Trumpet: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Jackie Kay

  He stares at her long enough to make her feel nervous, stupid. ‘Time is a great healer,’ she says. ‘Oh, yeah?’ he says, raising his eyebrows. ‘Who says so? I think that’s crap actually. I know I’m not ever going to get over this. Simple as that. See, I’m screwed now. Do you get it?’

  She shifts in her seat, pulls her skirt down at the sides in an attempt to make it cover her knees. He’s a bit of an asshole really, she thinks. But cute. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘let’s get out of this room and go down to the lounge.

  ‘What we really need is the early stuff. What did she do before she played the trumpet?’

  ‘I haven’t got a fucking clue,’ he says. ‘Always was a bit cagey about his past as I remember. With good fucking reason.’

  She giggles. ‘Yeah, right.’ she says. ‘Right.’

  The lounge of the hotel is throbbing with people: people with money, having afternoon tea.

  ‘I was thinking,’ he ventures, ‘of going back to Greenock where he came from. I thought it might help me to work things out.’

  ‘Good idea!’ She pours herself some more Earl Grey tea from the pot and takes a biscuit.

  ‘More tea?’ He shakes his head. He can’t stand all those scented teas. It’s like drinking fucking perfume. What he needs is a Jack Daniels. Quite a few people are drinking bottled beers by the bar. He doesn’t want to ask her though. She should offer.

  ‘Yeah, I thought I could snoop around. See what I can dig up. I want to get on his case. I can see myself as a kind of private dick investigating him, know what I mean?’ He smiles the first broad smile of the day.

  ‘Of course we’d pay expenses,’ she says encouragingly.

  ‘Funny,’ he says, staring at a couple who are talking intently together. ‘Funny, I always thought one day I might get round to tracing my other father. Ironic, isn’t it? Pretty ironic.’

  He likes that word, she can tell. ‘Yes, it’s very ironic,’ she says back. ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘Eleven o’clock tomorrow OK again? I’ll be in room 413 waiting.’

  ‘It’s worse than the dentist. How long have you got that room for?’

  ‘For as long as we need it. It’s good, isn’t it? It gives us some privacy.

  ‘Oh, and Colman? Remember you told me you had a letter from your father? Well, I think it will help the book. If you don’t want to read it, I will. Bring it tomorrow.’

  It’s her that’s calling the shots, Colman thinks. Really. It’s her that’s getting him to say things and not others. She seems to want only a certain kind of thing. He is not sure what that is. But he will need to find it. If he can find the way she wants him to tell the story, he will get the money. It shouldn’t be that fucking difficult, should it. He noticed when he was shaving this morning, the first actual shave he’s had since his father’s death, he noticed himself looking different. His own eyes gave him a bit of a shock. The shaving mirror, the old-fashioned shaving mirror in his bathroom, the wooden brush, shaving soap and razor were a present from his father. He’s had them since he was a teenager. Gets the blade changed regularly. Replaces the soap with the same kind of soap. Back then his father even bought him a small jar of Nivea cream in case he cut himself. He still buys that too. He wonders how come his father shaved. How the hair got there. Or was there never any hair. Did he just pretend? Did he take hormones to make himself hairy? Fucking Jesus. What did he do? He was into the shaving business. He got all elaborate about it. Loved the ritual of it all. He passed that on to Colman. Colman still enjoys a good shave, the extravagant lather, the clean swipes at himself, the tiny hairs mowed right back. Colman remembers the excitement of that first shaving set, the honour, the coming into manhood. It was something to do, a fine thing to do. Should he tell Sophie Stones about the shaving brush?

  Colman hears himself say, ‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it …’ (He can’t quite believe he is saying it, but he is.) ‘Obvious. He got a kick buying me that shit because he wasn’t a man. He had to do this big masculine number on me because he didn’t have one. He wanted one and he didn’t have one, did he. We know what he had. So, it was perfect that he had a son to play with. He had it made. It’s pure sick, man.’ Sophie Stones fixes her eyes on his. This is more like it. This boy gets better every day. He’s grasped the plot. ‘Good,’ she says and turns the tape off and writes down something in her notebook. Squiggles. Must be shorthand. She could be writing anything; it’s all jibberish to him.

