An Ocean Apart

by Robin Pilcher

  “And obviously the bands are quite happy to make the trip all the way out here?”

  “Well, it was a bit of a gamble, but yeah, they seem to love it! They book into a bed-and-breakfast in Leesport, and then, because most of the work is done in the evening or at night, they head off to the beach during the day, or the more sporty ones play tennis or golf at the country club.” He looked across at David and raised his eyebrows. “It’s quite funny, actually. The club has a strict dress code, and you can imagine the kind of clothes these guys turn up in to play their games.”

  David chuckled. “And they get away with it?”

  “I’ve never actually witnessed what happens. I think it’s better if they don’t know who the culprit is who’s bringing them here in the first place, but yeah, usually there’s someone there who knows of the band, or their children know of the band, and they get to bend the rules a little. I think they try to get them out on the course or onto the courts before the old duffers come along and get the chance to complain.” Gerry juggled with a handful of leads, shaking his head from side to side as he made a silent calculation as to where they should go. “Look, would you mind just holding on to these for a minute?”

  David pushed himself off the ledge and took hold of the leads, while Gerry went round the other side of the desk and squatted down on his haunches to study the confusion of inputs on the patch-bays below.

  “So most of the groups that you produce are quite well-known?”

  “Yeah, you could say that. The lads here at the minute are popular on the sort of rock/folk circuit over here. Dublin Up, they’re called. Ever heard of them?”

  “No, can’t say I have. I’m afraid that I gave up my musical career some time ago.”

  Gerry looked up at him. “You played, did you?”

  David made a noncommittal gesture with his head. “Well, sort of. I had a group at university, but I’ve really done little since then.”

  “What instrument?”

  “Lead guitar.”

  “Good for you!” Gerry said, swapping round two inputs on the lowest patch-bay and straightening up in front of the desk. He flicked a couple of switches on the console and feedback screeched through the two massive speakers behind David. Gerry quickly twisted two knobs and the noise subsided to a loud hum. He pointed through to the recording floor next door.

  “That’s the Gibson live. Do you want to have a go?”

  David turned to look through the window at the bright blue guitar in the centre of the floor.

  “Would you mind?”

  “Not at all. Just give me a second, and I’ll join you.”

  David laid down his handful of leads on the desk and pushed open the two doors. He picked up the guitar from its stand, slung the strap over his neck, and pulled out the plectrum that was stuck between the strings, creating a tuneless thwang that rang through the speakers as he did so. He played a couple of chords to make sure that it was in tune, then went through a couple of lead runs to get his fingers accustomed to the feel of the guitar. At that point, Gerry pushed open the doors and came through.

  “Bert Jansch, yes?”

  David smiled at him. “Oh, well, couldn’t be that bad if you recognized it.”

  “Bad? I tell you, there’s many a lead guitarist nowadays who couldn’t do better!” He picked up a semi-acoustic Ovation from one of the stands and sat down on a leather-padded chrome stool. “Christ, you’re some man for a gardener, aren’t you? First tennis, then the guitar. What else do you do?”

  David shook his head. “That’s about it, I’m afraid. You happen to have witnessed the sum total of my talents in one day!”

  “Thank God for that!” Gerry exclaimed, plucking at the strings of the guitar and adjusting the knobs on the machine head. “It’s quite enough. Any more and you’d be making me feel humble.” He played three quick chords. “Right then, David, that’s it! The night is young, so let’s get stuck in.”

  Chapter TWENTY-THREE

  Duncan Caple walked across the empty car-park at Glendurnich, turning his key-ring over in his hand to find the one that unlocked the front door of the office. It was seven o’clock on Monday morning, and even though the distillery throbbed with activity, having been in operation throughout the weekend, the office was completely deserted. He pushed the key into the lock and opened the door, and walked briskly to his office.

