The talented guitarist

Hart was the cousin of our cousins, the Gunneys. Auntie Sylvie was my mom’s favorite sister and so we spent a lot of time in the summers with the Gunneys: swimming in their little circular pool, staying in their house in their scenic English coastal village. 

The Gunney kids were older than us and we were in awe of them. They had lots of friends, they went windsurfing, they stuck up for one another. In time, they even started drinking and smoking. They were demonstrably cooler than our other cousins. 

The main contact was Daisy, the third of the four Gunney kids. She burned the brightest: blond, pretty, funny, outgoing. When she spent a year with us in New York after she graduated high school, we were all thrilled. She walked us kids to school, helped out around the house, and had fun visiting America. She became a kind of talisman for our family. We all loved her. 

For years, the Gunneys had always spent their summer vacations at a campsite in France near Nice, Camp Dou. Aunt Sylvie and Uncle John started going when the kids were young. Even as they got older and went to university, the Gunney kids still turned up at Camp Dou pretty reliably. Sylvie and John had the same plot every year and their kids came and went, sometimes renting their own plot, sometimes staying in John’s white camper van or in a tent outside. 

The campsite entered into folklore among us boys. Daisy and the Gunney kids had a whole contingent of Camp Dou friends with whom they experienced Camp Dou adventures and shared Camp Dou jokes.

Benton and his brother Hart were fixtures in the Camp Dou adventures and so we had been hearing about them for years before we ever met them. Benton was younger and seemed to live a charmed life. Hart was supposed to be shy and quiet except that, when he picked up a guitar, he lost all his inhibitions. A marvelous guitarist. Both boys were rumoured to be brilliantly intelligent. Benton got top grades; Hart dropped out of school. 

Benton did so well in school that he was accepted to study at Cambridge, quite a coup for his high school. His teachers were very proud. 

Being accepted to Cambridge brought Benton into our orbit, since my dad was an economics professor there. Benton stayed with us when he was visiting and interviewing at the various Cambridge colleges. It was our chance to pay back the Gunneys for all their kindness to us but, more than that, we were delighted to have him. Benton was already a celebrity as far as I was concerned and my dad was always happiest being around precocious students. Benton’s visit was highly anticipated.

When he showed up, Benton was dry and funny, generally polite and agreeable with my parents but a little cheeky behind their backs. My older brothers didn’t make any particular connection with him but he and I developed a respectful relationship. I was too young to be interesting to him but I was savvier than the rest of my family - less gushing, more anxious and self-aware - and Benton seemed to respond to that. 

He came a couple times, visiting colleges and having interviews in the daytime, coming back to ours at night. In the end he chose one, Christ, and went back to Newcastle to finish his A levels. 

In that summer, after Benton was accepted to Cambridge but before he became a full student, we were as usual spending the first week of the summer with the Gunneys. It was me and Dennis and Bart, although Bart was just a toddler at this point. I’m not sure where Luke and my Dad were - working probably.

The four of us had the regular grand old time at the Gunneys. The circular swimming pool, down to the beach, watching soap operas with my cousins. 

On our last day, my Mom was packing up for the trip back to Cambridge. She was setting our expectations. 

“It will be quite boring next week, boys,” she said. “Your father’s working and I’ll be busy packing up the house. I’m sorry we can’t do anything fun for you boys on your vacation but it’s a very busy summer. You will cope admirably as you always do.” 

“Could we go to Camp Dou with John and Sylvie?” I asked. 

She closed the suitcase and sat up on her knees.  She made her frowning thinking face and drew a finger to her lips. 

And so it was decided that Dennis and I would go down to Camp Dou with John and Sylvie. Bart would stay with my mom because he was too young. Looking back, I wonder how keen John and Sylvie were to have us aboard. Sylvie was probably pretty agreeable, John less so. John liked me and Dennis well enough but we were a definite intrusion. We were two more mouths to feed and into our awkward teen and pre-teen years l. I bet John was not delighted, although he was affable as always.

And so we headed down, five of us in the little white Astra. We played cards in the back seat and listened to the radio. We stopped at a cheap motel in Bordeaux on the way down. 

The next day, we arrived weary and happy at the camp. Dennis and I were given a little two-person tent to ourselves. John and Sylvie were in the camper two meters away. Daisy had her own plot a ways down the road. 

Dennis and I were given pretty free rein. We went to the beach from time to time, which was okay. I was most interested in the little five-a-side pitch. The camp was wall-to-wall Europeans, so everyone was good at football. Dennis was less enthusiastic but indulged me in a few games. It was mostly very uneven - either real big kids or real small kids. I was hoping to be recruited to play in one of the Friday night tournaments but I was not.

