Other People's Love Affairs
Page 6
at that, the power contained in that willowy frame. When Agnes
reached for her in the night, her grip was sometimes overwhelm-
ingly strong.
“I’m a singer,” May said, when they spoke in the shop. “A jazz
singer as a matter of fact.”
Agnes said, “I’m keen on church music, myself.”
The hail abated and gave way to hard rain, which ran down the
windows behind them in sheets. Headlamps from cars could be
seen from the street, washed out, indistinct, like jewels glimpsed in water.
“Do you believe in God?” Agnes said, and May admitted she
didn’t. “That’s all right. Sometimes love can take time.”
They lived together eight years.
In the darkness, May says, “He’s sure to go under. I don’t know
how he’s managed this long.”
There is comfort in speaking aloud.
“Did Virginia finish her homework tonight? Agnes, do you
think she takes drugs?”
Virginia’s Birthday
53
In the living room, Virginia lifts her head from the pillow. Like
a strange, ghostly detail from a dream, she recalls her mother having been in the room. The keys in the lock, the television switched off: these sounds register after the fact. The pills she took are stronger than the previous ones. Jeanene has warned her of that. She
doesn’t know what is in them; Jeanene doesn’t either. They make
you feel like you are taking a bath. Whatever the color, that’s the name of the pill: red, blue, yellow, or pink.
Another sound emerges, more immediate now. It is her moth-
er’s voice, a murmur from under the door. She is talking to Agnes
again; knowing that, Virginia feels sorry for her. These months
they have suffered apart, not able in their grief to comfort each
other. Fly-by-night is what May called the man Agnes left with.
Virginia could not recall having seen him. There had been peo-
ple who came and went through the years, new congregants and
preachers who guided her spirit. She was the sort of person always searching for something; a holy fool, May sometimes said. But
nights, when they were alone, she would tenderly braid Virginia’s
hair. They would laugh at stories of childhood mischief, old jobs
from which Agnes had got herself sacked. When first she’d come
to live in their flat May had called her Virginia’s aunt. But Agnes never made any mention of that. Standing over steaming pots in
the kitchen, she explained the proper way to make curry, or soup,
having been taught in just the same way as a girl.
It would not have changed anything, the truth being spoken.
Things would have been better, in fact. She does not mind that
her mother is that way. It doesn’t matter at all. She only wishes
there had been no pretense, that she might have loved Agnes
54
OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS
unfettered by lies. Sometimes Fergie Davidson says things about
it, and about Mr. Chapman as well. At school, people say Fergie
fancies Virginia. That’s why he hurts her feelings so much. Four
Eyes he used to call her. Lemonade because her complexion was
pale. Lately he has begun to say other things, things that make her scalp itch with discomfort: “What’s two and six buy me? Three?
Have a heart. I’ll starve. You drive a hard bargain, Missy.”
“There was wickedness here,” Agnes said when she left, and
Virginia knows that was painful for May. She wouldn’t have been
in her right mind to say that. It would have been a madness,
speaking that way.
She turns over, frightened all of a sudden. The voice from the
next room continues to drone.
“How will I manage?” May says in the dark, sleep, like warm
limbs, bearing her up.
In the small flat he owns above the Blue Parrot, Walter
puts on a record and smokes by the window.
It is true that the nightclub is failing, that it has, in fact, been failing for years, a slow death the inevitability of which has been so total as to have escaped notice till now. Lately, small and simple expenses—renewals of licenses, lights for the stage—have presented an unaccountable burden. He has never been adept with
the books—in school he always did poorly in maths—but in the
past they have balanced nearly enough.
The band, above all, is sinking the place. There is simply no
audience left for the music. Once, the Blue Parrot was a closely
held secret: the stiff pours, the singer’s ethereal tone. Touring
Virginia’s Birthday
55
bands would come and play after hours, having sold out the large
concert hall in the city. Briefly then, emerging from the dark years of war, tourists had flocked to places like Glass. The coastline had boomed with factory work. There had been a black and white
middle class in those days.
Now paint peels from the window and door frames; in winter
the radiator smells of leaked fuel. Piles of records line the walls and the corners: ragtime, big band, bebop, and blues. His phonograph
is of the old-fashioned kind, its large brass speaker like a bell, or a flower. It is one of many aged things in the flat, Walter being keen on antiques as well. Never, even when there was money to spare,
did he feel in any need of more space. He spends most of his spare time at the club. Only this morning he was there to wash down
the floors, to place liquor orders, to tidy the stage. Monday nights are the loneliest time, because he has not seen her all day and won’t see her the next.
The record pops with each revolution, the needle riding an
uneven groove. The song is “Do Nothing till You Hear from Me.”
