Jack of Diamonds (38 page)

It was not until twenty years later when Penguin published D.H. Lawrence’s
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
in 1960 that kids like me had access to any descriptions of sex. If only I’d had some of his words in my head at the time, many of which I found so beautiful that I never forgot them.

Of course I knew about male climaxes but hadn’t any idea how it happened for a female. The twins could have explained, but I was too terrified to go near them. Just observing one of them from the back filled me with lust and guaranteed a nocturnal assignation with my hand.

Miss Flash had the same effect on me as the twins, and although she never exposed herself a second time, I had great trouble walking past her when she was consorting, flashing her brilliant smile down at me from her balcony. I usually carried a paperback in case I had a spare moment to read, or had to cover my tent pole, as if the usual way to walk around carrying a book that could just as easily have slipped into the side pocket of a lumber jacket or the back pocket of one’s trousers was to clutch it to one’s groin.

However, if Reggie Blunt was right and I was to be a raffle prize, what was it that I was expected to do to fulfil my role and satisfy the winner? If they thought I knew anything about how to please a woman they were in for a big, big disappointment. I wasn’t just a novice, I’d missed out on most of the salacious gossip boys shared with their peers. None of us had been told about the birds and the bees, we were simply expected to follow the chirping made by someone’s sister when we reached nineteen or twenty. If she proved too willing she was called the town bike, if too cold, the ice maiden. Mac and Dolly’s experience (well, Mac’s anyway) was typical of teenage sexual experiments, most of which ended in a confab between both sets of parents with a bit of chest stabbing and shouting before a hasty marriage in a hand-me-down wedding dress or, if the bride’s waist was expanding too rapidly, in her best dress let out round the middle. Cabbagetown had an astonishing number of premature births.

‘Well, what do you think, old chap?’ Reggie said in his Canadian version of Colonel Blimp.

‘Think? I’m not sure I know what to think, Reggie.’

‘Well, if it’s any reassurance, Jack, I can honestly say in the thirty-five years I’ve been in Moose Jaw, I’ve never known this to happen before. I think you ought to take it as a huge compliment. I’d say Honky-Tonk Jack is the man of the moment, the ant’s pants, the star on the top of the Christmas tree.’

‘Reggie, I don’t have any idea what . . . you know . . . what to expect. I mean, it is just ah, one girl who wins the raffle, isn’t it?’

‘Good lord, yes, just one. They want to have a party on a Monday. That’s what the hat money is for – booze and canapés. Even the madams have made a contribution. Everyone is surprised at how much money they’ve collected with the raffle. It’s a real tribute to your popularity, old chap. You don’t work Mondays and it’s almost as quiet for them with River Street virtually closed down. The party would be at the Caribou Café – John Robert to supply both booze and eats. A nice little earner for him I daresay. The band would play and then you’d be, ah . . .’ he paused and cleared his throat, ‘the raffle prize! Splendid, what?’

‘And if I refuse? What then?’

‘Well, that would be extremely awkward, old son. Not the done thing at all. The sisterhood are paying you the ultimate compliment.’ He shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe what I’d just said. ‘Very churlish, very churlish indeed.’

I thought immediately of Miss Flash. ‘But . . . but I don’t even get to choose the girl I want.’

‘Well, no Jack, that wouldn’t be fair. They’ve all put in their money and bought tickets. No jealousy that way, see? No resentment among the various houses.’

‘Houses? What’s that mean? Whorehouses?’

‘Bordellos, Jack, much nicer word,’ Reggie corrected, looking quite hurt. ‘The girls are not freelance. That would never work. Like everything in this town they need the protection you can buy with a little zigzag or they’d be in front of a magistrate every other week.’ He demonstrated ‘zigzag’ with the gesture he’d used initially for the chief of police – the hand outstretched to accept a bribe and then the quick retreat to the trouser pocket.

