The White Father

by Julian Mitchell

  Martin nodded, still speechless.

  “Counter-espionage,” said Mr Brachs calmly, “has already begun. I do not propose to involve you in this work, Mr Martin. Your duty is simply to be more vigilant. To be most vigilant. Champney, Morrison, Dulake is perhaps the most easily entered of our departments. Daily strange people arrive for auditions and recordings. There is a constant coming, a constant going. It is there that the enemy has made his main beachhead.”

  “Oh, sir!”

  “It is hard to believe,” said Mr Brachs. “It is nonetheless true. The particular reason for this conference is that I have evidence, not conclusive but highly suggestive evidence, that Sammy Sweet is an agent of the enemy.”

  “Sammy Sweet? You mean Edward Gilchrist?”

  “I mean Gilchrist, yes. He associates with musicians who are not clients of Champney, Morrison, Dulake. With musicians, indeed, who have refused to become clients of Champney, Morrison, Dulake. Gregory Smith turned down an offer of ours. Peter Harrisson expressed no interest at all. These people are all connected with the agent Hepwith at the Racket and with the drummer Frank Barrett. I have here a note from my night confidential secretary Mr Burgess about a conspiracy between Hepwith and Barrett. Hepwith is to be dismissed forthwith.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I understand that Hepwith pretended ignorance of our previous interest in Gilchrist when he submitted his comments. Clearly he was lying. Mr Burgess originally imputed the ignorance to incompetence. Neither he nor I was then aware of the many ramifications of the enemy. Of the enemy’s deviousness. We are in constant danger, Mr Martin.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The Sway will not now be sung by Edward Gilchrist. But we must not allow the enemy to disrupt our plans. That would be to concede defeat. Under no circumstances will we concede defeat, Mr Martin. A new Sammy Sweet must be found at once.”

  Martin was aghast. He was a man of simple ambitions. He wanted a cream Bentley with red upholstery and his own initials on the number-plate: FM 1. He wanted a black Humber for his wife (FM 2), an Aston-Martin for his son (FM 3) and something small but sporty for his daughter—an Austin-Cooper Mini, perhaps—which would be FM 4. Then there would be a house in the country—near Horsham, say—instead of the present one at Richmond. So far the Martins had to be content with a white Consul with plastic covers over the seats and a valueless numberplate—XYT 306. Even that now seemed in danger.

  “Do you have anyone in mind?” he said.

  “I do, Mr Martin. Albert Swetman. Swetman to Sweet will be a sweet change.” Mr Brachs permitted himself a small, saccharine smile.

  “Albert Swetman!” said Martin. “But is he quite suitable?”

  “Perfectly. He is poor. He has a reliable manager, Sidney Carnaby. We can deal with him without letting him into the Building at once. He is malleable, unintelligent, small.”

  “He has, it’s said, rather peculiar tastes, sir.”

  “So long as he indulges them in private, there is no objection. I understand it is something to do with a drummer, is it not?”

  “I’m afraid so, sir. He likes, it seems, to be tied up with piano wire, then played on. There has to be a naked girl present, too. I believe she just sits and watches.”

  “It seems unnecessarily complicated,” said Mr Brachs, “but at least it is musical.” He smiled again briefly. “Sign on the drummer and the girl, too, if necessary. They may not appear in public with him, but they can be given innocuous titles—secretary, perhaps, and personal assistant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I would like to hear a recording of the new Sammy Sweet before the end of the week,” said Mr Brachs. “That is all, Mr Martin.”

  Martin rose.

  “Do not forget my warnings. Spies are everywhere. Conduct negotiations in Carnaby’s office. Until Swetman has been cleared, he is not to be admitted to the Brachs Building.”

  “No, sir.”

  Mr Brachs watched Martin retreat down the long office. He flinched, as was proper, from the Rothko. He kept his eyes on the carpet. He seemed impressed by what he had been told. Mr Brachs was pleased with Fred Martin.

  Fred Martin was not a bit pleased with Mr Brachs. As he went over to the lift he wondered what on earth to do. The old man was going right round the bend, obviously. But if Mr Brachs said there were spies everywhere, to say nothing of counter-spies, it was probably true. It wouldn’t be safe to open one’s mouth.

