The Officer's Mess/The place to play
"Welcome everyone to the Fusiliers' Speakeasy, I'm Frantz, leader of this merry band, and we're going to play for your enjoyment, while you eat, drink and gamble, the proceeds of tonight's activities are going towards our own retirement funds, as you well know... Thank you to Colonel Van Stoat for allowing the use of officers facilities for this performance." He took a sip of water.
"And today we have a particularly sparkling line up for you." The crowd gave moderate applause.
"On drums, not quite his usual position, we have Captain Brady "baby boy" Wynne." The crowd gave a more interested reaction, after Brady shook his cymbals a bit with a pedal. "And on horns, we have, of course, Bandpiper first class Dabloo Lihne." The clearhorn player's curved upon-itself woodhorn squirted a bevy of notes, "Bandsman Min-Ji Seeyon will be our flutist." Said tall, spare man flickered through an arpeggio with practiced ease. "And our very own Second Lieutenant Susan Noh will be joining on guitar, while our regular players:
Michael Goldenrod on trombone,
Cynthia Goldenrod on the saxophone,
Iguwolé "Clean" Brador on the Tuba,
and myself on the piano."
They jammed for a few minutes, then he noticed the band was missing notes, clearly startled, he tried to pick up the pace, to cover the gaps. Then he saw why they were having trouble, he simply stopped. Sophia, his ex-wife, was climbing on stage, in an half-transparent cocktail dress, she... she was carrying a microphone, so clearly, she intended to sing.
"Fusiliers!" Her brassy voice hushed the entire mess hall. "Tonight we sing and dance and wager and drink and eat, some of us to forget, some of us to remember." She paused. "We live, we made it through another year as a regiment, I was there, and so were only a fraction of you... I would like a moment of silence, to remember the fallen, this day." Michael, his trombone slack in his grasp just behind her, breathed loudly. Oh good, so that wasn't something they'd planned together to embarass him at least. But then, he remembered, a few weeks ago, that night after the victory. All of them had given themselves onto the music. Maybe it was the path forward, maybe he could forgive. Not today though, today the hurt was still raw, but he could ignore it, for the regiment, for the anniversary of their founding, where he'd been set to play, he could play for the living, and play for the dead. He kept silent, as indeed, everyone did, even Sniffy and Workman.
She only broke her silence two moments later, humming the first verse of the Van Doos Royal Canadic Regiment's official anthem, such as it was, getting the band back in sync. They knew what to do now, and sequed into In Flanders Field, not the version common in the second millenia, but the later version, adapted to the endless fields of war of the 40th and 41st millenia. She kept pace with them, her voice rising higher than Frantz remembered her singing... She'd been practicing. At the end of the poem, the band preceded her in the full-voiced version of the anthem, honouring fallen comrades, fellow Terran solders a long way from home. The trombone, especially, slid into long glissandos, and the tuba's powerful graves shook a tear from some of the audience, and the performers blinked one or two off themselves.
Then, they sang their own regimental anthem, which was a palate cleanser as far as the band was concerned, after the performance they'd just given. The reference to the spectacle of Terra, that none should forgive the honor of the stars, brought other tears, this was such a night.
Noh switched from her clearhorn to her oboe, and led the band into the second couplet. The march on the Cardinal always got the crowd going, and Noh had switched to her stronger, more classical instrument, but to Noh and Frantz' surprise, when she did, Cynthia pulled out her own clearhorn, a dark wooden version of the saxophone she'd been playing, and the two woods dueled in intensity for the rest of the song, Sophia's voice calling out the words as they did. Then the song ended, and the band looked uncertain what came next... Frantz had planned a line up for today, but it'd been thrown off kilter...
But Sophia had apparently known all about it, Kenny Rogers' 'The Gambler' demanded a lot of Sophia's generally higher-pitched voice, but she gave it her all, and it reminded the dealers to start dealing the various games of chance that were to get the money for the cause. For Frantz, it was destabilizing, how his respect for her kept growing, but his fear of being hurt kept it in check.
Type
Room, Military, Mess hall
Parent Location
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