Page 18 of Finding Grey

TEN

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DANTE

Three days. I’d been here for three days and all I had to show for it was a rapidly growing pile of scrunched paper and a foul mood. So much for the wonders a change of scenery was supposed to bring. As it turned out, all coming here did was make the barren wasteland of my internal landscape that much more apparent.

I’d been unimpressed withThe Bard’s Retreatat first. The main house proved devoid of warmth and life, with its countless rooms and echoes of silence. Even my inspection of the well-equipped and comfortably furnished recording studio had brought little comfort.

Then, late that first morning, I’d stepped out onto the sun-drenched patio. The large, tiled area was enclosed by a hedge teeming with life, from the busy fluttering of sparrows and finches, to the low hum of dragonflies. Lush and tall, the green hedge provided privacy from the world beyond, but also a sense of protection from the realities it contained. A lap pool stretched out along the far side of the patio, its glistening water visible through transparent safety fencing. Standing alone out there, in the early Autumn warmth, I’d felt like I could breathe freely for the first time in months.

No, I couldn’t blame the scenery for my troubles anymore. This place had stripped me of my final excuse. If I was going to fix whatever was wrong with me creatively, I’d have to look deeper—somewhere the sun didn’t shine. The idea lacked appeal.

My phone rang, and I searched for it under the piles of sheet music and notebooks I’d scattered across the patio table. The name on the screen made me wish I hadn’t bothered. “Roger,” I said by way of greeting. “What do you need?”

“An album’s worth of hit songs,” he responded.

My head fell forward. “I’m working on it.”

“So you keep saying.” The sound of typing in the background made it clear I only had half his attention. Roger still worked as my manager, officially, but the majority of his time was now taken up with younger artists he’d signed on a couple of years ago—after the downturn in my sales. He never told me I was hishas-been, not in so many words, but his actions spoke loud and clear. Now I no longer produced a hit album every second year, I was worth only a modicum of his time.

“Bri tells me you’re at some kind of retreat for musicians.” The words were gruff, and I knew he was pissed he’d found out about me leaving Melbourne from my assistant. Honestly, I hadn’t expected him to notice I was gone. “Do you have everything you need to work?”

“Yeah, it’s quiet and it has a state-of-the-art studio.” I attempted to force some enthusiasm into my voice. “With any luck I’ll come back with some decent tracks to work on.”

“Glad to hear it,” Roger replied. “If you don’t release something new soon, even your biggest fans will forget you exist.”

The barb struck home. My place in the world was defined by my music, Roger had made sure of that. Without it, I was nothing.

“I’ll set up an interview while you’re there.” Roger’s voice had grown distant. He was talking to himself more than to me now. “We need to get your face back in print. I’ll email the details. Keep me updated on your progr—” The line went dead.

I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked down at the screen. The old bastard hadn’t even managed to finish his sentence before hanging up on me. “Good talking to you too, Dad,” I muttered, dumping the phone back on the table.

My gaze slid across the few lines I’d written before the phone call. They were supposed to be the start of a chorus, but now they struck me as superficial, predictable, lacking in any deeper truth or profundity. Ripping the page from the book, I scrunched it up and tossed it across the patio with a groan of frustration.

Creating music had seemed effortless when I first started out. I’d been bursting with so many raw emotions, they’d threatened to break me open. All I had to do was allow them to flow down through my fingers and onto the page. That had become my purpose in life, my reason for being here in the world: the transmutation of emotions into music. Lately, though, there was an absence of anything so rich as emotion inside me. And the music didn’t flow like it used to.

I couldn’t tell Roger any of this. He didn’t want to hear about my struggles and I wasn’t about to share. Any semblance of a father-son relationship that may have existed between us in those early years had atrophied now. Only the client-manager relationship remained, and even that continued to wane with each day I failed to produce another hit. Essentially, I was on my own.

Movement inside the house drew my attention to the glass sliding door, and I saw Sean enter the kitchen. A quick glance at the time told me he was there to prepare my dinner. Which I would eat alone in this same spot, staring at my blank pages and wallowing in my own failure. Fucking hell, when had I become such a bore?

Sick of my own lousy company, I got up and made my way into the house. After three days with no one to talk to but the birds, I was desperate for human contact and Sean was the only person within shouting distance. He would have to put up with me.

“Mind if I join you?” I asked as I approached the counter.

Looking up, he pasted on another fake smile. “Not at all.” He minded very much. Thankfully, he wasn’t about to say so.

At first, I’d been surprised how little I saw of Sean. He delivered every meal on time. The house and studio were always spotlessly clean. He even bagged up my scrunched paper each day, dated the bag, and placed it in a dedicated storage space, in case I needed access to previously rejected ideas. But when I looked for him at odd times during the day, he was never anywhere to be found.

Part of being a good host included the ability to be available but scarce at the same time, and Sean had turned out to be an excellent host, but I couldn’t help feeling like he put extra effort into staying out of my way. That may have been due to the unexpected, but sexually charged, staring contest we’d indulged in my first morning here. I’d started it, teasing him the way I did over a perfectly innocent remark about breakfast food. But his quick-witted response had amused me, making me forget the need to keep my distance. And then, when his gaze found mine, I’d stumbled and fallen into grey. The moment of vertigo had been enough to bring me to my senses, reminding me who I was with… and who I wasn’t with. Disappointment crashed through desire and I’d pulled back, shutting the whole thing down. We’d barely spoken since.

“What’s for dinner, Mr Kelland?” I asked as I slid onto the same kitchen stool I occupied during breakfast each morning. Sean had arranged a trio of bowls across the counter, filled with flour, beaten egg and breadcrumbs. “Fish?” I guessed.

“Chicken,” he corrected. “More specifically, crumbed chicken breast with butter and herb stuffing, paired with slow-roasted rosemary potatoes and a fresh autumn salad.”

I grinned at the way he listed the food in a precise, haughty manner. “You make it sound all fancy.”

“I try. Anything can sound fancy if you word it right.” He reached into the fridge for a large plate which held half a dozen pre-prepared chicken parcels, each individually covered in plastic wrap. “It doesn’t sound half as good if I say chicken kiev and vegies.”