Jack of Diamonds

by Bryce Courtenay

  I learned much later that this is done using essentially the same techniques as brainwashing: fear, tension, physical exhaustion and a total lack of privacy. I found this last aspect the most difficult. I’d always been a loner and now I lived in a barrack room with twenty other guys farting, snoring and yelling out in their sleep on their unscreened beds. Showering en masse was hard to endure, but easily the most difficult was being forced to defecate in a line of toilets in full view of all the other recruits. This was intended to desensitise us, working on the premise perhaps that those who shit together kill together. I don’t know about you, but crapping in public seemed to me a strange way to bond.

  Basic training is designed to make you a part of a unit and at the same time set you apart from those outside this peculiar experience. Put crudely, it is supposed to teach you how to kill ‘the enemy’ with impunity, and the enemy are those you are taught to regard as different from you.

  Not that I resisted – there wasn’t any point – it was just that I was incompetent at most army tasks apart from drill. ‘Square bashing’ came easily because I had a better sense of rhythm than many of the other guys, but in most other tasks I was pretty pathetic.

  I missed being able to play the piano every day, and felt almost as if I was missing a limb. I began, for the first time, to realise how one-dimensional my life had become: without a keyboard I amounted to very little. Being a loner didn’t help, and being intelligent made matters even worse so that I soon learned to conceal this aspect as I had done at school in Cabbagetown. If I knew the answer I kept my big trap shut. Besides, it’s not much use knowing all the theory if you can’t put it into practice.

  Most young guys my age had practical experience and could do mechanical stuff – like taking a machine-gun apart and putting it together again – that left me completely mystified. I was good at the spit ’n’ polish aspect of army life because I’d had to take good care of the stuff we got from Mrs Sopworth, but that was nothing special, because most of the guys came from similar backgrounds.

  I confess, while I hadn’t been conscious of it at the time, I had become accustomed to being respected for my playing. Now I was a nonentity, or even worse, an incompetent. Life in the barrack room was like being a kid of seven back in the Cabbagetown schoolyard where you were required to show you couldn’t be pushed around. Pecking orders needed to be established, and while I was big I wasn’t aggressive; in fact, I was pure marshmallow. In the army there’s nothing more pathetic than a big guy who doesn’t know how to defend himself. As a consequence I took three or four good lickings before I started to get the hang of things. The fifth guy who decided to take me apart to cement his place in the pecking order faced a Jack who was now both fit and strong. A lucky right to the jaw dropped him to the floor unconscious, and when he took several minutes to come around it caused a degree of panic in the barrack room, not least in me.

  The tale of the five-minute knockout became vastly exaggerated in the retelling, finally reaching the ears of Sergeant Major Mark O’Brien, who called me out on parade. A huge man, standing stiffly to attention with his drill stick jammed under his arm and his nose almost touching my own, he shouted at me loudly enough for the entire company to hear. ‘Private Spayd, now you’ll be listening to me! While I’m not a man to stop a certain amount of horseplay, I’ll not be having you throwing yer weight around! So, I’m warning you, Private Spayd, if I hear of another incident I’ll put you on a charge that will keep you so busy you won’t have the fuckin’ energy to pick yer nose for a week! Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant Major!’ I shouted in the required fashion, knowing there was no point in trying to explain the truth. This public dressing down only served to validate the story of my phenomenal physical prowess. It seemed that nothing had changed since I faced the bully in the schoolyard, and after this I was left pretty much alone.

  If my vastly overrated fists earned me a certain reputation, it was once again the harmonica that gave me a lucky break. I could play just about anything and this gained me not only a certain amount of respect but a lance corporal’s stripe. During basic training we had not been granted town leave and so on Saturday nights in the mess hall they’d set up a microphone and a makeshift stage and we’d mount an impromptu concert. My harmonica playing stood out against most of the pretty amateur performances, which traditionally were howled down, so I guess the audience could tell the difference. In addition to playing solo, three of the guys in the barrack room had reasonable voices and with a little instruction the four of us soon had a reasonable barbershop quartet going. This pretty well made me immune from any further barrack-room bullying. That barbershop quartet did a whole lot more to bond the men than latrines without walls or doors.

