I foolishly believed that if I played fair and didn’t cheat or lie or steal that everything would be okay and I’d come out on top. In other words, that life was just and fair and that whatever you sowed you would ultimately reap.
Even though the poker game had been a set-up, I’d been unaware of Reggie’s bitterness over my taking his job at the Brunswick, so how could I have possibly been aware that he’d want to take his revenge by fleecing me in a crooked game? Juicy Fruit had told me Reggie wasn’t what he seemed to be, a remark I’d conveniently forgotten, and when Grover informed me the game was rigged, I’d still played it straight. As a result of playing good poker, in other words, sticking to my principles, I had beaten a bunch of crooks. Didn’t that show that good always triumphs over evil? Which goes to show that being almost eighteen isn’t exactly a wise age. For a guy with a dad like mine I should have known better. But then again I was also the kid who believed that a royal flush was only as far away as the next hand. Talk about being naïve! Looking back I now realise that I was far from qualified to be my own man, independent of the opinions of others.
The irony was, of course, that I was determined to be at the recruitment centre as soon as I turned eighteen, where my newfound manliness and independence would count for nothing. My life for the foreseeable future would be totally controlled by other men, but I comforted myself with the thought that where there are men there’s bound to be a poker game. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack . . .
I arrived in Toronto two days after I’d left Moose Jaw, and choked up when I saw that everyone was there to meet me: Miss Frostbite, Joe, Mrs Hodgson, Mac and of course my lovely mom, who burst into tears the moment she saw me sticking my head out of the carriage doorway waiting for the train to slow sufficiently for me to jump down onto the platform. This could only have been Miss Frostbite’s doing. I’d given my mom very little notice and here they all were at the station to greet me. Or perhaps working for the twins had taught my mom a whole lot about organising things. I knew from her weekly letters how happy she was with her new job, but despite my constant assurances that I was doing well, eating well, enjoying my life and, of course, that I missed her greatly, she always ended with the same sentence: Jack, I pray to God every night that He’ll keep you safe in those dreadful endless prairies.
I hopped off the train before it had fully stopped and while the brakes were still squeaking. There were hugs, kisses, handshakes, back slapping and laughter all round. Everyone seemed to be talking at the same time as I gathered my sobbing mom to my chest, her arms clasped tightly around me.
‘Where are your bags?’ Mac asked, about to enter the carriage to retrieve them.
I shrugged and said, ‘Nothing worth keeping except memories.’ Yes, I admit I’d rehearsed it, and it didn’t sound anything like as good as I’d imagined.
Joe laughed, slapping me on the back. ‘Jazzboy, that skuffin’, my man. You done gone and survived. That good! You ain’t got nuthin’ lef’ ’cept your own skin and a whole heap a’ ex-peer-ee-ence. That ex-cee-lent!’
Miss Frostbite held me close. ‘Jack, becoming a man is a difficult process, especially with so many women in your life. I guess that’s why you want to join up.’ She laughed. ‘But do be careful, won’t you? We don’t want to waste all the effort that’s gone into making you the splendid young man you are.’
My mom couldn’t stop weeping and eventually I asked Mac to get us a taxi. Still sniffing, she protested, ‘Jack, we can’t afford a taxi!’
‘No, it’s okay,’ I reassured her.
To my astonishment, Mac had hailed another black Model A Ford with bright orange wheel spokes just like the one that had taken Miss Frostbite and me to visit Miss Bates that first time to see if she’d accept me as a music pupil. While there were still lots of Model A’s around, bright orange spokes were rare and so I remarked on the coincidence to my mom, explaining that the first taxi I’d ever been in had orange wheel spokes and here we were, all these years later, in yet another taxi with orange wheels. The driver overheard me. ‘Sir, this is the only taxi in Toronto that’s got orange wheels. I painted them myself when she were brand new because I thought folks goin’ to see me better with them coloured wheels.’
‘Then this is the same taxi and I guess you must have been the driver?’
‘Ain’t nobody but me ever drove this old gal, sir.’
