The Courage Consort Read Free Page B

Consort were busy with unpacking, nosing around, eating cornflakes ('Nieuw Super Knapperig!'), and other settling-in activities. It was Ben who noticed, through an upstairs window, the tiny cycling figure approaching far in the distance. They all went to stand outside, a welcoming committee for their prodigal contralto.
    Dagmar had cycled from Duidermonde railway station with a heavy rucksack on her back and fully laden baskets on both the front and rear of her bicycle. Sweat shone on her throat and plastered her loose white T-shirt semitransparently against her black bra and tanned ribcage; it darkened the knees of her electric-blue sports tights and twinkled in the unruly fringe of her jet-black hair. Still, she seemed to have plenty of energy left as she dismounted the bike and wheeled it towards her fellow Consort members.
    'Sorry I took so long; the ferry people gave me a lot of hassles,' she said, her huge brown eyes narrowing slightly in embarrassment. Like all colourful nonconformists, she preferred to zoom past awed onlookers, leaving them gaping in her wake, rather than be examined at leisure as she cycled towards them over miles of dead flat road.
    'Not to worry, not to worry, we've not started yet,' said Roger, stepping forward to relieve her of the bicycle, but it was Ben she allowed to take it from her. Despite his massive size, unfeasible for cycling, she trusted him to know what to do with it.

    Swaying a little on her Reebok feet, Dagmar wiped her face with a handful of her T-shirt. Her midriff, like all the rest of her skin, was the colour of toffee.
    'Well, childbirth hasn't made you any less of an athlete, I see,' commented Julian.
    Dagmar shrugged off the compliment as ignorant and empty.
    'I've lost a hell of a lot of muscle tone, actually,' she said. 'I will try to get it back while I'm here.'
    'Toning up!' chirped Julian, straining, as he always did within minutes of a reunion with Dagmar, to remain friendly. 'That's what we're all here for, isn't it?'
    The thought of Dagmar's eight-week-old baby roused Catherine from her daze. 'Who's taking care of little Axel?' she asked.
    'It's not a problem,' Dagmar replied. 'He's going to be staying here with us.'
    This revelation made Julian's chin jut forward dramatically. Accepting delivery of Dagmar had already sorely taxed him; the prospect of her baby coming to join her was just too much to take.
    'I … don't … know if that would be such a good idea,' he said, his tone pensive and musical, as if she'd asked him his opinion and he had deliberated long and hard before responding.
    'Is that so?' she said coldly. 'Why not?'
    'Well, I just thought, if we're being given this space—this literal and metaphysical space—to rehearse in, far away from noise and distractions, it … well, it seems odd to introduce a crying baby into it, that's all.'
    'My baby isn't a very crying baby, actually,' said Dagmar, flapping the hem of her T-shirt with her fists to let the cooling air in. 'For a male, he makes less noise than many others.' And she walked past Julian, to stake her own claim to the Château de Luth.

    'Well, we'll find out, I suppose,' Julian remarked unhappily.
    'Yes, I guess we will,' Dagmar called over her shoulder. On her back, nestled inside her bulging rucksack, a spiky-haired infant was sleeping the sleep of the just.

    By the time the Courage Consort settled down to their first serious run-through of
Partitum Mutante,
dark had come. The burnished lights cast a coppery glow over the room, and the windows reflected five unlikely individuals with luminous clarity. To Catherine, these mirrored people looked as if they belonged together: five Musketeers ready to do battle.
    If she could just concentrate on that unreal image, shining on a pane of glass with a forest behind it, she could imagine herself clinging onto her place in this little fraternity. The rehearsals were always the hardest ordeal; the eventual performance was a doddle by