“Casadh an t’súgáin”

 

“I feel that I have to… to make up for twenty years of practice that I haven’t had.” Pádraig put his flute down on the dressing room table. The old rosewood tube had but one key and a worn silver mouthpiece. The Paolo Santori button accordion which lay next to it was brand-new and bright red.

“Well, you can’t,” stated Elen Evans, sitting herself beside him. “So don’t bang your head against walls.” She gazed at nothing-at-all in the corner of the dressing room. “Besides, Pat, you don’t need to.”

Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin had a baby face. He set his smallish mouth stubbornly. “I missed the bridge last night that Martha wrote out for me and everything. Nobody else has to get music written out for them. You do it all yourself.”

Elen had to giggle. “You got it a bit different, that’s all, ducks. Seriously, how could anyone but me arrange things for this one-of-a-kind dinosaur I play? Martha gave you that bridge because you asked her to, and though it was pretty nice of her, it was no better than the kind of thing you fuss around with, and probably lots harder to finger. After all, it’s not her instrument.

“And believe me, Pat—no one but ourselves dreamed there was anything amiss last night, and we only knew because you practiced the thing so much. Too much, I think.”

“George knew, and that was what counts.”

Hearing St. Ives’s name, Elen sat quite still for a moment. Then she propped an ankle over the opposite knee and played with the flounce of her skirt. “Diddle St. Ives, Pat. He’s a cancer to all concerned. In fact, let me be nice and catty for a moment: he’s not who Martha wanted for the tour. I myself might have thought twice about coming, had I known he’d be in the group.”

Pádraig looked up from his sulk. “You say he’s not who Martha wanted? There was someone else?”

Since Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin ended all his questions on a fall of the voice, it took Elen a fraction of a second to realize they were questions. “Folsom,” she replied. “Seán Folsom. We were set up until a month before the tour and bang! He’s got a cracked spine. Fell off a roof. St. Ives was what she could get.”

A smile touched Pádraig’s face, like a glimpse of sun on a dark day. He hit her on the upper arm, rather too hard. “She only asked him then? She asked me six months before. She asked me first.” But he was immediately sober again.

“You say you wouldn’t have come. But you came after all.”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t let Martha Macnamara down; not for any reason. I wouldn’t, for one thing. She’s too decent a lady. And then professionally, it’d be the kiss of death, wouldn’t it? Everyone knows she’s good, and she fulfills her promises. Both to the houses and to the people she works with. So I gave a great sigh and said ‘La!’ And here I am.”

“I’m glad,” said Pádraig, and then he looked away. “But I think it isn’t Martha herself who keeps everything right but her boyfriend.”

Elen grinned, and this encouragement was enough to induce Pádraig to add, “And they aren’t married, are they?”

Elen Evans sat up straight on the hard bench. “I’m sure I never asked. They don’t project that image, as Ted might say, but I never thought it my business…”

Pádraig shot her a glance almost gleeful in its mischief. “But isn’t it funny? They are not young kids, to be getting in trouble. Why are they at it?”

Elen opened her mouth but no sound came out for some seconds. Pádraig laughed aloud flat the expression on her face. At last she clapped both long-nailed hands on her knees and said, “My dear infant, how long have you been out?”

The baby face went bleak again and he turned half away. “Not long enough to play with Macnamara’s Band. Martha knew I blew it too.”

Evans hit her knees again, much harder. “You moron! More of that, Sullivan, and I’ll haul back and hit you one.”

Pádraig had pulled back one sleeve of his dazzling sweater and was scratching a red spot on his forearm. “Go ahead. I’m not worth anything anyway.”

With complete spontaneity Elen did so, slamming him in the center of the chest with her right fist. Pádraig fell backward, landing on his rear on the concrete floor. Elen hopped, cursed, and licked her palm, where her sharp harper’s nails had bit into her hand. Then she saw Pádraig flat out on the concrete staring up at her.

“Pat! What have I done? I’ve hurt you!” She got down on her knees and put her wounded hand behind his head.

