Charlotte’s Tale,
by Angharad.
part 14.

Nothing much happened for the next few days and I did my practices and occasionally saw Simon, but not Jane. I wasn’t deliberately avoiding her, but neither was I seeking her out, so our paths didn’t cross.

A few days before the concert, Mrs Phillips rang to say that Sir Cliff was coming and he’d suggested we sing a duet. Wow! Singing with a legend, okay an old one but still Wow!

“What does he want to sing?” I asked.

“He was going to leave that up to you to choose bearing in mind he doesn’t sing anything choral or classical, his voice isn’t trained for that.”

“Gosh, I don’t know.” My mind had gone blank, “I couldn’t think of anything he’d sung, although my mum had some of his CDs. “Could he call me and we could discuss it?”

“I don’t know Charlotte.”

“You did tell him it was Christine not Charlotte who was appearing?”

“Yes don’t worry, he won’t be expecting the Welsh songstress.”

“I mean, even if we agreed on something, we’d need to practice it. I don’t think I’ve ever done a duet with anyone before.”

“Oh, shall I just tell him, no?”

“No way, my mum would be over the moon to hear me sing with him. I’ll think of something. Let me go look at his CDs and I’ll ring you back.”

“Okay Charlotte, bye for now.

I went off and rummaged in the CD rack, looking at my mother’s collection of Cliff Richard CDs. I looked at the titles of the tracks and one caught my eye, ‘Miss you nights’. It was one which I liked and I hoped he wasn’t going to sing beforehand. I played the song and sang along to it. Yes, it would work, if we simply sang the verses to each other and then the choruses together.

My mother came to see why I was playing her music. “I didn’t think you liked Cliff Richard?”

“I don’t dislike him, he hasn’t got a particularly good range, but he can hold a tune and this song is pretty good.”

She poked out her tongue at me, which made me giggle. Then she sat down to listen to the rest of the CD.

I called Mrs Phillips. “Hi, it’s Charlotte. I’ve got a song, one of his. I just hope he wasn’t thinking of using it.”

“Which one?”

“Miss you nights.”

“Oh, that’s one of my all time favourites. I’ll ring his agent and see what we can do.”

“We’ll need to practice it, and who is going to accompany us?”

“Not sure, but leave it with me?”

“I would suggest that we each sing the verses to each other and the chorus together.”

“Okay, I’ll tell the agent.”

“How did you manage to get him to agree?”

“He’s staying with a mutual friend about ten miles away for the weekend.”

“Are you going to publicise it?”

“No we can’t; all we can say is, ‘a celebrity mystery guest.’ It’s a shame but there you go. Half a loaf is better than none. Don’t tell anyone will you?”

“I’ll have to tell Mr King and Miss Daws. I’ll also have to try and get the music.”

“I’ll ask his agent if they can email you some.”

“That would be great. Wow, I can’t believe I’ll be singing with him.”

“It’s true, I met him a couple of years ago at a charity gig, he was really nice.”

“For an old man,” I said cheekily.

“He looks twenty years younger than he is.”

“That’s still old to me.”

“I suppose it is, but then when you are as young as you are, someone of twenty seems ancient.”

“Dunno about twenty, but thirty sure is old.”

“Thanks Charlotte. If I’m still here when you’re thirty, I shall remind you of that.”

“Why where are you thinking of going?”

“I don’t think I need to answer that Charlotte, but the South of France would be nice.”

“No, Mrs Phillips, Nice is in the South of France.”

“Very punny. I must go and ring this agent.”

I was so bubbly when I went back into the lounge Mum asked me if I’d been sniffing something.

I was tempted to answer with something very rude, but didn’t. I could hardly contain the fact that this was one of my mum’s all time heroes and she didn’t know. I’m sure afterwards if I ask him to pose with her, I can get a photo which will make her year. How I was going to keep it quiet for another few days, I didn’t know.

Everybody noticed my barely hidden excitement. My mother thought I’d fallen in love, with a capital ‘F’. Others wondered if they changed my pills or something. I just walked around with this smug grin on my face, which Simon described as a ‘shit-eating’ one. His turn of phrase actually wiped the grin off my face for a few minutes as I found it revolting.

