Jack of Diamonds

by Bryce Courtenay

  As for my own post-war life, I found myself in somewhat of a dilemma, with a contest between the head and the heart. Dr Reed, now my stepfather, was convinced I’d make an excellent doctor after my work with him as a medic during the war, and was anxious that I apply for a veteran’s scholarship to study medicine. My mom was quite overcome by the notion that her precious son might someday be a doctor. In her eyes there could be no more worthy vocation – this was the top of the Christmas tree. A jazz musician was something, but an MD was something else; in one generation the family would have leapt from poverty and obscurity to the pinnacle of social success.

  I’d sent in my application and subsequently attended the first two interviews with the War Veterans Department, armed with all the correct references from the relevant top army medical brass, organised by Nick. My medal as a medic in the battlefield didn’t do any harm either. I felt I’d gone well in both interviews, and was yet to undergo a third and final one in front of army and civilian medical men and a solitary woman, a professor of something at McGill University in Montreal, before being accepted. Nick assured me that it was pretty much a rubber-stamp process.

  I tried to convince myself that I could continue with jazz as an amateur and that being an MD would somehow compensate me for staying in my homeland. I’d had my fun in the Army Entertainment Corps, sowing my wild oats with some generous English girls who had allowed me to put Juicy Fruit’s lessons to excellent use, so maybe it was time to settle down. But in my heart I knew these attempts to convince myself weren’t succeeding.

  During the war I’d developed into a reasonable poker player, skilled enough to take my place confidently at almost any card table, provided I had the appropriate stake. You grow up fast at a poker table, but now I found myself in Toronto, a town of Scots Presbyterians, which, despite a burst of post-war activity, continued to progress slowly and cautiously. Like a lot of veterans I felt unsettled and out of place among those who had stayed at home during the war, so the prospect of settling down again to study to become an MD, so I could write prescriptions for cough mixture and play the odd bracket at the Jazz Warehouse on weekends, seemed a little too much like crawling backwards into the future. War and travel change a young guy more than he realises, until he returns to his old environment. Or, as Joe put it, ‘Jazzboy, I guess you jes forced to grow up some in a hurry, son. You gone put new footprints in da old ones ain’t gunna help none.’

  To add to my discomfort, I learned that a highly exaggerated version of my war experiences was circulating, recounted in hushed tones when I wasn’t around to set the record straight. If you left out the details it reeled off the teller’s tongue very neatly – I was a young lad whose manhood had been forged in the heat of fierce combat. As I gathered from Mac, my battle experience now featured men dropping like ninepins around me while I tended the wounded, despite being severely wounded myself. The most colourful version was that a German sniper’s bullet had removed my ear and gouged a ditch in my skull. The most heroic was that I’d personally rescued several men who were wounded and unable to reach the landing craft, throwing myself into the sea and heaving them out before they drowned. If I protested that the sea was sufficiently shallow to stand in and that I’d merely yanked a few wounded men aboard, my listeners glanced at each other in a knowing way.

  In truth, there had been so much blood around and my own adrenalin had so distorted my perceptions that I hadn’t felt the bullet nick my ear until later, when we were underway and someone pointed to the blood dripping onto my shoulder. Somehow, I emerged covered in unearned glory, with a medal and a citation for bravery while tending the wounded under so-called relentless enemy fire.

  Jack Spayd was hardly made of the white-hot metal that, once beaten into shape, makes a hard man. I felt like a phoney. I had learned to play the man game perfectly. I was confident around other men, a big guy who was well liked. I’d attended to men who were wounded and who trusted me to save their lives. I had gained their respect and, while my efforts on the landing craft had been no more than my training and duty required, they seemed to look at me differently after those three frightening minutes.

  I was afraid that if I became a doctor or stayed in Canada I’d never live down my hero status, phoney as it was. People want heroes in their lives and I had been branded one whether I liked it or not: poor Cabbagetown boy, with a drunken and violent father, and a mother who worked nights and couldn’t give him the love and attention every child needs, goes off to war, wins a medal for bravery, is wounded in battle, returns and becomes a doctor. Wow!