In 1944 that one was recorded. He recalls an alleyway off Rue
Gabrielle in Montmartre where, in spring 1945, he drank white
wine with strangers. Paris, then, was not the jewel of his dreams
but was ragged and beaten, gripped by a primal and desper-
ate euphoria that could not disguise the weight of its heart. It
suited him, wearied as he was himself. He remembers the gypsy
guitar on a rooftop, the high hat, the slender woman singing
in French.
As light falls, he smokes a third cigarette. There was a time
when he allowed himself to imagine that May might one day live
56
OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS
in the flat, that she might like to leave the city behind. In Glass they’d have had a quiet existence: drinks on the boardwalk, books
on the strand. He imagined her speaking of any old thing, harmo-
nizing with the buskers they passed, softly, for his and her pleasure alone. It would have raised a few eyebrows, he knew, but in his
dreams they were safe in their love. That was before Virginia was
born, when May was still new at the club.
“A fine place,” she said the night she was here. She stood by
the window, looking out at the sea. On the boardwalk, the lamps
had not yet been extinguished; a man passed beneath one, pushing
a pram. He had invited her up for a drink, a casual thing. “Any
time, if you’d like.” In the weeks since first she’d sung “Stardust,”
she had taken to stopping by his office each night. Peering in, she would smile, pause for a chat. Still he can hear the welcome creak of the hinges, the tap on the door that was quickly dispensed with, since, by habit, he left it ajar.
On the record,
a song ends; another commences. Cootie’s horn
is like an animal’s cry, like a peacock’s, which is said to be like a man’s.
At the window, that night, he brought her a highball.
“Do you like singing here, Miss Valentine? May?”
He drank, having poured out a measure for himself.
“You must know what I think about you.”
Was it she who initiated their touch, or has he only imag-
ined that since? There was surely something in the nearness of
her, in her eye, that seemed for all the world like permission.
When he thinks back, he tries to dwell in that moment, when
the space around them trembled with promise, that moment
Virginia’s Birthday
57
at the threshold between two different lives, just before she
smiled and said why didn’t he tell her, just before he felt her lips upon his.
Tomorrow, having nothing to do at the club, he will buy a
gift for Virginia’s birthday. It isn’t easy knowing what to give her at this age. Toys won’t do; neither would a ring or a necklace. She has probably grown to be beautiful now and wouldn’t know what
to make of a gift of that kind from a man who these days is little more than a stranger.
Her stamp book remains on a shelf in his office, the small
squares pasted in haphazard rows.
Perhaps a record. It needn’t be jazz. She might like rhythm
and blues, rock ’n’ roll, and he smiles, since that would give them something in common.
Wednesday morning a notice arrives: a check to the
chamber of commerce has bounced. A telephone call reveals the
bank’s error, a series of transactions processed out of sequence.
The situation otherwise isn’t dire, but still there is consternation about it.
“Things all right, chief?” Alvin asks from the bar. It was he who
found the notice when he brought in the post.
Walter only mumbles a bit. He is thinking of the gift he bought
for Virginia: two records, a secondhand suitcase gramophone.
“Only fair you should warn us if we ought to be looking.”
“I’ve told you, Al. It was a clerical error.”
There will be a cake, as there is every year. He will telephone
Richter’s soon with the order. They’ll remember when he tells
58
OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS
them the birthday has come. Virginia’s favorite: chocolate with
apricot jam.
Later, when he knocks at May’s dressing room door, she appears
in red, stilling the heart in his chest. Her beauty has been undiminished by time, only altered, made more enduring somehow; she
looks, to him, very much as she sings, exquisite beneath the weight of her life, though he knows she wouldn’t wish to be so in his eyes.
“I’m a half hour late,” she says. “Not that it matters. Why
rehearse if nobody comes? And, anyway, I hear we might not get
paid.”
“Are you late?” he says. “I hadn’t noticed.”
She gives him a look and turns back to the room. She leaves
the door open, so he follows her in.
“Honest, I hadn’t.”
In her chair she sets about with her face, seeming pleased to
have spoken so sharply to him. “What do you need then?”
“Just to see if we’re on for tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Virginia’s birthday, of course.”
Last night, Virginia watched Hawaii Five-0 while May cleared the meager remains of their supper. Unblinking, she looked at the
screen. Agnes would have disapproved of the program; often she
disapproved of such things. In all the years they were together,
she never came to the club, saying only that it wasn’t her kind
of music. Last night she’d have said, “Is your homework done,
girlie?” and Virginia would have told her the truth. As it was May didn’t manage the question, only asked, “What’s on at school for
this week?”
Virginia’s Birthday
59
“I don’t know where she’ll be from one minute to the next,” she
says now. “I hope you haven’t gone to much trouble. It’s kind, but she’s not a little girl anymore. She’s liable not to show up at all.”
