Nowhere Near Milkwood

by Rhys Hughes

  Goodbut came back and joined me. We sank a few more pints of beer and finished our waiting together. The pub slowly filled up. Then the acts themselves started to arrive. Some had lots of equipment. A few just had guitars and mouths. First on was going to be Bridget Wells, an attractive and witty woman who (it emerged) had carried her instrument to Tenerife to give its neck and notes a tan. It certainly looked healthy. I guessed its sound would be exotic but just a little melancholy. I wasn’t right, nor was I entirely wrong. I couldn’t take any of my eyes off her and that’s unusual when I have so many in reserve, and I felt unguarded and vulnerable for the first time in my mutant life.

  I reckon it must have been about an hour after sunset when the indoor night properly began. The audience had been chatting away to themselves but now they mostly hushed, and chairs were angled to point at the stage. Bridget was already up there, slowly tuning her instrument, but she didn’t have spotlights, just crimson candles all around her. There were two other musicians next to her, some guys named Marc and Tich, and the resultant sound was a web of chords which shouldn’t be brushed aside, because it enhanced rather than tangled the shadows. One of her songs was called ‘Rage Inside’ and contained the line, “stay away from the dark one”, and several people around my table took her advice and moved away from me. But anyway, Bridget was the lusty girl in pajamas whom I referred to earlier, but she didn’t actually wear pajamas. She wore purple dungarees. Consider the pajamas a symbol for something else, whatever you like. I know what I like. It’s her. She was talented and flirtatious, but I realised instantly she was not for me.

  Then it was the turn of Satori. They played complex fusion jazz and its prog rock nephew with panache and ease. The bass player had funky thumbs and a fringe like rain to hide behind, a weather reporter turned sniper. That’s not my metaphor, but Goodbut’s, which I cribbed when I leaned over and took a peek at what he was scribbling, in the glare from the cigarette lighter of the girl who sat next to me. This band ambushed my expectations in other areas too, especially in the reeds. The utterly bald singer used his remarkably powerful voice to great effect in all the songs, particularly in the symphonic composition ‘On The Steps At The Front Of My House With A Mobile Phone’, and the epic finale, a song titled ‘Red Haired Wife’. At one point he sang without amplification. He didn’t need it. And it was cheaper.

  Grampa Chaff was a more primitive act. He played his anatomy with mallets. They weren’t soft mallets neither. His ribs were a xylophone with a surprising range of tone colours. His heavy skull was a gourd, like one of those pumpkin drums I’d heard they have in Slovenia. He was an old fellow, broken veins all over his face, but maybe they were due to impact injuries rather than age. Yes, in fact, if it wasn’t for his giveaway name, I don’t think I’d have been able to judge his age at all. There was too much blood for one thing. It poured out of his nose and ears and puddled on the floor but nobody in the audience raised an eyebrow. This was Swansea. I was the only one who clapped at the end. The pub was filled to bursting with applause. But it wasn’t that the listeners didn’t appreciate his music, just that they were very cool, and he seemed to realise this. Goodbut had written a single word in his notebook: “Knockout!” But this was plainly a lie. Grampa was still moving!

  The Rag Foundation were a folk rock outfit, which makes them sound like the sort of citizens who wear cardigans under studded leather jackets, but I soon learned to keep that sort of archaic opinion to myself, or to lose it altogether and honestly change my mind, because a fool in the audience made a similar remark and the fiddle player, a petite but ferocious woman named Kate threw her violin at his head. It bounced off and back into her hand in the middle of a solo, and this tiny pause added to the phlegmatic power of the song, in the same way that a sigh contributes to a laugh over dinner at your best friend’s house, when something has gone sour but it’s a feeling instead of a rational certainty, and the song which was improved by this act of violence was about miners or cider or possibly love, or all three, a lovestruck miner drowning in a large vat of cider, and I knew this combo were the real thing, and that their shadows on the wall behind the stage would never usurp them.

  I asked Goodbut: “Why are none of these acts better known outside the Swansea area? It’s strange.”

