September Song (2 page)

Graham looked as if he was about to cry but did the sensible thing and left.

The piano player straightened up and coughed.

Baxter stepped back and allowed the man he'd pinned to the floor to stand up. ‘Give me your membership card,' he said.

The man looked at him for a moment and then fumbled in his pocket for a wallet. He produced his card.

‘Right,' said Baxter, ‘I'm confiscating this.'

‘Oh, come on, Pete, you can't—' the man started to say, but he broke off when Baxter brought the bat down on to his toes. Hard. ‘Bloody hell, Pete!' he said.

Baxter prodded his foot again. ‘Don't call me Pete,' he said. ‘And now, get out and take him with you.' He pointed the bat at the guy sitting on the floor, nursing his jaw.

‘I'll remember you,' the big man said to me as he struggled to his feet. ‘I'll definitely remember you.'

There's always a certain amount of bravado after a ruck – even one that didn't really amount to much – and I ignored him and turned to the piano player.

‘You all right?' I said. I was aware of the other two men walking away, giving me ugly looks as they did so.

‘Sure,' he said. I don't know why, but it hadn't occurred to me that he was American, but that one drawled word emphasized his nationality. He was very thin and tall, and good-looking in a lean, pale, haggard way. The wide, garish, pink tie shimmering against his dark-blue shirt emphasized his pallor. ‘Thanks.' He rapped on the door he'd been pressed against. ‘It's OK, Jeannie,' he said. ‘They've gone, honey.'

I awoke to the rich scent of Paris: the ripe, strangely sweet, cloying smell of drains fluttering past the heavy curtains; the heady intoxicating aroma of coffee drifting from the sunny kitchen where Ghislaine was carefully preparing it, using her grandmother's elegant old dark-wood grinder, as she gazed out of the window at the rooftops of la Ville-Lumière.

Then I did wake up, in Leyton, to the distant, mournful sound of the Caribonum factory hooter, booming out along Church Road, sounding hauntingly like a cross-Channel ferry in the fog, sadly warning its employees that they were about to be docked pay for their late arrival. And the smell, harsh and acrid, from the miasma of smog and smoke that always hovered over London, stinging my eyes and souring my mouth.

I lay there for a moment or two, sweating, eyes firmly closed against an incipient headache. I always knew that lemonade wasn't good for you. A trolleybus slid to a halt outside Enzo's café before grumbling and rumbling slowly away. A steady stream of bikes, carrying Caribonum workers who were cutting it fine, hissed by.

There was no noise from downstairs which meant that Jerry, my young landlord and owner of ‘Jerry's Records', the shop above which I kipped, wasn't up yet. Dickie Valentine fans might have to wait an hour before he would be in a mood or a state to sell them any of the great man's records.

Not that that would bother Jerry all that much. Or me.

Dickie Valentine's kind of romantic balladeering was not to my taste. And I'd discovered recently that Jerry could afford to be sniffy about popular taste. Most of his income from the shop came from acquiring specialist jazz recordings from America for a select group of customers from all over London who shared his taste for bebop and what had become known as cool jazz. He stocked and sold the popular stuff under sufferance. He regarded it as charity work.

I rolled out of bed and lurched into the scullery, my bare feet slapping on the cold, worn lino. The gas ring exploded into flame, and I put the filled kettle on to boil.

I'm a great believer in old adages, particularly ones involving looking expectantly at household utensils, and so I slip-slapped my way back to the sink and splashed cold water over my face and rubbed a toothbrush over my teeth. The kettle still wasn't showing any sign of life so I returned to my bedroom (which was also my living room) and rummaged around for some clothes.

The kettle started to whistle, and I realized I'd been thinking about Paris and Ghislaine again. Well, not thinking, really, more daydreaming, and my trousers were in my hand rather than flapping loosely around my legs.

I sighed, pulled the trousers on and then padded back into the scullery where the kettle was shrieking like one of the more avant-garde trumpet players Jerry was so keen on.

Not even Jerry could sleep through that, and I brewed a big pot of Typhoo and put it on a tin tray with a picture of the coronation coach painted on it. I noticed that the gold of the coach was dull and stained as I dumped two cups, a bag of sugar, a teaspoon and what remained of yesterday's bottle of milk on it and carried the whole lot into my office, sat down at the kitchen table I used as my desk and waited for Jerry to appear.

