Open Writing

A short time ago I met an honourable man, and was witness to an act of complete selflessness.

Whoa, you go. The hell you say.

It says something sad about the times in which we live that such a simple thing could be so remarkable, but there you go. It occurred in Melbourne, Australia and, regardless of your thoughts on honour in business, it nevertheless happened.

I was in Melbourne on a shopping trip with my wife and daughter, having recently taken early retirement due to a combination of good fortune and hard work. After years of rejection, of thousands of lonely hours slaving over my old Panasonic electronic typewriter and later, as my marginally improving fortunes allowed, my word processor, writing my stories in a succession of cold basements, I was offered a contract for my novel.

Out of the blue. Just like that. And not just any contract. With me, when the golden eagle shits, he either does it not at all, or copiously. There doesn’t seem to be too much middle ground in his crumenal bowel movements. Constipation or diarrhoea, it seems, are the only options available to me.

As if to demonstrate this, the publishers liked the novel so much, they offered me a huge advance, seven figures. Clearly, they thought it was a certain bestseller - it subsequently was - and to say I was bowled over would be to seriously, almost criminally, understate the case. I was jumping out of my skin. Just having a novel published has been described as being like winning the lottery. Having it become a bestseller is like winning it again.

We did all the things we always said we would do should such an unlikely event ever occur. After taking advantage of the benefits of the ridiculous exchange rate between the currencies of the US and New Zealand – the Greenback was worth about NZ$2.30 at the time - we bought a property in the country. We also shared some of the wealth with our families, bought a few things we never thought we’d be able to afford, then invested safely in fixed term accounts with well-established banks and settled down to enjoy the fruits of my labours. After a life of only a little luck, and most of that of the bad variety, we were at last well and truly in the black. But in the midst of all this hoopla, there was a serious personal problem that had to be addressed.

*

Only partly because of the sedentary nature of my profession - and probably more because of my love of good food and wine - I had been badly overweight for several years. This had lately become a matter of increasing concern - although, at least initially, more to my family than to me. Dire warnings of heart attacks and strokes, which I had chosen to ignore, had been directed my way for some time. Oddly, considering my lifestyle, my health had always been good; I was rarely ill, hardly ever caught a cold, and at my last checkup – to the consternation of family and friends – my doctor had told me my cholesterol level was normal. Still, I had for some time felt I was riding my luck, and I decided I’d better do something about it, since even I was forced to admit that things had reached the serious stage.

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight, and been unsuccessful at it, you might have some sympathy for my position on the subject, which is that it is more difficult to succeed when your financial state is poor. Perversely, it somehow costs more to eat less, because to do so you have to eat well – read expensively - which is why so many of our nation’s poor are overweight. Now, however, I no longer had that excuse, so I girded my loins, squared my sloping shoulders, and determined that this time I would succeed. I would take the weight off and, more importantly, I would keep it off.

The house we had bought was a sixty-five year old villa, beautifully positioned on ten acres of rolling land near Motueka, at the northern tip of the South Island of New Zealand. When the real estate agent first showed it to us, we thought it was the closest thing to paradise on earth we’d ever seen. The property sloped gently down to the Motueka River, where trout just begged to be caught, and majestic mountains rose up and towered over the valley.
The house itself had a large basement the size of the entire floor area, and I turned one of the rooms there into a gymnasium, then set to work. Every morning I would spend up to an hour on a variety of exercise machines: stepper, home gym, exercycle, weights, rowing machine, you name it.

As I had expected, the first few weeks were very hard. I had sworn off the booze for the duration, and was eating less than half of what I had become accustomed to over the past ten years or so, but I persevered. Every morning, without exception; first, just a half-hour, in the morning, before what was laughingly referred to as breakfast. Then as the pounds began to melt away, I started an afternoon session as well, on the days when I wasn’t playing golf.

To my delight, I shed weight like our Afghan hound sheds hair. In the first month, I lost twenty-five pounds; in the second, twenty. By the second week of the third month, having started my regimen at three hundred and four pounds, I was down to just two forty-five. Over the next five months, I toned my body and lost another fifty-five pounds, ending up at an amazing one ninety even.

