a night in June

1

There are times she wonders why she does it. Tonight is one of them. The bar is full. She stands under the spotlight. It catches the side of her face, accentuates the line of her dark profile, her short, tight hair. All she can hear is the shuffling of chairs, of feet, the babble of conversation.

She turns the keys of the guitar, struggles to catch the pitch above the noise. Placing her fingers along the fretboard, her long, thin right hand plucks a chord on the strings. Her ears strain to check if everything is in tune. Moving her body forward, she lightly plays a short blues run. Sighing, she is satisfied that it is probably the best she can hope for in the circumstances. She turns her face to the crowd.

There is a quick ripple of applause from her left. It is followed by the sound of laughter. Why she is regularly booked to play here, she does not know. She feels she is nothing more than background music for the eagerly socialising faces, faces for the most part turned away from her. Once, just once, she would like to be able to play something different, something that would reach them, something that would quieten them, make them stop and really listen. On Saturday evening it is the talk, the drink, the company they come for. She steps to the front of the stage.

The barman passes. He is holding a tray full of yellow glasses above his head. Accidentally, he knocks against the stand that holds the microphone. It sways and she puts her hand out to steady it. She looks at him and signals that she is ready to start. Nodding, his long moustache moves up and down, his small sad eyes remain expressionless.
She taps her foot on the wooden boards. To her right, her boyfriend is standing. He smiles at her, raising his shoulders.

In front of her, sitting with his legs stretched out, is a guy with cowboy boots and a fifties hairstyle. In his fist, he holds a glass, has a small cigar stuck between his teeth. He sullenly stares at her.

Putting her hand to her forehead, she looks into the ceiling. The top cannot be seen for smoke. Her upper teeth bite gently on her lip.

The barman returns, negotiating the outstretched feet, the groups of animated conversation, and with a quick movement of his head indicates he is ready to introduce her.
The P.A. whistles, the microphone hisses and then the voice asks for quiet, for some attention and applause. There is a slight lull in the voices, a couple of bursts of clapping and the faces turn to gaze curiously at her. She picks a point somewhere in the centre of the audience and fixes her attention on it. Taking a deep breath, she reaches for the opening notes of her first song.



2

He is surprised to find himself step in. It is not somewhere he would usually go. His bicycle is left locked to a bridge, locked to an old railing lining a narrow stretch of inky water.

He was walking down the alley behind the main street, walking really without direction. After eating, he just felt like being out, just felt like being in the air, seeing what happened on a Saturday evening.

It is a long time since he has done anything like this. Mostly he sits in reading the newspaper, sometimes watching the television, sometimes half watching, half reading. Tonight he feels restless.
In the last months things have not been going well between him and his wife. She has taken the children to her parents. They will not be back till after the weekend. Reluctantly, he agreed to this. She said, maybe they needed a little space, a little time apart.

Each weekend now is tenser. She is tired, is under pressure. She has become more involved in her work, has begun to put her career increasingly before their home. Criticising her is out of the question. The only reply he will receive is that there is no reason why she should not do so, that, what does he expect, that she should pass by an opportunity like the one being offered her.

When he argues it is not a question of her doing anything like that, not a question of her giving up her own life, but that he, her children, need some attention too, she has not listened.

He feels it unfair. When she took this job, he made adjustments in his working life. It was difficult to explain to his boss, it caused conflict with his colleagues. Later when there was a question of training on a new system, he was passed over.

He would not mind so much if he felt the same commitment was there on her part. What she is really after, is the promotion. The complication that will bring is something he does not like to think about.

She stands back from the microphone. The sweat runs down the side of her face. The applause dies down. Her fingers move up and down the fretboard as she introduces her next song. There is the clatter of glasses falling somewhere as someone suddenly gets up to walk to the toilets.

At first he went right past it. The alley was nearly empty, quiet compared to the bustle of the square and main street. It was an area with a couple of trendy theatres, a couple of cafes only frequented by a particular crowd. He did not expect to see such a place. It was the music that stopped him. Looking in the door, something about it reminded him of when he was younger. For a time with a friend he played in a couple of these types of bars. They were not that good though he enjoyed it. He gave it up when he began to study, when he began to think a little more seriously about his future.