I was halfway through my second cup, still wishing I was sitting with Ghislaine and drinking café crème and eating
pain beurré
at the little place on the corner of rue Saint-Sulpice, when I heard him clumping up the stairs.

He slipped around the door, yawning hugely, running a hand through his unruly, curly hair. He looked as if he was wearing the same clothes as he'd had on the day before, but with Jerry it was difficult to tell, since he always dressed the same: black trousers, black shoes, black socks, grey shirt, yellow waistcoat, bright tie.

‘Thought I heard you making tea,' he said. ‘Any chance of a cup?'

I poured him one, and he sat on the wooden chair I always borrowed from him when I had a client and usually forgot to return. He yawned again before heaping sugar into his cup.

‘I hope I didn't wake you up,' I said.

He shook his head. ‘No,' he said, ‘the Caribonum hooter did that most effectively.' He looked queasily at the deep-brown liquid and stirred it languidly for a few seconds. He steeled himself, closed his eyes, tilted his head back and swallowed the tea in one long gulp. Then he thumped the cup back down. ‘That's better,' he said, smacking his lips. ‘What you up to today, Tony?'

I shrugged. ‘Haircut, shave. Might pop in to the Antelope.'

Downstairs, the telephone in the shop started to ring, but its shrill insistence was dulled by distance. I looked at Jerry. He made a little moue. It stopped ringing. We both knew it was too early for the call to be about shop business, and neither of us had much of a social life so we knew it was most likely Les Jackson ringing to ask me how his current matinee idol had behaved on his night on the town. I didn't much want to tell him. Les was the unfortunate managing director who had the wayward Philip Graham under contract. And I was the unfortunate minder who Les was currently paying quite well to ensure that young Philip didn't get into too much trouble when he went on the town.

‘When I was in Paris  . . .' I began.

Jerry held up his hand. ‘Tony, my friend, I love you dearly, but I do know that you spent the first two weeks of August in Paris. You really don't need to preface every statement with those words.'

‘Sorry if I'm boring you,' I said. ‘If you don't like the conversation, you can always risk Enzo's tea and bacon sandwiches.'

‘Don't get tetchy,' he said.

‘I'm not,' I said. But I was. ‘All I was going to say was that I went to a jazz club you would have liked. There was a saxophonist, Bobby Jasper, played your kind of stuff.'

‘You know your problem?' he said.

‘No,' I said. ‘What's my problem?'

‘You've got the post-holiday blues. You've been away. It was exotic and different. Now you're dissatisfied with your lot. Well, get used to it, my friend. This particular lot –' he looked around the dusty bare room with something close to disdain flickering around his lips – ‘is all you've got.'

He was, of course, right.

I, too, looked around the room and shared his almost-disdain. It wasn't much to show for nearly thirty-three years of life.

And I was getting boring about Paris.

Downstairs, the phone started ringing again. Jerry and I stared at each other gloomily. The sharp lines of his pale, lean face were accentuated by the black stubble and the dark circles under his eyes. Even so, he still looked very young to me, without his goatee. I remembered why he'd shaved it off, and my thoughts drifted back to Paris and Ghislaine.

‘We'll have to answer that damned phone eventually,' Jerry said, getting to his feet. ‘It might as well be sooner rather than later.' He paused at the door. ‘Thanks for the tea, Tony. No offence intended.'

I shook my head. ‘None taken,' I said, which wasn't strictly speaking true.

I sat slumped at the table, listening to him thump his way down the stairs and then waited to hear what music he'd play. It was usually Charlie Parker these days, but he occasionally surprised me.

This morning was one of those occasions. The joyous sound of Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds, Lil Armstrong and Baby Dodds launching exuberantly into ‘Muskrat Ramble' bounced up the stairs.

I smiled. It's simply impossible not to when you hear that. Anyway, it was Jerry's way of apologizing for any upset his uncharacteristic, early-morning crankiness may have caused, and, as an apology, it was completely acceptable.

