Vinyl

This short sample from Jude Davison offers a show-not-tell. We are left hanging, like the arm on a record player, wondering where the music went.

‘Shall we do this box next?’ Margaret began to pull away the cardboard tabs that had been neatly tucked inside each other and peered inside.

‘Natalie, come and look at this.’ She handed her daughter a couple of vinyl records – T-Rex, David Bowie, Roxy Music.

‘Wow, these are so cool,’ said Natalie, turning them over in her hands, admiring them.

‘Records,’ said Margaret, ‘your grandfather was a collector, a real music nut.’

‘These are really old,’ said Natalie, looking over the back covers, ‘early seventies.’

‘Grandad would have been eleven or twelve at the time, likely the first music he ever bought.’

‘Did you have records in your day, mom?’ Margaret shook her head.

‘CDs,’ she said, ‘vinyl had long gone when I was growing up, CDs were supposed to be an improvement in sound quality, indestructible they claimed, that’s what we listened to. The Black-Eyed Peas, Jay-Z, Kanye West. Great memories that really take me back.’

‘Can we play one of these?’ said Natalie. Margaret moved over to where the stereo sat on the dusty sideboard and flicked the on switch.

‘God, lemme see if I can remember how to do this,’ she said, taking the record out of its sleeve and carefully placing it onto the turntable. She lifted the arm and moved it across the black plastic disc, the record began to spin, and she gently placed the needle down just as she’d watched her father do so a thousand times before. Nothing happened. No sound.

‘It doesn’t seem to be playing,’ said Margaret, ‘not sure why not, I don’t really know how these things work, if I’m being honest.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Natalie, ‘maybe l can find the song on my phone.’ She tapped and swiped a few times, and soon had Bowie’s ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ playing out of the tinny speaker. The two of them listened for a minute or so.

‘Nirvana did this song,’ said Margaret, ‘on their unplugged album. I still have the CD.’

‘Who are they?’ asked her daughter.

‘Nirvana – they were grunge, the sound of the nineties really – Kurt Cobain was a tortured genius. But I thought he was kinda cute.’

‘Are they still around?’

‘No,’ said Margaret, lifting the vinyl off the turntable and carefully placing it back into its sleeve. ‘Kurt Cobain killed himself. He left behind a wife and little girl. It was such a shock, such a tragedy.’ Natalie switched off her phone and returned it to her pocket.

‘Mom,’ she said, ‘how did grandpa die?’ Margaret stared at the old piece of vinyl in her hands, it really was a thing from an era gone by, although, vinyl records were making a comeback, or so she’d read somewhere.

‘I think Grandpa died of a broken heart,’ said Margaret, putting the record back into the box, ‘after grandma passed away, he didn’t have the will to carry on anymore. You could say that he simply lost hope.’

‘But didn’t he . . .?’ Natalie let the sentence hang in the air, unfinished, and then mother and daughter, without speaking, began to re-tape the box closed, in readiness for drop off at the charity shop.