  In reality, I had led an absolutely charmed life, with the right teachers and librarians to form my early years: Miss Frostbite, Miss Bates and, of course, Joe, and the enduring love of a wonderful mother to set me on my way. I’d always been a loner as a child, but somehow I never missed the company of friends.

  There was just one aspect of my childhood that didn’t fit the picture – the sight of my bleeding and broken little mother cowering and sobbing over my vile bastard father’s dirty garbage collector’s hobnailed boots. It was a vision that was never to leave me. The reconstruction of my mother’s nose wasn’t merely my attempt to bring back her looks and to help her to regain her self-confidence, it was also a vain attempt to rub out the past. But now, with my mother pretty again, I discovered that I still couldn’t forgive my father. If I ever came across the motherfucker I’d break his neck. But then, here again was a paradox. It was my father who gave me a second-hand harmonica for my eighth birthday and, in so doing, effectively changed everything. The only person I hated and continue to hate had inadvertently given me the thing I treasured most – music – as well as a possible future.

  Good fathering had been in short supply in my childhood. Mac had always been my good buddy, but I don’t believe he led me along the path to manhood. His relationship with women had been almost the opposite to my own: while I had been shaped and nurtured by women, he’d been battered and broken by them, or by one woman at least. While I cherished him as a friend he was no substitute father. Joe, wonderful Joe, was a jazz man who regarded me first of all as a young musician. I guess he came close to being the mentor every boy needs, but he concentrated on turning me into a jazz musician, teaching me about the meaning and privilege of playing jazz and giving me a musical understanding that was probably beyond my years.

  What I needed was a challenge, something that wasn’t handed to me on a plate, by a woman in particular. Women had almost singularly made my life a good one and I was grateful, but it was high time I discovered what kind of man I really was. I had taught myself to be comfortable in the company of men, whereas I had always loved women. As Joe would say, ‘Jazzboy, jes remember, the wo-man yo kiss goodnight ain’t the same you gonna kiss good mornin’. Ever’day she gonna be a bran-new in-ven-tion o’ herself.’ It may sound simple but becoming your own man is a very difficult process to execute alone, while, it seemed to me, women were born with an innate ability to be themselves, in all their glorious variety. One thing was certain, the idea of a career as a Toronto MD and part-time jazz pianist was no longer enough for me.

  There was another aspect of my own country that I found stifling. Before I’d gone overseas and mixed with people who came from America, Britain and the Commonwealth, I hadn’t thought much about language; that is, the vernacular used by various English speakers. I began to realise that my own mother tongue was more concerned with damping down emotions than portraying them. Canadian English was too polite. Even our street argot lacked the bite of the well-chosen and accurately directed invective of the British or the Yanks or, in particular, my fellow colonials, the Australians and New Zealanders. Words and phrases shot off the tongue like mortar bombs, creating a verbal explosion that couldn’t be ignored. The best way to illustrate this, if you’ll excuse me, is to take the word ‘fuck’. The Australians seemed to have mastered its robust use better than most, not simply adjectivally, loosely scattered through a sentence, but also to expre
ss a range of meanings. For example, fuck off! (leave, you’re dismissed); to fuck over (to treat badly); to fuck up (to bungle something); you’re fucked (you’re in serious trouble); don’t fuck with me (don’t mess with me); no, fuck that (no, I disagree); you little fuck (you contemptible person); he really fucked me over (he took advantage of me); well, fuck me (I’m surprised).

  There are, of course, many more uses for this word, most of which have no sexual connotations. Australian men use it frequently and colourfully, the Americans and the British have their own particular uses, while Canadians seem to be able to use it without adding much colour or intensity or inventiveness to their speech. Or so it seemed to me. Such free and creative use of street argot was much less pronounced in Canada, where language lacked the flashes of electric blue such a word could add. Canadians, myself included, seemed reluctant to express their emotions. It was almost as though we had decided to become the world’s most conservative English-speaking people. When you damp down emotion, you restrict the expression of anger and other strong feelings, and, as a result, people tend to simmer inwardly. Australians refer to a quarrel as a ‘flaming row’ or ‘having a blue’; they don’t hold back. I was beginning to realise that language wasn’t simply a mark of class, it expressed the national character.