I had not been that weight in more than thirteen years - ever since I had given up smoking - and to say I was delighted would be another enormous understatement. I was ecstatic! It had happened in a short enough time so that I could still just remember what it was like to be so overweight. When I walked, I felt so incredibly light on my feet, I thought I could almost take off and fly. The tension headaches I had suffered for years disappeared; they were due, I was told, to my carrying around a forty-pound basketball at my midriff. I’m still a pretty big guy, over six feet, so I was now at my optimum weight.

One area in which I noticed considerable change was in the clothes I was now able to wear. For years, my normal attire had been sweat pants and any shirt that could be worn outside them in a pathetic attempt to hide my stomach. Of course, it did nothing of the kind, but I thought the alternative - my gut hanging over a belt - was much worse. Now at last, things sartorial were about to change.

School holidays were due in about six weeks, so I suggested to my wife that we take that holiday we had talked about ever since our ship, so to speak, had come in. Neither of us had had a real holiday since our honeymoon, so we decided to make it a good one. We would incorporate an overseas trip with a clothes-buying spree. I had spent a few weeks in Melbourne in the nineteen sixties, and remembered it as the fashion capital of Australia. It was only three hours away by air, so I suggested we make that our destination. It was agreed, and arrangements were made.

While I had been busy getting in shape, the book had been published to much acclaim and best-selling success. The movie deal had netted us even more, and the paperback rights had gone for a sum that could only be described as galactic. The fact that I appeared to have only the one book in me did not matter all that much, although I am still writing. I have never been one of those authors you hear about, like King or Koontz, who say they have to write, because it’s something they have to do in order to live, like breathing. I’ve never been that deep or that obsessive about my writing. I don’t mind admitting, it’s always been mainly about the money, and I was happy because we were at last financially secure.

Six weeks later we departed from Christchurch Airport bound for the Land of Oz, flying first-class for the first time in our lives, our wallets stuffed with traveller’s cheques and credit cards. We landed at Tullamarine Airport, a place I had not seen for thirty-six years. During the taxi ride into the city, little seemed familiar; so much had changed, and so much time had passed. The magnificent Elizabeth Street railway station was still there, of course; the Aussies are not as fast as we Kiwis are to knock down their historic buildings in the name of progress. Consequently, the central city had not changed as much as Auckland had during that time.

We checked into the best hotel in town, and for the next four days indulged ourselves as only the nouveau riche can, spending up large with no concern for the cost for the first time in our lives.
It reminded me of an interview I had once seen with the British rock star, Phil Collins, on some ‘Lifestyles of the Rich’ kind of show. He said he still lived in the part of London where he had grown up, and still occasionally shopped at his local supermarket where everybody had known him all of his life.

“I still shop at the same place”, he said wryly, “only now I don’t care what it costs.”

For me, that simple statement, delivered with absolutely zero boasting, has always summed up what it would be like to be rich. Now, we were enjoying the same thing; it was a wonderful time, and by the end of those four days we had bought enormous wardrobes for our daughter and ourselves.

Jackets, trousers, skirts, dresses, pants, shirts, blouses, sweaters, suits, jeans and shoes, shoes, shoes; you name it, we got it. Then, on the fifth and last day, I went looking for something I had resolved to try to find thirty-five years before, should I ever get back to Melbourne. Let me explain.

Back in the nineteen-sixties, I was a professional musician, playing in a pop band in New Zealand. We worked the clubs of Auckland: the Shiralee, the Top Twenty, the Platterrack, the Monaco, the Beatle Inn and all the others. We made something of a name for ourselves locally, put out a couple of records, then in 1965 went to Australia for what was supposed to be an extended stay. Unfortunately, the club where we were booked to play burned down the day before we arrived – remember that luck I talked about? - and for a while we scratched a living in Sydney and Melbourne, finding what work we could. It was, to say the least, a less than successful tour and we found ourselves back home little more than three and a half months later.

