Meet the Jasmine Orchestra

She reeled as the hot atmosphere enfolded itself around her. The place was improbably bright, like she had entered a cartoon. It was a small room with half a dozen mis-matched tables and a counter at the side, behind which stood an old man with improbable comb-over hair. Two men, early forties, were seated beside Jack Duguid, playing simple tunes on guitar and flute. One leered at Ash, the other ignored her. Hubbub and noise. Ash sat at an empty table, her heart hammering, and studied the man she had crossed an ocean to find. He was gorgeous. He was about forty, she reckoned. His hair was badly cut. Steel-rimmed glasses threatened to overwhelm his face and his clothes were almost as dishevelled as Ash’s, green corduroys and a black and white jumper. But it was his eyes that attracted her. They were multi-coloured, like pebbles on a beach, grey and green and blue and slate and flecks of white and cream and silver. Those eyes, sliding around the room as though not wanting to draw attention, watching aslant, disconnected. Those eyes, shy and internal and focused. Ash made to approach him, then sat back again. She ran her fingers through her hair and retreated into herself, tried to become invisible while she summoned the courage to act.

Gradually, others arrived for the Jasmine Orchestra’s Saturday night band practice. Joss’n’Jules wandered in, Joss in his red cap and munching an apple. He spotted Ash and placed a second apple in front of her. She looked at it in surprise but he walked away as though no transaction had taken place and sat at the next table.

“Thank you,” she said. He waved cheerily. Carmela Cant arrived with her bodhran under her arm.

“Hoi,” she said to Ash. “That’s my seat.”

“Sorry,” said Ash.

“Shift.”

“There’s no need to speak to her like that,” said Joss. “She couldn’t know.”

“And you can mind your own fucking business.”

“Hey,” said Ash. “No skin off my nose.” She got up and kicked her rucksack across the floor and moved to the table nearest the door. Carmela stared at her until she realised the stranger would not join the confrontation, then went to use the phone at the rear. Emily Pound arrived and greeted Bob Kelty behind the counter.

“Hi grandpa,” she said. She took out her fiddle and bent over it with a quiet intensity borne of worry. She spotted Ash and smiled at her. “Hello,” she said. “Are you thinking of joining?”

“Maybe,” said Ash.

“Hey Gayna,” shouted Carmela when she returned from the phone. “I got offered a job yesterday. Council Offices, Barnkittock.”

“Well done,” said Emily.

“Nah, turned it down. It’s too busy. If the pay’s going to be shite I don’t want much to do.” Emily remained quiet. It was the third job Carmela had turned down in the past month. Her benefit had already been stopped. Aged twenty-one, she had never done a day’s work.

Joss’n’Jules played two-man poker. Both were cheating. Behind the counter, Bob Kelty draped his dishcloth over the oven. He hung up his apron, lit his pipe and slid onto a chair next to the poker match. Joss, who was fearing defeat, changed the subject.

“Carmela, was that you dumping your boyfriend?”

“Not yet.”

“You should be nicer to that boy. He doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going.”

“Well, he’s going.”

“A boyfriend’s for life, not just for Christmas.”

“A boyfriend’s for fucking.”

“I love Christmas,” said Mally Vogel. “The presents, the lights.”

“You don’t get any presents,” said Kester Dunning.

“No,” Mally agreed. “I’ve had a pretty poor time of it this past... well, twenty years.” He pointed to a spider in the corner of the window. “D’you know, if you were to fit a blindfold on that spider, it would still be able to construct a perfect web.”

“How d’you fit a blindfold on a spider?” said Kester.

“It’s metaphorical. The point is, a spider can construct a web in half an hour, using only its sense of touch, and then dismantle and rebuild it every day. Isn’t that amazing?”

“Not as amazing as a spider blindfold,” said Kester. “Christ, how small would that be?”

Carmela Cant picked up Bob’s cloth and peered at the window. She gathered the spider in the cloth and squeezed it and dropped it into the bin by the door.

