Sea Change

by Jeremy Page

  She had fallen. She had slipped. Had she? He can’t be sure. Marta said she must have slipped. It has to be that way, it’s something they need to believe. But he remembers the look that Marta gave him. The look was unequivocal. Regardless of what had actually happened: he had saved her.

  He tries to sleep more, but it’s no use. He’s too full of a sense of worry, of a deep-rooted problem without shape or answer. It’s risen during the night like a tide.

  When he goes to the saloon he sees his work area - his desk covered in maps and city guides of America - of street plans pinned above it and, seeing it now in the same way as Marta and Rhona must have done when they came to visit, he sees the library madness of an obsessed man. On notepaper he writes various words, hoping to see some hidden clue where this new anxiety is coming from. He writes ‘Judy’, ‘Freya’, ‘the Flood ’. Familiar words with familiar shapes so overlaid with meaning they appear, in this instant, impenetrable. The J of Judy, still an optimistic letter to him, despite all that’s passed. The y of Freya, still looping at speed below the line, still giddy - Freya’s y, the one she could write haltingly, had always been capitalized, two strikes of the pen - she’d never joined her letters up. He tries some other words: ‘estuary’, a mystery to him really, neither a likeable nor unlikeable word, curiously lacking flow. Then he tries something: ‘Marta’ and ‘Rhona’. It feels strange. Marta’s name is oddly comforting, he likes it, whereas Rhona’s name seems full of unease. And then a final word, written small on the corner of the pad, but full of questions for him: ‘Nashville’.

  His diary is beginning to consume him, he knows that. It’s an addiction, a hit he needs every day, but it makes him feel balanced - it makes him feel emancipated. For a time. And this morning, more than most, he needs it.

  He reads the relevant pages of a city guide to Nashville, looks at a street plan, studying the grey intersections of roads and buildings, searching for his place.

  Guy finds himself sitting in an easy chair surrounded by several other easy chairs, all of them empty. The one he’s chosen is fabric, cream, and has a swing to it as well as a tilt which he’s not keen on. Not a thing out of place in here, he thinks, looking around. A low glass table with music magazines on it in a fanned-out design, a drinks bar in the corner, all of the bottles arranged in height order, a wall covered with pressed records, gold and platinum, in silver aluminium frames. Could be anywhere in the world, he thinks, it has the air of international well-oiled business, except there are also a row of hand-signed Stetsons on the wall, and a couple of guitars with plaques below them, one, a beautiful Gibson Dove, with the famous white bird inlaid across a deep red pick guard. Nashville, finally, this is like no other place in the world.

  He’s been sitting in this room for about an hour. He has a book to read, he has a drink to drink, but still the time is passing slowly. Freya’s been smart, he thinks, she’s gone with one of the PAs for a bit of sightseeing and shopping, is probably right now looking at CD racks as her mother likes to do. But not Guy. He decided to stick it out at the studio, claiming tiredness, but really it’s to do with not wanting to miss anything. If there is anything, then he won’t be missing it.

  As a result, he’s in this glorified waiting lounge, thick with comfort, feeling uncomfortable, left alone. Through an open doorway he can see a wide corridor leading to other parts of the complex. Studio A and Studio B, written above a drawing of a hand pointing that way. Occasionally a man walks by the door - he’s tall with dark hair, dressed in pale jeans and a flowery shirt. He wears cowboy boots, and the boots look out of place on the thick pile carpet. He thinks the man’s name is Bradley, but he can’t remember. He was introduced, and immediately forgot.

  Guy goes to the bar and pours another drink, downs half of it, then walks through to the control room for Studio C. A very fat man is sitting by the panel - both he and his mixing desk look way too big for the room. The man Bradley is in there too, his feet up on a low table, eating some sort of roll. He nods and smiles at Guy, and carries on eating. Guy finds his own stool near the back of the room, away from the desk and its smell of warm electricity.