  Placing his brief-case on the desk, he shrugged off his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair, at the same time pressing one of the autodial numbers on his telephone. While waiting for it to connect, he clicked open the locks of the case and took out a thick typed document. He sat down and began leafing through it as the distorted ringing sounded out from the telephone speaker.

  After the tenth ring, he leaned forward with a silent curse, and was about to end the call when it was answered.

  “Hullo?”

  Duncan quickly picked up the receiver. “John? It’s Duncan.”

  “Duncan! You just caught me. I was on the way out to the car. How are you getting on? I was going to call you today, but I never quite know when to ring.”

  “I know. Sorry that I haven’t been in touch, but I just wanted to get this document ready before I made contact.”

  “So you’ve got it then?”

  “Yup, and it looks good, though I say it myself. Giles has done a wonderful job in selling the idea, as has Keith with the figures. It all looks very convincing, even though it is fairly simplistic, but there again, it has to be put in such a way that all the distillery workers can understand what’s going on. Having read it through in its entirety, I would have thought that we’d more than a fair chance of pushing this thing through to fruition.”

  “Bloody wonderful, Duncan! Well done! You’ll let me have a copy?”

  “Yes, I’ll get one couriered down to you today.”

  “Great! So have you any idea as to when you’re going to move on to the next stage?”

  “Well, where are we today?” He pulled his desk calendar towards him and flicked over the page to look at the next month. “Right, it’s the fifteenth of June, so … I think to be on the safe side, John, I would really like a month to get everything ready. I want to make damned sure that this whole thing succeeds, as I’m sure you do, and I just don’t want to push it any harder than I need to. So … let’s see now … how does Friday, the seventeenth of July, sound to you?”

  “No earlier, huh?”

  “No, I really think that if we left it until then, it would give me the best chance to make sure that it went through without a hitch.”

  “And you’re pretty confident that there won’t be one?”

  “John, I’ve been up here for a year now, and I’ve seen how this place works. The Inchelvies pride themselves in having built Glendurnich on labour relations, almost to the point of extreme. Even though they hold only thirty-one per cent of the shareholding, if, to a man, the workers back our proposals, then the Inchelvies will go along with them. I can honestly vouch for that. And once you’ve had a chance to look at this document, you will see that the terms laid down will be more than attractive to the family itself.”

  “Right. And have you heard anything at all from Corstorphine?”

  “Not a cheep. As far as I can gather, he’s gone to ground somewhere in the States. Wallowing in his sorrow, no doubt. I don’t think we’ll have much bother on that account.”

  “Okay, well, you know what’s going on. I’ll put Friday the seventeenth of July in my diary, then. Now I want you to do just one thing for me, Duncan.”

  “Yes?”

  “I really need to get in touch with you over the next month on a much more regular basis, so I want all lines of communication to be opened up between Kirkpatrick’s and Glendurnich. That means telephone, fax and E-mail. I cannot be expected to keep tabs on what’s going on through these hit-and-miss telephone calls.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Well, as you know, it’s impossible at the min
ute while your old battleaxe has control over the switchboard.”

  Duncan slowly nodded his head. “Ah.”

  “You’ll have to get rid of her. It’s important. As you said, you need time to set the wheels in motion, and we can’t afford to have it being leaked out before the designated date. What’s her name, anyway?”

  “Margaret.”

  “Right. How difficult would it be to give her the push?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t like to give a firm answer on that one. She’s well over retirement age, but she does wield a great deal of clout both here in the office and with old Inchelvie himself.”

  “Can’t be helped, Duncan. Just keep Inchelvie at bay for a month by keeping him in touch on a more than regular basis from his house. Visit him if needs be, but just keep him so well informed on how the business is going that he finds no reason even to telephone the place. All right? And as far as Margaret is concerned, give her a substantial amount more than the redundancy due to her, and if you have to, let everyone know that she’s been given a handsome ex gratia payment. Don’t lose sleep over it. Just do it. Okay?”

  “All right, John.”

