Jack of Diamonds

by Bryce Courtenay

  Some of the great classical musicians had started to take jazz seriously around the late 1920s, even incorporating elements of the jazz idiom into their compositions. Three among many notables in the twenties and thirties were George Gershwin with Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris and Porgy and Bess; Maurice Ravel with Violin Sonata Number 2, Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D Major and Piano Concerto in G Major; and, even earlier, Igor Stravinsky in 1918 with Ragtime for Eleven Instruments. But despite this homage, concert audiences had not yet welcomed black jazz musicians to the great classical music venues in North America and Europe.

  Arthur Rubinstein, for instance, would visit the jazz clubs when he was in New York to hear Art Tatum play. On one such occasion at the Onyx Club a noted professor of music walked up to him and said, ‘Maestro, this is not your usual habitat.’ Rubinstein placed a finger to his lips. ‘Shush! I am listening to the world’s greatest piano player.’

  Like I said, it wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy learning classical piano, I did, very much. I am also eternally grateful to Mona Bates, who, by the way, kept her word and never spoke to me again, but who was nevertheless a good person, always generous to my mom and a simply wonderful teacher to the boy she so often castigated. Whenever I do something foolish, which happens frequently enough, her immortal words echo through my mind: ‘Stupid boy! Wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong again!’

  However, self-analysis and speculation about the future were pointless. War had been declared; the army was where I was headed as soon as I turned eighteen; that is, if it wasn’t over by the end of 1941, as some people were speculating in the news.

  Anyhow, I had one year to kill before anything much could happen in my life. In the meantime, with my school days over, Miss Frostbite had given me a job as general factotum and kitchen hand in the club. I started at two o’clock in the afternoon doing anything and everything, scrubbing down the kitchen walls and the floor, cleaning ovens and stoves, and washing and polishing the previous night’s glasses and ashtrays until the club opened at nine o’clock. Then I became the general dishwasher, running three sinks, one for dishes, one for drink glasses and the third for pots and pans. I knocked off at eleven o’clock, three hours before the club usually closed. Miss Frostbite had decided a boy of seventeen should be in bed before midnight.

  I earned six dollars a week, and now that I had to make my way in life Miss Frostbite gave me a choice: I could jam for an hour every night with the band, with twenty minutes of this time allocated to the piano, but it would mean a deduction of two dollars from my salary. Naturally I grabbed the opportunity with both hands. My hope was that, with this experience every night, plus Joe’s lessons, I’d be good enough to do a solo improvisation by the end of the year. I’d worked up a piece on the piano based on a theme the band always included in its repertoire.

  I had planned to spend the whole year before joining the army on a return to jazz. I hoped Miss Frostbite would let me continue to practise in her piano room, so that I could adapt what I’d learned in classical study to jazz piano. I’d also be taking formal lessons from Uncle Joe, who, while very competent, would never be a great jazz pianist. Nevertheless, he was a great teacher. I wanted to maintain more or less the same schedule as I’d had with Miss Bates, realising that in some ways I was starting all over again, with work hours replacing school hours and jazz lessons replacing classical lessons, and practice replacing any leisure hours I might have had. While my day was now turned upside down, the amount of effort I’d have to put in would be much the same. This was the well-worn, familiar and comfortable groove I was speaking of earlier, and I was as addicted to routine as everyone else.

  When I’d approached Uncle Joe about formal lessons shortly after I’d started as a kitchen hand at the club, he’d thrown back his grey peppercorn head and laughed. ‘Jazzboy, welcome. Personally I am deelighted! You’re already good, but you ain’t great. That don’t happen until you gone out and gotten yo’self some life and done yo’self some dirty livin’. So now we gonna teach you the fine art o’ scuffin’, so you learn to take care yo’self in dis big bad world that Mr Bad-ass Adolf Hitler want to make even worse, if that possible. In the next three months I is gonna learn you ragtime, swing and big band jazz.’ He paused to explain what he meant. ‘Dat when you can’t improvise none and gotta read the music strict and play accordin’. After you learn all this you gonna go out play yourself some bars, clubs, taverns, hotels, any venue you can find for a musician that eager to learn himself in.’

  ‘Couldn’t I just play here at the club? I know the routine and the musicians and you’d be watching and teaching me . . .’ Then I added, ‘I’ve been working on a solo piece for piano.’