The first of her three sets end and she lets out a long sigh. She leans her guitar back against the stand, turns the microphone away, toward the floor. Taped music bursts from the P.A. The crowd resume their drinking, their conversations.

It did not go as bad as she had at first feared. She had to work hard at it. The attention wavered, came and went. The old favourites were what she opened with. It was always better to begin with the well﷓known songs, the songs everyone had a copy of somewhere. She is never sure whether it is the familiarity, the reassurance of the known that holds a crowd’s attention or her performance.

Her fingers sting a little, her voice feels dry. Stepping down off the low stage, a figure comes toward her through the crowd. In his hand is a glass of mineral water and across his face, a sympathetic smile.
“Thanks,” she says, “it’s not easy tonight.”
“No,” he answers, “it’s a real Saturday night crowd. Tell me is it extremely hot in here, or is it my imagination?”
She looks at him.
“It’s extremely hot. I think it’s a mixture of all these bodies crammed into so tight a space together with the smoke.”
She pauses.
“Speaking of which, I’d love a cigarette.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“It can’t do me more harm than this atmosphere is already doing.”
“Ok, let’s go out to the door, we can stand on the street.”

They push their way through the bodies. The guy with the fifties hairstyle is lighting another cigar. As they pass, he looks up at her. His face sullenly gazes into hers and then he moves his feet a couple of centimetres to let them pass.
“Hey, nice songs lady,” he calls after her.
“Thanks,” she says, dodging an outstretched arm, “thanks a lot.”



3

He stretched up on his toes to see what was going on. It was busy. The crowd was rather haphazard, chaotic, a mix of old and young, a mix of types, drinking, talking, listening.

Normally if he wanted an evening out, he went to the cinema, or the theatre. Usually they went together, hiring a baby-sitter, sometimes first going to a restaurant and eating. In other circumstances he would have chosen to go somewhere else.

As he strained forward, he wondered if maybe it was because she was away. It occurred to him he was going through a stretch where he felt his future to be somewhat uncertain. Perhaps something that reminded him of a part of his past appealed right now. He did not for one moment imagine he was about to return to that way of life or anything, but, it seemed to break the line between what he had once been and what he had become.

Edging into the crowd he thought life was not always as simple as you believed. It was possible things only receded into the background, only seemed to be forgotten when there was something in your present, something that took over your thoughts, your feelings, that kept you chasing the future. It was a notion that unsettled him, made him feel uneasy. The idea there were other elements, elements standing in the wings, elements you thought you had put firmly behind you, but that were really just waiting to come back at you, elements, that one day you might realise had been other choices, other possibilities, unnerved him. Where would you be had you known that then, where would you be had you chosen differently? It was not that there were choices, but perhaps there was no one right choice. Perhaps all choices were relative and it was only time that showed whether your choice had been a good one or not. Yet you had no way of controlling time. Did you really have that much control over choosing? Was making a choice a gamble? Was it like throwing a coin in the air? You could never see ahead, never predict. It was like standing in front of a maze, and having to get from one side to the other. You watched everyone else, noticed the pathways they took. All you had to do was follow, keep close and you could also make your way through.

You thought a always led to b, and b then to c, that there was one pathway, one route. But that was an error. To assume your a was the same as another’s a, to assume that, even if it was so, both a’s would lead to the same b, and then to onto a similar c, was mistaken. Really, choosing the pathway that seemed the safest, was just an attempt to ignore risk, to ignore responsibility. It did not remove either. Their existence continued, the way the moon was there, or the stars, though you could not always see them.

The younger you were, the more naive you were. You did not reckon on life having an intelligence of its own. Everything was under control, you thought. Choices were made that were in your present, choices that increased your past, yet were made in order to determine your future.

Perhaps everyone's life was about crossing the maze, everyone had to make the journey. Not only were none of your a's the same, but the maze was unstable, was unfixed. It fluctuated, changed, could alter its shape and the trick was to figure out if there was a pattern to its mutations, if there was a principle which determined its modifications, and then to work with that.

It would have been better had you started with the knowledge there was an element of the unknown, an element that was unique to your experience; been prepared to accept the unexpected.

Then, perhaps, you would make choices that at least allowed for alteration, that allowed you the room to change direction.



