by Debra Oswald
Eventually the festival boss did the big announcement and the band members came out, including Jimmy Nicholls. Looking just like Jimmy Nicholls.
‘Hi, everyone,’ said Jimmy with a cheeky smile. ‘Thanks for coming. I can tell you, we’re happy to be here.’
From the first chord, Ash knew he wasn’t going to be disappointed. Jimmy’s band was so good, so tight, it was like a masterclass in how a band should play. He’d assembled an amazing collection of young musicians: a short muscly dynamo of a drummer, a woman who played bass guitar plus sang backing vocals and a guy who played keyboards and harmonica. Jimmy knew his musos were the best. When the harmonica player did a scorching solo, Jimmy pointed to him and shook his head, saying to the audience, ‘Isn’t this guy fabulous?’ Ash really liked the way Jimmy did that. He was the big star but he still made a fuss of the young musos in his band.
Even so, Ash would have to say that Jimmy was the most fabulous person up on that stage. He wasn’t known for having a perfect singing voice but it didn’t matter. He half-sang, half-spoke the lyrics in his growling voice and it ended up sounding just right. He really delivered those songs.
Ash already knew Jimmy was a brilliant guitarist, especially on slide guitar, but seeing him play one metre away was like nothing else. He didn’t do those annoying, show-offy, look-how-fast-I-can-play solos. He just made that guitar swoop and slide and jab and bend and sing as if no other combination of notes could possibly come out of it. The man had music in every cell of his body. Ash really wished Ben was standing next to him to hear this.
It wasn’t only the playing that blew Ash away. It was also the way Jimmy grabbed the crowd so totally, making everyone laugh with one cheeky comment or revving up the four thousand people in the marquee to dance on the spot. Jimmy was having a ball.
Ash spotted Erin in the crowd nearby. She was beaming. She yelled out, ‘This is great.’ Ash nodded emphatically.
For one moment, Ash closed his eyes and let the music engulf his whole body. The bass reverberated through his rib cage and the guitar line wrapped all around him. Live music had special power, no question about that.
For the two nights of the festival, the Novak family plus Ash and Erin were all sleeping at a house that belonged to an old surfing mate of Vic’s.
Ash was too exhausted on the first night to notice where the hell he was. He just wanted to crawl into a sleeping bag and flop his head onto a pillow as fast as humanly possible. But when he woke up in the morning, he realised what a weird, cool house they were staying in.
Half of it was on dry land and the other half was built on top of a jetty out over Wooreenga Inlet. The living room, where Charlie and Ash slept on foam mattresses, was on the jetty section. The floor under Ash’s mattress was wooden slats and between the slats you could see the water lapping a couple of metres below. The front wall of the living room wasn’t really a wall; it was the huge glass front of an old petrol station. On the deck in front, two pelicans were stretching themselves and having a bit of a think.
The house itself was tacked together using plywood and corrugated iron held in place with layers of bright-orange and electric-blue paint. It looked as if the whole thing would fall over if you breathed too hard on the walls.
There were musical instruments mounted on the walls everywhere. Other stuff covered the rest of the walls and every shelf in the place: surfboards, shell ornaments, giant dolls wearing grass skirts, plastic palm trees, fibreglass tropical fish, coconuts, toy monkeys and lots of other tat. It was like being inside a gigantic Hawaiian shirt.
Just as Charlie woke up, Vic stumbled out of one of the bedrooms. Joanne and Boy were still out to it. Erin was sleeping in a bunk room with the twins at the far end of the house.
Vic inspected the fridge supplies. ‘Hey, you guys, we need some more milk, I reckon. Could you get the newspapers too?’
So Ash and Charlie walked up to the shops in town to buy milk and the papers, while Vic got started cooking breakfast for everyone.
In the main street of Mandawarra that Sunday morning, at least half the people wandering past were wearing blue festival wristbands. Ash got a kick out of seeing that – they were all part of a special club.
The newsagency was busy, full of people. While Charlie stood in the queue to pay for the papers, Ash wandered over to check out the guitar magazines.
