Page 64 of Goode Vibrations
“Wondered that a long time myself. Best I can figure, she drowned herself in painting because it was the only way she could deal with…with whatever her deal was with Dad.” A shrug. “I took it to heart. I never let art consume me. I take time off. I read books. I go for drinks. I watch sunsets.” A harsh laugh. “I think she meant something else, though.”
“Like?”
He ducked his head again, bent and scooped the lake bottom muck in his hands, splatted it from palm to palm. “Like…” a pause. “Like love. Like…not letting art push away…people. Relationships.”
“Oh.”
“Art didn’t push people away.” Another harsh laugh. “Life did that.”
“Life. Meaning loss. Tragedy. Pain.” I felt my voice drop to a whisper. “I know a little something about that myself.” Louder, then. “So…after.”
“He sold the house.” Bent again, scrubbed his hands clean in the water. “Let me pick a few things as keepsakes, which he then put in storage, except a few photos and little knickknacks. Put his stuff in storage, got rid of a lot. Basically, cut ties with Christchurch except a storage unit which I think he meant for me, for…eventually.”
“And you still have that?”
A nod. “Yeah, but I haven’t been back in years. Been considering just cutting it loose, having someone sell it all off. Everything that matters to me is there,” he said, pointing at the van. “Once ends were tied up, we left. I got on a plane for the first time, and that was the beginning of my life with Dad, on the road. That was when I got into photography. We’d tour for three or four months, and then the band would unplug in London or Dublin or Glasgow or thereabouts, and they’d all scatter for a bit, then come together and write new songs and practice, and Dad would hire a tutor for me, so I could get my basic education finished. But schooling was irrelevant.”
“What’d you do?”
“I played with them. Father and son dueling fiddles? It was gold. Turns out I had a talent, and getting to play on stage sort of lit me up. Plus, staying up late, skipping school, nicking a pint or a glass of whiskey when Dad was playing? What kid wouldn’t want that life? I grew up in a hurry, or rather, finished the growing up that Mum’s dying hadn’t done. The usual suspects applied to a teenage boy living with a touring band of single men—drinking, drugs, women. They kept their tour tightly spaced, so each date was close in terms of kilometers to the next, so we’d drive part of the day and have time free. I had Mum’s camera and with nothing better to do while Dad and Jonesey and the others did their adult stuff—pubs and chasing fanny—I would go exploring wherever we were, with the camera. It was just something to do, something that connected me to Mum. When I was with her, and Dad was gone, the fiddle was my connection to him. With Mum gone, living with Dad, the camera was my connection to her. As the years went on, I got more passionate about the photography, and playing in the band with Dad was just…part of life. Something I did because…just because it was what I did.”
“You were part of a touring band at twelve?”
“Oh, yeah. Played all over Europe. Not huge crowds—they weren’t a great big famous draw, but they could pack out pubs and kept booking shows for decades.” He shrugged. “That was life, touring and playing and photography. And then…” a ragged, bitter sigh. “And then.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.” Hand through his hair. “That playlist you turned on. It was in a pub in Dublin. Recorded live. My first-time solo opening with the band. Dad was so fucking proud.”
“That was you? On that song?”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah.” Pause. “I was sixteen. Packed-out pub, spilling out onto the footpath. It was some holiday or other. We played for six hours nonstop, just went through our whole song list over and over, and then just started jamming. Dad and me dueled, he’d play this amazing riff on the fiddle and I’d try to match it, you know? It was kind of a joke, obviously, because Dad wasn’t just talented naturally, he was a consummate professional. He’d been playing professionally every day of his life since he was my age, and I was just this kid with raw talent and zero real experience. But they loved it, and I loved it.”
I swallowed hard, feeling the weight of what was coming. “It’s amazing that you had that.”
He nodded, a jerky movement, his chin coming to rest on his chest. “It was. It really was amazing. Best day of my life, in some ways. Next day, we slept in as we’d played till some ungodly hour. Came time to load up and make for the next stop, and nobody could find Dad. We checked the hotel, hospitals, checked with the police, asked the barman if he’d seen Dad leave with anyone.”
He chewed on the silence, teeth grinding, breathing harshly.
I couldn’t breathe.
“I found him. He was in the van. We had a big old caravan, a proper one, with a kitchen and a bathroom and all, and we lived in it. If our stop didn’t have decent accommodations, we’d stay in the caravan, but once in a while we’d treat ourselves and stay in a proper hotel. That night, we’d stayed in a hotel. I figured I’d check the caravan, because sometimes Dad would get restless, reclusive, sort of. Need to be alone. Missing Mum, I always thought, but he’d never say as much to me. So, yeah. I checked the caravan. He was in the dinette booth. Facedown on the table in a pool of bloody vomit. Bag of coke open nearby.”
“God, Errol.”
“He’d overdosed. Police later tested the coke he’d been taking and turns out it was laced with something. Not just impure coke, but something awful, something poisonous. All I remember was a big long compound name, don’t remember what, doesn’t matter.”
“No. God, no.”
He swallowed hard. “His eyes were open.” A whisper, raspy, hoarse. “I couldn’t get up. I’d fallen down, sitting on the step up in to the camper van, and I couldn’t get up. Just sat there staring at my dad. Eventually Jonesey, Murray, O’Brien, and Connor found me.”
“Orphaned at sixteen, Errol. God, I’m so sorry.”
“The band nearly broke up. I stayed with Jonesey, who was always closest to Dad. Jonesey plays the penny whistle, flute, Uilleann pipes. He took me off to the coast, and we camped out on the beach in the freezing cold, and he got me drunker than I’ve ever been, before or since. Just absolutely pissed. Let me cry and yell and all that. Then we went back to Dublin and the rest of the guys convinced me to carry on with them. So, I took Dad’s place. Sixteen, and I was the fiddler for a touring band. I wasn’t as good as Dad, but I could keep up, and I learned.” He stared out over the darkened lake, the glow of the fire behind us dying. “That was when I properly got into what I do now. I had nothing to live for. Playing in the band was…it reminded me of Dad, and part of me hated it. But I had nowhere to go, and the mates from the band were the only thing like family I had left. I needed Mum more than ever, and her camera was the best thing I had to feel her. But I needed…I needed a rush. So I’d climb up to the top of skyscrapers and hang over the edge and take ridiculous photos. Or jump onto a moving freight train and take one from the top as it went under a tunnel. Hang off bridges over big ravines. Crazy stuff, just to make my heart pound, to feel like I was alive. Then, it wasn’t about the art, it was about the rush. But gradually, I started to really appreciate the art of it. The guys from the band were pissed off at me more often than not, because I’d be impossible to find, off taking photos and climbing the sides of old castles and banging about ruins.”
“You said that was how you ended up working forNational Geographic.”
He nodded. “Eventually. Not before the guys got fed up with my bullshit. We broke up. And, honestly, it was my fault. The fiddle, the band, it wasn’t my future. It made me miss Dad more than anything, and I was this angry, angsty, lonely, confused boy with no family, no clue who the fuck I was, or what I wanted. We broke up in Prague. They all went their separate ways, except Jonesey. He stayed with me a week or two, but eventually I pushed even him away. I was eighteen. I spent the next year, maybe two, just sort of…floating around. I’d saved money, and Dad had saved a lot too, so I was able to live off that as long as I was frugal. And I was. I barely ate, walked everywhere or took a train. Just sort of wandered Europe on my own. I took…god, hundreds of thousands of photos during that time, and that’s when I really discovered a passion for it. For myself, not just to connect me back to Mum.