ACCRINGTON MUSICAL TURNS TO A LOVE THAT EXISTED ALMOST ENTIRELY IN SILENCE
NOBODY KNEW
William’s song for the clarinet player remembers the feelings that can exist between two people while the rest of the world notices nothing
Everybody thought they knew William.
That was partly his own fault.
He laughed easily, talked readily and possessed the useful ability to turn almost any uncomfortable moment into a joke.
People like William are often mistaken for open books.
They aren’t.
Sometimes they simply become very good at choosing which pages everybody else is allowed to read.
“Nobody Knew,” one of the final songs from Gabriel Undici’s developing Mind The Trams Accrington musical, reveals another page.
And on it is a clarinet player.
SOMEWHERE BEHIND THE MUSIC
She was easy enough to overlook.
While dancers filled the floor and conversations competed with the orchestra, she sat amongst the musicians with her clarinet, helping provide the music against which everybody else’s stories unfolded.
William noticed her.
Perhaps at first it was nothing more than that.
A glance towards the bandstand.
A familiar face.
The moment before she raised the instrument to her lips.
The peculiar way one person in a crowded room gradually becomes the person you look for first.
Nobody remarked upon it.
Nobody teased him.
Nobody whispered behind his back.
Because, quite simply,
nobody knew.
THE WILLIAM BEHIND THE JOKES
Throughout Mind The Trams, William frequently provides humour when those around him need it most.
But humour can conceal as effectively as it reveals.
Nobody Knew allows the developing Accrington musical to show us the man who existed behind William’s jokes: somebody capable of carrying feelings far more quietly than his personality might suggest.
There are no extravagant declarations.
No interruption of the orchestra.
No dramatic rush across the ballroom.
Instead there are stolen glances, unfinished sentences and perhaps the occasional hope that next time he will find the courage to say something.
Next time.
Two words upon which an extraordinary number of lives have depended.
THE CLARINET REMEMBERS
Musically, the clarinet becomes more than accompaniment.
It becomes memory.
One phrase can return William to a particular room.
A particular evening.
A particular woman sitting amongst the musicians.
That gives Nobody Knew a quality quite different from a conventional love song.
William isn’t merely remembering someone.
He is remembering something that was never properly allowed to begin.
And perhaps those are the memories which linger longest.
THE STORIES NOBODY SEES
That idea lies close to the heart of Mind The Trams.
History remembers wars, governments and dates.
Communities remember something else.
Who danced with whom.
Who waited outside the bakery.
Who took the same tram every morning.
Who secretly loved somebody.
Who nearly said something.
Who didn’t.
Across Accrington and Oswaldtwistle in 1939, thousands of such stories must have existed without leaving so much as a sentence behind.
Nobody Knew gives one of them a song.
ONE LAST LOOK TOWARDS THE BANDSTAND
Perhaps William never needed everyone else to know.
Perhaps it was enough that, for a while, she occupied that private corner of his life.
The ballroom eventually empties.
The chairs are stacked.
The musicians pack away their instruments.
And somewhere amongst them a clarinet disappears into its case.
William leaves too.
Still joking.
Still smiling.
Still apparently the William everybody knows.
Except now the audience knows something they don’t.
Some of the greatest stories in a person’s life can happen without anybody else ever realising there was a story at all.
THE HERALD VERDICT
★★★★★
“EVERYBODY KNEW WILLIAM. NOBODY KNEW THIS.”
Beautifully understated, Nobody Knew finds the quiet man hidden beneath the laughter — and turns one clarinet, one crowded ballroom and one unspoken affection into a remarkably intimate moment.
FROM THE WORLD OF MIND THE TRAMS
An Accrington and Oswaldtwistle musical about love, friendship, humour, family and the ordinary Lancashire lives history so easily forgets.
Gabriel Undici — Lancashire author, songwriter and creator of the Mind The Trams musical project.
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