  When you’re looking for faults, I guess you can always find them, but when I met other veterans returning to Canada, they often expressed the same restlessness and inability to settle down. Perhaps it was simply the aftermath of war, but it appeared that nothing had really moved forward. We were greeted with the same mild and rather smug surprise: ‘Oh, so you’re back? How was the war?’ The wealthy were as superior as ever and the post-Depression poor still carried the same haunted look in their eyes. The whole city seemed to be running on a slow and endless treadmill.

  Let me attempt to explain. Canada had helped to win a war that had taken place elsewhere, so back home there was nothing to mend, or build, or change, no need to begin again, no reason to gird your loins and roll up your sleeves. There was nobody to shout at or blame, as there was in Europe. There was no anger, no invective, no taking of chances in a new environment, no repairing of old mistakes. Buildings stood solid, intact and dull, schoolchildren chanted their lessons and neighbourhoods remained much the same, the same ducks quacked on the same ponds. Canada seemed fixed in a pre-war time warp. The women who had taken over the men’s jobs in factories, farms and institutions were now required to put their aprons back on and return to the kitchen, as if nothing had happened. Everything was the same, yet everything was different. Of course, I had to assume that, in time, post-war, post-Depression Canada would eventually change, but I felt I couldn’t wait around until it did.

  After a couple of months in Toronto I was going stir crazy but, in defence of my homeland, perhaps I didn’t want to admit the degree to which I had become addicted to gambling. I had my winnings from London – not a lot, but sufficient to sit down at a reasonable card game – and yet I couldn’t find a half-decent poker game that didn’t involve a criminal element of some kind. In all, I had around two thousand Canadian dollars – my accumulated back pay, my demobilisation bonus, and a couple of hundred bucks I’d won at Lenny Giancana’s poker games in London. I hoarded this like a miser, a poker miser waiting for the chance to get into a game where the stakes weren’t penny-ante, which tells you something about my aspirations. I seemed to be, more than ever, addicted to having five cards in my hand, certain that a rare royal flush would be mine some day. In Toronto, the chances of satisfying this need were looking smaller and smaller. Medicine as a career wasn’t going to satisfy this craving but playing poker and leading the free and easy life of a jazz musician would. Running a general practice or slicing people open in surgery just didn’t compete.

  Even if I had taken up a medical scholarship and tried to satisfy my craving for jazz by playing a few nights at the Jazz Warehouse, I would be going backwards, I felt. Miss Frostbite and Joe were still doing their dual piano act, and the musicians in the band were growing older and more set in their ways. Joe, for the first time, was looking his age, his thick mop of wiry hair now sporting a fist-sized patch of pure white above his brow and grey streaks at the temples. He looked like some fierce ageing prophet from the Old Testament.

  The jazz scene in post-war Toronto was going nowhere. And then a letter arrived from Lenny Giancana at the Jazz Warehouse address I’d given him. His letter was as direct as the man himself:

  Dear Jack,

  How you going, buddy. Still freezing your butt? I still remember the cold in Chicago, and Toronto ain’t any warmer.

  Here the sun shines and the gals at the hotel pool are wearing these new bikinis, turning themselves a nice shade of tan.

  Now comes a proposition, the same as before, but this is a definite offer.

  I don’t think I mentioned to you the Family have this casino, the El Marinero in Las Vegas.

  To you ignorant Canadians, that’s in the State of Nevada where gambling is legal.

  Now they’re building a new casino, state of the art, The Firebird, on ‘The Strip’. Think – casino, resort, gals – there ain’t never been anything like this before. The Family also has a share in this new one. Catering contracts, cocktail bars, we doing the guest luxury accommodation side.

  So, here’s the deal, buddy. This is what I’m proposing:

  Come play at the El Marinero, then we’ll give you your own piano bar at The Firebird when it’s all done.

  Jack, buddy, Las Vegas is going to be real big time pretty damn soon.

  We’ll fix you up with a Musicians Union Card so you’re legit.

