Jack of Diamonds (34 page)

‘Fourteen! With lunch thrown in as well as dinner? Days off, Sunday, Monday.’

‘It’s a deal, but with a salary review in three months?’ (Joe Hockey once again.)

‘Done!’ he said, reaching out and clasping my hand in both his own. ‘Welcome to the Brunswick, Jack.’

Effectively I was a dollar fifty a week better off not having my dinner at Mrs H.’s and I’d be saving on lunch money, too. I had my first scuffing job and it was a damn good one – I couldn’t have asked for better. I ended up playing the foyer and the cocktail lounge of the Brunswick Hotel from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. with half an hour for dinner, then the main fine dining room or ballroom if they had a gala event. Tuesdays to Saturday, 6.45 p.m. until 9 p.m. (10.30 p.m. for ballroom events) or back to the cocktail lounge until 10.30 p.m. for a normal night. Of course, I did the Thursday ladies’ tea party, 3 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.

After paying my board I had more than ten dollars left over a week. I wouldn’t have to touch the money for my mother’s nose job and felt I was positively rolling in cash. I handed Peter Cornhill two bucks for the introduction. ‘Thanks, young Jack; more than generous. Welcome to the Brunswick.’

I’d pressed a white shirt and my only pair of dark blue flannels for any interviews I might have obtained, but I certainly wasn’t dressed for playing piano to a celebrity audience in a ballroom. My Mrs Sopworth suit was back at the boarding house but it was still squashed into the bottom of my rucksack along with the starched collars and shirts.

‘What time would you want me here, Cam?’ I asked.

He glanced at his watch. ‘Now, in ten minutes,’ he replied.

‘What about Mr Blunt?’ I asked, Joe’s advice once again ignored.

‘Oh, I’ll tell Peter to explain and I’ll pay him off tomorrow.’ I was beginning to understand the cutthroat world of the entertainment business. Poor old bastard, I hoped he really did want to get to Winnipeg and wasn’t broke.

I glanced down at my clothes. ‘But I won’t have time to get home and change.’

‘Oh, I see what you mean. Wait on, we’ll find you a bow tie. The manager’s a big guy and always has a spare suit in his office. We’ll borrow his jacket. Nobody will notice your pants, just remember not to get up to take a bow.’ I could see he saw me as a feather in his cap.

That was my first Saturday night, in fact, my first night scuffing. When I finished playing just after 11 p.m., half an hour beyond my official time, the maitre d’ congratulated me and added that a number of his Rotary diners had commented favourably on the music. After most of the guests had left, I earned two dollars in tips playing for the stragglers, old friends chatting on and enjoying a last drink. Finally, at 11.45 p.m., my first night’s scuffing came to an end. Altogether it had been a good night’s work and I felt rather pleased with myself. I could now truly call myself a professional musician and it felt good. The big wide world wasn’t as frightening as Joe had said. All that remained was the prospect of attending the Sunday revival meeting the following day with Mrs Henderson, and coming clean about earning my living doing the devil’s work.

I spent the next hour canvassing River Street to check out the other sinners before finally heading to my half of the bedroom. It had stopped snowing and the white neon cross was pumping out the true light, testifying for Jesus to the heathen horde still Saturday-nighting along River Street. The bright candy-pink lettering below it flicked on and off – APOSTOLIC CHURCH OF THE PENTECOST – and under it in blood-red neon ran the words I hadn’t noticed when the neon had been switched off:
The wages of sin is death!

I’d mentally backhanded myself several times for being so weak and now I did so once again. I should have told the white-faced old dragon to go jump in the lake, or in this particular case, Thunder Creek. I’d only just obtained a paid job in the devil’s playground and now, in a few hours, I was going to attend a revival meeting where I would be asked to give my life to Jesus.

I unlocked the door to my bedroom close to midnight. My roommate Jim Greer’s snoring practically battered down the door before I’d even opened it. Should I switch on the bedroom light or leave the light on in the hall and hope I could see enough? I decided to risk waking him up by turning on the bedroom light; it was half my room after all.

