and threw gorgeous pots and bowls. I liked working more organically and constructed great big urns that were really glorified coil pots which I’d burnish and burnish and then scarify the sheened surface with these dense little marks like hieroglyphics. I spent hours on them. Because it was summer, Mr Whatever His Name Was let me sit outside with my pots and my tools and that’s when I saw Arlo again. He walked across the playground over to me, like a strolling troubadour, strumming and humming until we shared a great big grin. Then he sat a little way off, playing.
Every Wednesday afternoon after that, during that summer term, he’d somehow appear when I appeared, mostly with his guitar. He never sang ‘Among the Flowers’ for me again. Not from beginning to end. Not with the words. Every now and then he’d hum it and strum it but very delicately, slipping a few bars in between other melodies. We kept each other’s company, those Wednesday afternoons, though we didn’t say much at all. I asked him what A levels he was doing. I can’t remember now. He asked me how many O levels I was taking. Christ, how many did I take? Eight. And passed seven. He told me about some of the mad teachers at his school. I told him all about Mrs McNeil. And then I didn’t really see him until the following spring because I chose print-making during the winter term. And though he’d’ve been swotting for A levels, he did find time most Wednesdays to find me. And we just picked up from where we’d left off.
‘How’s your little old lady?’ he’d ask, when we were sitting not talking and not really working. I’d tell him some of the stories she told me, some of the funny little errands I ran for her. Once he covered his eyes and winced and I asked what was wrong and he said my halo was so shiny and bright it hurt his eyes and I chucked a little wet clod of terracotta clay at him and he laughed. Mostly though, we shared happy little interludes of chat in an otherwise quietly industrious atmosphere. I was engrossed in my terracotta urns and he was deep in thoughts of chords and riffs. Out in the playground, in the warmth of his final summer term at school. We’d sit together, though we were actually a couple of yards apart. We were certainly sitting together none the less, separate yet united in our little hive of creativity and tenderness every Wednesday afternoon.
And now I make jewellery. I wonder what Arlo does because he used to make music. And, for the first time in seventeen years, I’ve just heard the song he wrote for me. On national radio.
‘Sir,’ Nathan whined, ‘sir.’ He’d been saying ‘sir’ for ages but Sir didn’t seem to hear. Sir seemed a bit lost in thought, somewhat distracted by the bright spring morning ablaze outside. ‘Sir! Mr Savidge! Sir Savidge.’
Nathan’s teacher finally turned his attention to him, raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m liking the “Sir Savidge” moniker, Nathan. In fact, class – you can all call me Sir Savidge from now on. OK?’
‘Yes, sir. Savidge. Sir.’
‘Nathan – what can I do for you?’
‘Would you say that rhythm is the soul of music, sir?’
Arlo regarded his pupil, unable to keep an affectionate smile at bay. He remembered being just like Nathan. A keen fourteen-year-old, happy to study but also keen to add personal philosophy to the dry curriculum. God, what a gorgeous day it was. Warm too.
‘I mean, Sir Savidge, sir,’ Nathan said. ‘Rhythm is the soul of music – wouldn’t you say?’ he repeated, dragging his teacher’s gaze away from the view outside. ‘But sir, if you put that kind of thing in your GCSE do you think the judges give you better marks?’
Judges. Sirs. Arlo changed his sigh into another smile and focused on the boy. ‘I think the examiners would mark you higher if you said something along the lines of rhythm being the lifeblood of music, Nathan. Think of blood, all of you – how it pulses, how it pumps. If blood doesn’t pump – if it ceases to pulse around our bodies – what are we?’
The class was silent.
‘Come on, guys, what are we?’
The class loved it when their teacher called them ‘guys’. ‘Fish?’ offered Artemas.
‘Fish?’ said his teacher.
‘Fish are cold-blooded,’ Artemas muttered while the class began to snigger. ‘Isn’t that the same thing?’
‘No no no,’ Arlo said, thinking he ought to check it anyway with Mr Rose the biology teacher. ‘I’m talking physically and metaphysically. Come on, guys, if our blood isn’t being pumped then it’s not pulsing around our body – then what are we?’
The boys gawped at him.
‘We are dead!’ he said.
There was a murmur, a gasp or two. Schoolboys love the word ‘dead’.
‘So, if rhythm is the lifeblood of music, it must mean it is at the heart of it. Music needs rhythm to breathe its life into the listener – don’t you think?’ There was silence as twenty-five pens scribbled away at exercise books, frantic to copy Sir’s quote verbatim. Good old Artemas with his fish, Arlo thought. But poor old Nathan – he’d been on the right track but with the wrong metaphor, just a little unscientific when it came to the particular anatomy of music. Arlo considered how, though the whole class was committing his improvement on Nathan’s quote to memory, the GSCE examiners would no doubt put a red line through the lot. ‘If it’s not on the curriculum, it doesn’t exist,’ Arlo said under his breath though not so quietly that the eternally eager Finn right in front of him didn’t start to write that down too.
‘Finn – you can’t quote me on that.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
Arlo glanced at the clock. Fifteen minutes till his charges swapped rhythm for the thwack of leather against willow. ‘Mussorgsky and Marley,’ he announced, browsing the CD shelves much to the boys’ anticipation. ‘They knew a thing or two about rhythm,’ Arlo said, loading discs into the machine. He tapped the remote control against his lips. ‘The Russian, Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, died in 1881 and the Jamaican, Robert Nesta Marley, died in 1981. Listen to this.’ He chose “Pictures at an Exhibition” by the former and “Get Up Stand Up” by the latter. The boys were entranced; toes tapped, rulers and pens bounced gently against the edges of the desks. They would gladly have relinquished cricket to listen to more but the bell went and Mr Savidge ejected the discs and released the class.
‘Well done, guys,’ he said. ‘See you whenever.’ And he took up his gazing out of the window.
From the empty classroom, Arlo looked out across the rolling manicured lawn to the plotted and pieced playing fields beyond. He considered that schoolboys in cricket whites at that distance were basically interchangeable with the sheep scattering the North York Moors beyond the school’s grounds. They shared that peculiar characteristic of inactivity interrupted by sudden bouts of gleeful gambolling. But neither sheep nor cricket did much for Arlo. He was more of a dogs and tennis chap. Just then, he quite fancied a knock-around on court. He checked his timetable. He had a couple of hours until he taught the first years but then only the odd half-hour during the rest of the day and no opportunity that evening because he was on prep duty. He gathered his papers and books into the worn leather satchel the boys often teased him about and wandered over towards the main building.
He came across Paul Glasper in the staff room, enjoying a cup of coffee with the illicit luxury of the Sun newspaper. ‘It’s
