The Piper's Son

Later, he shares cigarette time against the front wall of the pub with the saxophonist and two guitar players from Deluge.

“Impressive,” the saxophonist says.

“Same.”

“You cheat when you go for Paul Kelly, though.” This from one of the guitarists. They’re not holding their instruments, so he can’t tell who’s who again. “Specially in front of a bunch of old-timers.”

“Had no choice. You stole our cover,” he explains.

The three of them lean forward from the wall and look at him.

“‘The Blower’s Daughter’? With an accordion? Don’t think so,” one of the lookalikes says.

“We’re pretty experimental. Our accordion player’s gifted.”

The others lean back again and mutter something about “the accordion player.” Tom doesn’t like their tone.

“Problem?” he snaps.

One of the guitarists peers into the window and shakes his head. “We have to sit in a car for the next seven hours with Mr. I’m-in-love-with-the-accordion-player.”

“And in one year he has made no progress from ‘She could like me’ to ‘I think she likes me,’” the saxophonist complains.

“We’re over it!” This from the second lookalike. “Back home, the girls are going to be like, ‘Did you ask her out, Ben? Did you? Did you?’ And we’re going to spend the whole time in therapy with him.”

There’s a banging sound on the window and it’s Stani.

“Got to go. Back to kitchen duty.”

Then Tom pauses. “With my friend, Ned,” he says for emphasis. He nods, looking at the guitarist. Actually both of the guitarists, because he doesn’t know which one had the moment with Ned. “Ned the Cook. Tall guy. Hair over his face. Kind of a bit shy? Ned. Hands out T-bones.”

They don’t say anything. Look at him suspiciously, actually. Until one of the guitarist grins, wolfishly.

“Tell Ned, Alex said hi,” he says.

“You?” Tom asks.

The guitarist points to his brother. “Him.”

Him’s a bit embarrassed. Him’s doing a Ned and looking everywhere but at them.

Inside, Justine and Ben the Violinist are awkwardly playing that game of her-fiddling-with-her-hair and him-talking-a-mile-a-minute-with-a-lot-of-hand-gestures.

Tom puts an arm around both of them. “He wants to sleep with you. She wants to sleep with you. Just do it.”

Justine stares at Tom in horror and he recognizes the look that says she’s about to cry and then she walks away leaving him with an incredibly hostile violin player.

“They made me do it,” he says, pointing to his friends.

Tom follows her into the toilet where Francesca’s standing by, a filthy look on her face.

“Oh you are so dead, Tom.”

The Deluge wins the beer and drive away in the stolen car. It takes them forty-five minutes to get everyone out of the pub. Justine begins cleaning, while Francesca goes into damage control.

“He didn’t mean it, Justine. Tara’s always said that Tom’s the last bastion of arrested development.”

“I thought you’d like that he was into you,” Tom says, confused, as he mops the floor. He wished, with all his might, that there was a guidebook to life out there that he could follow.

Justine stops cleaning and looks at him. “I like him, Tom. A lot. I knew he probably liked me too. But that’s not the way it’s done.”

“Let me make it better.”

“No,” they all say at once, even Stani. “Bloody bastard,” he had muttered when he saw his niece in tears. Tom believes it was most probably directed to him and not the violin player.

“How long’s he gone for?”

“Until uni begins again. In March!”

“I reckon —”

“No more suggestions, Tom,” Francesca orders.

“I just want to —”

“No more,” she says, holding up a finger. “Or I’m telling Tara and Siobhan.”

“You’re going to tell them anyway,” he argues.

“Yes, but I was going to give you enough time to go to a place where they can’t track you down.”

“Stop!” Justine says.

“I didn’t say anything,” he argues. “Geez! Can everyone stop telling me to stop?”

“Stop,” Francesca says, holding up a hand to listen. “Shhh.”

Strands of music come from outside the door and they all rush to the window to peer out, even Stani tries to push them out of the way.

And while the violinist is playing his tune, the car thieves sit on the hood waiting.

“What is it?” Tom asks her.

“‘Calliope House,’” Justine answers.

“Are you going to go out there?” Ned asks. “He’s good.”

Justine shakes her head. “I’m so embarrassed. Everyone’s watching. I have to do this in my own time.”

“Justine, it’s been a year,” Francesca argues.

“I know,” she says honestly. “But not like this. Everyone’s watching and I just want to talk to him, alone. Or on the phone. Not with an audience.”

“Do you have his mobile number?” Tom asked. “I’ll go out and . . .”

“No!”

Justine backs away from the window.

“Great. Now the cops are here, and Stani, you’re going to get a fine for noise pollution.”

“Bloody bastards.”

When the violinist finishes, he walks to the window and slams his hand against it.

“He’s Post-it-noted the window,” Tom says, peering to see what it reads. “It says ‘Call me’ and his mobile number. I might just do that,” he muses. “He’s kind of cute.”

Justine and Francesca laugh. Ned does too. And there it is. The knowledge that it makes him happy to hear it. So simple. They laugh and it makes Tom happy.

He closes up and Stani hands him his pay. He started getting it a month ago. He can feel it’s too much and when he looks inside the envelope, he stares back at his boss.

“Back pay,” Stani explains.

“You don’t owe me back pay.”

“I do. What your friends did? Not your debt to pay.”

“Yeah, it was.”

“No.”

Tom flicks through the money.

“You earned it with the floorboards, anyway,” Stani says. “Don’t try to give it back or leave it behind, because you won’t have a job here if you do.”

Tom shakes his head but puts the envelope in his pocket.

He holds out a hand to Stani and they shake, then he turns and walks away.

“It’s been good to see your father again,” Stani says just as Tom reaches the door.

“He was a good in-between man, Dominic Mackee. A good union man. Kept the peace. Kept the dialogue going.”

He walks into the house later, into the kitchen, where his father’s sitting. Tom mutters a greeting and stands at the fridge door, staring at Georgie’s shit organic stuff as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world.

“I liked your choices tonight,” his father says.

Tom shrugs. “We didn’t know what else to play.”

But he’s lying and there is a part of him that hopes his father knows that too. The part that doesn’t have to explain away sentimentality. That doesn’t have to tell him the way he feels. He hopes, somehow, that ten minutes on a stage does that because he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to say it with the proper words. They’d all sound contrived and forced.

He feels the wad of money in his pocket. “Do you want me to come along?”

“Where?” his father asks.

He shrugs, facing him. “With you and Bill. To bring Tom Finch home.”

His father stares at him. “To Hanoi?”

Tom nods. An in-between man. Keeping the peace and dialogue going. That would be a good profession to go into. Union reps to keep families united. Maybe that was his calling.

“I don’t have the money for both of us, Tom.”

“Got my own. And Bill reckons the government will pay anyway.”

His father doesn’t speak. Just nods and then says, “I think Na

Tom goes to walk out again, but something stops him.

“Would you, though?” he asks his father.