  He shook his head. “Not really. This city exists apart from the rest of the universe. It is protected by obscurity and always will be. Even if (for example) Napoleon was still alive and tried to conquer Europe again, but without making any mistakes this time, he couldn’t get as far as Swansea. All thanks to the miasma.”

  It explained everything, this miasma, which wasn’t a physical smell but a psychic stench. You could blink at it only with the third eye, the mind’s eye, and I had many of those, thrice three at least, so I understood and felt pity for myself. Mental blocks were the best defence against it, so I thanked my reluctance to ever enter therapy and have mine cured. But to be honest, I did once try to visit a therapist. He ejected me the moment I crossed his threshold. He didn’t want to be infected with madness and I can’t really say I blame him. He won’t say the same for me, because I was to blame, apparently. So it goes.

  “Besides,” he added, “some of these acts have played in foreign parts. The miasma must form a variable shield which can be penetrated on rare occasions. Don’t tell Napoleon!”

  I noticed that there was a problem with the timing of the evening. The pub had to close at 11 PM, half past at the very latest, and it was already quarter to the hour. But The Rag Foundation were closing their set and I felt happier, for I assumed that because I was heading the bill, the other remaining act would make room for me by playing less songs. This was not to be. I clapped my myriad hands even more vigorously now, hoping to hurry the band off the stage with the noise. It almost worked. But they were going anyway, so perhaps not. I gave myself credit for it anyway. I like to do that. I’m very lonely.

  Now Toni Trumpet got up alone and puffed some stuff. But no, I’m not going to describe what it was like. It was too paradoxical... the weird and impossible colour of azure red... the beat of a monkey’s wings... the sheen of vacuum, density of hope, awe of epicycles... I can’t say whether there was one song there, several or many, or none at all. The music was inside my head already, a distant and unobtainable memory, and it sprang awake for the first time. So there was novelty and nostalgia at exactly the same moment... Wheels inside my soul had been set in motion, springs I never knew I owned were winding down and powering unique feelings in my heart in the same way that windmills can be employed to drain knees, stir pots of stew or ventilate shipyards, anything unexpected but perfectly valid, just never attempted before.

  The audience was spellbound and from the darkest corners watched things not human or alive. I realised they were the angles where walls met the ceiling. Even geometry had been seduced by the gutsy magic. That’s quite a first, I think. I’ve never heard of that happening before. I suspect they cried afterward, those intersecting planes, slaves to theorems, tasting amusement on their sentient debuts.

  It was done. One minute to the hour. Sixty seconds left to perform my infinite song! I didn’t think it was possible. Yet I wasn’t ready to give up faith. I needed some sort of reputation, I was desperate for recognition, and this was the only opportunity within sight. So I hefted my banjo like a frying pan and mounted the stage.

  I was going to play an extract from my song. At the start of the gig, I’d planned to play as much of it as possible. I’d revised this intention when Bridget, Satori, Grampa and Rag had run over their alloted times. Toni had kept it trim, but only in the same way that life is short, which is always a saying but only generally a truth or feeling. It had became clear to me that I should just play a dozen verses of ‘And Dug The Pigdog A Tomb’, and then just one verse, and then just one line, and then just one bar, and then just one chord, but now I knew it ought to be only one note, a single note, the best note in my favourite song, the best note in musical history, the on
e perfect note.

  That’s all I had time for, but it was enough. The note in question and also in answer was G sharp, not any old G sharp, but the G sharp in the sixth line of the 498th repeated verse of ‘And Dug The Pigdog A Tomb’, a G sharp which is superior to all other G sharps in all other compositions due to its context, what came before and after, but I was going to attempt the audacious and remove it from its context while retaining its quality of ultimate superiority. If I could pull that off, I could tug anything, so guard your hair and teeth, doubters!

