by Bill James
What Ralph didn’t want was this full-time nincompoop, Basil Gordon Loam, making more pleas at Corton for re-admittance to The Monty. It would be embarrassing if he started all that in front of unquestionably distinguished musicians. They’d be curious as to why he had been kicked out and might uncover the whole story of the shot beard and the inconvenient flying sauce. No doubt these celebrities would find the abominable episode a big, unmusical laugh. It would be demeaning for the club and for Ralph, the very reason for seeking association with them torpedoed.
Or, of course, Loam might try an alternative and get all tough and angry, claiming he’d been victimized for what amounted to only a prank and arguing that nobody had been hurt by the pieces of hurtling glass, and stating he’d offered to pay for repairs. What Ralph had to remember was that Loam sometimes carried a weapon, and sometimes used it, as the beard damage proved. Suppose Loam, in a wrath-spasm because at Corton Ralph continued to refuse him restored membership, instead, gave him the big ignoral – and Ralph at Corton would refuse him restored membership and try to give him the big ignoral – suppose, then, Loam pulled out a pistol and in a paddy started targeting some of the orchestra’s instruments. Admittedly he’d been drinking when he attacked The Monty’s Blake. But that didn’t mean he’d always have to be tipsy before opening fire. Anger and self-pity might be enough to take the place of alcohol. Ralph hated to think of one of the orchestra’s drums ripped open by bullets; or a triangle hit by a .38 and giving out a lovely, melodious sound as a result, but from a disgraceful, extremely unlovely cause.
Culture had to be safeguarded. Ralph saw it as rather like care for the environment, which he was very strong on, such as river pollution. Basil Loam and his sodding firearm could be a pollutant. He and it should be shunted off to somewhere out of sight and kept there.
And, of course, Ralph had to consider that Loam might become even more vicious and malignant than that. What if in his fury he turned the Smith and Wesson on Ralph, and possibly Margaret? There would be a dark symbolism about this: the old style, violent Monty attacking the new, brilliant, emergent Monty – him, R.W. Ember, in a wonderfully aesthetic and educational setting. Ralph wondered whether he ought to take a shoulder-holstered automatic himself, entirely for defensive purposes. He had a duty to protect not just Margaret and himself but all the talented folk visiting, and their kit.
But Ralph greatly disliked the notion of going into a school carrying a firearm, just as he wouldn’t be comfortable tooled up at home or in The Monty. This wasn’t simply a school, but a school which, in term times, his daughters attended. There was something not acceptable about taking a pistol into the building. It would be to taint premises devoted to learning and, for now, music, with the unpleasant presence of an item designed to kill or disable, just as the unleashed Worcestershire sauce had tainted a pool table – and as that injured fruit machine woman might have, if she hadn’t been warned by Ralph to keep her blood to herself.
True, Corton didn’t do Latin or Greek, but it represented education all the same. One of his daughters had mentioned a civil war in British history with a rebel’s head on a spike. Corton did all that type of thing. Ralph would not contaminate it by going there armed. After all, it wasn’t totally certain Loam would be at Corton. Even if he was – very likely – it didn’t signify he would come armed himself, and, even if he did, he might not actually produce a gun and start shooting.
And he was present, as Ralph had guessed. He and Margaret had just come out from a classroom where they’d been watching and listening to a young lad being coached in bassoon playing by a musician who’d been announced by their guide for the evening as Mr Gerald Davidson. This had made Ralph get very alert and curious. The name, Davidson, was common enough, but it was bound to bring back memories of that woman superintendent in the days of the street battle in south-east London. This instructor, Davidson, wore a fairly foul red-dots-on-a-yellow-background bow-tie but, even in the limited time Ralph and Margaret Ember were present, had shown the learner how to get simultaneous passion, incisiveness and precision from what Margaret called his warm, lyrical, double-reed woodwind. Although Davidson’s nose was not broken it had bruising of about two centimetres length, as if he might have been thumped by an elbow jab or a kick some while ago when he was down. He took no notice of Margaret and Ralph.