The day after my conversation with Mrs P, I had an email. It was from Sir Cliff’s agent and ‘in confidence’. It suggested that he was agreeable to sing the duet with me using ‘Miss you nights,’ and they sent me a copy of the music. They also suggested that I pop over to where he was staying the morning of the concert to practice with him. They gave me the address and told me that someone would come and get me and bring me back in time to get ready for the concert.

I went and spoke to my mum. “Mum, I need to rehearse a duet with some guy who’s singing at the concert, on Saturday morning. They’ll come and get me.”

“Who is it and where is it?”

“Some bloke called Webb, never heard of him before. He does ballads.”

“What are you singing?”

“Dunno, he’s got some song in mind apparently, you know me, hear it once and sing it.”

Her eyes narrowed at my deliberate arrogance. “Yes provided I meet the driver before he takes you, and you have your mobile with you.”

“Yes, I’ll take my phone with me.” How I managed to down play my excitement, I couldn’t say. Inside I felt like a bottle of champagne, ready to go pop at the first opportunity.

When I took the music to my own rehearsal, Miss Daws was astonished, but she played it well after two runs through. Mr King listened and helped me with the presentation of the song.

“These pop singers have little or no training, so you often can’t hear what they’re singing, their enunciation and diction is so poor.”

By the time we’d done it for the sixth time, my enunciation and pronunciation was perfect and my pitch was pretty good too.

I was going to wear a new dress for the concert, a gold sequinned thing with a scoop neck and short pleated skirt. Although I’d put on a bit of weight, I needed to use my enhancers. On the Friday before we managed to find some gold sandals with a two and half inch heel. I also bought some gold eye shadow and nail varnish and some sparkly tights.

On the Saturday morning, the bell rang and Dr Phillips was at the door. He was my lift to see Sir Cliff. Mum was so surprised that she forgo to ask where we were going and whom we were meeting.

By the time we got there, I was positively buzzing. I mean I’d been sat with my favourite doctor for half an hour, and our conversation was nice. Then I was going to be singing with this legend! Wow just doesn’t seem to cover it!

We went to this big house on the very outskirts of a village. There was a large Mercedes in the driveway. We rang and were admitted, where I was introduced to the agent. He laid down some rules, about recording and stuff. I was quite happy with that. He also said that Sir Cliff would arrive only a few minutes before he was due on stage, otherwise it would create uproar and be nasty for the other artists.

I was told that the male voice choir would sing for half a dozen songs, then there would be a short break. Then I would do my three songs and at the end would wait on stage while the mystery guest arrived and was introduced. Sir Cliff would do three songs, then he would ask me to return to the stage to sing the duet with him. The concert would then end.

Wow, it’s really going to happen. I nearly had to pinch myself to believe it wasn’t a dream.

“Come and meet Sir Cliff,” I was led through to a large lounge where he was sat on a sofa, there was some man playing on a baby grand piano, a sort of bluesy piece of music.

Sir Cliff stood up and we shook hands, I was overawed completely and began to tremble. He smiled and sat me down alongside him and we chatted for a few minutes. He was so nice and relaxed me very quickly.

I asked him what he was going to sing, but he told me, ‘to wait and see.’ He felt however we ought to crack on as he had a lunch appointment. We went up to the piano and the agent positioned some mics for us to use, he was going to record it so he could discuss with us how it was going.

The pianist began running through the music of the song. I asked if I could do some warm ups. Sir Cliff agreed he’d like to do so, too. So we did some scales and a few bars of songs. He complimented me on my voice, which had me blushing and I got very embarrassed for a moment. I had to pause before we could continue.

Then we ran through the song, individually. We each listened, his was even better than Mum’s recording, and he kept winking and smiling at me. It was magical, Mum would have had a heart attack, I’m sure.

When it was my turn, I let it rip and was too powerful, so my second attempt was much more sotto voce. Then we sang together, it was okay, but a little rough. We listened to the recording and the agent and Sir Cliff pointed out the bits that needed attention and we practised those.

After an hour we had a pretty good product and we were all pleased with it. He gave me a signed photo for myself and also one for my mum. Then I asked him if he would pose with my mum after the concert for me to take a photo.

