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He picks himself up and crosses over to the black violin case. Danny looks surprised but gratified to have been included in Finlay’s little speech, and Rory seems triumphant as always. I watch as Finlay pulls out a glossy sunrise-colored violin, which he cradles as though it were natural. The way his fingers fit comfortably on the strings, the cherishing yet familiar way he holds the instrument… These aren’t things that are taught. They’re things gained through years upon years of experience and intense practice. This isn’t someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing. This is someone who knows what to do all too well, instinctively, inside-out and deep within his soul.
I lean my mouth close to Rory and ask in a whisper, “Why does he hate the violin so much?”
“He doesn’t,” Rory replies, watching Finlay intently. “He loves it, and I love watching him play. But he turned up late to his Grade 8 exam and failed it. Too much liquid courage the night before. Said classical music was a bunch of pretentious shite, that from then on he’d be dedicating himself to the music of his people and become a folk hero.” He pauses and summarizes, “There’s a lot of angst between Finlay and music.”
“A lot of angst between Finlay and Finlay,” I say, and Rory gives an assenting nod.
Finlay tests the strings out, bowing two silver strings at once and twisting the tiny wooden pegs while holding the violin against his jaw. “So whit am I playin’?” he grumbles. Rory stands up and whispers into Finlay’s ear, and just for a moment, Finlay’s grouchiness melts away. His green eyes flutter, as though they have trouble staying open, and his mouth parts the longer Rory pours out his secret plans to him. I don’t miss the stir of Finlay’s cock against his dark underwear, either.
When Rory steps away to check that Finlay understands, Finlay holds back a grimace and mutters, “Holst deserved better.”
Rory looks pleased with himself. He settles back down on the ground, reaching out for Luke’s hand. Luke accepts despondently, still wrapped up in his own unhappy world, but he grudgingly slides himself closer to Rory, their fingers entwined, and all four of us sit in a row watching Finlay prepare to play.
Finlay closes his eyes, picturing whatever music he needs, and I think to myself that this is a type of magic, too. To pick up an instrument and know how to produce beauty with such astonishing intuition. Without sheet music, without aids, just a pure internal musicality. An inner rhythm. A secret, whispered harmony. All I know is that Finlay’s knowledge of music is immense, and it seems a shame to waste such powerful talents chasing politics. In another world, he’d be free to do his own thing, build his name and become a credible musician. It’d take years of hard slog and low pay, but he’d get there in the end and it’d be joyous. Inthisworld, however, his music is nothing but an extracurricular activity, never primped or perfected, an obliging nugget to put on his personal statement to St. Camford, where he’ll study a more appropriate degree before lining up to advise politicians in either London or Edinburgh, working too-long hours for an establishment that doesn’t care about his skills unless it makes them money or power, until his artistry begins to wane and die.
The idea presses upon me so sharply that I suddenly feel the need to protect Finlay from this fate. He’s special. He deserves to be draped in musicianship, reveling in melody and art and song. But I see his life sign-posted in front of him so clearly, because Lochkelvin doesn’t make all-around students for nothing. It makes all-around students to get a one-up on the other elite private schools in the country, the competition, for league tables and to impress the parents of future generations, andstillit forces them onto the same restrictive conveyor belt, each shiny Lochkelvin student year group the same as the last, with the same high-status, stressful careers waiting to destroy their creative dreams.
Conformity. Lochkelvin produces conformity.
I recognize the song Finlay plays. LikeJerusalem, it’s that powerful combination of both somber and hopeful, of hard times and the desire for better. The melody starts low and warm before gliding, high and airy with hope, like a balloon billowing past the treetops. It’s anthemic. It stirs the spirit.
It punctures Luke’s deep, abiding apathy like a knife wound.
“You utter bastard,” Luke murmurs to Rory, staring transfixed at Finlay. “You know this song makes me cry.”
Rory rubs his back. “You have a duty,” he says quietly. “You know you do. People still listen to you, despite what Antiro says — if anything, Antiro gunning for you will only make them listen harder. This country needs you to speak up. Yourmotherneeds you to speak up.” He pauses as Finlay reaches a soul-touching crescendo. Warm shivers scatter down my spine. “In another world, you’d be king right now. And if ‘I Vow to Thee, My Country,’ a song about being torn between Heaven and your homeland, doesn’t make you remember where your loyalties are supposed to lie, then I don’t know what will.”
“What am I supposed to do,” Luke asks, his lips barely moving as he looks at Finlay with a sense of crushing paralysis, “when every fiber of my being is telling me to run?”
“Talk. Condemn. Garner sympathy. Because everyone in this God-forsaken land has just found out that a militia has murdered a teenager’s mother and orphaned him overnight, and not all of them will support that. They’ll want to know, whether through spite or sympathy, if he’s strong enough to speak about what’s happened. They’ll want to know if you were ever up to the challenge of being king, before they reassess where to place their loyalties.”
Luke is quiet for a moment. “They need to know I’m still an option to support. That I’m not out of the game.”
“Precisely,” Rory says, as Finlay ends on a gloriously uplifting final chord, summoning applause from all of us. He takes a small bow. “I guarantee ordinary people are not happy about what’s happening. They’re being forced to accept something they know isn’t right. But they need someone to speak up for them. Demanding acceptance to a cause that nobody believes in will only ever bring violence. This needs to end.”
Luke nods slowly as he listens to the calm whisper in his ear. “You’re right. It does. I’ll end it.”
And as Finlay plays an encore of that haunting, rising melody, the early morning sun dappling down on us through the shaded trees, I think to myself that, going forward, it’s impressive that “going forward” is on the cards at all. Rory’s tongue must be made of pure silver to convince Luke to crawl out from his grief-buried hole, and to find in him the resolve to fight back.
In a slow voice, more a promise than anything else, Luke confirms, “I’m going to end this.” As the last chord on the violin trills delicately beneath Finlay’s fingertips, he adds in a voice as resolute as steel, “I’m going to end this, andwin.”
***