My mom, who’d stopped crying at last and was clutching my hand, said, ‘Fancy it being the same taxi, and fancy remembering it had orange wheels! That has to be a good omen,’ she said excitedly.
I laughed. ‘Mom, it was the first time I’d been in a taxi! I don’t know about an omen but it seems as if I’ve kind of come full circle, beginning my music education with a ride in an orange-wheeled taxi and returning home from scuffing in the same taxi ten years later.’
‘It’s an omen, all right. God is telling you your musical education is over and now you’re a professional musician. Oh, Jack, you’ve worked so hard – I wish you didn’t have to go off to war.’
Miss Frostbite had suggested at the station that we all meet the following night at her apartment for a welcome-home celebratory dinner at eight o’clock. ‘Jack,’ she said, ‘Joe and I have cancelled our performance for the night – the band will jolly well have to manage on its own.’ It was a lovely gesture. I can’t remember an evening at the Jazz Warehouse without their double piano act, Joe in his pale blue tails, flipping them free of the piano stool as he sat down, Miss Frostbite in one of a dozen elegant evening gowns, a gardenia in her hair in spring and summer, looking pretty as anything.
It turned out to be a lovely evening, and after dinner Joe suggested we go through to Miss Frostbite’s practice room and ‘See what scuffin’ done do to you, Jazzboy.’
I sat down at the Steinway and played a medley, a sort of updated Rachmaninoff to ragtime but with a bit of fancy finger work he wouldn’t have seen or heard before – some of the stuff I’d used for the Sunday concerts. It was satisfying to see the look of surprise on his face as he turned to Miss Frostbite. ‘Maybe Mr No Pain can take that holiday he been hankering for. He got hisself jes two weeks to visit his old folks in New York.’
Joe explained that No Pain’s parents were getting on, his dad wasn’t well, and he’d wanted to visit them for some time. Would I take my seat at the Jazz Warehouse piano for the two weeks until I turned eighteen and went off to ‘take care of that Hitler bastard’?
Would I ever! Even Miss Frostbite, who was a stickler for the law, said she could hardly see the police making a fuss if I was going off to fight for king and country in a fortnight, the day after my eighteenth birthday.
I was still at the Jazz Warehouse when Mrs Henderson sent the money and my mom’s picture minus the rent I owed her and the postage. She included a note:
Dear Jack,
Praise the Lord you are safe. We were all very worried and Mrs Spragg and Mr Greer thank you for the money and the clothes and I thank you for the rent money.
I will continue to pray that Jesus, Praise His Precious Name, will save your soul and that you will be Born Again. You are a good young man and one day will see the Truth and the Light and be snatched from the clutches of Beelzebub, the prince of demons and the devil!
Yours, in His Precious Name,
Mona Henderson (Mrs.)
So Juicy Fruit had even handed over the fifty dollars to Mrs Spragg, as I’d asked her to do.
My eighteenth birthday was to be celebrated alone with my mom. It was something she’d asked for especially. The previous night – well no, it was after 2 a.m. so it was actually my birthday – when we’d finished at the Jazz Warehouse, the band, Joe and Miss Frostbite gave me a small presentation, popped three bottles of champagne and gave me a solid gold signet ring, the face inscribed with the single word: Jazzboy. I had half a glass of champagne, which tasted awful, the first and last drink I’d have in my life. I was terrified that I might go the same way as my father, sensing from my obsessions w
ith both music and poker that I had an addictive personality.
On the afternoon of my birthday my mom had to go out to take care of a chore for the twins. She hadn’t been gone ten minutes when the front doorbell rang and I opened it to find both twins standing there. ‘Happy birthday!’ they chorused, then Melissa (I remembered she was the one with the mole on her neck) said, ‘Have you got a moment, Jack?’
‘Yes, of course, come in.’
‘No,’ Clarissa said, ‘we have something we’d like to give you, upstairs.’ They both smiled mysteriously.
My heart skipped a beat. Upstairs . . . did that mean what I thought it meant? I’d lusted after both of them and now they were inviting me upstairs! All I could think was, thank god for Juicy Fruit and her careful instructions. We took the clanking old lift to their penthouse apartment and on the way up I was trying desperately to appear relaxed and cool.
