The Cure of Souls (9 page)

Lol moved closer but didn’t touch.

Mother-of-pearl was inlaid around the soundhole but the softwood top was otherwise plain, with a dull sheen but no lacquer, no polish. There was an orange line of yew in the neck. She was like one of those old parlour instruments from the late nineteenth century.

A holy relic. What was it doing
here?

Lol said reverently. ‘She’s a Boswell.’

‘Mother of God!’ The man with long white hair strode out from behind the counter. ‘She’s a guitar!’ Carelessly plucking the instrument from its stand, handing it to Lol. ‘Go on, take her. But no plectrum, if you don’t mind. I’d hate to need a scratchboard.’

‘I’m no good with a plec, anyway.’ Lol accepted the guitar, one hand under its sleek butt.

‘Quite right, lad.’ The man clapped his hands, two rings tinking. ‘Plectrums, thumb-picks – condoms for the fingers. Why would God have given us nails?’ His sharp rural accent, with flat northern vowels, was unplaceable, the kind sometimes affected by traditional folk singers.

The guitar was unexpectedly lightweight.

‘Yours?’

The man smiled.
Check out the back room
, Prof had said earlier, winking. Back room?

‘Ah, you’re embarrassed,’ the goblin man said. ‘All right. I’ll leave you alone with her for a while.’ From behind the counter, he pulled a wooden stool for Lol to sit on. ‘I’ll give you just one tip – don’t be too delicate with her. She won’t repay you.’ He wagged a finger. ‘Remember now, Lol, she’s not sacred. She’s only a guitar.’

Lol looked up at him, unsure whether he’d fallen on his feet or into a trap.

‘The Prof.’ The goblin smiled – a couple of gold teeth on show. ‘The Prof said you’d be around sooner or later.’ He unlatched the door. ‘I shall be back in about ten minutes. Enjoy!’

The Hop Museum was set back from the main road to Bromyard, about fifty yards from the turning to Knight’s Frome. Like Prof’s place, it was the remains of farm buildings, but in this case with a few acres around it. There were two ponies and a donkey in the field in front, and a pond with ducks. Also, a gypsy caravan in green and gold.

The River Frome passed unobtrusively under the access drive, through what looked like a culvert.

Earlier, Lol had played the Frome song for Prof, as far as it went. The chorus had written itself, but sounded a bit trite.

***

Pity it was pronounced
froom
, to rhyme with
doom and gloom
. Lol had decided he’d still have it sounding in the song like
home
and
loam
so as to carry the vowel in that first line:
Frome goes nowhere
. He was, after all, a stranger.

‘You don’t know enough about the place to finish this song,’ Prof had said flatly. ‘It might be about what a complete loser you are, but you still need some images to carry it. What do you really know about this sodding river except its name and that it isn’t very wide? You ask me, Laurence, it’s time you went to talk to Sally, down at the hop museum. The river, the hills, the woods, the people – Sally knows everything about them all.’

‘Sally?’ Lol had stared at him. ‘You actually know this woman? I thought you had a policy of not knowing local people unless they could play something useful?’

‘It was an accident,’ Prof said.

It was about five-thirty when Lol had set off to walk the half-mile or so from the studio. The white-haired man had been closing the gates at the foot of the drive but had beckoned Lol in anyway. The only visitor they’d had all afternoon, he said. Admission was a pound, and there were a few items on sale inside.

But not, presumably, the Boswell guitar, handmade by the great Alfonso Boswell who had given all his guitars women’s names. The same instrument on which Lol now played the slow and ghostly Celtic instrumental he called ‘Moon’s Tune’… knowing it was going to remind him of the abandoned hop-yard, the place of the wilt, and the woman he’d seen there. He’d dreamed of her since, twice in one night. Not pleasant, though, as dreams went.

Are you all right? Then letting her approach to within a few inches before he slunk bashfully away. Registering by the rhythm of her movements and her blurred smile that she was not hurt, bar the scratches, and had not been attacked or forcibly stripped… was more likely some stoned moonbather who’d assumed she was alone but didn’t really care
.

The low-beamed room, one of three linking up to accommodate the museum, was dim and crowded with annotated exhibits that looked at first like junk. These included the hopcribs – hammocks in frames, in which the cones were separated from the bines; the giant sausage sacks called hop-pockets, in which they were collected; a huge cast-iron furnace, rescued from some subsequently converted kiln.

