Jack of Diamonds

by Bryce Courtenay

  Like most of the men in Cabbagetown he was a sports nut. He’d leave for the game mid-morning, summer or winter, so he and his pals could buy cheap seats in the bleachers. As bottles of beer were too bulky to carry and could easily be spotted by the law, they’d each take a bottle of cheap whisky or bourbon made by Joe Rattlesnake, a local who kept a secret still in the yard of one of the abandoned factories along the banks of the Don River. His liquor was sometimes referred to as Rattlesnake Special, whether it was whisky or bourbon (the only difference was said to be the colour, and no one ever knew what was in the wash). It was even cheaper than the fortified ‘bum wine’ you could buy, and lord knows the alcohol content of Joe Rattlesnake’s distillate, but it could render you pretty motherless at the end of a long afternoon’s drinking. Dad and his pals would then retire to the tavern after the game for beer, which, mixed with hard liquor, made for an even nastier drunk than usual. As often as not it ended in the all-too-familiar Saturday-night wife- and child-bashings.

  Those fathers who didn’t drink at the game would take one of their sons to the football or hockey game as a treat, for a birthday or something like that. My dad took me to a football game once, when I was seven. There was no special reason. Perhaps he wanted to look like a real father. The game at Varsity Stadium was between the Toronto Argonauts and the Ottawa Rough Riders, two teams in the Grey Cup competition. He even made me wear his precious Argonauts scarf, which fell to below my knees, even though I wrapped it around my neck three times. Taking me was a big sacrifice for him as it meant he couldn’t go back to the tavern to drink beer with his pals afterwards.

  When the Argonauts scored, I yelled and threw my hands in the air, and I think that pleased him, but I knew I was never going to be like him or the other fans at the game. Sport – football, anyhow – just didn’t do a whole lot for me. I was not a bad skater, and I was pretty good at shinny, a rough-and-ready type of pond hockey, but that was about it. I played shinny when the pond in the industrial area near the Don River froze, skating in a pair of old skates from Mrs Sopworth at the Presbyterian Clothing Depot.

  In truth, my dad seemed more interested in the breaks in the game than in the game itself. ‘Stay there. Don’t move, son,’ he’d say, while he and his pals left to join all the other men behind the bleachers with bottles in brown paper bags. While drinking at a game was against the law, the cops, in an unwritten agreement, turned a blind eye to the area directly behind the bleachers.

  After the game, when we were in the middle of the crush leaving the stadium, Dad turned to heckle a group wearing the colours of the Rough Riders. They responded, and he and his pals suddenly lunged towards them through the dense shuffling mass, shoving people aside. The crowd quickly closed behind him, separating us, and moved forward, sweeping me along with it. Outside the stadium I waited for fifteen minutes but couldn’t see him. I could clearly imagine Dad and his pals involved in a drunken fight with the Ottawa supporters, and suddenly it seemed like a bad idea to hang around.

  I was a pretty observant and independent kid, and on the way in the streetcar I’d taken in all the landmarks. It was a straightforward route down Bloor Street, so I wasn’t too worried. But I hadn’t anticipated the snowstorm that swept over the city, practically blinding me and changing everything. These severe blizzards were called Panhandle Hooks, and they came up from the Gulf of Mexico, usually in late December and January but seldom in November. Snow in Toronto isn’t usually that heavy but when a Panhandle Hook hits the city, watch out.

  While Varsity Stadium hadn’t seemed a long way from the east side by streetcar, walking home proved quite a different matter. The streets were now deserted and I couldn’t identify any of the landmarks I’d seen on the way to the game. I struggled on through the blizzard for what must have been an hour, growing numb with cold. I figured it should have taken me less than that to get all the way home, but soon I couldn’t see from one streetlight to the next and somehow, I don’t know how, I lost the streetcar tracks in Bloor Street, and after that I quickly lost my way.

  The shops were all shut, so I couldn’t ask for directions or shelter from the snow. It never occurred to me to knock on someone’s front door. I might have done so in Cabbagetown, but I didn’t dare knock at houses where there was only one family and a garden. Stupid, I suppose, but in those days everyone knew their place in the social hierarchy and mine certainly wasn’t at the front door of a big house. I eventually found a small tobacco kiosk and a fat bald man with an accent redirected me. ‘Ven you get lost, come back, I tell you some more za vey.’