  Maybe he’s doing him a disservice. He bought him a shaving brush because he needed a shaving brush. Isn’t that all there was to it? Does he need to go through his whole life working out his father’s motives for every fucking thing? He’ll be dead himself before he’s finished. How can he do that? He thinks of saying something to Sophie. He can’t think how he’d put it but something simple like, ‘Do you think this is the truth?’ But so what if it’s not the truth exactly. He told a lie, didn’t he? His whole life was a fucking lie. What does it matter if Colman himself changes things a bit? He’s getting paid for it.

  MONEY PAGES

  I wake up every morning at exactly the same time. Sophie Stones has never needed an alarm. 7.10. I’ve got a small, slick flat in the city. I seem to lurch from one obsession to another. It’s my sister that’s done that to me. She’s like me, only better. My current preoccupation feels different from the others. The others I had to force myself into a state of extreme interest by playing tricks on my mind, putting up pictures round my flat, repeating radical words. But this one. This one is just with me all the time, day and night, night and day, all I’m doing is thinking about this Joss Moody and what made her tick. I’ve thought up some brilliant titles for this book. But none of them have clicked yet. I don’t know which one is the best. My sister would know. She knows things straight away. Sarah’s what you call a decisive person. When we were young, she’d decide for us both – just like that. Then she’d turn and say to me that I was too fat to be decisive. I didn’t even know what decisive meant then. I had to look it up when she wasn’t looking. Bloody cheeky cow. Believe it or not, I was a heavy little girl. I was. Being plump made me feel silly and inferior so I went on a diet and I got thin. But I can’t be too careful: there is always the fat person, lurking around, waiting for a chance to take me over. If I looked away, she’d be in there quicker than I could snap my thin fingers.

  The Trumpet Man/Woman. The Life and Times of the Transvestite Trumpet Player. Now You See Her, Now you Don’t. Must discuss with Colman. It would be good to have a title. The publishers want one for the catalogue. Dreaming up book titles is good fun. Perhaps Transvestite and Trumpet should go the other way round. The True Story of a Trumpet Transvestite. Blow Her Trumpet. Daddy, You Blew It. Blow That Thing. Joss Moody’s Gamble. A headline is only around for a day, but a title’s permanent like a hair dye. I’ve got to get it right. They should have no problems selling this book. People are interested in weirdos, sex-changes, all that stuff.

  I’m interested myself. Always have been as far as I could remember. If I heard my mum or my dad hinting something about somebody, in those soft voices that went down then up, my ears would cock like a dog onto the scent. They were always whispering about the house. Talking in low serious tones, enjoying all the world’s badness. My odd uncle. My malicious grandmother, my too tall aunt. I never quite caught what they were talking about; so I’d make things up. Next time I saw my uncle or my grandmother, I’d be absolutely terrified of them. There’s nothing more fascinating than gossip. My sister Sarah says gossip doesn’t utilize the intellect. I say, What intellect? All the bloody theories in the world can’t get me hooked like a piece of strange news does. I’d just need to hear my mother say, ‘There’s something distinctly odd about her,’ to be in seventh heaven. People: that’s what interests me. People are weird.

  Colman is coming along nicely now. Each time he divulges a little more. Soon I will crack him. I plan to trumpet the story everywhere. Spark up a blaze of publicity. Ignite t
he paparazzi. I could do a search on the Internet and find the cities that have had famous transvestites live in them. I have just read a piece about New Zealand being the first country to have a tranny mayor, Wellington. Stilettos in Wellington! The word transvestite has got more in it than the word cross-dresser. What is a cross-dresser anyway when he or she is at home? Someone who dresses in a fit of fury? Transvestite has a nice pervy ring to it. When we have finished The Book, Joss Moody’s records will be selling better than they ever did. We’re doing her a favour. We’re making her immortal.

