September Song

by Colin Murray

  ‘They’re on in twenty,’ Peter said, looking at me sceptically. ‘Apparently.’

  I’m not a great one for omens. There were blokes in the war who saw them in everything: that it was raining; that, for once, it wasn’t; that the sergeant-major had nicked himself shaving; that the huge brown cow in the nearest farm mooed. It all meant something for them. I remember dear old Mrs Wilson at school telling us about the Romans, or some lot, who used to disembowel a chicken and read the entrails in order to see how things would turn out. Well, that was fairly rational compared to someone like Bernie Rosen, who saw stuff in the shapes of clouds, or Big Luc, one of the Frenchmen I found myself working with during the war, who once told me quite seriously that a particular operation couldn’t possibly be successful because my socks were an inauspicious colour. Since they were the same drab colour I always wore, that puzzled me.

  I’ve never believed in them myself. I’ve always preferred to look at facts and make judgements – if I really have to – accordingly.

  Lee the piano player had long since come off his chemical high, and, to add to his general level of joie de vivre, he had been knocked about quite a bit as well. I also suspected that Jeannie Summers was well on her way to being more than a little sozzled. The facts, as I saw them, all led inevitably to one conclusion.

  I gloomily joined Jerry at the bar, fearing the worst. He smiled at me cherubically, bought himself another pint and reluctantly forked out for a brandy for me. I felt I needed it.

  ‘Why so morose, my glum friend?’ he said as I knocked back most of the brandy in one fiery gulp and slumped against the bar. ‘It may never happen.’

  I shrugged helplessly. ‘I’m afraid, Jerry,’ I said, ‘that I’ve concluded that the omens are not good.’

  I swallowed down the rest of my brandy and looked for the barman to refill the glass. Jerry looked at me owlishly over the rim of his pint glass. I suddenly realized that the round-eyed gaze indicated surprise. His surprise didn’t noticeably diminish when I ordered a double.

  ‘What are the omens not good for?’ he asked amiably.

  ‘Tonight’s main attraction,’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘So what?’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ I said and stopped. He had a point. Peter had his club’s takings to worry about. Lee and Miss Summers had their reputation to worry about. But why was I bothered?

  ‘Well what?’ he said.

  ‘The piano player’s turned up, but he’s not in much of a state to perform.’

  ‘He’ll still be better than me,’ Jerry said. ‘What was I thinking?’ He laughed. ‘Do you know how long it is since I played the piano in semi-public? Two years and eight months. It was at what your mate Bernie would call a knees-up and what my mother would call a cocktail party. I was adding a bit of class to her at-home. I tinkled those ivories like my life depended on it. And all I got for my pains was a glass of lemonade, one small, triangular, meat-paste sandwich, two crackers with some Cheddar and a smidgeon of Branston’s pickle on top and my father asking if I’d mind playing something “a bit more traditional”. I told him that “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” was as traditional as I got, and he went off in a huff, muttering, “There’s nothing wrong with Stephen Foster.”’ He sighed. ‘The vicar did give me a consoling pat on the shoulder, though, so the evening wasn’t a complete waste of time.’

  He sought further consolation in his pint as Peter Baxter shuffled on to the stage, tapped the microphone and announced that the delightful Jeannie Summers would be on in five minutes. There was a smattering of applause and one amiable, muffled shout of, ‘About time,’ followed by a leisurely stampede for the bar.

  Jerry and I moved away from the front line and sat at a suddenly empty table.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘what’s the difference between a cocktail party and a knees-up?’

  Jerry looked up at the ceiling, which at one time had probably been a delicate primrose but had matured into a fetching smog colour. After carefully contemplating this masterpiece wrought by time and nicotine – mainly nicotine – for a few seconds, he nodded. ‘At a cocktail party,’ he said slowly, ‘the sherry is Amontillado and pretends to be Spanish.’ Having made this, as far as I was concerned, completely baffling pronouncement, he thoughtfully sipped more beer. Then he looked up again. ‘Oh,’ he added, ‘and your bank manager never goes to a knees-up.’

  Clearly, Jerry was drunker than Jeannie Summers.