On the walls were blown-up black and white photographs of kilns like Gerard Stock’s, in which the harvest had been dried on platforms over the furnace. The atmosphere in the museum was humid and laden with a mellow, musky aroma that could only be the hops themselves. And because hops were used to flavour and preserve beer it was easy to find the smell intoxicating. It seemed to soften Lol’s senses, made it easier to accept the curious turn events had taken.

He pulled the Boswell guitar comfortably into his solar plexus. The soundboxes of Boswells had curved backs long before Ovations became ubiquitous but, while Ovations were fibreglass, the back of the hand-crafted Boswell was like a mandolin’s. There were probably fewer than a hundred of these instruments, so it had to be worth more than anything else in the museum. But what was it doing here – and did it have anything to do with hops?

Lol played the opening chords of the River Frome song: B minor, F sharp. The tone was entirely distinctive: deep but sharp, a bit like the voice of the man with the long, white hair.

He stopped playing.
No
… No, really, it couldn’t be. Because he was dead, wasn’t he? He would surely have to be dead, after all this time.

‘Al,’ he said, jabbing a thumb at his own chest. ‘And this is Sally, my wife.’

They stood together in the doorway, looking strangely like a period couple from a sepia photograph. Sally’s hair was ashgrey, fine and shoulder-length. She was tall and slim and, at surely close to the same age as Al himself, still startlingly
beautiful. She wore a long, dark blue dress and half-glasses on a chain.

But her handshake was businesslike and her accent clipped and cultured. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘you thought he was dead. Everybody thinks he’s dead. Which is absolutely no handicap at all when we have one to sell. It gives it a certain patina of antiquity.’

‘You like her, then?’ Al Boswell asked him. ‘You like my baby?’

He meant the guitar.

Al
.

Alfonso Boswell: virtuoso blues and ragtime guitarist and perhaps the most revered, if eccentric, guitar-maker of the past half-century.

‘Can’t believe this,’ Lol mumbled.

‘He’s a little older than he looks.’ Sally Boswell flicked at her husband’s snowy hair. ‘But also he’s been making guitars and things since he was just in his teens, so that rather confuses people.’

‘I
wanted
to stop,’ Al Boswell said, ‘but after I finished the last one, I awoke in the night with what seemed very like the first twinges of arthritis. Well, I’m a superstitious man, from a long line of superstitious men, so I started work again the very next morning.’

Lol thought of the gypsy caravan outside. According to the legend, Alfonso Boswell would travel the country lanes, selecting and cutting his own wood and then set up his workshop in some forest clearing – each instrument growing organically in the open air, under the sun, under the stars. There would be no more than three or four guitars a year; it was never a full-time job, and he’d also be doing seasonal work on the farms: fruit-picking and… hop-picking?

Looked like Al Boswell had uncoupled his caravan and settled down.

‘And if you didn’t know already,’ Sally Boswell said drily, ‘the Rom are renowned for their outrageous lies. Proud of it, too, for reasons that still escape me after all these years.’

‘Non-confrontational is all we are,’ Al said. His face carried very few lines and his skin was lighter-toned than you’d imagine on a pure-bred gypsy. ‘Amazing, it is, how much conflict can be avoided by a well-timed fib. The truth can be hurtful and dangerous sometimes. Come on, lad, what do you
really
think of the instrument?’

Lol thought this was getting increasingly unreal. He thought, Why should Alfonso Boswell care what the hell I think?

‘We heard your playing,’ Sally said. ‘We were listening outside the door, I’m afraid.’

‘So you’ll know why I’m not worthy even to tune it.’ Lol was embarrassed. He was still holding the guitar but careful to keep his fingers well away from the strings.

‘How long you been playing?’ Al Boswell asked him.

‘Oh…’ Lol blinked nervously. ‘Since I was a kid with a plastic one. Sad, isn’t it?’

‘It’s not the technique, lad. It’s the
heart
, the relationship. You know that.’ Al tapped the body of the guitar. ‘This one – she’s very young, you see. She’s the first this year. And she’ll probably be the last, I reckon. What she needs is a good playing-in. I never let one go until she’s been played-in. What do you think, now? Is she worth it?’