Back in Auckland, we discovered that work was even harder to come by; in just fifteen weeks, the pop world had forgotten us, passed us by. Now, there was no room in the club scene for us - this being in the days when the pubs closed at six o’clock, and had no live entertainment - and we were forced to look outside Auckland.

Fortunately, early in 1966 we found a gig only eighty miles south in Hamilton, a medium-sized provincial city in the heart of some of the best farmland in the world. The place was a small coffee lounge upstairs over an arcade in the main drag, Victoria Street. The area around Hamilton was full of well-to-do farmers, and most of them had kids, particularly daughters, who were looking for a good time. The town’s nightlife was sparse, and the club turned out to be a surprisingly good scene, with quite a few…interesting liaisons for the boys in the band. Anyway, we played there for about nine months until it all turned to custard, and the band broke up. During this time, I bought two guitars. The first was second-hand, the other was new, and the first was by far the one more worth hanging on to.

Let me explain something about guitars, especially the so-called ‘vintage’ models from America. Certain electric guitars, mainly Gibsons and Fenders, actually appreciate in value as the years go by, some by a greater percentage of their original value than a house. The first of the two I bought was one of these, although I did not really know it at the time.

I was walking up the main street of Hamilton one day, when I passed a second-hand shop, more of a junk shop, really. Hanging in the window was a Gibson ES 335, the sort of guitar used by Chuck Berry, Eric Clapton in his Cream years, Roy Orbison, B.B. King and, more recently, by Michael J. Fox in the movie, Back To The Future. It was cherry-red and dusty and old-looking and magnificent; God help me, it might even have been a fabled ’59 or ’60 model; I never knew for sure. Anyway, I stood there for a few minutes looking at this rose among thorns and at the price tag: sixty pounds, or one hundred and twenty dollars, then went inside. Ten minutes later, I had traded the George Harrison-style Gretsch I had been using, and walked out of the shop clutching my prize.

I used that wonderful guitar for a few months; then, as is often the way with us poor musicians, I found myself in desperate need of cash. Reluctantly, I took the Gibson to a music shop and traded it for a new Fender Telecaster, a much cheaper guitar, plus some cash. I don’t remember how much, but I do remember it was a very bad bargain. Still, beggars and choosers and all that; besides, what did I know? I was twenty years old, for God’s sake.

There was really no such thing as vintage guitars in those days, anyway. Back then, the oldest electric guitars were only about ten years old. How was I to know that, if I had kept that Gibson, it might have been worth as much as five thousand dollars today? Or that, if it had indeed been a 1959 or ’60 model, the figure would have been closer to twenty thousand! Even now, with our newfound wealth, it still makes me weep just to think about it.

Anyway, about two weeks after my injudicious but unavoidable transaction, the band was offered a one-week stint at our old stamping ground, the Shiralee nightclub in Auckland. We jumped at the chance to be near our families again, and to play at a real club back in “The Smoke”, especially one we knew so well.

We were playing one night, early in the week; the club was about half full, and things were going pretty well. Towards the end of the evening, an incident occurred that I didn’t think much of at the time, but which had dire consequences for me later.

There were a few people on the dance floor; one of them, an English sailor off one of the merchant ships docked just down the road at Prince’s wharf, took exception to the songs were playing. He wanted Rolling Stones, and we were a Beatle band; Mods and Rockers, all that sixties stuff. Eventually, he scowled at me and said, in a broad Liverpool accent, “Why don’t you play some f..... decent music?”

I was tired, I admit it, and this joker had been giving us stick for some time, so I turned to him and said, “If you don’t like it, why don’t you just f... off?”

I got a dirty look, but nothing more was said, and since you got that sort of thing from time to time, the incident was quickly forgotten. Or so I thought. We finished the night, and I went home to my parent’s place where I was staying, and thought no more about it. That is, until we arrived at the club the next night.

