A Musical Son

“Definition destroys; there is nothing definite in this world.”

                                                                                         Jack Frost                                                                           

Hector Starkweather was his mother’s pride and joy. He was the perfect son: seventeen and a half, bright and polite, musically and academically gifted and utterly respectful of his parents. At school he performed brilliantly and his teachers considered him a pleasure to have in class. In his final year now, he was expected to complete his exams and enrol in one of the country’s top colleges.

Everyone—his mother and father, the staff at his school—assumed that he would take a degree in music when he went to university such was his prowess with the violin. His headmaster had told Hector’s mother:

—“He’s the very definition of a straight-A student and to hear him play his instrument is to hear the very notes of Heaven itself!”

During that particular flight of hyperbole, the headmaster had added that Master Starkweather’s test scores were exceptional:

—“We’ve never seen the like of him in this school before,” the man enthused.

Mother Starkweather—whose name incidentally was Jemima—was thrilled to hear of her son’s ability and just like John Brown’s mother from the folk ballad she was “telling everybody in the neighbourhood”. Jemima would announce to anyone who’d listen:

—“My Hector is the consummate scholar, and such a beautiful boy to boot!”

Naturally, being such a proficient musician, music was a key extra-curricular pursuit of Hector’s. He had assembled a little rock band and they—all five of them—met several nights a week to play and practise. For the purposes of the band, Hector used an old fiddle given to him by his mother for his fourteenth birthday. The group was a terrific outlet for the young musicians—four boys and a female singer whom the boys jokingly referred to as Chantelle the Bell because her voice was so gloriously resounding. By common consensus, Hector was the band’s leader. Starkweather was simply that kind of fellow. Without even thinking about it, his peers constantly veered towards him for guidance in the oft-fraught process of growing up. He was tall and he was handsome; he was warm and congenial; he was a natural born leader was Hector Starkweather.

At school in music class he played classical violin with great skill. He was extremely agile, and could execute rapid and tricky sequences of notes with ease. The music teacher loved him, remarking that Hector was the best pupil he’d ever taught. On the theory side of things, Hector passed all of his mid-year tests with flying colours. 

In his band, in the evening time, rehearsing with Chantelle the Bell and the rest of the guys, Hector was falling rapidly in love with rock and roll. To this end he had purchased—with savings from a Saturday job—a brightly coloured, second hand, electro-acoustic violin that he hooked up to an amplifier in the garage where he and the band rehearsed. His old fiddle was now consigned to his bedroom. He loved the wild, thin mercury sound that this new violin produced and the band—now christened The Flashing Spurts—jammed for hours with Chantelle hollering her mystical lyrics above a divine jangle of strings and drums. If somebody had asked Hector to describe what this sound looked like, he would have said that it was bright gold.

Noticing his son’s growing interest in rock, his father, the doughty Caleb, furnished Hector with a bunch of old records featuring an immensely talented folk rock pioneer by the name of Fiddledrag. You would not think to look at Fiddledrag nowadays but he had been famous long ago, playing the electric violin on some of the world’s most venerable stages. Unfortunately for Fiddledrag, his spell in the limelight was short-lived. Drink, drugs, girls and fame quickly got the better of him. He soon lost his star status but had remained alive for many a day afterwards. Now, some forty years on from his glorious, evanescent moment, he was reduced to playing his fiddle for beer, bed and board in a dive bar on Bowe Row at the town’s western edge.

Hector was enthralled by Fiddledrag’s old records, and while never losing his own originality, he began to bend his bow to mimic their sound.

It was May now and Hector’s end-of-school exams were rapidly approaching. He stayed back after classes each day and got stuck into the books. Studying was not something he found difficult. He had a natural aptitude for schoolwork and, truly, he excelled at it. All his classmates and every other person in his year had the same overriding preoccupation: to pass their exams and to go on to college. There was a lot of nervousness about the place and much febrile activity in the study halls when classes had finished for the day.