  The last book I did wasn’t the success I’d hoped for. The timing was wrong. I lost money on that book. That’s the way it goes. In this business we are more like gamblers than anything else. This one is a cert. A cinch. I wonder what I would have felt if I had been Mill Moody. Would I have fallen for Joss Moody too? When I look at her, she looks just like a handsome big fella. I could have been taken in. Maybe that’s what happened with Mill Moody. Maybe she didn’t actually know to begin with. Must find out when she found out. The question of Mill Moody’s attraction to Joss Moody intrigues me. She married a woman who pretended she was a man. Why? A woman who stuffed wet cotton wool into a condom and tied on a couple of walnuts to fake the balls and penis. (Well, I don’t know if Joss had a so-called ‘three piece suit’ or not; but I’ve read about that somewhere.) Wild! It will do. She might have stuffed socks down her knickers, who knows? It’s all as weird as fuck as far as I’m concerned. Weirder than anything my peculiar family could have dreamt up and that’s saying something. A woman who slicked back her hair with oil, shaved daily to keep up the pretence, who always went to the sit-down part of the Gents. A woman who, even in the baking heat of a Greek summer, could not be persuaded to strip off and swim in the sea. A woman who wrapped bandages round her breasts and wore at least two T-shirts beneath her shirts. She must have had small tits. She couldn’t have carried it off if she had Barbara Windsors, could she? Find out the exact cup size. Chapter One – ‘Even though it turned out that my dad had a 32C cup, he still wrapped bandages round his breasts in the curtained secrecy of his bedroom.’ I could just sit down and write this book in one gulp. Once I’ve got the details it won’t take long. I won’t even need to check it with Colman. He can look at the proofs when it’s done. He won’t be all that bothered. Anyone can see the guy’s out for revenge. Don’t blame him.

  All for the sake of playing a trumpet. Wasn’t that the issue that I read debated in the quality Sundays? Friends quoted as saying that Joss Moody lived and died for his music. Balls. I’m not buying it. I’m not keen on jazz anyway; can’t imagine anybody going through all that just to blow a horn. The music angle is a red herring for definite. Let the rest of the wankers go down that road. My book will be the business. Snatched off the shelves, scandalous, piping hot.

  What I want Colman Moody to find out is this: what made Joss Moody into a transvestite? What was the real reason for pretending she was a man? She is different, I’m quite sure, from other transvestites. Joss Moody only returned to being a woman in death. The rest of the time she dressed like a man, lived her life as a man, her own son believed her to be a man. No, this isn’t a straightforward tranny. Wasn’t there an army officer that lived her life as a man? Good background. This isn’t going to be your usual hack book. But there’s not a lot of time. It needs to get out quick. Forget about the background, on second thoughts. Was she just a perv or what? Which came first? What’s the story? How did she manage to pull it off? How come none of the smart journalists that have interviewed and reinterviewed her over the years never noticed? Nobody called her bluff. And yet now, in hindsight, everyone is saying it was staring them in the face. Bollocks. I look at Sophie in the mirror. I pull my hair up and put some pins in. I look clever with my hair up. I knew I had it in me. Clever Sophie.

  I drift into my small kitchen and put the kettle on. I take some fresh coffee out of the fridge and put three generous spoonfuls into the cafetière. I get my favourite cup and saucer, black and white spots, from the wooden shelf and arrange it on the table. Colman probably doesn’t like fresh coffee. How did he end up like he is with those parents? He’s rough at the edges. He doesn’t like jazz. He’s pretty conservative really. He’s a rubric, that one. A rubric. It occurs to me that Sophie here is starting to find Colman more puzzling than Joss Moody. I pour my coffee adding a spot of milk. I’ve never been to Scotland before. I’ve heard the people are friendlier there. I wonder if that means they’ll talk more. It should be quite a trip. I’ll come back from Scotland a changed Sophie. My parents will have to stop saying, ‘Sarah this and Sarah that’ to everything. This time is going to be it. I can feel it in my bones. Something lucky is about to happen. (Will they love me? Is success lovable?) It will completely change my life, place me in another league. I can see myself suddenly very rich in Italian clothes, my hair thick as my sister’s and swept to one side. When the moment comes, I will look back and say, ‘It all happened the moment I met Colman Moody. I knew from the second I saw him.’