“It may have just lost its sense of touch,” said Kester.

Ash sat apart as conversation rebounded around the room. It was unintelligible to her. Jack Duguid, she noticed, was with the group, but not of it. His head was lowered to the fretboard of his guitar as he adjusted the low E and used it to tune each string in turn, striking the notes so quietly not a soul in the room save him could hear. Occasionally, he spoke in a voice so low Ash couldn’t make it out, even though she was only feet away. The guy was self-contained, his expression so blank he looked like he’d been switched off at the mains.

As she studied the room, Ash suddenly became aware that everyone was holding a musical instrument and it dawned on her she’d stumbled into some sort of practice session. She flushed with embarrassment and approached the guy at the counter. Bob Kelty was pouring coffees from the urn.

“Sir, am I alright bein’ here?” she asked. “Is it a private affair?”

“No, you’re fine, hen.” He smiled and handed her a mug of coffee. “We’re always open.”

Kester Dunning reached across her, resting his hand on her back as he took a coffee from the counter, taking advantage of his proximity to study the newcomer’s face. “It’s just that most people have enough sense not to come in,” he said. “Especially when we’re playing.”

“Oh, I’m sure you ain’t so bad.”

“Lavish some more of that faint praise on us, why don’t you?” He laughed and turned away.

“Ignore him,” said Bob. “You’re very welcome. Any time.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“D’you play an instrument?”

“No.”

“Sing?”

“Only in the shower.”

“You can maybe give us a wee song later.”

“Maybe,” she said. Definitely not, she meant. She took her coffee and retreated to her seat. Kester Dunning picked up his guitar and rang the opening notes of The Kesh Jig and one by one the Jasmine Orchestra joined in. Bob Kelty watched Ash. Ash watched Jack. She sipped her coffee, rationing it to make it last. Warmth flowed through her. The Jasmine Orchestra finished The Kesh and pummelled their way through Give Us A Drink Of Water as though teaching it a lesson. Each band member played in a different time signature and the effect was oddly melodious. Kester broke his G string but played on. Jack Duguid, on second guitar, strummed in silence behind Kester’s lead, his fingers hovering an inch or so above the fretboard. Mally Vogel seethed into a fractious flute. Carmela Cant battered her bodhran and Emily Pound, ungainly, self-conscious, bowed politely on her fiddle. A modulated groan rang out as Joss Stein released his uillean pipes from captivity and belted them into place and they wheezed into life. The volume of noise increased, and it was not wholly ugly.

To Ash, it seemed as though she had been engulfed by music. Music on music, note for note, rising in the air and humming and disappearing like the joins of time made tangible. She watched Jack Duguid pretending to play guitar, his face creased with concentration, following Kester Dunning’s chord progressions. Emily’s eyes flitted from her fingers to Carmela Cant and back again. Kester Dunning ogled Carmela. Mally Vogel slouched in his seat and played as though no-one else was there. The music shrilled. It whirred. Fizzed. Cloudland lived.

Bob Kelty picked up a fiddle and stood wide-gaited in the middle of the room and, as he played a solo that was crisp and cheerful, Ash knew immediately he was a superior class of musician. Then, as he struck into The New Way To Edinburgh, the Jasmine Orchestra fell in behind him and instantly the most beautiful music filled the room and it filled Ash’s head and lifted her heart and she felt a peace she hadn’t known for months, since the funeral, since before, the build-up, all that, and it was only now as she relaxed she realised how tense she had been all this time. She thought of her momma, twelve months dying, three months dead and Ash holding her hand at the last, a hand so frail she feared she could break it if she squeezed too tight and those final smiles, mother to daughter, daughter to mother, their mutual hopes and dreams expiring in time with the failing breath of the living wraith dying on the bed. Ash had thought never to be happy again but life advances, and here was life, and music, and joy. She drummed her foot in time with the music, lost herself, unwound. She smiled. Bob Kelty smiled back.