Jack of Diamonds

by Bryce Courtenay

  I have to confess I was pretty excited, even if I didn’t know how it was all going to work out. But Mac had started everything and so I needed to tell him. I needed his reassurance about Miss Frostbite as well. He’d always said she was fair and did the right thing by her staff, and I reminded myself that she’d said I was allowed to call her Miss Frostbite, so that was something good as well.

  I managed to waylay Mac real early the following morning as he left for work, and we talked as we walked. He had been given four days’ work in a row on a road gang, filling potholes, with unpaid overtime of course, so he’d miss the next four jam sessions, but he was happy. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers, Jack.’ We walked down the pathway along the Don, while I told him everything that had happened and, like he always did, he listened without interrupting. Finally, I asked, pretending that I hadn’t made up my mind, ‘So, what do you think, Mac?’

  ‘Nothing to think about, Brother Jack, grab it with both hands and hang on tight!’

  ‘Really? But I want to be a jazz musician when I grow up.’

  ‘And so you will be, pal. But jazz piano! That’s big time, man! Miss Frostbite, she’s right, it’s better than the harmonica, and you’ll learn to read music and play classical as well. Hey, man, now you really bustin’ outa this rat hole!’

  ‘But what about us, you and me? I won’t be hitting the steps any longer.’

  Mac stopped on the path, turned to me and spread his arms wide. ‘Brother Jack, we’re buddies and that’s forever. Anyhow, we can sometimes walk home together after the jam session and chew the fat as usual. Be much the same as now,’ he reassured me.

  That night when she returned home, my mom handed me back the dollar I’d given her. ‘I think this is meant to be your first week’s streetcar fare. Miss Byatt promised she’d give it to you and I’m very happy you’re not walking home alone at night from your piano lessons.’ She emphasised the word ‘piano’ and I could see she was really proud.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AND SO MY LIFE changed. Being a kid, you just go with the flow, but this was a stream that turned into a river until my whole life seemed to be music. But first I need to tell you about my visit to see Miss Frostbite. I’d have liked my mom to be with me but she couldn’t take off any more time. I knew that, even if you were the head cleaner, like my mom, even if you were the best in the whole of Canada, you could still be sacked. You couldn’t just take time off to be with your boy because he was a bit nervous.

  If my mom lost her job and couldn’t get work, I would end up in an orphanage, like two kids who’d been in my class and whose parents both had a ‘drinking problem’. When the bailiff threw the family out of their house, their parents couldn’t look after them, and they were living on the street and begging, so the Children’s Aid Society took them away. If this happened, it would be the end of everything for me. I couldn’t imagine my life without my mom, and I sometimes grew real scared just thinking about it. Mac told me it couldn’t happen, and that if both parents couldn’t work, then the Canadian Government would help with the rent and other stuff.

  I couldn’t ask Mac to come with me to the meeting because he was with a road gang, filling potholes for another four days, and I knew he was over the moon about it. ‘I’m gonna bust my ass to try to stay on even longer. I’ll work overtime free until midnight if the foreman wants,’ he’d exclaimed.

  ‘If you do, then the job won’t last as long,’ I’d joked, pleased that he was working.

  ‘It’s better than staying home,’ he replied. It was one of the few times I ever heard him say anything critical about his home life.

  I didn’t have an appointment to see Miss Frostbite. All my mom had said was, ‘Jack, she wants to talk with you personal.’ When I got home from school, my mom was just about ready to leave for work. I gulped down my dinner and we walked to the streetcar stop together. Hers came first and just before it stopped she kissed me. ‘You’ll be fine, Jack,’ she assured me. ‘Just tell her you want to do the piano lessons. Be nice and polite and don’t forget to say thank you and to give her my note.’

  She had written the note to Miss Frostbite the previous night. ‘Jack, I think I got it right. Can you look at it?’ she’d asked. She didn’t have much education but she did learn how to write. Mom had once told me that when she was at school they spent hours copying letters and sentences from the blackboard. ‘I remember the one we copied the most – The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Did you know it’s got every letter in the alphabet in it?’ Her writing was called ‘copperplate’ and it was beautiful. The note had taken her ages to write, using my school pen and inkpot, and she’d made several fresh starts.