‘But what if I end up with, you know, some old crone?’ I protested. I guessed my chances of scoring the coffee-coloured flasher were pretty remote, one chance in who knows how many. ‘You said even the madams made a contribution!’ In my mind’s eye I saw a Mrs Henderson lookalike. Holy smoke! Imagine that. Lumbago Lil!

Reggie looked me in the eye. ‘There’s no likelihood of that happening, dear boy. Possibly a girl in her mid-twenties, and you should pray that this is the case. There is simply no substitute for experience. There’s plenty of time for young and pretty later. The kind of instruction you’d get isn’t that easy to come by. An experienced professional can teach you how to please a woman, which will, I assure you, pay off handsomely in the years to come. You should be very happy if she isn’t a comparative novice.’

Here we go again, Jack Spayd being managed by an older woman – Miss Mony, Miss Frostbite, Mrs Hodgson, Miss Bates and now, with my luck, Miss Wrinkles.

‘And I’d wear a rubber, of course,’ I said, trying to sound as if I knew more than I did.

‘But, of course old chap, a contraceptive is mandatory. Would you like me to make the purchase for you? You’ll need five or six, I should think.’

‘Five! I’d feel a bit foolish . . . like I was bragging!’

‘You don’t have to use them all.’ He drew his head back. ‘Strapping young chap like you – better to have too many than to find yourself short.’

‘Thank you for your advice, Reggie. If I agree to the raffle I’ll buy my own.’ I thought for a moment. What the hell, I’d be joining up soon. Who knows, I could die in a muddy trench in Europe, still a virgin. I grinned sheepishly, not looking directly at Reggie Blunt. ‘Okay,’ I said quietly, adding in musician’s jargon, ‘that’s cool.’

Reggie hugged himself, plainly pleased. ‘Oh, that’s excellent, Jack!’ He then reached out and took my hand in both of his. ‘It may well be an experience you’ll cherish for the remainder of your life, old son. What a grand party we’ll have, one you’ll never forget, that much I can guarantee!’

I recall hoping that the party wasn’t the main thing I remembered from the day, but having agreed to go along with the plan I felt sufficiently emboldened to ask, ‘Did ah, did you lose your . . . um . . . you know, in the same way?’ I couldn’t bring myself to say the word
virginity
. It seemed somehow a word that marked my immaturity and which, once removed, would allow me to mysteriously grow up; by losing it in a single sexual act I would gain my manhood and thus my maturity. In a sense it felt like a barrier I must leap so that I could get on with my life as a man. The sooner the word was tossed away the sooner the metamorphosis could take place.

‘What? My virginity? Did I lose it in such a grand manner?’ Reggie shook his head. ‘No such luck, old boy. Olga – God rest her soul – and I were complete neophytes. Married, dumped on the doorstep of a friend’s lakeside cottage, uninstructed, ignorant and simply left to our own devices. We had no idea! Hadn’t a clue! Made a ghastly hash of everything. She ended up sobbing all night with her back turned to me in bed. We didn’t attempt it again for a week and the second attempt wasn’t much better. As I recall, it took several months and always in the dark before she could or would allow me . . .’ he grinned, ‘free passage.’

‘But when it happened, did you . . . I mean, were you, you know . . . able to . . . ?’

‘Get it up? Good God, yes! Horny as a charging rhinoceros! Walking around bow-legged with lover’s balls for days. I just didn’t know how to . . . well, of course, I knew the anatomical part concerned, but it didn’t seem to want to cooperate.’ He paused momentarily, recalling. ‘I guess it was made even more difficult probing – so to speak – in the dark.’ He laughed uproariously, then reached for his whisky and took a slow sip. Licking his lips, he observed, ‘But that won’t happen to you, old son. You’ll be in expert hands and the doorway to heaven will be opened wide and welcoming. Chorus of angels, fanfare of trumpets, all sorts of glorious things.’

‘Shit, Reggie, I hope you’re right.’ The thought arose again that my unknown partner might not be all that discreet and if my performance ended up a disaster I’d be the laughing stock of River Street.

‘Never been more certain, old son. Strapping young lad like you, Jack. She’ll think all her Christmases have come at once.’