“Not at all. I fell over from the surprise of it,” he said, disentangling his legs from the bench. He grinned and blushed simultaneously. “It was a rotten hit. No strength in it.”

“I’m not in practice. My aggressions are more subtle.” Elen got up and dusted off the lavender cotton of her skirt. With a moment’s alarm she made sure the fall had not done harm to any of the instruments that had been left in the room for the afternoon. She pushed back her little curls of hair and sighed. “Let’s take a walk.”

 

Landaman Hall was as much a theater as a concert hall, and as in many theaters, the back of the stage opened directly onto a loading dock, which was usually closed by roll-up steel doors. These were on the east side, and barely visible along the alley that ran between the Hall and the supermarket which adjoined.

As Martha and company passed in front of the building on their way back to the motel from the beach, Long happened to look in and see a square of darkness where the doors hung. “That’s odd,” he said and strolled down the alley, still carrying Marty.

Martha had been a few steps in front, and his sudden diversion took her aback. “What’s odd?” She followed him into the cool shadow of the alley. It was chilly, after the sun, and pleasant to the skin.

The right-hand door was open, and she could look up into the ceiling of the backstage. No lower, though, because she was not a tall woman and the dock was high. “Don’t they know we left our sound equipment in there? Or is Santa Cruz so faultlessly honest…?”

Long chuckled and expressed disbelief. Setting Marty on her feet, he grabbed the lip of the dock in his hands and heaved up.

There was the disheartening hiss mid pull of silk unraveling. He dropped again and stared at the rusty bolt which had caught his jacket front. “Oh, damn,” he said very primly, and sought about in his pocket.

“It can be mended,” said Martha, but Long was too involved to pay attention. He drew out a pigskin box about half the size of a cigarette case. It had some very pretty little nail trimmers in it, and a small pair of scissors, and also stainless-steel tweezers, which he took out and held at the very tips of his long fingers. With surgical care he reached into the tangle of hanging threads and puckered fabric and pulled.

Fascinated, both Marty and her grandmother watched one thread after another sucked back into its place in the weave. Long’s face was hard with concentration. At last he let out a sigh and snapped the pigskin case closed. “It will never be the same,” he said, and gave one more rueful glance at the dock.

“I’ll use the door after the approved manner.”

Martha thought that was just as well, considering not only the dirt but also the possibility that thieves had opened the door up there. If one had to walk in on thieves, one could at least avoid doing so head first, clawing at the concrete. Besides, there was a large stone or cement pediment of some kind, tilted at a nasty angle over the edge of the dock. Being theatrical in nature, it was probably papier-mâché, and it did have a cable wrapped around its middle, holding it in, but still …

 

It piqued Mr. Long that he had not been given the key to the Hall. Most managements along the tour had been more trusting. Or more realistic. It was mere luck, now, that he found a man vacuuming the lobby, and it was sheer persistence that made him continue his rapping on the glass door until the fellow heard him over the racket of his machine. He was a colorless man dressed in janitorial drab.

Infuriating. The fellow refused to admit the dock gate was open. No one had been in the theater all day except himself and the musicians, and the big steel gates were never opened except for deliveries. He did give Long the key from the front stage to backstage.

The carpet and seats of Landaman. Hall were dark blue plush, which exuded odors musty and a feeling of chill restraint. The woodwork, in the orchestra pit and up the sides of the stage, was gray. The walls were white, but of course in the dim light they appeared gray also, and Mr. Long felt a moment’s doubt that Macnamara’s Band would be able to infuse warmth into such a sepulchral chamber. Especially with the lack of warmth existing within the group itself.

But one would never know that, he reflected as he went through the doorway that led to the stage-left stairs. On stage, they gave the impression that they were one mind and one heart, and even the creaky little digs and puns with which they filled the time between numbers seemed imbued with family feeling.

