The Devil's Chord – Chapter 5
Done deal
Hell ’n’ High Water will arrive in town on Thursday. They’ll get the same appearance fee we agreed with the Cropdusters. A generous sum, from our perspective, for three performances across the long weekend, with two or three workshops by band members thrown in. Not what they would have made from a single appearance at the Sidney Myer – but beggars, etc.
So far, we haven’t had to speak to Toby in person. It’s all gone through the band’s tour manager, and as talent and artist relations coordinator, Brendan Ferrier has handled the details at our end.
‘We’ll have to invite the bastard to dinner,’ says Ken. He’s standing at the sink, rinsing leaves in the salad spinner: sorrel, mint, rocket and lettuce from the garden. The fresh, dewy smell wafts over to me.
‘Really?’ I ask, horrified. ‘Do we have to?’
‘Course we do, love. It’s what we always do.’
It’s true. We always host a welcome dinner for our overseas guests on the eve of the Pick. It’s become a tradition, it’s expected and it would be insulting to change it now.
‘I reckon being nice to Toby for a couple of hours, reminiscing about old times, blah blah – that comes under the heading of “Presidential Duties”, don’t you think? Him and his band. They’re saving our arses, after all.’
‘Or we’re saving theirs. The Music Bowl gig, remember. Cancelled.’
I unwrap the cheese I bought this morning. It’s a cow’s milk washed-rind from Milawa: orange, buttery and pungent.
‘Ah, yeah. Do we know why?’
‘Low ticket sales, Bren says.’
‘Oops. Bit embarrassing, eh?’
‘Schadenfreude, darling?’
‘Not really,’ Ken shrugs, drizzling olive oil over the bowl of salad, sprinkling a pinch of salt. ‘I don’t give a shit. Not any more. It’s all over and done with. Water under the bridge. He can’t hurt us now. Inviting him to dinner isn’t just the polite thing to do, it’s making a point. We don’t bear a grudge, we don’t care, he hasn’t got a hold over us.’
I take out the bread board and cut slices from the dark rye loaf. It has a delicious, spicy aroma. Caraway seeds.
‘Niamh will be arriving tomorrow,’ I point out. ‘Do you think she’ll mind?’
‘Mind? Nah. She’ll be curious to meet her mum’s old boyfriend.’
‘My old boyfriend? Is that what we’re calling him?’
‘Unless you want to weird the kid out.’
‘She’s hardly a kid, Ken.’
‘She’s still our kid – and there’s stuff about your parents’ sex lives that you don’t need to know, right?’
‘Yeah, too right. All of it.’
‘Exactly. So, “Mum’s old boyfriend, and Dad’s former bandmate” will do just fine.’
Ken sets the salad bowl on the table with a thump.
Looks like it’s happening, then. Events are coming together, without my being able to influence or prevent them. All I can do now is sit back and accept it, see what happens.
I’m hungry, despite the knot in my stomach, so I do my best to eat. But the moist, fragrant bread tastes like cardboard, the fresh salad like cellophane.
A year, almost to the day, after Toby left our shores, he was back.
The career Stateside hadn’t turned out as well as he’d hoped. It emerged that US audiences weren’t ready for Toby Reid’s brand of musical genius, after all.
The record company deal had fallen through. There’d been trouble with the new band: artistic differences, work ethic disparities, personal friction. The story shifted according to our friend’s mood and how much he’d had to drink, how much weed he’d smoked.
Anyway, whatever the reason, back he came. Not exactly tail-between-legs, but slightly ruffled by real life. To get the old band back together, and resume the fun times.
Only our lives had moved on – without Toby Reid.
Ken and I were in love, newly married. He’d just finished his veterinary degree and I was enrolled for a DipEd to go with my Bachelor of Music, with a view to teaching at secondary school. We were on the way to becoming a conventional young married couple, building a life together in our dilapidated High Country cottage. The mountain goat shed, Toby called it.
We wanted to have pets, grow our own vegies, maybe have kids at some point in the future. To be part of a community. All the corny, conventional, important, grown-up stuff that real life is made of.
Along came Toby, expecting to hop back into our lives and our bed and carry on where we’d left off. As if nothing had happened.
He was still the same old Toby: the same dark good looks, the same lean, hungry body, the same allure. He was still enchanting, inspiring company when he chose to be. He still sang and played like a young god, one with a cute Kentucky twang and a knowing smile that reached right into you.