  Dear Miss Byatt,

  Thank you from the bottom of my heart

  for what you done for my boy, Jack.

  We are most truly grateful to you

  and can never pay you back ever.

  I work at nite so if you want any cleaning done

  in the mornins for free just ask.

  God bless you Madam.

  Yours faithfully,

  Gertrude Spayd (Mrs)

  She had worked so hard on it that I felt guilty about correcting it. When I left out the free cleaning bit, she got quite upset. ‘Jack, we may be poor as church mice, but we don’t take things from people without trying to pay them back. That would be like begging and we don’t have to do that yet, thank the good Lord.’

  ‘Mom, I’ll just say it in another way,’ I promised. ‘I can always tell her you’ll help if she needs it.’

  My mom then did the final copy and it looked beautiful. She wrote it on a page we tore out of my school exercise book.

  Dear Miss Byatt,

  Thank you for what you are doing for Jack.

  We are most grateful to you, and if I can help

  you in any way, I would be most happy to do so.

  May God bless you.

  Yours sincerely,

  Gertrude Spayd

  Short and sweet, and adding the ‘May’ to ‘God bless you’ made it a tiny bit swanky. I’d read it in a book where a church minister said it to a grand lady, and it sounded better than just plain ‘God bless you’, which is what ordinary folk say all the time.

  I got to the Jazz Warehouse at about a quarter to five and decided to wait in the foyer as if I had arrived early, and then if Miss Frostbite decided to see me, that was okay. If she didn’t, then I could pretend to be accepting Joe Hockey’s offer to jam anytime I wanted to.

  I’d also worked out that, if I got off one stop earlier, like my mom did on the way home from work, the fare would only be five cents, which meant I’d have twenty trips to the Jazz Warehouse from Miss Frostbite’s dollar. Or even more if Mac came to listen and we walked home together. Maybe, if Mac had been working all day and was dog-tired, I could say, ‘Be my guest, let’s take the streetcar home, Brother Mac.’ It felt real good to be rich.

  When I got to the Jazz Warehouse, the front door was open and I went and sat in the foyer alone. Then, a little later, I summoned the courage to try the door to the main clubroom, but it was locked. After a while there was a rattle of keys. The main door opened slightly and Joe Hockey’s head appeared. ‘Why, if it ain’t the Jazzboy!’ he exclaimed. ‘You come to jam, eh, Jack?’

  ‘Yes, please, Mr Hockey, and my mom said I had to see Miss Byatt, that is, if she has the time and wants to see me.’

  ‘Yessir, she said something about conversatin’ wid you if you came today. I’ll go tell her you are here now. By the by, she gave you permission to call her Miss Frostbite. That what she expect from now on, you understan’, Jazzboy? We family now, so you jes call me Uncle Joe. Okay?’

  ‘Uncle Joe’ was much easier and more respectful than calling grown-ups by their first names, which was difficult for me when I’d always used ‘sir’ or ‘mister’. ‘I’ll try, er . . . Uncle Joe.’ Then he repeated more or less what Mac had said. ‘Jazz don’t know no age. If you can play good, that mean your music is gr
owed up, and so you family, and family don’t say sir or mister the one to the other. Wid me, Uncle Joe be jes fine.’

  I made a note in my head to look up the word ‘conversating’ next time I was at the library. It sounded like a real word and you knew immediately what it meant, but I just thought I’d check it to be sure. Mrs Hodgson’s insistence that I look up words I didn’t know had led to me forming a good habit, and I enjoyed flicking through the dictionary. It wasn’t that I’d use words to show off – you couldn’t do that at school or you’d be in deep shit – but it was just nice knowing a new word.

  Two musicians turned up for the jam, and before they walked into the main room, they both stopped and welcomed me and said they were glad I’d returned to play with them. Then Uncle Joe came back and told me to follow him. We passed through the club and went through the door I’d seen my mom enter. It led to a large kitchen, then a short corridor ended in another door, which, to my surprise, opened onto what looked like somebody’s house, only it was built inside the warehouse. The hallway had a red runner on the floor and on the left was a proper lounge room that looked very grand.