  Amazingly I was only about twenty minutes from Moss Park, next door to Cabbagetown where we lived. I can tell you now, I was stumbling with exhaustion and cold when I finally arrived home. My frantic mom burst into tears, running to embrace me, but my dad stepped directly in front of her, blocking her way. He was drunk of course, and in a towering rage. When she tried to pass him, he bumped her hard so that she crashed to the floor. She got to her knees, arms reaching for me, sobbing with relief that I’d come home safely. ‘Oh, Jack. Oh, my darling, you’re home!’ she cried.

  ‘Jesus Christ, where yer been ya miserable little bastard?’ my dad yelled, standing above me. ‘Look what ya done to yer mother!’

  ‘I got lost. It snowed real heavy,’ I said through chattering teeth.

  ‘Why the fuck didn’t ya wait fer me?’

  ‘I did, then I thought you were in a fight,’ I stammered, my teeth still chattering, now even more so from fear at his drunken rage.

  ‘C’mere!’ He reached out and grabbed me by the scarf, and yanked me violently so that I near lost my footing and found myself in the centre of the kitchen. ‘Git yer fuckin’ pants down!’ he barked.

  My hands were frozen, and I had trouble removing his scarf and my overcoat, then unhitching my braces and dropping my pants. I watched fearfully as he removed his big leather belt. Holding the buckle, he wound it around his fist and snapped, ‘Bend!’ While I’d received my share of backhands from him, I’d never received a formal thrashing. Most of the guys who’d told me about their experiences said that it wasn’t too bad – six across the bum and sometimes you couldn’t sit comfortably the next day. But that was when your dad was sober. I was terrified. The leather belt he wielded was at least two inches wide and my knees were knocking, not, I assure you, from the cold.

  ‘Turn round, grab yer ankles!’ he commanded. I turned so my ass faced him, then bent, my stiff fingers disappearing into my crumpled pants to grasp my shins. I locked my knees so that they almost stopped shaking.

  ‘Please don’t, Harry!’ my mom begged him frantically. ‘Please don’t thrash my boy!’

  ‘Shurrup, woman!’ he commanded. ‘Teach the little shit a lesson!’

  Still bending, I peered around my skinny legs to see him lift the belt above his shoulder. I braced myself, ready for what was coming to me, but suddenly my mom sprang at him, screaming and clawing at his neck and face. The lifted belt came down hard across her back, but I don’t think she even felt the blow as her nails raked across his face, opening it in four distinct furrows from just under his right eye, down his cheek and the side of his neck. She was in another chilblain fury but this time she had no pail of cayenne and piss as a weapon, only her nails. My father let fly with a straight left, his fist smashing into her face, and she sank to the floor, bleeding from the nose and mouth.

  ‘Now see what yer gorn and done to yer mother!’ my father growled. The scratches on his face had reddened but he seemed oblivious to them. ‘Next time you wait for me, if necessary, until the fucking second coming of Christ! Yer hear, boy?’ With this, he started lambasting me with the belt, going hell for leather across my ass and the backs of my legs. I started to scream and scream until I fell to the floor, unable to stand any longer. He whacked me one more time across my back, then I could hear him panting. I managed to crawl to my mother, and we huddled together on the kitchen floor, her blood dripping onto my best shirt, which I’d worn esp
ecially for the game, both of us howling our hearts out.

  Then my father grabbed his coat and gloves and stormed out of the house, presumably heading for the tavern before it closed.

  It was the first and last time I accompanied my dad to a game of any sort. I think my mom must have put her foot down. But I don’t suppose he needed much persuading. I don’t think my dad liked me, and I’ve got to admit the feeling was pretty mutual. I wasn’t the kid he’d wanted, nor was I, like most kids my age, mad about sport and collecting cigarette cards of football and hockey stars. I just wasn’t into ball games.