  Think about it carefully – sunshine, girls, poker, good pay.

  You’ll make yourself $50 tax-free a fortnight. We’ll guarantee this and it don’t include your tips and what you can win at poker!

  Poker and black jack is why this town exists, buddy.

  I promise you the suckers will be coming to the desert with a truckload of cash from all over the States!

  C’mon Jack, don’t freeze your balls no more!!

  What say you little buddy?

  Your good friend,

  Lenny Giancana

  PS Give me a call, LV 2397.

  Lenny was both right and wrong. I’d read a bit about Nevada and the town of Las Vegas and knew that it was largely a Mormon state and that the town had been known in the early days for the silver mines in the desert. It was near where they’d built the Boulder Dam in the Depression. Some of the air force guys I’d played poker with at Gatwick had been trained at the US air force base just out of Las Vegas, and they usually referred to the town as Hicksville. Of course I had no idea about its re-emergence as a gambling town, but thought it curious that Mormons would make gambling legal in Nevada.

  Despite these doubts, it didn’t take me long to decide. In my heart I knew I was a musician. I’d asked Joe what he thought, and he said, ‘Jazzboy, a man gotta do what a man gotta do. You ain’t been happy since you come back from the war. Maybe you got to keep kickin’ the dust some. Moose Jaw and the war ain’t enough. Yo not ready for no settlin’ down in one place. Maybe you got to be a bit more troubadour? You good now, make no mistake, you a real good jazz man and you kin work anywhere yo want. If somebody hear yo but they cain’t see yo, they gonna think yo a black man. Hey, son, whaffor yo want to become a doctor ’n’ cut folk up or feed ’em pills? The good Lord, he put jazz music in yo heart and in yo fingers. He jes done forgot to change the colour yo skin.’

  Miss Frostbite put it more simply. ‘Jack, dear, your mother has a perfectly good doctor in the family and is extremely happy with him.’

  While I probably didn’t need their encouragement to leave, it was nevertheless nice to have their blessing.

  My mom, thinking she’d got me home at last, was pretty upset when I handed her the letter. ‘Oh, Jack, please, you can’t possibly,’ she cried, turning to Nick and thrusting the letter at him. ‘Your stepfather says you’ll
make a wonderful doctor. I know you will, Jack. You were such a kind boy, treating my chilblains. You’ve always cared about people, always,’ she repeated, very close to tears. ‘You’ve been a musician, in Moose Jaw and the army, isn’t that enough?’ Now she was crying openly.

  ‘Mom, it’s difficult to explain. Becoming a doctor is about learning stuff; being a musician is about feeling stuff, in your heart, your soul.’ How could I possibly explain my physical and emotional need for jazz, let alone my compulsion to hold five cards in my hand as a means to test my intuition, judgment and mental stamina against my opponents’?

  Then she suddenly cried, ‘Oh, how I wish your father had never given you that stupid mouth organ when you were a child!’

  I was shocked. My mom had sat through endless concerts, encouraged and praised me; could she possibly mean what she’d just said? ‘Mom, I just need a little time to find myself. I was too young when I went scuffing. The army was all about obeying orders without question. I need to find out who I am.’ I looked across at Nick. ‘If it doesn’t work out for me in, say, a year or two, can I still take up the offer to study medicine?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, I think so. I’ll need to confirm, but I think you’ll have at least that long to decide. I’ll have to check to make certain and get back to you,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Jack, please reconsider!’ my mother begged. ‘A doctor . . . a doctor is a somebody! We’ve always been nobodies . . . the dregs!’

  ‘Mom, you’ve never been the dregs,’ I protested.

  Nick, who wasn’t a man to show his emotions, took a step towards her and folded her into his arms. ‘My darling, you are somebody, the best somebody I’ve ever known,’ he said quietly, kissing her on the top of her head as she sobbed against his chest. I’d never before heard him use that endearment. He turned to me and went on. ‘Jack, whatever happens, your mother is proud of you. However, I need to add that, while I know very little about music, I am certain you would make a splendid doctor.’ He waved the letter in his hand. ‘Would you mind if I read this?’