  As it turned out, the set was not the disaster I’d been expecting, and nowhere near as embarrassing. But it was close. I was relieved. I wasn’t sure why.

  Miss Summers and Lee both stumbled on to the stage and then stumbled into their first number. They stopped ‘Stormy Weather’ twice, very apologetically, before managing to synchronize their efforts. Fortunately, they improved a little over the next couple of songs, and by the time they came to the end, they even managed to make a pretty good fist of ‘Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man’. There was some enthusiastic applause. But that might have come from Peter and the band, standing at the bar.

  Jerry wasn’t as impressed as he would have been the night before, but he didn’t say anything, just pursed his lips and concentrated on his beer.

  When the lights came up, Miss Summers had disappeared but Lee was still slumped at the piano. After a few seconds he looked up, blinking, saw me and pulled himself to his feet. He was clearly stiffening up, and the bruises were throbbing. Then, very gingerly, he walked very slowly over to our table.

  ‘Jeannie told me that you came looking for me, and I want to thank you,’ he said. ‘I appreciate it, sir.’

  ‘It was nothing,’ I said. ‘I just wish I’d found you.’ He was holding his stomach, and I nodded at it. ‘By the way, who gave you the beating?’

  He sniffed. ‘Just some kids,’ he said. ‘I don’t rightly know why. But they could have been the fellers who were in here last night.’ He shook his head. ‘Maybe. I’m not sure.’

  His uncertainty was unconvincing. He knew. I wondered why he wasn’t saying.

  In the sickly, yellowish light, his gaunt face was all sharp angles and fierce bloodshot eyes. He rubbed his hand over the stubble on his cheek. Miss Summers had done her best, but he hadn’t cleaned up that well. Fortunately, the poor lighting on the stage hadn’t revealed the full extent of his disarray.

  ‘Say,’ he said, ‘you don’t know where I can get some protection, do you?’

  ‘Protection?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, you know,’ he said and made a gun out of his right hand, his first two fingers forming the barrel and his thumb the hammer. ‘A shooter.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s not easy to acquire firearms in this country.’ I now had a very uneasy feeling about his reasons for not telling me who had beaten him up.

  He sighed. ‘Pity. I guess a blade will have to do,’ he said.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ I said, ‘go looking to get your own back.’

  ‘It’s just for protection, man,’ he said. ‘Just for protection.’ He chuckled.

  ‘All the same,’ I said, ‘it wouldn’t be a good idea.’

  He smiled in a mean, ugly sort of way. ‘Anyway, thanks again for looking out for me,’ he said and shuffled back on to the stage. He went to the piano and picked out the opening notes from ‘The Funeral March’, then he grinned at me before stumbling out of the rear exit.

  Thanks to Bernie Rosen and a dodgy little deal from a few months before that was still haunting me in the unusual spectral form of sporadic telephone calls I received from the inspector at Scotland Yard, I was in funds and, blissfully, the cost of the taxi back to Leyton was not a concern.

  Jerry’s case of hiccups, however, was. It was clearly touch and go whether he would make it back to the little shop on the corner of Lea Bridge Road and Church Road in Leyton without a gallon or so of beer making its considerable presence felt.

  Still, my worries diminished into insignificance beside those of the cabby, who spent more time looking at us than he did
at the road. When he wasn’t inquiring solicitously after Jerry’s health, he spent the time muttering darkly. I didn’t make any real effort to hear what he was saying. It probably wouldn’t have made me happy.

  In the event, Jerry made it back without any serious spillage, but he was still hiccuping helplessly. He stood on the pavement and swayed gently in the non-existent breeze while I overtipped the driver, who did have the grace to look a bit sheepish and thank me twice – ‘Very kind of you, guv. Very kind’ – before rumbling off in a cloud of grey exhaust fumes.

  I negotiated Jerry into his flat and left him lying on his bed, still threatening to erupt at any moment. I removed his shoes but left it at that and then made my way out into the dark passageway that led to the stairs to my own flat.

  Jerry had thoughtfully left my post – the parcel from Ghislaine – on the top step where I was bound to trip over it. This had the advantage that I wouldn’t miss it.

