Jack of Diamonds

by Bryce Courtenay

  While the group muddled along and played well enough without a bass player, we all felt the lack. A group without a bass instrument is like chewing without back teeth. Then several weeks after we’d started, a guy from the audience introduced himself as Robert Yuen and asked us if we had room for a double bass. Whoopee! There must be a god in heaven!

  Robert Yuen was twenty-five and the son of the wealthy owner of more than a dozen small hotels in towns along the rail line and the Trans-Canada Highway. He must have known we’d grab him with both hands. We now had the final instrument to allow us to achieve a characteristic jazz sound, and his addition made all the difference to the group. Although all of us were professionals who played in other bands on River Street, our group began to have its own sound and pretty soon people were begging us to play at private parties. We all had night jobs elsewhere, so we had to decline most of the invitations.

  In honour of our generous patron we called the group the John Robert Johnson Caribou Café Band. A bit of a mouthful I admit, but such was his generosity that we never shortened it to the Caribou Café Band, and I think he liked the tribute. He was a great guy, ‘salt of the earth’ as Reggie would say.

  My hope was that we’d progress sufficiently to do a Sunday afternoon gig at the Brunswick, but, as I said before, the kids who came were essentially purists, cool and demanding, insisting on a standard of jazz I could only barely reach. While I’m not suggesting I was all that much better, the others were set in their ways and had always been functional middle-of-the-road musicians making a living. We were pretty good by Moose Jaw standards, but that wasn’t quite enough for my diehard Sunday fans.

  However, Robert Yuen, the ring-in who’d approached us, turned out to be good, I mean really good. He’d studied at the Juilliard, and was back in Moose Jaw because his dad had cancer. As the oldest son he was expected to take over. Although he didn’t say much, I think he was pretty disappointed at having to give up a musical career. He’d once said to me, ‘Jack, man, you saved my life. I always wanted to play jazz and now at least I’ve got something going aside from fucking buildings and leases.’ He and I soon worked up a gig that was pleasing enough for the Sunday aficionados. Cam Kerr could hardly refuse a $10 Sunday salary for Robert when we were so popular, but he wasn’t all that keen to begin with. Piano and bass are an unlikely combination, but it worked.

  I’d bought a state-of-the-art harmonica, the magnificent Hohner Echo Elite, from a Main Street music shop, the last one of its kind in stock. I felt guilty just owning it, not because it was German, but the word ‘new’ to me had always been preceded by ‘almost’ and meant second-hand in good condition. We’d get an item of clothing from Mrs Sopworth and my mom would exclaim excitedly, ‘Why, it’s almost new!’

  I also bought a lot of sheet music, then once I knew it by heart I’d start extemporising. Even Joe had once remarked, ‘Yo real good, Jazzboy. Yo bin the fastest ever I seen to get a melody in yo head.’ Miss Bates, pretty stingy with her compliments, had said much the same on more than one occasion, commenting that she believed my big hands and musical memory were going to be my greatest assets in classical music.

  I must have been improving because the Sunday afternoon ballroom crowd continued to grow, despite the five-cent surcharge on drinks and despite swing being all the rage. When Robert Yuen came along with his bass I think we both took a big leap forward.

  My most ardent desire was to return to the Jazz Warehouse, casually sit down at the piano knowing they’d be expecting a bit of backsliding, and then positively knock their socks off. I wanted Joe to say, ‘Hey, Jazzboy, you three notch up the Tatum totem pole.’ He’d told me when I’d left (as a huge compliment) that I was past the first notch and ‘jes toe-touchin’ the secon’. When I asked him how many notches there were on the totem pole, he’d laughed. ‘Maybe twenny-five, maybe fifty, maybe dat totem pole be the stairway to heaven. Ain’t nobody ever gonna get all the way up. Mr Fats Waller? No! Mr Earl Hines? No! Mr Teddy Wilson? No, no, no!’

  Joe never explained his antipathy for Teddy Wilson, whom I greatly admired. He was simply up there with the very best and it wasn’t like Joe, who, by his own admission, was never a great jazz piano player. I knew he was better than he made out, but he was nowhere near Teddy Wilson’s class. Few jazz musicians were. But he knew a great jazz player when he heard one and I was yet to meet a musician, including Art Tatum, who didn’t respect his judgment.