Jim Greer lay on his back with his mouth open, his false teeth, fixed in a Machiavellian grin, in a large glass of water on the small bedside table beside his gilt-edged Bible. His big belly and chest were covered with three heavy blankets and a brown quilted eiderdown with the words
Asleep in the arms of Jesus
appliquéd in white down the middle. At breakfast he’d made it sound as if he led a neat, ordered and fulfilled life; he’d certainly earned his sleep.

His snoring didn’t bode well for future weekend sleep, but I told myself I’d cut my teeth on my dad’s drunken snoring and then Dolly’s far from dulcet tones fret-sawing their way through the ceiling, but Jim Greer’s nocturnal snorts and barks were really something. Inhaling grain dust must have permanently affected his sinuses.

I grabbed my wash bag and repaired to the bathroom, then returned to the bedroom, changed and switched off the light and lay in bed listening to the cadences of his breathing, broken occasionally by a long pause and then an alarming snort. It had been a good day and I was on my way to making a living as a musician. The last thought I remember was that if I averaged two dollars a day in tips, this added an extra ten bucks per week to my income. I was already earning more than Mac had made on any week I’d known him over the past ten years.

Gospel hymns blaring into the street over powerful speakers at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning could be described as a rude awakening. A blast of music and singing practically lifted the covers off my bed. I was to learn that they played gospel gramophone records for an hour on Sunday mornings, followed by silence for an hour until the church meeting began at nine, whereupon the sermon, the witnessing and the attendant vocal pyrotechnics took over, all of it broadcast live onto River Street.

Jim Greer was already up when I awoke with a decided shock and parted the curtains to look out. The neon blazed in the December dark, with the blood-red threat to sinners punching out a warning to stragglers and the last of Saturday night’s lost souls that they were being closely watched.

It was difficult to comprehend how this dawn chorus or the fervent religious carry-on that followed would ever switch the Saturday-night and Sunday-morning ne’er-do-wells to God’s way of thinking. With all the noise and a sore head to boot, you’d have to have been a pretty desperate sinner to come running in from outside to be born again. The Apostolic Church of the Pentecost owned River Street on a Sunday morning and the whores and their hungover clients were most certainly getting their comeuppances.

It was just after eight o’clock when I arrived in the dining room. Thankfully, neither Jim Greer nor Mrs Henderson was present. The singing had ceased and the street outside was now blessedly silent. No doubt my room-mate and hostess had departed early for the church service, even though it was only a hop, skip and a jump across the street. Jim Greer would later tell me they always attended a Sunday morning pre-service Bible reading and prayer meeting when they all ‘
drew unto themselves
’ and prayed silently for their personal sanctification.

‘It’s completely silent? No speaking in tongues or shouting out?’ I’d asked.

‘The Holy Spirit isn’t required for the eight o’clock meeting, Jack.’

‘Isn’t required or isn’t invited?’ I asked somewhat cheekily.

He looked at me as if I were a child in need of a patient explanation. ‘The Holy Spirit descends as a dove, a white dove among us. Sometimes it turns into a flame. It is always welcome and sometimes arrives quite unexpectedly when a blessed brother or sister bursts spontaneously into tongues. But the Lord Jesus also allows us silence to contemplate His word.
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
’

‘This dove descending, can you actually see it? I mean with your own eyes?’ I asked, more than a little sceptical.

‘Of course! That is once you’ve been
washed in the blood of the Lamb
and have accepted Jesus into your heart as a born-again Christian.’

There was no point arguing. I was to learn that born-again Christians witnessed and experienced phenomena not seen by or given to those who are not embraced within the arms of Jesus.

The cook, Mrs Mary Spragg, handed me a note from Mrs Henderson saying she’d hop over the road to fetch me at 8.45 and to wear a clean shirt and necktie if I possessed one – if not, Mr Greer had left one of his own on his bed for me – and not to forget to polish my boots. Mrs Spragg seemed to be everything Mrs Henderson wasn’t, thin as a rake and a chirpy, cheerful soul who took one look at me and declared, ‘Ah, a four-egg young man, I do declare! How do you like them, Jack, over easy or sunny side up? Call me Mary.’

After breakfast, I spent ages trying to press my crumpled suit, using a sheet of brown paper to avoid making the material shiny, as my mom had taught me to do with my school blazer and grey flannels. I then ironed a shirt, pressed a blue tie from the back and polished my boots.

