Jack of Diamonds (24 page)

‘Oh, that’s a shame they’re going, Miss Frostbite.’ It was all I could think to say.

‘Well, I can’t complain. After all, they’re doing their duty to their country. But here’s what we’ve decided to do. The war promises to be a busy time for all of us – soldiers need entertainment – so we’re going to shut the club for two weeks and paint and generally spruce the place up. The kitchen needs updating and the couches will all need to be re-upholstered.’

‘I know just the man for the job – the upholstery, I mean,’ I said quickly.

She laughed. ‘You mean your friend Mac McClymont?’

Why hadn’t I guessed she’d know Mac and I were friends? Miss Frostbite missed nothing. ‘Of course, tell him to come and see me tomorrow. His work was excellent, as I recall.’

‘He can only come at night. He’s working at the new military camp at the Exhibition Grounds,’ I explained.

‘Have him announce himself to the doorman, say about ten-thirty, when our first performance concludes.’

‘Thank you, he’ll be very pleased, he liked working for you before.’

‘That’s nice, Jack, but I’ll need a firm quote. He knows what’s involved. Now, we’re going to have to find three or four new musicians, and as America doesn’t look like joining the war in Europe, Joe and I have decided to go to New York to find them. Joe has friends in Harlem with whom he can stay and we’ll stay at the Waldorf-Astoria.’

‘We?’

Miss Frostbite smiled. ‘Yes, Jack, I thought you might like to accompany us.’

She must have seen my astonished expression. ‘You’re kidding?’ was all I could think to say. I could hardly believe my ears. ‘New York? Art Tatum? Billie Holiday? Count Basie?’

‘And the rest of them, Jack . . . all the greats of jazz. Well, almost, they’re not all in New York, of course. We’ll be gone for a week, then I must get back to make sure the painters and carpenters are following my instructions.’

As I previously mentioned, I’d left Toronto only once in my life, on that trip to Montreal with Miss Bates. Now I was struggling to keep calm in front of Miss Frostbite, but then I decided there was no point. I was trembling with excitement and simply couldn’t conceal my feelings a moment longer. ‘Oh, thank you,
thank you,
Miss Frostbite!’ I exclaimed.

‘Oh, and Jack, the World’s Fair is still on. Shall we visit that as well? What do you say?’ She laughed and clasped her hands. ‘Why, I think I’m almost as excited as you are, Jack.’

A little more composed, I now said, ‘I doubt that, Miss Frostbite, but that will be grand.’ I’d come across the word ‘grand’ in a book, of course. Now that I’d said it out loud I realised how pretentious it must sound. As someone who was about to have the shit kicked out of him in the process of scuffing in rough joints, I’d have to mind my vocabulary. I loved words, but the trouble with using the swanky expression of a character in a book is that when you say it out loud yourself, words don’t land quietly into a sentence like leaves falling from a tree; they hit the ground like an overripe apple with a noticeable thump.

But if Miss Frostbite noticed she didn’t show it. ‘It’s nice that you want to come, Jack,’ she said graciously.

What a panic, what a scramble to get ready. I could no longer wear my school uniform as I had at concerts, and my everyday clothes, while okay for kitchen work, were not exactly appropriate for visiting New York. But my mom discovered one good thing. With most of the men under forty in uniform, the second-hand clothing shops were bulging with civilian clothes, and for next to nothing we bought a brown suit and whatever else I needed, including a blue striped shirt like Joe’s that I particularly liked. It was the first time I could remember not wearing darned socks. We even bought a white shirt with two detachable starched collars, and a red tie for when we went to see Art Tatum and Count Basie’s Big Band. I also took plenty of boot blacking and my mom packed a new bar of soap. ‘Be sure you keep yourself nice and clean, Jack,’ she’d cautioned. ‘Don’t forget to clean the basin afterwards.’ Miss Frostbite suggested I bring my birth certificate along, for I was big for my age and she said the Canadian border guards were on the lookout for draft dodgers trying to get into America. The government was already conscripting men for wartime production work.

