Pete and Jenny were grabbing a quick bowl of soup together, before she had to go out. Watching her as he ate, he was struck by how sad she looked all the time. His bright, sparky little sister had vanished.
He came over to the barn, in search of me. By now, I knew him so well – it was like having the brother I’d never had.“What’s bugging you?”
“It’s Jenny – she’s so miserable. That school just doesn’t cater for her. It’s okay for Charles – he’s not academic. All I ever wanted was my music. And when the older two were there, the school was better. But Jenny wants to learn, to be challenged. And it’s not happening."
“Can’t your parents send her somewhere else?”“Farming’s too unpredictable. They can’t afford it.”
I knew what private schooling cost – Mum had told me, and Dad had occasionally thrown it in my face. And I knew what Pete and I were making from our music.
“But we could afford it! You and I together – as long as your parents will house us and feed us.”
“You’d do that for Jenny? Really? We’re talking a five year commitment here.”
But I thought: why not? What else have I got to spend my money on? Why not at least make Jenny’s life a bit happier?
And a few weeks later, a very nervous Jenny was standing in the doorway, in her new school uniform, ready to leave. She was going to be a weekly boarder, and come home at weekends – it was too far to travel each day.“I feel stupid in this.”
“Yes, but you’re not stupid! Go and enjoy it, Jenny. Grab your chance to really learn at last.”
It was odd without her there at first. I’d got used to her – to her intelligent comments on things, and her slightly surreal sense of humour. We all missed her, but after a rocky first few weeks, she was beginning to find her feet and make friends. Her texts, emails and even letters got progressively more and more cheerful, and her end-of-term reports were positively glowing.“I’m still playing catch-up a bit,” she said in an email to me, “but I’m getting extra help where I need it. And I’m not stuck on anything; I just hadn’t covered enough ground at Airhead High (her pet name for her previous school, Aldred High). Miss Higgs says my physics is really promising, and Mrs Boson positively smiled at my last maths practice paper.”
Pete’s and my days fell back into their old rhythm – practising, helping on the farm, and doing as many gigs as we could. After all, we had a child to put through school! We started work on another album – the first ones were selling steadily, if moderately – and I was writing more songs for it this time. And when Charles left school, we had a bit more free time yet.
We played anywhere and everywhere we could! Some places didn’t pay quite so well…
We did outdoor stuff for people’s parties (mostly covers), indoor stuff at old peoples’ homes (a lot of jazz there: we both enjoyed that a lot) and local club circuits, where we played a real mixture, but featured more of our own stuff. The next album started selling as well, steadily, if not spectacularly, and we were earning enough between us not only to keep Jenny at school, but to let her go on to full boarding as she moved up the school and her timetable got busier.
Each time she came home, it was obvious how much the change of school had suited her. She looked happier, and she was regaining her old confidence and sparkle. Jenny – the real Jenny – had come back.
My mother totally approved of what I was doing with my earnings. She’d been to stay regularly – well, as regularly as her somewhat irregular life would allow – and really liked Jenny. Her last visit had coincided with Jenny being home, and she’d phoned me to tell me again what a difference she saw in Jenny this time round. Then she got personal.“Jasper – I don’t want to be a nosy, interfering mother, but are you really happy?”
There was nothing I could say in reply to that. She knew me too well for me to be able to lie to her.
“I sort of got the feeling that something happened that summer, all those years ago, when you had to go and stay with your dad. You don’t have to talk to me about it – and I could be completely wrong…”“No. You’re not.” Suddenly, it all rose up inside me again – Elf’s sudden and complete disappearance, without so much as a word of farewell.
“Have you thought of trying to write it out of your system? That’s how I cope with some of the things I’ve seen and heard about.”
And then, wise woman, she changed the subject completely, and started asking me what Pete and I could do to help further her latest project.
My mother had been right! I started messing round with some ideas, and it all came pouring out – the frustration, the sadness, the sense of loss I’d had bottled up inside me for so long now.
When I’d roughed out the lyrics and melody, Pete began putting the percussion to it.“This isn’t like anything you’ve written so far! Much angrier in parts. But quite romantic in others. This is going to be fun!”
“She’s like a shadow girl.Dancing at the edges of my mind.
She’s like a shadow girl.
Hiding in the corners of my heart.”
The song began soft, romantic – sounding like it would go into a minor key any moment now. Pete was beginning to make the percussion talk, but it still needed more: the tension that I wanted to convey was missing. We worked on it for a few weeks, then had to put it aside for a while.
It was Jenny who provided the next breakthrough with the song. She was home for the holidays before her last term at school. She’d had a triumphant final year so far, academically, socially – you name it. She had blossomed into the girl she was meant to be. She’d also abandoned her glasses for contact lenses, and looked pretty stunning, actually.