When they left the classroom and were about to be taken to the flute room by their guide for the visit, a young girl soon to go herself for saxophone coaching, Basil Loam seemed to be hanging about waiting for them in the corridor outside. He might have seen them enter. ‘Why Mrs Ember, Ralph!’ he cried joyously. ‘Here’s a pleasant surprise.’
‘You’re the mad, boozy fucker who shot The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, aren’t you?’ Margaret replied.
‘What could be termed a jeu d’esprit, I think,’ Loam said, chuckling in a dismissive sort of style.
Ralph thought Loam had just the kind of face you’d expect for someone who’d shoot upwards at totally harmless pictures; in fact, not simply harmless but significant, and part of a tableau much larger than a club in Shield Terrace. Of course, Ralph knew Loam did shoot upwards at totally harmless pictures, and to spot this tendency in his face now could be called a kind of cheating. Someone might ask why Ralph hadn’t kept him out of the club if he’d been able to tell from his face pre-incident that he would pull out a gun and use it on the beard.
Ralph would accept this as a valid point. He decided that what he meant about Loam’s face was that a disdain, even contempt, for ordinary, solid standards could be found in his face and this might at any time get transformed into an urge to damage a montage and cause ricochets. Snub, his features might reasonably be described as, his nose small and turned up at the end so you had the feeling you could look up his nostrils to the inside of his head and the notions he kept there. Ralph did not believe these would be civilized or even worthwhile notions
Loam’s eyes were small. They had a glint that seemed to proclaim he was lively, mercurial, irrepressible. Ralph sensed that this glint wasn’t spontaneous and natural, though, but had been worked on and contrived a bit at a time over the years. The eyes were blue-black and contained furtiveness. He was giving Margaret and Ralph some of that creepy gaze now. Ralph hated it when people put bits of French into what they were saying in English as Loam had done just now to Margaret as explanation for the Monty shooting. Ralph didn’t understand what the phrase meant, but in his opinion if someone had to go into French to account for his actions it showed those actions lacked straightness. Although Ralph was in favour of classical languages being taught in schools, foreign words slipped into ordinary talk, possibly with an impudent chuckle, were sickening and signalled now not what the words were supposed to mean if they were spoken in, say, Paris but, in Britain, falsity and slipperiness.
‘We have to get along to the flute,’ Ralph told Loam.
‘Yes,’ their guide said.
‘Ralph, I have to say I miss the club badly,’ Loam replied
‘You didn’t miss the montage,’ Margaret replied.
‘I’ve found myself walking along Shield Terrace twice in recent evenings, just, as it were, to get a renewed glimpse of the building, an almost subconscious, compulsive, robot-like attraction to the spot.’
‘Ralph won’t mind you parading like that, as long as you don’t try to get in,’ Margaret said.
‘I must be a sad, forlorn sight,’ Loam said.
‘I can bear it,’ Margaret told him.
‘A kind of yearning, a kind of haunting.’
‘Tough,’ Margaret said.
‘Yet I’m not the only one who does it,’ he replied.
‘Does what?’ Ralph said.
‘Parades, as Mrs Ember calls it,’ Loam said.
‘Around the club?’ Ralph said.
‘Exactly,’ Loam said.
‘Who else?’ Ralph said.
‘Is it another what we might call banee?’ Loam said.
‘What
banee?’ Ralph replied.
‘Twice I’ve noted him,’ Loam said.
‘Who?’ Ralph said. He tried to keep his voice unflustered, steady.
‘Ah,’ Loam said.
‘What?’ Ralph replied.
‘Are you saying, Ralph, it’s not someone else you’ve banned?’ Loam asked. He gave a short whistle. ‘Why these secret visits, then? Someone casing the property?’
‘Are you trying to scare us – scare Ralph?’ Margaret said. ‘This is some feeble attempt at retaliation, is it? Alarmist. You’re the kind who would call Ralph “Panicking” behind his back. That’s a rotten slander, not for one second justified.’
‘Certainly not,’ Loam said. ‘As a matter of fact, I had wondered whether there might be a different reason for this person to patrol there – a more sinister reason. Well, look, Ralph, shall I accost him on your behalf next time and see what I can discover for you?’
