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name. Baritone.
    I averted my gaze, still unable to look at him. I turned my face, unseeing at the heap of concert posters and programmes before him on the desk. No, I cannot do this. I’m treading dangerous ground and heading for disaster where I’ve been before and no, no, I’m not going there! ‘Sir,’ I blurted, my voice louder and my tone more urgent than Id meant it to be, ‘I’m not doing well in firsts and would like to be transferred to seconds, Sir.’ I kept my gaze on my legs, waiting for him to speak.
    ‘Look at me, Karl.’ Again the voice was gentle, offering measured reassurance. I lifted my head, found him smiling across the desk. ‘You’re saying you’d like to be a second soprano? That you’re finding firsts too much?’
    ‘Only the really high score, Mr Cilliers. I’ll be perfect in seconds, I know, it’s not as though I need to go down to alto or anything like that. I’m excellent between B flat below middle C, up to . . . maybe just above the high G. So to test my voice would be superfluous, Sir.’’
    He chuckled, lifted his hand to his mouth, amused. ‘To test your voice would be superfluous.’ A smile played around his lips. He nodded. Possibly teasing me.
    ‘That’s just my opinion, Sir.’ Spoken in earnest. ‘I’d hate to waste your time this late in the term when I should have told you already during voice-testing in January. But if you prefer to test me, Mr Cilliers, that’s fine.’ But please, please Merciful Father, don’t let him, don’t let him ask me to sing.
    ‘You’ve never really enjoyed choir, have you, Karl?’
    ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Cilliers?’
    ‘You may go to seconds, of course,’ he paused. I am ready to shout for joy. ‘But,’ he says, ‘I’d like to know more about how you feel in choir, generally.’
    What must I say? More than a word of truth from me would be suicide.
    ‘I really enjoy the concerts, Sir. I’m not sure why you think I don’t like choir, Sir.’
    He said he’d been watching me over the last month or so, had noticed a marked change in my attitude. He wanted to know what the change was all about, whether it had been merely because I had wanted to soften him up to allow me to change voices. I felt a flush across my face. Warmth radiating around my legs as if from a floor bathed all afternoon in the hot sun.
    Now I would talk for my life: ‘Sir, when I came back in January,’ I paused, picking through the words, ‘I decided I wanted to give my bestto the school. If I have a different attitude, then it’s because I’m a Senior now and I want to get the most out of my last two years here.’ Surely that was good enough. An ample explanation. Whatever the motive for my altered state, surely the point was that I had changed for the better. How wonderful that I had succeeded—
    ‘You can trust me, Karl.’
    ‘Sir?’ Still looking at him, I now frowned. His bottom lip was caught between his teeth. Again smiling.
    ‘Is there something else on your mind, Karl? I believe there is, you know.’ I yearned to melt into the air. He knew, had known all along the real reason for my coming. My alibi of being moved to seconds — no, not alibi, I had wanted that too — had been seen through. As I said, you can go to seconds tomorrow, that’s cleared up and agreed upon. No test . . . As you say, it would be, eh, superfluous.’
    ‘Thank you, Sir.’
    ‘But,’ he said and stopped. When at last he spoke, asking for the real issue on my mind, I knew that my being there was because of his precise grasp of what I had been hoping for; had been dreading. Now, the realisation of what I had gotten myself into terrified me. Every signal, every pondering look I had cast him over the weeks had indeed been seen. And as I saw it on his face, heard interest from his tone and his searching open-ended sentences, I longed to either retract everything or at once make him understand — believe — that he had misread it all. No, this