  Predictably enough, the favourite Saturday-night piece was ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’. Everyone knew the lyrics and it always resulted in a grand singalong. Surprisingly, ‘Amazing Grace’ was the second most popular, and responded well to being jazzed up a bit. ‘The Saints’ was a rowdy, joyous all-in-together affair, but you could have heard a pin drop when I played ‘Amazing Grace’. Of course I played a lot of other crowd-pleasers and the quartet sang all the popular songs.

  One evening a month after I arrived I asked for permission to play piano in the officers’ mess. I offered to give them a bit of an impromptu concert, even though my real purpose was to get my hands on a piano after weeks without one. Apart from a single short session at the Jazz Warehouse when we’d been allowed our first weekend leave after basic training, I hadn’t been near a piano and I was starved for a bit of jazz. I had to do my Rachmaninoff to ragtime routine before they’d believe me, but once I’d played for a couple of minutes, I was in. Music had once again saved my ass. Not just the big black piano but also the simple little metal music box you can put in your pocket, just about the best travelling companion a guy can have. You can stand up and face the world and still hide behind it.

  Not long after, I found a poker game, made up of a mixture of players from other units. On a soldier’s pay of a dollar fifty a day it was penny ante but the players were of a high standard, and as I was often successful, poker gave me added status among my peers. Funny that if you show too many brains during theoretical military tactics in the company classroom men soon set you apart and taunt you for being a smart-ass, but if you use the same intelligence to win a game of cards they marvel at how clever you are.

  Once we were through with basic training we headed back to Toronto. I couldn’t wait to board ship and sail off to war. I’d read far too many Boy’s Own Annual stories in my childhood and they had clearly influenced my views about soldiering. In my imagination I was manning a machine-gun against advancing hordes of Afghans crazed on hashish, or launching a hand-grenade attack to wipe out an entrenched German machine-gun post. Like most guys of eighteen I preferred the image of dying heroically rather than having to spend the war somewhere safe and secure.

  But back in Toronto I joined my unit, the Royal Regiment of Canada, one of the oldest and proudest in the army with all the attendant traditions, and from there was thankfully seconded to the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps to be trained initially as a stretcher bearer and then as a medical orderly. The fact that I didn’t carry a weapon was disappointing to say the least, but the medic training immediately appealed to me. It didn’t rely on mindless obedience but required a fair amount of initiative. Soon after I started training I began to change my mind about being a machine-gunner. Here was something I could get serious about; I was doing something useful and after all that basic killing practice I’d undergone in London, Ontario, I was slowly beginning to realise that rather than at best becoming a mediocre killer I could be the opposite, a soldier who saved lives. The brainwashing and bonding that had taken place in basic training obviously hadn’t entirely taken me over and was beginning to wear off. I was becoming obsessed (here we go again) with medical and first-aid duties. The years of piano playing meant that my big han
ds were nimble and efficient and I threw myself into the task with huge enthusiasm. In fact, all the abilities and aptitude I’d sorely lacked in basic training as a soldier and potential fighting man I now seemed to possess as a medical orderly.

  My concerts in the officers’ mess went down very well and I was approached afterwards by one of the officers who introduced himself as Captain Nick Reed, an army surgeon. He was, he said, an ardent jazz fan and knew a good jazz pianist when he heard one.

  ‘A bit rusty, sir. It’s been hard to find time for piano in the last three months.’

  ‘You’re completing your training as a medical orderly with us are you, Corporal?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘It’s obvious you’re a professional musician, Lance Corporal . . .?’

  ‘Spayd . . . Jack Spayd, yes, sir.’

  ‘Nice to know you, Jack. Damned shame military bands don’t include portable pianos, eh?’ He smiled. ‘How are you liking your training as a medic?’

  I grinned. ‘Loving it, sir. I only wish it was more than twelve weeks.’