  “Good! Well, I’ll look forward to receiving the papers, and say well done to the boys.”

  Duncan put down the receiver and swung his chair round to look out of the window. He sat for a moment, rubbing at the side of his cheek as he worked out his memorandum to Margaret. Then, with a thin smile curling up the edges of his mouth, he turned back to his desk and, unclipping a pen from his inside pocket, he pulled forward a pad of paper and began to compose the receptionist’s retirement order.

  Chapter TWENTY-FOUR

  Catching his breath as he rushed into the kitchen, Benji threw his tennis racket down on the table and turned triumphantly to David as he entered through the French doors.

  “Beat you!”

  “Okay, but you had a head start.”

  “But you’re faster than me.”

  “Not much. I think it’d be fairer if you gave me a start.”

  “Oh yeah, right!” He walked over to the refrigerator, and pulling open the door, took out two cans of Coke.

  “Here, catch!”

  He threw the can erratically towards David, who lunged forward to catch it, but the condensation on its surface made it slip from his grasp, and it struck hard against the corner of the table and fell to the ground punctured, fizzing Coke in every direction. Jasmine, who had been in the process of taking a hot casserole dish out of the oven, turned to witness the sticky liquid spraying out across her polished floor.

  “Oh, for Chrissakes, Benji, what the hell do you think you’re playin’ at?” She banged the casserole dish down on the sideboard, and shaking off the oven gloves, took a cloth from the kitchen sink and walked across to the table. “Just go and put your racket away where it belongs. Go on—do it now!”

  Benji, taken aback by Jasmine’s uncharacteristic reaction, glanced warily at David, who flicked his head to the side to indicate that he should do what he was told. David bent down and picked up the can, and covering the puncture with his finger, walked over to the sink and poured away the remainder of its contents.

  “Sorry about that. It was more my fault than his.”

  “Well, you should have caught it, shouldn’t you!” Jasmine sniped at him as she knelt down to wipe up the mess.

  David pulled a face at Jasmine’s mood, as surprised as Benji at her outburst. He walked over and squatted down beside her. “Look, let me do that.”

  She pulled her arm away from his outstretched hand. “No, I am perfectly capable of doin’ it myself.”

  David straightened up and stood watching her as she wiped furiously at the mess.

  “Jasmine?”

  “What is it now?”

  “Is something wrong?”

  She stopped wiping for a second, then continued, rubbing harder on the floor. “Nothin’s the matter with me.”

  She stopped again, and letting out a loud sniff wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. David went back down on his haunches and put his hand on her shoulder. “Look, there is something wrong. What’s happened?”

  She turned to look at him, tears in her eyes. “It’s nothin’ really. I just overheard something on Saturday during the tennis party, and … well, I could use some advice from you.” Her eyes focused beyond David’s left shoulder. “But not right now.” She returned to her task.

  David followed her line of vision to see that Benji had come back into the kitchen and was walking towards them. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, “I didn’t mean to do it.”

  Jasmine laughed as she wiped at one of the legs of the table. “I know you didn’t, and I didn’t mean to yell at you. Just me being real bad-tempered. As David said, just as much his fault as yours.”

  The boy ran forward, and throwing himself on her back, kissed the top of her wiry hair over and over again. Jasmine spread-eagled her hands to stop herself from being flattened on the ground by the extra weight. “All right, Benji! You can get off now! I accept your apology.”

  “Great!” Benji said, slipping off the side of Jasmine’s back. “Can we do it now, David?”

  “In a minute. Just go and do a bit of practising. I want a quick word with Jasmine.”

  “Okay.” He turned and raced upstairs.

  Jasmine pushed herself to her feet and studied the floor just to make sure that she hadn’t missed any of the Coke. “So what have you two got cooked up now?”

  “Oh, it’s his song. The school told him today that he has to have it ready for tomorrow morning. D-day has arrived! He has a slot on the public address system at a quarter to nine.”

