Jack of Diamonds

by Bryce Courtenay

  Diamond Jim and I had been alone for a long time and, although he whistled ‘Love Me or Leave Me’ each day to remind me of Bridgett, I couldn’t convince myself I would ever see her again. Now luck had smiled on me once more, bringing a second gorgeous woman into my life to love, who miraculously seemed to return my feelings. She also grew to adore Diamond Jim, who soon greeted her each morning with the words ‘Abrihet, you’re beautiful!’

  Before long, Abrihet and I were married in Holy Trinity Cathedral in Addis Ababa, with rather more pomp than I would have liked, but Abrihet was from a powerful and devout noble family for whom all the trappings of the Ethiopian orthodox Christian church were necessary. To my dismay Diamond Jim wasn’t allowed into the church. At least there was a precedent: President Andrew Jackson’s parrot had been ejected from his funeral service because he kept cussing.

  Abrihet was a virgin, but quickly proved to be a passionate and generous woman and we were happier than I’d have thought possible. Within weeks she became pregnant, to the enormous pleasure of her family, for whom fecundity was proof of a successful marriage.

  Thanks to her family’s connections, I had been put in charge of the Royal Emergency Medical Centre in Addis Ababa. Jack’s luck strikes again! It seemed I would never fully free myself from caring women stepping in to help me or even to save my life, but what the heck. I was as happy as I could be away from a jazz club and a card table.

  Abrihet’s family were close to Emperor Haile Selassie and, knowing of my passion for music, they arranged for me to be one of the musical directors of the emperor’s imperial brass band, originally comprising forty Armenian orphans adopted by him and trained as musicians. I didn’t like to think of the parallels with my own story – music must have come to the rescue of countless children – but I feel sure that if people played music rather than spoke to each other, this world would be a much better place.

  Our daughter was born before our first wedding anniversary, and we named her Ayana Rebekkah – Ayana, meaning beautiful flower, and Rebekkah, meaning to bind. Certainly that little girl bound me to her and her beautiful mother with unbreakable ties, or so I believed.

  My mom was desperate to meet her first granddaughter, but Nick and I both thought it was too dangerous. We’d been writing to each other using the private post-office box set up by Nick’s contacts in Canadian Intelligence, and my contacts in the Ethiopian diplomatic corps. We were careful never to give away my whereabouts, which made it almost impossible to arrange for my mom to come for a visit. Perhaps I was paranoid, especially after all this time, but I kept remembering how they’d hunted down Johnny Diamond, and now I had at least two precious reasons to live.

  One of Mom’s letters carried the sad news of Joe’s death. That I would never now be able to show him the musician I had become in Las Vegas hit me with renewed strength. I could almost hear him say, ‘Jazzboy, you done real good. That phrasing real subtle, my man!’ I grieved for the old man who had come closer than anyone to being a father figure to me. With the loss of Joe, Miss Frostbite could no longer continue with her piano routine, and went into retirement. The Jazz Warehouse was purchased by the twins, who now saw themselves as entrepreneurs, with their long, elegant fingers in several pies. Hector was still head chef at the Jazz Warehouse, and his daughter, Sue Stinchcombe, had become a very successful model in Canada.

  There is little call for jazz harmonica players or, for that matter, poker players, in Ethiopia, so I had plenty of leisure time to work with Diamond Jim on what started out as a playful jazz routine with a bit of repartee, which we worked out between us. I was constantly amazed by his intelligence and devotion, not to mention his gift for mimicry. I estimated his vocabulary consisted of nearly seven hundred words and numbers, the meaning of most of which he clearly understood.

  Almost from the moment she set eyes on him, my little Ayana loved Diamond Jim but, while he tolerated her, he always greeted her with ‘Oh boy! Here comes trouble!’ Despite sweet-talking Abrihet, Diamond Jim was a one-man bird.

  Like most children, Ayana loved music, and would listen happily to anything I played, at first rocking or nodding to the beat, then, as she grew older, singing along in a sweet tuneful voice. Once she tried to sing along with ‘Love Me or Leave Me’, but only once; Diamond Jim fluffed his feathers furiously and squawked fit to strip the paint from the walls.

