Dark Briggate Blues (2 page)

Reluctantly, like slowly drawing back a curtain, she’d revealed the rest of the picture. Freddie Hart was eleven years older than his wife, from a well-to-do family. His father had put up the money for a Ford dealership two years before. Now he was there all hours. Off first thing in the morning, then meetings and dinners until late. All business, that was what he told her. But the scent on his skin and the lipstick traces on his handkerchief told a different story.

‘What do you think, Mr Markham?’ Her voice was cool, no trace of emotion.

‘I’ll look into it, if that’s what you want.’

She brought a five-pound note from her handbag and placed it on the desk.

‘Is this enough to retain your services?’

‘More than enough.’ It was a full week’s wages. ‘How do you want my reports?’

‘I come into town every Tuesday and Friday,’ she said. ‘I usually take luncheon at Betty’s. You can meet me in the cafe there at noon.’ She replaced the gloves on her hands. All the nervous gestures had disappeared and she moved with easy assurance. ‘Good day, Mr Markham.’

He heard the click of her heels on the stairs, gave her ten seconds and followed.

She never looked back, swinging her hips as she moved down the street then turned up Briggate. He kept his distance, holding back as she stopped at the entrance to Thornton’s Arcade.

She stayed for two minutes, checking her watch impatiently, until a man hurried up. They embraced and her face softened as he kissed her on the cheek and they walked away together.

***

He turned the car down Eastgate. At the roundabout, beneath the long grey face of Quarry Hill flats, he turned along Regent Street. The motor car dealers had gathered here, a cluster of them with their shiny new buildings of chrome and glass. Every one of them promised the future and the freedom of the road. They did a good trade; there were more vehicles on the road every month.

He didn’t want a new car. He couldn’t afford one; anyway, he knew a mechanic who kept his Anglia running sweeter than it had when it rolled off the production line. He passed Hart Ford, a place of yellow stone and large, gleaming windows that stood out brightly. The building spoke of solidity, of trust and modernity. The other half of the block was Victorian, decaying. The Reginald Building was carved over a boarded-up entrance. The past and the future, side by side.

Tomorrow he’d go and take a look. For now, though, he was content to go home. There was nothing more to keep him working today.

***

He ran a hot bath and soaked until the water began to cool. In the living room he selected
The Amazing Bud Powell
from the stack of records in the corner and put it on the gramophone, letting the strange sound of ‘Un Poco Loco’ fill the room, Powell’s piano on its strange, mad journey.

Markham found eggs in a bowl on the shelf, along with half an onion, some cloves of garlic and a pair of mushrooms he’d bought at the market for a fancy Continental meal that never happened. It only took a few minutes to turn the ingredients into an omelette.

The LP finished and he swapped it for some Sarah Vaughan. Outside, beyond the window, the world was carrying on. Men were on their way home from work, wives were cooking tea. In here, though, caught in the music, he could close his eyes and try to imagine himself in a New York jazz club.

It was dark when he stirred in the chair. The record was still turning, the click of the needle in the groove sounding like a hushed birdsong. With a smile he remembered the way his father so often fell asleep after eating.

His parents had been dead for five years now. The summer of
1949
. He’d only been back from National Service for two months when it happened, and still deciding what to do with his life. His parents went away on the holiday they’d booked to Scotland. He went down to the station to see them off and received a postcard from his mother three days later. The next he knew was the copper knocking on the door to say they’d died of injuries after a train crash in a place he’d never heard of – Ardler Junction. Somewhere and nowhere.

The house had been rented. After the funeral and the sad gathering of distant relatives, all that remained was to divide the possessions with his sister. The photographs, the furniture, the small keepsakes and the surprisingly large bank account.

His share had been enough to buy a second-hand car and still keep plenty in the bank. He found the flat and took a position as a clerk in an insurance company. The day he turned twenty-one, legally an adult, he handed in his notice at the job, took the lease on an office and set up in business as an enquiry agent.

He got by on divorces. God knew there was no shortage of them. People who’d married right after the peace and now regretted it. The wartime marriages that had sunk to nothing once the fighting stopped. They were his bread and butter. Those and the frauds that employers wanted discovered and kept away from the ears of the Inland Revenue. It was enough to pay his bills.