  ‘Oh? You’d like that?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Would you like to become one of my assistants? When we are posted overseas I’m taking over as the medical officer in the First Battalion, the Royals, in the UK. I can arrange for you to be posted with me as an orderly if you’d like?’

  I decided to take a risk. ‘Does it mean further training?’

  ‘Corporal, we’re going overseas, possibly into combat. The more a medical orderly knows the better for all of us.’ He laughed. ‘We’ll take you as far as you’re allowed to go without a licence to practise medicine.’

  ‘I’d sure appreciate that, sir.’

  ‘It’ll mean less blues and more bandages.’

  I grinned. ‘I don’t imagine there are many pianos on the battlefield anyway, sir.’

  ‘But you’ll play piano regularly for us in the officers’ mess?’

  ‘With pleasure, sir.’

  On my return to Toronto we were allowed our first weekend leave prior to my being seconded for medical training. It was a couple of months since my mom’s nose operation, and I knew from her letters that it had gone well, but she was due for the final one in a couple of weeks and I was dying to see how she looked. Joe had invited me to play a bracket with the band on the Saturday night and to bring my mom. I told him I was a bit out of practice and he’d given one of his Joe cackles. ‘Hey, Jazzboy, we gonna play the old time easy blues so you don’t go get yo’self hu-mil-ee-ated.’

  My mom’s nose looked great and she was all for not having the final op, which was to give her a clearly defined and straight bridge. ‘Jack, it’s so much better but you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, you know.’

  Her self-esteem was still very low, not surprising I guess after all those years of being pummelled by my dad’s fists. It was going to take longer to fix than her battered nose. ‘Mom, I told you before, you’re a very pretty woman and you’re going to be even prettier when the bridge is back where it belongs. Men are going to be falling over themselves to get to you.’

  She’d blushed furiously. All she could manage was, ‘Oh Jack, you are such a silly boy!’

  By the time I’d finished my training with the Medical Corps and moved over to the Royals with Captain Reed, the last operation had been successfully completed. I tell you what, it wasn’t just me – Joe, the twins and Miss Frostbite all agreed Gertrude Spayd was a damn pretty woman. The twins took her to have her dark hair cut and styled (still no sign of grey) and gave her lessons in applying make-up, and she’d have looked a treat on the arm of any man over the age of thirty-five. Her skin was still smooth and blemish-free and soft as silk. Moreover the Depression and all her hard work had kept her figure trim. The only parts of her that showed the hard life she’d led were her hands. Being a cleaner had taken a toll. Quite frankly, I was dead proud to be seen with her.

  Captain Reed was a true jazz aficionado. Because we worked together and I played often in the officers’ mess, we’d become friends off duty. He was in his early forties and quite old to join the army, but his wife had died two years previously of cancer and as they didn’t have any children he decided to join up when there was a national call for more surgeons. He was also willing to serve overseas.

  He’d taken me under his wing and I was learning a lot, and not just from being with him; he’d send me to all the courses he could. I learned how to do emergency transfusions of plasma under battlefield conditions, safe injecting practices, anti-tetanus injections, the use of sulpha drugs for infections, dressing battlefield wounds using the soldiers’ first-aid kits, shell dressings, splinting of compound and simple fractures and the special care required for head injuries.

  It may not sound like much, but it was miles ahead of simply lugging a stretcher around the battlefield. I was trained to give first-aid treatment in the first hour after a soldier sustained a wound, this often making the difference between life and death. I felt I was being trained to be useful and necessary, not just cannon fodder. If only I’d known how accurate that last seemingly exaggerated reference to cannon fodder would prove to be.

  Anyhow, I’d told Captain Reed about the Jazz Warehouse and suggested that he might like to visit it one weekend, but there was one problem – an officer and a lance corporal were not usually companions. But when I’d mentioned that my mom’s final nose operation had recently taken place and that I was taking her to the Jazz Warehouse to celebrate, to my surprise he’d said in a very tentative voice, ‘Jack, I’m also a reconstructive surgeon. I’d like to see the work on your mother’s nose. Perhaps you’ll allow me to buy you both dinner at this Jazz Warehouse.’ He’d laughed in a slightly embarrassed manner. ‘Kill two birds with one stone, eh? Hear some jazz and have a look at her nose.’