I went into the backstage room where we stored our gear. The previous night, instead of taking my guitar home, I had left it in this room, in its case. See what’s coming? Thought you might. The case was there, and when I went to it and opened it, I could not at first comprehend what I was seeing. Or, more accurately, not seeing. My guitar was gone! Inquiries revealed nothing, until one of the guys who sometimes hung around the club said he saw a pommy – English - seaman taking a guitar on board one of the ships at the docks just down the road. We called the cops, but it was too late; the ship had sailed, and there was nothing I could do.

Well, that pretty much finished us as a band. I couldn’t afford to buy another guitar, and the club owners didn’t offer to pay for it out of their insurance, although they could easily have done so. Bastards. Anyway, we went back to Hamilton where I used a rough-as-guts homemade guitar for a while, but it was no good. Some of the heart, the desire, as Billy Joel says, “to let music set me on fire”, had gone out of me, and the band broke up soon after that anyway, when our drummer ran off with the club-owner’s wife. I tell you, never a dull moment in the music business.

Over the years I have played in other bands, even went back to Australia for a few years, but I never regained that youthful enthusiasm for the music business. Nor did I ever get back to Melbourne again. A short time after the theft, a friend of mine, a guitarist in a very well-known New Zealand band at the time told me that he had seen my guitar in a shop in Melbourne. The shop owner had told him that he had bought it from an English seaman for cash, and it had not had a case. Again, there was nothing I could do, and that feeling of helplessness, that impotent rage and frustration, represented a very low point in my life.

*

Now, thirty-five years later as I walked down Elizabeth Street on a sunny Victorian day, these thoughts returned to me. I was wearing an outfit I had dreamed of wearing for about fifteen years, since the last time had been in the kind of shape to be able to wear it. Jeans, cowboy boots, a long-sleeved white shirt and a black leather jerkin. OK, out of date now, but if you think that worried me, you must have me mistaken for someone who gives a shit.

I passed several music stores, and after a quick look in each of them continued on my way. Finally, I found a small, darkened shop up one of the side streets down by the station. I couldn’t see much through the grimy windows, so I went in.

The interior was dingy; guitars hung from the ceiling like sausages on Oktoberfest, and everything was covered in a fine layer of dust. As I walked around the shop, I saw that there were quite a lot of older guitars. I looked closer, and saw a 1968 Gibson Les Paul, several older Fenders, Gretsches and Rickenbackers, and a lot of amplifiers. A veritable treasure-trove of vintage gear, and all at pretty reasonable prices. As I inspected this unanticipated discovery, a small man came out of the rear of the shop, wiping his hands on a piece of muslin.

“Can I help you, sir?” he inquired, in a faintly European accent.

I turned and looked at him. He was, as I have said, small, a good head and more shorter than me, and appeared to be aged somewhere either side of seventy. He wore dark trousers with braces, a striped shirt with a bow tie, and a pair of pince-nez perched on the end of his prominent nose.

“Just looking, thanks,” I said automatically. Then, on an impulse, added, “You wouldn’t happen to have any old Telecasters among this lot, would you?”

He regarded me for a moment, then said, “Excuse me,” and disappeared into the rear of the shop. A few moments later he returned carrying a guitar I recognized as a Fender ‘Tele’. He passed it over the counter, and I examined it closely.

It was white, as many of the old ones were, and was beginning to yellow with age. The scratch plate had been painted black at some stage - its original white was showing through in places - and my heart began to race. I had painted my stolen guitar in that fashion after I had seen the English group The Yardbirds in Auckland. Their guitarist, Jeff Beck, had painted his Tele in that way and I had thought it looked cool. Still do, actually. I had owned another one in Australia in 1969, and I had done it in the same way. As casually as I could, I asked what year it was.

“That is a 1966,” he replied.

Feigning disinterest, I asked how he had come by it.

“Well,” he said, “it’s interesting that you should ask. This is the third time I have had that particular guitar in my shop. I record all the serial numbers, you see. The last time was about fifteen years ago, and the first time was...”

