Blue Eyed Stranger by Alex Beecroft

Author:Alex Beecroft [Beecroft, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Published: 2015-01-05T23:00:00+00:00

Martin had not been sure what “a session” was, but had assumed it would be something to do with morris dancing. As he pushed through throngs of people, young and old, filling the pub’s large back room, he could see there wasn’t floor space enough for that.

The room was packed so close with tables it was hardly possible to edge past them to the bar. He ordered two pints of Theakston’s Old Peculier and two packets of crisps as he watched the crowd squeeze themselves onto chairs and begin to assemble equipment out of the many rigid black cases they had brought with them.

Outside the windows of the room, weeping willows trailed against the brickwork, and he could see the waters of the Arborough Drain surge like a tide towards the sea. Although he only lived an hour’s drive away, he had the strong impression that stepping into the marshlands was stepping back in time by at least twenty or thirty years. It gave him an unexpected sympathy with the Griffins’ view that reenactment was theatre—dressing up, playing let’s pretend—whereas what they did was a continuance of the past. Theirs was a live tradition, his a dead one.

“You all right there?” Billy asked. Tonight he was smiling. Something loose and relaxed about his long limbs indicated he was having a good day. They stood together next to the bar and Martin noticed that the flow of people streamed straight past Billy. He was constantly having to move aside as folk went through him as though he weren’t there.

Martin edged a barstool out for him with his foot, so that Billy could get out of the way properly. They hopped up together and Billy opened his own black case, taking out a violin.

The close-packed tables in the centre of the room were now covered in beer glasses, wicker baskets containing complimentary chips, and more musical instruments than Martin had ever seen in his life. Things were being screwed onto other things, folded out, clipped together, or otherwise assembled.

There was a sense of anticipation and an odd discomfort, as though something momentous was about to happen and no one could be entirely sure it would turn out well. Billy smiled at Martin and screwed a wood-and-leather ledge onto the underside of his violin, swinging the instrument round to check that the rest sat comfortably on his shoulder. “You’ve not been to one of these before?”

“No.” Martin felt a little wild-eyed, like an anthropologist coming across an entirely new culture. “Is it okay to be here if you don’t play anything?”

“Oh yes. Everyone loves a listener.”

A clink of a coin on a beer glass called the room to order. Everyone quietened as a frumpy, middle-aged woman with some kind of squeeze-box strapped to her chest got up to welcome them and suggest a first tune. She sat down, and Martin braced himself for the grown-up equivalent of school music lessons. When Mrs. Palmer at that place where he didn’t work anymore left her

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