“I will on one condition.”

“Okay,”

“That you pose with me for one as well.”

“Wow!” was my response and he laughed.

We shook hands and Dr Phillips took me home.

“So how did the rehearsal go?”

“It was alright I suppose. Never heard of the guy before, some pop star bloke apparently, his voice is okay and we got a reasonable effect in the end.”

“What’s his name?”

“Spider Web, or something.”

“Who?”

”I told you, I’ve never heard of him before, but I think you’ll enjoy the duet, it’s a Cliff Richard song.”

“Pity it’s not with Cliff himself,” she said looking dreamy.

“Yeah, this is a local Amnesty concert, not the Albert Hall, like Cliff Richard is going to drop in and sing with little ol’ me.”

“I can wish, can’t I?”

“Well I think it will take more than blowing out the candles on your birthday cake to get that one.”

She glowered at me, and I felt so naughty, she would kill me when she found out.

We had lunch, some salmon with new potatoes and salad, then some fruit and ice cream for pudding. I knew that tea would be a light snack so as not to weigh me down for my singing.

The concert was due to start at eight, with the doors open at seven thirty. Changing facilities at the church are rather poor, so I had agreed with Mrs Phillips to arrive ready to go on at half past seven. This meant getting ready about half past five and leaving here at seven, with a light coat over my dress.

I phoned Simon, who said he’d bought a ticket for his mum and that he might come as well. I managed to get him to promise not to breathe a word about the mystery guest. He couldn’t see what the problem was. I could, it was a sell out without anyone knowing who was coming. If they had known we’d have had riots with people trying to get tickets. The church will hold a maximum of about three or four hundred, which for me is a huge audience, but I was trying not to think of that. I found out later, they squeezed in five hundred, a hundred tickets were sold on the door.

I had to dye my hair again for my stage identity, which was a bind. I’d told Sir Cliff about it and he smiled, saying he had to do all sorts of things to get ready to hide his age. I told him he looked pretty good to me, and I wasn’t just being nice to him.

In the end I didn’t use the gold makeup, it looked awful, I just did my usual stage stuff, which is a bit more than I’d wear to go out, except maybe to a party. Mum was going to wear something fairly sedate until I told her I wanted some photos of us, so to ‘get her act together’. She laughed and changed into a rather nice black and gold dress, which would photograph well with mine.

We drove to the church and parked up in some reserved spaces. Then we went in and I was amazed at the sound equipment they had there, I knew who was responsible for that. We were going to be singing into microphones, and they had mixers and all sorts of stuff at the back, with an engineer. I did a sound check, then went off to the artist’s room behind the stage — the vestry in other words. Mum had settled herself with Dr Phillips, whose wife as producer was rushing about like a lunatic.

The vestry was full of men, the male voice choir I suppose. They were from Wales and from some unpronounceable place, but they were all very pleasant and made a fuss of me. They did some warm ups, which were amazing, the whole room resonated with their wonderful harmonies.

Just to show I wasn’t completely ignorant, I asked if they were going to sing, ‘Sosban fach’.*

“Only at Twickenham when we’re beating England,” came back the reply.

Then I was on my own and they went off to start the concert. I walked to behind the stage to listen to them, they were fabulous. They did several pieces I knew and several in Welsh I didn’t recognise as well as one or two I did recognise but didn’t know the names.

Of course they got encores and overran by some twenty minutes.

While the interval was on, I did my own warm ups in the vestry without realising I was being listened to by half of Wales. I stood facing away from the door and ran through the Ave Maria, then Miss you nights. At the end I heard this clapping from the choir. I nearly messed my panties, I didn’t know they were there.

“Dew, but that was lovely,” said their conductor, “I hope we’ve got some seats near the front.”

I was so embarrassed all I could do was blush. I excused myself and went to the loo, touched up my lip gloss and powdered my nose, then out to Mum to take my bag.

The interval was called over and a few minutes given for Miss Daws to set up and the audience to return to it’s seats. Then I was announced and I walked out on to the stage. The place was absolutely packed, and I tried not to think about it. I gazed at a spot on the back wall above the door.