I stirred myself and drifted back into my other room. It was time to prepare for the day.

I was just leaving my flat when the phone rang again and Jerry answered it.

He poked his head out of the door that led from the passageway at the foot of the stairs into the shop and saw me. ‘It's Les,' he said.

I nodded and ran down and into the shop. The big, black phone was on the counter by the cash register on top of an unstable pile of invoices. I picked up the receiver. ‘Les,' I said, ‘how are you?'

‘I'll be honest, Tony, I've been better. The thing is, I'm missing a leading man.'

‘Les,' I said, ‘the last time I saw him, he was heading out of a jazz club with specific instructions to go home. He wasn't happy about it, but I couldn't force the issue because I was tidying up after him. In short, doing what you pay me to do.'

There was a long silence that sounded very like a sigh.

‘I'm not blaming you, Tony. There's only so much you can do with some of them. But he wasn't answering at his flat when the car went to collect him this morning. He's not picking up the phone, and he hasn't shown up at the studio. It's costing money. Serious money. And most of it is mine. Find him, Tony. Please. You will not be out of pocket.'

‘I'll do what I can, Les,' I said. ‘But I'm not promising anything. If he's decided to take a little holiday, he could be anywhere.'

‘I know,' he said. ‘Just give it your best shot. You've never let me down yet.'

Oddly enough, that was more or less true.

‘I'll try,' I said.

‘Thanks,' he said. ‘By the way, can you come over to the office later?' He lowered his voice. ‘There's something a bit personal I'd like to discuss.' He sounded a bit hesitant, almost embarrassed. That wasn't at all like Les.

‘Will half two be OK?' I said.

‘Fine. And if you've got the Brylcreem queen in tow, so much the better.'

‘He's not a queen, Les,' I started to say, but he'd already hung up.

I put the receiver back on the cradle and sniffed.

Jerry wandered into the shop. ‘Trouble?' he said.

‘My boy's gone AWOL,' I said.

‘Hardly your fault,' he said.

‘No,' I said, ‘no one, not even Les – surprisingly – is suggesting that I could have done much about it. But, all the same, it is my problem. Les has asked me to find him.'

‘Good luck,' he said. ‘Where are you going to start?'

‘Where I was always going to start,' I said. ‘With a haircut and a shave at Vic's.'

‘Well, good luck with that too. I hope the DTs are under control this morning.'

‘Vic doesn't have the DTs,' I said. ‘It's just a slight tremor  . . .'

Jerry laughed and patted my shoulder condescendingly. ‘Of course,' he said, ‘just like the slight tremor that reduced San Francisco to rubble back in 1906.'

Jerry had received the rudiments of a good education back when I was fighting for king and country, but I don't hold that against him. Much.

‘By the way,' I said, ‘there's a terrific singer at Pete's Place. Jeannie Summers. Fancy going there tonight?'

‘Not heard of her,' he said, shaking his head.

I wasn't sure whether that meant that he was open to the experience or if he was dismissing the idea. I shrugged and left the shop. He'd probably come.

TWO

I
t was another lovely morning, and I walked in bright sunshine along Church Road, past the green-grassed slope that led to the London Electrical Wire Company, past the dull brick of Church Road School where the low buzz of dull rote-learning sighed from open windows, past Etloe House, behind the tall walls and solid gates of which the grey-robed Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary discreetly cared for destitute girls, and past the looming presence of the big Caribonum factory, with the wonderful sound of The Hot Five still bouncing around in my bonce, until I arrived at the little row of shops where Victor Cardew snipped hair – and, just occasionally, ear lobes.

I walked a little further and stood in among the cracked concrete bristling with stinging nettles, dandelions and dusty convolvulus of one bomb-site and looked across at another, the one where my parents' house had stood. I thought of Mama, Papa and Grand-père for a moment or two. I'd been in France when they died, drinking
vin baptisé
in sufficient quantities to be very drunk, celebrating the liberation of Paris, and I hadn't seen them in nearly two years. Like so many others, we'd never had the chance to say goodbye. I'd thought that the pain of missing them would have dimmed after eleven years. It hadn't. But then neither had the memories. It seemed that in order to keep the one, I had to keep the other.