  ‘Jazzboy, you ain’t hearin’ me correk!’ Uncle Joe said. ‘Playin’ here at the Jazz Warehouse, what you gonna learn, hey, boy? You gonna learn same old same old. You gonna eat good, wash a few dishes and have yo’self a jolly time. No, sir, I gonna teach you the ways of scuffin’ for three month, then you gonna go out, get yo’self gainful employed any how you can wid the piano.’ He paused then stabbed me in the chest with a big, bony forefinger. ‘And don’t you forget your harmonica. Some crazy joints dey don’t have no piano, but if you can play good ragtime on your harmonica, they gonna give you some grub and a bed when you hungry and weary. I don’t want you should stay here in the big smoke neither.’ He chuckled, then appeared to be thinking. ‘Now let me see. Maybe Cowtown, Calgary, Alberta? Go mix wid the cowboys, smell yourself some cow shit, eh? What say?’

  ‘But, Uncle Joe, all the good musicians are across the border in New York, Chicago, Memphis, New Orleans – I mean, surely that’s where —’

  I didn’t get to complete the sentence. ‘Hey, whoa, Jazzboy! Uncle Joe gonna tell you why you ain’t crossin’ no border. Now you listen to me good. Firstly and foremost you ain’t good enough to mix it wid them cats. What you gonna need is seasonin’. You gotta harden up. Need some space to grow some. What I sayin’, you gotta get yo’self some life to put into your music. Dump some ex-peery-ence in them chords. You got talent, sure, but that don’t mean nothin’, sonny boy. You got yourself a musical education, that gonna be useful later when you growed up a bit. Now, this exact moment we is speakin’ . . . why, you just a dumb kid wid a bit o’ fancy technique you learned from that piano woman.’

  ‘Jesus, Uncle Joe, go west? It’s just cow shit and prairie!’

  ‘That pree-cisely what you gonna need, boy! Log cabining, snowshoes and bad liquor. Now there is also other places you gotta acquaint yourself wid. Edmonton, the Rockies . . . you never seen them mountains? They like you looking in the veri-table face o’ God! It put wonder in your soul that gonna go straight back into your music! Then Vancouver, that by the Pacific Ocean that stretch way out to Australia.’

  ‘You want me to go to Australia?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘No no, that the end o’ the fuckin’ world, man!’ It was the first time I’d ever heard Uncle Joe use such language. ‘I want you should do yo’self a whole parcel o’ good. Do some hard things, hungry things, tough-goin’ things . . . but good things all the while.’

  ‘But, Uncle Joe, I’m going to join the army in less than a year.’ I was implying that this would surely be tough enough. ‘I mean, I could get myself killed.’

  ‘Ho! That pree-cisely my whole point. You learn scuffin’, you learn a whole lot more than scuffin’. You gonna learn yo’self survival.’

  ‘What does that mean, Uncle Joe? I mean, I understand what you said about playing piano and going west, but in the war if you survive it’s not really up to you, is it?’

  ‘My goodness, son, you sure is one big greenhorn! Ever-thing is up to you, boy. Scuffin’ – that about learning to figure the odds, you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. You’re saying it’s about knowing a bit of everything – ragtime, jazz, swing, big band – then sort of instinctively getting to know the joints that might give you work. Is that it?’

  ‘Hey, h
ey, not so fast, Jazzboy. That only a part; the other part is maybe you learn somethin’ about stayin’ alive. You ever heard an army band? Soldiers got to have music, not jes for marching but also for their rec-ree-a-tion. They gotta have dance bands for the officers, also dinner music and entertainment for the big brass. That what I gonna learn you and you gonna practise out west. That the scuffin’ music that gonna save your butt. Ain’t no music playin’ in them fox holes they gonna make you dig wid your fingernails. You do that kinda work, your hands ain’t gonna be worth a dime next time you meet a piano. You got good hands, big hands, you gotta protect them and also yo’self. You gotta be out the way when the Germ-man come runnin’ wid their bay-on-net fixed so you crap your pants and you shiverin’ and shakin’ so much you can’t pull the trigger point blank.’ He said it all in a rush of words put together in Joe style with no pauses so that I must have looked blank as I was cobbling it all together in my mind. ‘Hey, Jazzboy! You hearin’ me good? You understan’ what I sayin’ to you?’