  And the decided disadvantage that I did indeed trip over it. Fortunately, I didn’t break anything important, just bruised my knee painfully.

  Fluffy, Jerry’s large and bad-tempered cat, eased his way languidly around the door to my office and dispassionately watched me hopping about on the landing. He wasn’t noted for his compassion towards others’ suffering. His eyes glittered like broken glass in the light from the lamp post outside the window. With a dismissive meow, he brushed past me and loped silently down the stairs.

  I rubbed at my knee, picked up the parcel and felt for the light switch in my office as I went in.

  I sat in my grandfather’s old leather chair and looked at the brown-paper package: the exotic stamps, Ghislaine’s handwriting, my name appearing as ‘Antoine’. Only Ghislaine called me Antoine these days.

  The scorch marks on Grand-père’s chair reminded me every day that Papa and Maman never would again.

  It would be a book. I knew that. This was only the second gift that Ghislaine had ever given me, and the first had been a book. It sat in splendid isolation on the old, scrubbed kitchen table that pretended to be my desk: Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire.

  I unwrapped the parcel as carefully as an archaeologist unwinding the bandages around an Egyptian mummy and finally unveiled Alcools by some geezer called Guillaume Apollinaire.

  Like her previous present this was also second-hand: the pages had already been slit. It was another collection of poetry. Ghislaine had evidently decided that it was time for me to be educated in the finer things of life.

  Racy poems about malevolent flowers and strong spirits seemed like an odd way to go about it.

  The accompanying letter was bland and formal enough. She sent her felicitations and said how much she had enjoyed spending time with me in Paris. There was a sting to it, though. At the end she said she was thinking about getting back together with her husband, Robert, and asked what I thought about that.

  I didn’t really know what I thought about that. As Robert was a noted womanizer and had, on one occasion that I knew of, beaten her, I wasn’t sure that making it up with him would lead to happiness, but it wasn’t my decision. In any case, the date on the letter suggested that she’d sent it the day after I left, so she’d probably done whatever she was going to do already. My reply would tax my limited French diplomatic vocabulary.

  I picked up the volume of verse and started to read.

  SEVEN

  I don’t sleep well. According to friends, I worry too much. I think that may be true. It certainly doesn’t take much to wake me up.

  And the thumping on the front door before the sun had risen was definitely de trop. I was up and pulling on my trousers at the first bang, but the hammering continued as I ran down the stairs. Whoever it was seemed determined to put a dent in solid wood and wake up everyone in the building. Well, they may have splintered a plank or two, but Jerry, the only other occupant of the house, resolutely refused to be roused.

  I have to admit, I was expecting a couple of burly law-enforcement officers. I don’t know why policemen have such a liking for seeing the unshaven cheeks and chins of known felons, or the hair curlers and face cream lathered faces of their spouses, but predawn visits have long been their idea of a good time. I also couldn’t think why they would be calling on me. (Well, I could, but I didn’t want to dwell on what I regarded as ancient history. Although, to be fair, Inspector Rose preferred to think of it as an ongoing investigation.) So it was with some misgivings that I opened the door.

  Not enough misgivings, though.

  The two burly men standing on the pavement were far too smartly dressed to be on-duty policemen. From the recently brushed hats down to the highly polished shoes, via the sharp, double-breasted suits and the crisp white shirts and neatly knotted ties, they oozed villain. Thugs like to look nice.

  ‘Mr Tony Gérard?’ one of them said. His accent was pure East End, but he was polite enough. And, clearly, he was keen to ensure that he only knocked lumps off the right person. So, a decent sort, then.

  I nodded.

  ‘Would you be so good as to get in the car.’ He indicated, with a flick of his head, a flamboyant, two-tone Ford Consul in red and white parked just down the road, motor running quietly. ‘My employer would like to see you.’ He was a very big man, and I was grateful that he was asking nicely. I don’t think that he and his equally large companion would have had too much trouble picking me up and carrying me.

  ‘Any point in asking who?’ I said.

  ‘All will be revealed in the fullness of time,’ he said, tossing his cigarette butt on to the pavement and grinding it out with his heel.