At the door of their apartment Clarissa produced a silk scarf. ‘We have to blindfold you, Jack,’ she said, standing on tiptoe to tie the soft fabric over my eyes. I heard the keys rattle and the lock on the front door click open and then both of them took me by the hand and drew me into the apartment. As the blindfold was removed they cried, ‘Tahdah! Happy birthday, Jack!’
Standing in the centre of a dark green carpet was Dolly and Mac’s ancient Victor gramophone with the giant lily-shaped speaker and the emblem showing the loyal little dog.
‘We’ve had it reconditioned and polished and there’s all the records to go with it,’ Melissa cried excitedly.
‘Jack, it seemed so very appropriate. This old darling is where it all started for you, isn’t it?’
It wasn’t just my hopes that deflated like a punctured bicycle tyre. Thank god they mistook my expression for stunned surprise, which of course it was. It was a lovely thought and, once I’d recovered, a truly wonderful gift.
That night my mom and I sat at the kitchen table. On it was a cake with chocolate icing identical to the one she’d baked for my eighth birthday which my drunken father had smashed to pulp and crumbs with his huge fist. The little cake was now positively overloaded with eighteen red, white and blue candles with the inscription Happy 18th Birthday Jack. Beside it was a small bottle of soda pop. My mom wore the same little white lace apron as she lit the candles and I blew them out in one breath, the way I’d practised but never had the chance to do all those years ago. I cut the cake and then we both had a good cry.
I put on one of Mac’s records, now mine – ‘For Me and My Girl’ – and my mom started to cry all over again.
I took her in my arms. ‘C’mon, Mom, stop your crying. Jack’s back and he loves you.’
‘Oh, Jack, I’ve missed you so much!’ she sobbed.
‘Mom, it was good I went away, I’ve learned a lot.’
‘I can see that,’ she sniffed. ‘You’ve come back a man. I can see it in your eyes and the way you walk. Oh, Jack, I’m so proud of you!’ Her eyes were filling up again.
‘No more crying, Mom, or I’ll remember my eighteenth birthday for the sobs and not the laughs.’ I pointed to the cake. ‘What happened the first time you baked that cake is long over and he’s out of our lives forever.’
‘I don’t bear him any ill will,’ she sniffed.
‘Why not? He was a drunk and a bastard who beat you up.’ I was trying not to get angry.
‘Jack, he gave me you. He could have smashed my face to a pulp, just like he did the cake, and I’d have forgiven him because he gave me a son who’s turned out beyond my dreams.’
I was suddenly embarrassed. Trying not to show it I said hastily, ‘I’m glad, Mom, but I have something to say too.’
‘Oh, please, not about your father, Jack.’
‘No, Mom, this is about you.’
‘Oh, what?’ she asked, her expression suddenly alarmed.
‘It’s what I want you to do,’ I said, smiling.
‘Oh, goodness, what is it, Jack?’
‘Mom, you’re still young and a very pretty woman and you’ve had a raw deal. What would happen if you started all over again?’
‘Started all over doing what?’
‘Well, you don’t need to be alone for the rest of your life.’
Both my mom’s hands involuntarily crept up to her face to cover her nose. ‘Jack, no one would want me,’ she said quietly.
‘What, because of your nose?’
‘Well . . . yes, that and . . .’
‘Mom, stop!’ I interjected. ‘I want you to go into hospital.’
‘What on earth for?’ she asked, genuinely amazed.
‘Mom, I contacted the surgeon and the hospital – you know, Dr Freeman, who did the first operation to your nose. I’ve paid him for the two operations you’re going to need. The first one will be as soon as you can make it, and the second one in about three months.’
‘Jack, how could you do that? You came back from those awful prairies with nothing.’ Then almost as quickly she said, ‘I can’t accept. My nose doesn’t matter, nobody is going to want me.’
‘Mom, will you do it for me? The money has been paid.’
‘Jack, you shouldn’t have. My life’s over, my nose doesn’t matter. Who cares what I look like?’
