I Am Dublin: The Last Gig by Fionnuala O’Connor

Dermot takes his saxophone out of its case. It is as beautiful as ever. He hasn’t played for  a year, since before he came here.

He puts it to his lips .

This audience looks unresponsive, slumped in their seats, and some asleep even. He’s played a fair few weddings in his time where half the guests were comatose before the band came on. The South City Jazz Band it was called. Originally Jimmy wanted “The Jimmy Devlin Jazz Quintet” but that got shot down pretty quick. Jimmy liked to think of it as “his” band even though he was only the vocalist. The rest of them would have to put him in his box. Dermot used to say to him

“Get back in your cage Jimmy you’re only a canary”

Still, to be fair to him, it was Jimmy who got them together in the first place and he organised most of their gigs.

A woman shouts “stop that noise!”

They got a bit of heckling in the old days too, played some rowdy Pubs . Jimmy could give as good as he got. One time some young gougers started throwing things and big Dan had to come out from behind his drums.

That was before they got a bit of a name for themselves. They had quite a following..

Yes he knows they weren’t masters of jazz, just a bunch of Dublin lads playing in their spare time. Some Music Journalist, as he called himself, once had a go at them for being “not authentic”. Well who’s to say what’s authentic? They loved the music and they played it as well as they could so feck him anyway.

Dermot pauses, then tries Summertime, always popular.

His fingers feel clumsy and slow.

Something is not right. Is it him or the instrument? The tone is wrong. Maybe it’s just that he misses having the others around him.

The old woman shouts again.

He stops. He puts the sax down.

“Just out of practice” he says to himself.

Carefully he places the saxophone back in its case, walks out of  the big room with his head down, past the carers and the nurse who had encouraged him to perform today.

He won’t be taking it out again.