  Jazz wasn’t my only obsession. I mean, here I was, in the epicentre of sin, with girls leaning from windows and balconies everywhere I looked. They called me Honky-Tonk Jack, and had come to know me as a regular and not as a mark, a professional who worked on River Street as they themselves did, but this hadn’t stopped me imagining dozens of scenarios with different girls. Once, a very pretty, dark-eyed girl with skin the colour of milk coffee and a smile that would have lit up a moonless night, had opened her coat and flashed me the entire bodyworks, leaving nothing to speculation. What I witnessed had sent my imagination into a fever for two weeks. Jim Greer’s nightly absence during the week permitted some blessed release, but not before I’d turned my back on his Asleep in the arms of Jesus quilt.

  Which goes to show how mixed up I was about sex. I knew I was hungry for love, starving in fact, yet I lacked the courage to confront Miss Flash, as I termed her, or for that matter any of the other girls. As for meeting what might be termed a ‘nice’ girl, I was even less certain about how to go about it. There were lots of them at my Sunday concerts, but there was nowhere to go afterwards and besides, as I’d learned at the Jazz Warehouse, Miss Frostbite’s first immutable rule was no fraternising with the patrons.

  Reggie Blunt seemed to know most of the balcony sisterhood, as he called the girls, I suppose because he had been a widower and had hung around River Street for so long. He and I used to walk over to the Brunswick and he’d have a whisky after our poker game. One day he said, ‘My dear boy, the balcony sisterhood are putting a dollar each week in the proverbial hat towards a party. They’re selling raffle tickets at 25 cents each to be drawn at the shindig to see who’ll be the first to put Honky-Tonk Jack on his back.’

  I laughed, though I could feel my face burning as I tried to conceal my embarrassment. ‘Reggie, do they know how old I am?’

  ‘Ah, exactly, that’s half the challenge, old boy. A good-looking, tall, broad-shouldered, seventeen-year-old virgin who is clean as the driven snow and yet still a legitimate part of the River Street scene is close to a miracle. A mark who is untainted and talented – you’re the dream of every member of the sisterhood.’ He laughed. ‘You’re big time, you draw a hundred and fifty or more young people to the ballroom on Sunday. I know for a fact that six of the River Street girls attend religiously. They see you as the big prize, my boy, the scalp they all want, the status symbol, the notch on the rifle butt, or in this case, on their own butt.’

  He paused and gave me a bloodshot, weepy-eyed, whisky-nosed look. ‘You are a virgin, are you not, Jack?’

  All I could think to say in reply was, ‘Not in my head, Reggie.’

  I immediately recalled Mac’s story of being seduced by Dolly and how he’d returned to his apprenticeship having only gained one thing from the altogether frightening experience in the bushes beside the Don River: the right to nod sagely when the loss of virginity was discussed and, if asked, admit casually and modestly to being a veritable stallion.

  While I was certainly ignorant, there wasn’t a skerrick of innocence in my head. I imagined doing sexual things to a woman that I could never talk about to anyone. While they were neither vicious nor violent they didn’t allow her any choice in the matter. In my head she’d be completely compliant and go along with whatever it was I wanted and if I wasn’t absolutely sure what I required, nevertheless it was all one way, all about me and my pleasure. I am ashamed to say that if my imagined partner had any needs of her own in my torrid fantasies, they had never occurred to me.

  Despite this, Reggie Bl
unt’s words filled me with terror. It was not what I wanted, it was what they wanted, and they were professionals. They’d actually know the what, the where and the how. If they’d won me in a raffle they could do whatever they desired and I was terrified that I might prove entirely inadequate.

  Apart from the glimpse of the neat triangle of dark hair on the milk-coffee-coloured Miss Flash, I had absolutely no idea of the precise appearance or use of the intimate parts of the female anatomy when it was naked. I had even less idea of whether women enjoyed sex, and if so, how they went about it. It wasn’t a subject discussed in any of the hundreds of books I’d read, other than in the most unspecific phraseology. Couples ‘made love’ or ‘consummated their relationship’ and were therefore happy, satisfied and mutually fulfilled afterwards. It was the words ‘made’ and ‘satisfied’ that preoccupied me. ‘Made’ suggested at least one specific task that led to a highly satisfying conclusion known as ‘mutually fulfilled’, but there were no books that told you the details. I was a man. How the hell could I be expected to know how to satisfy a woman?

  It was not until twenty years later when Penguin published D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1960 that kids like me had access to any descriptions of sex. If only I’d had some of his words in my head at the time, many of which I found so beautiful that I never forgot them.