  As he was about to enter the lift, he was stopped by Bray, the day confidential secretary.

  “Could I have a word with you, please, Mr Martin?” he said. “It’ll only be a moment. Would you come into my office?”

  Christ, what now? thought Martin.

  “Do sit down, Mr Martin,” said Bray. “I just wondered if you had gained any impression—this is very difficult to say, I’m afraid, and I hope you won’t misunderstand me—if you’d gained any impression of Mr Brachs’s—how shall I put it?—his general state of health. Some of us have been a little worried recently whether he may not have been overworking. But we see him all the time, and an outsider’s view would …” His voice trailed off.

  Oh, good grief, thought Martin. What should he say? Was Mr Brachs going mad? Or was he right about the conspiracy against him? He took a deep breath and said, “I saw nothing out of the ordinary. I can’t think what you mean.”

  Bray looked at him for several seconds, then his face took on its usual mask of blandness and he said, “I’m glad to hear that, Mr Martin. That’s most encouraging. Good. I’m so sorry to have bothered you.”

  When Martin got back to his office, he told his secretary to get new locks put on all his drawers and filing cabinets at once. No doubt Mr Brachs would get to hear of it soon enough. There was no harm in going along with the old monster, mad or not, and there could be a lot of harm in not going along with him. The cream Bentley glittered in his mind’s eye.

  But Albert Swetman! Albert Swetman was impossible. The short youth with the face like putty and dyed hair who had followed Pete and Edward on their one appearance at the Racket was, as Mr Brachs had said, certainly malleable. He was also stupid. His manager, Sid Carnaby, described him as something to rattle around the bottom of the barrel. Yet something could perhaps be done with him. What he lacked in personality could be forcibly injected by the Sway. He could be worked on. He could be given some new teeth, for instance, and his face could be pushed into some sort of shape. Dyed hair was perfectly acceptable in show business. That he could be made in all senses need not be a drawback. The more eccentric his private vices, the less likely he would be to get involved in unfavourable publicity with girls. The papers simply didn’t print things about people who liked to be tied up with piano wire unless they came out in a public tribunal about spies or something. The laws of libel were mercifully restricting. Albert Swetman was an awful little runt, of course, but Sid Carnaby was reliable. If necessary, Swetman could be bought.

  He began to look at his notes. Sway shirts, slacks and skirts were being already being designed. Sway songs were being written and subjected to rigorous examination. His big idea, which he hadn’t, in the circumstances, been able to suggest to Mr Brachs, was a Sway Festival to tour the country. Instead of the usual one-night stands in theatres and cinemas, the Festival would visit dance-halls, staying in one city for a week or two at a time. The Sway would be taken to the kids, in fact, instead of waiting for the kids to come to the Sway. With Sammy Sweet and the Swaymen would go a group of dancers trained to make the most of the new craze. (It was already, in Martin’s mind, a craze.) The dancers would give an exhibition together, then break away to take partners from the audience. Thus there would be free lessons as part of the attraction. Sway with the Swayers—it would be a good gimmick. There would be a tie-up with the distributors of Free in the various areas, and with the Brachs clothes shops. Childishly simple competitions, involving little more than an ability to write (Include six Free bottle-tops with each entry—Enter as oft
en as you like!), would have free tickets to the Festival as prizes. These, to help things along, could be called Free tickets. Martin had a vision of crowded dance-halls with spotlights slowly turning over the happy youth of England, while the Swaymen belted out the new tunes and Sammy Sweet stood in front of them, shimmering in a spangled new white suit, gyrating and yelling out the words, smiling his spangled new white teeth.

  The buzzer went on his desk.

  “Mr Gilchrist to see you, Mr Martin.”

  “Tell him,” said Martin, “that I’m not in. I’m sorry, but I have an urgent meeting. Tell him I’ll get in touch. Tell him we’ll call him, and not to call us.”

  “Very good, Mr Martin.”