  Through the glass he sees Judy, his Judy, standing off-centre in the live room. Wires lead to her, to her mic and to her headphones, and briefly Guy thinks he’s about to witness some kind of operation, that she’s being plugged in and kept alive in that little sterile cell so they can extract her life. It’s not so far from the truth. She has her hair tied back and is sipping a hot black coffee. A small twist to her back, he sees her slender arm and the lightness of touch with which she holds the microphone stand. There’s a man in there too, with silver hair tied back in a ponytail, talking her through something - but it’s entirely silent through the glass. Judy’s nodding and doing that shy smile from the side of her mouth which is giving the man a sense of assurance. Seeing that smile, Guy feels a little star-struck by her, more so because she’s so clearly at ease. His wife, under such scrutiny and glare and she’s entirely relaxed - she gets much more wound up by the smallest things Guy does or doesn’t do. It doesn’t seem fair.

  Bradley says a soft heh to the engineer at the mixing desk - who turns, stiffly, and smiles at Guy. ‘Right, mister, she’s doing real good,’ he says, kindly and automatically, his mouth drawn wide. He’s sweating, and has a handkerchief in his hand which he keeps dabbing at his temple. It’s not that hot in there.

  For Guy’s sake the engineer brings up a slide and Judy’s voice springs into the room on four speakers. ‘. . . Feel it lower on the first then wait for the cue, yes?’ she says, her words given unnatural volume and intimacy, like a hot bedtime whisper, so loud in your ear, but said from another room. Her voice seems owned by someone else, added to, enriched, taken apart by this massive calm machine into its mysterous threads before being wound back together. This machine full of wire might break the code that makes her voice so special, present the series of lights and levels which gives away its secret. Guy would love to find out just what that is. Even after all these years, he’d like to sit at the desk and remove parts of her sound, bit by bit, until he discovered the qualities that affect him most.

  That’s when he sees Phil, sitting the wrong way round on a chair at the back of the live room, his guitar by his feet. He’s resting his chin on his arms and is grinning wolfishly at Judy, listening to the silver-haired man and smiling like an imbecile. Phil, whom Guy’s known since he joined the band, since the time he was a market town music shop assistant, and a prat. He used to sit at the back of that shop playing the guitar, bending the notes, sweep picking the chords into arpeggios to show off. Fond of a loud shirt and a waistcoat, too. For ten years he’s been gazing at Judy, laughing slyly and cracking jokes and being in love with her. Dickweed, Guy mouths to himself, enjoying the childish satisfaction it gives.

  Of course, Phil has seen Guy come in, he has an eye for such things, and he performs an elaborate waving gesture which makes everyone look up and see who Phil’s seen, including Judy. Guy lifts his hand to say hi and sees a brief mix of expressions flit across her face, a touch of annoyance maybe, overridden with a warm professional smile.

  ‘Hi, love,’ she says, amplified to the room.

  ‘OK,’ the silver-haired man says, ‘we’re cool and I think it’s time we tried that, are you good?’

  He comes out of the live room and Phil comes too, beating him to the door and holding it open in a fussy way. They come into the control room, and Guy realizes he must have taken Phil’s stool. Hard luck, he thinks, you’ll just have to find your own space.

  ‘Isn’t it great!’ Phil says, all excited, his eyes have a thin gleaming expression of delight and awe. ‘Who’d have thought we’d be here one day, huh?’ He’s like a puppy, all bouncy, probably couldn’t sit down even if Guy hadn’t taken his stool. He’s all angles and energy, in a new shirt too, and can’t take his eyes off Judy through the glass. Careful, Guy thinks, times like this you’ll give it all away, Phil.

  The equipme
nt plus the four men makes the room seem very small indeed. The producer and engineer share the desk, used to their own proximity, but Guy feels wedged in, at the back. At least Phil’s in a worse position, forced to stand by a door which is constantly being used. Guy takes a glance and sees Phil has hitched his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans, country style. He’s bought a pair of cowboy boots, and Guy realizes the others in the room probably don’t know what he knows - that Phil has an artificial leg below the right knee. If they had known that, he would have been offered a seat. No. Phil’s covered all that up, and Guy wonders about how he got that cowboy boot on. Did he have to ease that weird plastic foot with its rigid toes into the leather? Did he put a sock on first?

