A Week in Winter(72)
‘You play an instrument yourself,’ she said. It was a statement rather than a question. Anders found he was telling her about the nyckelharpa and about his love of music.
‘And what do you do for a living?’ she asked.
‘I’m just a boring accountant,’ he said with a wry smile.
‘Accountants are no more boring than anyone else,’ she replied, ‘but if your heart is elsewhere, would you not want to follow your destiny?’ As she spoke, her eyes looked into the distance.
‘Ah, no,’ he said wistfully, ‘I know perfectly well where my destiny lies. I will take over from my father very soon and run the business which was his life’s work. And once or twice a week I will go to a tiny club and play music to half a dozen people. And that will be my life.’ And then, as if to take the bleakness out of his words, he smiled and added, ‘But this is my holiday, and I’m going to find the best sessions in the county. Care to join me?’
It was agreed. The very next day they would meet after breakfast and go off in search of the best music to be found.
It was all totally undemanding and he was glad that he had come. When he went to bed and looked out on the crashing waves in the moonlight, he knew he would sleep properly. He would not wake twice, three times during the night, restless and unsure. That alone made it worth coming to this place.
The following morning, Anders asked Chicky Starr about music venues.
She knew of two pubs, both of them known locally for their sessions. One of them did terrific seafood at lunchtimes, if he was interested in sampling the local food.
As they were talking, Freda joined them, ready and eager for the day. The weather looked set fair and, with high spirits, the two set out in the direction of the town, Anders carrying his small rucksack on his back with his maps and guides inside. They passed whitewashed cottages, farmhouses and out-buildings. For a while, the road followed the coastline, and high as they were on the clifftop, the wind and spray stung their faces. Even the trees were bent double and stunted by the Atlantic gales. Then the road took them inland so that the sea was out of sight. As they got nearer to the town, the fields disappeared, ploughed up and replaced with new housing, row after row looking eerily empty.
The main street in Stoneybridge was lined with two- and three-storey houses, each one painted a different colour. The pubs were easy to identify, but the two explorers made the little café their first stop. They talked easily, comparing notes on their first impressions of their fellow guests at Stone House.
Freda, Anders noticed, gave little away about her own reasons for coming to Stone House but she had observed everyone else quite closely. The doctor and his wife, she said, shaking her head a little, were very sad – there had been a recent death, she could tell. Quite how she could tell she didn’t say. And that nice nurse – what was her name? Winnie, was it? – was having a dreadful time with her friend Lillian, but it would all be worth it in the end.
They went for lunch into the larger of the pubs: great bowls of steaming, succulent mussels and fresh crusty bread. And then, as if in response to some silent cue, a small, red-faced man sitting in the corner produced a fiddle and started to play. The session had started . . .
At first, musicians outnumbered audience but gradually more people arrived. Most would arrive in the evening, it was explained, but some liked to play in the afternoons and everyone was welcome to join in. The music, at first gentle and haunting, grew faster and faster. At one side of the room, a couple started dancing and Anders himself borrowed a guitar and played a couple of Swedish songs. He taught everyone the words of the songs and they joined in the choruses with great gusto.
He had, he admitted rather shyly, brought a traditional Swedish instrument with him on his holiday and he could bring it in the following day. Only if they’d like him to, of course . . .
Freda looked at him oddly as he returned to their table. ‘Once or twice a week, to an audience of six people?’ she said, so quietly he could hardly hear her over the cheering. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
Anders began to feel as if he had lived nowhere else. The American man actually was Corry Salinas, obviously here in hiding and calling himself John. The two women, Winnie and Lillian, were nearly drowned on their second day there and had to be rescued from a cave: Anders had missed all the excitement as he had stayed on in the town for the evening sessions. This time he had taken his nyckelharpa with him and had found himself called upon time and time again to play and sing along. Of John Paul there was no sign, although Anders did move between both pubs.
Eventually, on one of his visits, he asked a craggy-faced man who played the tin whistle did he know a piper from the area called John Paul?
Of course he did. Everyone knew him, very decent lad. Immediately, four other musicians joined in the conversation. They all knew poor John Paul. Stuck up there in Rocky Ridge with his old divil of a father whom no one could please. A discontented man who wished he had taken the emigrant’s ship years back and blamed everyone but himself that he hadn’t.
‘And does John Paul play the uilleann pipes anywhere round here?’
‘He hasn’t been in here in months now,’ one of the men said, shaking his head sadly. ‘A group of us went up for him in a van one day but he said he couldn’t leave the old fellow.’
The following morning, Anders asked Chicky how to get to Rocky Ridge and she packed a lunch for him.