4

They step out onto the street. He leans against the wall. The brick is cool on his back. She looks up into the sky. It is dark, the blue almost turned to black. The buildings lean in over the narrow alleyway, the lights from the main street caught and reflected in the roofs above. He pulls his jacket open and puts his hand in his pocket. It is a warm night. The chatter, the laughter from inside, the music from the P.A., drift out to them.
“Fresh air,” he exclaims, breathing deeply.
She looks at him, takes her glass from her mouth.
“You know, I thought tonight I wasn’t going to make it. When I got up there to tune up, I thought this is it. I don’t know which I felt, more nervous, or more angry. It was like facing a blank. I wanted to step up to the microphone and say, aah, hello everyone, I am here. Music, do you know what I mean. That’s what this is about."
He stretches his shoulders.
“Yes, but what can you do? It takes time to work your way in. That barman, what’s his name now, René, he’s only interested in selling beer, no?”
“I think he needs a good haircut, that’s what I think.”
He laughs.
“Maybe we could offer to get him one for his birthday.”
She looks at him, her eyes opening, her face adopting an expression of mock surprise.
“His birthday? Do we know when his birthday is? Do we need to know when his birthday is?”
“Sure we know. He told us earlier this evening. He was having one of his rare, conversational moods. Next week sometime.”
She nods her head.
“Of course. I forgot. Still, it’s a bit of a time-warp, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not that it’s long, it's...well I don't know. I guess there’s no harm in him being the way he wants to be. But it’s a bit like my hair is still back twenty years in time, what does that say about me?”
He moves his weight from one foot to the other.
“Nothing, and probably everything.”
She looks down into her glass, shakes it, swirling the remains of the water around.
“I’ve just remembered I left my cigarettes in my jacket inside.”
He smiles at her.
“You can do without them, can’t you? It’s not good for your voice you know, it’s unhealthy.”
“I know, still.”
It is then she notices the stranger to her right. He is standing holding a glass awkwardly between his arm and his body. There is an unopened packet of cigarettes in his hand and he is fiddling with it, trying to get the plastic wrapping off. She goes over to him.



5

He pushed further through the entrance until he was nearly at the edge of the stage. Two girls turned and looked at him. At first they appeared a little annoyed at his shoving, but then one smiled.

The interior had an odd shape. To the right, just after the entrance, was the stage. Facing it were lines of chairs and tables. The floor ran away to the back where there was a bar. Groups of people stood there, leaning against each other, or drinking, some with their arms folded defensively across their chests.

He watched the singer, watched her movements, watched her struggle to keep the crowd with her. The barman came down close to him and he signaled he wanted a beer. As he waited, he realised he felt like smoking a cigarette.
‘To hell with it,’ he thought, ‘one time won’t hurt’.
Normally he did not smoke. He considered it a dirty habit, unhealthy. He had done so when he was younger, but now felt that it was better not to. At home, she was strictly against it. She argued it made the children passive smokers and he had to agree she had a point.

At one time she wanted to put up a sign in the hallway of their apartment stating, ‘no smoking’. He found that going too far. ‘What if they had friends over and they smoked? Then it was a little unsocial, a little off rude?’ He suggested it would be better just not to leave any ashtrays around, then people would figure out it was not a smoking household.

He had to laugh when he thought of the complications people got themselves into. Only the previous week he listened with amusement as one of his work-colleagues told him how his wife had accused him of seeing someone else because regularly he went to the neighbours on the pretence of needing to ask for something, because there he could light up.

He thought of his own wife and wondered in the same circumstances what she would find more upsetting; that he smoked, or that he was maybe seeing another woman.

Putting his hand in his pocket, he searched around for some loose change. He turned to see if there was a cigarette machine anywhere. Behind him was a guy with a scruffy appearance. A lined face, bright, piercing blue eyes and short uncombed hair, stared down at him. For a moment he was taken aback. He thought he read aggression in the eyes. He mumbled a half-hearted, pardon. The guy looked at him, and then with a grin, stepped aside.

Going to the cigarette machine, he fumbled with the coins. He wavered over which brand to buy. He decided on the one he recollected having seeing the least amount of adverts for.

Pulling on the metal handle, he felt a little guilty. The coins dropped and there was a soft thud when the tightly wrapped packet appeared in the tray. He bent down and picked it up, shoving it quickly into his pocket. Taking a drink from his beer, he pushed back to where he had been standing.