  ‘Do you mind if I shave, wash and finish dressing?’ I said, thinking that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to apply a cold, wet flannel to the bump on the back of my head that was starting to throb like a good ’un.

  ‘Be my guest, Mr Gérard.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Shall we say five minutes?’

  I nodded and went back up the stairs.

  I didn’t have time to boil a kettle so I shaved, painfully, in cold water. Then I dressed in record time and went back down the stairs. I’d been gone for slightly less than four minutes.

  He smiled at me warmly when I reappeared. For some reason that made me wish I’d taken the extra minute and gone for a pee. I realized I had no idea where we were going.

  ‘Is it far?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he said, putting his hand gently on my back and guiding me towards the waiting car.

  It’s not very brave or resourceful of me, I know, but I’ve always found that some things just can’t be resisted and it’s better not to waste time or energy fighting them. At school and in the forces I was occasionally accused of dumb insolence, but it isn’t that at all. Sometimes it really is best just to let events unfold and see how they develop and wait for an opening or bow to the inevitable.

  These two gents looked pretty hard and fairly inevitable to me so I slid meekly into the car. It smelt of new PVC and stale cigarettes. The politeness and courtesy I’d been offered so far indicated that things might turn out all right, but I wouldn’t have been human if I hadn’t had a bad feeling fidgeting away in my guts about it all. I recognized the bad feeling for what it was. I’d been scared before.

  I did hope that the banging on the door and my to-ing and fro-ing had roused Jerry, and that, even in his befuddled state, he’d had the presence of mind to make a note of the car’s registration plate, which was more than I had, but I wasn’t overly optimistic that he’d even woken up.

  The car was parked on the wrong side of the road, facing Lea Bridge Road, and so described a beautiful arc as the driver executed a perfect U-turn, the headlamps sweeping across the pale-yellow wall of the Gaumont cinema and, for a brief moment, lighting up the window of Enzo’s dark and deserted café.

  Then the surprisingly powerful motor accelerated smoothly along Church Road, empty at this time of the morning, swiftly passing all the old familiar landmarks made eerie and alien by the early morning light and silence
. We glided past the bomb site where Maman, Papa and Grand-père had met their fiery end; past the Oliver Twist pub, where the road made a harsh left, and St Mary’s Church; past the congregational church and the hall where the 1st Leyton Boy Scouts meet every Friday night; and then we turned into Leyton High Road at the cavernous Lion and Key pub.

  Within minutes, we’d swung into Grove Green Road and I had more than an inkling of where we were going. I started to feel a little less scared, even relieved. Anyone wanting to do bad things to me would probably have taken me off to a secluded glade in Epping Forest, rather than whisking me off to their home. This was going to be a warning, at worst.

  We swished to a halt outside one of the only houses with any lights on. In fact, it was lit up like a Christmas tree. Once again, the driver parked on the wrong side of the road, facing the non-existent traffic, and, once again, he stayed in the car, with the engine running, lighting up a cigarette as we slid out and the big man gently eased me in the direction of the wide steps that led up to the front door, his hand on the small of my back. His companion bounded up the steps and rattled the knocker. The door was opened instantly.

  I was manoeuvred into the standard working-class-made-good front room. There was a lot of gleaming dark wood, a thick, fitted carpet with a headache-inducing, swirly pattern in dark greens and browns, and some cut-glass vases. There was also the same alabaster Alsatian dog with a small child wrapped around its neck that I’d seen at Daff’s perched on the sideboard. It made me smile.

  There were also a number of hard-looking men scattered about the room, sitting stiffly on high-backed dining chairs, all smoking furiously. Even through the fug, I recognized two of them, and two of the others shared a family resemblance. The smile was short-lived.

  Dave Mountjoy got up from his chair and walked towards me. He’d put on a little weight since I’d last seen him and lost some of his hair. He looked more like the older man who was sitting on the only comfortable-looking armchair in the room than like the sour-faced Ricky, who was sprawled untidily on his chair. Something decidedly unpleasant inside me took great pleasure in the discovery that I wasn’t the only one suffering after last night’s little fracas. Ricky had a very nice Technicolor bruise just under his jawline.