CHAPTER 40
We assembled our little army and headed off back to the music, bundled up with water and instruments. Jimmy was booked to play the smaller stage, where Mark was raving about a band with a girl called Kathryn Tickell following on.

Steph was promising great things later from some lot she called the Oysters, and I realised that despite all the talk, all the practice and playing, I was completely out of the loop with this music.

I had trained classically, as had Steph, as had Eric, but there we diverged. My taste ran to older rock, especially where my own instrument appeared, so I was a fan of Tull, of Focus, of CCS, of Hawkwind, while she had given her soul to the traditional stuff I had dismissed as tumpty-tumpty. My eyes were opening along with my ears, and when I found myself alongside Geoff I put it into words. He laughed.

“You think so? You should have heard her at a friend’s wedding a while ago, playing rock”

“What? Like Zep, or Airplane, aye?”

“Er, like Metallica and ‘Enter Sandman’ “

“You are joking!”

“No. Think of how the track goes, and then imagine her as over the top as ever. Went down well. Now, what’s going on with Kell? You seem to have clicked with her”

“Yeah, Geoff. She’s been more than a little down. We seem to have a bit in common, god knows how. I mean, typical teenager, she doesn’t want to be herself, she wants to be her Mam, or Steph. Daft thing is, I’d sell my soul to be Kelly…ah, you know what I mean”

He nodded. “Yeah, I do have a sort of inside loop on things, don’t I? Kelly, though, she brought the odd boy round, never seemed shy of doing so. They just never lasted long. It’s the family, isn’t it? She’s been talking to you about that?”

“Aye, she has. You frighten the poor dears away”

He laughed again. “I will have to stop feeding my wife the raw meat, then! She is a bit…psycho. God, you should have seen her on the rugby pitch, seriously scary…”

He drifted off into memory, with a happy smile, and I was puzzled.

“Geoff, can I ask a really personal question?”

“I’ll tell you after you ask it”

“Well, how do you cope with, you know, her history? It’s obviously an important thing for me”

“For you and Eric together, you mean?”

He considered the question for a while.

“Look, what I first saw of her were her legs, and they are wonderful legs. Then it was her hair, and her eyes, and then she smiled and Kelly says I went ’all goosh’ in about ten seconds. Everything she did was girl. When she was dressed up for work, or for the rugby, it wasn’t her taking off her femininity but her putting on a disguise over it. She was still there, still my lovely girl, even when she was smacking some poor bastard into the middle of the next century. Her soul leaks, Annie, leaks round the edges so that people can see. I know what my wife is, so her history is just that.”

He stopped, as the others went on. “You are so like her, you know? You have played your part well, but when I talk to Eric get the same words that I get from Ginny and Kate, that you were always off-kilter, out of alignment with the world. I, we, see you relaxing now, and just like my wife you are leaking. You are doing well, pretending, here, but you won’t be able to keep it up. I mean, you and Eric….”

“Yeah, me and Eric. Funny, we start talking about Kelly, and we end up on me. I must come across as a bit self-obsessed”

“Hard not to be, in your shoes”

He chuckled a bit. “Ginny told me about your tastes in shoes. Thank god Steph isn’t into shoes, we’d have to sell the bikes!”

I did the hands-up mock-terror “NO!!!!” thing, and Eric dropped back to us.

“Share the joke?”

Geoff brought him up so speed, and he grinned. “Yeah, she’s only got about four pairs so far, but I am dreading the future”

If, if I had been different, there and then, if I had had the time and the luck to be myself, I would have kissed him for that remark, for everything it implied. I pulled that urge back, and indicated Kelly and Mark, who seemed to be deep in a very animated discussion.

“They are both doing that teenaged thing, you know, do they fancy me, will I look stupid, I’ll die if they don’t, and the daft thing is that they are both smitten”

Geoff nodded. “Yeah, let’s not push or take the piss then. Right, we’ll see Jimmy do his bit, then grab a first pint, and Kath afterwards, then you have a choice”

“What’s that?”

“Either wait with me and Jan and the instruments in a seat, or get right up front with a hairy woman who thinks she can sing as well as the Oysters. Trouble is, she knows all the words”

I grinned. “Given the circumstances, I’ll do the coat holding thing, aye?”

“Sensible girl!”

At the marquee, Jimmy and Mark disappeared to prepare for what I suddenly realised was ‘their’ set as opposed to Jimmy’s alone, and I noticed a little touch of the young man’s hand to Kelly’s arm as he left. No pushing, no teasing.