She was introducing one of her own songs. Suddenly she seemed nervous. He noticed she was fiddling with the tuning keys, that her eyes kept trying to find a space somewhere above the faces.

As she played the opening chords, as she began to run the bass strings down, as the slow, melodic song unfolded, he found himself listening carefully. It seemed to him more like a jazz or blues ballad. A woman near the bar leaned forward and looked intently, listening to every word, her glass suspended in the air. He followed the rhythm, his foot moving involuntarily, his eyes observing her every expression.

About halfway through there was a shuffling of feet and a group of guys near the back started raucously laughing at something one of them had apparently said.

When she finished, the applause varied. Some seemed impressed, enthusiastic, others looked to the bar, started to get up to go and order. Some just carried on with conversations they had never stopped. He realised there was going to be a break.

Curiously, he watched her as she stepped down off the stage, as she tried to make her way through the crowd. Then, he remembered he was alone, saw that everyone else suddenly seemed to be with someone.

Feeling a little strange, like the odd person out, he stood for a moment looking about him, draining the remains of his glass.



6

“Ja, of course,” he replies, hesitating for a moment over the English. He opens the pack and pulls one out for her.
“Thanks.”
“Do you maybe...ah...have some fire?” he asks.
She puts her hand in her pocket, takes out a lighter and clicks it open. He leans forward and pulls on the cigarette.
“The last song was very nice,” he says.
Her dark, lively, eyes, her bare, high forehead, her expressive mouth, soften into a smile.
“You liked it?”
“Yes, it was different. I like that it was slow, that it was...,” he hesitates, “eh, how should I say, that it was maybe a little sad.”
“Why thank you.”
She pauses.
“Hey, why don’t you come over and join us. We’re just out here trying to get some space, trying to cool down a bit.”

He stands at the bar and drinks a couple more beers. She does some more of her own compositions. He likes them best. When she finishes, she comes over to him. He buys her a drink and she stands and talks to him for a while, waiting for the crowd to clear. Perhaps it is the beer, perhaps the music, but he feels relaxed. Not once does he think about home, about work, about anything. It is just after four when he leaves.



7

He bends over his bicycle, struggles to focus on the lock, struggles to get the key to turn. The water below the bridge, is slow, dark, washes indolently against the stone canal side. The warm air moves against his skin, over his neck. Pulling a light raincoat over his shoulders, he gets up onto the seat. He grips the handlebars and begins to cycle, begins to cross the deserted main street.

The buildings around him are impassive, the shop fronts darkened. Slowly pushing the pedals, he moves along the bicycle lane. A police car drives lazily past, its white and blue keeping to the raised centre of street where the tram-tracks are.

He gazes up into the sky. It is a clear night. He does not yet feel like going home. In a way he does not want the night to end, the morning to come.

To his left, where the old palace stands, is a three-quarter moon. Sometimes it seems so cold, to be almost made of chalk, to be like a still, white disc hanging there. In the winter, it can make the city seem colder and closer, its pale rays catching faces as if suggesting some time past, some memory not quite forgotten. Now it is the middle of June. It is florid and creamy, dulcet. In the warm Spring night, it blends with the city air, with perfume, the remaining aromas from now closed restaurants, the faint smell of car fumes, pollen. He turns to his left and passes the Nieuwekerk. The yellow traffic lights flash on and off. Cutting to his right, he crosses onto one of the main canals. Following it, he takes in its rise and fall, whistling to himself.

The trees are heavy, their leaves full under the arc of the streetlamps. The vibration of the bicycle as it moves over the surface of the canal side passes up into his arms through the handlebars. He is about to cross the bridge near the station, to go to his left when he realises this will bring him home all the quicker. For a moment he stops, putting his foot down on the hard ground, steadying himself and thinking. His head still feels a little light.

He goes straight on then crosses behind the station. He will cycle along the old unused harbour area. Coasting under the rail bridge, there is a hiss as a solitary post train rattles above his head. The open space with its water appears in front of him. The wooden piers, the rise of the pass behind the station and the moon shining on the silky surface hold his vision. This way he can still get home, this way he can get to where he lives by another route.