  Of course I agreed right off.

  To everyone’s surprise, there was an instant connection between the two of them. Physical attraction led to infatuation, so that by the end of the first evening Captain Reed asked if he could call on my mom. What I hadn’t realised was that Captain Reed’s childhood had been very similar to my own. He’d grown up on the wrong side of the tracks with a single mother who suffered from an intermittent nervous complaint. ‘We managed somehow,’ he said. ‘Lucky that it wasn’t the Depression; part-time jobs were easy to get, even for a kid, and I’d work at two jobs over the long summer vacation. So when my mom couldn’t work I would somehow manage to pay the rent, usually late, as well as put a bit of food on the table.’ He’d won scholarships at every level of his education. Far from being born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he’d come up from humble beginnings the hard way.

  Without my knowledge, Mom and Captain Reed started to see each other whenever they could. When Captain Reed realised that I thoroughly approved he laughed and said, ‘It’s been two years since my wife died, Jack, and they’ve been just about the loneliest of my life. It’s lovely to meet someone like your mother. It feels as if we’ve known each other all our lives.’ My only concern was that my mother might not be able to match his intellectual acuity; he was a doctor and she’d left school early. But she had a hunger for knowledge, and had always been smart. She also had a lot of love to give to a good man and when it came to good men Nick Reed was one of the best. I don’t suppose the disparity in their education mattered, since it was still relatively rare for women to have professions, and it was nice to know she’d be going out with a guy, something she hadn’t done since I’d been born. I can’t ever remember her and my dad going out together. Pity Captain Reed would be shipping out with us. It would have been nice if they’d got to know each other better; it was high time she had some fun.

  In late May we learned that the battalion was going to England, though no more than that, no date, no port, no name of ship, it was all top secret in case of German U-boats. Captain Reed called me into his office.

  I knocked on the open door to his surgery, waited for permissi
on to enter, then stood to attention. ‘You called, sir!’

  ‘Close the door, Corporal,’ he said quietly.

  I closed the door and he indicated a chair on the other side of his desk. ‘Please sit down, Jack,’ he invited. He’d never previously used my name while in barracks or invited me to sit down. I did as I was told and waited, a bit nervous at the sudden informality while we were both in uniform. He too seemed a little nervous, not looking directly at me for a few moments then clearing his throat before he glanced up. ‘As you know we’re moving out, overseas, probably to England. Quite when I don’t know, but I feel it will be soon.’ He paused and cleared his throat again. ‘I’ve asked your mother to marry me.’

  I did a double take. ‘What? You . . . you’re going to . . . marry . . . my mom?’ I gulped, only just remembering to add, ‘sir’.

  ‘Well, yes, is that so strange?’ he asked with a half grin.

  Then it sank in and I couldn’t contain my delight. ‘No, not strange, just . . . that’s great, sir!’ I said, almost leaping from the chair.

  He grinned, holding up a restraining hand. ‘No, no, not so fast, Jack.’

  ‘What, sir?’ I asked anxiously.

  ‘She’ll only agree if you give your permission.’

  ‘Done, sir!’ I said, grinning like an ape, then I stretched over the desk and shook his hand, perhaps more vigorously than I should.

  ‘Not sir. In private you must call me Nick. After all, I’m soon to become your stepfather!’ He laughed.

  ‘When, sir? Er, Nick.’

  ‘As soon as we can arrange it. Of course I’ll need the CO’s permission and I’ll have to arrange for the Anglican chaplain to marry us here at the barracks. But there’s no time to waste. Never know when we’re going to embark for overseas now we’ve been informed. I don’t want to give some other guy a chance, do I! You’ll be required to give her away, of course. Just a quiet affair, no fuss.’