I didn’t let him finish. Taking a chance, I said, “The first time was in 1966. You bought it for cash off an English merchant seaman, and it didn’t have a case.”

He stared at me curiously. “You would seem to know more about this instrument than I,” he said. “May I ask how...?”

I looked at the guitar fondly, and said, “Because that bastard stole this guitar from me in Auckland, thirty - five years ago.”

I stood there holding my long-lost guitar, and for a few moments, nothing was said. The little man and I looked at each other in the dimness, the weak afternoon sunlight slanting through the windows, dust motes dancing on the air. It was a singular moment in time, and it seemed that the world was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.

Finally, I said, “I know I can’t prove any of this, but I swear it’s true. Anyway, I must have this guitar. I’ll give you whatever you want for it.”

He looked at me over the top of his glasses for a moment longer, then his eyes softened and he smiled. “My friend,” he said, “your words have the unmistakable ring of truth about them. I did indeed acquire the guitar in the manner in which you have described. It has been to my everlasting shame that I knew it was not an entirely kosher deal, but the bargain was too good to pass up.” He removed his glasses and began polishing them on a handkerchief which he took from his trouser pocket, then continued.

“That moment of dishonesty has troubled me over the years, but at last I have the opportunity to set things right.” He reached out and touched the guitar once more, then said, “Take it. It belongs to you.”

I stared at him, unable to believe what he was saying. “But, but,” I sputtered, “it must be worth…” I groped for the price tag; it read $2500, a good deal, considering the guitar’s vintage.

The man smiled, and overrode my protestations. “You must,” he said. “I insist. It is time it went at last to its rightful owner. And besides, it is a question of ethics, you see.” He paused for a moment, a look of concern on his face, then said, “But I fear it still has no case of its own. Let me just go and get you something to put it in.” He walked off into the back room again, leaving me holding the guitar.

A few moments later he returned, carrying a new Fender guitar case. He laid it on the counter and took the guitar from me. “I am happy to have been given a chance to right this wrong after all this time,” he said, “and I know it goes to a good home.”

He smiled, and opened the case, showing the soft, velvet interior.

I stood there for a moment, then said, “No, hang on a minute, this isn’t right. You had no way of knowing it was stolen. Even if you did suspect, that sort of thing happens all the time, and you had no way of checking. If you hadn’t bought it, someone else would have. I think that makes me kind of lucky.”

He began to protest, but I went on. “No, look, I’ll tell you what. When this guitar was stolen from me, the thief didn’t take the case. He left it behind, and only took the guitar. Probably easier to stick up his sweater, or something.”

The man nodded. “Probably, but…”

“So,” I continued, “you might feel you owe me a guitar, but you certainly do not owe me a case. Therefore, I’ll pay you for it.”

Over his protests, I took out my wallet. I had just that morning cashed some traveller’s checks, and the wallet was bulging with colourful Australian banknotes. Even, or perhaps especially when we were broke, I had always enjoyed having money in my pocket. Now, because I’m still pretty big and intimidating to most would-be thieves, it’s my habit to walk around carrying quite a lot of it. Did I mention I’d been studying and training in Tae Kwon Do since I began losing weight? Go ahead, muggers, make my day. That was another dream, and another story. Anyway, I proceeded to lay most of my cash on the counter.

“Now,” I said, “that looks like a pretty fine case to me. In fact, it looks so fine, I feel obliged to offer you $2500 dollars for it. I could not, in all good conscience, pay anything less for such a magnificent case.” I smiled at him, and added, “It’s a question of ethics, you see.”

Both of us knew the case was only worth, at best, $200, and he began to protest. I said nothing, just picked up the wad of notes and held it out to him. His protests died away and, with a small smile and a nod of his head, he acquiesced and took the money, then shook my hand.

I took the guitar from him and put it in its case and, after a final nod, carried it out of the shop into the street. The sun felt good on my face, as if I had done something honourable, even ethical. But I knew with whom the honour lay.

As I walked off down the street, I realized I had not asked his name. Somehow, that felt about right.

***