There was constant community at John and Sylvie’s plot: old friends that came back year after year. Everyone kept asking when Hart would arrive.  

After a couple days, Benton arrived. He and Daisy would spend the days at the cafe by the terraces. They’d drink cocktails and Benton would smoke cigarettes, looking cool in sunglasses. 

One time, we were sitting with Sylvie at the plot and Sylvie was going on about how bright Hart was. 

“He’s almost as bright as you, Benton, but he hasn’t got the marks. He’s more interested in playing guitar and his girlfriends.”

Benton said, “I’d say he’s brighter than me, actually.” 

Benton worshipped his older brother just like the rest of us. 

Among the many Hart-inquirers was a French girl, Desiree. She was Hart’s girlfriend from the previous summer and mooned about waiting for his return. 

At first everyone told Desiree that she was out of luck: Hart had a girlfriend back in Newcastle. Privately John and Sylvie disliked the girlfriend; they thought that Hart could do much better, and so they were gentle with Desiree and gave her lemonades when she stopped by. 

And then exciting news came through: Hart had finished with the Newcastle girlfriend. We all heartily congratulated Desiree. 

Hart finally arrived in the middle of the night towards the end of our stay. He was traveling with a cavalcade of friends and they had lingered longer than expected in the French towns on the way down. I couldn’t wait to see him but he was asleep in his tent at noon when I snuck past and then still at 2pm. A little later, John reported that Hart was still in his tent - but that a girl’s feet had appeared besides. 

I didn’t see Hart all day but Dennis went out to look for him after dinner while I went back to the tent. I went to sleep and, when I woke, Dennis still wasn’t back. I was terrified. I cursed him, I thought about waking John and Sylvie. I was sure he was dead somewhere, drowned or hit by a car. I thought about what I would have to tell my Mom. 

But instead I just lay there and maybe fell asleep again. A while later, I heard him come into the tent. I have never been so relieved. I pretended to be asleep though, out of spite. 

The next day Dennis told me that he had spent a long night down on the beach with Hart and his friends. They played guitar and drank wine. Dennis was amped. He had been accepted into Hart’s inner circle. He promised to take me down that night. 

All day, I waited and worried. I was more scared than curious but I didn’t want to be a wet blanket. I also didn’t want to wait in the tent all night worrying for Dennis to come home. I agreed to go. 

It was still light as we approached the circle on the beach. There were five or six boys sitting in jeans and tee shirts and, sitting close to Hart, one girl, Desiree. They looked cool but I still watched them warily. Perhaps, in a drunk or drugged craze, they would turn violent. Perhaps they would ridicule me. To gain some leverage, I chose to evaluate them by how they treated me, a ten year old. Whatever their faults, if they treated me kindly they were good souls. If they treated me badly, they were jerks and no other attributes would mitigate: coolness, popularity, intelligence. 

Hart was leaning back in the sand. “All right?” he said lifting his chin. He was lean and long with curly hair. 

“All right,” I said and sat down next to my brother. 

They chatted amongst themselves and I began to feel comfortable, even bored. When would something happen? 

It was getting darker. Someone passed around a plastic bottle of wine and Dennis took a sip. I declined and no one made a big deal. 

One of the boys finally suggested a little music and Hart said, “Sure, why not?”  He shifted to sit upright, cross-legged and pulled the acoustic guitar onto his lap. He played a song about “Nowhere Town”, which I’ve never heard before or since. Then he played “Fever” by Peggy Lee. The other boys joined in with the harmonica and tambourine. The music was loud and confident. 

After “Fever”, Hart put down the guitar and chatted with Desiree. It was too dark to see him from where I sat in the circle. Later, Dennis surprised me by saying that Hart and the girl had been making out. I hadn’t noticed. 

The wine went around again and this time, under cover of darkness, I took a swig. It was tart. Dennis chatted amiably and I listened and watched with attention. Eventually, Dennis turned to me and said, “Should we go?” I nodded and we said our goodbyes.

We left a few days later. I didn’t see Hart again at the camp. Years later, I met him at a family reunion somewhere in England. He introduced himself as if we had never met and I didn’t bother correcting him. He was married with a couple kids at this point. 

I asked him what he did for work and he said he was a scientist. I said “What kind of scientist?” and, for some reason, this made him blush. Even all these years later, he was such a shy man. 

And, since I was very shy myself, that gave me something to look up to.