  I began to teach her music through games and songs, and realised that, with her keen intelligence, she was hungry to learn. So, just for fun, I taught her how to play cards. By the time she was twelve, when Abrihet insisted we move to England for Ayana’s secondary education, my daughter was a real whizz at cards. I had weaned myself off poker of necessity, and was determined never to return to it once we were in England. It had brought me too much bad luck. Besides, I wanted to earn a living and keep my family like other men did. I was sick of relying on my wife’s family. The blues lends itself wonderfully to the harmonica, and in the UK, with Diamond Jim as part of the act, I hoped that I could resume my life as a performer.

  We arrived in London in 1968, the year of the Prague Spring, student riots in Paris and the Beatles’ White Album. America had launched the first manned Apollo space mission, but was unable to give its citizens equal rights. Black people were demanding to be treated decently; Martin Luther King had died fighting for their rights, and, at the Mexico Olympics, Black American athletes had given a black-power salute, supported by an Australian athlete. Noel White would have been proud of his countryman, and Joe and all my other black friends would have been gratified. It was heady stuff for someone who’d been living quietly at the ends of the earth.

  In the UK, the troubles had begun in Northern Ireland, and there were violent demonstrations in the streets of London against the Vietnam War. But, as luck would have it, blues had been rediscovered by a new generation, and I soon found myself in the thick of a jazz and blues scene that was really jumping. It was an era of innovation, the perfect time to introduce my act with Diamond Jim: Jack, Jim & Jazz, or JJ&J. It had a quirky edge, and the music was good. Thanks to Ray Charles, nobody thought twice about a jazz musician performing in dark glasses, and I hoped the disguise and the different name would be sufficient to keep me safe from the Mob. One reviewer said I was the best exponent of this type of music in Europe and, thank God, we quickly became famous. DJ seemed to love performing as much as I did.

  When Ayana finished school at seventeen, with first-class results, her mother was delighted that she would be going up to Cambridge. Ayana had grown into a stunningly beautiful young woman. Her Ethiopian elegance combined with her Iroquois and Anglo-Saxon heritage had produced astonishing results. She was just on six feet tall, slender as a reed, and still growing. One night when she was out dancing with friends in a club near Carnaby Street, she was spotted by a Paris fashion identity called Eva Segelov, who ran the Paris School of Modelling. The independent Ayana – or Rebekkah, as she was known to her friends – didn’t consult us and, even though she’d been accepted to Cambridge, she left for Paris to train as a model under the name of Rebekkah Reed, a combination of her second name and my assumed surname.

  Eva Segelov was from a Russian Jewish family; feisty, contradictory, ruthless and unpopular within the Paris fashion industry, which spread slanderous rumours about her supposed links with illicit gambling as well as English and French criminal elements. Eva was forthright in her views about the French fashion scene, which, she claimed, was moribund, with petite models who were chosen and trained to be interchangeable, conservative ‘clothes hangers’. She wanted to change the fashion business, put some ‘guts’ into it, and her idea, to the horror of the industry, was to make the model a star. She took one look at Rebekkah and knew she had found the perfect stalking horse, a young woman of such striking beauty that she could never be a mere clotheshorse.

  Abrihet was not happy, not happy at all, but assumed modelling would be a passing fad. I extracted a promise from Ayana that she would take up her universit
y studies if she were to prove unsuccessful in Paris and hoped for the best.

  Alas, the times were a-changing for me, too, and by the mid-seventies, music was taking a different direction, and one that I was not prepared to follow, even if I’d been able to do so. I’d woken up one day and found that I’d turned fifty in a time when youth meant everything. On top of that I was something of a purist, and either unwilling or unable to adapt to the music of the times. We, DJ and I, would always be able to make a living as performers, but I began to slip from being a top act to being a club act. Diamond Jim and I still performed together as Jack, Jim & Jazz – JJ&J – but we were now regarded as a novelty act, despite my blues harmonica playing being better than ever.

  I didn’t have time to dwell on my changing fortunes because, in the year Ayana entered the modelling world as Rebekkah Reed, Abrihet was injured when an IRA bomb exploded in Oxford Street. She was rushed to Hammersmith Hospital and I had Ayana come over and stay until her mother was out of danger. Once her condition stabilised, the prognosis wasn’t too serious, but then, three weeks after Ayana returned to Paris, my darling Abrihet died from a cerebral haemorrhage.