There was a guy standing next to Ash looking at the music mags. He noticed Ash’s wristband and smiled.
‘Enjoying the festival so far?’ asked the guy.
Ash looked up. The guy was in fact Jimmy Nicholls.
Ash was so nervous all he could manage was a nod and an affirmative grunt. He’d been infected with Erin Landers’ tongue-tied disease.
‘My wife’s been trying to choose postcards for the last three hours,’ Jimmy joked and waved to his wife. Ash saw a grey-haired woman wearing jeans and a leather jacket peering at the postcards on the spinning display.
Then Ash blurted out, ‘Your set last night was the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard.’
‘Well, thanks very much,’ Jimmy replied and shook Ash’s hand. ‘Jimmy.’
As if he needed to introduce himself!
‘Uh … Ash,’ mumbled Ash, not quite sure who he was anymore.
He was dead nervous to be talking to a legend but there was something about Jimmy’s relaxed style that soon made the nervousness dissolve. They stood there at the magazine racks and chatted for a few minutes about guitars, amplifiers, pedals. Jimmy asked Ash about his playing and how he was getting on with learning slide guitar. He was really friendly, giving Ash a few tips about playing slide.
Suddenly Ash felt a rush of air beside him and there was Charlie, right in Jimmy Nicholls’s face. Charlie gushed about Jimmy’s music and then – oh Lord – he started raving to the man about Blue Noise. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a CD with three of the band’s numbers on it. He pressed the CD into Jimmy Nicholls’s hand.
‘Have a listen sometime,’ Charlie suggested.
He also whipped out a card he’d had printed up; it featured one of Vic’s great photos of the band with the address of the Blue Noise MySpace page.
Ash shouldn’t have been surprised, really. That was Charlie. Diabolically embarrassing. Ash thought he should rescue Jimmy Nicholls from Charlie’s over-enthusiastic clutches.
‘Hey, Charlie,’ said Ash. ‘Give the poor man a break.’
Jimmy laughed. ‘It’s fine.’
Then Charlie grabbed Ash by the shoulders and presented him to Jimmy Nicholls. ‘Ash is the guitarist in our band.’
‘Ah, I see,’ said Jimmy. ‘Well, Ash and I just met. He’s started playing slide and there’s a particular Fender he’s got his eye on.’
Ash was chuffed that Jimmy Nicholls remembered what they’d talked about.
‘He’s a good guitarist,’ Charlie announced. ‘He’s going to be a great guitarist.’
Jimmy laughed again and made a show of looking Ash up and down as if he was judging a cow in a cattle show. ‘Yeah. I can believe it.’
‘Sorry about this guy,’ Ash said to Jimmy. ‘Thanks again.’
Ash bundled Charlie out of the newsagent, refusing to listen to his wailing and protesting.
The last gig of the whole festival, on the Sunday night, was The Jimmy Nicholls Band again. This time, they played a whole different set, but just as brilliantly as the night before. Ash was right up the front again.
During one of the keyboard solos, Jimmy took the chance to glance around the audience, squinting against the glare of the stage lights. He made eye contact with Ash for a moment. Jimmy Nicholls winked and mouthed ‘Hi.’
Later that night, back at the Hawaiian Shirt House, everyone else was fast asleep. They would head off in the morning for the drive back to Sydney. Ash was exhausted but too hyped up to sleep. His ears were still ringing and his head was still full of music. So he just lay there listening to the water lap against the pylons holding up the house.
/> Then he heard bare feet pattering on the floor behind him. It was Erin. She couldn’t sleep either. Ash made a ‘sshh’ gesture and pointed to Charlie.
Charlie was so knackered he hadn’t even made it onto the foam mattress. He was flaked out on the couch. Charlie was a ball of energy most of the time but then he would collapse as if someone had unplugged him from the power.
Erin looked at him and laughed quietly. Then she whispered, ‘Hey look, he’s sleeping with his mouth open … ready to start yacking the second he wakes up.’
Ash grinned and then pointed outside. Erin nodded and the two of them tiptoed past Charlie and onto the deck. They perched on the end of the little wharf, staring out across the inlet; the water’s surface glowed from the lights of a few houses on the shoreline. Beyond the inlet you could just decipher the dark semicircle of the mountains.
