Jack of Diamonds

by Bryce Courtenay

  Most of the rest of my landlady was concealed behind a heavy woollen knit-one purl-one no-nonsense brown cardigan, a baggy skirt and faded floral apron, below which heavy grey woollen stockings, and black felt slippers the size of small canoe paddles protruded. Taken together with her ginger hair and ghoulish face, she was an altogether formidable-looking woman and I confess I was immediately intimidated. Mrs Henderson could well have passed for Dolly’s older sister.

  ‘That will be three dollars for bed and breakfast, four dollars fifty with dinner. We don’t do lunch, but you will let me know if you’ll be out for dinner – can’t go throwing out good food – and there’s no reduction, unless you say so the night before; cook needs lots of notice so she don’t waste money marketing.’

  Still standing on the doorstep I reached into my wallet and handed her five single dollars, whereupon she drew fifty cents from her apron pocket in change, then stepped aside and smiled for the first time . . . well, sort of twitch-grimaced. ‘C’mon in,’ she instructed, as if I’d only just knocked and she’d opened the door to welcome a not particularly good friend or a tradesman. Then, reaching for a key on a rack beside the door, she beckoned me to follow her.

  As we walked down the hallway towards the rear of the house, she kept up a flow of instructions. ‘I always need the rent a week in advance. We don’t want you sneaking off in the dead o’ night, do we now, Mr Spayd? You wouldn’t be the first. I’ll show you to your room. You’ll be sharing with Mr Greer; he’s long term, clean, tidy, don’t snore week nights ’cause he works nightshift at the grain depot, don’t come home till eight in the morning and don’t drink.’ We’d turned into a dark passageway in what seemed to be the rear of the two-storey house. She stopped to click on a light. ‘Always switch off the light if you’re going out at night; can’t waste electricity.’ We proceeded a little further down the passage and came to a halt outside a door marked 7, a lucky number for me when playing cards and the first good omen. Mrs Henderson made no move to open the door but turned instead to face me. ‘Mr Greer is a born-again Christian and so am I, praise His precious name.’ The last four words were said as an attachment to the sentence, almost as a throwaway, and I would come to learn that they were always attached whenever she mentioned matters of salvation, witnessing for the Lord, the church, its pastor or congregation, known collectively as the Lord’s work. ‘We don’t allow strong drink on the premises. Come home drunk, you’ll get your marching orders quick smart and no rent returned, can’t say it more plain than that, can I?’ She paused fractionally, her green eyes pinning me down. ‘You a drinker, Jack?’

  It was the first time she’d used my name in this one-way conversation. I smiled in what I hoped was a reassuring way. ‘No, ma’am. Marge at the railway explained about drink. But it’s okay, I never touch a drop.’ She looked at me doubtfully so that I felt the need to explain further. ‘You see, my father was, ah . . . is an alcoholic.’

  ‘You mean a drunkard?’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose that’s another word for it.’

  ‘Ain’t no other word for it. No point in using fancy names. Strong drink is the devil’s way of leading the world into temptation. You smoke?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘Dirty, filthy habit, wicked, wicked. This is an iniquitous city, Jack.’ She fixed me with another warning look. ‘You’ll want to be careful, fall thou not into temptation, saith the Lord, praise His precious name. A young man like you can easily get into trouble. There’s plenty of that around here, all of it the devil’s work and he’s lurking, Jack. Satan is everywhere you turn.’

  How was I ever going to tell her I was in the entertainment business, a jazz piano player and potentially a part of the wicked and iniquitous city? Hoping to change the subject, I asked, ‘May I have a shower every morning, ma’am?’ Miss Frostbite had advised me about the importance of personal hygiene after discovering that a daily shower wasn’t customary among the populace of Cabbagetown. As a schoolboy, I’d become accustomed to having a shower after I completed my piano practice at Miss Frostbite’s place. She had installed three showers at the Jazz Warehouse and so there were no excuses, everyone on her staff was expected to be clean. She could smell what she called ‘BO’ from ten feet away. If she passed a kitchen worker who hadn’t attended to his or her personal hygiene for two or three days, she’d say in a reproving voice, ‘There is absolutely no excuse for body odour.’ Once said, it wasn’t lightly forgotten.

