Georgia (51 page)

They knew from his passport that he was from New Orleans, that he was forty-three, a musician and his name was Samuel Cameron. If he hadn’t fallen asleep they would have got to the bottom of it.

‘Such a good-looking man,’ Muriel leaned closer to Sonia, dark eyes full of mischief. ‘Just look at that face!’

He was sitting in an aisle seat, his head lolling over to one side as if he was about to go back to sleep. Rich goldeny-brown skin with high cheek-bones and long curling eyelashes. His nose was straight, almost Roman, lips wide and fleshy as might be expected with his dark skin, yet shapely and well defined. Even his ears were perfect, like two small shells flat against his beautifully shaped head.

‘I could go for him,’ Sonia said. ‘That black treacle voice gives me goose pimples.’

‘I’m more interested in his body,’ Muriel giggled. She loved the way his hair was cut in a close crop, his broad shoulders and his muscular thighs. ‘You know what they say about black men!’

‘Well it’s too late now,’ Sonia sighed. ‘We should have kept him awake right from the start.’

Samuel Cameron wasn’t just tired. He was exhausted. Greyhound bus from New Orleans to New York, then two days of partying with old friends before catching the plane. It had seemed a good idea to avoid the expense of a New York hotel. But now he wasn’t so sure. Men he hadn’t seen since his de-mob, musicians he’d promised he’d look up when he was in town. Twenty years of catching up, packed into forty-eight hours.

They all believed landing a six week residence in Ronnie Scott’s club in London was the big break he hoped for. But now in the early morning, tired and needing a bath and a shave, Sam had misgivings.

The money was little better than back home. By the time he’d sent something back for the kids and found himself somewhere to live there would be precious little left.

Yet he had to take a gamble. The war had changed nothing in the South. Still the same old prejudices. The whites got the good jobs, the decent homes. Which was worse, to leave his kids with his sister to chase a dream? Or to let those kids see him stay for their sakes and grow old and embittered?

‘Damn you Ellie for taking off,’ he thought as through a gap in the clouds he caught a glimpse of London. ‘If you’d been a proper mother we could have worked something out between us. But then you never cared for the kids.’

He ought to have known a barfly like Eleanor wouldn’t settle for diapers and strollers instead of dancing all night and pretty clothes. Yet he managed to turn a blind eye to the way she neglected Jasmine and Junior, put up with her sulking, and worked longer hours to bring in more money. He didn’t guess she was running off to meet this white guy. If it hadn’t been for that freak storm and a cancelled gig, he wouldn’t have found out his kids were alone at home, night after night.

‘I have to get out,’ that was her explanation. ‘The kids drive me crazy and you don’t love me enough.’

That was the last night he spent with her. He could see her now as she threw herself into his arms begging forgiveness. The red satin dress she said her sister had lent her, damp from the rain, clinging to her curvy little body, her black hair a shower of tiny tight curls glistening with water. He’d believed her that night, loved her hard and long, promising to try harder to make her happy.

But the next evening when he got back from work, she was gone, taking everything worth selling and the savings from the box under the bed. She didn’t even leave a note for her children.

It was left to the neighbours to fill him in about the man from Vegas who promised her a job as a dancer. And he had to tell his children Ellie wouldn’t be coming back.

Five years of trying to be mother and father. Finding babysitters so he could work. But Jasmine was ten now, Junior twelve, old enough to understand he wasn’t deserting them for ever as Ellie had done. Just trying something new which might make a whole new life for all of them.

There were far more people in the arrivals lounge than he expected so early in the morning. Women rushing forward to hug their husbands. Children’s faces alight with expectation. A feeling of pent up excitement in the air, shrieks of laughter, questions, perhaps the inevitble row brewing.

Sam stood still for a moment, his kitbag on one shoulder, his tenor saxophone in his right hand. Everyone had someone, except him.

‘Sam, over here.’

He could hear Clive’s voice yet he couldn’t see him. His eyes prickled with affection for the man who had not only arranged his contract, but also made the time to meet his flight.

‘Sam! Good to see you.’

Clive was pushing through the crowd, a wide grin spread over his small face. ‘I thought you’d missed the flight, everyone else got off ages ago. What kept you?’

