Page 8 of Crescendo

Eliza laughed lightly. “You’re not very competitive, are you, Lydia?”

“She doesn’t need to be,” Bansi laughed. “She’s Lydia Howard Fox. She’s the one to compete with.”

Clara smiled lightly across the table at us. “And Ella the dark horse…”

Ella put a hand up. “Please, don’t try competing with me. I’ll be a disappointment. I’m rather… new to all this.”

I nudged her side. “Ella wants to keep the dark horse label. Keep underestimating her.”

“ Lydia, ” Ella pleaded, half laughing and half embarrassed.

“We’ve all been new once,” Eliza said. “What matters is what you do from there. I think we’d best set some… aspirations for the months ahead. You can’t get anywhere without good, solid goals, after all.”

Hannah nodded. “Yeah, you’ve gotta have goals.”

New day, no new thoughts for Miss Hannah Carter. Bansi, the most earnest and eager person alive, launched right in with, “I want to get half as good as Lydia Howard Fox.”

“Bansi, my friend,” I said, “you’re going to have to stop full-naming me.”

“Forget that,” Eliza scoffed, leaning past Hannah to give Bansi a shove on the shoulder. “You’ve got to set your sights higher than being like a washed-up has-been.”

“Eliza,” Olivia said with a polite smile that I knew was British for I’m going to cut you but I’m too upper-crusty to say that in public. “Let’s try to at least get to noon today before we go picking fights with people, shall we?”

Hannah cut in with what might have been her first independent thought, even if it was just a riff on Eliza’s. “You can’t go making someone else your goal,” she said. “You can’t go trying to be Lydia, you know? You and Lydia are different people. You gotta be Bansi.”

“Hey, cheers to that,” I said, picking up the glass of water the table had been set with before we arrived, the waitstaff still a little overwhelmed with all of us tumbling in at the same time. “You’ll have to show me your work, Bansi. I’m unbearably nosy.”

“She is,” Ella laughed, meeting my glass with hers before everyone else did. “She grilled me relentlessly about my work, as if I know the first thing what I’m doing and have any place to go talking to her about music.”

“How is she?” Eliza said, and Ella answered for her.

“Bad enough she immediately went to give me piano lessons,” she laughed, and the table laughed with her, Clara rolling her eyes with some playful comment about me being helpful. I let it slide, because I was magnanimous.

“It’s lovely,” I said. “The kind of piece where you know the person making it just loves music.”

Ella blushed, ducking her head a little, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. “So, literally the description of an amateur.”

“Miss Ella Hendrickson, do you want me to insult you?” I said, giving her a playful shove on the arm as the table rippled with laughter around us, a harried waitress making her way up to the table. “Are you going to keep asking until I’ve insulted you? Because I’m famously quite stubborn!”

“No, no,” Ella laughed, cheeks coloring more, making her freckles stand out more against the warm peach-hued flush. I was a sucker for freckles. “I just don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea about me!”

“All right, here’s Ella’s resolution for the next two months, then,” I said, turning back to the table. “To know which key she’s writing in—”

“Oh, god, stop that,” Ella said, just about lunging for me. Eliza went wide-eyed.

“How do you write a song without knowing what key—”

“She doesn’t need to know it, she feels the music in her veins,” I said, and Ella hung her head, but she laughed with the rest of the table.

“I shouldn’t have come out today…”

Once we’d finished placing our orders and another waiter had come along right away to get everyone their tea—I made sure to ask for tea, too, since I wasn’t a monster about to disrespect the local customs by asking for coffee—Eliza sat up taller and spoke in her poshest declaration voice.

“My intention for this program is to write a piece worthy of the Royal Albert Hall. Something that will play in that hall one day—one day soon—and show everyone who I am.”

I raised my glass to hers. “I’m sure you’ll do great, Lizzy,” I said, and she rolled her eyes, meeting my glass anyway.

“I don’t want compliments from a has-been,” she said.

“Well, you’re getting them anyway, so I’m afraid you’ll have to live with the pain.”

Bansi tossed in, “I just want to improve my skills… maybe enough for my parents to see music is something I can do.”

Ella smiled brilliantly at him. “That’s a great resolution. We’ll all be cheering for you.”

Clara nodded her assent and said, “I’m more or less just here to see what happens. I enrolled with my friend on a bet.”

Ella had said Clara was old money… that seemed like the kind of thing old money would do. “What’s the bet?” I said, and Clara smiled wryly at me.

“That I’d win him over. He’s an old-school rocker.