CHAPTER SIX

WE LEFT UNION STATION
at eight-thirty in the morning and arrived at Penn Station, New York, at 10.30 p.m., so I spent most of the day looking out of the train window. We didn’t see Niagara Falls because they were two-and-a-half miles upstream, but it was pretty sensational crossing the Niagara River gorge on a high – I mean,
very
high – steel bridge and seeing the water still churning from the falls way down underneath, with a small boat about to sail under the bridge looking about the size of a large leaf. The track ran for the most part due east, before turning towards the south and running down to a big city I at first thought must be New York but was Albany, where we crossed the Hudson River. We travelled through small and big mill towns and past farms, and threaded through pretty wooded valleys, but mainly we clung to the banks of the river. Everything, it seemed, depended on the river.

We had lunch in the diner, and Joe and I had steak, because I hadn’t had that too often in my life, with mashed potatoes and green peas and gravy. Miss Frostbite had grilled fish and she squeezed lemon juice on it. I’ve eaten less fish than steak in my life, but I reckon that as far as fish is concerned I’m ahead of the game. Even cooked it smells horrible. She said it was sole and tasted delicious.

In the lounge car after lunch Joe and I played poker. The musicians at the club played it all the time, and I’d picked it up from watching them. It was always penny-ante stuff, like now with Joe, so you couldn’t lose much. But I really took to it. Memorising was easy for me and I was getting quite good, so I’d go home with an extra half a dollar more often than a loss.

For dinner we had roast chicken with roast potatoes and beans. Miss Frostbite had fish again – Canadian salmon that smelled even worse than the sole at lunch, and she put lemon juice on it again. For dessert we had apple pie and Miss Frostbite had smelly cheese and crackers, then I had a milkshake while she and Joe had coffee. I reckon if they did scuffing on trains – I mean, like musicians working their way across the country entertaining the passengers in the dining car – I’d be in on that in a flash, with all the good food going around. As we approached New York that night I’d never seen so many lights in one place. You couldn’t see the skyscrapers because there didn’t seem to be a moon, just the lights in square patterns; some rose as high as the stars would have been in the sky above Toronto. What I want to know is how a train can travel for fourteen hours from one place to the next, winding and twisting, and arrive exactly on time, not a minute too early or late. How can that be? But that was how it was; we arrived at Penn Station exactly at 10.30 p.m. and the porter took our luggage to a taxi stand where the taxis were all yellow and lined up.

Joe said goodbye and that he’d catch the L line then take a bus for the last bit to Harlem and see us in the morning. Like me he only had one small suitcase but Miss Frostbite had three big ones and they wouldn’t all fit, so we had to take two taxis to the hotel. At that time of night the streets were busier than downtown Toronto during the rush hour. You’ve never seen anything like it, horns honking and people everywhere with nobody in military uniform and in Times Square neon lights blinking on and off, that many in all the colours of the rainbow that you could have stood and counted them all night and not got to the end.

Now, how can I tell you about the Waldorf-Astoria? Put it this way, I started to panic the moment we arrived. They had an awning, and carpet running from the front door across the actual sidewalk, with a big black guy in a charcoal-grey uniform with a whistle in his mouth calling taxis for people coming out of the hotel, all of them dressed to the nines; you could see they were rich. The women tittered and touched each other, and you could see the diamond rings on their fingers, and the men were wearing dinner suits with white scarves hanging round their necks and smoking big cigars. I noticed the light shone on their plastered-down hair.

I’d also had my first real haircut – for once my mom didn’t do it in the kitchen – and the barber called it ‘The Sheik’. It was parted at the side and oiled then brushed flat. When I asked him why it was called that name, he said it was because of Rudolph Valentino.

I said, ‘But he’s dead, isn’t he?’

And he said, ‘Yes, but it’s in memory of him, because he’ll live forever.’

He then wanted to sell me a jar of Brilliantine, but I told him no. I reckon he was bullshitting anyway and just wanted to sell me the hair grease. Instead I just used water on my hair, which was okay until it dried. Then it looked as if I had two black lopsided wings that flapped if I ran. I think my mom’s way of cutting my hair was better, you didn’t have to worry about it and it was how I’d always looked.