  ‘Yes, but that would be shirking, Uncle Joe!’ I protested, shocked at his suggestion. ‘It would be cowardly looking for a cosy, safe job in the army when other guys are out on the battlefield.’

  ‘Shirkin’? Cowardly?’ Joe’s face took on a look of disdain. ‘You got too much Boy Scout in you, Jazzboy! O’ course savin’ your butt well in advance o’ the moment when you got to do it for real ain’t cowardly! It in-telly-gent and just plain sensible, you hear? A man don’t want to die just because he can’t make up his mind, and so he gonna leave it to somebody else, some high-rank dude who gonna do the decidin’ for him. When you go out west you ain’t gonna practise no dyin’. You gonna practise stayin’ alive, man! That the battlefield you gotta learn. This lousy world full o’ bad asses like Adolf Hitler. Once you learned them by character you knowed them by action. Only battlefield you gotta learn to know is the battlefield o’ life. Ain’t no war wid them Germans gonna teach you that.’ Joe Hockey paused and jabbed his finger at me once again. ‘You got one bad problem . . . you wanna know what it is, Jack the Knife?’

  It was a name he’d not previously used for me. ‘Only one?’ I grinned sheepishly, trying to recover my equilibrium. Joe was stamping down hard on my increasingly battered ego.

  ‘You got too many women bin runnin’ your life too long. Time you got yourself a ticket on the Canadian Pacific Rail train. Time to vamoose.’ He grinned. ‘“Go west, young man.” It time to tell Miss Frostbite and your mama goodbye, like you already told Miss Bates.’

  Joe was never short of a word or an opinion, but he seldom handed out direct advice unless it concerned teaching music. He’d sometimes say, ‘White man advice you can take or leave; black man advice you ain’t most times gonna bother your head at listenin’.’ Then he’d add, ‘So, I ain’t botherin’ my head none wid givin’ out that kinda wise-ass stuff.’ So, this was a world record for advice. I also knew he wasn’t kidding and joking around like he sometimes did and that he meant every word.

  Moreover he wasn’t wrong. Except for Mac and Joe himself there was an absence of influential men in my life. Both had played important roles, and but for them, I might have grown up thinking most men were bastards like my dad. Mac had introduced me to the Jazz Warehouse and Joe Hockey had found me under the steps and dragged me inside, where my life miraculously began to change. But, like he’d said, it had basically been three women – my mom, Miss Frostbite and Miss Bates – who’d more or less dictated my every move since I was a small boy. No, not three, five women, because you’d have to include Miss Mony and even Mrs Hodgson from the library, who’d taken over from Miss Mony when my reading habits grew more sophisticated.

  ‘Yeah, okay, I hear what you say, Uncle Joe,’ I said, perhaps a tad annoyed.

  ‘Okay, Jazzboy, now you heared me and you thinkin’ about takin’ a black man’s advice and you mad at me some. But now I said it, I ain’t never gonna say it again. By the way, Floss want to see you pronto.’ He said this last bit in the same tone as the general flow of his other words so that I almost missed it.

  My heart skipped a beat. ‘Is it about my job in the kitchen?’ I asked, at once anxious. Disastrously, on my third night as a kitchen hand, I’d dropped a tray and broken twenty cocktail glasses, though fortunately not in front of the club patrons. Just as I was coming into the kitchen I’d slipped on a cocktail snack – we were supposed to call them hors d’oeuvres – that a waiter had dropped. I went ass over tea kettle, broken glass was scattered across the kitchen floor, and the chef was near ready to decapitate me with a meat cleaver. Just picking up the glass screwed up the kitchen routine completely and the rest of the night had been a major disaster. Miss Frostbite had entered the kitchen and read the riot act to the furious chef while not saying a word to me. The whole scene hadn’t been pretty and I thought she might have been saving her pique for a later time to avoid risking her dignity by shouting at the dishwasher.

  ‘I ain’t sayin’, ’cept it ain’t about them Manhattan glasses you broke,’ Joe chuckled.

  Miss Frostbite wasn’t in her apartment when I called around, so I decided I’d catch up with her later when I came on shift that afternoon. I could arrive fifteen minutes early. It wasn’t one of my mom’s cleaning days so I’d stay and have lunch with her.

  When I got home Mom kissed me then pointed to the kitchen sideboard. ‘Note there for you, Jack.’

  ‘From?’

