Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

The low-beamed room, one of three linking up to accommodate the museum, was dim and crowded with annotated exhibits that looked at first like junk. These included the hopcribs – hammocks in frames, in which the cones were separated from the bines; the giant sausage sacks called hop-pockets, in which they were collected; a huge cast-iron furnace, rescued from some subsequently converted kiln.

On the walls were blown-up black and white photographs of kilns like Gerard Stock’s, in which the harvest had been dried on platforms over the furnace. The atmosphere in the museum was humid and laden with a mellow, musky aroma that could only be the hops themselves. And because hops were used to flavour and preserve beer it was easy to find the smell intoxicating. It seemed to soften Lol’s senses, made it easier to accept the curious turn events had taken.

He pulled the Boswell guitar comfortably into his solar plexus. The soundboxes of Boswells had curved backs long before Ovations became ubiquitous but, while Ovations were fibreglass, the back of the hand-crafted Boswell was like a mandolin’s. There were probably fewer than a hundred of these instruments, so it had to be worth more than anything else in the museum. But what was it doing here – and did it have anything to do with hops?

Lol played the opening chords of the River Frome song: B minor, F sharp. The tone was entirely distinctive: deep but sharp, a bit like the voice of the man with the long, white hair.

He stopped playing. No … No, really, it couldn’t be. Because he was dead, wasn’t he? He would surely have to be dead, after all this time.

‘Al,’ he said, jabbing a thumb at his own chest. ‘And this is Sally, my wife.’

They stood together in the doorway, looking strangely like a period couple from a sepia photograph. Sally’s hair was ashgrey, fine and shoulder-length. She was tall and slim and, at surely close to the same age as Al himself, still startlingly beautiful. She wore a long, dark blue dress and half-glasses on a chain.

But her handshake was businesslike and her accent clipped and cultured. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘you thought he was dead. Everybody thinks he’s dead. Which is absolutely no handicap at all when we have one to sell. It gives it a certain patina of antiquity.’

‘You like her, then?’ Al Boswell asked him. ‘You like my baby?’

He meant the guitar.

Al .

Alfonso Boswell: virtuoso blues and ragtime guitarist and perhaps the most revered, if eccentric, guitar-maker of the past half-century.

‘Can’t believe this,’ Lol mumbled.

‘He’s a little older than he looks.’ Sally Boswell flicked at her husband’s snowy hair. ‘But also he’s been making guitars and things since he was just in his teens, so that rather confuses people.’

‘I wanted to stop,’ Al Boswell said, ‘but after I finished the last one, I awoke in the night with what seemed very like the first twinges of arthritis. Well, I’m a superstitious man, from a long line of superstitious men, so I started work again the very next morning.’

Lol thought of the gypsy caravan outside. According to the legend, Alfonso Boswell would travel the country lanes, selecting and cutting his own wood and then set up his workshop in some forest clearing – each instrument growing organically in the open air, under the sun, under the stars. There would be no more than three or four guitars a year; it was never a full-time job, and he’d also be doing seasonal work on the farms: fruit-picking and… hop-picking?

Looked like Al Boswell had uncoupled his caravan and settled down.

‘And if you didn’t know already,’ Sally Boswell said drily, ‘the Rom are renowned for their outrageous lies. Proud of it, too, for reasons that still escape me after all these years.’

‘Non-confrontational is all we are,’ Al said. His face carried very few lines and his skin was lighter-toned than you’d imagine on a pure-bred gypsy. ‘Amazing, it is, how much conflict can be avoided by a well-timed fib. The truth can be hurtful and dangerous sometimes. Come on, lad, what do you really think of the instrument?’

Lol thought this was getting increasingly unreal. He thought, Why should Alfonso Boswell care what the hell I think?

‘We heard your playing,’ Sally said. ‘We were listening outside the door, I’m afraid.’

‘So you’ll know why I’m not worthy even to tune it.’ Lol was embarrassed. He was still holding the guitar but careful to keep his fingers well away from the strings.

‘How long you been playing?’ Al Boswell asked him.

‘Oh…’ Lol blinked nervously. ‘Since I was a kid with a plastic one. Sad, isn’t it?’

‘It’s not the technique, lad. It’s the heart , the relationship. You know that.’ Al tapped the body of the guitar. ‘This one – she’s very young, you see. She’s the first this year. And she’ll probably be the last, I reckon. What she needs is a good playing-in. I never let one go until she’s been played-in. What do you think, now? Is she worth it?’

‘Oh, Al!’ Sally frowned. ‘You can hardly expect a snap judgement. Why don’t you let Mr Robinson take the thing away for a couple of weeks?’

Al stared at her, then he threw up his arms. ‘Well, damn it, why didn’t I think of that? Aye, you take her away, lad. Break her in. Bring her back in – what shall we say? – September? Unless you want to buy her, of course. In which case we can discuss terms.’

Lol was shocked. He put the guitar carefully back on the stand, stepped away from it.

‘Now what’s that mean?’ Al said. ‘Is it some form of gaujo insult?’

Sally closed her eyes, shaking her head.

‘This is all moving too fast,’ Lol said. ‘I just walk in here, you don’t know a thing about me… I can’t just walk out with six thousand quid’s worth of—’

‘Mother of God!’ Al cried. ‘Is that what they’re fetching now? I’ve never had more than two and a half!’

Sally smiled tiredly at Lol. ‘Mr Robinson, a short time ago, Mr Levin rang us to say you were on your way. Al has known him for many, many years. Mr Levin feels you could use a little inspiration.’ She looked at him over her half-glasses. ‘Don’t, as they say, knock it.’

Al Boswell laughed loudly, threw up his arms and walked out of the museum.

‘He loves his little games,’ Sally explained. ‘They’re mischievous sometimes, like elves. He’s just gone to find you a guitar case.’

She bent to adjust the guitar on its stand. When she straightened up she stood taller than Lol. Where Al Boswell was volatile, Sally seemed watchful and serene.

‘Al owes Prof Levin some favours from way back and wanted him to have a guitar, but Mr Levin insisted that a Boswell should never go to someone who couldn’t play. This is the guitar he was promised. Consider yourself an intermediary in this. Play it while you’re there, if it agrees with you, and then perhaps forget to take it with you when you leave. In a few years, I suppose, it’ll be worth ten or twelve thousand to a collector.’

Lol was still bemused. ‘He recorded with Prof?’

‘Mr Levin would always find Al session work when we needed money. He’s a kind man, and he’s very fond of you. He doesn’t want you to fall by the wayside.’

‘The wayside’s OK, sometimes,’ Lol said awkwardly.

She arched an eyebrow. ‘That’s the sort of thing Al says. But we are not Romanies, you and I. When we fall, we don’t just roll over and land on our feet again, grinning all over our faces.’

Lol was curious. ‘Did Prof know Al was going to be here when he bought the stables?’ I have sympathy for the Romanies , Prof had said.