But now I was getting wise, painfully and late, to this brilliant man I’d adored. I was starting to see the cracks in the persona: the bouts of self-pity, the arrogance and self-centredness. I think Ken was too. We’d had the advantage of a year away from Toby’s influence – a year when he’d all but ignored us. Time enough to get a feel for what a real loving relationship could look like, one with genuine commitment.
The three of us would still drink and smoke and lark around, almost like in the old days. Then Toby would say or do something gross, casually offensive, and I’d see that look in Ken’s eye. Thoughtful and with just a hint of disgust.
Toby had an animal instinct for his own advantage, and maybe a quiet fear that he might not really be capable of the grand passions he laid claim to, in his music and his relationships. Maybe that’s why he always pushed boundaries. Trying to make himself feel something.
‘Damn I love you guys so much,’ he’d often say, with his arms slung around both of us.
‘We know you do, Tobes,’ I remember answering, running my hand over his firm belly, plucking gently at the dark little hairs. ‘Just not as much as you love yourself, maybe?’
The more we pulled away, the more he pulled back. Hard.
It was a volatile situation.
Then one night, he’d been with us a couple of months, the three of us got recklessly, inexplicably drunk.
When I woke in the half-light, extricated myself from the tangle of bedclothes and male limbs, stopped at the bedroom door to grab my smoky flannelette shirt and pull it on, tiptoed across the living room between empty bottles, album sleeves and musical instruments, fumbled with the bolt on the back door, padded barefoot down the path to the dunny, perched gingerly on the wooden seat, trying not to think about redbacks, and released a copious stream of urine into the musty depths, I became aware of a dried, whitish crust across my inner thigh.
Further investigation confirmed my suspicion.
I’d had sex with someone. Or someone had had sex with me. Or we’d had sex with each other. But who? Was it consensual? Did the term even have meaning in the context? Was either – any – of us conscious at the time, able to make an informed decision about wanting sex or not?
I decided that I wanted it to have been Ken and not Toby, and that therefore, it was. I was on the pill; it was just one of those things. Not worth making a fuss about.
By the time the kettle had boiled, the two boys were awake. We sat huddled on the back veranda, the boys in their jocks, me in my flannie and knickers, drank coffee and passed a joint in companionable, if rather subdued, silence. The brazier smoked on, the embers of last night’s fire still glowing in the ash. Eventually breakfast was mooted. We pulled on more clothes and ambled down to the town to see what was open.
We never discussed the previous night.
A few days later, Toby told us he was leaving again.
‘It just ain’t working out for me here,’ he said. ‘I should leave you fine young married folks in peace. Y’all have a nice life together, okay?’
He packed his bags, shouldered his mandolin case, and left. This time, as it turned out, it was for good.
Strange, to think of all that happening right here, so long ago. This house is haunted by the ghosts of our past selves.
I look around. So much is different now. The outside dunny’s long gone, and what was our bedroom then is now the music room. The house is bigger and more comfortable, has been repainted inside and out, refurnished. There are terraced gardens all around, not just a weed-filled sheep paddock. I can’t see the neighbours’ house for our trees.
Yet I can picture those two boys, as they were then, sitting right there on the step. I smell again the brazier’s cold smoke. Despite the warmth of this spring afternoon, I feel the chill of the autumn morning that made the goosebumps rise on their skinny arms and backs.
I smell their young male flesh: citrus and musk; ganja, booze and sweat. Subtly different, the two of them. Even in the blackest night, I could always tell them apart by smell and by feel, the catch of their breath, the texture of their hair, their skin.
I see Toby striding off, turning at the bend of the drive to wave. Off to catch the school bus to Myrtleford, the first stage on his journey out of our lives. He declined Ken’s offer of a lift. His swinging stride was a study in nonchalance.
Just a little too studied to convince. Hurt pride, or a guilty conscience?
You see, he’d taken something that didn’t belong to him.
Next Tuesday in The Devil’s Chord: Meg recalls the accusations which embittered Ken’s friendship with Toby. Meanwhile daughter Niamh is expected to arrive from Sydney, and Meg readily agrees to an errand.
Title image ‘Whisky Before Breakfast’: created in Gemini 3 using the author’s reference photo; altered by the author in Adobe Lightroom.
“Mum’s old boyfriend and Dad’s former bandmate” 🤭………..When past creeps in our present we have to retell our story to those who joined us later in life.
I am waiting for their reunion.
And Steve, don’t forget to tell Susan that I am enjoying her beautiful narration💛