Jack of Diamonds (29 page)

But to return to 1940, I was able to prepare for my trip with a clear conscience now, knowing that my mom could manage in my absence. Apart from the twins, there was Mac, Miss Frostbite and Joe, all of whom she could turn to in an emergency. At seventeen, I was six foot one inch tall and, although I was still growing, my warm clothes would just about last me through the winter. All I needed was a good heavy-duty anorak. So a week before leaving, I’d stopped by the Presbyterian Church Charity Clothing Depot and got one for a song.

Old Mrs Sopworth, known as ‘The Camel’, ran the depot and was responsible for almost everything I’d ever worn up to that moment. I told her what I was hoping to buy and explained that I was going west to the prairies for a year before I joined the army. ‘It gets pretty cold up that way – down to minus twenty degrees,’ I explained, a touch melodramatically.

She clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘Oh my goodness, Jack, I have just the thing. It came in several days ago and you won’t believe this, but I actually thought of you.’ She beamed up at me. ‘And here, dear boy, you are!’ She showed me a splendid, almost new anorak, explaining it had come from a church family who had recently lost their grandfather, a man over six foot, which was why she’d thought of me. ‘It’s yours for two dollars, Jack.’ It was an absolute bargain and with a decent warm coat I was finally ready to depart. ‘You’ll be requiring a good grey suit, my dear, for when you play at swanky places. I have one of his that’s practically new, also six white shirts with detachable collars, and his neckties.’

While I doubted that the sort of scuffing jobs I’d get would require such formal attire, she was so enthusiastic I couldn’t say no. I figured a suit would always come in handy, so I selected three shirts and the box of collars, as well as three neckties, and thanked her sincerely.

Armed with a battered harmonica, an ability to read music and play piano – jazz and classical – and, as I foolishly saw it at the time, whatever musical corruption fell between these two pure forms, I prepared to head west on my getting-to-know-myself expedition.

My mom, Miss Frostbite, Joe Hockey and Mac had all promised to see me off at Union Station. I was headed for the prairies, my first stop the town of Moose Jaw in South Saskatchewan.

Why Moose Jaw? Well, no special reason.
Moose Jaw in Southern Saskatchewan
read like the opening line of a Rudyard Kipling poem. I was by nature a romantic, and with the choice to go anywhere I desired, I couldn’t pass up a conjunction of names like that. In my mind it evoked wide-open spaces, sun-dried bones, hard men and women who were not afraid to use a gun, the Canada of the tough-minded north-west frontier. Which proves you should never be beguiled by a name and that it might be just as well to do some research before you settle on a destination.

For a start, Moose Jaw was no small town nestled on the never-ending prairies. It was in the prairies, all right: the rich agricultural part – wheat and meat. It also turned out to be a railway junction for the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway with branch lines heading down into the US and up into northern Canada. If Toronto was the city of the Temperance movement, with evangelical Protestant watchdogs barking Christian dogma, then Moose Jaw was the red-light district of the prairies, actively doing the devil’s own work. I was to discover that Moose Jaw was the Canadian capital of vice, booze, gambling and wayward women.

If Joe had personally selected my baptism of fire he couldn’t have chosen better. I later realised that when I’d mentioned Moose Jaw to him, he must have quickly decided it was probably a good thing that I be thrown in at the deep end. It was Joe’s intention that I arrive with very little money and then support myself by playing the piano. In truth, I didn’t expect to have much over after I’d paid my second-class rail fare. I’d given my weekly wages from the club kitchen to my mom, so that for once in her life she’d have some money over to spend on herself – a new dress or a pair of shoes or a good winter coat from Eaton’s Department Store – and not have to depend, as she’d done for most of her married life, on second-hand stuff from Mrs Sopworth.

I had sufficient to live on anyhow, plus all the food I could eat at the club. Miss Frostbite had always insisted that the customers’ tips (she called them gratuities) were shared with the kitchen staff. Now, with the war on and with more money around and servicemen anxious to spend it, these tips were often substantial. I could depend on at least five dollars a week and with a further two dollars or so won at poker, I could live quite nicely and save my rail fare with a little left over.