Six weeks ago it had seemed that Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin’s rough antics and awkwardness around Elen Evans would prevent any lasting peace—not that they showed it on stage. Eight weeks ago St. Ives had spent his days gazing at Weird Teddy Poznan with clear and steady loathing. That had been before Pádraig’s Celtic cachet had worn off. And Elen, too, had exchanged some muted hisses with Teddy over sound levels. Who would have thought the great antagonism of the tour (and Martha said at least one was inevitable) would have been St. Ives versus Pádraig?

Long crossed the waxed, white-wood stage, stepping neatly around the swags of rope and the black cables of their own equipment. Perhaps, he thought, it was more accurately stated St. Ives versus Everybody. He yawned. Coughed.

The wall which divided the front stage from the back was jointed and ran in tracks in the floor and ceiling. It was padlocked shut, but set into one of its sections was a door of normal size and shape, with a Yale lock in it. A stiff double loop of black cable pecked from beneath the door, and Long wondered if it was part of the band’s equipage. If so, then perhaps there had been thieves. He glanced over his shoulder at the bulky boxes on stage: the tuners, the amps, the complex gear that made it possible for Elen’s triple harp to compete against the sound of the pipes. It appeared intact. He turned the key in the lock and touched the doorknob—

Which flew out of his hand. Long snapped face-front in time to see the entire wooden door flying away from him across the day-lit backstage, as though it had taken wing. It was a sight designed to engrave itself upon a man’s memory: the upright rectangle, with empty brass hinges on one side and brass knob at the other, outlined starkly against the larger rectangle of the open dock gate, with an open trunk full of pipes at the right edge of the rectangle, looking like a sea trap overflowing with crustaceans, and the white wall of the supermarket beyond. Surreal. Dada. Perfect Magritte.

Then Long himself was picked up by the foot and slammed to the floor. He landed on his side, and his head was only saved from impact by his flailing right arm. The same incomprehensible force which had sucked away the door rushed him across the dirty floor of the backstage, past the trunk and toward the open dock.

He heard a crash which did not sound like wood and he heard Marty cry out. He saw that the thing which had him was the black cable that had been stretched under the door. He curled into a ball, and twisted the snag from his foot, but as he came free he went over the concrete dock and into space.

The lip of the dock was below Long, and by instinct he grabbed on to it. So large were his spindle-fingered hands, and so strong, that his grip held, and Mr. Long came to earth feet first, slamming his stomach and the side of his face only slightly against the side of the dock.

There was Martha, standing two feet to the right of him, holding Marty against her. Martha’s mouth was wide open, showing her very nice teeth.

Marty wore a small replica of her grandmother’s expression. “Daddo!” she cried, and hopped in place. “How wonderful! Do it again.”

“Don’t you dare,” said Martha. “Whatever it was, Mayland, once was enough.” She glanced from him to the door, which had come apart, to the pulverized pediment that had first gone over the edge.

Long released his grip on the dock. His hands were scraped and the left one was a touch bloody. He felt a sore spot over his left cheekbone. His clothing was very dusty.

He peered left and right. “At least,” he said in a shaky voice, “at least this time I missed the bolt in the wall.” Mr. Long stepped back from the dock.

At his feet lay the door, which had come unlaminated. He took it by the knob (somewhat gingerly) and lifted it to examine the other side.

There was more of that black cable, snarled—no, tied—to the other side of the knob. A foot away from that knot was another which seemed to do nothing but tie off a fifteen-foot loop of the stuff. The far end of the cable lay in a pile of shards, gravel, and stone dust. “That was a little pillar,” offered Martha. “That toppled over the side here. The black cord was tied around it.” With both hands Martha prevented Marty from making her own investigations.

Long stood back and surveyed the whole mess. “No pins in the door,” he said, and shook his head in wonder. “By all the auspices! A trap.”

“It might have killed someone,” said Martha.

“It most certainly might have killed someone,” said Long, rubbing his face.

There was a howl of profanity from up on the loading dock, and they all glanced over to see the theater janitor, whose pale face was livid. “What the hell is going on here?” he roared, gesturing grandly over the wreckage.

No one had an answer for him.

 

“It would help if the janitor could remember exactly which of us had been going in and out this morning,” said Martha, sitting on the toilet seat lid with an expression of worry on her face.