‘Oh, Al!’ Sally frowned. ‘You can hardly expect a snap judgement. Why don’t you let Mr Robinson take the thing away for a couple of weeks?’

Al stared at her, then he threw up his arms. ‘Well, damn it, why didn’t I think of that? Aye, you take her away, lad. Break her in. Bring her back in – what shall we say? – September? Unless you want to buy her, of course. In which case we can discuss terms.’

Lol was shocked. He put the guitar carefully back on the stand, stepped away from it.

‘Now what’s that mean?’ Al said. ‘Is it some form of
gaujo
insult?’

Sally closed her eyes, shaking her head.

‘This is all moving too fast,’ Lol said. ‘I just walk in here, you
don’t know a thing about me… I can’t just walk out with six thousand quid’s worth of—’

‘Mother of God!’ Al cried. ‘Is that what they’re fetching now? I’ve never had more than two and a half!’

Sally smiled tiredly at Lol. ‘Mr Robinson, a short time ago, Mr Levin rang us to say you were on your way. Al has known him for many, many years. Mr Levin feels you could use a little inspiration.’ She looked at him over her half-glasses. ‘Don’t, as they say, knock it.’

Al Boswell laughed loudly, threw up his arms and walked out of the museum.

‘He loves his little games,’ Sally explained. ‘They’re mischievous sometimes, like elves. He’s just gone to find you a guitar case.’

She bent to adjust the guitar on its stand. When she straightened up she stood taller than Lol. Where Al Boswell was volatile, Sally seemed watchful and serene.

‘Al owes Prof Levin some favours from way back and wanted him to have a guitar, but Mr Levin insisted that a Boswell should never go to someone who couldn’t play. This is the guitar he was promised. Consider yourself an intermediary in this. Play it while you’re there, if it agrees with you, and then perhaps forget to take it with you when you leave. In a few years, I suppose, it’ll be worth ten or twelve thousand to a collector.’

Lol was still bemused. ‘He recorded with Prof?’

‘Mr Levin would always find Al session work when we needed money. He’s a kind man, and he’s very fond of you. He doesn’t want you to fall by the wayside.’

‘The wayside’s OK, sometimes,’ Lol said awkwardly.

She arched an eyebrow. ‘That’s the sort of thing Al says. But we are not Romanies, you and I. When
we
fall, we don’t just roll over and land on our feet again, grinning all over our faces.’

Lol was curious. ‘Did Prof know Al was going to be here when he bought the stables?’
I have sympathy for the Romanies
, Prof had said.

‘Pure coincidence, actually, although Al knew Simon St John, of course. We’re all parts of interlinked circles, aren’t we?’

Lol wondered how this very English woman had come to link up with Al Boswell, pure-bred Romany, apparently luring him off the road for good.

‘But, according to the Prof, you want to know about the Frome Valley,’ Sally Boswell said. ‘Therefore I want to tell you… because there are aspects of life here which
do
need to be recorded, and nothing keeps memories flowing onwards like songs. And the Frome flows through that guitar – the vein of yew in it came from prunings from a thousand-year-old tree in Simon’s churchyard and there’s also a little willow from a tree which bends over the river itself. The Romany is ever a discreet scavenger. He lives lightly on the earth.’

She led him into the next room. Hop-bines were intertwined along the beams (silent, but as soon as he saw them he could almost hear them crackling and rustling, and he felt a small shiver). More blown-up photographs were spotlit on the walls: men in flat caps, women in print dresses, berets and head-scarves. People laughing. The strange sadness of frozen merriment.

‘Until mechanization began to take over in the sixties, hop-picking was very much a multicultural phenomenon,’ Sally Boswell explained. ‘Well… four cultures, really: the indigenous locals, the Welsh Valleys, the Dudleys, as we called them, from the Black Country, and the gypsies.’

She told him how, at picking time, in September, the local population would expand eight- or tenfold – perhaps a good thing, leaving the locals far less insular than in other rural areas. The hop-masters would have huge barrack blocks for the pickers, and the pubs were always overflowing – the police constantly back and forth, breaking up the fights.

Lol studied a photo in which the smiles seemed more inhibited and there were scowls among the caravans and the cooking pots.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Sally, ‘when did the travellers
ever
like to be photographed? They were always a settlement apart, but usually
very honest and faithful to their particular employers. They liked being able to return to the same establishment year after year.’