  Jasmine smiled and walked over to the sink and began rinsing out the cloth.

  “So … what do you want my advice about?”

  Jasmine shook her head. “Nothin’ that can’t wait.” She draped the cloth over the tap and turned to face him. “We’ll get a chance to speak sometime when Benji isn’t around. I don’t want to risk havin’ him hear what I gotta say.” She picked up the casserole dish from the sideboard and placed it back in the oven, twiddling at a couple of the dials on the control panel. “Anyway, I think you’ve got a more important job on your hands than listening to me.”

  With a shrug, David turned and made his way through to the hall and up the stairs to Benji’s bedroom. As he walked in, Benji looked up from where he sat playing the ukulele on his bed, the piece of paper bearing the words of the song spread out on his knees.

  “This is soppy!” He threw aside the ukulele and scrumpled up the word-sheet, and letting it fall to the ground, he slumped back onto his bed.

  David walked over to the bed and bent down to retrieve the ball of paper. “It is not soppy!” he said, carefully unravelling it and pressing it between his hands to iron out the creases. “Listen, I think this song is great. What don’t you like about it?”

  “It’s all about love,” Benji said quietly.

  “So? That’s what all the good songs have been written about. What would you rather write about? Playing tennis?”

  Benji looked at him, a sulky expression on his face. “Don’t be silly. Who’d listen to a song about tennis?”

  “Exactly. The words are great—and they’re a bit different too. I mean, you’ve got a really good rhythm going in that first line—‘I do love you, but you’re breaking my heart, breaking my heart in two’—I think that’s really great. It’s very catchy.”

  “But everyone’s going to laugh at me when it comes out on the PA system.”

  “Why? You know the tune, you can play it well enough and you sing it just fine. So why would the others laugh at you?”

  “’Cos they’ll call me a sissy for singing about love.”

  David pushed himself farther onto Benji’s bed and leaned back against the wall, his arms folded. “Okay, how much is it worth?”

  “How much is what worth?”

  “Well, let’s say I’m your record producer and I say, ‘Rig
ht, Benji Superstar, I’ll give you ten dollars if they laugh at you, and twenty if they don’t, would we have a deal?”

  Benji looked hard at him, his brow creased with thought. “That’s not much of a deal. You lose out both ways.”

  “Well, maybe I just know that they won’t laugh at you. Okay, so I’ll have to pay you out twenty dollars, but then I’m pretty sure I have a hit single on my hands, otherwise I wouldn’t have made you the offer.”

  Benji was silent for a moment. “Do you really think it’s that good?”

  David nodded. “Yeah, I actually do.”

  “Gee!” Benji’s eyes focused on open air as he contemplated his impending fame.

  “So, do we have a deal?”

  “You bet!” He leaped up from the bed, and picking up the ukulele, proceeded to play the first few chords of the song. “What do we do now?”

  David pushed himself off the bed. “Well, we need to find a tape recorder.”

  Benji thought for a moment, then, placing the ukulele back on the bed, he leaped towards the cupboard at the far end of the room. He threw open the doors and rooted around inside, ejecting long-unused toys from its depth, eventually reappearing with an old plastic Fisher Price recorder. “How about this?”

  David walked over and took it from him, and having given it a quick appraisal, chucked it dismissively onto the bed.

  Benji’s shoulders dropped visibly. “No good, huh?” he said, profound disappointment in his voice.

  “’Fraid not. The thing is, if we want to make a hit single, we’re going to have to call in the professionals.”

  Benji swallowed hard. “What d’you mean?” he said quietly.

  “C’mon. I’ll show you.”

  Twenty minutes later, Benji stood half-hidden behind David in the centre of Gerry’s recording studio, his ukulele held firmly behind his back and his mouth open in amazement as they listened to the ear-blasting music being played by the four musicians present. David felt the young boy tug at the back of his shirt, and he turned and bent down so that he could hear him above the noise.