Mr. Long was in the bathtub, soaking his battered body. He stared at the shower head with his eyes unfocused. Occasionally he made small sounds of discomfort. “Of us, Martha? Does the deed proclaim itself the work of one of Macnamara’s Band? That fellow doesn’t strike me as the best watchdog to be had. Any demented soul—”

“Setting a trap for a perfect stranger? Possible, I guess. But”—Martha clapped her hands on her knees—“there is no crazy like a crazy musician.”

Long let his gaze drift from Martha to the shower curtain and thence down to his toes, which were sticking out of the water: very dark. “Not for a perfect stranger. There was reason to expect someone in particular to be using that door.”

“Huh?”

Long closed his eyes and recalled the tableau of the sailing door once more. “In the far corner of that back room was St. Ives’s music trunk, filled with pipes. I noticed it on my trip through.”

“Ouch,” said Martha, in reference to Long’s short flight, and then “Ouch!” in a different tone, as the implications struck her. “And yet you still think it wasn’t one of the band?”

He stirred, making warm waves that sloshed over his scraped cheekbone. I think rather that we can’t know. Unless someone tells us. Or we call the police in.”

Martha’s face tightened. “Jesus! Do you think we should?”

Long, in contrast, closed his eyes. “I have been thinking about it. Had it not been myself who touched that door… Had it been George, he might have been killed. Had it been Marty…” Long scowled and nudged open the hot-water faucet with his left foot. “But I’m inclined to believe that the catching of the foot was not really part of the joke as planned. Perhaps the punch line was only to make a person—George, let’s say—stand like a fool while a part of his usual reality suddenly behaved in very unusual fashion. The door, however, had a large gap at the bottom—a carpet had been there, possibly—and the finished setup turned out to be about ten feet too long to work. Hence the knot and the loop under the door.”

Martha looked very dubious. “So no police?”

Long shook his head and sedately lowered his head under the waves.

 

Pádraig seemed to have a great deal of difficulty understanding. “To play a trick on Mayland? Naw, he’s the last person I’d rag. Now, Ellie here. She’d be great sport to tease.” He poked the harper in the ribs. She did not look pleased.

Martha tried again to explain that the joke was probably not intended for Long, but for George, but that it was a badly thought out and dangerous joke anyway. Halfway through her explanation, she realized she was assuming Pádraig was the joker, and that it wasn’t fair. Her explanation faded off.

Pádraig didn’t look offended, however. He leaned against the south door of the theater with his hands in his pockets and he nodded all the while she spoke.

“Terrible. Was the old man much hurt? A shame, if it was supposed to be George.”

“It would have been pretty shameful if it had been George!” said Martha, losing her temper. Pádraig took a startled step backward. “Don’t twist my ear, Auntie Martha! It wasn’t me that did it.”

He spoke simply and looked her in the eyes, but Martha still wasn’t certain she believed him. He was so much the obvious suspect. She glanced at Elen, who had been standing in the shade, pretending not to listen. “It wasn’t her, either,” added Pádraig. “I’ve hardly let the lass out of my sight all day. I’m trying to get her out of patience with me, you see, and I can’t seem to do it.”

Elen broke into a laugh more robust than her figure and face seemed to promise. “It’s true. He’s been a pest. So unless we did it together, this deadfall could not have been set up by Pat. Or me.”

“And did you do it together?” asked Martha helplessly.

They answered, in perfect unison, “We did not.”

 

“That’s a good example of what I’m always saying,” said Ted, when he in his turn was asked. “Snarls in thought, and in the emotions. Knots, holding back the flow of essence through our bodies and our minds. We are tripped and thrown down, sometimes maimed, sometimes destroyed, because of—”

Martha had had enough. “Goddammit, Teddy! This was not something Mayland could have avoided by taking an enema. He fell into a nasty trap: one probably set for George. Did you set it?”

Gently, sadly, Teddy shook his multicolored head. “Never, Martha. George sets enough traps for himself.”

