surrounding trees. There was a measured chorus of voices singing Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’. Phryne stopped the car and listened. It was perfect. The rain drifted softly down, the river ran with a slap and gurgle, and the voices, from highest sop to lowest bass, were blended as finely as a Ritz Hotel cocktail.
Blake really was an excellent poet, Phryne reflected, lighting a cigarette and leaning back on the leather upholstery, though regrettably mad, as poets so often are.
The song finished. Several people came out onto the balcony, and one girl exclaimed in a high-pitched voice, somewhat affected by gin, ‘Oh, I say! What a spiffing car!’
‘That must be Miss Fisher,’ someone else commented. ‘I hope she’s remembered the beer!’
‘I have remembered the beer,’ she called up. ‘But you’ll have to carry it yourself.’
There was a clatter of feet, and several young men erupted out of the boathouse and down the steps.
‘Oh, Miss Fisher, I’m so glad that you could come. Let me help you out, what an amazin’ car! Very kind of you to bring some refreshments for the lads. . and the girls, of course, I was forgetting. Connors, you and Tommy Jones get the beer, will you? Do you remember me, Miss Fisher?’
Phryne accepted the eager clasp and extracted herself from the driving seat, summoning up the name to match the bright, intelligent face.
‘Of course I remember you,’ she temporised. ‘Aaron Black, that’s who you are. Well? What about the bet?’
‘You can call on me for a row down the river in a real boat,’ he confessed, grinning. ‘They know several much ruder songs than we have heard. But we are learning. We think that we should put the two societies together, Miss Fisher, I mean, silly, isn’t it, in these days of equality, females all over the shop, I mean, women students in Medicine and even in Law; silly to have separate singing, when all parts in music are of equal value. What do you think of it?’
Phryne allowed herself to be led up the stairs by this charming young man, past a series of boats stored in racks like coffins, and up onto a plain dancing floor, with a servery in one corner and the balcony at the end.
‘It’s a bit of a crush,’ apologised Connors, panting past with a crate. ‘I always think that the balcony is not going to make it through another party, but it has managed so far.’
‘Beer?’ cried a huge young man, seizing the crate and extracting a bottle. He bit off the cap and gulped half the contents before his outraged friend regained possession.
‘Beer!’ he said with a delighted smile, and grabbed for the bottle again.
‘Behave yourself, oaf! This is Miss Fisher, donor of all that amber liquid and some plonk for the ladies, so be civil.’
The huge dark young man took up Phryne’s gloved hand with wincing delicacy and bestowed a respectful kiss.
‘Madam, your kindness overwhelms us. . can I have my bottle back now, Aaron?’
Aaron returned the bottle, seeing that Phryne was amused, and the chorus began on a sad tale of a young maid who was poor (but she was honest). Phryne sighted Alastair across the room, scowling, and the beautiful and diverting Lindsay near him, looking embarrassed. Then two young women claimed Phryne’s attention and a bottle of her wine, and she elbowed her way out onto the balcony, where there was a wicker garden-seat.
‘What do you think of this idea of putting the two societies together, Miss Fisher?’ asked the blonde girl, gnawing at an ink-stained fingernail. ‘They are pretty rough types, these Glee-ers.’
‘Nonsense, Marion,’ retorted her companion, who was thin and stylish and would be elegant when she started wearing stockings. ‘They’re nervous around us. Once they see that we aren’t put off by the vulgarity they’ll be all right. And we need some basses if we are to put on that B Minor Mass you’re always talking about.’
‘I suppose so. The world has a lot of men in it, doesn’t it? It won’t do just to pretend that they don’t exist. Miss Fisher, we are devoted admirers of yours. We read all of your cases. Are you engaged in one at the moment?’
‘Why, yes, I am engaged in the cases of the vanishing lady and the appearing lady; one died and one is alive.’
‘Ooh, a riddle! Let’s see if we can guess it. Do you want some of this wine? It’s rather good,’ said Marion. ‘Let’s get Alastair onto it, he’s frightfully good at riddles.’
‘Alastair!’ shrieked the other girl, but Alastair did not seem to have heard her. He turned his back to the balcony and was arguing with Lindsay.
‘What’s wrong with him lately?’ demanded Agnes. ‘He’s terribly shirty at the moment. Used to be a good enough chap, too, though a shark for the books.’
‘I’m doing Arts,’ explained Marion. ‘Agnes here is doing Medicine. So is that Alastair chap, and he was rather fun, though over the last year he’s been awfully dull. Does nothing but talk about money.’
Phryne accepted some of the wine, a good traminer riesling from the Hunter Valley which she had personally selected as being light and sweet enough for a student’s taste. No glass being evident, she drank out of the bottle, sharing it with the two girls.
‘I don’t know that one,’ remarked Agnes. ‘What are the men singing?’
‘Far away,’ carolled the tenors, ‘Far away,’ growled the basses, ‘He kept it for a student who is far, far away.’
‘That’s a good song, we must learn it. Look here, Agnes, I think you’re right. It sounds much better with us all singing together. So much more balanced. Not shrill, like we used to sound.’
‘Ah, and you should have heard us,’ commented Lindsay from behind Phryne. ‘We growled like bears with sore heads. Now the sound is quite perfect.’
‘Not quite perfect,’ disagreed Johnson, poking his head under Lindsay’s arm. ‘There is a lot of dissonance which can be removed by rehearsal. We need to knock the raw edges off and get used to singing in time with each other. Listen. One half of the room is out of tempo with the other half.’
This was true. Someone had started the old catch, ‘My man Tom has a thing that is long,’ which the girls also knew. ‘My maid Mary has a thing that is hairy,’ they replied, but somehow got irremedially out of synch, so it was hard to tell whose thing was long and whose thing was hairy. Eventually cacophony was reached and they broke off, laughing.
‘Was that as indelicate as it sounded?’ asked Phryne, and Marion blushed. ‘It’s a broom and a broom stick.’ Phryne laughed and had another mouthful of wine. It was cold and dark outside, and the rain slanted down in sheets, but in the boathouse it was very warm, and the wine was delicious, and the singing was (occasionally) excellent. Phryne relaxed for the first time since she had left the bed with Lindsay in it, and produced a flask of cointreau.
This drink was new to many who tasted it, and it seemed to have a powerful effect. Edwards, the music student, suggested a negro spiritual, and they began to sing ‘Swing low, Sweet Chariot’. The battery of voices in that confined space, all trained to hit a note so that it went down and stayed down, was terrific. Phryne felt tears prick her eyes, as she joined in, and Marion was openly snuffling.
Before the impact of the song had time to die away, Edwards was pushed aside and the bespectacled madrigal enthusiast flourished a pile of sheet music.
‘Sops on the right, basses on the left,’ he ordered, and Phryne was left alone on the balcony.
She reclaimed her flask and sat staring out into the night, enjoying the rain, until she felt a hand slide up her calf to her knee and she covered it with her own.
