Hathaway's bow…who couldn't love it and wish the show would have let something develop between our awkward sergeant and the lovely gardener?
Magic in the Air
The lass seemed nice enough, and, obviously, Hathaway was smitten. The bow gave that away if nothing else. Lewis couldn't help smirking a bit, and after all the ragging the sergeant gave him over Hobson, the lad couldn't expect any less.
Still, for all the ribbing he could have done, Lewis let his sergeant get off light. He had a weakness for young love…not that Hathaway was all that young age-wise, or ever had been all that young in some ways, but in this—neither he nor the girl had the air of jaded experience. They both seemed young and new to love (nothing like the fair Fiona or Lady Scarlet), and Lewis was happy to leave them to it.
He'd been young once. Young and in love. And he'd never quite gotten over it.
It had all been the music…the exhilarating exuberance and rhythms of the time. The sort that made his mother cringe and grit her teeth and his dad pound on the door and yell that either he turned it down or his dad would do it for him. (Looking back, he hated to think that that might have been some of its appeal, but he couldn't say it hadn't. And having done his own share of banging on doors and hollering to turn it down, neither could he say his dad had been all that much in the wrong.) It had been the sort of music that made his own children groan and snicker. And the sort Morse would have turned his nose up and complained he couldn't think with it on.
But to Lewis it had been—still was when he took the time to pull out his old records—magic.
Magic then because somehow Midnight's Addiction's loud, raucous chords and lyrics had captured and expressed the uncertainties, fears, hopes, and possibilities he'd felt standing on the brink of adulthood. Things he'd barely begun to grasp and things he could never have explained or hoped to have explained…there crystal clear in Esme Ford's strained, raspy voice and the pulsing, deep tones of Mack's bass.
That last drink with Morse, Morse as though he knew the end was coming had turned to Lewis and said, "You really should persevere with Wagner, Lewis. It's about...important things. Life and Death. Regret." And Lewis who had only ever felt even the slightest interest in opera the one time (in Italy on a case with Morse, and that only because in the course of their investigations they'd met Nichole Burgess, the opera singer; that glimmer of interest hadn't survived the flight home and the thrill of winning for his lad the fathers' race ribbon at his sport's day)* had finally understood Morse's deep connection to music.**He'd stopped snickering at Morse's choice of music that day and had with a great deal of determination persevered with Wagner until it was frequently his choice as well.
And magic now because it was under its spell that he had fallen in love. Utterly and irrevocably. One glimpse of her smiling face in the mass of swaying, screaming young people at that long ago concert had been all it had taken. A girl he'd never met, never known had existed until that very moment. A center of calm in the crowd for she must have been the only one there that night that wasn't enthralled with the Addiction.
If he'd caught a glimpse of her in the halls at school or queuing at the shops, would it have taken him like it did there in the old city hall with the music throbbing in the air and pounding in his ears? Would the sight of her smile have stolen the air from his lungs and set his heart to beating in an entirely new rhythm of its own if the music hadn't already been trying to do the same?
He liked to think it would have. But that night had been magic. So, perhaps if he'd seen her anywhere at any other time…perhaps it wouldn't have happened. Who could say? Certainly, without the music emboldening him, it was doubtful he would have been brazen enough to sidle up to her and catch her eye just in the hopes she'd smile at him the way he'd seen her smile when he'd caught that first glimpse of her.
But, she had turned to him, she had smiled at him, and the sight of her smile had moved him long after the music had stopped. Long after. And its absence still ate into his soul and reverberated through his life. Without it to buoy him up...he was just an old man marking time. But, at least he'd had that time with her. All those years, the good and the bad. And he'd not trade a one of them. They'd been glorious. Magical.
And he couldn't help hoping that to Hathaway these gardens and this girl with the shy smile and laughing eyes who'd had the wherewithal to answer his bow with a curtsy of her own would always be just as magical.
*Inspector Morse The Death of Self
**Inspector Morse The Remorseful Day
Author's Notes:
The only blatant discrepancy I've noticed between the Morse episodes and the Lewis ones is Lewis in The Promised Land clearly saying (albeit in his cups at the time) that he hadn't met his wife until he'd come down south and then telling Esme Ford in Counter Culture Blues he'd met her at a Midnight Addiction concert at Newcastle City Hall. For this story, I've chosen to let what was said in Australia, stay in Australia.
Thanks to Autohumans for suggesting I write something about Counter Culture Blues, though I somehow doubt this is what you had in mind…
As music is a foreign language to me, and I find the sounds of Midnight Addiction just as horrible as Morse's operas…I apologize for my lame musical descriptions.