Musical dares

This one's true, happened about a month ago. Names changed for no particular reason.
____________

Jamie and Margaret had gone on ahead, leaving me to chase up the rear, along dusty tracks of the remote valley towards the last of its four dispersed residences.  A short distance past our hosts considerably sized territory, complete with numerous outhouses, huts and barns, the mountain’s incline began and the African wildlife entirely reigned.  I arrived to find dinner still comfortably some time away, a Braee burning, steak cooking and beer being served.  

I greeted our hosts warmly, nodded to my brief companions, settled, then the  lumberingly youthful Jamie and I took a quick browse around the vegetable garden.  We dished out generous compliments to the wafer thin Angela about its healthy looking contents.  Starry-eyed, always beaming, the wrinkly but trim fifty-something German ate them up gladly. 

She then exhibited her own artwork to us: abstract, faintly Picasso like oil paintings of animals which adorned several walls of their small, purpose-built house. She led us through a tight kitchen and living area, both of which wore an array of miscellaneous hippy objects dangling from the ceiling, and into a back room study with more paintings and an unlikely grand piano.  How had they got that in here?  We admired and nodded as she explained that the paintings could be interpreted however we wanted.  

The meal was good and the conversation bland as we drank and became gradually better acquainted through tame jokes and token exchanges.  The couple’s dogs brushed all table sitters, lapping up the attention, but no food.  Their master and our host was a Lothar, a volatile looking German.  The long haired ex rocker betrayed occasionally appropriate glimpses of spontaneous wild eyed abandon during swift quaffing at a cheap boxed Chardonnay. 

Once dinner was done and clutter cleared, further drinks were drunk, cigarettes smoked by our hosts, and conversation turned to music.  Lothar repetitively baited Margaret to play the guitar, despite her constant rejection and counter that she would if others did.  They duly did.  Bongo drums were duly produced, the 1960s frozen Angela tapped away, as did Jamie.  I was encouraged and had a half arsed attempt, quickly finding that I still hadn’t miraculously developed any rhythm, then passed it back to Al.  The guitar was strummed, drums were tapped and a growing atmosphere of cyclical musical rhythm was developed in the full moonlit darkness.  Angela began nodding intensely with the sounds, eyes shut, lost in her reverie, occasionally tapping the large bongo wedged tightly between Jamie’s thighs.  She’d shown him how to hold the instrument.  I found it all slightly eerie, especially given my knowledge of their monastic chanting inclinations.  How far was this going?  Could it stop now please?  Let’s have a boring conversation about where we’re from or our family instead.  I was cold and musically inept, therefore peripheral.  As well as not quite “feeling” or appreciating the music.  And quite uncomfortable anyway. 

Lothar took the guitar and drooped his lank long hair  over it, spiderishly riffing with the bongos, making a show of being deeply in synch with the developing layer of beats and rhythms.  I sat looking at the full moon, feeling cold, mildly spooked, and wanting to go back to our basic house.  Our own fiftysomething music schoolteacher was Margaret, a ferret-like and relentlessly annoying woman, peculiarly reminiscent of a non specific Matt Lucas Little Britain character.  She took the guitar and played reasonably, but sang horrendously.  I squirmed and shivered when she massacred Let It Be, and had to go to the toilet. 

The fire provided brief warmth and comfort on my return, but I’d resolved to try and politely make my leave.  I grasped for my small backpack, inferring my imminent departure.  Margaret, still suffering with potential bronchitus and an undeniably terrible sounding cough, said she would come too.  Apparently ingrained and steadily supping alcohol, Jamie was uncaringly unmoved, apparently enjoying the instruments and the company of Angela and Lothar, who was now plying him with large whiskies.  When I eventually summoned the braveness to declare I was going at around nine thirty, Angela looked at me in disbelief.  “You’re not really going?” she said, like nobody had ever left them at such an early hour, or maybe ever.  Perhaps they buried their visitors here.  Or left them out for the Leopards to feed on.  I thanked them but yes, I wanted to go.  The increasingly animated Lothar made his power play.  He would not allow us to leave until he had played something else on the guitar.  We had to sit down.  First I stayed standing, hoping he’d just play while we stood, waiting.  Or say he was kidding, it was a joke, bye bye  Or hoping he’d become aware that I was tired and cold and not game for this at all.  Angela lightly tried pushing me towards a seat.  I didn’t move.  Lothar laughed at me wanting to go home and being cold in my “skinny body”.  It felt like one of those awkwardly tense Tarantino skits, where the next actions of either character are brilliantly paused: on edge, unknowable, potentially violent and dramatic.  Only I knew my own actions wouldn’t be any of those, because they were pricked with growing nervousness about his.  That madness which flashed through his eyes, his stocky bulk, the likely proximity of dangerous weapons. 

It became clear that he really wanted us to sit down and wouldn’t play on until we did.  We couldn’t turn our backs and leave by being rude, for Angela’s sake at least. Lothar made a theatrical show of lighting a cigarette, taking his time while cradling the guitar, methodically preparing to play.  He paused numerous times, fingers grazing strings.  About to start, then stopping.  About to start, then stopping.  About to.. 

Eventually, he looked up from his strings and through his dangling fringe, troubled.  He brushed his hair from his eyes, flicked a cigarette butt to one side and said that he had made a mistake, sorry, and that we could go.  I didn’t know if the joke was on me at that point.  If we, or I had been made a fool of, or if he would have objectively and internationally appeared a nutcase.  Thanks, I said, still confused by my compassionate release from their warping musical captivity.  I affected a strongly controlled politeness, all the whie thinking: you are both totally fucking mental, yet remaining aware that this lunatic could still easily just explode and suddenly kill all of us.  Bring his chainsaw out from somewhere, a rifle, some hippy nunchucks. 

I shook his hand, and forgivingly slapped his shoulder with my other, just in case his apology was genuine.  Then I hugged Angela once more and said a cheery goodbye to everyone, hoping to appear like this was all fine. 

Margaret and I left, our feet crunching quickly into the moonlit sandy tracks, hers struggling to keep pace with mine.