“Surely she’ll remember,” he says.
“I’ll ask her. But I can’t say it’ll help.”
“I’ve got a present for her. And a cake.”
“A better gift would be keeping her mother employed.”
“It was only a clerical error.”
May can scarcely hide her disgust. Lately she has been this way
with him, an end to many years of what seemed a détente. It was
disgust she felt, also, that night in the flat. Something had changed from the moment it ended. In silence, she gathered her things
from the floor, her earrings and bangles, the comb from her hair.
She straightened her dress, which, in haste, had not been removed.
That is something that has stayed in his mind: the dress not having been fully removed. It fills him with shame, remembering that.
With shame and with yearning as well, for he never saw the bare
silhouette of her body.
Now she says: “Only don’t go to more trouble.”
Nine thirty, the band performs “Love Me or Leave Me.” She
was right: they didn’t need to rehearse. They scarcely interact
anymore, except when they are performing onstage: a glance or
a smile, a holler from Ham, and a chorus is turned around or
repeated. It makes Walter think of how whole worlds of meaning
can pass between two people, unspoken, or of the wordless way
love can be made. The feeling is one of great intimacy: her voice
mediates the distance between them. And though at bottom a sad-
ness remains, he isn’t really lonely when he listens to May.
60
OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS
“I’m sweet sixteen,” Virginia says in the morning. The
house is warm and smells of hot breakfast, which makes her think
about Agnes.
“That’s right, lady,” May says. She puts a plate of scrambled
eggs on the table, having woken early to make something special.
“Will they do anything for you in school?”
“Sometimes on a girl’s birthday she gets covered in sweets. By
her friends, like. They put whipped cream in her hair.”
In her purple dress, May thinks, she looks young; she has not
yet become interested in appearing grown up. Her shoulders are
small with sharp bones at the top, a light, copper color that shines in the heat.
“Who ever would do that? What kind of friend?”
“Oh, I don’t think they’ll do it to me. It’s for popular girls.
Dancers and them.”
Again, May wonders who gives her the pills. Despite her pret-
tiness, she has long been thought strange. As far back as her nurs-ery school there was concern, the way an insect or a bird might
distract her attention, or the way she might continue to work on
a drawing long after other children lost interest.
“You can come to the club after school if you like,” May says.
“Mr. Chapman insisted on cake.”
Virginia nods, pleased but trying not to let on. She likes the
way the band plays “Happy Birthday.”
“I understand if you don’t want to come. I think he forgets
you’re not a kid anymore.”
“I don’t mi
nd,” Virginia says. She thinks of Mr. Chapman in
line at the baker’s. “He’s a sad case, isn’t he, Ma?”
Virginia’s Birthday
61
“Yes,” May says, irritated somehow.
He asked only once, when first she was pregnant. Just two
words , “Is it . . . ?” to which she said, “No.” And though she could tell he didn’t believe her, she held firm, and he did not press again.
At the Scat Club, things had been required of her. Mr. Aubrey
had expected her at least once a week. Mr. Parr at the Hot House
had called her crude names, refusing to look directly into her eyes.
She can still see him chewing his long, green cigars: “More slut
than Saint Valentine, aren’t you, May?”
Mr. Chapman was different: he wasn’t unpleasant. He’d loved
her from the first lines of “Stardust,” he said. When, afterward,
she didn’t return to his office, he said nothing, only started closing the door. It was that that made possible the subsequent years: the knowledge that the child’s father was kind. Still, she didn’t want him any nearer her life. She never did, and does not want him still.
She can’t help but recoil at the thought of his touch: the thin fingers, sweat beading on the edge of his scalp. That feeling has grown worse without Agnes, worse because she might need him again.
“Thanks for breakfast,” Virginia says.
And May is gripped with affection, watching her leave.
In the Blue Parrot, Walter fills pink balloons. Without
helium, they make a dull picture, blown by the ceiling fans into
the corners. Ham arrives early, too, in a black suit and tie. He
doesn’t own a piano—like the other musicians, he lives in the
city, his flat too small for even an upright—so he likes to practice sometimes at the club. He waves to Walter as he pulls out the
bench, plays a few chords and stops, looking around.
62
OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS
“Virginia’s birthday?” he asks, and Walter says that it is. Ham
taps out the traditional song, then plays it as a rollicking New
Orleans rag. He knows, of course, as everyone does.
Walter listens as he goes about tidying up. In the dressing
room, he puts the gin bottle away. He wants Virginia, when she
arrives, to see her mother’s place of work as clean and respectable.
She has not been to visit since this day last year and in the interim might have grown discerning that way.