This theory slots seamlessly with Fraser’s, it almost feels as if Beau is delivering a message from him. I rub the goosebumps on my arms. But if the idea is true, that means there either is orisn’t a whole body of music existing now in my future. I shiver at the notion that there might not be any, that I might stagger on like this forever and never really write again in a way that I’m proud of—the headline-making, knocking-it-out-of-the-park stuff IknowI can do if I just reach for it again.
‘Play it for me?’ he says.
‘Fraser’s song?’
The request triggers a shock wave of stage fright.
‘It’s really not a road trip kind of thing.’ I can’t taint it, having it play over the drum of the engine, while we pass semitrailers and grey nomads and road signs that say,Wrong Way Go BackandRoad Works Speed Limits Enforced.
‘I had a complaint once from a neighbour. A note slipped under the door of my apartment after I’d been playing it on loop at top volume, sobbing. All I’d wanted to do wasroarthe music, bloodletting my agony through the notes. Do you know what I mean?’
His eyes are firmly fixed on the road as he nods.
‘The note was in all caps,’ I tell him. ‘STOP THAT FUCKING RACKET.’
Beau lifts his foot from the pedal instantly, as if he’s been personally assaulted by my neighbour’s ruthless insult. Next, he’s swinging off the highway onto a side road covered in thick shrubs. He takes a sharp right, down a dirt track that the ute gobbles in a way that thrills my inner adrenaline junkie, but I’ve got Sara’s voice in my head, concerned about our sudden change of direction. I clutch the door handle and say, ‘You’re not a murderer after all, are you?’
‘Trust me.’ He is focused on the bumpy four-wheel-drive track until eventually we arrive in a deserted dirt car park at a headland overlooking the ocean, the ute coming to a stop ina cloud of dust that clears over a breathtaking vista of endless blue. I imagine we can almost see all the way to New Zealand.
‘How did you know this was here?’ I ask, unclasping the seatbelt’s latch and leaning forward.
‘Scouted every lookout up and down the coast for a film scene.’
Ah, that’s right.
‘I don’t mean to brag, Hepburn, but this vehicle has nineteen speakers.’
He passes the auxiliary cable while the ocean crashes on the rocks beneath us and I look into his steady, patient gaze. I’ve never heard Fraser’s piece outside my own living room and in the chapel at his funeral, or while playing it hundreds of times through headphones at a volume so loud it’s probably damaged my hearing. I recorded two versions. The one I sent to Josh, drunk, the night I wrote it, and a more refined example for posterity, which I tried to record sober. The former has my heart.
My fingers shake as I plug in my phone and fumble to the private SoundCloud account, hovering over the play button while Beau waits patiently for me to summon the courage I need to share this. At the funeral, I was desperate for the tune to sink deep into everyone’s heart so they’d get it:Can you feel it? This is what he meant to me!
Do I need Beau to understand that, too? To see how deeply I have loved. To know what I’m capable of in this department. Emotionally? Musically?
It’s not just about Fraser. It’s that half terror, half thrill of handing someone an example of what you can do and who you are as an artist.
He seems to take my uncertainty and instinctively understand that this would be easier if we weren’t trapped inside asmall space. He dials the volume to max on the stereo, opens his door, walks to the front of the ute, gives me a hint of a smile, then pushes himself up on the bonnet, swinging to face the ocean.
I stare at his broad back and shoulders through the wind-screen. I don’t even know this man, but without looking back at my phone, I press play, pulse racing.
The usually soft introductory bars belt through his speakers and grow into the first three lines as I listen to the familiar melody, in an unfamiliar way. Beau tilts forward and rests his elbows on his knees as I open my door.
When I reach the front of the ute, I realise he’s not staring at the waves at all. He has his eyes shut, listening. Salt spray whips my skin, and strands of hair blow wildly across my face as I push myself up beside him. Fraser’s piece soars while the bonnet vibrates with the music beneath us, the wind carrying the notes, scattering them, like ashes, from this cliff.
I place my palms flat on the warm metal of the bonnet, the rhythm pumping into me and through me like a thumping heartbeat, working up to the crescendo I know is coming, the one that always makes me want to scream, though I never have. You can’t let yourself go like that in a city apartment. You’d have the authorities on your doorstep.
It’s like Beau isn’t even here. Suddenly I’ve kicked off my shoes. I’m pushing myself to my feet, standing on the bonnet now, barefoot, music thundering through my soles, coursing up my legs and through my body, dress flapping against my thighs, hair flying, trapped grief surging, unleashing, while I sense the noise raging through me … up, up, up … and finally belting out of my mouth in a scream that doesn’t sound like my own, and will never be too much, or too loud, because we’re a match now—the wild ocean and me.
And suddenly there’s no music left. Nothing to hear. Nothing left to voice.
Just the waves again. And me standing on the bonnet of Beau Davenport’s ute on a clifftop while he sits calmly at my feet, as if he wouldn’t have directed this scene in any other way.
Eventually I sit again. I draw my knees to my chest and hug them. I desperately want to explain what just happened, but can’t find the words. I mean, who just stands up on someone’s car bonnet, screeching into the void?
I turn to face him. ‘Beau—’
He puts a hand on my knee, briefly, to silence me, before he looks back out to sea, at a storm brewing on the horizon. There’s a long pause, during which every cell in my body seems to tingle and vibrate the way they used to with alcohol, now with the powerful charge of three years of emotional release.
Eventually he turns to me and clears his throat. Blue eyes glisten as he says, in a voice that aches with a disarming blend of compassion and admiration, ‘No notes, Hepburn. Not a single one.’