He was ready by nine the next morning, dressed in his best suit, brogues shined and the tie just so in a Windsor knot. Town would be busy; it was the same every Saturday. Consume, consume; it was beginning to feel like a national fever.

On Regent Street he pulled into Hart Ford, parking at the side of the building. Already there were couples, young and old alike, walking around the shiny new vehicles whilst earnest salesmen tried to convince them that Ford was the motor car that would improve their lives.

He strolled into the showroom, eyeing the models, the Prefect, Popular, Consul, Zephyr and the brand new Zodiac on gorgeous display. Idly, he wandered from one to another, opening doors to glance at the dashboards before moving on. Finally, on his second time around, a voice behind him said, ‘That’s a good car, you know. Top of the range. Better than a Wolseley, if you ask me. Terribly good value for money. Very smart with the two-tone paint and it’ll go up to eighty when you put your foot down.’

He turned with a smile to face a man in his early forties, still trim, a dark David Niven moustache clipped close and the first hint of grey moving back from his temples. His nails were clean and manicured, with no nicotine stains on his fingers.

‘How much is it?’ Markham asked.

‘Eight hundred and fifty-one.’ He winked. ‘But we’ve been known to let the spare pound go now and again.’

The voice held the ready charm and the confidence that only came with a lifetime of opportunity.

‘Not cheap.’

‘But worth it, old chap,’ the man said. ‘Unless you spring for a Jag, you won’t find a better car on the road. I’m Freddie Hart. I own the place.’

He stood about five feet seven, his back straight, wearing tailored cavalry twill trousers and a blazer with the Royal Army Service Corps badge on the breast pocket.

‘Dan Markham.’

‘Do you drive now, Mr Markham?’ he asked, as if he expected the answer to be ‘no’.

‘I have an Anglia.’

Hart nodded.

‘Lovely little motor car. And one of ours, of course,’ he added with another smile. ‘Good taste on your part. But try this and it’ll never seem the same again.’

‘I’m honestly only looking. Curious.’

‘Well, if you want to take it out and try it, just let me know. It’s the only way to tell, isn’t it? And if you’re interested, I can give you a very fair price for yours.’ He leaned closer. ‘To tell you the truth, every Tom, Dick and Harry wants a motor car these days. It’s hard to keep enough stock.’

‘Good business to be in,’ Markham said.

‘Thriving. You take your time, old chap. If you want anything, just ask for me.’ He held out his hand and they shook before Hart disappeared through a glass door, stopping in a secretary’s office to lean over the desk.

Could it be that obvious, that clichéd: an affair with the secretary? The glass was frosted, but he could see that her hair was blonde. Hart’s grin turned wolfish as he looked at her. If something was going on, at least it would be easy to discover.

But it left one question. Who was the man Joanna Hart had met on Briggate yesterday?

***

He decided to go into the office for an hour, squeezing through the crowds that filled the pavements. The post lay on the floor, a bill and an onionskin airmail letter from Carla in Italy. He looked at the postmark. Sent six days earlier.

Ciao bella, cara … you see, it’s easy to pick up the language! I’m having a ridiculous time. Spent a week in Venice that could easily have lasted a month or a year. I’m in Florence now and I can see why those rich young men used to relish the Grand Tour. Everywhere I turn it takes my breath away. My God, these Italians had a love of beauty that we English never seemed to discover for ourselves. While they dissect the soul, our Constables and Gainsboroughs paint these stolid scenes. Sometimes I think the only one worth a damn was Turner.

Anyway, the weather is beautiful (of course!) and I’m brown as a berry, although my bum’s sore from Italian men pinching it! It really is true what they say. We should come here next year and you can look after me – what do you say? Everything’s unbelievably cheap, we could live here on next to nothing. I leave for Rome tomorrow, all that history and grandeur they taught us about in school. Then home again. I bloody well hope you’ve missed me!

She’d signed it with three kisses, everything scrawled in her own disorganised fashion. Another eight days and she’d be back; he’d circled the date in his diary. Soon enough he’d see her smile and hold her again. He’d missed her.

