The warm mellow notes from my bagpipes communed with the beams, danced around the old oak windows and mingled with the Cornish sunshine as it struggled through the tiny old glass windows of this ancient Cornwall inn.
The audience of Cornish country folk and tourists edged closer as the notes faded to quiet and then faded again until all that could be heard was the old clock ticking over the fireplace. Ticking as it had for centuries counting the years away in this ancient Cornwall hostelry.
Silence reigned and was enjoyed almost as much as the sounds that had occupied the tiny bar with it’s antlers of ancient quarry and paintings of long forgotten English Lords of the manor with their scarlet riding costumes and leaping hounds.
Then applause shattered the calm of the secret place I’d visited during the few short moments I had been given to contribute to this evenings West Country folk music session in this remote rural Cornish Inn.
My eyes opened and focused vaguely on the smiling happy faces, feeling almost confused,
I nodded and smiled my gratitude for their appreciation. Opened my palms upwards to return the warmth and acknowledge that the shared journey through musical sounds that celebrated the Cornish countryside was a joint success and not only my own.
But to rejoin this group of kind, friendly people was hard. Whilst I’d been playing, I’d inhabited the nearby Bodmin Moor, danced amongst the heather, soared upwards with the kestrel hawk and swept through the darkness with the owl. The hills and meadows had folded and unfolded around me and had embraced me as the audience now sought to do. Yet the warmth that came from the land I’d known since my childhood was more powerful and elemental than the shared feelings of my fellow humans and I was loath to leave the valleys and meadows behind to rejoin with the throng.
Then the moment was over. Another musician, a fiddle player, took over the task of reaching out to them to satisfy their yearnings for musical adventure. Her sea shanties told of North and South Cornwall harbours giving safe haven against crashing waves. Traditional tunes with nautical flavours of St Ives, Penzance, Boscastle, Padstow, Looe, Polperro, Fowey and Mevagissy were skillfully crafted and composed into her own glorious free concerto.
My eyes, which had been closed through my short performance, now adjusted to the dim light of the bar. Sipping absentmindedly on the last few drops of the local bitter beer, I sought to eke the liquid out so I could drive home safely when the bar and the evening drew to a close and I returned alone to my hilltop cottage.
Occasionally, in my life I have been fortunate to see a shaft of sunlight shine between two Cornish hills and pick out a meadow or clump of trees, bathing it in a warm magical glow, yet leaving the hills surrounding in the shade.
Thus it was that a shaft of light from the dying sun slid through the small window, slipped past the revelers and brightly illuminated, as if by design, a slender, raven haired woman.
Like the hills that surround our valley, her admirers clustered around as she leaned against the bar’s hard beam. Her traditional long white peasant dress softened the old timbers. Her questioning dancing eyes and strangely hawklike features challenged the costumed folk dancers pressing in around her, inviting these men to explain, if they could find the words, why they leaned in so close.
A tiny bead of perspiration rested on her brow below the garland of red pansies she’d worn when earlier she’d danced in the lane outside the pub as Queen of the May.
She tossed her head, bantered, urged the men on to laugh, smile and dream of capturing her narrow waist in their arms and of drawing her close so her low cut dress could rise and fall in time to their passion.
Neither the band she wore on her finger nor the tall gaunt folk dancer who eventually claimed her shoulders with a casual arm could discourage them … And they were not alone.
Suddenly, I too was falling under her spell.
Guiltily, but with gathering obsession, for the rest of the evening, I watched her. I enjoyed her like a painting, explored the rhythms of her body as a musician would explore the cadences of a tune or an artist the shades of light on a canvass.
Surreptitiously, every movement of her body as it pressed against the bar, every gesture of her hand as she reached out and pulled a beard or tickled her admirers bells, was drawn into me in deep draughts as if it were the finest wine.
Yet, however much I stared, her attentions were not for me. Occupying her own private theatre where she was centre stage, she bathed in the admiration of her audience and devoted herself to satisfying only them.
Finally, I could look on no more. Drunk and dizzy, as if in the grips of a pulsating and hypnotic tune, I had to retreat and escape.
The dark night outside with it’s twisting tiny lanes that curved between high earthen hedges engulfed me. Each step I took away from the Cornish inn, my bagpipes case and heart felt heavier.