  Mrs Henderson’s head snapped back at my request. ‘Certainly not! You’re not a labourer, are you?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘Well then, two hot showers a week ought to be quite enough and they come with the rent. Anything extra is ten cents a shower, fifteen cents a bath. Money don’t grow on trees, but someone’s got to chop them down to heat the water. All that lumber and lugging and bath cleaning costs.’ She made it sound as if she was the lumberjack responsible for the entire process involved in feeding the furnace.

  Perhaps it was her first attempt at levity. I wasn’t sure. I handed back the fifty cents change she’d given me, wondering how much more she would extract before she finally let me into the bedroom. But that, for the time being anyhow, seemed to be that. She unlocked the door and handed me the key, but not without further admonishment. ‘You must always lock it when you’re going out. I can’t be responsible for your bits and pieces, so don’t come crying to me if anything gets stolen. Take your keys with you. I don’t need no careless and inconsiderate person waking me up in the middle of the night and asking me to walk down them stairs with my lumbago to let them in. And be quiet when you come in. Have some consideration for others.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Henderson, I will be very careful. Just where is the bathroom, ma’am?’

  ‘Down the end of the passage, the door without no number, and don’t leave your things lying around in your half of the room, and kindly clean up the bathroom and wipe the floor after you’ve been. I don’t want no ath-a-letes feet. Only men on this bottom floor, no men allowed upstairs. Brush next to the privy, don’t want no dirty splashboard neither. Breakfast seven to eight-thirty, till nine o’clock on Sunday, though you won’t want to sleep in with the Lord’s work going on outside, praise His precious name.’

  With this last remark Mrs Henderson’s demeanour suddenly changed and she smiled a more or less proper smile, the cracks in her face powder shifting and her voice assuming a slightly softer tone. I was to learn that there were two Mrs Hendersons: the first was God’s precious child, who was working towards what she referred to as her sanctification; the second was tough as old boot leather and worked at keeping her boarding house shipshape.

  ‘We are having a revival meeting, starting at noon after the regular prayer meeting this Sunday, praise His precious name. Perhaps you’d like to come, Jack? The church is just across the road. It’s the old theatre, you’ll see it in the morning.’ She indicated a window above what was to be my bed and my half of the room. ‘Snowing too heavy now, but you’ll see it when you go out in the morning. Don’t do the neon Friday night.’

  I didn’t ask what she meant by this last remark. Mrs Henderson in her guise as boarding-house keeper had given me a fair old verbal bludgeoning. Surprised by the sudden change in her persona, I agreed to attend a revival meeting, whatever that was supposed to be.

  Later, having been to the bathroom and cleaned my teeth and changed into my pyjamas, I lay in bed in my half of the room trying to justify my pathetic spinelessness in acquiescing so quickly to my landlady’s suggestion. I told myself I was only going for the music, though I doubted there’d be Negro spirituals. Joe had once told me, ‘Negro spirituals, that like white folk tryin’ to have themselves their own jazz. Ain’t pretty but sometime it got itself some nice Lordy Jesus rhythm.’ I was going to hear the Lordy Jesus rhythm. After all, I was a musician, it was my professional duty to check out every type of local music. Comforting myself with the thought of this act of musical piety I felt co
nsiderably better about my moral cowardice. I assumed my room-mate would be home on Saturday and Sunday nights, and asked myself if it meant that these were his big snoring nights. I’d simply have to wait and see, but for now I was dog-tired, and soon drifted off to sleep.

  Mr Greer, my room-mate, turned up for breakfast, and after Mrs Henderson introduced us – ‘Mr Spayd, Mr Greer’ – he said quietly, ‘Call me Jim.’ He seemed a nice enough gent and informed me he worked permanent night shift as a grain blender at the grain terminal, explaining, ‘I like to do the Lord’s work at the railway station.’

  When I looked blank he explained that he handed out tracts and testified to passengers passing through Moose Jaw. ‘Otherwise I sleep until it’s time for my dinner, then I have my quiet time with the Lord, then it’s time to go to work.’

