Free Jog On Fat Barry by Kevin Cotter Page B

the instructions I’d shown him and put it on. When I asked if it was working, he leapt back.
    “ Was ist dieses? ” he cried out.
    He began asking me questions, quickly and in German. I had no idea what he was trying to say. Then the First Movement of the 9th began to play somewhere above us. Beethoven cocked his ear toward the music and then hurried out the door. I followed him: running up one spiral staircase that led to another, and along a narrow landing that brought us to a door, that opened onto the backstage of the Kärntnertortheater proper. And from there, Beethoven sidled up to Kapellmeister Umlauf and began to conduct the 9th himself.
    He gesticulated like a lunatic. His arms shot up and down. He weaved, twirled and looped. It was as if Beethoven was playing each and every instrument himself: as if his was the only voice singing. Every musician followed his tempo and his tempo alone. And at the very end of it all, one of the soloists, Karoline Unger, turned Beethoven around so that he could see the wild cheers and applause of the audience.
    Of course, Unger and the others thought Beethoven was unaware of the thunderous applause because he was mutton and couldn’t hear. But they didn’t know that Beethoven had Granddad’s hearing aid, and that he himself had heard every single note: all the open fifths, fourths, and what have you. They honoured Beethoven and his magnificent symphony, but never knew that the tears running down the Master’s flushed red face were tears of joy, because he’d been able to hear his magnificent No. 9 for the very first time.
    I must have blinked or sneezed or something. I shut my eyes for the briefest of moments, but it was time enough for that genie to transport me back to Somers Town. I was back in the kitchen, sitting on the floor with the Ludwig Van Beethoven book upended beside me, and Granddad’s oil lamp in my hands.
    “Oh shit,” I groaned, reaching into my trouser pocket and pulling out Granddad’s spare battery. “If I’d only given him these he might have finished the 10th.”
    I heard the front door open and then shut. Moments later my dad was standing in the doorway shaking snowflakes off his coat.
    “Hello, son,” he said. “What you doing on the floor… and who you talking to?”
    He walked over to the sink and shut the window.
    “Fancy a cuppa?” he asked, switching on the kettle.
    I watched him spoon some tea into the pot as the kettle began to boil. He took two mugs from the cupboard; spooned some sugar into them. Then he began to whistle.
    “Blimey,” he said when he saw the oil lamp. “I haven’t seen that for a long time.”
    “Granddad pinched that,” I told him, getting up. “Took it off a German officer at an archaeological site on the banks of the Euphrates in 1944.”
    “Don’t be bloody daft,” he said, getting milk out of the fridge and pouring a little into each mug. “The silly old sod won that on the rifle range at Battersea Fun Fair when I was a few years younger than you are.”
    The kettle came to the boil and Dad filled the pot. We sat at the table waiting for the tea to brew. Wind rattled the window. He glanced at the Chelsea scarf tied around my neck and his eyes began to well. He picked up the teapot and filled the two mugs. Little swirls of steam hovered above them. I asked him if he’d ever believed that magic genies lived in oil lamps. He told me he’d believed in all sorts of things when he was a boy: said believing in magic was how some people coped with their fears, and anxieties, and boredom.
    “It’s what you do when things go pear-shaped,” he said.
    “Our world went pear when Frank died,” I said back.
    Dad looked at me for a moment and then looked away. He picked up the oil lamp.
    “I remember when my old man won this,” he said. “He was just back from the war. Took Mum and me to the fun fair, and he hit that bull’s eye every time.”
    Dad held onto the oil lamp for a moment longer. Then he