It’s just a pity that Sarah Gardner had missed this particular sign, or that the people in her social proximity had neglected to tell her.
You couldn’t call Sarah a pretty girl (which she almost certainly thought she was) but it would be unjust to judge the mid-twenty year old as unattractive. Sarah spent a fortune on cosmetics, clothes and constantly re-styling and reshaping her shoulder-length blonde hair. Appearance meant everything to the young girl. As onlookers saw her striding down the high street in her heels and with the grace of a diva, tossing her hair from side to side, stood by their front doors or pruning their hedges, they were forced to ask themselves - Just who the bloody hell does she think she is?
Sarah’s fiancé, Mike, could answer very easily. It was whoever Sarah had read about in Hello magazine that particular week. Sarah just loved the stars: dressing like them, talking like them, acting like them… One week it was Jordan, a member of Girls Aloud the next, followed by a Big Brother contestant (a programme she had had a countless amount of unsuccessful auditions for before).
Sarah’s parents owed an enormous debt of gratitude to Mike for taking her off their hands. Not only had Mike, since proposing marriage to Sarah, slowly calmed her down, Sarah was no longer the wild child she had been in her teens, spending all her time and money flaunting herself in the bars and clubs of Hanley and Newcastle-Under-Lyme. Now, it seemed, she had her roots fastened into sensibilities: a home, a job, a car, an impending marriage, a couple of kids perhaps, somewhere down the line.
Nobody, however, could shake the impressionable and unrealistic ambitions she held for superstardom and the glitz and the schmaltz that came with it. In Sarah’s eyes, she was destined for celebrity.
Mike was a plasterer by trade. Among his peers in the decorating industry he was known as a good, honest worker. His plastering skills were probably the finest in the local area. He was also very fair, never overcharged his satisfied customers. Mike considered ambition in his own terms, but kept them closely guarded from Sarah, for the sake of argument. He wanted only for the simple things life: a car, a nice home, holidays abroad once or twice a year, a wife, children… That was it, really. A nice quiet, simple life. He hated the celebrity culture in Sarah’s magazines, thought it plastic and ridiculous, but he kept his opinions to himself.
Sarah and Mike had met up Hanley one Saturday evening in a nightclub, and initially Sarah hadn’t displayed much of an interest. Yet Mike had seen what he liked and had persisted with a barrage of texts and phone-calls. He saw beneath Sarah’s - what some people would describe as - slightly selfish foibles and self-indulgence and instead he found a decent, caring girl, one of which he would like for his wife. He was sure that time would eventually iron out the creases of Sarah’s idealistic expectations. It was called maturity.
They had only been dating for six months before he asked her to marry him. He had decided to book a table at their favourite Indian restaurant before producing an £800 engagement ring he had bought from Argos earlier that afternoon. Sarah, gushing, had immediately said, Yes!
During their engagement, the couple hardly went out at all - apart, of course, from the Sunday night karaoke event at the Dog and Whistle. An event, Sarah proclaimed that she was the undisputed star. She reserved any duties from after six o clock Sunday afternoons so she could prepare herself for the event: practising her voice in the mirror, constantly changing and reworking her hair and make-up. It would take Mike ten minutes to get ready to Sarah’s three hours. During such evenings, Sarah would be constantly rushing up and down the stairs of their semi-detached home, not far from Central Forest Park, to ask Mike his opinion on the various outfits she tried on.
‘Does this make me look fat?’ she would ask. Alternatively, ‘Does my bum look big in this?’
Mike, to his eternal wisdom, had learned when to nod and when to shake his head. The problem, he thought (though he would never address it to Sarah) was that his fiancé refused to accept she had outgrown her usual size 14 clothes into a 16. Mike constantly told her she had a perfectly healthy size, and that the girls in the newspapers were, though not in his own words, frighteningly unwholesome in their borderline emaciation (and he had meant it) but Sarah refused to accept it.
When the time arrived, Sarah would arrive in the Dog and Whistle’s entrance like a star, her fiancé and her parents following meekly behind like her entourage. They would buy the drinks before settling themselves into a corner of the room they favoured. Sarah would seldom get up to sing first. It was her duty, she informed anybody in earshot, to save the genuine talent until later on in the evening. Sarah would usually sing three or four songs throughout the evening. For her first, Tina Turner’s powerful, What’s Love Got To Do With It?, would suffice, then Bryan Adam’s, Everything I Do, I Do It For You (at which point, in mid chorus, she would hold an outstretched left hand to Mike, sitting uncomfortably in the corner) then Celine Dion’s, My Heart Will Go On, would cap the evening off.