  ‘Jack, will you kindly take a seat? Miss Frostbite, she won’t be long now.’ When Uncle Joe reached the door, he turned and said, ‘When she through conversatin’ wid you, you can come join us on stage.’ Then he left and closed the door behind him.

  I sat on the edge of one of two couches, both covered in yellow silk, I think; anyway, in shiny material that looked too nice for a boy to sit on. The polished wooden floor was covered with a huge yellow and green carpet with complicated patterns, and on the walls there were framed pictures that looked like real paintings. There was also a radiogram big as anything which stood on its own legs. It was made of varnished wood with two half-moon shapes and a circle cut out of the middle of the wooden front and backed with brown cloth where the sound came through. It had a badge on it with a little terrier dog looking into an old gramophone speaker and the letters HMV. I’d seen pictures of a radiogram, but this was the first real one I’d seen. Talk about swanky! There was also a glass cabinet filled with lots of little coloured porcelain figurines, mostly beautiful ladies in old-fashioned gowns. Later I would learn they were Royal Doulton and that the long skirts were called crinolines. Collecting them was Miss Frostbite’s hobby and I must say they looked very pretty. It must have been hard to walk around the kitchen in dresses like that, or to get close to someone.

  On the top of the cabinet was a framed photograph showing Miss Frostbite when she was younger, together with a fat, bald man with a moustache, who looked much older than her and who held a pipe. She was smiling but he wasn’t.

  Maybe ten minutes later, just when I was beginning to worry, Miss Frostbite entered. ‘Welcome, Jack,’ she said as I jumped up and stood at attention with my hands behind my back.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Frostbite, thank you!’ I said, remembering my mom’s last instructions.

  She sat on the couch opposite me, and when I stayed standing, she said, ‘Please be seated, Jack. I hope that you’ll soon come to think of this as your second home.’

  My first thought was that if this were to become my second home, then maybe she’d let me listen to the radiogram.

  ‘Well now! What have you decided?’ she asked.

  I dug into my trouser pocket and handed her the note. ‘It’s from my mother, Miss.’ I forgot to add the ‘Frostbite’.

  She read it quickly then looked up, smiling. ‘So I take it you’d like to learn the piano, Jack?’

  ‘Yes, please, Miss Frostbite,’ I said, remembering this time.

  ‘Well, I must say I am delighted. I believe you to have a very impressive talent, young Jack. It would be a shame to neglect your musical education.’

  She seemed real friendly, so I plucked up the courage to say, ‘I want to play jazz and can I please keep my harmonica?’

  ‘But, of course! I will consider it a part of your musical education. That is, sitting in with the band to keep you in touch with the real world of jazz. Joe Hockey will see to that part. He doesn’t play much jazz in public these days but he is an excellent teacher. He says you can do a good ten minutes of very competent jazz and several jazz numbers. After only a year that’s very promising. Now, do you know what all this is going to mean?’

  ‘No, Miss Frostbite. My mom said she didn’t know, only about learning the piano that’s classical, and learning to read music and all that.’

  ‘Well, Jack, the key to everything in a musical life is practice. How old are you?’

  ‘Ten, Miss.’

  ‘So, you won’t be able to do much more than an hour a day.’

  ‘We don’t have a piano, Miss Frostbite.’

  ‘No, of course not, Jack. You will practise here. My own piano room is soundproofed so that my playing doesn’t go through to the club. You will have to come here every day. I’m hoping your piano teacher will come here for the two afternoons you have lessons. As you grow older it will be considerably more.’

  ‘Do I have to practise on the weekend, too, Miss?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Why do you ask, Jack?’

  My heart started to pound. ‘Miss, I can’t on the weekend. It’s when me and my mom go out together.’

  I think she must have heard the panic in my voice and seen the look on my face. ‘Let’s just get the information down first, Jack. Once we’ve got a schedule, we can adjust it.’ I was to learn that schedules were very important to Miss Frostbite. ‘Now, when does school come out?’

  ‘Four o’clock, Miss.’

  ‘So you could get here when? Half-past four?’