 

The back door of the theater was steel, and opened reluctantly onto a paved parking lot. Elen and Pádraig, once Martha had gone, sagged out the door and onto the pavement not looking at one another.

“Nice of you to give me an alibi,” said Elen, her voice a bit unsteady. Pádraig squinted at her in the sunlight. “No thanks necessary,” he said, and followed this with a rude snort. He turned his head away uneasily, until his eye was caught by something beyond.

“Look at that!” Not touching Elen Evans, he led her to the wire fence that divided the theater yard from its neighbor.

“The empty field?”

“Ryegrass,” he corrected her. “Or mostly ryegrass. All wasted. They could have had three sheep in there, or even a cow.”

Elen eyed him with amusement. “Maybe nobody was clever enough to think of it till now.”

“Well, now it is too late. The grass is too tall and dry to be of any use, except as straw. Ah! Wait, Elen, I have an idea. We can make a rope of it—súgán, like the tune we play.”

“Twisting the rope? What kind of invitation is that, Pádraig? I’ve heard about…”

But in his enthusiasm he was already over the six-foot fence. “We will need first a big knife, so I can cut the hay close to the ground. Then a stick to twist it…”

 

Elen took the broom handle in both hands and gave it the first twist. “I didn’t know anyone still did this sort of thing.”

Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin was pounding his end of the rope with a broken brick, adding new grass, as Elen backed away, in the manner in which a spinner adds rough wool to the thread. His motions were rough with enthusiasm. “It’s still done. For halters for horses and cows and sheep. They don’t cost money, and it doesn’t matter how soon the beast chews on them. They also used this kind of rope to hold the thatch down, but now mostly they use bought rope.

“But the visitors—the tourists—like thatched houses. You can get a lot of business if you have a thatched house.”

“I’ll remember that.” The late-spring California sun beat down on Elen’s head. She held her end of the rope taut and twisted as instructed. The beating and wringing of the tall grass bled juices which smelled very green. Pádraig’s short hair was littered with dust and weeds and he looked happy in a bull-like way. She was now fifty feet away and had to step back again as he added more substance to the rope. “Is this the part where you slam the door on me? In some versions of the song, that is?”

He looked up, flushed with effort. “I would, of course. But we’re in the car park and don’t have a door, so you are safe.” He smiled at her an instant longer than the joke required.

Elen replied, “Who is safe, you little bugger?” But she whispered it, and Pádraig was now fifty-five feet away.

 

The walls of the theater dressing room were an unfortunate green, and they deadened Long’s complexion as he sat alone at the table, playing his electric keyboard. His positioning at the instrument was odd; the length of his fingers forced his hands to curl over like the talons of a bird as he worked the keys. This anatomical singularity was not entirely a disadvantage, however. He could hit almost any key on the little instrument without moving his wrists, and crossed thumb-under a sixth at a time. Long’s supple back was carried rigidly straight, for once. It had been impressed upon him that he should keep his back straight. His music lay propped against the button accordion.

It was late afternoon when George St. Ives came in and found him there. Despite the heat of the afternoon, St. Ives was wearing his disreputable woolen sweater and corduroys. Heavily he stepped the width of the room and stood behind Long. Breathing.

“Gawd. That again. I thought we were done with that now that Sully’s decided it’s too much for him.”

“This is hardly the same arrangement that Pádraig was learning. This is—as you might say—single-syllable music, suitable for beginners such as myself.” As Long spoke, he continued the piece: slow, even, hard on the downbeats. Just a shade mechanical. Part A twice. Part B twice. Again.

St. Ives had a large, daunting presence. It hovered over Long, who came down hard on the downbeats just the same.

“Simple isn’t its problem,” said St. Ives, deep in his throat. He stepped closer. The B part ended and began again.

“Damn music-box rhythm you got.”

Long heard him shuffling in his thick-soled work shoes over to the cabinet where his assortment of bagpipes were stored. For another minute there was silence from that corner, and then the squeak of a reed. Finally, a blatt of the regulators announced that St. Ives was about to play the elbow pipes.