  Much later, when I sat in a different bar on my own, I worked out how it had gone wrong. Do you know the words to the song I chose? They loop round on themselves, which explains how that tune lasts forever. The first line is a standard opening. It goes, “A pigdog came on the lawn,” and the second line continues, “and walked around alone”, and it’s like a promise of a lazy story, but the third line subverts this by saying, “Then gardener swung a hoe,” and the fourth adds, “and broke its funny bone”, to which the fifth line responds, “Then all the pigdogs came grunting”, which may not have been deliberate of them, but in fact was, because, “and dug the pigdog a tomb”, is the sixth line, and the seventh explains what they did with this tomb, which was “And they carved upon its door,” and now the eighth explains why, “for the eyes of pigdogs to come”, at which sombre point the song reverts to the first line again, which is the text they carved there: “A pigdog came on the lawn...”

  And on and on to eternity. Dig it?

  Actually it’s a horrid song, because the pigdog wasn’t dead when they dug it a tomb, just injured in the elbow joint, and they ended up burying it alive while it begged for mercy.

  Like I said, this is a variation on the original, but popular music works that way. I’m not bothered by accusations of plagiarism or anything of the sort. Besides, what does it matter to me? Can I be sued in court? I hardly even own a crust of bread. More likely that a crust of bread somewhere in this wide world owns me! I’m pretty certain it does, the only pretty thing I can ever be, so I cling tight to it. That’s a tendency I have. What’s yours? Don’t care to examine that, I bet.

  Anyway, I ditched most of the song long before Toni Trumpet came down from the stage, but by the time I was climbing up on it, I’d resolved to pluck my note, the ultimate G sharp, as I’ve mentioned. The audience licked its lips, unsure of whether I was a solo player or a band. I like that ambiguity. It’s my version of androgyny, a look very many musical stars cultivate. I can’t do that, I have too many masculine chests to depilate, too many rugged cheeks to powder, so I just make the most of what I’ve got, which is lots of much. My support acts were watching me too, drinking and relaxing after their performances, and I briefly considered dedicating my perfect note to Bridget. Fear of rejection prevented me, rejection not just by the woman in question, but by the fabric of the cosmos for daring to presume too much. She was lovely.

  I stood there and flexed my thumb.

  To my astonishment, Goodbut called out a request: “That obscure Bavarian number, if you please.”

  “Which one do you mean?” I muttered.

  He said, “‘I Feel Like Hound Dressed Up As Swine Tonight’,” and I realised he was trying to assist me, trying to make the pigdog soul of my banjo seem deliberate and right.

  I loved him for that. Music reviewers don’t earn enough money in my opinion. He was able to keep his car on the road, true, yet I still think he deserved a small wage increase.

  But I retorted, “Don’t know that one.”

  He shuddered just a little, and I added, “No, my set for tonight is sure to be remembered in myth long after the destruction of Bavaria, however and whenever that happens.”

  “Because,” I continued, “it’s the best...”

  And then I roared, “Listen!”

  And I plucked the G sharp. And it flew out of my banjo and filled the pub to its most hidden corner.

  I knew something had gone amiss before the ripple of sound struck the nearest tables to the stage. I wanted to run forward, pull off my coats and gather it up, this ripple, whose circumference was already growing bigger than any item of clothing. Yes, gather it up and push it back into my instrument! But I stayed where I was and let the damage make itself known. It did. I leaned over and blew out the crimson candles which had been left flickering to themselves since Bridget arranged them there, for I craved darkness for the payback.

  What had I done? What was my mistake?

  Playing a sharp on a flattened instrument! The note just wasn’t right. It was shifted a semitone backward, which wouldn’t have mattered usually, it’d just be a major tone, but not in this case, because I had suggested the context with the note, as I indicated earlier. A bum note. It was infinitely bum. That stinks. So I flushed. My embarrassment was severe enough to calcify hedgehogs. That’s warm.

  The glow of my shame returned sunset to the interior. The UPLANDS TAVERN boiled itself alive. The people ran out. Somebody was plucking at my sleeve. It was Goodbut.

  He said, “You imbecile! You’re finished.”

  We ran away somewhere. Turned out we were headed toward the only late night drinking venue in this part of Swansea, a bohemian place called MOZART’S. It was just down the road. I don’t believe Goodbut wanted to go there with me, but the momentum of acquaintance carried me through the doors in his wake. It was cramped inside. Most of my audience were already there, together with my support acts. They tolerated me without a flicker of compassion. This was good enough for me. I didn’t expect any sort of forgiveness. No quarter, not by half. I moved into the back room, which was slightly less full.