But now I saw that the barber had been right and most of the men, unless they were bald, used Brilliantine, because their hair was stuck down and shone and this was obviously the fashion. So Toronto can’t have been the hick town I’d begun to imagine it was, coming into New York on the train and then from Penn Station, and now walking across the sidewalk on a green carpet with two bellboys pushing our luggage ahead on a trolley with two big polished brass hoops, one at either end.

Holy smoke! If you thought the outside was good you shoulda seen the inside! Miss Frostbite had earlier explained that she’d chosen ‘The Waldorf’ in Manhattan because it was the only top-notch hotel in New York that allowed women without an escort to register. The lobby looked like a royal palace, which was how I suppose it was meant to look. My battered cardboard suitcase tied with twine was conspicuous on the very top of Miss Frostbite’s suitcases on the trolley, but my head was turning this way and that so fast with the sights and sounds around me that I guess my new Sheik hairstyle made my head look as if it was about to fly off on its own.

I’d been in a few quite nice concert halls before, but nothing like this. You couldn’t help but feel a bit out of place, like you didn’t belong. Miss Frostbite later explained the decor was called Art Deco. If I felt a bit intimidated by everything, she fitted into the grand hotel like a hand into a silk glove, people calling her madam and kowtowing and ‘this way please-ing’ and generally carrying on.

Our rooms turned out to be what the desk clerk termed ‘a two-bedroom suite’: two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a hallway and a parlour Miss Frostbite referred to as our living room. I’d read about living rooms being rich people’s parlours and concluded from the name that, unlike parlours, which you only opened for important visitors, rich people must actually use living rooms like poor people used kitchens. They were places where you could sing around the piano, listen to Amos ’n’ Andy on the radio and have a cup of tea or even a drink before you had your dinner. We didn’t even have one – a parlour, I mean. To have one you were usually middle class or owned your own home.

Now I’ve got to come clean – the other room most Cabbagetown houses didn’t have was a bathroom. For instance, we had a small room at the back of the house with nothing in it but the privy. If you lived downstairs, as we did, it had a cement floor that was freezing in the winter. Some people used it not only as a toilet but also for storing coal in winter so they didn’t have to go out in the freezing wind to the coal shed. They then used the kitchen or a bedroom for bathing on Saturday nights. During the week people simply washed their faces and hands at the kitchen sink, using a damp square of sugar bag to wipe away any dirt not concealed by their clothes.

When it was time for your weekly bath, you filled two large tin jugs with water, or, if you were like us, you used kerosene tins with the tops cut off and the edges beaten flat, fitted with a wire handle and a wooden grip. These were then heated on a coal stove. When they were hot enough you carried them into the bedroom or stayed in the kitchen if you were still a small kid. You then poured the first container of hot water into a large enamel basin or small tin tub and then, stepping into the basin or tin tub, you soaped yourself. Then you emptied the basin down the privy or the kitchen sink and filled it with the second jug, rinsing yourself using a sugarbag flannel. But you didn’t use all the water in the second jug. At the very end, and best of all, you tipped it slowly and ever so carefully over your head and shoulders so it didn’t splash on the floor. This last bit was sheer heaven: hot water running from your hair down your face and the back of your neck and over your stomach, back and legs and into the dish or tub. When you were still very young and your mom did it for you it was even better.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I entered my own bathroom at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel and there was this gigantic, gleaming white bathtub, and a washbasin and toilet with two toilet rolls fitted on the wall in a cavity specially made for them. The walls were tiled white and the floor was black marble with a fluffy mat next to the huge tub for when you stepped out.

Now, I don’t expect you to believe me, because I couldn’t believe my eyes, but the tub had two faucets, hot and cold, which you just turned on to fill the bath with as much hot water as you wanted. But of course everyone knew about hot and cold water faucets even if you didn’t have both in your own house. What was unbelievable was that these faucets were made of gold with the spouts shaped like a dragon’s head, so the water ran out of the dragon’s mouth! The faucets on the washbasin were smaller but the same shape. I don’t suppose they were solid gold, maybe just gold coated, but still – I mean, talk about sheer luxury.