  The track begins and Judy starts to nod the rhythm. Entering the song, Guy thinks, such a professional. Here comes the lead guitar, picking an interesting melody, not quite settling, then lurching forward, promising something, then a fiddle, faster and scratchy, messing the air like a wind - that’s great - and suddenly the sound is sucked out of the air as the engineer pulls a slide and he sees Judy form the note and there it is, split into forty-eight channels, then rebound, intensively, and pushed through the speakers to fill the room. He hears Judy beside him, behind him, and from both sides of the desk, everywhere, it seems, but from Judy herself.

  A few bars later she stops singing - another voice is now on the track, the one Judy’s doing the backing vocals for. It replays quietly and assuredly. Judy listens, her head bowed respectfully, her eyes firmly closed. She takes her cue and rejoins, alongside the other voice this time, giving the voice a hand, for a moment leading it, then backing away, giving a texture that’s needed. Guy’s exited, for a second he knows it’s working, the harmony is perfect, but then something begins to emerge which doesn’t quite fit, an edge to the voices defines and juts forward, rubbing the way it shouldn’t - the tiniest of discords, but he knows it’s there.

  ‘Yeah,’ Phil says, enthusiastically, the moment they stop recording.

  The silver-haired man leans forward and speaks through his own mic to Judy: ‘I really love it, I really do. We’ll just need to try that once more, OK?’

  Nashville, Guy says out loud to his empty boat, leaning back from his diary.

  It’s been a while since he wrote about Phil - having to write about him now is upsetting. He tries to cheer himself up by thinking about that artificial leg. The real Phil has both legs in place, but the one in the diary, the one Guy imagines, was given a ridiculous accident a couple of years back - the fool got his shin snagged in a shopping trolley, of all things, and after an almost impossible secondary infection of the wound, had had to have the lower part of his right leg removed. Very painful it was.

  Though it had been immensely satisfying to cause that amount of discomfort and disability, Guy suspects the stunt he pulled has backfired. If anything, Phil has been made more charismatic because of that false limb. The way he hops about on it, with an air of injured pride which is sickening - he’s turned it to his advantage, with rattish tenacity.

  Suspecting all now, he’s anxious to get straight back to America. What’s going on now in Nashville? Is Freya trying on a Stetson, insecure as to how she looks in a hat when she sees her reflection? Is Judy taking a trip to a music store, flicking through the racks of CDs with that amazing speed of hers, like she’s counting library cards?

  It’s no surprise to Guy that he hears someone tapping against the wheelhouse glass, or that when he looks up the ladder from the saloon he sees that it’s Rhona. But although he’s been expecting her all day, having her here in the boat, suddenly, unannounced, catches him off guard. After last night, he doesn’t know how she’ll be. She stands briefly at the top of the steps, then begins to climb down, her hand holding the rail carefully, not looking at him once.

  ‘You writing your story?’ she says, quietly.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You look busy. It looks busy in here. Mind if I sit?’ she says, sitting down on one of the chairs, perching slightly, as if undecided. She tucks one foot behind the other and looks down, smiling. ‘You sure I’m not disturbing you?’

  ‘How are you?’ he asks, calmly.

  ‘Not so good,’ she replies, still looking at her shoe. ‘Stupid, I guess.’

  ‘There’s no need to say that.’

  ‘No?’ she says. She looks directly at him. She has a shadowed look of sleeplessness below her eyes, and her mouth seems thinner, as if drawn tight by choosing what to say. Perhaps she’s had to talk about what happened all day. ‘I think I swallowed a lot of the river last night.’

  ‘Me too,’ he replies.

  ‘I guess I should thank you,’ she says, simply. ‘It’s why I’m here.’

  She looks at him, questioningly. ‘But you didn’t need to throw yourself in the water like that, you know,’ she says, sounding braver, more offhand. ‘I wasn’t in trouble.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Yeah. Suppose not.’ Impulsively, she stands, as if sitting down made her uncomfortable. ‘How come you saw me fall in?’

  ‘I was up late - I was in the wheelhouse.’

  ‘Watching me?’

  He remembers how she had stood at the bow of the boat, wrapped in that blanket, looking so beautiful. ‘There wasn’t much else to look at.’

  ‘I was drunk.’

  ‘Yeah. You were.’

  ‘You saw me slip?’