Long stopped his own playing to listen, as politeness seemed to require it. Besides, he could no longer hear himself. George St. Ives played “Kid on the Mountain,” and he played it very well. There was a great deal of life in the tune as he played it, and a strong, free rhythm. It was much faster than Long’s version and highly ornamented. When it was done the older man complimented him very sincerely and went back to his slow, metronomic lesson.

St. Ives gave a roar of laughter. “Goddamn. Nothing shakes the rich man!”

Long’s smile showed a bit of tooth. “I think you’re quite right, St. Ives. One becomes used to being in command.”

St. Ives leaned against the table beside him and said, conversationally, “You’ll never be a musician, though.”

The piper was between the sheet music and the single, naked bulb in the middle of the room, but Mayland Long had days since memorized the tune, and only looked at the paper through habit. “Isn’t it fortunate that I never aspired to such estate?”

“Then why this, then? An hour of this dah-dee-dah, every day?”

“It is my lesson.” Their eyes met, and Long noticed that St. Ives’s were squinting and his forehead was drawn, as though with a headache.

“From her, eh? You… get into that?”

Long’s laugh was mild, almost uninterested. St. Ives shifted in place two or three times and finally got up and wandered out of the room.

With a sigh and a yawn Long ceased playing. He turned off the machine and blew his nose. He was very glad the man had gone, for he himself had been getting sick of playing “Kid on the Mountain,” but would rather have died than allow St. Ives to think his influence had stopped him.

He was considering whether to quit his hour with five minutes still to go or to start the next tune in the book, when Ted Poznan sailed in, naked save for a pair of running shorts. He collapsed on the sofa and folded his hands over his sun-darkened, concave stomach. He stared at the ceiling vaguely. “Hey, Dragon,” he said, not bothering to turn his head to Long. “This place has really bad feng shui.”

Long picked up the keyboard and put it back in its neat, flat carrying case. “You mean the door facing north?”

Ted’s eyes widened. “I hadn’t even thought of that. I was thinking of Sea Street—three lanes wide and straight as an arrow, pointing directly at this poor defenseless little building.”

Martha walked in, freshly showered and wearing a cotton dress of more manageable design than the wraparound skirt. She was in time to catch Ted’s last phrase. “What’s pointing at the building?”

“The street outside, Martha,” Long explained. “The auspices are very bad, you see, when a long street, or river for that matter, points straight at a dwelling or a tomb.”

“Tomb?” she echoed.

Ted, without moving on the couch, called out, “Uncontrolled life-force, crashing destructively against our individual realms. Forced, unnatural chi, bombarding us like cosmic rays.”

She threw a glance of mock dismay at Mayland Long, who replied with a grin. “The front gate facing north is also as bad an aspect as could possibly be.”

George St. Ives had come in behind her and was filling the doorway. He listened to this talk silently and then stepped through. Ted Poznan’s eyes flickered. Long looked politely up and Martha turned, but St. Ives said nothing, walking past them all to his instruments, his hand, on his forehead. Ted raised up on one arm and murmured a question to him. The piper only grimaced and shook his head.

Martha broke the tension. “Do remember, fellows, that we have to play here both tonight and tomorrow. Try to keep a good face on it, no matter how unnatural the chi.”

There was a sound of laughter from outside the room, in the direction of the vacant parking lot. Everyone looked up, even St. Ives. “It’s Elen and Pádraig,” Long explained. “They have been out there most of the afternoon.”

“Playing in the parking lot?” Martha asked.

Ted made an expansive gesture with both naked arms. “Why not? Parking lots are real too.”

“Making something, I believe.”

St. Ives lowered himself onto the padded arm of the couch, not far from Ted Poznan’s head. “Making what? Bacon?” He showed his teeth. “All we need is for her to dance her little dance for the boy and he’ll be worse than useless to us.”

Ted Poznan’s vague gaze sharpened. He looked up at St. Ives and it seemed there was a question on his mind. Martha’s round blue eyes went pale with anger. “As we’ve only five days more of the tour, George, I won’t worry about either Elen or Pádraig too much.”