  I recognised one person there, Brian, who I’d last met at Darren’s party a few weeks before. He sat with his friends, Chris, Pete, Reshmi, Louise, and his hairstyle, Ginger. He guessed something was up, so he treated me like an unwanted bill, which is the overused pun I truly was. He deferred me indefinitely, like the climax of my song. It still hasn’t been performed in its entirety, so I’ve heard.

  Somebody had left a newspaper at the bar, so I perched awkwardly on a stool and sat reading it. Anything to appear unobtrusive. The front page was bursting with news about trouble in distant lands. Lots of revolutions had broken out at the same time. The nations of Africa, the Americas and Asia had overthrown their governments. There were angry mobs in every street demanding globalisation and a single world state. As they marched to victory they sang anthems. I recognised these. I’d written them with the Cussmothers. The songs from our first (unsuccessful) album. It was clear what had happened. The secret societies had finally made their move. My former colleagues ruled much of the planet now. I felt like the fifth Beatle or the sixth sense, left out of things but still there, cheated, frustrated and helpless, an orphan of cuss.

  I folded the newspaper and returned to my immediate surroundings. I needed to confront my own mess.

  Some of my support acts began strumming guitars for their personal pleasure, while Goodbut kept repeating to himself and anyone else who would listen: “Infinitely bum! Infinitely bum!” And the beers and glasses of wine slipped down all other throats smoothly, but not down mine, and parts of me wept for the rest.

  The very bald singer from Satori came up next to me. “That gig wasn’t big enough for the all of you.”

  I nodded every one of my heads.

  The atmosphere in the room became strained. The songs which came out of those guitars were painful. Every time a G sharp was sounded, the walls sparked red. There was shame and heat. The people winced. Even though these G sharps should have been different to the one I’d extracted from ‘And Dug The Pigdog A Tomb’, the horror was there. My fault for welding it to one specific context! The note was alloyed with that context forever now, tainted and ugly.

  A mirror for my existence.

  I felt a strong grip on my biggest shoulder. Bridget Wells was standing behind me. Then she growled:

  “You’ve destroyed G sharp! You’ve ruined an entire note. Nev
er again will anyone be able to play that semitone. There were only twelve in a full scale and now there are just eleven. All musicians must regard you as an enemy from this instant. You’ll never get a gig anywhere. You should go home now. Leave us forever.”

  “I have no home,” I replied miserably.

  “Just get out of Swansea,” Goodbut added. “I’m sure the miasma will part itself especially for you.”

  “I’ll finish my drink first,” I said, and I raised my pint to my lips, but I didn’t taste it. I suddenly found myself surrounded by grinning people. So many happy faces! I felt light and immersed in compassion, warm and at peace. This is the way it should always be! I laughed my typical laugh but the sound was a fraction softer.

  Then I realised that I was lying on my back parallel to the bar with my feet still resting on the stool. I was upside down and the grins were sneers and pouts. The warmth was gore. There was a gouting neck where one of my heads had been. I felt a fraction more stupid. But I rapidly worked out what had happened. Fed up with my delaying tactic, Bridget had punched me. Don’t mess with that girl!

  I crawled away, out of the room, out of the door, onto the street. It had started to rain. The sky washed me. Cars helped by splashing puddles. All the moonless gutters were damp and crooked. I didn’t enter any of them. I crossed the road and found a patch of soggy greenery, Cwmdonkin Park, it was. There was no real shelter here, but I lay flat on my back again and thrust my legs up into the air.

  All songs are now played without G sharp. Strings have been removed from pianos across the globe. Banning this note may even become law in the utopia of the new world order.

  I sang a tune to myself while I was in the park, an obscure Atlantean number called, ‘I Feel Like Urchin Dressed Up As Octopus Tonight’. It was appropriate. The membrane which connects all my thighs acted as an umbrella. There are no notes in Atlantean music, just bubbles. It is sure to surface in popularity again.