  Fred Martin sighed. He rang Sid Carnaby and asked if he was free for lunch. Fortunately he was.

  *

  “There wasn’t,” said Edward, “an opportunity to say anything at all. The secretary’s face went all sort of dead and she told me to go away. It was the first time I’d seen any of those girls in the Brachs Building stop smiling.”

  “She actually said that?” said Judy. “She said ‘Go away’, just like that?”

  “Well, no, not actually. She said Mr Martin was busy, he had an important meeting, he’d get in touch.”

  “Perhaps he will,” said Pete. “Maybe he suddenly had the chance to get Elvis Presley over here. They’d cancel everything if they had a chance to negotiate that.”

  “I don’t think so. The girl said not to bother to call them, they’d call me.”

  “It’s incredible,” said Judy. “You mean she actually said that? There really are people in the world who say that?”

  “Yes,” said Edward. “She actually said it.”

  “I hope that’s the end of all this pop rubbish, that’s all,” said Pete. “Listen, I’ve practically got the money for the club. I don’t care what you decide to do in the end, Edward, but will you please at least stick around for the next couple of months. I want to be able to get a band together at a moment’s notice.”

  “Who’s putting up the money?” said Edward. “If it’s that bloody Mr Brachs, I’ll scream.”

  “You know that little place in Frith Street? The Dreadnought? It used to be the Macaroon, only it folded. Then the man who took it over and called it the Dreadnought tried to run it as a folk-song place, but it didn’t catch on. He’s prepared to give us a couple of months from September the first. We have to leave the place as it is, of course, and it’s not ideal. But he’ll pay the rent and run the coffee and drinks side of it, if we’ll advertise and handle the club end. I’m not sure quite how it’s going to work out, and we haven’t actually settled any details yet, but I think it’ll be O.K. The trouble is, I don’t suppose people will join for only two months. But at least, even if we fold after October, we’ll have had a place to appear every night, to get ourselves known. And we can have guest nights, with Americans dropping in after concerts or something. We’ve got to make it work.”

  “And what do you want me to do?” said Edward. “Just play the piano for you?”

  “That’s all. But if you want to do more, you certainly can. You can help get things organised. Our end of it’s going to have to be run on a shoestring. I’ve only got a couple of hundred quid, and that’s got to last the whole two months.”

  “It sounds great, Pete,” said Edward. “I mean, great for you. But I’m not sure whether it’s so great for me. I’m not even sure if I want to go on being a musician—I’m not good enough. You’d have to find a better pianist in time, anyway.”

  “O.K., so you’re not the world’s greatest pianist. But you know my style, you fit in well with Greg. You can enjoy yourself with us for a while. What else have you got in mind?”

  “I haven’t got anything in mind. You know my mind—it’s always empty. But I don’t think I can face tinkling away much longer, knowing I’m no good. I want to do something more purposeful, something I can do well. I’d like to feel I was at the centre of something, not just fiddling about on the edge. It’s different for you, you’re a good trumpeter, you could be very good if you stuck to it. You have an instinct for the original phrase—I haven’t. I’m all head, I have to read a thing before I can hear it properly.”

  “Look, forget all that,” said Pete. “I’m not asking you to join me for life. I’m asking you to help me get off the ground, that’s all. If you want to go out into the big wide world and punch the Prime Minister on the nose, that’s fine by me. Not that I see you in politics, honestly.”

  “I didn’t say anything about politics.”

  “Whatever it is, you’re going to have to find out how to do it first, aren’t you? You can afford to hang around for another couple of months, and you know it. It’s what you’ve always claimed you wanted to do.”

  “Not any more.”

  “Listen, Edward, how old are we all? We’re young enough to fool around without hurting ourselves. You don’t want to lock yourself up in a career, you know you don’t. It’s the one thing you’ve always dreaded. It’s what we all dread. And we’re not scared for nothing. We know what we do like, we stick with it, we keep our eyes and our ears open, we walk warily, we’re cats. All the kids are like that nowadays. There’s nothing special about us, except we’re bright, we’ve got good educations, for what they’re worth. And we’re much luckier than most, we can afford to go on doing what we like for a while. Think of all the kids who leave school and have to dive straight into the nearest factory or office. They get a decent whack of pay every Friday, sure. But they can’t be as free as we are.”