  We had never been a proper family. We seldom, if ever, shared anything, not even meals, except occasionally on a Sunday night. Dad must have eaten somewhere, because my mom rarely cooked for him. If she left a plate of food for him to warm up when he got home from the tavern at night, in the morning she’d invariably find it untouched and scraped into the garbage pail. He’d never just leave it on the plate so we could maybe eat it ourselves. Eventually, she simply gave up. You couldn’t waste perfectly good food like that.

  He can’t have been all bad – he seemed to have plenty of friends. One of my school pals said his father had called my dad generous because he’d never let a pal go without a drink. We knew all about that! Perhaps he used up all his generosity in the tavern. At home he was a morose grunter – nothing seemed to please him and I can’t remember him ever saying anything nice about my mom or speaking kindly to her.

  Maybe he resented her for giving him only one kid, a boy he couldn’t really enjoy in the way some other fathers seemed to enjoy their sons. On Sunday mornings he’d come out of his bedroom just as we were leaving. Scratching his crotch, he’d called after me, ‘Fuckin’ mama’s boy! Tit sucker!’

  At school we once had to write an essay on the subject ‘Why I like my dad’. The girls had to do the same about their moms. I was forced to invent a whole lot of bullshit, saying how lucky we were to have him. Later, Miss Mony handed back the essay and said quietly, ‘Jack, imagination in a child is a good thing, but sometimes you have to stick to the facts, to the truth.’ She must have guessed the cause of the split lips, bruised cheeks and black eyes I occasionally sported, or maybe she’d heard about my dad somewhere. But she was dead wrong about telling the truth. A boy never talked about having a drunk for a dad, never ever. It was a lousy choice for an essay topic and she should have known better.

  A drunken bashing was a source of personal shame, always kept within the family. A thrashing – or a good hiding, as it was sometimes called – was quite different. Six of the best on the bum was the definition of a thrashing, and you could talk about it if you wanted to. Thrashing a child for a misdemeanour was accepted practice in all families and happened when your dad was absolutely sober. The adage ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ was a universal truth at that time and, as far as I can gather, applied in proper middle-class homes as well. You can be sure everyone knew the difference between a thrashing and a beating, and who were the truly violent drunken fathers. There were no secrets in Cabbagetown. But still, you never admitted or talked about a bashing, even when you came to school with a battered face. The doorknob had a lot to answer for.

  So my home life was divided into two parts: a father whom I avoided, and a loving mother. Somehow my mother’s part outweighed my father’s, and all things considered, I was a pretty happy kid. My dad did one good thing that was to change my life: he gave me the harmonica for my eighth birthday.

  School was good. With my quick wit and easy manner, I was quite popular, though I never had a best friend, preferring my own company. Still, in the summer there were plenty of boys ready to play marbles in the schoolyard, or muck about after school among the deserted factories and along the river, and in winter play shinny on the frozen pond. By the time I’d turned eight, I was well ahead of the other kids my age. I mean, I couldn’t help it, with all that reading and with the stuff my mom and I learned on weekends, and especially with Miss Mony pushing me along. Just before she left for Vancouver, she told me I should be at another school, because ours wouldn’t let you skip a class, let alone two, which she said was what I needed to do. ‘Jack, the principal here doesn’t understand children like you who really want to learn. He’s been at Cabbagetown School too long and simply doesn’t know how to handle truly bright children.’ But I knew what she’d done for me was much better than being promoted to a class where I’d probably have to endure a worn-out and dispirited teacher, and the snubs and slights of the ten-year-olds, on top of ostracism in the playground by guys of my own age for being too clever for my own good. She’d set me on a course, created within me habits of reading and questioning that would serve me well all my life. One of the last things she’d said to me before leaving for Vancouver was, ‘Jack, you don’t need me any longer. Keep reading and asking yourself questions, or anyone else you think may have the answers. That’s all you’ll need until you get a scholarship to a decent high school and then university.’

  When I told my mom, she couldn’t believe her ears. ‘University!’ she squeaked. ‘Isn’t and never was nobody in our family ever could have thought about something like going to university.’