  I get out my personal money file. Currently I have £3,300 saved in an Abbey National Investor Account and £2,500 in Premium Bonds. I have £1,000 in an instant access Halifax building society account and £700 in my current account and that is it. Too much of my money goes on designer clothes. If I pull this off, it will be a case of Armani, Givenchy. I can visualize the money columns in these blue books changing rapidly like a wild cash register. ‘We’re talking big money,’ I say to my bank book. ‘Big Money.’ Disgusting, I know. But Sophie deserves it more than anybody. I kiss my blue bank babies and put them back in my drawer. What I need to start thinking about is how to invest the money. I don’t want to piss it up against the wall. I lock my white door. I notice an extra flourish to my wrist the way I turn the Chubb. The moment is coming, Sophie baby, it’s coming.

  MUSIC

  When he gets down, and he doesn’t always get down deep enough, he loses his sex, his race, his memory. He strips himself bare, takes everything off, till he’s barely human. Then he brings himself back, out of this world. Back, from way. Getting there is painful. He has to get to the centre of a whirlwind, screwballing in musical circles till he is very nearly out of his mind. The journey is so whacky, so wild that he sometimes fears he’ll never return sane. He licks his chops. He slaps and flips and flies. He goes down, swirling and whirling till he’s right down at the very pinpoint of himself. A small black mark. The further he goes, the smaller he gets. That’s the thing. It’s so fast, he’s speeding, crashing, his fingers going like the hammers, frenzied, blowing up a storm. His leather lips. His satchelmouth.

  And he is bending in the wind, scooping pitch, growling. Mugging heavy or light. Never lying. Telling it like it is. Like it is. O-bop-she-bam. Running changes. Changes running faster, quicker, dangerous. A galloping piano behind him. Sweating like a horse. Break it down. Go on, break it down. It is all in the blood. Cooking. Back, from way. When he was something else. Somebody else. Her. That girl. The trumpet screams. He’s hot. She’s hot. He’s hot. The whole room is hot. He plays his false fingers. Chokes his trumpet. He is naked. This is naked jazz. O-bop-she-bam. Never lying. Telling it like it is.

  The place down there: it forces him to witness his own death. He watches open-mouthed the card he’s going to be dealt. He watches himself in flashback. He’s a small girl skipping along an old disused railway line in a red dress, carrying a bunch of railway flowers for her mother. He goes further back till he’s neck in neck with his own birth. There’s the midwife, Kathleen. (His mother always said he was either going to be Kathleen or Josephine.) Kathleen, with her big thick midwife’s hands. The hands of a butcher. Fleshy and too soft. Kathleen pulling the slippery powdery, slimy baby out and up in the air. The cord wound right round. Right round the baby’s neck Kathleen has to unhook the wee girl first before she can cut the cord. ‘A lucky, lucky girl,’ she says to the mother. He gulps on the trumpet. The music has no breath, no air. Small ghost notes sob from hi
s trumpet. Down there at the bottom he can see himself when he was a tiny baby, blue in the face. The trumpet takes him back to the blue birth. In the music at the bottom the cord starts to swing. It swings round and round and up and down until he slices it, cuts the cord and watches the cord slither into a bucket. Looks just like a perm of snakes. The drums start to hiss. His trumpet plays gutbucket. Kathleen scrubs the baby hard and hands the wee black girl to her mother. He turns away, still playing, pulling out the past or the future, looking at the faces. What the fuck are those faces doing in the music? The mother licks her baby. He licks his trumpet.

  The face of his own undertaker scares him the most. Albert Holding. He is wearing a brass sign round his neck. Death hath ten thousand several doors for men to take their exit. He leans out of the music and calls out, ‘See you later.’ When he is in the groove he can see Holding’s long fingers unbuttoning a shirt, his shirt. Unwrapping him. Holding’s hands are cool. His breath hot. His fingers are tough at the edges. He can see him bent over the table he will lie on. Cold, soft, bare. He can see the pine drape. The pad of stiffs. The other unlucky bastards that have quit it at exactly the same time as him. It’s strange to share a birthday, but it’s even stranger to share a deathday. There they all are, his stiff comrades inside their coffins. He can see right through the pine. Snuffed it. All at exactly the same time. This is their meet. One last jam. Dead meat.

  The picture changes with the light. He can taste himself transforming. Running changes. The body changes shape. From girl to young woman to young man to old man to old woman. The old woman sits up on the cold table and looks straight into his eyes. She says, ‘Who are you kidding?’ He watches the flame eat the body up. He is an ear man. He can play it all by ear. He is bending the ears of everyone in the bar.