Moths fluttered against the old inn light as I found my way down the short cobbled path to the country road. One by one these small insects spun away and fell to the ground consumed by the light that still drew them on. Parked cars waited like sentinels beneath the high hedgerows, shining brightly in the light of the half moon.
I know not how long I stood by the hedgerow staring away from the inn, drawing strength from the glittering firefly starlight that ended it’s billion miles journey in this small West Country lane and whose silent beauty forbade me to disturb the silence of the night by starting my car.
The light from the stars seemed to wrap around me so that, even in the darkness of the night, when I felt warmth on my back and arms suddenly encircle my waist, I was not alarmed, although they held me tightly.
“Guess who?” The voice was female with a soft West Country burr.
“I’ve no idea.”
“Who would you like it to be?”
“Let me turn around and see … ”
Soft arms relaxed around me and the blissful closeness that had warmed my back retreated.
In the small space, I shuffled around. Two huge heart melting eyes gazed up at me framed by flowing raven hair, laughing, challenging, inviting and promising.
“Are you pleased to see me?”
Hesitantly, I glanced down into the darkness of the quiet country lane, half expecting to see her husband waiting to pounce or her burly friends ready to mete sudden retribution. But the country lane was silent and empty as if nature was holding its breath and waiting for my next move.
“Yes,” I said, bewildered. “But why?”
“Don’t ask,” she said, and reached for me.
Breathlessly, I tossed aside all questions and with a thousand symphonies playing magical tunes between the dark hills surrounding this tiny country lane, I gave in and drew her to me.
Her arms encircled my waist, reaching up inside my old denim shirt. My lips found her upturned face in the darkness, kissed her eyes, her cheeks and then gloriously her smiling mouth.
Like stardust floating between the planets, we revolved in each others arms drinking deeper and deeper of each other, panting with our intoxication. I held her tighter, then she held me tighter still. Her whole body molded to mine and breathed an eager “yes”.
Minutes later, she drew away … but only the top part of her body, so she could speak. I tried to draw her lips to mine again but she avoided me.
“You weren’t supposed to notice me,” I breathed.
“When you were playing your wonderful bagpipes, I couldn’t take my eyes off you. Silly you had your eyes closed otherwise you would have seen me. By the time you had finished playing, I felt my life had changed.”
Her voice was as light as woodland wind chimes tinkling in the night.
“How could you know?”
“I knew because I’d watched you the other night when you played your other pipes, you know, the Uilleann pipes, the Northumbrian Pipes, even those unusual Cornish Bagpipes and then, wow, your saxophone. Believe me, I knew!”
“And you knew I was watching you all night?”
“I knew you were watching me. Why didn’t you come over?”
“You had plenty of admirers. I didn’t want to be part of a crowd.”
“They are good buddies but they’re not you.”
“You are married? I saw a band on your finger.”
I hated sounding anxious but, in such a short time, was already afraid of losing her.
Her voice became low and pleading.
“I can’t talk about that, yet, and I can’t stay here any longer. I have to go.”
I pulled her close again. Firmly, she disentangled herself from me, grasping my hands in hers, holding them tight.
“I have matters to deal with. They will only take a week to resolve then I can come back here to this wonderful Cornish inn and we can be together for always, if you like, We can walk together across Bodmin Moor and relax in each others arms until we get tired of each other … Although somehow I don’t think we will.”
I tried to pull her back to me, wanting my arms to tell her I didn’t want her to go. She pulled away once more.
“Promise you will be here waiting for me in exactly one weeks time.”
Her voice was pleading, her eyes sparkling with tears of tension.
“What if you don’t come?”
“I will be back … Now promise!” Her eyes were pleading, her voice desperate. She needed to go.
“Then we can always be together?”
“Yes!”
“What is your name?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“I want to know.”
“I’ll tell you when we meet again. Now promise you’ll be here in a weeks time.”
“I promise!”
Then she was gone, like a shadow slipping away into the night.
I drove home slowly no longer feeling alone as I wound my way through the country lanes.
Instead, there was something else inside me. It was a feeling of somehow still being connected to the raven haired beauty who had secretly stepped into my world and with whom I now shared a strange new, powerful and exciting guilty secret.
The End
(for now)
Copyright Rob Hopcott 1999 - 2007, all rights reserved. All characters are fictitious and no reference is intended to any person living or otherwise.
