Read Online Gazooka by Gwyn Thomas - Free Book Online Page B

having Sewell pitching on him with questions that were so well outside the catering trade.
    There was a long silence from Sewell and Tasso worked the urn to cover his embarrassment.
    â€˜What about the Toreador Song?’ asked Cynlais again.
    â€˜Just sing it over,’ said Sewell very casually, as if to say that we might as well have something going on while he picked down the one he wanted from a hallful of Iberian alternatives.
    Cynlais started in a tenor so thin he had us all bending over him to follow the melody. Cynlais had never been a vigorous singer, and his collapse had caused his cords to dangle worse than ever. We all gathered around him and tried as briskly as we could to give him support in the bullfighter’s song.
    Tasso tapped with his toffee hammer on the counter and smiled broadly at Sewell as if to tell him that this was just the thing, especially if played or sung without Gomer Gough, who was lunging at the melody as recklessly as he would have done at the bull.
    â€˜No,’ said Sewell. ‘I don’t think so. It’s a little bit too complicated to play on the march. We want something a bit wit less, something everybody’ll know.’
    â€˜What about “I’m One of the Nuts of Barcelona”?’ asked Gomer Gough, and the title of this piece sounded strangely from the mouth of Gomer, which had been worn down to the gums by the reading of a thousand unsmiling agendas.
    â€˜What’s nutting to do with bullfighting?’ asked Uncle Edwin. ‘Let’s lift the tone of these carnivals. I’m for the operatic tune. Let’s go through it again. It’s got a very warming beat, although I still think a nation that has to make the fighting of bulls a national cult is just passing the time on and trying to keep its mind off something else.’ Uncle Edwin gave Cynlais a nod and raised his hand to lead the group back into Bizet.
    â€˜Don’t make difficulties, Edwin,’ said Gomer, and he was clearly torn between two conversational lines; one to censure Edwin for hanging a little close to the boneyard spiritually, second, to explain to us how he had come to spare enough time from the dialectic to find the title of such a tune as ‘I’m One of Nuts of Barcelona’, one of the least pensive lyrics of the period. But Willie Silcox nipped in before Gomer could make his point.
    â€˜There’s another thing, too,’ said Willie. ‘Do you still want Cynlais to win the esteem of Moira Hallam?’
    â€˜Oh definitely. It’ll give Cynlais that little extra bit of winning vim. What are you hinting at now, Silcox?’
    â€˜This girl has got some sort of Spanish complex.’
    â€˜No question about it,’ said Mathew Sewell. He turned to Tasso. ‘I expect you’ve heard, Tasso, that the adjective Spanish is often used in connection with various sexual restoratives and stimulants.’ But he got no answer. Tasso was not looking. ‘She’s even got me feeling like a bit of a picador, and I haven’t felt that sort of urge very often since I conducted the united choirs of Meadow Prospect in the Messiah three years ago.’ Sewell paused and his thoughts dived into waters that were not instantly visible to us. ‘Do you remember those sopranos in their snow-white blouses? Do you remember the big dispute about my treatment of the last six hallelujahs?’
    We remembered the sopranos, the steep, tumescent tiers of gleaming satin, the last great outlay on sheet music and cloth in the pre-bath-chair phase of the coal trade in the third decade. But we could recall no dispute about Sewell’s interpretation of that particular score. His hallelujahs had seemed to us orthodox, even flatly so.
    Gomer became annoyed at this backwash of recollection in which we had politely allowed ourselves to become involved. He accused Sewell of egomania, of putting his own and Handel’s past before Meadow