. The only fair
way would be to draw lots and pick out eight choirs to sing alongside those of Dorothy,
Laura and Mr Morgan on the big day, they having been declared resident host
choirs. There’s a name for everything!
That idea was not quite in the Eisteddfod spirit, but at least
it would avoid upsetting the organizers, especially Cleo, who was ready to quit.
Anyway, no one would know that they had not been in the lottery. All the choirs
not chosen for the main competition would sing in the afternoon and the one
that got the most applause would open the main event.
And so it was. At the end of the next Sunday service, Mr
Parsnip picked on the smallest and chubbiest of the little girls sitting, feet
dangling, in the front pew and told her to put her sticky little fingers into his
old felt hat and draw out the first piece of paper. No one could claim there
had been bribery and corruption, because there is no way you could bribe such a
small girl to pick out this or that piece of paper, when all the pieces were
exactly the same and folded so small that you could not see the writing on
them. Anyway, five year old Texas McMulligan, the red-headed offspring of avid
Western fans, had not yet learnt to read joined up writing and was really only
interested in the sweet she got as a reward for every piece of paper she pulled
out of the hat.
When all eight pieces of paper were assembled on the pulpit, the
vicar, who had been praying intensively for guidance, opened them and smoothed
them flat, oohing and aahing with each new discovery he announced. Cleo made a
list of the competitors for the evening final and a second list of those not
fortunate enough to have been plucked from the hat by Texas. Laura thought none
of the finalist choirs picked could hold a candle to hers, Dorothy thought she
stood a fair chance of not coming in last, and Mr Morgan merely smiled
enigmatically.
Every choir would sing two songs, a slow one and a fast one,
and a third one if the audience clapped for long enough. One of the songs
should be in a different language from the other, although that was not
compulsory. Laura had insisted on that clause. At the end, they would all sing ‘Jerusalem’
and Mr Parsnip would add a blessing or two, and when it was all over, there
would be beer and a barbecue even if it rained. Lots were draw for the
programme order, the three seeded choirs having been placed apart with Mr
Morgan’s choir at the end.
On the day of the Eisteddfod, the eleven choirs not drawn for
the final sang in the afternoon with all the other choirs cheering them on and
clapping. The loudest applause went to the Italians from the pasta restaurant
in Middlethumpton under the management of Romano, who had a big heart and lots
of friends and relatives. Having received the most applause of the afternoon,
they would get the evening off to a rousing start with their medley of Calabrian
folksongs. All the other afternoon choirs would get a certificate stating that
they had achieved second place.
Mr Morgan’s words about the Welsh keeping a welcome, uttered
in his thank-you speech to the eliminated choirs, exhorted them not to go home,
but to enjoy the hospitality and stay for a candlelight sing-along after the
competition. The invitation was still ringing in Dorothy’s ears when the red
coach drew up on the other side of the village common.
‘I’ll have a nice surprise for you all later,” Mr Morgan
announced. So he had kept something to himself, Cleo mused. What a deceitful
little man he was.
Dorothy could not think of anything really surprising Mr
Morgan could do. It was literally in God’s hands who would come out best
because the bishop was there, having decided to adjudicate the proceedings. The
bishop was a rare sight in Upper Grumpsfield. He was a thoroughly unpleasant
character and during his short reign he had already put most people’s backs up.
He invariably kept up a running commentary that interested only Mr Parsnip and
possibly all the other vicars in the diocese until inebriation took over and the
disliked church nobleman fell into a stupor for the rest of whatever proceeding
he was gracing.
Mr Parsnip plied him
with his best brandy after Robert Jones had tipped him off on how to handle the
church dignitary. The bishop would not notice that the audience was having the
last word on who was going to win the competition although he was officially
judging the choirs. In fact, he would probably sleep through most of the
singing.
Not long before the evening event started, about forty Welshmen
got off the red coach and strode purposefully across the common towards the
church, a bit like the children in ‘The Village of the Damned’. In the background,
you could hear the various choirs tuning up for their performances. It was a
dreadful cacophony.
When the first Welshman got within shouting range, he said “This
is the English Eisteddfod, isn’t it?’ and Dorothy’s heart dropped to the pit of
her stomach. Wasn’t that a Welsh voice? Wasn’t that 40 Welsh voices?
Just then, Mr Morgan reappeared, beaming from ear to ear.
“Gareth bach!” the Welsh shouted, and Gareth bach carried on beaming
from ear to ear. He hadn’t heard his first name delivered with such warmth
since leaving Wales.
“Where’s the concert, bach?” continued the first Welshman.
“In the church because the grass is too wet to sit on. How was
the journey?”
Dorothy was not really surprised that Mr Morgan had now
relapsed into a singsong Welsh accent. Wales isn’t called ‘the Land of Song’
for nothing. In Wales, people sing even when they aren’t singing.
“All right except that the driver forgot the beer.”
“Well, let’s go in then, isn’t it! You can have as much beer
as you can drink on the house.”
So that was the real surprise of the visit. Mr Morgan had
invited a coach-load of Welsh friends to applaud his choir.
Laura appeared. She found Dorothy still rooted to the spot.
“‘You look a bit pale, Dorothy,” she said, not sounding very
concerned.
“Do you know what Mr Morgan has done, Laura?”
Laura shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t really care. All she
knew for certain was that Mr Morgan’s choir was the worst in living memory and
Dorothy Price’s not much better.
“He’s invited a bus load of Welsh friends here to support him,”
Dorothy told her. “They came in that red coach parked over there.”