Sam’s friend was smaller, paler than he remembered. His dark hair thinner, the moustache tinged with grey. But the grin was the same, pale brown eyes dancing with excitement, his mouth stretching from ear to ear.

‘Customs, what else!’ Sam shrugged his shoulders. ‘Only black guy on the flight. So it goes without saying they’d pull me.’

For a moment Sam felt unsure of himself. He had remembered Clive in old jeans and a sweat-soaked T-shirt. He hadn’t expected the dapper grey pin-striped suit and neat polished shoes. Was this really the man who had dared to penetrate Harlem just to see and hear his jazz idols play?

‘Did they find anything interesting?’ Clive took his sax from him, and squeezed his arm, the nearest thing he could get to hugging the man.

‘Just a pair of smelly socks I’d forgotten about under the sax,’ Sam laughed. ‘It sure is good to see you Clive. I’ve been havin’ more than a touch of the collywobbles.’

It was strange to find their roles reversed. Three years earlier in the Ghetto club in Harlem, Sam had been the big man who saved the drunken Englishman from being rolled if not murdered. He had seen the raised eyebrows as the white fool flashed a wad of notes, and he found himself suddenly protective, just because the man had an accent that plucked at some forgotten chord.

Pulling a knife and bundling Clive out the club could have backfired on him badly, but fortunately by the time Clive sobered up, with his money still in his pocket, he was astute enough to understand Sam’s motives.

Now it was Clive’s turn to be protective, leading Sam to his world.

That night in Harlem he thought Clive was a jerk. A white man who wished he was black, hung up on all the old jazz legends. But that was before he found out the guy was sincere, knew about music even if he did play the shittiest trombone he’d ever heard. And the guy had a big heart.

‘You got collywobbles?’ Clive laughed heartily. ‘You’ve got a contract, your air fare paid. You’ll be knockin’ em dead in Soho tomorrow.’

It hadn’t seemed much to take Clive back to New Orleans with him. What else could he do with such a likeable jerk, hell bent on his own destruction? The man had a wife and kids at home in England. Someone had to straighten him out, let him hear some good music and get him on the plane home.

He didn’t expect the guy to keep in touch. Clive was from the white middle classes with a high-flying job in the motor trade. He had money, good connections and education. Why would a man like that want to befriend an itinerant musician who lived in a cold water, one bedroom apartment with two kids to slow him down?

Perhaps it was music that sowed the seeds of real friendship, but an understanding of each other made it grow. Clive had his problems. Sam had his and somehow as they shared them, they began to care.

‘What the heck!’ Sam stopped and stared. Just outside the doors of the arrivals lounge was a vast crowd of kids, shouting and hollering, pushing and shoving. For a moment it reminded him of a riot scene he’d witnessed in Alabama, except most of these kids were white.

Policemen stood by, forty or fifty of them. The helmets and blue serge uniforms just the same as he remembered all those years before. Around twenty of them had linked arms to form a human fence, but the kids were still pushing to get through.

‘Georgia! Georgia!’ they chanted. Girls, some no older than thirteen or fourteen, in white socks and school scarves, faces contorted in their screaming.

‘What’s goin’ on Clive?’

‘Shit.’ Clive caught hold of Sam’s arm, blushing furiously. ‘I’d forgotten.’

‘Forgotten what? Is it a riot?’

‘Georgia, the singer. She’s leaving with her band for the States. We may as well go back and get a drink at the bar, we won’t get a taxi now.’

It was impossible to talk over the babble of noise from outside. Each time they started to speak, the doors would burst open and fans would rush in looking for another vantage point to get closer to their idol.

There was something hysterical about so many youngsters waiting for a celebrity Sam had never heard of. A sad reminder that he was too old and cynical now for such foolishness. A whole generation born and raised since he was last in England.

‘So who is this Georgia? I thought it was only the Beatles who got this kind of scene?’ Sam laughed as he saw one girl trip another and she landed on her face, her short skirt flying up, revealing a pert bottom in white panties. ‘I’d like to thank the person who’s giving me this free show.’

‘Georgia James. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of her?’ Clive’s face registered surprise. ‘She’s had five or six top twenty hits.’

‘I don’t listen to that pop shit,’ Sam grinned. ‘Is she any good?’