And they were good, very good together, the old man and the tall lad, clearly having played together for a long time and fitting almost seamlessly together. They played seated, and I realised Jimmy was actually losing his physical edge. The eyes were still there, full of fun, the playing was sharp and quirky and the banter was incomprehensible. I noticed the way they looked at each other, the intensity. As one took the lead, the other’s eyes fixed on their rhythm, following their movements as the leader stared off into some distant world of feeling.

They brought their set to an end with some swirling alternate lead thing, and there was a good round of applause as they took their bows. Kelly had been fixed on them all the way through, and when they joined us once more I could see the tells in her, the little jerks as she tried to decide whether to hug Mark, and then she did the devious thing and hugged Jimmy instead, which of course gave her the excuse to transfer her arms to Mark, who blushed crimson again. Jimmy was stretching his shoulders.

“Aye, ah’ll hev that forst gill noo, ah owe”

We all looked at Mark, who sighed.

“Granda fancies a pint”

It went down well, in my case another local microbrewery’s product, and I realised Mark was getting a little excited.

“Ah whey, she’s the top player about these days, one of the best ever, I think. That’s what got me down here, that and looking after the gadgy there”

“How, ye cheeky hoit!”

More of the same, as someone with a strongly accented English swapped badinage with someone who made sounds that lurked at the edges of comprehension. It was a good mood, the family poking gentle fun at each other until the second pint was gone, and we headed off without Jimmy (“Ah’ll hev some seat for yeez”) for what turned out to be one of the most talented musicians I have ever encountered.

When she appeared on stage, I couldn’t help it, and started to giggle, just as Steph started to blush. Long red hair–tick. Fiddle–tick. Manic leaping around stage----no, she played with a sort of bobbing dance, clearly deeply involved with what she did, her eyes often closing, head back. With a band round her that she announced included her brother on fiddle, she stood barefoot as she did things to Mark’s instrument that left him open-mouthed, and then switched to fiddle to knock me sideways as well. At one point, she was playing fiddle together with her brother, and they ended up pogoing and giggling as they worked through the tunes. It was pure delight, and I asked myself yet again how I could have let this music pass me by.

Once more it was out into the cool of the evening as we walked over to the main stage, ready for the final act of the night. Steph almost dancing in her own excitement as Kelly stuck close by her swain. They seemed to be moving on to the ‘accidental touch’ stage, where a hand might just help someone through a door, or round an obstruction, by landing in the small of the back, or be placed on a forearm to emphasise a point.

We split up, Eric staying by me at last after all the weaving we had been doing over Kelly and Mark, and as most of the rest headed for what I thought of as the mosh pit I ended up sandwiched between Jan and Eric and encumbered with a stack of instruments.

The MC did his thing, and a short man with bleached crew cut, a dark suit and shades came up to the microphone as guitar, fiddle, drums and–cello? They had a cello? This could be interesting.

It was more than interesting. It wasn’t rock, there was no wailing guitar or long solos, but the sheer intensity and passion of their music floored me. The lyrics were sharp, they were audible and comprehensible, there was wordplay as well as musicianship, and the tall man with the cello played it standing as would some rock guitarist. No, not slung across his chest, but walking it round the stage and playing with attack and virtuosity. I knew, instantly and utterly, what it was that drew her to them. By the time they finished, I was wishing was down the front with the others.

It was a stunning finish. A slow lament about the end of mining and the loss of jobs and communities, followed by a song I recognised as having been done by the Byrds. This was different, very different. The drums and the cello laid down a pulsing ground bass, the melody instruments following it, and the singer, his voice at first soulful, then with rising anger and passion, began listing South Wales coalmines, the repeated question being ‘who killed the miners’, and that question answered as the whole band roared with an accusatory shout of “Bastards!”

I felt the tears rolling down my cheeks, and I knew that the first thing I was going to do when we got home would be to steal every recording Steph had of them. It was a while before I realised that Eric had my hand in his. I looked across to him, and he just smiled, squeezed it and then let go. Jan handed me a tissue.

“I know” she said. “That’s their political bit, always gets people when they first hear it. Come on, let’s get this horde off to the beer, they will be drained”

They were, Geoff and his wife smiling in a dazed way, her hair stuck to her shoulders with sweat, Bill bouncing, and Kelly and Mark hand in hand, she looking dreamy and he like a rabbit in headlights.

“How, man, that was superb! You just have te dance te them, aye?”

Kelly hugged him. “Thank you….”

Yet again, that blush, that lottery-winner smile. We gathered up all of our gear and made the trek to the other tent, where Jimmy had indeed kept his promise and our seats. How he had managed, I had no idea. As the boys set off for some more ales, I managed to catch Eric, and whispered in his ear.

“Thanks for that, love”

There. Said it.