The thing what everybody neglected to tell Sarah was, she couldn’t sing a single note - in tune, that is. Sarah was a terrible singer. Some locals like to joke that she made some off the awful people in the early auditions of televisions’ The X Factor look like professionals.
In fact, the only person that frequented the Dog and Whistle on Sunday nights that didn’t know how entirely awful her voice was, was Sarah herself. And not only did Sarah not recognise the terrible sound of her own voice, but she also misinterpreted the audiences response to her performance to suit her own fantastical designs. Because after her performances Sarah mistook the cheers and good-spirited applause from the amiable (if slightly patronising) locals as genuine adulation. Their smiles and tears of mirth, to her, were tears of emotion and gasps of open-mouthed amazement. Their backhanded sniggering and laughter was a coy disguise at the indisputable talent they - to their good fortune - had just held witness to.
Mike’s response to his fiancé’s blatant misapprehensions was to simply humour her, masking his embarrassment with forced enthusiasm and applause.
‘Was I any good, Mike?’ she would ask breathlessly, returning to their table.
‘Any good?’ he would ask. ‘You were bloody brilliant, sweetheart. Bloody brilliant.’
Sarah’s parents, who sometimes came along to the event, would serve to reinforce Mike’s lie.
‘She were good, weren’t she, our Sarah?’ Mike would ask them. Sarah’s middle-aged parents, clearly not as convincing liars as their soon-to-be son-in-law, would murmur their approval with forced smiles and fierce nodding, unable to hold eye contact for more than a few seconds; Sarah’s father draining his pint a little too quickly and spluttering a little.
‘Perhaps I should get up for an encore,’ Sarah would say, still basking in her illusory glorification.
‘Perhaps not, eh?’ Mike would say quietly, quickly draining his.
The situation was untenable for Mike and Sarah’s parents. They each knew that Sarah was utterly tone-deaf, and that she had become something of a laughing stock amongst the locals in the Sneyd Green area. But to tell her some home truths would be akin to tearing the poor girls’ heart out with a rusty spoon. The only conclusion they had collectively drawn was to humour Sarah for as long as possible. They all hoped that as Sarah grew older and more mature, her impracticable visions of superstardom would slowly dissipate.
However, the situation was to get untenable when, one Sunday evening in the Dog and Whistle, the pub proprietor, Barry made an announcement over the microphone.
Barry, a middle-aged man with wispy greying hair combed over a prominent red forehead, wearing a white shirt that seemed as though it had never been washed or ironed, coughed twice into the microphone to get people’s attention.
‘Ladies and genitals,’ he cackled into the microphone, blushing and sweating furiously, pulling trousers up to his massive gut. ‘This next week we’ve got a little bit of a surprise fer thee at the Dog and Whistle,’ he rasped, ‘a karaoke competition!’
Sarah quickly swivelled in her seat excitedly just as Mike squirmed uncomfortably on his, eyes darkening in mortal fear.
‘Now, I know we’ve all had a good mess about tonight, and in previous weeks, but next week it’s the real deal!’
This earned a large cheer from the locals.
‘There’ll be prizes,’ the landlord went on, ‘first, second and third. I’ll prepare a panel of judges for the event to make it fair. See you next week.’
Sarah was bouncing in her seat. ‘Did you hear that, Mike? Prizes! We might win a holiday! We could go to Barbados!’
‘I dunna think the Dog and Whistle can afford to be that extravagant, love,’ he said, sipping his ale thoughtfully.
‘This is my big chance!’ she said, lost in her own distant world of wonder. ‘My big chance.’
The following week, during the days leading up to the Dog and Whistle karaoke competition were very difficult for Mike. Surely now that the performers were to be judged on merit, Sarah would be shot down mercilessly. And there was no doubt about it - she stood absolutely no chance of winning. Mike had heard some of the other singers (Sarah’s potential competition) at the karaoke nights before, and some were very good. It was a pickle alright, and it wasn’t as if Mike could lean on Sarah’s parents for support; they had already made a rash excuse not to attend the evening. Mike would have to fight this battle alone.
As the week wore on, Mike grew more and more depressed, constantly in conflict with what he should and shouldn’t do. On the other hand, Sarah’s anticipation grew in increments; she became too excited to settle. The mere intimation of trying to put her off the idea was inconceivable. As far as Sarah was concerned she had already won, and she already had designs on how she would spend her prize money on decorating the house!
