Page 55 of Summer at Harbour View House
‘Nice one,’ Natasha said to Hannah, as Eddie, muttering and grumbling under his breath, went into his kitchen. ‘I don’t know you how you do it.’
‘Oh, it’s easy,’ Hannah said with a grin. ‘Just think of him like a big lump of Play Dough that needs to be moulded the way you want it.’
Natasha grimaced. ‘I’d rather not,’ she said, as Eddie, pulling on an old duffel coat, returned.
‘Let’s get this over with,’ he said. ‘I have soap operas to watch and real money to count.’
As they headed out of the house, Natasha shared a little smile with Hannah as they followed Eddie down the path.
It had taken a little asking around at the beach over the afternoon to find enough people who had heard of Cowslip to do what Natasha wanted. As they headed into the pub, Eddie grumbling that the easy door into the pub was closed, meaning they had to negotiate the awkward round route through the pub’s back rooms, Natasha only hoped that it had the desired effect. As a teacher, shoehorning importance into everything was an art form, but this had been a stretch even for her. As Hannah held the door into the main bar open for Eddie, Natasha crossed her fingers behind her back.
‘A bit dark in here, isn’t it?’ Eddie complained. ‘How are you supposed to play board games in the dark? Or is this the wrong pub?’
‘Surprise!!!’ came a roar from twenty-five voices. The lights came on, music started to play, and the gunfire rattle of party poppers filled the air with streamers and the smell of red phosphorus.
‘What the hell is this?’ Eddie said, as Natasha came in behind him and shut the door, then leaned against it to stop him fleeing. Hannah took his hand and led him forward to the middle of the room while Lizzie pulled down a projector screen. Around the walls of the room, a motley crew of campers, locals, and randoms accosted on the beach, sworn to secrecy and then bribed with beer to show up and stay quiet afterwards, clapped and cheered.
‘Ed,’ Lizzie said, coming forward. ‘Us don’t get much opportunity to thank ‘e for being our most famous local resident. But tonight, on this ‘ere special anniversary, we’d just like to say, cheers, and ‘andsome job.’
‘What anniversary?’
Natasha brought a stool over, placed it behind Eddie, and then joined Hannah in easing him back on to the seat.
‘It’s the, er, twenty-seventh anniversary of the highest chart position of your third single,’ she said, trying to sound excited. ‘Not many bands have a song that reaches number seventeen in the charts. And you had two that went higher.’
‘Huh,’ Eddie said, as a grainy old live recording from YouTube began to play on the screen. ‘Number four and number thirteen. Those were the days.’
‘We just wanted to remind you of what a rock god you once were,’ Hannah said, as a thirty-year-old vintage of Eddie strutted into centre stage, gave a shoulder length mane of blonde hair a shake, then began to wail into a microphone. The camera swung towards the crowd, taking in a handful of enthusiastic fans by the front rail, then panning out over a larger crowd.
‘Castle Donnington, nineteen-eighty-six,’ Eddie said. ‘We played the four p.m. slot, the dead zone for rock bands. And we tore it up. Oh man, those hungover kids didn’t know what hit them. Cowslip, like a freight train of rock.’
Lizzie clapped her hands. As one, every member of the assembled group dropped to a knee, lifted a hastily acquired wig—Davey and Hannah had picked up a job lot from a fancy dress shop in St. Austell—and pulled them over their heads.
Lizzie, dressed in her fishing nets, and with a wig over her already-shipwreck-influenced mop of hair, dropped to a knee in front of Eddie.
‘I ask ‘e, Eddie John Willard, on behalf of every maid and lad here in Pinkle, to save our little village.’
Eddie looked at her. Gummy eyes ringed with grey bags narrowed. He looked more like a park gardener on the cusp of retirement than a former rock star, but when he began to speak, the old power was there.
‘Bring the band, and bring the crowd,’ he said. ‘And if you do that … I will come.’ His voice lowered even more, to the point where he seemed to be talking only to himself as he added, ‘After all these years, it’s time, once again … to rock.’
21
A Ray of Hope and a Mark of Progress
‘The original bassist, Mikey Pinsent, agreed,’Natasha said to Ben, as they sat together outside the lifeguard hut, watching a handful of kids playing in knee-high waves. A chilly wind was blowing down through the valley, and clouds had come in to cover the sun. Ben, in just his lifeguard shorts, seemed unaffected, but Natasha had hung a towel around her shoulders to ward off the cold.
‘We’ve also got Carly Dixon, one of the original backing singers from Cowslip’s biggest headline tour in 1986,’ she continued. ‘She wasn’t keen, but she said her oldest daughter, who’s a university student, convinced her. Both Carly and Mikey are coming down the week after next for rehearsals.’ She sighed. ‘Providing we can come up with the rest of the band. We’re just short drums, guitar, keyboards, and a couple of other backing singers.’
‘You’re doing great so far,’ Ben said. ‘I couldn’t be more impressed.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. Whatever happens, you’re a shoe-in for Pinkle’s first statue.’
Natasha smiled. ‘Are you trying to flatter me or make me feel old?’
‘Definitely flatter you.’