Then, the night before I was due to leave Toronto, Joe sprang a big surprise. Miss Frostbite had decided that, despite the law preventing me from playing in a nightclub because I was under-age, I was to play for the first band session after their double piano act. ‘You got your solo part chance jes one time, Jazzboy. Play good. It be yo farewell present from the cats in the band. Mr No Pain gonna step aside, but if’n you no damn good and cain’t hack it, he gonna kick yo sweet ass an’ shift you off that pee-ano seat pronto. Don’t let me down now, you hear? This yo first scuffin’ job and it pay two dollar. Yo mama, she gonna be here also. This the last time she gonna hear you for a long, long time, so play good, Jazzboy.’

There had been times when I was younger that Miss Bates had remonstrated with me, yelling, ‘Stupid, stupid boy! Wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong again!’ until she’d left me emotionally tattered. But Joe’s injunction not to let him down gave me perhaps the most anxious moment in my musical career.

I’d practised my solo part a hundred, maybe five hundred times, maybe even more, but when the moment came I could feel my knees begin to tremble beneath the keyboard. Having my mother seated at a table directly next to the stage, along with Miss Frostbite and Joe, didn’t help calm my nerves either. Though my mom was no jazz expert, she’d heard me on the harmonica so often that there was no doubt she knew a good musical passage when she heard one.

Noah Payne, alias No Pain, handed the piano over to me and introduced the band: ‘Ladies an’ gennelmen, welcome once again to the Jazz Warehouse, where the band gonna play you some real nice jazz. Tonight for the first session we have us a special privilege to introduce the one and only Jazzboy!’ He paused, then, raising his voice like they do at a boxing match, went on, ‘From Toronto, I give you Mr Jack Spayd at the piano!’ A bit of sporadic clapping followed and No Pain brought us to life with a sweep of his hand.

I knew the opening routine like the back of my hand and played it almost effortlessly. It was smooth, easy and relaxed – ‘smooth as whipped cream on a satin bedspread’, as Mickey Spillane had said, describing the skin on the thighs of one of his fictional molls. With the extra musicians from the US, this was now a truly good jazz band, perhaps even the best in Canada at the time.

Then the awesome moment arrived when No Pain signalled the start of the solos, pointing at me to begin. I took a deep breath and began to play, all the while looking at my mom. The band had already played through the basic melody and progressions, so first of all I repeated the chords. Then I started embellishing a little with my left hand and doing a few showy bits like trills and fast scale runs with my right hand. The grins from the other musicians boosted my confidence and I turned back to the keyboard to concentrate as I threw in some passing chords to make things more interesting. Then, halfway through my solo, I grabbed my harmonica and stepped over to the microphone and jammed with it, keeping the musical thread and pumping out the beat. This was a complete surprise for the band, and glancing down at Joe I could see his eyes were near popping out of his head. But equally surprising was the burst of applause from the audience as I moved back to the piano to complete my solo.

Joe would have handed me my two dollars scuffing money anyhow, but he seemed genuinely pleased, and at the break No Pain and the other musicians came over and congratulated me, as did Miss Frostbite. Turning to my mom, who was standing shyly off to one side, she said, ‘Gertrude, I truly think the boy has made the correct decision. That solo piano with the harmonica interlude just summed up everything for me – from that first day Joe brought Jack in out of the cold until now. It was splendid, truly splendid. You can be justifiably proud, as indeed am I.’

My mom smiled her best new flashing smile, but I could see she was close to tears. ‘Thank you, Floss, for giving us a chance,’ she said quietly.

Joe gave me ten dollars and Miss Frostbite gave me fifteen. It was generous of them both and meant that if I didn’t immediately find a job, I’d be financially secure for a month at least. But that wasn’t all. What had actually happened was that my mom had saved every cent of my wages, a sum that amounted to $150, and she wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer when she gave it to me. ‘At least I’ll know you’re going to eat properly and sleep warm, Jack.’

So when I took off for Moose Jaw I was stinking rich with $175 in my wallet. I determined that, come what may, I wouldn’t touch my mom’s money, and when I returned it would go towards her nose job. At that time, the twins’ contribution to her plastic surgery was still in the future.