  After breakfast – oatmeal, toast and tea (two fried eggs on Sundays) – I left to explore Moose Jaw. The theatre church across the road was easy enough to spot and I asked myself why it was that an abandoned theatre, despite being occupied for a different purpose, still looked forlorn, like an old dancer who had sustained a permanent hip injury. The large and lonely-looking building explained Mrs Henderson’s cryptic reference to ‘the neon’; on the front of the theatre-cum-church was a large white neon cross with APOSTOLIC CHURCH OF THE PENTECOST spelled out in pink neon tubing. The sign was turned off during the day, but it was sufficiently large to dominate the building.

  I must have kept my head down in the heavy snowfall of the previous night, because somehow I hadn’t noticed this proclamation in lights of God’s residence. I was to learn that the neon sign was turned on every night as soon as it grew dark. There was a church service every night of the week, each with a particular purpose for members of the congregation, the point being that the Apostolic Church of the Pentecost was active seven days a week, and not just on the Lord’s day. They were busy ‘grabbing the devil by his tail daily’.

  The Sunday revival meeting I was to attend with Mrs Henderson was after the regular church service from nine o’clock to eleven o’clock, where the Holy Spirit seemed to be especially present. That in turn followed the Sunday quiet time meeting that came after the gospel record broadcast at 7 a.m. to rouse the neighbourhood. The revival meeting began shortly after 11 a.m. and had the singular purpose of saving souls, with singing and hellfire preaching to encourage us sinners to be born again, washed in the blood of the Lamb. The revival reinforcement meetings on Tuesday and Friday evening were to strengthen the faith of those who were born again at the Sunday revival.

  My visit with Mrs Henderson, who had previously attended the earlier service, therefore had as its primary purpose the saving of my soul, along with the souls of other sinners dragged in by members of the congregation. We were to look into the glorious face of the Lord, confess our sins and be born again.

  I was too young at the time to understand the mechanisms of conversion, although later I came to understand that any fundamentalist cult requires at least two indoctrinating events per week to reinforce the message and further isolate the convert from the society outside the cult to which they had belonged in the past.

  It must have snowed all or most of the night, for River Street and the surrounding streets were blanketed in snow and looked pristine despite the previous night’s mayhem. Nothing looks more shut than a nightclub or tavern or other place of entertainment with the neons and the lights switched off and a chill morning-after wind battering at the barred and padlocked doors. Bright artificial light has the advantage of concealing the creaking and aching bones of tired buildings that are all too apparent in the harsh light of day. On this Saturday morning, much of River Street above its blanket of snow looked a little like Mrs Henderson’s face, beaten but not entirely bowed, the whiteness from the newly fallen snow covering all but the creases and disrepair on the older buildings that had remained unmaintained during the previous decade of the Depression.

  Reading the billboards and posters outside the clubs, saloons and gambling joints, I made a note of several likely places I might apply to for a job. Nothing appeared to be open except for the slightly better hotels, where the whirr of hoovering and the smell of floor polish indicated the major activities of the morning.

  I soon discovered that it was pointless enquiring after the entertainment manager. Nevertheless, I did the rounds, asking anyone I could find for the name of the manager or person I should ask to see, and writing this down for later. Finally I approached a uniformed bell captain at the entrance to the Brunswick Hotel, a three-storey building that was seemingly one of the best of several hotels in River Street. He was an older man and I introduced myself and asked him if I could see the entertainment manager.

  ‘What’s your business, Jack?’ He was obviously accustomed to authority.

  ‘I play piano,’ I replied.

  ‘What sort?’

  ‘Jazz . . . ah, just about everything else as well,’ I added quickly.

  ‘Bit young, ain’t you?’

  ‘Well, the keyboard doesn’t know my age.’ It wasn’t an original line and could probably have been attributed to Mozart in his day.

  ‘Hey, I like that!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re going to need all the cheek you got in River Street, Jack. There are more ways to fleece a greenhorn in this street than I’ve found to swear at a bellboy.’

  ‘Yeah, I must say it’s a bit different to Toronto.’