  The months after her death were a blur; I simply couldn’t believe I’d lost the second woman I had loved wholly and completely.

  But life goes on, and if my act with Diamond Jim had been relegated to small stages in workers’ clubs, the occasional nightclub and pub, Ayana, aka Rebekkah Reed, was beginning to make a big name for herself under the tutelage of the redoubtable, outspoken, loud-mouthed Eva Segelov. At a willowy six feet two inches, the stunningly beautiful Rebekkah Reed became an instant sensation. Her popularity soared, magazines begged and queued, and Harper’s Bazaar dubbed her the most beautiful young woman on earth. The world’s first supermodel was born. Of course I was proud, very proud, and wished only that I could have shared her fame and good fortune with her mother.

  As Ayana’s career began to soar into the stratosphere, mine sank into virtual oblivion. There is a time for everything and my musical career, or rather ours, DJ’s and mine, seemed finally to be over. My heart simply wasn’t in it. I’d survived the era of the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, but disco and hard rock finished me. It seemed it didn’t matter how good a jazz musician you were, nobody was really interested any more. I earned enough to get by, but not much more.

  I’d learned from my mom’s weekly letters that Sue Stinchcombe had long ago moved on from modelling, no doubt understanding that she’d need a new career once she could no longer sell her face and body. With her intelligence, guts, organisational flair and people skills, she’d started her own talent agency, dealing with models at first, then branching out into handling musicians and entertainers. The twins had helped finance her business, recognising a savvy woman when they saw one, and even Mac had contributed financially. He’d been right about electric guitars, and his ‘McClymont Roadshow’ had become famous with the new pop and rock musicians for its tone. I would learn much later that one of the first musicians on Sue’s books had been a torch singer whose stage name was Prairie Gold – Juicy Fruit had made it.

  Unbeknownst to me, Sue and Ayana had met through the modelling side of the agency when Sue brought her over to Canada for a promotion, (with a multi-thousand-dollar price tag attached) for a leading bank who were savvy enough to see that women might just be worth pursuing as customers and investors in their right. It’s not hard to guess the name of the bank and its kinky elderly owner, or that the twins would be involved. Sue was completely unaware of Rebekkah Reed’s connection to me and had no idea I was in London – no doubt she still thought I was lost somewhere in darkest Africa – and Ayana did not know of my connection with Sue.

  I would learn much later that Sue had, of course, kept in touch with Chef Napoleon Nelson, her godfather, who had made his name as a piano player in the GAWP Bar before Bridgett retired from the Firebird when it was sold to Howard Hughes. Bridgett was living somewhere in New York, having financed the education of Jim-Jay Bullnose, who had become a prominent young lawyer. All this came to Sue from Chef Napoleon Nelson, as Bridgett apparently had made no contact with any of the old Las Vegas crowd and had instructed Chef Napoleon Nelson not to breathe a word about the two of us to his goddaughter. Besides, I knew Nick Reed did everything in his power to keep news of me from reaching anyone who’d known me in Las Vegas. It was as if Bridgett and I had never been friends, never loved each other. Perhaps it was for the best, although Diamond Jim always ended his morning serenade with the words ‘I love you, Bridgett’.

  One of the best things about living in London was the wonderful variety of classical music concerts on offer. I’d never lost my love of classical music, but my life had led me to places where it was rarely played. Now I was in one of the classical music capitals of the world, and I took full advantage of it. It helped ease my aching heart, and when I listened to beautiful music, I could forget for a moment how much I missed my wife and my lovely daughter.

  I went to every concert during the London Proms season at the Royal Albert Hall. Not long after we’d arrived in London, I’d joined the long queue for Prom tickets, with Diamond Jim, as always, on my shoulder. Naturally, he soon became bored, and a bored parrot is a noisy and destructive parrot, who requires a lot of time and attention from his owner to distract him. This is hardly surprising when you understand that these parrots are monogamous, and form lifelong bonds, which can easily last for up to sixty years.