  I owe Miss Mony a great deal and mostly because she got me reading, which wouldn’t have happened otherwise. ‘Curiosity is the greatest habit a human can cultivate and reading is the best way to satisfy it,’ she’d say. Reading made me happy for another reason, too. I loved sharing books with my mom. Late at night, when we’d padlocked ourselves in the bedroom, I’d read just for her. Because she’d had very little education, she was anxious that I didn’t end up the same as her, just another child following in the pretty miserable footsteps of ignorant parents. She’d constantly ask me about school and Miss Mony’s private lessons, and she’d be proud as punch when my report card came in at the end of term with a whole string of straight As. Although you never allowed yourself to appear clever in class, you were allowed to be clever in tests. End of term report cards were regarded with indifference by most kids and never discussed. They were usually bad news, anyhow. The reports probably didn’t get too much attention from parents either. Most, recalling their own time at school, didn’t harbour great expectations for their kids. In those days people really believed you inherited your stupidity: like father like son; like mother like daughter. Working-class women especially were never expected to have brains and were regarded as breeders and factory fodder.

  I remember my mom would give me a hug and a big kiss and shake her head in genuine wonder when she saw my results. ‘I don’t know where your brains could possibly come from, Jack. In my family nobody was good at schooling, yer father’s family neither; hopeless, the lot of us. Miracles will never cease, dumb marries dumber and, lo and behold, out pops Clever Jack!’ Then she’d laugh. ‘You don’t suppose they swapped babies at the hospital by mistake, eh?’ I could see she was surprised that I kept topping my class and it pleased me no end to see her so proud.

  My father would just grunt and say, ‘Yeah, nice,’ in an off-hand manner, barely glancing at my results before adding, ‘It’s all bullshit, son. Remember yer from Cabbagetown, nothin’ here to beat. Only means yer the least stupid of a bunch o’ knuckleheads, so don’t you go thinking you’re God’s gift, eh, boy.’ Without discussing it, we stopped showing him my report card, and he never asked to see it.

  But I had a long time to wait for my mom to come home each night, and sometimes I’d even grow weary of reading. Singing along to the McClymonts’ gramophone upstairs would, of course, help pass the hours occasionally. My mom and I had always sung together – mostly Iroquois tribal songs her grandmother had taught her – and often enough she’d say I had a real nice voice, but you couldn’t take too much notice of her. With only one child, who she loved to bits, she was a bit biased. Not that it mattered, because the one thing a boy never did at school was sing, except for ‘God Save the King’. You were allowed to belt that out because it was an act of loyalty to your kin
g and country. Otherwise, our school was no place for a boy soprano.

  I’d long since memorised the lyrics of the songs I heard drifting through the ceiling, and when the gramophone started upstairs I’d sing at the top of my voice, pausing at the parts where the needle stuck in the worn grooves. It never occurred to me that my voice would have travelled up through their floorboards as readily as the music travelled down, but they never complained; perhaps the silent treatment they’d imposed on us prevented them from speaking.

  I recall my favourite song was ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’, but I loved most of the songs filtering down from the McClymonts’: ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’, ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’, ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’, ‘A Bicycle Built for Two’. Many of them were popular during the Great War, when, I suppose, someone in the McClymont family had a good enough job to be able to afford the gramophone and seventy-eights. They hadn’t added any new records since and all of them were badly worn from being played so often.

  But there was worse, much worse, to come for Dolly McClymont, Mac and the twins. The arrival of the harmonica marked the beginning of a whole new musical era. I was desperate to learn to play, and practised for so long that my reading suffered. I knew all the tunes by heart, so I didn’t have to wait for the gramophone to start up. Sometimes I’d practise until my lips hurt. When I think back, it must have been sheer hell for ‘them upstairs’. The boy soprano might have been annoying but the novice harmonica player would have been far worse. Unknowingly, I had probably paid them back for the emotional hurt they’d so cruelly inflicted on my mother.

  I don’t know whether it was from kindness or desperation but Mac confronted me one afternoon in the hall when Dolly and the twins must have been out. ‘Jack, you’re coming along nicely with that mouth organ. I’m surprised how quickly you’ve learned to play. Well done, and my goodness, all self-taught, eh?’