She read the lyrics, listened to us playing through what we’d already written, and then began playing around on the piano. I was surprised to hear just how good she’d become at playing – it was a while since I’d heard her.“What about this?”
“Getting there – but there’s still something missing…”
“Pete – if you beef up the drums a bit in between the words – and if we take a longer break between the lines, slow it right down, can we build up a sort of suggested conflict? A bit like the beginning of the Mars movement from The Planets?”
And she was right. The romantic opening became a little bit menacing, left you a little bit uneasy.
And the chorus, under her hands, became downright aggressive, almost. Pete really let himself go with that, and I enjoyed ripping into it as well.“Shadow girl, I’m sick and tired of chasing after dreams.
Shadow girl, I told you once just how much you mean.
Well, now I’m done with all that hurt, I’m putting it aside.
The love that I once had for you, my shadow girl, has died.”
We both agreed that the song needed a bit more, a final twist, but we couldn’t find it, so we put it aside, to mature, and went on with our normal run of stuff. Jenny took her final exams, did brilliantly, and headed off to university full of hopes that, I reckoned, she would realise very nicely indeed.
It had been a long time since that first tour, when Chris Deakins had spotted me playing in the park I’d been part of this family for more than a decade now – I’d seen Jenny grow up from a bright sparky six year old to a bright sparky university student. And these had been good years, I thought. I fitted in with Pete’s family very nicely. My mother really liked them too. My dad hadn’t had much to say about what I was doing: I think he thought I was wasting my time, earning very little, and he’d have had a fit if he’d known I was helping to support Jenny at school, instead of investing my earnings. But my mother thought it was a really good move.“If you think, where should I give my money away? then it will never have a hold over you,” she said. “If you always have giving as your top financial priority – even if you only have a very little to give from – then money will serve you, instead of you serving money. And if you’re not changing anybody’s life for the better, then what are you here for?”
She’d been right about something else as well. Writing about Elf, putting it into words and music, had set me free from missing her, set me free from my past.
I’d thought about throwing away the ring that I had bought for her all those years ago, but in the end I’d kept it. I’d decided that I didn’t need to expunge every memory of her from my mind. And I’d found the final twist we needed for the song; a gentle farewell.“So goodbye, shadow girl,
This time it’s me who’s leaving you behind.
But though I’m moving on
Your memory can stay a little in my mind.
Your memory can stay a little in my mind.”
The last line trailed softly away, with a soft interweaving of my guitar and Jenny’s piano.
For the rest of our lives, Pete and I were grateful for those years we’d had, mixing music and performing with hard physical labour. That was what kept us firmly grounded in the hectic and giddy time that followed. Because once we’d finished it, we started playing Shadow Girl at gigs, and everyone liked it. Chris suggested to Jake that we released it as a single, and Jake agreed. And suddenly we had a hit on our hands! Along with all the publicity, razzamatazz and hoo-ha that went with it. Radio Caudex started playing us – “And now folks, here’s the new release from greenstone, a promising new band…” and apparently Magnus Culmen got a bit huffy and sniffy about us, and called us hayseeds and yokels, but we didn’t care.
My mother promptly upgraded her plans for us. She’d been wanting us to help her raise some money for her Albania project. This was the one she’d been starting when I went to stay with dad all those years ago. She was trying to do two things at once – address the people-trafficking problem, specifically of young women, and also give girls an education so that they could aspire to something better, and not be such easy targets for traffickers. Her original one village primary school had grown into a network of about a dozen, and now she wanted to start building and equipping secondary schools. For girls.“Let’s get girls from this country involved. Let’s get girls here singing to raise money for girls there. And let’s get them educated about the problems that are being faced elsewhere as well – let’s raise a generation of women here who will care about what happens to other women, in other places. Because if you educate the girls, then they in turn can educate their children. Educating women lifts the whole community, benefits everyone.”
So we agreed. We’d do a charity single, with schoolgirls from this country, but not as a here-is-your-moment-in-the-limelight thing. We’d do it as part of a whole education thing. Chris wasn’t too keen, as he couldn’t see what the financial advantage would be to us, and the publicity might backfire, but Jake was all for it.
Writing that song had changed Pete’s and my musical direction as well. We were picking up new influences, and were having fun playing around with a more classic-rock based approach to things. Chris got us to change how we dressed for stage and publicity appearances – on the farm, it was still workwear!“It feels a bit like dressing up,” Pete said, and I agreed with him. But in an odd way, the dressing up also seemed to let us be a bit different too – I suppose that’s why actors like costume, because the clothes help you be the person.
Life was definitely changing. This was something very new – and a bit like riding a roller-coaster without a safety belt on – but on the whole, Pete and I reckoned it was a good thing, and that with a bit of luck, and a hefty dollop of common sense, we’d be okay.
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