Chapter 30

The Wedding

Whenever The Works had returned home from their previous overseas jaunts, the punters in Leeds invariably noticed a marked change in their playing. The ensemble always tended to become tighter and sharper, performing several new tunes and generally displaying an ever more professional approach.

The last couple of times we had returned with pockets full and looking forward to further successes. This homecoming was different. It still remained to be seen whether Xero would make a full recovery. The bank manager at the local NatWest refused to allow either Xero or I any further credit. My overdraft, which was supposed to have been paid off with the income from the tour, was now a major millstone around my neck. I had to forget about future fortunes and focus instead on getting a job. A "real" job. I applied to work in the peanut butter factory at a local wholefood warehouse and to my immense surprise, I was accepted.

Holding an infinite number of jars under infinite splotches of peanut butter from the machine and screwing an infinite number of lids in place was never going to be fun. But it provided some welcome mindless times when I could reflect on life on the road with The Works. I also pondered on my earlier travels to places further afield, particularly the too few months I had spent in Brisbane with Rani. I remembered the richness of the colours at sunrise and sunset, the trumpet shaped purple jacaranda flowers, and I remembered the two of us sitting chatting and holding each other beneath the waterfall in the tropical rainforest.

The seemingly endless flow of peanut butter also provided a wage so that I could begin to pay off my debts and start to think about somehow circumnavigating the planet which now separated the two of us. After the collapse of the tour, I retreated to an attic room in Leeds. I found solace in the thrice weekly letters which Rani and I began to send to one another. We exchanged hopes, beliefs, jokes, poems, stories, fears and dreams and found they pretty well matched up. Even though we had not set eyes on each other for four years, we had talked on the phone a couple of times. We both knew that there was a very special spark that we shared. I think it was a kept alight by a common sense of irony, a way of looking at the world slightly askance.

Louis and Gene were both obviously shaken by fate's roll of the dice but their innately optimistic natures helped them to be uniformly encouraging for Xero. They were his rhythm section in life as in their ensemble. The realisation that we are all mortal affects us all in different ways, and while Xero became more internalised their youthful enthusiasm for life shone through. If they were disappointed at having to cancel their tour they certainly never showed it. They appeared to be OK.

They were able to play in other ensembles - after all, that is what jazz musicians do - and they were able to do studio session work and busking as well. Xero sank back into a life of domesticity while he recuperated. The marriage was a grand celebration. The pair of them looked radiant as they made their vows. Xero gave a classic speech at the reception, erudite as ever.

" I am, She is, We are. Thank you very much!"

At the hospital in Dortmund, Xero had learnt that his tumour hovered somewhere between benign and malignant. It was going to be a matter of time before he knew whether the operation and the subsequent radiotherapy had rid his body of every last bit of the unwanted cancerous cells. He had to have indelible crosses and lines marked on his cranium to help the radiologists find the right spots when he went for his daily Zaps. He asked one of them what was there in his brain now that the lump had been removed. They informed him that brain fluid had gathered were once his brain tissue had been.

Xero spent the rest of the day plastering and painting walls in the attic and occasionally shaking his head from side to side and feeling and listening for the sloshing of the fluid. In regular breaks from the DIY he would manically attack the beaten up old piano which was also up there in the attic. It was a stand up piano with the front ripped off and its innards bared. He was writing a new opus for dozens of instruments. It only took three weeks before he was ready to try his hand at performing again. He did a show with The Works at the Cardigan Arms and although he was a little restrained - as was to be expected - the night went off without any problems, which was a relief for everyone, musicians, administrator and audience alike.

After the gig, the three of them informed me that it was with "great regret" that they were "letting me go". The Works tried once again to do the re-booked tour. They succeeded this time and were the subjects of much adulation. While they were in Koln, they recorded a second album of their tunes, this time in Schnaffel's studio. If it was hard to capture the essence of The Works with a recording of a live gig, it was infinitely harder to record a studio album which does so.

"Up Down" is a remarkable beast, not least for the sublime rendering of "Eric's Window". The whole album retains the sense of adventure and the humorous charm from the first album - it is most certainly Not a Serious Jazz Recording. But somehow the wildness and rawness of "Shove It" has been lost. Still, definitive versions of such Slingsby Classics as the tital track, "The Allegroes", "Marabel", "Up Yours", "Blue Material", "Free Snake Davis" and "Unicycling" were finally committed to Vinyl. The final track, "The End", never fails to conjure up visions of Xero strolling off, his plaintive saxophone trailing away into the night

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