‘And you’d have to bring back a report, which would be your way to reinstatement at the club,’ Margaret said. ‘It’s all tosh.’ She turned to the girl who was escorting them. ‘Flutewards, dear,’ she said.
They moved off with her. Ralph felt panicked. A sweat layer soaked his back and shoulders. There was a scar down one side of his face, long ago healed, but in his worst collapses of morale he had the impression that this ancient wound had opened up and was oozing something unspeakable on to his cheek and down on to his shirt. It wasn’t, but he had that sensation now. He would have liked to ask Loam for more detail, might even have asked him to do what he suggested and question this unexplained figure. He could think of a string of possible names, above all Quentin Stayley’s. Would he still have a ponytail?
The girl tapped the flute-room door and he and Margaret heard a fairly terrible, weak screaming sound coming from the instrument. ‘We feel so privileged to be a part of all this, don’t we, Ralph?’ Margaret cried to the mentor and novice.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Harpur hadn’t pushed Ralph entirely out of his mind, though, when he ditched his plan to talk caution and alertness to him and, with a sudden switch of direction, drove past The Monty car park. He did some inquiries and found that the club would host a celebration party for the youth orchestra instructors and other staff after the concluding concert performance. A day before this event he went up to Iles’s suite at headquarters. ‘There’s a bit of a do for the musical lot at The Monty tomorrow night, sir,’ he said.
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Oh?’
‘I felt sure you’d catch up on things eventually, Col. Plod and more plod gets you there ultimately.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘It’s mentioned in your CV documents: “An ultimately person. Never overhasty. In fact, slow.”’
‘Right.’
‘But what’s it to you, Harpur?’
‘I thought I’d do some mingling with the festive crowd at the club.’
‘Why, Col? You hope there’ll be spare pussy around in a liquored-up, music-juiced, exuberant, gasping-for-it state?’
‘I’ll go armed. There might be something,’ Harpur replied.
‘What makes you say so?’
‘Well, as starters, your intimations, sir. These are famous for their accuracy.’
‘True. And?’
‘Sir?’
‘What else?
‘Not sure.’
‘Your brilliant private source let you down on vital details, did he? So sorry, Col.’
‘It’s just to show my face.’
‘Well, yes, it’s the kind to scare most people shitless.’
‘Thank you, sir. I’ll be recognized by most of them. They’ll see we’re watchful, holiday season or not. A deterrent.’
‘If you meet a woman called Davidson give her my regards, will you? She might have bruises and/or scars visible, so she’ll be easy to identify.’
‘Your regards?’
‘Yes, I think “regards” is at about the right level of familiarity.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry about that, sir.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
One of the most useful things about Esther as a wife of a professional musician was she didn’t detest all classical stuff, at least not to throw-up level. For instance she would sit through this youth orchestra concert tonight and keep a look of real interest and even appreciation on her face more or less the whole time and especially, of course, for Gerald’s item. There would be no bored-as-buggery shifting about on her chair, no get-lost-for-God’s-sake splutter-coughs. And, in any case, Mahler: she could spot something quite close to being a tune in a piece of his they did. She thought it might be that theme from the Death In Venice film, where Dirk Bogarde lusts so feverishly after the blonde boy that his mascara melts, dowsing his face, and puts the kibosh on his chances. She’d bet Mahler never thought his symphony would be just right for runny cosmetics.
Then the Elgar: taking into account what composers could be like, the bombastic prats, she thought he had things reasonably tidy and genial. He didn’t go blasting off with brass and timpani, or not in this extract, anyway. Gerald’s own composition seemed OK and got good applause. He’d told her his was a gavottish fantasia after Poulenc – ‘quite a way after,’ he’d said. The orchestra was children only, except for the conductor, so Gerald didn’t get to play any of his opus himself, but he’d written a very nice three- or four-minute solo chunk for the youngster bassoonist.
Esther felt pleased Gerald’s work earned a decent reception. He hadn’t been all that keen to take the youth orchestra offer. ‘Hackery,’ he’d told Esther. ‘Poor for my reputation. I’m on a Haydn to nothing.’ His reputation was at its best a year or two or five ago, so he was very sensitive to any signs of a further shrinkage. He’d discovered, though, that all the other tutors brought in for the youth orchestra session were unquestionably top bananas, and top bananas today, not the day before the day before yesterday. This allowed him to respond to the youth orchestra’s call and agree the fee.