Their meeting had been pure accident, a lunchtime in the record shop downstairs at Vallance’s. He was looking through the LP sleeves, hoping they’d finally decided to stock some jazz, when he heard the woman next to him mutter, ‘Oh bugger.’

He turned and noticed her, auburn hair, every inch as tall as him, in a bright, flame-patterned dress under a maroon coat. In a black-and-white world she was a splash of Technicolor.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘I’m looking for something to inspire me. But this lot are all dead, aren’t they?’ She frowned. ‘If they’re not, they look it.’

‘I know who you need,’ he told her.

‘Who?’

‘Thelonious Monk.’

She burst out laughing, a hand covering the deep red of her mouth.

‘You just made that up.’

He met her the next day and lent her the record. The following morning the telephone rang in his office.

‘You sod,’ she said, with no hello or how are you. ‘He’s brutal. He’s bloody wonderful. Do you have any more?’

He asked her out, a meal at Jacomelli’s, and they began seeing each other regularly. They enjoyed each other’s company, and some nights they ended up in bed together.

She was an artist, making her living as an instructor at Leeds College of Art. The daughter of a Sheffield doctor, she’d been offered a scholarship and then stayed on to teach when she’d finished her diploma.

Carla had her studio at the college. He’d often find her there at lunchtimes or in the early evenings, bright clothes covered by an ancient smock, a scarf wound around her brilliant hair, sipping tea from a flask and working. She was good, everything striking and bold, even if he didn’t understand any of her paintings.

They’d gone to London together once, a long dirty weekend in the capital. She had to go down, did he want to come with her? Of course he did. He hadn’t been since he was a child, back before the war. She’d taken him around the National and the Tate, praising and criticising by turns. Then they spent an evening in Soho, eating real Italian food and eavesdropping on conversations in the pubs before heading off to Ronnie Scott’s jazz club. They walked and watched the tarts in their windows before going back to the hotel.

The next morning, she announced she’d meet him at twelve.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I have a meeting at my gallery.’

‘Your gallery?’

‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘They sell my work. Didn’t I tell you before? It’s why I needed to come down here. Can you do the catch on this brassiere?’

***

He folded the letter, stuck it back in the envelope and slid it into his jacket pocket. Now she’d put thoughts of Italy into his mind. He decided to go up to Donmar’s to eat. It wasn’t Soho, and he was certain it wasn’t anything like Naples or Milan, but it was all Leeds had to offer.

Carla had brought him here. She seemed to gravitate to places like this, to find them without effort. All he had to offer her was jazz.

***

By half past four he was parked on Byron Street, close enough to the corner of Regent Street to have a view across to Hart Ford. Time crawled by, the way it always did when he was waiting. At five he sat upright, a camera ready in his hands. The last of the customers vanished from the dealership and there was a short parade of salesmen and mechanics leaving to form queues at the bus stops. But no blonde woman.

Then she was there, in the passenger window of a shiny new Humber Hawk. He snapped a couple of pictures, enough to show her face, with Freddie Hart at the steering wheel. No Ford for him, Markham thought. As the car moved away, Markham started the Anglia and followed.

Beyond the city the traffic thinned to just a few cars and Markham had to keep his distance, hoping they wouldn’t turn off the main road where he might lose them.

Finally, as they came to Pannal, the Hawk indicated a right-hand turn and he knew exactly where they were going. The Harewood Arms in Follifoot. A little country pub for the well-heeled set. He parked in sight of the entrance, in ample time to snap more shots of them going in, Hart’s arm possessively around the woman’s waist.

***

At ten he drove back into town. The crowds from the late shows and the Odeon and the Ritz filled the pavements, mixing with the drinkers leaving pubs before closing time. He parked and crossed the street, then pushed open a door and took the stairs down to the cellar and Studio
20
. The only jazz club in Leeds. Open seven nights a week, as late as the musicians were willing to play.

It was early yet, just six people in the audience. A piano player he didn’t recognise doodled on the keyboard, trying to herd an improvisation into a version of ‘Lover Come Back To Me’. Everything would begin to come alive around midnight, when the musicians drifted in from their paying gigs, ready to have some fun.