  I decided to put on an impromptu performance to distract DJ, playing blues and jazz on harmonica while he did his usual cheeky commentary, whistling along with the songs he knew well. This proved to be a huge success with the crowd and became a feature of the ticket queue each year. Eventually the two of us were caught by TV cameras and appeared on the BBC. Luckily I was wearing dark glasses and a hat at the time, so I was fairly confident I wouldn’t be recognised, and surely after all this time and in another country . . . Jack, Jim & Jazz were now known throughout Britain, so I guess we were once again famous in our own small way. Although I had a sneaking suspicion that my parrot was the real star.

  Soon we were synonymous with the Proms, a fixture outside the Royal Albert Hall. My sixteen-hole chromatic Hohner super harmonica allowed me to mix my routines with classical and semi-classical music, such as George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and the queuing crowd became an audience in its own right, supplemented by folk who were not in the queue for Prom tickets but were loyal followers of JJ&J.

  We worked on several routines. For instance, in one I’d be playing a blues or jazz number and would play a note or two a semitone flat. There’d be a sudden loud whistle from DJ, who would shake his head and shriek, ‘No, no, no!’ I’d stop playing and he’d say, ‘Tin ear! Flat! ’orrible!’

  ‘No, you’re wrong, DJ!’ I’d protest.

  ‘You’re wrong!’ he’d insist, then he’d whistle the phrase, pitch perfect. The Prom crowd adored him and he loved all the attention.

  My lovely Ayana dealt with the tragic death of her mother by going silent on me. Perhaps because of her personal grief, she became even more consumed with hard work, and when I was fortunate enough to get her on the phone, she was always dashing off somewhere and the conversations were seldom personal. I can’t say I didn’t mind, because it hurt like hell. She was my everything – my sun, my moon, my firmament.

  What I wasn’t to know until much later, was that, by thoughtlessly introducing her to card games as a child, I had unwittingly exposed her to the lure of gambling. Her game of choice was blackjack and, while she was still little more than a girl, had become hopelessly addicted. Eva Segelov proved to be her partner in crime; they were both inveterate gamblers addicted to blackjack. Perhaps my daughter was more like me than I cared to admit.

  The modelling world isn’t easy for young women: there is a lot of money, a lot of pressure, and a lot of parties, alcohol and drugs. Ayana had fallen in with the wrong crowd and, after a very bad run, ended up owing a fo
rtune in gambling debts to one of the most notorious gangs in London.

  The first I knew about it was when a Cockney version of Sammy Schischka confronted me after a show for the Prom queue and explained in very colourful language that if I didn’t pay his boss a staggering amount of money (I mean, staggering), my daughter’s beautiful and now famous face would be permanently disfigured. ‘She won’t end up with egg on her face,’ he said, smiling as if the whole thing were a joke, ‘we’ll use sulphuric acid, mate.’

  Frozen with horror, I was unable to respond as he handed me the number of a private safe-deposit box at a London bank. ‘Six weeks, you’ve got six weeks, matey,’ he growled. Then added, ‘Or it’s your bricks and mortar.’ It took me a moment to understand that bricks and mortar was rhyming slang for daughter.

  I had a sudden flashback to my gentle stepfather, Nick, talking about trying to patch up a victim of the Mob who’d been attacked with acid. ‘Sulphuric acid isn’t nice,’ he’d said, and I had known then that his understated comment covered unimaginable horrors.

  I couldn’t possibly raise that kind of money, not if I had months or years. Six weeks was laughable. What made it worse, I couldn’t tell anyone about Ayana’s problems, for fear it would reach the press and end her career. I spoke to Eva Segelov, who said she too had been a victim of a sting; they hadn’t seen it coming and she and her protégée were both up to their eyeballs in debt, potentially ruined. If the tabloids knew about Ayana’s gambling habit, or that she had been consorting with gangsters, she’d never be employed again. I could just see the headlines: The face that launched a thousand chips.

  I had no doubt that the gangsters would follow through on their threat. How could they not? If my daughter defaulted on her debts, her fame would only exacerbate their very public humiliation. Frantic to raise the money any way I could, I contacted Abrihet’s family, but I had not reckoned with the conservative and aristocratic Amhara people. Horrified that Ayana would choose to ‘flaunt herself’ as a model and had, in their view, debased herself, they refused to help. Even Fenet, who I’d thought would be more enlightened, turned her back on us. Perhaps she blamed me for her sister’s death; I will never know.