  ‘No, Miss Frostbite, that’s when I have my dinner.’

  ‘A bit early, isn’t it?’

  I explained my mother’s work hours and how she had to leave at half-past four for her office-cleaning job and didn’t get back until ten at night. ‘Oh, well, what about half-past five? That should give you lots of time and you can sit in with the band for half an hour.’

  ‘I can’t do Thursday, Miss.’

  ‘Oh, dear. Why not, Jack?’

  ‘I have to go to the library, Miss.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Four days, that’s only four hours a week. Hmm, that’s hardly enough and, besides, you should be practising every day. You couldn’t come after you’ve been to the library?’

  I explained about the hour walk each way.

  ‘And if you take the streetcar?’

  ‘Fourteen minutes.’ I knew precisely because of Miss Mony.

  ‘Well, then, you shall have money for the streetcar. Could you be here by, say, six?’

  ‘Easy, Miss. Half-past five, if you like. But I can pay for it out of the dollar you gave me, because you gave me too much and I have to give you some back.’

  ‘You shall do no such thing, Jack. Buy yourself a small treat.’

  Small treat! Even with the library I’d have money over. My mom and I could spend it on the weekend – tea and buns in the café near the rotunda. ‘Thank you very much, Miss Frostbite.’

  ‘Now, about the weekends.’ I was to learn that Miss Frostbite seldom took ‘no’ for an answer. ‘Could you get here at, say, eight o’clock on Saturday and Sunday mornings? Or do you go to church on Sunday?’

  ‘No, Miss, I think that will be all right.’ It was five cents each way for the streetcar fare for two extra days. There goes another twenty cents of my dollar, just when I thought I was rolling in money.

  ‘Jack, you shall have a dollar for your travel expenses each week.’ She paused. ‘Now, if you’re going to sit in with the band until seven, why don’t you have your dinner with them? You could be home just after eight.’

  ‘I’ll have to ask my mom, Miss Frostbite.’

  ‘Now that you are a budding musician and a growing boy, your food is very important. We like to feed the band properly – they’re mostly single men and so don’t look after themselves. Besides, musicians don’t play their best on an empty stomach.’ She held up one hand
and ticked the meals off on her fingers: ‘Let me see, Monday is beef stew; Tuesday, macaroni cheese; Wednesday, shepherd’s pie; Thursday, lamb casserole; and Friday, roast beef and roast potatoes. And you tell your mom there’s always vegetables.’ She smiled. ‘Dessert every night, stewed fruit with custard, rice pudding with raisins, bread pudding with dates . . . all you can eat, Jack.’

  I now definitely knew my mom would say yes when I told her about the food. I’d never had food that good, not ever. You couldn’t turn down an offer like that, could you. ‘I think the extra half hour will be okay, Miss Frostbite.’

  ‘I’d like you to start as soon as possible, Jack. I have yet to finalise my agreement with Miss Mona Bates, your teacher. I’m hoping she will take you on. She’s very famous but also a friend. Last year I played on two occasions in her ten-piano ensemble for a charity and they turned out to be very successful events. My hope is that by the time you’re twelve they’ll allow you to sit for the fifth or sixth grade examination at the Toronto Conservatory of Music.’

  ‘What’s a conservatory, Miss Frostbite?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a place where they teach music to talented students when they’ve graduated from high school. They also oversee all music examinations – a school for future musicians where every instrument is taught, as well as singing.’

  ‘Do they teach the harmonica?’

  ‘Well, now, that’s a good question, Jack. I really don’t know the answer to that. But if I can get Mona Bates to take you privately for piano lessons twice a week, and if you make good progress, then her recommendation will help enormously to allow you to take the entrance examinations when you finish school. But she’s very fussy about the students she accepts. She will need to hear you play and you’ll also have to sing for her. I promise you she won’t take my word on it. I expect we’ll have to go to her Jarvis Street studio for an initial test. Shall we meet again the same time tomorrow when you’ve discussed the things we’ve talked about with your mother?’ She looked at her wristwatch. ‘Now, go and see Uncle Joe and sit in on the jam for a bit. See you the same time tomorrow. You may eat with the band tonight, if you wish.’