It was Long who said what all were thinking. “She could hardly do worse to him than you, St. Ives.”

St. Ives had been rubbing his face. He put both hands down and his bloodshot eyes looked much older than did Long’s. “Later for that, rich man. After we play.”

But Long seemed not to have heard. He rose from the bench, brushed his light linen trousers, and went to the back door. He was just in time to open it for Elen, who looked surprised to see them all. She was smiling broadly.

So was Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin, but his smile froze and faded as he found himself the center of attention. Elen took something from his arms. It was dry and tawny and fell in loose loops onto the floor. “Behold! Sixty-odd feet of hand-twisted rope.”

There was a moment of pleasant confusion as Ted, Martha, and Mayland Long came forward to see it. Long, who seemed to know something of the craft, was both interested and approving. He suggested they try rice stalks next time, for a tighter twist. No one made jokes about courting, and St. Ives did nothing worse than to laugh.

 

Martha sat on the lid of the john again, for that was the only privacy she had, what with Marty everywhere, and she thought about what had happened to Mayland and the door. She felt it was her responsibility to do so, since no one else seemed to want to. Not even Mayland.

George, when delicately questioned, had admitted to leaving his pipes in the backstage room. He had been the first in, when unloading, and hadn’t known where the dressing room was. He had since moved them downstairs. The inner door had not been locked, when he had gone in that morning. The rolling door, of course, had been.

Martha had found herself unable to say to St. Ives, in so many words, that it looked like someone had set a trap for him. Maybe intended as a harmless joke. Maybe not. He was so easy to set off.

And she was not sure. She almost wished she had called the police when the matter had first occurred. Now everything had been handled by people, and the whole setup taken apart. The door was right now being replaced (with recriminations & from the management) and the black cable was coiled on the wall.

At least no one had suggested that they pay for the concrete pediment.

 

The band ate together that evening, as they had used to in the first two weeks of the tour, when there were still things to talk about.

Elen Evans, despite her name, face, and triple harp, was American: born and raised in Georgia and having lived for some years in California. One of her old friends had stopped by today and left an enormous bowl of mixed salad, and Mayland Long had placed beside it two quart-sized cardboard containers of curry.

Carefully Ted Poznan speared out tomatoes, sprouts, and asparagus from amid the meat and cheese. Ted was on a mucus-free diet. Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin followed him, regarding the array of foods distrustfully and taking only the meat. Elen, alternating moods of gaiety with five-minute broods, ate almost nothing.

George St. Ives did no better, though he had taken a large helping of curry. He sat in the corner by his pipes, as close to Ted as to anyone, and as always he drank down a quart of Miller beer with his meal.

Marty Frisch-Macnamara liked scallops and ate all those on Long’s plate as well as her own. Another of her favorites was asparagus dipped in mayonnaise. She wandered over to Pádraig where he sat on the floor (not too near to Elen Evans) and stood before him eye-to-eye, sucking the woody end of a stalk as though it were candy.

Pádraig looked up from his plate of ham and buttery bread. “Do you like that… stuff, Máirtín?”

It seemed such a silly question to the girl that she did not bother answering it, but stood, and sucked, and stared.

Pádraig made a face. “It’s nasty. Ugh! Put it away now before your face becomes green.” He poked her in her round belly with his finger. “Go away with it or I’ll hit you one.”

Marty sensed the emptiness of the threat and did not bother to move.

“Marty knows what good is.” Ted Poznan had alfalfa sprouts in his hair. His eyes were still sleepy as they beamed on the child. “Here, lady. Come take some of my wonderful sunchoke slices.”

Marty went, uncertain but hopeful.

“We’re teaching her to have no more manners than a dog,” Martha said to no one in particular. “Elizabeth won’t like that.”

She wiped her mouth with a paper towel. “Business for the day.” There was attentive silence. “Just like last night. Unless someone has a sudden inspiration?”

Pádraig Súilleabháin went rigid and he stared at Martha’s feet. When no one else spoke, he said, “Do you want us to make any changes, Martha?”