I knew that bastard who I no longer recognised as my father had damaged her self-esteem, but now I saw just how much harm he’d done. She had only hung in for me; everything she’d done had been for me. ‘Mom, everything we’ve achieved was because of you – not Miss Mony, Mrs Hodgson, Miss Frostbite, Miss Bates – it was all you! They all played a part but you were always there, always fighting to keep us going. If you hadn’t been with me every inch of the way I’d just be another slum kid on the bones of my ass. If you hadn’t believed in me, worked your guts out cleaning offices at night, getting chilblains, getting off one section short to save a few cents on the fare, I wouldn’t have had any of the breaks. Now it’s your turn, and there’s one tiny thing I can do for you. Please, Mom, let me do this for you!’ I begged, close to tears.
‘What about the twins? They need me here,’ she said, still stalling, putting herself last once again.
‘I’ve spoken to them and they’re delighted for you. Mac’s coming over to fill in while you’re in hospital.’
‘Oh, Jack, I love you so much,’ she gulped.
Then I held her in my arms and she wept and wept and wept for all the years of struggle and hardship and pain and humiliation. Finally she stopped and I got up from the chair and found the record I wanted and wound up the ancient gramophone and put it on. It was the very first thing I ever learned to play on my father’s belated birthday gift, imitating the music coming through the ceiling. The first time I ever played it was to her, waiting up for her to return from work and preparing her chilblain water: ‘Daisy Bell’, or ‘A Bicycle Built for Two’. She’d sat in the kitchen soaking her feet in the hot pail and I’d played it. When I’d reached the end of what was probably an excruciatingly bad effort, she clapped her hands and said, ‘Oh, Jack, didn’t I say you have a real talent for music?’
CHAPTER TWELVE
I GUESS EVERYONE HAS a different war. My combat experience was ten minutes of abject terror. I received a medal for being there and another, thoroughly undeserved, for bravery, which entitled me to call myself a veteran.
At the time I had no idea that my combat experience was entirely the result of incompetence, although the events leading up to it should have given me sufficient warning that the guys in gold braid with red stripes down the sides of their pants were, generally speaking, by no means as smart as the uniforms they wore.
If the men recruited to fight were over the age of fifty-five rather than the men in charge, wars would last no more than a few days. Instead we let these old men, resplendent in braid and brass, send the next generation off to die while they study battlefield maps I’m reasonably sure some of them couldn’t even orient so they were the right side up.
Canada only sent volunteers overseas to fight, boys like m
e who couldn’t wait to shoulder a rifle, but the old men in charge were well aware that in times of war young guys virtually line up to die. They also know that war is an opportunity for them to gain more braid and glory for themselves. As far as Canada’s top brass went, I feel sure I could count those generals who died in combat on the fingers of one hand and still be guilty of overestimating.
I had been one of those misty-eyed kids, my appetite for war boosted by a boyhood diet of adventure storybooks, but it took just ten minutes of actual combat to disabuse me of the notion that war was glorious, or an adventure that would prove an exciting interlude in an otherwise predictable and almost certainly dull life to follow.
Mind you, the eagerness of young Canadians to be slaughtered in the name of king and country may well have been the result of the decade or so of poverty preceding the war. The Depression had been well named, not only for the collapse of the New York stock exchange in 1929 but for its effects on communities worldwide. By the time war broke out in Europe, many young Canadian lives had been blighted by poverty and shame. Joining up meant three square meals a day, free clothes and accommodation, equality in the barracks where you were given a purpose and were no longer ashamed of being useless and unwanted in a crippled society. What’s more, a dollar or so a day was thrown in for good measure.
Anyhow, there I was three days after my eighteenth birthday, lining up with thirty or so other guys at the Fort York Armoury on Fleet Street for a medical examination. Passed fit we were given a train ticket to London, Ontario, for two months of basic training. I was young, didn’t smoke or drink, and fortunately wasn’t carrying any excess weight on my big frame, but piano playing isn’t the best fitness training and I struggled for the first few weeks until I got fit. This, of course, delighted the NCOs responsible for training, who seemed to take particular pleasure in their assigned task of breaking us down and forming us into a cohesive unit.
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