Friends always having a go at me for being—pardon my language— a snooty classics twat over the sorts of music I listen to.

He’s doing this program with me, and then we’ll both go do some work together with his rock buddies, and we’ll see which one of us wins. ”

Eliza shook her head. “I cannot believe you enrolled in a program like this just for… bants.”

“Who’s your friend?” I said, and she gestured across the crowd.

“Dodge. Tall guy, bit ginger, unfortunately for him. Looks like a surfer, not actually very good at it. You’ll meet him… man likes to bother me when I’m doing better things.”

Ella quirked a smile. “Dodge… is that a nickname?”

Clara shrugged. “His name’s Nathaniel, but, you know. His first car was a Dodge, so we all made fun of him for that, and it stuck. All the better he sounds a bit dodgy for it.”

“Brutal,” I said lightly. “Well, keep us posted on the war you two have got going on. Hannah, how about yours?”

Hannah shifted awkwardly, sitting up taller. “Oh, er. Dunno, really.”

Eliza elbowed her, the first time I’d really seen Eliza interact with her other than echoing each other. “Hannah, don’t be all wishy-washy.”

“I’m not wishy-washy,” she said with a nudge back. “I’d like to be able to get a contract. For scoring work, like Lydia does.”

I beamed. “Aw. Does that make me your inspiration?”

Hannah snorted. “A cautionary tale, more like. What’s yours?”

“Me…” I laughed. “Good question. To get my music back. You know, washed-up has-been that I am.”

Eliza put her nose up a fraction. “What a terrible aspiration.”

I waved her off. “Don’t flirt with me too hard right off the bat, we’re still only just getting to know each other.”

Ella snorted into her hand, nearly spitting her drink, and the table burst out into laughter as Eliza scrunched up her face, a hint of flush poking out from under a little too much makeup.

“I’m telling you—” she said, her accent slipping a little bit, before she tried again in a crisper voice.

“I’m saying, you can’t aspire to go backwards. ”

“Hm?” I raised an eyebrow, and she settled back in her seat as the food started coming out, eggs Benedict for Bansi set down and a big Belgian waffle for Hannah. With the sudden line drawn between me and Eliza, though, the table practically didn’t notice, watching the two of us as Eliza spoke.

“You can’t aspire to something in your past. Everyone knows that. If you want to move forward, you have to move forward. To something you haven’t done before.”

I stared at her for a second before I settled into a smile. “That’s cute that you’re concerned about me.”

Eliza smiled a little wider. “Just that you’ll need it, Lydia Howard Fox.”

“I get it, I get it. I’m Lydia Howard Fox.

I know. Stop saying the whole thing. Then I guess my aspiration…

to try something new,” I said. “To discover something I haven’t.

And maybe… find where my passion lies right now,” I said, with my eyes drifting inexplicably towards where Ella was looking at me, and where our eyes locked for an electric second.

Wasn’t that inexplicable after all, of course.

She was the one bubbling with passion—but only barely bubbling on the surface, where you couldn’t see a lot of it but you could tell it meant there was explosive pressure under the surface.

And maybe me trying to teach her as much music as I could wasn’t just for her, but trying to get at that wellspring of passion, trying to see for myself what made a person burst with inspiration like that.

Of course, she was also damn pretty, so I guess maybe I just liked to look at her. But also, I’d stared for a second too long, so I passed it off with a, “That leaves you, Ella. What’s yours?”

Ella quirked a smile, still holding my gaze for one more charged second before she looked away.

“A few,” she said. “One is to learn enough that I don’t get publicly roasted at breakfast.” The table all laughed around her, and she rode the laughter with, “Two is to find what I like. I’m still so new to this that I want to develop my…

my taste, my ideas. And three—” She sat up taller, raising her drink high.

“Three is to figure out something about Lydia I can use to embarrass her in return.”

The table burst into laughter and chatter, and I met her drink with mine. “I cannot wait to see what you come up with,” I said. “A lot rolls right off of me! I’m looking forward to seeing what really sticks in my feathers!”

“Oh, I know,” Ella said with a mischievous smile my way. “Don’t worry. It’ll be something good, just for you, Lydia.”

I really hoped this girl was straight. It was a little too nice hearing my name in her voice. I didn’t need the issues that would come with finding out she was gay. She wore shoes that were a little too comfortable to be regular straight-woman shoes, but I put it down as being a doctor instead.

“Here’s to bringing me down, beating me, and humiliating me,” I said, and the whole table clinked their glasses to that.