This Is August

james blunt - bonfire hearts

Despite being in Seacombe for just under a week, Fran hadn't yet been to the beach. She slipped her shoes off and hopped onto the sand, letting the cool grains coat her toes, before she ran out of things to do. The novelty wore off very quickly.

"So I don't really get what we're doing here," Fran said finally, watching Joel drag an oversized bucket he'd found on the beach over to them to use as a rudimentary seat. They were sitting in a loose circle on the dry sand, Fran fingering chords on the guitar to warm her fingers up. The beach wasn't lit, and the moon was only half-full, so the shore was dark, their figures just murky silhouettes, edged with light from the pubs behind them.

"Think of it as an audition," Joel said.

"Right," Fran said. To be honest, she was kind of at a loss for what to play. She felt like there was a lot riding on what she decided to perform; like she had to impress Joel, like maybe if Darius enjoyed it he'd come and join her upstairs when she played guitar on her own and they'd have something else to talk about other than what he was listening to.

She stalled for time, letting her drawn out arpeggios coalesce into chords. She started to strum absently, humming off-key under her breath. It took her a while to pick up on the chord sequence she'd settled into. She smiled a little to herself. She liked this song: low-key tropical house vibes, fast-paced rolling lyrics and a beat you couldn't help but tap along to. But it didn't really work on a solo guitar; it needed a lot more depth to bring out the fullness of the song...

Still, she felt like she'd committed, so she took a deep, sharp breath and plunged in.

"The club isn't the best place to find a lover, so the bar is where I go," she began. "Me and my friends at the table doing shots; drinking fast and then we talk slow..."

Damn, she really liked this song, she realised, as she began to get into it. She started to zone out a little, focusing less on her music and more on the groove, bopping her head, and then her shoulders, in time to the beat. She felt the smile grow across her face as she moved into the chorus, the infectious rhythm spreading across her body.

She heard someone join in with a deep, pounding pulse and looked up to see Joel drumming his hands against the bucket he was sitting on. A couple of seconds later, Ash had picked up the ostinato on the violin. With the heavy drumbeat and the violin in the background, the song started to fill out, taking on shape, structure.

Fran started to experiment with the chords, changing up the rhythm, the notes, letting her imagination fill the spaces in the music. The energy increased until it was something vibrant, tangible, sparking across her fingers and into her body as she played. Her voice was strong now, swelling with energy and life. She barely recognised Ash adding a new, more complex change to the violin melody, Joel bringing a low harmony during the middle eight. She was having too much fun.

She didn't want the song to end. She repeated the last few bars a couple more times, bringing the middle eight back into the chorus so her words twisted with Joel's, complimenting each other. But finally, she let the chords drop, the electric notes fizzle out into silence. She refocused: she was back at the beach in the dark, with the warm night air lacing through her hair and feathering against her skin.

From behind them came the sounds of sparse applause.

"How was that?" she said breathlessly, looking up at the others. For a second, as she glanced up, she caught sight of Darius' expression: a kind of wide-eyed, intense wistfulness that surprised her for a second until he looked away.

Joel whistled. "Good. Shit, Fran. That was probably the most fun I've had with my hat on. Buuut, it's not me you need to convince."

"What?"

Joel gestured behind them, to the people milling around in front of the restaurants and pubs on the promenade, and presumably stretching to the entire village of Seacombe. "It's them, Fran."

"Ohh," Fran said. "So it's kinda like a taster session."

"Yeah, think of it like that," Joel nodded. He had been tapping absently on the bucket whilst they were talking, but suddenly he sped up, hammering out a fast paced rhythm, alternating clapping and stamping to form a complex beat. "Here, you know this one, Fran?" he asked.

She didn't, but recognised it immediately when he started to sing.

"Cecelia, you're breaking my heart, you're shaking my confidence daily..."

Fran tapped her foot against the sand to pick up the beat, and then jumped in with the guitar, singing along. "O-Oh, Cecelia: I'm down on my knees, I'm begging you please, to come home."

She didn't know how to harmonise, but a couple of bars after she joined in with the tune, Joel shifted up a little bit so their voices overlaid each other, neatly in sync. They soon got into a flow. Once they'd finished Cecelia, Fran started playing another song. The others picked it up straight from the opening chords and by the end of the introduction were already in full swing. Fran loved how quickly they picked up on the way she played: once or twice, when she was feeling really adventurous she'd do something a little crazy like repeat a section or modulate, and generally they seamlessly followed her.

The night deepened. They started to draw a crowd: first one or two passers-by, intrigued by the music they were playing. More often than not they stayed for another song, or requested their own, and the crowd grew, attracting more people with that mysterious gravity that crowds have. Soon it was a sizeable group. Some brought instruments, but most were there to listen, sing along and dance.

The music grew louder, messier, wilder. Songs came in a constant stream: midway through playing one she'd think of another she wanted to play, or someone would shout out a suggestion. The night was alive with noise. Fran played until her fingers hurt; sometimes she'd take a break, and once or twice someone else asked to borrow her guitar and led the next few songs until she'd recovered enough to continue. In the downtime she bought a bottle of cider from one of the pubs and drank and watched the crowd that had formed, singing and swaying along to the music, not quite believing what they'd just done.

Joel was spontaneous, versatile: mostly he drummed on the bucket and sang harmonies. Once or twice he beatboxed instead of drumming, and on occasion he'd hum a little improvised bassline instead of singing when the feeling took him. But he brought energy no matter what he was doing. You could never tell what was happening, with him. Ash, on the other hand, stuck to the violin. Sometimes, when they did a song she really liked, she would start swaying from side to side, and sometimes escalated to dancing around a little as she played, moving gracefully, shamelessly, through the crowd.

Darius didn't dance, but he stayed, and sometimes he tapped his fingers against his knee in time to the beat; and sometimes he started to hum along a little bit to a catchy phrase of music they played; and sometimes Fran caught him looking at her in that same wistful, far-away manner he had earlier. Fran could sense: he was enjoying the music, in his own way. But something about him was trying his hardest not to. She wanted to ask him about it, ask him what could be so pressing on his mind that he would completely refuse to lose himself in the music the way she did when something was getting to her, but she wasn't sure how to phrase the question. And she was sure he wouldn't give her a straight answer, if he answered at all.

And then someone would request a song she really liked, and that infectious wave of energy would sweep her up again, firing endless melodies into the night.

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