They talked about the weekend, their favourite bits, how amazing it had been.
Then Erin said, ‘I had a go at writing a song. About being here.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ said Ash.
‘Yeah, maybe. But I’m stuck.’
After a bit of persuading from Ash, Erin showed him the scraps of lyrics she’d written. He thought it was looking excellent so far and tried to think of suggestions for finishing the chorus.
‘Oh y’ know, I can’t really think about song lyrics without the music,’ said Ash, frustrated with himself. He jumped to his feet. ‘Hang on a sec.’
He ducked into the house, lifted an acoustic guitar off the wall and brought it outside. The instrument needed tuning but then they were ready to go.
Erin and Ash sat on that jetty for an hour in the middle of the night, writing a song by the light reflected off the water. Between them, they worked out the basic melody and polished up Erin’s lyrics for the chorus and the first verse. It was a song about being at the festival and what it felt like to see your musical idols play.
To think acutely about the music, Erin needed piano keys. So she played an imaginary keyboard, running her fingers up and down the wooden slats of the wharf. Ash could see how fiercely she was concentrating, listening to the imagined notes in her head, her lips silently moving with the words of the song.
Ash had an overwhelming urge to lean forward and kiss her. It hit him suddenly, like a bus lurching around a corner. He liked Erin Landers very much. Or maybe he’d always half-known that the liking-Erin-Landers bus was waiting round the corner and now there it was, smacking him in the head.
The trouble was, Ash wasn’t sure if Erin would want him to kiss her. And he didn’t have the guts to say anything or do anything.
So they sat on the wharf and no one kissed anyone. But they did write most of a good song together. ‘Mandawarra.’
Chapter Nineteen
There was a moment, sitting on that jetty on Wooreenga Inlet in the middle of the night, when Erin was aware of Ash Corrigan looking at her intensely. For a second, the thought crept across her mind that maybe it was a romantic look. Maybe he liked her back.
But Erin quickly got hold of that thought, bashed it round the head and booted it out of her mind. She only had that thought because she so desperately wanted Ash to kiss her at that moment. Just because you wanted something to be true didn’t mean it was true. How pathetic would it have been if she’d said something or – oh my God – tried to kiss him? She could imagine the scene: she would lean forward to kiss Ash, he would reel back in horror, then she would lose her balance and topple into the water. Then she’d have to clamber back onto the jetty like a shivering, soggy rat and face the hideous embarrassment of having tried to kiss someone who didn’t want you to kiss them.
No, it was much better to say nothing, do nothing. Just concentrate on writing the song.
On the minibus trip back to Sydney, Erin’s mind was still buzzing. She scribbled scraps of song lyrics in a tiny notebook, trying to control the pen as the bus bounced along the road. Christine De Sousa had advised her to carry a small notebook with her everywhere she went. That way, when a good idea for a lyric fluttered into her brain, she could capture it before it flew away.
Ash had fallen asleep not long after they left Mandawarra. Every few minutes, Erin permitted herself to sneak a look at him. He was hunched up against the window, head resting on one hand, his hair flopped across his face. He looked unbearably cute when he was asleep.
Erin decided there was no point trying to get over her crush on Ash Corrigan. In fact, it was worse than ever. She would just have to live with it. Like a chronic disease.
Even so, the weekend had made things better between them. They’d been through this amazing experience together. They’d written a song together. At least now it felt as though they could be friends. And Erin would just keep her romantic thoughts to herself and save both of them the embarrassment.
The Landers’ house was empty when the minibus dropped Erin off at home. Her parents were at work and Phoebe was still at school. Erin had negotiated the day off school with Mrs Vallentine’s help.
On the kitchen counter, she spotted information sheets about the Conservatorium of Music that her mother must have downloaded. Her parents were obviously continuing their campaign for her to leave Mulvaney High and transfer to the Con. When Erin saw those pages, she took a deep breath. Suddenly she was very sure about something.