  He laughed. ‘Well, yeah, chalk ’n’ cheese. Moose Jaw is the New Orleans of Canada, and River Street is where a man can find the most joy and trouble in the one place.’ He stuck out his hand. ‘Peter Cornhill.’

  ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, Peter.’

  ‘When’d you get into town?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘Last night,’ I said. ‘If you hear about anything going on the street, I’d be most obliged.’

  Peter Cornhill laughed again. ‘Jack, that’s my job, son. But in my profession the only way to open my ears is to unzip your wallet.’ I reached into my pocket. ‘No, no, not now.’ He grinned. ‘Most musicians are on the bones of their ass. It’s the one trade where money don’t stick. You pay if I deliver the goods, the information you need.’

  ‘Thanks, Peter, much obliged.’

  ‘May as well take it easy for the rest of the day, son. Ain’t nothing happens in this street until the girls have risen from their beauty sleep, painted their faces on and are back leaning on the windowsills and showing off their titties. That’s the signal, that’s the time when the joints start jumping and the saloons and the gambling dens get to thinking about the action for the night to come. Come by maybe five-thirty, six o’clock, be someone you can talk to in most places. I’ll have a word to Mr Kerr, the assistant manager, when he comes in. Reggie Blunt, who plays piano here, is getting a mite grumpy, been one or two complaints from the ladies at the Thursday tea party. Do you do, you know . . . light classical? They like that.’

  ‘You mean Johann Strauss, Franz Lehar, Fritz Kreisler? Yeah, sure, I can do them.’

  ‘Huh? No, never heard o’ them. Don’t suppose they have neither. You know, English classical . . . “Keep the Home Fires Burning”, “If You Were the Only Girl in the World”, “Roses of Picardy” . . . them?’

  I’d come full circle from Dolly and Mac’s ancient HMV gramophone squawking through the ceiling boards and my battered, belated birthday harmonica. ‘Sure, practically play them in my sleep,’ I assured him.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do, Jack. Come back round about six. Mr Cameron Kerr will be in to get ready for the dinner crowd. He’s a nice guy, bit sharp sometimes but don’t take no notice. Drives a hard bargain but he’ll give you a hearing.’ Peter Cornhill grinned. ‘Old Reggie says he’s getting too old to play ladies’ afternoon-tea-party crap. Says he’s gonna toss it in if he has to play to a bunch of cackling old hens much longer. Long as I can remember he’s bin saying he’s going to live with his son and daughter-in-law in Winnipeg and only play nursery rhymes to his grandchil
dren. “A definite step up the rungs of the musical ladder, Peter, old chap,” Peter Cornhill mimicked. ‘Only by now his grandchildren must be teenagers.’

  ‘Thanks, Peter, I’ll be here on the dot.’ I knew just how Reggie Blunt, the resident piano player at the Brunswick, must have felt. I’d never played any of the First World War songs on the piano and it had been a good while since I’d done so on the harmonica, but as I said, I could have played all the sentimental favourites on a comb wrapped in tissue paper and not missed a note.

  I spent the remainder of the day looking around the centre of the city and walking along both rivers, but it was too cold to go far. Around five in the afternoon I returned to River Street and began knocking on doors. Six premises of various sorts more or less fitted the bill. Three of them featured bands, two were setting up for the night to come, and one place featured a solo piano. For each of the two bands that were setting up, the piano player was the bandleader and both gave me the heave-ho, my feet barely touching the ground. The third band hadn’t yet arrived but the manager asked me to play a medley, and after I’d done so he told me I was too good and would show up the rest of his band, so thanks but no thanks. The solo piano player turned out to be a part owner of the club and asked me to play. I did and he said he’d hire me for the nights he had off and asked me to leave my phone number. Like an idiot I hadn’t asked Mrs H. for the phone number of the boarding house. Some professional I turned out to be. I’d been so intimidated by my landlady that I’d left without thinking of her at all, except to be hugely relieved that she hadn’t turned up in the dining room at breakfast. I could of course have asked the cook or Jim Greer, all the other guests having left or eaten earlier. I told the piano-playing club owner I was new in town and would drop in a contact number as soon as I had one.