I was just about to start when the guest arrived, we were running twenty minutes late and a buzz ran through the rear of the hall. I got Miss Daws to play the intro again.

I did Fields of Gold and had warned her I was going to improvise a little, we had experimented and I knew she’d be able to go with me. I slowed it down and elaborated a little here and there, and she was brilliant. I was in total command of this whole mass of five hundred souls and they were so patient. When I at last finished, their applause was very generous, I saw the Welshmen clapping and stamping, they enjoyed it.

I next introduced the Schubert (Ave Maria) as one of the most exquisite pieces ever written, and that I hoped they would forgive my inadequacies as I tried to sing it. That created a buzz and the Welsh contingent whistled and clapped shouting encouragement. I was as high as a kite.

I gave one of my best renditions and Miss Daws was absolutely perfect in her accompaniment. It went down, well I wasn’t sure for a moment because when I finished, there was total silence for maybe ten seconds. Then the noise was deafening. Mum told me she was in tears and that the audience was completely blown away by it.

For my last piece, Summer Time, I was going to sing unaccompanied, which when I told the audience, it drew a round of applause. Miss Daws gave me a note to start me and I shut my eyes and went for it.

In a few bars I had gone into my trance and forgotten there was anyone there. I played with it as we had experimented, and a bit off the cuff, which I felt I could do. After all, I had sung this so often I reckoned I could probably do it backwards while parachuting on a bicycle. Well maybe that would be a little too much of an exaggeration, but I think you get my drift.

Again when I finished, there was silence then a thunderous applause. There were cries of encore, which were ignored.

The MC announced, “Don’t worry Christine will be back to sing a duet with our very special guest. It gives me great pleasure to introduce a legend of popular music and an iconic figure of the sixties, seventies , eighties and nineties, and now the twenty first century. I give you Sir Cliff Richard, who has agreed to give us some of his very valuable time from his busy schedule.”

The applause was rapturous as the great man made his way to the stage, where I was waiting to escape. He walked up to me and said quietly, “That was absolutely wonderful, you need an agent, we’ll talk later.”

Blushing like a beetroot, I left the stage to the maestro.

“What a wonderful voice ladies and gentlemen, now you have to suffer this old duffer.” Everyone laughed and he chatted with them for a moment or two saying why he was here and the problems of Darfur and the need for the world to stop the genocide and enable the people to live freely.

His own accompanist took his place at the piano and they did half an hour of all sorts of his songs including one or two he said were going to be on his new album. I was stood off to the side really enjoying his act, it was longer and better than we were led to believe.

Then suddenly, my little dream state was shattered when I heard my name being called.

“And now ladies and gentlemen, the cream of the show is going to do a duet with this old fart, a little song I recorded some years ago called, Miss you nights.” The applause was deafening as I stepped up on the stage and he took my hand.

He started the song, did a verse, then we did the chorus together, then I did a verse and the chorus and so on. It was going so well, we ran through it twice, all the time he was holding my hand and squeezing it to give me encouragement. When we did finish it brought the house down, and I was so high I was nearly flying. The energy was beyond description, then he kissed me on the cheek and hugged me.

The applause went on for several minutes and there were flashes from cameras as we took several bows, then calls for an encore.

“Again?” he said to me and I nodded. The piano struck up and we did the song right through again, the result was the same but this time we finished and were both presented with bouquets of flowers by Mrs Phillips.

Then came the photo opportunities and he showed great patience in being photographed with dozens of people, including my mother, and also one with both my mum and me with him, then one of him and me for his album, he said.

Then as I wandered about in a daze, Simon came up and told me he’d enjoyed the show and had changed his mind about Cliff Richard, “He was cool,” I just nodded. My high was waning and exhaustion was setting in.

Sir Cliff was whisked away in his limo and my exuberant mother dragged me and my flowers off to home, alternately chiding me for keeping secrets from her, and complimenting me on her lovely surprise.

“Spider Web indeed!”

“No, I said Harry Webb,” I joked, which is Sir Cliff’s original name.

* Sosban fach = a traditional Welsh nonsense song about saucepans boiling on the fire, sosban fach means little saucepan.