“No.” Her voice was flat and weary. “I think I’m too tired to make room for them.”

“Well, that’s it, then. Meeting adjourned,” said Elen, who looked around in challenge, as though she feared something more might be said.

 

The light was still good at a quarter to eight, when Martha walked out for air. Though Santa Cruz was a city and filled with pavement, the evening heaviness came from the black-green hills to the north, and smelled of evergreens. The line of people waiting at the door should have gratified her: would have gratified her only a few weeks ago. But she was tired, and California had spoiled her, with its new-age society and passion for old-age music.

Thank all assorted gods for Mayland, and his altogether unexpected rapport with Marty. Without him, whatever would she do with the child? Of course, had he not been along, she would never have consented to take her granddaughter for the week, no matter what day-care centers folded or new houses got built. Elizabeth herself had been known to complain that following tours had blighted her young life. Well, Marty seemed to be suffering no blights. She was as easy-tempered as her father, Fred. Fred: the Californian.

Standing at the street corner, where buckets of cut flowers were being taken in for the night, Martha watched the restless movement of the gathering audience.

Odd, that the people who liked her music should dress so differently than she did. Egyptian shirts and skirts of Russian cotton. Drawstring trousers and necklaces of bone. Human bone, perhaps: reminder of mortality? Someone else’s mortality, at least. These people looked very much alive. It was not that Martha disapproved of “tribal” dress, but she’ could not imagine herself carrying around so much anthropological meaning upon her person.

Most of them so concerned with authenticity too. Well, they’d be disappointed tonight, for Martha had four musicians with her and no historical anthropologists at all. Except maybe Ted, who was more well-meaning than accurate, and George, who was so picky about authenticity when it served his purposes to be so.

Too bad about the feng whatever. Sea Street did look like it was determined to pierce Landaman Hall through, and the slim trough of marguerites planted in front of the main door only emphasized the peril. Did they often find wrinkled cars in their lobby? That would be inauspicious site planning, all right.

George St. Ives came down the street from the other side with another brown bottle-bag swinging beside him. He was not alone. The young woman beside him had frizzy fair hair and a dazed sort of look.

George was a magnet, thought Martha, and she wondered why. Didn’t appeal much to her.

He walked heavily up to the door, where it took him a while to convince the man in charge to let him in. He rolled as he walked, as though he had just come off a ship.

Martha tried to remember anything about his past that would explain this. He was always called a “Cape Breton piper,” whatever that meant. It had nothing to do with his playing style, surely, for that was as flexible and many-rooted as Martha’s own. Maybe it referred to his dirty woolen sweaters. He had two very good solo albums and had been around forever.

Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin didn’t walk like that, nor did he look like a fisherman in any accepted way, except that his hands, she had noticed, were dotted with tiny scars from hooks.

Martha could see a movement of heads along the line, and heard a sudden drop in the chatter level. Chickens, with a hawk overhead, she thought. George must have had to say his name. Yes, that was it, for now the crowd swayed suddenly closer. He stood in front of the open door as though the man had nothing better to do with his evening but hold it open for him, and he spoke with the fair-haired woman. She went up on her toes and gestured a lot; she was excited.

Martha grinned with her mouth closed. She herself could parade up and down in front of the Hall and create no stir. Even if she were announced by megaphones (and that odd thing had happened to her once or twice) people would look past her, seeking the celebrity. Such was public life for a woman turning fifty-five. And just as well too. Put an adoring young boy in front of her right now and she’d be reduced to asking him his school, and what books he liked to read.

But wait George stepped aside and let the young woman in ahead of him, giving Martha a chance to see her face more closely. It was Elen’s friend Sandy, who had come all the way up from Santa Cruz to San Francisco last night to greet them, who had baby-sat for Marty this morning while they had settled in and unpacked, and who had made the overwhelming salad. For a moment Martha felt like an’ old fool, and what was worse, a jealous old fool. She found herself yawning.

It was time to get it all going. That would wake her up, surely. The night a performance couldn’t at least open her eyes, it was time to quit for good.