  She shrugged. ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Mom!’ I said somewhat pointedly. ‘You’re talking to me, your beloved son Jack, who’s been with you seventeen years, remember?’ It was nice being able to answer back after the verbal hiding I’d taken from Joe Hockey.

  ‘It’s from Mac.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He wants to meet you after you get out from work tonight. He’ll be waiting outside the Jazz Warehouse.’

  ‘Did he say why?’

  ‘No, just that. Read it for yourself.’

  ‘Thanks, Mom. Can you make a cuppa? I need to talk with you about something that happened this morning.’

  ‘Oh, Jack! They’ve fired you over breaking them cocktail glasses, haven’t they!’

  ‘No, Mom. It’s about a long talk I had with Uncle Joe this morning. Make the tea and I’ll tell you.’

  She made a jam sandwich and a cup of tea for each of us, and we ate lunch and I told her about going west and scuffing.

  ‘Scuffing? It don’t sound very nice, Jack. What is it exactly?’ my mom asked, looking anxious.

  ‘Gaining experience, moving around, learning how to stay alive. You know, feeling the pressure of making a living, getting exposed to the world outside, learning about life by playing music,’ I explained.

  ‘Don’t them things happen here in Cabbagetown every day?’ She was now beginning to look decidedly upset.

  I explained how, in Joe’s opinion, it was essential if I wanted to become a jazz piano player. But, long before I’d finished speaking, the tears began to roll silently down her cheeks. I didn’t tell her about Joe’s lecture on survival and finding a job playing music in the army because, despite what Joe said, I still wasn’t sure I wouldn’t be dodging my duty.

  Finally, when I fell silent, she sniffed and used the backs of her hands, like a little girl might do, to brush away the tears. ‘Oh, Jack, you’re going to go west then return and join the army, and you might die,’ she sniffed.

  There it was again, the war and dying. ‘Mom, who knows? The war might be over by then, for all we know. Lots of people are saying it might.’ I’d been so busy telling her about scuffing that I hadn’t given a thought to her. I was all she had in the world. Once I left she’d be on her own and terribly lonely. Sometimes the plans we make for ourselves have consequences for others we can’t do a lot about, but I felt sure that in her mind she’d calculated on my being with her until I turned eighteen, when I’d be off to the war. The news of my departure would have come as a nasty shock.

  ‘I hope so, Jac
k. I do hope so, but the prime minister says we need to prepare for a long conflict, and he’s right about most things,’ she said softly.

  I’d always planned that some day I’d hit the trail and kick the dust, or plough through the slush and snow of the Canadian prairies, but I’d seen this happening later in my life, maybe after I’d returned from the war. It was one of those sometime whenever and possibly never ambitions we all carry in our heads, often into our dotage, like sailing singlehanded around the world in a 30-foot yacht or climbing in the Himalayas, or dog-sledding across Alaska, or some other wild dream of the ultimate adventure. I’d often enough ‘gone west’ in my imagination and I’d read half a zillion books set in the Canadian prairies, Alaska and the Yukon. Canada was a vast country – I owed it to myself to explore it.

  However, once his ‘do it now’ advice had sunk in I realised Joe Hockey was right about leaving the primary influences in my life and heading westwards. I had only left my mom’s side for two nights in my entire seventeen years, when Miss Bates and I had travelled overnight by train to Montreal to a piano competition. Travelling overnight on a train in effect meant I hadn’t really seen anything more than railway stations on the way, and a bit of Montreal going from the station to the concert hall, and returning in the early evening to the station.

  While my excitement mounted at the prospect of heading west, it was nonetheless a somewhat scary notion to drop everything and head out of town with nothing in my back pocket but a battered harmonica. But the more I thought about it the more I began to embrace the idea. I’d been on a strict schedule since the age of seven and I’d largely lost the sense of careless, casual and intrepid adventure a boy of my age might possess. Even the girls often kicked over the traces. For instance, the twins had fulfilled Mac’s worst fears by leaving school at sixteen despite, according to their teachers, being exceptionally bright. They’d left Toronto for Montreal to work for Dolly’s sister in her fish-and-chip shop. Seven years later they’d returned from their various adventures in an altogether different feminine guise from the lowly one their mother had envisaged for them as well-trained working-class women, at the lower end of the social pecking order: equipped to mind children, change nappies, cook and scrub other people’s kitchen floors in return for a daily pittance and the breakfast, lunch and dinner leftovers.