Their footsteps echo in the empty street. He carries her guitar. Leaning against him, she links her arm tightly through his and yawns.
“Sleepy, eh?” he says.
“Yes,” she replies.
They come to the door of their apartment. It seems small, old. Putting the guitar down, he searches in his pocket for the key. She folds her arms across her chest, yawns again. There is the sound of the metal turning in the lock, the rasp of the hinges as the wooden door swings open.
“Come on,” he whispers, “we’re home.”
They climb the stairs. There is that familiar smell, that dry, musty odour in the air. She hears the creak, hears him knock her guitar off the wall.
“Who would have thought you could build something so narrow,” she says.
He opens a door. His arm stretches into the darkness, his hand fumbles for the switch and suddenly there is a glow and the light like an orange sphere hangs over the centre of the living room. Something brushes against her ear, buzzes past her.
“Dammed mosquitoes,” she murmurs.
“What,”
“Nothing, it was just a mosquito I think.”
He walks to the window. The curtains are blowing gently against the back of the sofa. Pulling them over, he turns as she falls into a chair.
“I’m going to get a glass of water. Do you want one?” he asks.
“Yes please. I’m feeling a little dried out.”
Bright fluorescent floods the tiny kitchen. The tap opens, echoes in the steel sink and the water gushes around and into the cylindrical glass.

He has left his bicycle lying somewhere behind him. Carefully stepping over the rough ground, he goes down to where the grass falls away into a broken wall, to where it disappears into the water. Muttering to himself, that his coat will probably get dirty, that tomorrow he will probably look at it and wonder how it got like that, but now he does not care, he comes to a stop.

The water breaks against the old pier. His eyes fall on the dim wooden shapes, the rotting supports that once must have been a docking area.

To his right, in the distance, are lights, the lights of buildings, the lights of the harbours, the lights of ships. It seems to him he can hear a hum, hear the low, almost soothing murmur of distant activity.

He imagines being inside one of the ships, the oily smell, the narrow passageways, the metal railings, the thin steel steps, the excitement of a journey about to be made. Where have some of the ships come from, where are some of them going? It fills his mind. The sea and how it is, how it knows no boundaries, how it has fed this city, how it is what this city is built around. The tides coming in, swelling, rising and then ebbing, falling away.

For a moment he is there, is standing on a deck, watching the ropes being cast off, the rusty scrape of a side as it leaves the quay, the surge of an engine, the water churning up at stern. He imagines the next port of call, some faraway place, somewhere where he has never been. The journey, the roll and the sway, the change in appearance, the skin weathering as the ship navigates the ocean’s curve. He gazes up at the sky, at the moon.

It is higher and paler. To his right, to the east, he can see the sky is a lighter blue. It is as if the night is beginning to melt away. Dawn is creeping up over the city. Suddenly he feels tired, realises that it must be nearly five or after. Letting go, dropping to the ground, he lies back on the coarse grass. It is damp. It is cool against the back of his head.

He pulls out the near empty pack of cigarettes from his pocket, takes out the matches she gave him and lights one. The smoke rises above him in grey and blue clouds.

He does not want to think about it, does not want to think that tomorrow is nearly here, that soon it will be the day after, that then she will be back, then the tension will increase, and there will still have to be an answer.
‘Choices’, he murmurs to himself, ‘and if I were coming back from a voyage, if I were sailing up past these harbours, into this city, would I see my own life as if it did not belong to me, but to someone else? Would I see the choices I have made, and see that there were choices I should have made, choices I should not have made? Would I see my life any clearer, or would I be caught in another life, held by its current, driven by its needs?’
He puts the cigarette to his mouth and watches the end glow. Tomorrow he will remember this, will probably wonder what made him do it, will feel tired, his head will ache, and he will be irritated at himself for being foolish, for acting out of character. Yet as he lies there, he hears the pull of her songs, sees her in front of the crowd, her fingers finding the chords, the supple switch from one to the other. The bass strings counterpoint the melody, the soft tap of her foot keeps rhythm on the simple, wooden stage and her voice gently caresses the ears of those who are listening.

Maybe it was really not such a strange thing to do. Perhaps she will be playing there again sometime, and he will be passing, and then he will stop and listen to her sing, listen to her songs as she pitches them to that spot somewhere just above the centre of the audience, listen to her find the blues run, the sweet, jazzy sound like the pull of the sea, the sound that kept him standing there this one night in June.

Copyright (C) Peter Millington. April 1996.