Long-lost cousin.

She had lived in Australia for sixty years, she told me. Her father, one of two brothers, of Cypriot origin, had migrated here from Egypt. The brother had moved around the same time to London. So her cousins had grown up on the other side of the world. One day in the early 1970s, one of them had visited her house, which was in a suburb near the airport; a house in which she still lived. The cousin had been in Australia for a series of concerts and had visited his antipodean cousins before flying back to London. He had been emotional during his visit and had cried one night. She had asked him why, and he had said that he had never seen such a happy family, and that for all he owned, it was the one thing he had never had.

The lady must have been in her early eighties. I had never met her before. She had come into the jewellery shop where I was now working part-time, and we had struck up a conversation for some reason. People name-drop: you can always tell. But her eyes had the faraway look of the intelligent introvert, not the short bright slightly mad focus of the out-to-impress name-dropper.

She said his name was Cat Stevens. The cross-examining lawyer in me had tested her: ‘Ah, Steven Georgiou!’ I said. The name-dropper would fail outright, or last maybe one or two questions. Yes, that was the family name, she said, without hesitation. She had already pre-qualified, of course: Cat Stevens had indeed toured Australia in 1972 - I had audio-taped his concert at Festival Hall - and moreover he had had something of an unfortunate upbringing; his parents divorcing when he was eight. No wonder he had cried when visiting this cousin’s anonymous working class home in a tatty devil-may-care suburb in the shadow of Tullamarine airport in 1972 when he was the biggest pop star in the world. Be careful what you wish for: Cat Stevens’ next half-decade was spent searching for the equivalent of his cousin’s poverty-level lifestyle where love and mercy trump tatty furniture, and the sere windows look out onto golden sunsets instead of gold Cadillacs - and where the peaceful silence is spoiled not by the spiteful, destructive arguments of giant-like but juvenile adults but the roar of Qantas Boeing 747s landing ten streets away. Well, what would you rather? I know what I would.

*

A year had passed and everything was just as it was a year before/As it was a year before/Until the gift that someone left, a basket by my door/And in there lay the fairest little baby crying to be fed/I got down on my knees and kissed the moon and star/Oh, oh on his head

As years went by the boy grew high and the village looked on in awe/They'd never seen anything like the boy with the moon and star before/And people would ride from far and wide just to seek the word he spread/I'll tell you everything I've learned

And love is all, he said

*

'The Boy With a Moon and Star on His Head' from Catch Bull at Four, Cat Stevens, Island Records, 1972.