  “It’s what we do with our freedom,” said Edward.

  “Oh, pay no attention to him, Edward,” said Judy. “If I’ve heard him once, I’ve heard him a hundred times about this. Excuse me while I make some tea.”

  “I’ve always reckoned,” said Pete, “that if our music’s any good, it’s because we somehow catch all the longings and ambitions of the kids who aren’t so lucky. Good jazz is pretty rare. But when you hear it, that’s what it does—it gets you where it hurts most. Not in the heart or the stomach or the crutch, but in the imagination. It gets in there and it stirs up all the dormant stuff the kids have had to suppress because they have to work, they have to eat. All popular music does it in one way or another, from Elvis Presley to Cannonball Adderley. Styles, intelligences, sophistications, they all have their different kinds of music. My kind—our kind—appeals to the thoughtful, it gets right under their skulls and sets free all sorts of feelings and longings and dreams. You can call it entertainment, but it’s necessary entertainment.”

  “It sounds a bit like therapy,” said Edward.

  “Shut up. Now, one more thing. I’m not a Negro from New Orleans who can’t read or write, I’m a highly educated Englishman. My kind of music is probably limited by that. But there are lots of people like me around. One of them is you. You can get in there yourself and tap all that imagination that’s locked up in all those skulls. Maybe you can’t do it as well as either of us would like, but you can do it pretty well, man. You’re one of us, one of the cats. It’s just the right word. We walk along on tiptoe, giving nothing away, we’re sort of wary. You’re not going to change just because you’ve been hanging around an old-fashioned civil servant for the last few weeks. He’s an admirable guy, a great guy. But that’s all past, all that service and duty, it’s over. You belong with us. And you can stick by us, stick by your pals, if you want to put it crudely. Sure, you want to do something else in a while. But right now you’ve got nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. You need us and we need you. Don’t do anything foolish. You’re one of the lucky ones, you can spare a few months. So spare them.”

  “With cat-like tread,” said Edward. “That’s Gilbert and Sullivan, by the way.”

  Pete shrugged, but he looked intently at Edward, as though willing him to stay with the band.

  “O.K.,” said Edward. “Fine. Great. So I stick with you for a few months. I get my bearings. That’s what
you mean, isn’t it? I nurse you along, you nurse me, right? It’s not much of a proposition. I’ve spent my whole life trying to find my bearings. I don’t see why it’s likely I’ll suddenly come across them in the next couple of months.”

  “You never can tell.”

  “No.” Edward got up and walked restlessly about the room, touching pieces of furniture, blowing dust off the mantelpiece, looking at himself in the mirror. “You know, Pete,” he said at last, “I’ve been thinking a lot, and maybe this is all rubbish, and maybe it’s because I seem to have been hit by a lot of bad luck—if you can call it that—recently. But I’ve been thinking about jazz, too, and I know what you mean, I know what it’s like when you suddenly feel you’ve got under one of those skulls—you can feel your own skull lifting a few millimetres, and you think that this is what makes life worth living and all the rest of it. But I’ve felt that less and less since I’ve been playing regularly with you here in London. Perhaps it’s just because there’s a professionalism about you and Greg that I’m terribly aware of lacking. Anyway, whatever it is, I’ve been thinking around it, and it seems to me that if we’re to be artists, and there’s no point in being anything else, we’ve got to find an idiom of our own.”

  “Right,” said Pete, watching him closely.

  “And jazz isn’t a native idiom for us, is it? Like Greg said a few weeks back, we can only imitate the best American examples. Now perhaps you—and now he’s been with you a while, perhaps Greg, too—can create something original out of the American examples. I’ve decided that I can’t, and won’t ever be able to. Yet I want, I terribly want, to feel that business of my skull lifting, and of other people’s skulls lifting, too. So I’ve been wondering about this business of idioms, native idioms. And it doesn’t take more than two seconds to come up with the fact that the native English idioms are all literary, aren’t they?”