Yes, he could grow touchy about reputation and honour. He still steadfastly believed he had some of both in the music game. She thought this admirable and quaint. It would probably save him from complete break-up. ‘Don’t part with your illusions because if you do you will exist but cease to live.’ Where did that quotation come from – the economist, Keynes? Twain? Gerald had a good, nicely shaped, middling honest face which seemed to her the right sort for someone who wrote gavottish fantasias, but also had charming reserves of very realistic violence.
She’d arrived a couple of hours before the concert, in time to have tea with Gerald at his hotel, The Mandrake. That name reminded her, naturally, of the source who’d fed her the first tips about the then-approaching clash between Pasque Uno and Opal Render at Mondial-Trave. Not long after that conflict he’d been hit by a stolen car and killed while out walking his Rottweiler. It might have been an accident. The driver was never found. Legend said the mandrake plant shrieked if pulled from the ground. Esther had felt like shrieking on his behalf when she heard of his removal. She didn’t go to the funeral.
In the hotel lounge, Gerald said: ‘I’ve felt like a fucking animal at the zoo. People come in and stare at me when I’m doing my teaching.’
‘Did you have that bow-tie on?’ Esther replied.
‘Woman boasting that she knew the bassoon was a double reed. He, I could tell, very aware of my nose damage – staring, wondering.’
‘I’m sorry. I always try to avoid thumping your lips so the nose is rather liable to get it.’
‘I gave them the freeze. Maybe it was wise not to protest. I found out afterwards that this particular couple had chipped in big towards orchestra costs and would be giving us farewell hospitality at a club they own. It’ll be a fleapit probably, but I suppose they mean well.’
‘Name Ember?’ she said.
‘Ember, yes. Their guide introduced them.’
‘Ralph and wife.’
‘You know them? How the hell?’
‘He was a mini-crook in London and now is a maxi-crook here.’
Gerald grew agitated and pink verging to red, almost matching the dots on his tie. ‘Who told you this?’ he said.
‘I knew the first bit from when I worked there. As to the second, there’s nothing provable, I imagine, or he wouldn’t be acting the generous host now.’
‘And am I, Gerald Davidson, supposed to accept hospitality from such a one?’ he said.
‘Well, yes. But think of yourself as an artiste, a touch of the Bohemian in your character, an essential touch of the Bohemian in your character. You’re not one to kowtow to the tedious dictates of the law and conventions.’
‘True.’
‘Nobody who cared what other people thought about him would wear a tie like that.’
During the concert, she saw Ralph W. Ember, last in her view via security film. He still looked remarkably like the young Charlton Heston, but had picked up a long facial scar from somewhere. She had an idea he saw her, too, but made no sign. He and what Esther took to be his wife – small, pixie-like, blonde – had front seats, obviously reserved for those who’d coughed aid, sort of patrons of the arts.
TWENTY-NINE
Harpur went late in the evening to The Monty. He had a Glock nine mm pistol buttoned down in a shoulder holster. He went direct from headquarters. If he’d worn the armament at home Jill might have spotted the bulge under his jacket. Not might: would have. There’d have been questions.
Of course, the club was full. What sounded to Harpur like trad jazz boomed from the audio system. On these special occasions Harpur knew that the usual checking of membership at the door became pointless because so many regulars brought friends and relatives with them. And so, the risks. Ralph would know this, too. He busied himself behind the bar, helping out. Harpur thought he looked genial and relaxed. But Ralph was a trouper, could put on an act. He’d had plenty of practice. Harpur felt sure Ralph regarded most Monty members as rubbish. A club host had to do the hospitable role, though, and Ralph did it perfectly. He was in shirtsleeves so might not be carrying anything. That seemed to Harpur optimistic and casual. But there were little self-protection pistols around, small enough for a woman’s handbag. Possibly Ralph had one of these in his sock or trousers pocket.