Hector took it all in his stride, and when study ended he would go home, grab a bite to eat and assemble with the band in the garage around eight p.m. for a two-hour jam.  The group was quickly developing a quirky musical style all of its own; the sound was new and original and ear-catching in the extreme, although they’d yet to take it to a public stage. A mysterious alchemy was taking place in the rehearsal space, particularly between Hector and Chantelle who were starting to see one another as potential lovers as well as musical partners. It is not an exaggeration to say that when she sang and he played, the music of the spheres was intimated. Nightly, they walked home together holding hands before kissing at Chantelle’s garden gate. How Hector’s heart pounded, as did hers. The other members of the group noticed their chemistry and canoodling and joked with them to “Get a room!”

Hector was in love with Chantelle and with rock and roll when the month of June arrived and his exams were but a week away. It was then that the tectonic plates of his psyche began to shift, and he sensed, keenly, that his life was about to change forever.

He was online in the study hall—ostensibly reading up on the Minister President of Prussia from 1862 onwards—when he spotted the advertisement. He had tired of Bismarck and decided to engage the search engine on the topic of musical trends in the fashionable city of Freeland. The ad on the left of the screen said simply:

 

 “Wanted: Female vocalist and one violinist. Exciting new band based in Freeland. Auditions this Saturday. If successful, travel costs reimbursed. Take a gamble on your talent. For further info, contact harry@freelander.ie”

 

The pitch got Hector’s attention immediately. He was drawn to it in the same way that Elvis was drawn to Sun Records in 1953. He knew that he had enough money saved to buy two tickets to Freeland and that he and Chantelle could be on a plane the very next day. Every Saturday for the past two years, he had toiled in his uncle’s hardware store and most of his earnings he had kept. It wasn’t stinginess on his part, but rather prudence that had caused him to hoard his wages. He felt that things were now so good with Chantelle, both musically and physically, that the pair of them would sail through the audition. He certainly hoped to pass it, and he sensed that this really was it; he was on to something big. All he wanted now was a life of love and music with the supernal Chantelle, and this new band was his ticket to paradise; the only thing left to do was to convince the Bell to take the journey with him.

That proved easier than he thought it would. Speaking to her after practice that night on the short journey to her house, Hector sold her on the idea. She told him she loved him and would travel to the ends of the earth for him never mind Freeland. She was thrilled at the prospect of playing in a band in that shining city on a hill, and prepared to give up everything in her current life—her parents, her siblings, her friends, the college course mapped out for her—in order to make a giant leap into the future with Hector Starkweather.

They hatched a plan to leave on the following dawn. They would pack some belongings and Hector would have the money ready. He would meet her at the gate on the pretext of walking her to school but instead they would take a bus south. He impressed upon her the extreme need for discretion in everything they did until they’d made good their departure.

—“Breathe not a word of this secrecy,” Hector implored her. “You’re my special rose.”

When he got into his bedroom that night Hector emailed the aforesaid Harry and obtained the coordinates.

 

At Liverpool John Lennon Airport, prior to boarding a flight to Freeland, Hector had an attack of conscience and placed a call to his mother. At the very least, he felt that he ought to say goodbye. Jemima sounded stressed when she got on the line.

—“Hector, what are you doing? Where are you?” she pleaded. “Your father and I are worried sick. You’ve packed your clothes and left. You even took your violin!”

—“I don’t want to say where I am, Mom. I have to go away for a while. I love you, and Dad, too. I’ll be back at some stage. Don’t worry about me. I’ll drop you a line from time to time.”

—“But Hector,” she cried. “You were going to go to Godhead College. You’re assured of a place there. You’re so academically gifted, you must take your degree!”

—“I’ve given up all my academic pursuits,” Hector said.

—“For what?” Jemima asked, incredulously.

—“For love and music, Mom,” he said, calmly. “And a Freeland electric band.”

As he hung up the phone, Hector could hear his mother wailing on the other end. He went and found Chantelle. She was leafing through a magazine in WHSmith’s. He took her by the hand and without speaking they headed for the boarding gate. 

 

Ó Brian Ahern 2012