SALUT D'AMOR

"All you have to do is close your eyes and let the music wash over you."

"I've already had a shower today, thanks!" Katie said sarcastically but Dan was too focused on making sure she concentrated on what he was about to play his girlfriend of five weeks and three days, as she'd just excitedly reminded him.

As content as Katie was about being in a relationship with Dan, she wasn't too sure about her boyfriend's old fashioned taste in music. She far preferred listening to modern stuff, but she was enamoured enough with Dan on all other fronts to humour him in this regard.

"So what exactly is it I am supposed to be listening to, then?"

"Salut d'amor by Elgar. He wrote it for his fiancée Alice who was much older than him and whose family basically hated him for being broke and a dreamer."

"A bit like you with my family, then?"

Dan looked genuinely dismayed at his girlfriend's comment as Katie quickly attempted to reassure him.

"I'm joking! I mean Mum liked you at least. Sort of."

Dan remembered that Katie's austere looking father had barely said a word to him the first night he went round to her family home for dinner. The mother, however, had appeared to find her husband's passive agressive stance toward her daughter's boyfriend a little too much to bear for the entire evening so broke the tension with some light conversation about covid vaccines and Brexit.

As hard as he'd tried, Dan found little they could all agree on that evening but hoped they might at least respect him for holding true to his convictions.

He'd often found he was out of place with the general consensus of his friends' parents which he put down to being corrupted by his own deeply subversive father who was always encouraging him to think for himself and resist at any cost being sucked into the assumed collective agreements of "Guardian reading socialists."

"These types have what I call suppressive personalities, son. I'd have a mind to be wary of the sort if I was you."

Ironically for Dan, his not compromising his thoughts at the dinner table only made him ten times more attractive to Katie; she was already trying to find her own ways to rebel against her parents but more often than not failing miserably, especially when she was being so well financially assisted by them.

"Anyway, tell me more about this piece of music," she said, bringing Dan back to the present.

"Well, Alice had written a poem a few years earlier called 'The Wind At Dawn' which she re-named 'Love's Grace' when she presented it to her fiancé composer as a gift. He then composed music for it as an engagement present and so it represented a union of their artistic talents."

"A bit like Jay-Z with Beyonce?"

"Who's Jay-Z?"

Katie rolled her eyes.

"I'll tell you later. Go on."

Dan continued with his mini-lecture of sorts.

"I think we can assume they played the piece together and so you might think of it like a musical romantic conversation between them both with Alice playing the piano most likely and Elgar playing the violin."

"How do you know all this?" Katie asked Dan, wondering if he wasn't even more of a geek than she first suspected.

"Curiosity," Dan said matter of factly. "Anyway, you ready to listen to it?"

"Yes."

Sliding his headphones over her head as if he was placing a veil, she actually found the prospect of listening to the piece quite exciting.

"Don't forget to close your eyes."

She did as he instructed with no protestation as she felt flattered that he wanted to so genuinely share something that had touched his own heart. Of course, she could be cynical like her friends would be but something about his passion for music made her feel happy to honour it.

Watching her listening to the music, Dan could imagine the piece perfectly without being able to hear any of it through the noise cancelling headphones she had on.

Looking at her serene looking face for any sign or clue that she was enjoying the piece, he really couldn't tell at first and held back from emotively holding her hand or kissing her lips to further persuade her of its inherent greatness which he didn't feel he needed to do. He felt pretty confident she would succumb to its genius just as he did upon first hearing it.

Those few silent minutes were an exercise in self-restraint for Dan. Katie looked so beautiful to him immersed in Elgar's sound world with a pursed smile on her face that he desperately wanted to kiss her as if it was the end of the world or something.

Eventually, she lifted the headphones off her head as he eagerly awaited Katie's verdict.

"Well, what did you think?"

"Yeah. It's alright."