Mrs Henderson, arriving to escort me over the road, appeared somewhat taken aback by my appearance. ‘My goodness, Jack, you do look splendid!’ she exclaimed. I told myself once again that I was only going to church for the sake of the music, although the 7 a.m. blast of sound, presumably from a recognised and recorded gospel choir, undermined my argument.

Though everyone seemed to be having a good time at the revival meeting, to me it felt and sounded chaotic. My mom and I hadn’t been to church all that often in my childhood, but when we had it had been the Presbyterian church, mainly out of gratitude for their help in clothing us throughout the Depression. They were a pretty staid lot, almost as far removed from this lot across the street as the dreaded Catholics themselves. Joe might have said of the Apostolics, ‘Them cats they really jumpin’! They got the devil by his tail and they be swingin’, man!’ What ensued in the next two hours of the revival meeting was, to my mind at least, complete chaos, but joyous chaos, people letting their hair down in a manner I’d never before witnessed.

Pastor Mullens, wearing a lounge suit instead of robes, welcomed us and announced that, unfortunately, Sister Hammond, the pianist, wasn’t well and asked us to include her in our prayers. Fortunately, Brother Bright on the clarinet and Brother Simmons on his new electric guitar would accompany us whenever the spirit took them.

He then prayed, which turned out to be a series of injunctions to the Lord to send down the Holy Spirit to bring light into the lives of the heathen and to strengthen our resolve to fight the devil on every front. There were frequent interjections from the congregation, with ‘Hallelujah!’, ‘Yes, Jesus!’ and ‘Praise his name!’ being the most popular.

Then the singing started, with Brother Bright’s clarinet sounding anything but bright. The audience didn’t seem to mind, belting out the words of praise. Then followed more fire and brimstone from the pastor, and invitations to come to the front and declare for Jesus,
the one and only precious redeemer.

After more singing, the dove or the flame or both must have arrived because one woman jumped from her seat and, throwing her hands in the air, started speaking in tongues, a surprising gabble of words that made no sense but was nonetheless impressive – not the sort of sounds you could make from a standing start. Two others followed her, one having to be restrained by a companion as she attempted to throw herself to the floor.

More imprecations were directed at the devil, and those sinners in the congregation were urged to accept Jesus as our saviour. We were warned not to delay but to come forward and give our lives to Christ Jesus and be saved
from the everlasting flames of hell
. Several people, or rather sinners, came forward to kneel and be embraced by the pastor. Kneeling at his feet with his hands on their heads, they were declared saved,
washed in the blood of the Lamb.
More singing followed, with neither musician doing anything to improve the sound, and there was more crying out in praise.

I could feel Mrs H. beside me almost willing me to go to the front and accept Jesus as my saviour and precious redeemer, but the appalling clarinettist and excruciating guitarist were getting to me so much that I wanted to run for my life. Bad instrumentalists are painful to anyone and these two were agony personified. The piano stood empty, with what I took to be gospel sheet music resting on the stand above the keyboard. I could sight-read just about anything, and judging from the tunes we’d sung so far there was nothing difficult about the music, so I rose to a tremendous shout of
‘Hallelujah! Praise His precious name!’
from Mrs Henderson, who, thinking she’d brought me to her redeemer, clasped her hands in joy.

Instead I made my way to the piano, glanced at the music and began to play ‘Nothing but the Blood of Jesus’, which was taken up happily by the congregation. ‘On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand’ followed, with Pastor Mullens beaming at me. I played several others over the next hour, interspersed with messages, speaking in tongues, and urgings to accept Jesus into our lives. Two songs I remember were ‘I Have Decided to Follow Jesus’ and ‘There’s Room at the Cross’. Fortunately my playing was too accomplished for the other musicians to follow me, and they laid down their instruments and quietly resumed their seats. Finally, and to my surprise, I found ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’, a piece Joe had long since taught me to play with a very black feel. To my surprise the congregation took it up with alacrity, clapping their hands, and even dancing on the spot in a couple of cases. This seemed to signal the end of the revival meeting and the pastor concluded with a prayer of thanks for the six precious souls who had given their lives to the Lord, then a general blessing –
Go forth in the light of the Lord
. We all left the church then and spilled out onto the sidewalk, filled with the glory.