  Of course I knew about male climaxes but hadn’t any idea how it happened for a female. The twins could have explained, but I was too terrified to go near them. Just observing one of them from the back filled me with lust and guaranteed a nocturnal assignation with my hand.

  Miss Flash had the same effect on me as the twins, and although she never exposed herself a second time, I had great trouble walking past her when she was consorting, flashing her brilliant smile down at me from her balcony. I usually carried a paperback in case I had a spare moment to read, or had to cover my tent pole, as if the usual way to walk around carrying a book that could just as easily have slipped into the side pocket of a lumber jacket or the back pocket of one’s trousers was to clutch it to one’s groin.

  However, if Reggie Blunt was right and I was to be a raffle prize, what was it that I was expected to do to fulfil my role and satisfy the winner? If they thought I knew anything about how to please a woman they were in for a big, big disappointment. I wasn’t just a novice, I’d missed out on most of the salacious gossip boys shared with their peers. None of us had been told about the birds and the bees, we were simply expected to follow the chirping made by someone’s sister when we reached nineteen or twenty. If she proved too willing she was called the town bike, if too cold, the ice maiden. Mac and Dolly’s experience (well, Mac’s anyway) was typical of teenage sexual experiments, most of which ended in a confab between both sets of parents with a bit of chest stabbing and shouting before a hasty marriage in a hand-me-down wedding dress or, if the bride’s waist was expanding too rapidly, in her best dress let out round the middle. Cabbagetown had an astonishing number of premature births.

  ‘Well, what do you think, old chap?’ Reggie said in his Canadian version of Colonel Blimp.

  ‘Think? I’m not sure I know what to think, Reggie.’

  ‘Well, if it’s any reassurance, Jack, I can honestly say in the thirty-five years I’ve been in Moose Jaw, I’ve never known this to happen before. I think you ought to take it as a huge compliment. I’d say Honky-Tonk Jack is the man of the moment, the ant’s pants, the star on the top of the Christmas tree.’

  ‘Reggie, I don’t have any idea what . . . you know . . . what to expect. I mean, it is just ah, one girl who wins the raffle, isn’t it?’

  ‘Good lord, yes, just one. They want to have a party on a Monday. That’s what the hat money is for – booze and canapés. Even the madams have made a contribution. Everyone is surprised at how much money they’ve collected with the raffle. It’s a real tribute to your popularity, old chap. You don’t work Mondays and it’s almost as quiet for them with River Street virtually closed down. The party would be at the Caribou Café – John Robert to supply both booze and eats. A nice little earner for him I daresay. The band would play and then you’d be, ah . . .’ he paused and cleared his throat, ‘the raffle prize! Splendid, what?’

  ‘And if I refuse? What then?’

  ‘Well, that would be extremely awkward, old son. Not the done thing at all. The sisterhood are paying you the ultimate compliment.’ He shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe what I’d just said. ‘Very churlish, very churlish indeed.’

  I thought immediately of Miss Flash. ‘But . . . but I don’t even get to choose the girl I want.’

  ‘Well, no Jack, that wouldn’t be fair. They’ve all put in their money and bought tickets. No jealousy that way, see? No resentment among the various houses.’

  ‘Houses? What’s that mean? Whorehouses?’

  ‘Bordellos, Jack, much nicer word,’ Reggie corrected, looking quite hurt. ‘The girls are not freelance. That would never work. Like everything in this town they need the protection you can buy with a little zigzag or they’d be in front of a magistrate every other week.’ He demonstrated ‘zigzag’ with the gesture he’d used initially for the chief of police – the hand outstretched to accept a bribe and then the quick retreat to the trouser pocket.

  ‘But what if I end up with, you know, some old crone?’ I protested. I guessed my chances of scoring the coffee-coloured flasher were pretty remote, one chance in who knows how many. ‘You said even the madams made a contribution!’ In my mind’s eye I saw a Mrs Henderson lookalike. Holy smoke! Imagine that. Lumbago Lil!

  Reggie looked me in the eye. ‘There’s no likelihood of that happening, dear boy. Possibly a girl in her mid-twenties, and you should pray that this is the case. There is simply no substitute for experience. There’s plenty of time for young and pretty later. The kind of instruction you’d get isn’t that easy to come by. An experienced professional can teach you how to please a woman, which will, I assure you, pay off handsomely in the years to come. You should be very happy if she isn’t a comparative novice.’

