Page 62 of Goode Vibrations

Moving slowly, as if drawing on something only half remembered, he lifted the fiddle to his shoulder, tucked his chin against it, adjusted the position of fiddle and chin, bow still held slack against his thigh. Spine straight, shoulders back. I couldn’t see his face, but I had a feeling his eyes were closed. Seeing some past memory.

The bow seemed to float up, up, as if under its own power. Rested on the strings with a softzzzzhringgggg. He drew the bow along the largest string, twisted the tuning knob; the next, and the next and the next, and back to the first, sawing a couple short notes each time as he tuned, and then all went silent again.

I just watched, silent.

This was a different Errol I was seeing, and this one spoke to my heart, not just my loins.

A deep breath, broad hard shoulders lifting, settling as he sighed. And then the bow lifted once more and this time, he struck the strings with sudden force, a jarring clangor of double notes that he somehow drew out into a long, plaintive wail, the bow sawing smoothly back and forth. A three-count, a four-count, and then, without missing a beat, he tilted the bow across the strings and his fingers began to dance across the strings at the neck, near the headstock.

A jig, a reel—I didn’t know the difference. A quick, lively, merry tune.

In fact…

It was the tune that I’d heard a few snatches of when I’d started that mysterious playlist of “just some old stuff.” I also recognized the tune as the song they dance to in the lower decks in the filmTitanic.

My jaw dropped as he played, because he was…it was magical. The notes flew from his fingers, from the bow, from the fiddle, radiating across the lake in echoing waves, and there was nothing but him and the moon and the stars and this little campfire and me and the music, and he just played and played, tune after tune, as if he’d broken open a wellspring somewhere deep inside and the music just had to flow, flow, flow.

His toes tapped, and then his shoulders began to move, and then his knees began to dip with the notes and the rise and the fall of the melodies, and then, impossibly, this tall aloof laid-back surfer photographer was dancing in the sand, barefoot, sawing at a three-hundred-year-old fiddle with a virtuosic talent I’d had no clue he possessed.

It was seared into my very soul, the sight of Errol wheeling and spinning with his feet in the sand and splashing in the rippling moon silver-lit lake, fiddling a jig that would make the stars themselves dance.

How long did he play? I didn’t know, didn’t care. But after a timeless time of dancing and playing, he came to rest once more, near me, facing me, eyes on me. The jig slowed and became a ballad, a slow sad song; mournful, as hesitant as he’d begun.

Then, with a sigh, the fiddle dropped from his shoulder and the bow drooped to point at the dirt once more.

Silence reigned.

He sat, nestled the fiddle back into the case, the bow as well, and left the lid open, firelight glinting off the aged red wood.

“What…the…fuck, Errol?”

He smiled at me. “I haven’t played in a long, long time.”

“Well, you wouldn’t know.”

He snorted. “I messed up several times.”

“Errol.”

He sighed. “My dad was gone a lot when I was a kid. Gone more than he was home. But when he was home, he taught me to play. Insisted on it, said the Sylvain men had played the fiddle for three hundred years and I was no exception. Mom made sure I kept up practicing. The best days of my childhood were when Dad came home from a tour in Europe and would want to know what I’d been playing. It was the first thing, always. ‘Play for me, Errol,’ he’d say. ‘Let me hear what you have learned.’” He said it in a French accent, echoing his father’s voice. “And I’d play for him. I was always so desperate for him to approve, you know? So I’d…I’d practice my ass off all year for the moment he’d come home and ask me that question.”

He breathed out, slow, harsh.

“Of course, then, this was his fiddle. I had a cheap one mom had bought thirdhand. Always out of tune, a real piece of shit. But I played my heart out for Dad, year after year.” Another pause. “I was alone a lot as a kid. Mom was an artist; I think I told you that. She had been a photographer, but when she had me she’d retired from photography and focused on painting. Abstracts and still lifes, mostly. She had this studio out back of our little house, and she’d be in there for hours…sometimes for days at a time. Lost in the art, she called it. She sold them at this gallery owned by a friend of hers, and later, sometimes, online. Enough to keep us afloat, with a bit of cash Dad would send every month.”

He twiddled a finger in the dirt, not looking at me.

“I learned to be self-sufficient by the time I was, what, six? Seven? Mom would make a bunch of food all at once and put it in the fridge and freezer, but other than that, she’d be in her studio. And, it’s not that I wasn’t allowed in—I was. She just…wouldn’t even notice me. Didn’t see me, or hear me, even if I stood beside her and shouted. Just…lost. I’d sit in there with her until I got bored, just watching her paint. Then I’d go play. I’d get myself ready for school in the morning, make my own lunch, do my homework, play, watch the telly. Put myself to bed.

“Once she’d finished a piece, though…she was all mine, for at least a week, sometimes two. She’d keep me out of school and we’d take drives all over New Zealand, sleep in the car, or on the ground watching the stars. Swim on the beach and go on hikes, and she’d tease me and tickle me and tell me stories, and it almost,almostmade up for days and weeks of pure neglect. More than made up for it, I felt, in the moments I had her to myself, and nowhere near made up for it when she was painting. Then, randomly, Dad would appear and he’d stay for a month, and I’d have this…this little taste of what it was to be part of a normal family.” Sad, his voice. So sad, bitter, lost to me, lost in the memory. “We’d go for ice cream together, or go round the dairy together and shop for dinner, and we’d all cook together, and Mum and Dad would sing and dance in the kitchen and kiss each other right in front of me.”

Long hard pause.

“And then he’d leave again. Kiss me on the head, tell me to keep my chin up and take care of Mum, and keep practicing on the fiddle. He’d promise to call and write, but he never did. And Mum would do his washing and she’d find things in his pockets. Notes, and phone numbers, and addresses, and leftovers from smoking dope and packets of coke. Frenchie wrappers.” He shrugged. “Never said shit to him about it, and I never knew her to see anyone else. They never argued. He never raised his voice, and he was always kind to me, always my dad, playing and wrestling about. And Mum was…just Mum. She’d stop painting when he came home, and that always steamed me off, that. She’d never stop for me, not for nothing. But Dad came home and she’d quit her painting for a solid month. I loved those times as much as I hated them, because they always ended.”

“Fucking hell, Errol. What a childhood.”

His laugh was a bitter bark. “Just getting warmed up, Pop.” He stood, paced away; I snapped a stick into pieces and fed them to the fire. “That was life, until I was twelve.”