Music is very often associated with people and/or places from the past, whether we like it or not. The soundtrack of our lives - those songs or other pieces of music that will forever be associated with certain events and people that influenced us. Writers can use this phenomenon, too. But writers have a major problem and that problem is copyright or, rather, infringement of copyright. Use more than the title and you might be in for trouble. And don't fool yourself that Bob Dylan or Elvis would not come after you for quoting from a song. They won't because they probably don't own the copyright - Sony does, or some other large corporate.
In The Poor Singer, I use music to help conjure up the year 1968. To avoid copyright issues, I have rewritten the lines of a well-known song but it is, still, recognisable as the same old song. After 30 years, Julian is revisiting Hampton Court Palace. This is the place where he first experienced first love and its memory is there to greet him.
And so, after thirty years, he was again standing opposite the Tudor façade of the West Front. Nothing seemed to have changed. The person who looked out through his eyes was the same person who had looked at everything in the summer of ’68. The shell was lined, older and perhaps thicker, but Julian had a strong sense that the palace grounds belonged to him, that the tourists around him were trespassers on his territory. And there was a stronger sense, a deeper feeling, that in these ancient building he might find a part of himself that the years had taken from him.
Detaching himself from the groups of tourists, he took a left-hand path and approached the rose garden. From nearby tennis courts came the familiar and intermittent pock, pock, of racket against ball. The sound echoed in the stillness of the garden. Disembodied shouts encouraged and congratulated, and from a not-too-distant radio, the sound of music drifted across the lawns. Julian was not expecting a fanfare of trumpets to greet him, but as he strolled through the garden, he thought, just for a moment, that he could hear snatches of an old song blowing with the breeze.
“Those were the days, young friend,” came the words.
“Good shot,” cried an invisible tennis player.
“We thought they’d never end.”
Pock, pock sounded the ball.
“We’d sing and dance the whole night through.”
He was brought firmly back to the present by a clip-clipping of shears from near at hand. A solitary gardener was tending to the borders and she looked sullenly at him.
“Nice morning.”
“Indeed it is,” Julian said, breathing in the smell of cut grass.
On impulse he decided to play a harmless game, to ask her a question to which he thought he knew the answer.
“I wonder if you can help me. Is there a café hereabouts, where one can get a cup of tea perhaps?”
The gardener let the shears fall against her waist. Her lips moved slightly, but she stared at him for a long time before saying:
“A cup of tea? Bit early for tea. The restaurant serves teas. But there’s no café here.”
This was not the answer he had been expecting. He and the gardener looked at each other with increasing suspicion, two people divided by conflicting experiences.
“There’s always been a café here,” Julian said indignantly. “I used to work in it.”
The gardener examined him as if he were a fool. She mumbled to herself and then she woke up as though from a dream, shook herself and looked round with assurance.
“No café here. Never been a café here.”
He stared dumbly at her while she lined up the shears and worked again at the borders. He reckoned she was about twenty-five. Maybe, in her life, there never had been a café there, Julian thought, but one of them had to be wrong. Muttering his words of thanks, he left the rose garden.
Julian took a diagonal course across the first of the Tiltyard lawns. He watched his shadow tapering before him as it moved over the crisscross-patterned grass. The centre of the lawn was dominated by an ancient cedar, but long before his shadow had broken over its trunk, he found himself stealing sidelong glances through the high glass of the restaurant window. He knew, by then, that it was ridiculous, but he discovered he was still expecting to see people he knew. In particular, he was stunned to realise that he was half-expecting to see Kathy. The restaurant was still filled with her. Even after all those years, it was filled with the magic of her absence.
And yet, through all the pain, the guilt and the shame, there was the particular smell that he had always associated with the Tiltyard, the long hot summer days of ’68, and the drunken nights at the King’s Arms. The smell was a combination of tea, freshly mown grass and oldness, and it conjured up something people can only feel once in life. It was the magical feeling of first love, and it seemed to come out of the air itself like Aladdin from his lamp. First love, he thought, would never rust.
About the song attributed to Mary Hopkin, you might want to check out Alexander Vertinsky - Dorogoi dlinnoyu - Дорогой длинною - By the long road on Youtube
Posted by: Christopher Goddard | 12/18/2017 at 09:41 AM
Yes, the original is a traditional Russian folk song, I believe. So is "The Carnival is Over" made famous in the West by the Seekers. I think the original deals with Stenks Rasin - a Russian folk hero. Sung by the Red Army choir, it is magnificent!
Posted by: robert John Goddard | 12/18/2017 at 10:32 AM