  ‘Rhona,’ he says, ‘the first time I saw you, in that pool behind the pub, why did you do that thing in the water?’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘Floating, with your head under. Pretending to be drowned - why did you do that?’

  She shrugs dismissively, as if not remembering, but her posture looks guarded. ‘I’m not some kind of head-case, if that’s what you’re saying.’

  ‘No. I think I’m saying the opposite.’

  She smiles at him, regaining her composure. ‘I don’t get you,’ she says.

  ‘So why did you do it?’

  ‘Probably because you were watching. I don’t know. Give you something to look at. Men like a bit of that, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes. They do, but you’re still not answering.’

  She shakes her head and walks over to the piano, breaking the moment. You only get so far with her, Guy thinks. She’s young. Being honest probably still feels too revealing.

  He remembers how his hand had touched her in the cold river water last night. How she’d instinctively put her arms round him, the act of someone who knows she’s being saved.

  Rhona plays the first few notes of the theme from White Horses, like she did yesterday. But the comparison she creates, between yesterday’s confidant, coquettish visit, and today’s more cagey one, makes her stop.

  ‘I should go,’ she says. ‘I just wanted to say thanks.’

  ‘Is your mother OK?’

  ‘She’s sleeping. Finally. God, she’s been watching me like a hawk.’

  ‘Only because she cares.’

  ‘I know. But she’s suffocating.’

  He looks at Rhona, at this moment without any strength in her posture, as if she can’t hold herself upright, a lack of conviction in anything she says. All those seductive looks, that easy sexiness - it’s all gone.

  ‘Thanks for coming over,’ he says. ‘But be with your mother today. She needs you. What she saw last night - it’s something a parent shouldn’t have to go through.’

  Rhona frowns, about to react to his lecturing tone - before she stops herself. She realizes he’s saying something from the heart here, and it’s something she doesn’t know about. She nods in acknowledgement, and comes to put her arms round him.

  ‘You have an injured air about you, Guy,’ she says.

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yeah. Same as Mum.’

  They stand together, in an embrace which surprises both of them, and he feels one of her arms under his shoulder blades and the other one low down on his back, bringing him in towards
her. He feels her adjusting herself, making herself comfortable, turning her face into his chest, like a child would do. He smells her hair and he wonders. He wonders about all the embraces he’s missed, over the years. All the comfort he has to offer, going nowhere.

  When she pulls away from him he sees her eyes are a little wet and her face seems younger, more vulnerable and uncomposed than he’s seen it before. She kisses his cheek and leaves him, wordlessly, calmly, without looking back.

  They’re walking into downtown Nashville, on a wet pavement that reflects the neon from the bars they’re passing. Judy’s in a suede jacket and a skirt he hasn’t seen before, a pale buff cotton one with patterning up the sides. She’s shining, Guy thinks, she’s absolutely loving this, with her hair dark and glossy and hurling the neon back off it in little bright curls of light. The air’s cool, and he imagines Judy’s skin is warm, glowing, full with life. Which isn’t how he feels. He feels marginal.

  Phil’s with them. It’s Phil, Judy, Freya and Guy, and Phil’s walking a tiny bit faster than the rest of them. Guy’s aware of Phil’s pace like it’s a little nag - a little tug among the group and he’s not liking it. Judy’s sailing on, oblivious, and Freya’s being a bit dreamy. The things we have to keep an eye on, Guy thinks, it never stops.

  ‘Heh, Guy?’ Phil says, sounding a little American. ‘It’s going to take a while setting up - you could go take a walk or have a drink, I mean, it’s not worth hanging around.’ Guy gives Phil a look, tries to steady him with an expression which says I’m the calm one here, I’m the adult, but Phil’s not interested. Phil’s Tennessee spending spree has continued. Sometime in the afternoon he’s bought himself a sunburst Nashville B-bender Tele - it must have cost the earth.

  Guy resents being told what to do by Phil, but he knows the man’s probably right. Freya will only get bored while they set up the stage.

  ‘I’ll take Freya off,’ he says, making it his decision. Judy nods, and immediately gives Guy a quick kiss. ‘There’s music all along this row,’ she says, as if she’s lived here for years. Guy doesn’t pick her up on it. He’s made a pact with himself to be tolerant tonight.