‘Brilliant,’ Clive’s pale face took on that look of worship he’d once kept for giants like Duke Ellington. ‘Beautiful girl with a voice that makes your toes curl up. She’s one of the greats, buddy. Pop star or not.’

They sensed the arrival of the limousine even before they caught a glimpse of the gleaming black car. It started with a roar, a surging forward that made Sam leap to his feet despite his natural inclination to stay where he was. With long strides he made it to the window, forgetting even his kitbag and instrument left lying by the bar.

He was tall enough at six feet three to see over the heads of the fans, but even so he jumped up on a chair to see better.

The police had made a chain along each side of the car. More police were holding open the doors, and still more waited inside the departure lounge.

By now there were thousands of fans, elbowing each other, fighting to get to the front. Screaming at the top of their lungs, waving autograph books, handkerchiefs, scarves, even hats.

A policeman rushed forward to open the car door. Sam saw first a long, slim, brown leg in white boots snake out of the car, then the other, and his eyes travelled upwards.

She was beautiful! Coffee coloured like the mulattos in New Orleans. Long black curly hair with a white fur pill box hat perched at a rakish angle that matched her short white fur coat.

She said something to the crowd. Dark eyes dancing with pleasure at seeing them, but a hefty man with shoulders like a barn door was grabbing her arm and urging her to get inside the airport.

Georgia looked up and Sam caught her eye, just for the briefest moment. Her hand flickered at him, and she was gone, dragged inside to the comparative safety of the airport.

‘Wow,’ Sam jumped down, Clive had joined him, but his short stature had stopped him from seeing anything. ‘She was something else, man.’

‘If you’d been here two weeks earlier you might have got to play with her,’ Clive laughed at the animated expression on Sam’s dark face. ‘She often pops into Ronnie Scott’s. She used to live in Soho and from what I hear there isn’t one musician who wouldn’t cut off his balls to play for her.’

‘I sure wouldn’t go that far,’ Sam smiled. ‘But I’ll have to check her out.’

‘I’ve found you a pad,’ Clive said later in the taxi. ‘I’d have liked you to stay with me and the wife, but Surbiton’s too far out of London.’

Was Anne, Clive’s wife as enthusiastic about this Yank arriving in England? Clive had come to the States that time because his marriage was on the rocks. Maybe Sam was the man who sent her husband back, but as he remembered, sometimes women’s minds worked differently to men’s.

‘That’s swell of you,’ Sam sighed with relief. He didn’t want to impose on Clive anymore than he had to. ‘How much does it cost?’

‘Just a fiver a week will do,’ Clive said. ‘It belongs to a mate of mine. He’s away on business right now. It’s just a place he takes his chicks to. But don’t have any wild parties there and upset anyone.’

Sam was too immersed in looking at London to reply.

There was nothing he could pinpoint to reassure himself this really was England. Somehow he hadn’t expected streams of traffic, or tower blocks of apartments and offices. The only real point of reference was the biting cold.

Funny little houses in rows. Millions of them as far as he could see. The big red double-decker buses and all those small chunky cars. The England Sam had imprinted on his mind was full of small green fields, thatched cottages and gardens full of flowers. Bars where old men played darts and dominoes. Women with scarves tied round their heads queueing up for rations. Little boys who asked the Americans for chewing gum and chocolate.

London had meant Katy. Begging a lift in a jeep, or jumping on a train, barely noticing the bombed houses, or the narrow streets. Leave, to most of his friends had meant drinking, dancing and parties. To Sam it had been his girl in his arms.

‘Has it changed much?’ Clive asked. It was strange to be with Sam again. Perhaps he’d built up the friendship to more than it really was. Maybe it was a mistake encouraging him to come over. Was that coldness on the other man’s face, or just memories of something he’d never opened up about?

‘I guess so,’ Sam looked round at Clive, his mouth straight and severe. ‘But then I didn’t know this part of London. Bayswater was one bit I knew. Soho and Whitechapel. But most of the time I was out at Lakenheath. Ask me again when I’ve seen them.’

‘I expect you went to the service men’s club in Bayswater?’ Clive needed to find some common ground. ‘The Douglas House?’

‘That’s right!’ Sam grinned suddenly, happier memories chasing away the blues. ‘Is it still there?’