The kitchen at the Jazz Warehouse set me up with three days’ worth of sandwiches, mostly meat and pickles, a dozen hardboiled eggs, six apples, a packet of peanut biscuits and finally, as a special treat, a large Hershey’s chocolate bar. Even the cook shook my hand in the end and said he’d half forgiven me for breaking the glasses and making the kitchen floor lethal for days, and concluded that I had been a top dishwasher.

Mac, Joe Hockey, Miss Frostbite and, to my surprise and delight, Mrs Hodgson from the library were all at the station to farewell me. Remarkably, the twins appeared, having given up an evening’s work to support my mom, who was trying hard not to cry. These were some of the people who had made me what I had become at seventeen. Miss Bates and Miss Mony, who had also profoundly influenced my life, were absent, but all of them would remain forever in my mind.

Now I was to leave them all behind to find myself. It seemed paradoxical that I had to leave the people who’d influenced me most to find out who I truly was. This was the first time I’d be on my own, I mean with nobody, absolutely nobody, I knew at my side. While the prospect was exciting it was also sad – for all of us. Even hard cases like Mrs Hodgson and Miss Frostbite shed a quiet tear. It was nice being loved but I knew in my heart of hearts that Joe was right: it was time to go it alone. But whatever was to come, these people would always be a part of me.

With a shrill blast of his whistle, the conductor shouted, ‘All aboard!’ Then the train, metal wheels screeching on steel rails, let off a blast of steam and started to pull away to much shouting from passengers and those who had come to farewell them. My last glimpse of my mom was of her back as she wept in the arms of the twins. As the train gathered speed and the wheels clicked over the rails, the rhythm seemed to be announcing
Wrong-wrong-wrong-and-wrong again! Chuff-a-chuff-a chuff-a chuff – stupid-stupid-stupid boy!

I had all I could possibly eat for the journey, with plenty left over to share with a young guy in my compartment named Pat Malone. He was small in stature, like Mac, maybe an inch or so taller, but undernourished, thin and weak in appearance with a body that seemed reluctant to coordinate itself with his mind. He looked as if he lacked the strength or energy for physical work.

He’d been rejected for military service because he suffered from asthma and was going on to Moose Jaw as a volunteer agricultural worker on a combined wheat and cattle ranch. The army doctor had sent him to work on the land saying it would be good for his asthma to be out of the city. All they’d given him was a warrant for his train fare and he was almost stony broke with only two dollars in his pocket.

As it turned out, Pat Malone was a bit of a chucklehead. He’d shared my grub for breakfast and lunch on the first day out of Toronto, and seemed to relish the beef and pickle sandwiches, wolfing them down like he hadn’t eaten for days. Around midafternoon it occurred to me to ask him if I could take a look at his rail warrant. He handed it over and I saw that he was entitled to eat in the second-class dining car. ‘Hey, buddy, it says here you can eat in the dining car,’ I explained.

‘Yeah?’ he said, astonished. ‘Here . . . right here on the train?’

‘Where else?’ I laughed. ‘Compliments of the government.’

‘I can’t do reading that well,’ he admitted, adding, ‘I never was no good at school.’

He trotted off to dinner that first night and returned with a roughly tied napkin which he handed to me.

‘Open it, Jack,’ he said, giving me a goofy smile.

I untied the napkin and saw that it contained a broiled chop and two roast potatoes. ‘I didn’t bring them green beans – anythin’ green’s no good for ya, Jack,’ he’d explained, his expression serious, as if it was a universal truth.

‘You shared your dinner with me, Pat? That’s real nice of you, buddy.’

‘You did the same for me, Jack. They gimme two o’ them chops and four o’ them roast potatoes and a heap o’ beans I couldn’ eat.’

‘Pat, I
really
appreciate it, but I’ve already eaten.’ I pointed to the chop and two potatoes. ‘You’ve only had half your dinner.’

He looked guilty. ‘I ate all the puddin’ . . . rice custard.’

‘Better finish it, eh? Can’t let it go to waste, can we? I hate rice pudding,’ I fibbed.

He looked uncertain. ‘You sure, Jack?’