  Here we go again, Jack Spayd being managed by an older woman – Miss Mony, Miss Frostbite, Mrs Hodgson, Miss Bates and now, with my luck, Miss Wrinkles.

  ‘And I’d wear a rubber, of course,’ I said, trying to sound as if I knew more than I did.

  ‘But, of course old chap, a contraceptive is mandatory. Would you like me to make the purchase for you? You’ll need five or six, I should think.’

  ‘Five! I’d feel a bit foolish . . . like I was bragging!’

  ‘You don’t have to use them all.’ He drew his head back. ‘Strapping young chap like you – better to have too many than to find yourself short.’

  ‘Thank you for your advice, Reggie. If I agree to the raffle I’ll buy my own.’ I thought for a moment. What the hell, I’d be joining up soon. Who knows, I could die in a muddy trench in Europe, still a virgin. I grinned sheepishly, not looking directly at Reggie Blunt. ‘Okay,’ I said quietly, adding in musician’s jargon, ‘that’s cool.’

  Reggie hugged himself, plainly pleased. ‘Oh, that’s excellent, Jack!’ He then reached out and took my hand in both of his. ‘It may well be an experience you’ll cherish for the remainder of your life, old son. What a grand party we’ll have, one you’ll never forget, that much I can guarantee!’

  I recall hoping that the party wasn’t the main thing I remembered from the day, but having agreed to go along with the plan I felt sufficiently emboldened to ask, ‘Did ah, did you lose your . . . um . . . you know, in the same way?’ I couldn’t bring myself to say the word virginity. It seemed somehow a word that marked my immaturity and which, once removed, would allow me to mysteriously grow up; by losing it in a single sexual act I would gain my manhood and thus my maturity. In a sense it felt like a barrier I must leap so that I could get on with my life as a man. The sooner the word was tossed away the sooner the metamorphosis could take place.

  ‘What? My virginity? Did I lose it i
n such a grand manner?’ Reggie shook his head. ‘No such luck, old boy. Olga – God rest her soul – and I were complete neophytes. Married, dumped on the doorstep of a friend’s lakeside cottage, uninstructed, ignorant and simply left to our own devices. We had no idea! Hadn’t a clue! Made a ghastly hash of everything. She ended up sobbing all night with her back turned to me in bed. We didn’t attempt it again for a week and the second attempt wasn’t much better. As I recall, it took several months and always in the dark before she could or would allow me . . .’ he grinned, ‘free passage.’

  ‘But when it happened, did you . . . I mean, were you, you know . . . able to . . . ?’

  ‘Get it up? Good God, yes! Horny as a charging rhinoceros! Walking around bow-legged with lover’s balls for days. I just didn’t know how to . . . well, of course, I knew the anatomical part concerned, but it didn’t seem to want to cooperate.’ He paused momentarily, recalling. ‘I guess it was made even more difficult probing – so to speak – in the dark.’ He laughed uproariously, then reached for his whisky and took a slow sip. Licking his lips, he observed, ‘But that won’t happen to you, old son. You’ll be in expert hands and the doorway to heaven will be opened wide and welcoming. Chorus of angels, fanfare of trumpets, all sorts of glorious things.’

  ‘Shit, Reggie, I hope you’re right.’ The thought arose again that my unknown partner might not be all that discreet and if my performance ended up a disaster I’d be the laughing stock of River Street.

  ‘Never been more certain, old son. Strapping young lad like you, Jack. She’ll think all her Christmases have come at once.’

  I thought this unlikely, given the way these girls earned their living, but I didn’t want to say so. The less I thought about the number of comparisons she could make, the better.

  ‘Do the other cats in the band know about this, um, raffle being the reason for the gig?’

  ‘Well, no, I thought best not to tell them the purpose of the party. They might tell their wives.’ He took another sip from his glass. ‘Womenfolk don’t see these things quite as we do. Sanctity of marriage, that kind of thing . . . Charlie Condotti is Italian, strict Catholic, his brother is a monsignor; Chuck and Mort, I’m not sure, Presbyterian I think; Robert would probably just laugh, after all, he’s a bachelor and he’d probably wish it were him. All they know is that the River Street girls want to have a party, no males present except for the band. It’s a chance to help John Robert Johnson. He gets to buy the booze wholesale and make a few bucks on the food as well. Monday evenings are a pretty slack period at the Caribou, he informs me.’