Laura had seen ‘Welsh Valley Chorus’ and their coat of arms on
the side of the coach. Maybe they were taking part as entertainment only, she
suggested to Dorothy. So what? They could also sing along with the community
songs. Things could only get better. Anyway, there was only a quarter of an
hour until the Eisteddfod started, so it was too late to take steps to prevent
whatever Mr Morgan had organized for himself even if they had wanted to. It
would have served no useful purpose to tell Dorothy that those friends of his were
probably all members of a championship choir. Not that Laura knew for certain, but it was on
the cards that forty Welshmen gathered together would burst into song.
Predictably, the evening session got off to a good start. A
second drawing of lots had placed Dorothy’s chorus second to last and Laura’s somewhere
in the middle. Mr Morgan’s choir would round the Eisteddfod off. After the
Italians had warmed up the audience, the Middlethumpton choir, sounding more
like crows than larks, delivered their anthem, which sounded to Dorothy
suspiciously like a chunk of Carmina Burana, but lacked the necessary
depravity. However, it was in Latin, which made up for a dreadful rendering
‘Abide with me’ that the choir offered as its second song.
“I don’t want them abiding with me,” Dorothy was heard to
comment.
“Nor me, neither,” Laura had added.
Laura’s choir always sang some of the songs she had once sung
on the cruise boats. They weren’t really suitable for a choir competition, but
the ladies enjoyed themselves, which is more than you can say for the audience,
since the singing was more remarkable for its volume than its mellifluence. It
wasn’t really their fault. Laura liked loud singing and there’s only a very fine
line between loud singing and shouting.
By the time Laura’s choir was announced there had already been
great deal of raucous shouting from the
mixed chorus from Huddlecourt Minor’s pub choir (which Cleo decided was well
lubricated but not sober), Overthring, a farming community not far away (Dorothy
thought they must have smuggled in some goats and cows) and others who had been
fortunate enough to be picked by little Texas. The hapless screeching of the
Finch Nightingales came over almost like a blessing. The drawing of lots had
indeed proved a fatal mistake. The best choirs had already sung in the
afternoon.
It would be unkind to say too much about Dorothy’s contribution.
When Dorothy had decided to enter a choir, Mr Smith was delighted to reject Mr
Morgan’s church choir and support her in his stentorian tones accompanied by
insistent foot-tapping which Dorothy was unable to subjugate. He had been
joined by several Post Office colleagues, whose enthusiasm outshone their
talent by far. Mr Smith was undisputed boss of Dorothy’s vocalists. So complete
was his control of the front row that Mr Parsnip later felt duty bound to thank
him for his wonderful solos and ask Dorothy if she would like to have some
microphones for everyone else next time. Dorothy’s optimistic boast that her
chorus would number 60 was fortunately not achieved. Even those who came were
anything but competent.
What with Mr Smith’s incessant foot-tapping and Dora Buckley’s
friends’ laid back attitude to the group effort, Dorothy solemnly promised
herself that this would be her first and last eisteddfod and absolutely her
last attempt at forming a choir.. None of the finalists had had much to
recommend them and no one had sung in Welsh, much to Mr Morgan’s dismay.
Despite the noise levels, the bishop had slept soundly in the pale
shaft of evening light that was swathed round his head like a halo, his
intermittent snores and other less polite noises thankfully submerged in the
overall hullabaloo. His pre-concert plateful of grilled pork from the barbecue
had given him indigestion and he wished he’d gone somewhere else, except that
then he couldn’t have drunk all that excellent brandy. Sleep was in his case
the best medicine.
When it was Mr Morgan’s turn to take the rostrum, Dorothy and Laura
sat down at the back to enjoy the spectacle of Mr Morgan trying to get some
singing out of the stiff upper-lipped troop now lined up in front of him. The
only exception was Robert, who was oblivious to anything but his own performance
and his desire to make a good impression on Cleo.
Mr Morgan gave the singers their notes, raised his arms and
gave the signal to start. About forty Welshmen got up from their seats and
forty Welsh voices exploded into ‘We’ll keep a welcome in the hillside’.
Singing as they went, they moved towards the front of St Peter’s and took up
positions behind the church choir. They then proceeded to bring the house down
with Mr Morgan exhorting them and leaving no doubts in the minds of everyone
that he was responsible for this magnificent show of vocal supremacy.
The two ladies looked at each other. Laura nodded an ‘I told
you so’ and Dorothy hissed ‘It’s not fair!’ The bishop sat up straight, dyspepsia
forgotten. The audience got up out of their seats and gave Mr Morgan’s hugely augmented
choir a standing ovation. Mr Parsnip thanked God for the Welsh (though he
thought they were a funny lot). There was absolutely no doubt in anyone’s mind who
would win first prize.
“Next time we’ll make it a rule that you can’t have other
singers joining you at last minute,” Dorothy told Laura, but Laura was too busy
celebrating the winners and it was only Dorothy’s love of music that saved her
from a severe bout of sour grapes.
Representing the committee, she managed to squeeze out “I
think we are very lucky that such wonderful singers could join us today and we
hope you will stay a bit longer and sing some more of your wonderful songs for
us.”
Dorothy quite rightly assumed that life
would never be the same again in Upper Grumpsfield after the resounding success
of the eisteddfod. For a start, Mr Morgan seemed to have grown several inches
taller thanks to the mellifluous outpourings of his friends from the Welsh valleys.
Nobody who attended that memorable event had ever heard such magnificent
singing. Local choirs invited Mr Morgan to come and share the Welsh choral
tradition with them, hoping that he would also provide a little Celtic flair
and ultimately attract new members.
Laura invited him to play regularly for her
ladies’ choir, which he was glad to do, since not only did it provide him with
a small increase in his modest income, but it also granted him countless
opportunities to make the acquaintance of more or less eligible females who took
more or less interest in this quaint little man with a passion for his homeland
and a fondness for wine, women and song.
The integration of Mr Morgan into English
life was thus given a tremendous boost by timely intervention of a busload of
Welsh choristers. Truth is truly stranger than fiction.