Mike was at the end of his tether, sick with worry. It wasn’t until Friday night in his works van, driving home along Hanley Road, past the Dog and Whistle, that he developed a plan. The idea came to him like a flash of blinding light, a moment of clarity, and the more he thought about it the more convinced he was that it would work. He flicked his indicators over to the right and steered the van into the Dog and Whistle’s car park.
When Sunday night eventually arrived it had taken Sarah five hours to get ready to her usual three. Mike was ready in ten minutes, as always. As Sarah hurried around their home nervously, trying on various outfits, he was a picture of calm; a stark contrast to the troubled figure he had recently supplanted.
The Dog and Whistle was packed out. The bar-staff were struggling to cope with locals queuing four or five deep. Barry, the landlord, took time from his duties to spare Mike a friendly wave as he walked in, before the couple took their usual seats in the corner of the lounge. The first singer came on at just after nine - a young lad of around seventeen or eighteen. The youth sang a cracking rendition of Robbie Williams, Angels - and, Mike thought, did a fantastic job. Next up was a thirty-something local woman name Gloria who did an equally impressive rendition of Amy Winehouse’s, Back To Black.
Another four singers took to the microphone before it came to Sarah’s turn, and Mike was hard-pressed to find fault with any of them.
‘This is it. Wish me luck, hun,’ she said, squeezing his hand.
‘Good luck, babe,’ he said. ‘Knock ‘em dead.’
During the build-up to Sarah’s performance Mike had developed a very unlikely and idealistic notion that Sarah would suddenly find her voice and lay her singing demons to rest. That, preposterously, she would somehow develop an acute singing voice overnight. Such notions, however, are the mechanics of idle fantasy at work, and it was proved as such as soon as Sarah hit her first note.
If anything Sarah’s performance was worse than ever, which was probably because she was trying harder to impress. She had taken it upon herself to enhance her performance with the aid of choreography, using her outstretched left palm to devastating effect. She had chosen Whitney Houston’s, I Have Nothing, and tearfully devoted it to, ‘my fiancé, Mike, sitting in the corner,’ before the song had begun.
Once Sarah had started singing, Mike, squirming slightly, scanned the interior of the pub as the patrons’ faces changed from mild curiosity to utter horror. In just a two minutes it would all be over. As Sarah hit the final note (or miss-hit, as the correct observation would sustain) the entire pub fell into a deathly silence, mute disbelief etched across all the patrons’ faces. Eventually, Mike started to clap, and then the clapping spread outwards, like ripples in a pool; albeit, no-one quite understanding what they were clapping for.
All this awkwardness didn’t bother Sarah though. To her, the audience’s unease was simply a collective shock; they simply couldn’t believe the outstanding talent they had just heard.
‘I think that went quite well,’ she proudly exclaimed to Mike, returning to her seat.
At just past eleven o clock it was time for the judges to cast their decisions. Third prize went to an elderly man and his version of Frank Sinatra’s, My Way. Second prize, twenty pounds worth of beer tokens, went to a pretty young girl with her performance of Sinead O Connor’s, Nothing Compares 2 U.
‘Ladies and gentleman,’ Barry the landlord announced, scratching his gut, ‘the panel of judges have inaminous- inaministically - unouminously.. um… they’ve all decided that tonight’s winner should be…’
Somewhere from behind the bar someone performed an imaginary drum roll on the surface.
‘Thanks, Glen.’ Barry coughed into the Mike, suddenly looking very sheepish. ‘Sarah Gardner! With her performance of, I Have Nothing!’
Gasps of shock lit the air like fireworks. Locals, stupefied, looked between themselves for added confirmation. Sarah gleefully went back onto the stage and was presented with a glittering tiara by Barry, as jeers and boos resonated between the Dog and Whistle’s tattered old walls. Cries of “fix” echoed in unison.
But Sarah didn’t hear them. It didn’t matter. Sarah Gardner was crowned the Sneyd Green karaoke queen, and she had never been happier.
Weeks later the Dog and Whistle pub still did a smashing trade on Sunday nights. Allegations of rigging the karaoke event were long behind the proprietor, Barry. In fact, it had never been busier. Sarah and Mike still attended the karaoke nights and Sarah still got up and did her stuff on stage, and her parents still often came along too. Sarah’s voice, unfortunately, never showed any signs of improvement. But she wasn’t to know. The main improvement, however, and probably the reason for the pubs’ increased trade, was the new decorating job. Gone was the old-fashioned circa 1970s wallpaper, and replaced with a more modern design of terracotta and peppermint-greens. Even the pubs’ crumbling façade had been re-pointed. The decorating job had been a fantastic effort, particularly the plastering side, of which other decorators regarded as the finest work they had seen in the local area.
© Danny Hill 2009