She didn’t want to leave Mulvaney High to go anywhere else. She didn’t want to give up playing in the band. Sometimes, it’s only when a thing is about to get taken away from you that it hits you how much you’ve grown to love it. It was as if all the little misty positive thoughts about the band suddenly crystallised into a solid glittering object in Erin’s mind: she loved playing in Blue Noise and it was very, very important to her.
While she waited for everyone else in the family to come home, Erin prepared a speech in her mind. She decided the best time to deliver The Speech was after dinner.
But just before they finished eating, Erin’s mother said, ‘Oh, sweetheart, did you see that stuff we found online about the Conservatorium?’
Erin’s mouth was full of chicken schnitzel. She wasn’t quite ready to deliver The Speech but now she had no choice. To give herself courage, she tried to remember how she’d felt when the band played at assembly, how she’d felt when she was talking to Christine De Sousa. Erin wanted to remember those times and draw power from them.
She swallowed the chicken down quickly. ‘Actually, I wanted to talk to you and Dad about that.’ Erin tried to keep her voice steady and mature-sounding. ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about – I mean, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to transfer to the Con next year and what I’d like to –’
‘What?’ interrupted her mother. ‘I thought that’s what you wanted.’
‘Umm – look, Mum, do you mind if I finish saying what I need to say? I don’t mean to be rude or anything. It’s just – you know how hopeless I am at saying what I – I’ll get confused if I don’t say this all in one go, y’ know?’
Erin’s parents looked stunned. They weren’t used to their daughter presenting her opinions forcefully like this.
‘The thing is, I never thought about whether or not I wanted to go to the Con. Not properly. That was my fault. I was scared of making the wrong decision so I chickened out of thinking about it. But now I’m sure I want to stay at Mulvaney High. It’s partly because my friends are there. It’s partly because I don’t think the Con course is right for me at the moment. And it’s partly because I really want to stay in the blues band at school –’
‘But Erin, what about all the work you’ve put in to –’ her father began.
Erin could feel her confidence draining away. She would lose it and she wouldn’t be able to finish the task of explaining herself.
But then her mother touched her dad lightly on the arm. ‘Let Erin finish what she needs to say.’
‘Thanks,’ said Erin. ‘I’ve thought about this a lot. And it’s not some big extreme decision. I’m not giving up classical pi
ano. I like it and I’ll keep practising. But I don’t want to do the whole piano exam thing – not for a while, anyway. I hope that’s okay with you guys. I’m still taking music seriously but in a different way. I really love the music I’m playing now. I’ve been writing songs and I – well, anyway, this is how I feel at the moment.’
‘Oh … right. Okay … right,’ said her mum. ‘I guess it’s good if you can work out what you feel about – as long as you don’t rush into any decisions. As long as we all go on talking this over.’
‘Sure,’ said Erin. But inside she was worried. Did that mean they’d go on badgering her until she changed her mind?
For now, her parents were in such a state of shock from Erin delivering The Speech that they let her be. She helped clear the table and they all watched a bit of TV without the subject coming up again. When she went to her room to do some homework, she could hear her parents’ voices in the other room.
Later, as they cleaned their teeth in the bathroom, Erin pumped Phoebe for information.
‘Were they talking about me?’ she asked.
Phoebe spat out a mouthful of toothpaste foam. ‘Yes. But I only heard bits of what they said.’
‘Oh yeah?’ said Erin, sounding cool, as if she wasn’t busting to know.
‘Mum said they should let you make your own decision.’
‘Yeah? Good.’
‘But they also said they’re worried about you,’ added Phoebe.
Yeah well, Erin was worried about herself. Lying on her bed in the dark, Erin didn’t know what to think. Delivering The Speech hadn’t solved everything – not the way it would in a movie scene. A movie where the character realises the right thing to do, announces it in an articulate, dramatic way and then everything’s cool.
Maybe she’d decide blues music wasn’t right for her after all. Possibly she had no real talent for this new stuff and she was wasting her time trying to write songs. Possibly she was being very stupid. Kids her age made stupid choices every day. They made wrong choices that ruined their lives forever. So why should she be any different?