I thought this unlikely, given the way these girls earned their living, but I didn’t want to say so. The less I thought about the number of comparisons she could make, the better.

‘Do the other cats in the band know about this, um, raffle being the reason for the gig?’

‘Well, no, I thought best not to tell them the purpose of the party. They might tell their wives.’ He took another sip from his glass. ‘Womenfolk don’t see these things quite as we do. Sanctity of marriage, that kind of thing . . . Charlie Condotti is Italian, strict Catholic, his brother is a monsignor; Chuck and Mort, I’m not sure, Presbyterian I think; Robert would probably just laugh, after all, he’s a bachelor and he’d probably wish it were him. All they know is that the River Street girls want to have a party, no males present except for the band. It’s a chance to help John Robert Johnson. He gets to buy the booze wholesale and make a few bucks on the food as well. Monday evenings are a pretty slack period at the Caribou, he informs me.’

‘And he didn’t object?’

‘On the contrary, the girls use the Caribou a lot, he knows most of them, strictly legitimate of course, no hanky-panky . . . no fraternising. But they like him because he treats them just the same as any other customer, which is with due deference and kindness. He’s a good man.’

I’d once read somewhere that there’s no such thing as a good man, not through and through. The misanthropic author believed men are imperfect creatures, their minds a roiling mass of primitive, violent urges, and that controlling those violent forces gives men a sense of goodness. If my own father was a typical example, he was a bastard, drunk or sober, but drunk, all that bastardry towards women emerged from the dark recesses of his mind.

If most women’s minds are motivated by the same instincts then I haven’t personally observed this to be the case. I’ve witnessed frustration, bitterness, anger, despair, jealousy, bitchiness and sometimes racial bigotry in women, but most of it seems to me to have been directly or indirectly caused by men. Dolly McClymont may have been an exception, given the way she treated poor little Mac.

I thought of all the women who had been important in my life. Miss Mony was married but I had no idea how she was faring; Mrs Hodgson was divorced; Miss Frostbite and Miss Bates were determinedly single; the twins were showing no signs of marrying; and my mother was rid of my bastard father at last. Most of these women made a deliberate decision to remain on their own. My mother was plainly a victim. I couldn’t imagine any of the others tolerating a permanently flattened nose and broken teeth while still remaining loyal, nor being afraid to walk out on the bastard who beat her to alleviate his guilt, anger and pathetic weakness. The tragedy was that Gertrude Spayd was not the exception but rather the Cabbagetown stereotype, while my dad wasn’t a rarity either.

I have often wondered if men who were born into a higher social class were any better. Certainly they seemed to be outwardly, but what about deep down inside? I’d read enough to know that women in good homes were also beaten up by their husbands, men who took out their frustrations on their women, whatever those frustrations might be.

‘When is the gig?’ I asked Reggie.

For some curious reason he removed his fob watch, his fingers flicking along the gold chain to the pocket that housed it in his vest, then he clicked open the gold cover and looked into the watch face as if the date might be registered upon it. ‘Let’s see, today’s Saturday,’ he glanced up. ‘Next Monday week, Jack.’ Then clicking back the cover he replaced the watch.

‘And how should I dress?’

‘Mustn’t insult the girls, must we, old boy? Your grey suit, of course. Trust it’s virgin wool, eh?’ He placed both his hands on his paunch and began to heave with laughter, very pleased with his own wit.

I didn’t think at the time it was very funny but there was no doubt Reggie thought it extremely clever, one of his better
bons mots.
His affected English manner could at times be extremely tedious, as if Canadian English was somehow lesser or indicated an inferior people. All the other musicians used music slang as a matter of course, words such as hep (with it), cats (other musicians), wicked (very good), cool (good), chick (girl) and gig (job or performance), but Reggie Blunt never did, specialising in pomposity. His mind seemed stuck somewhere in the English prose spoken by British officers who’d attended Sandhurst prior to the First World War. For instance, he would order a ‘double whisky and splash’, as if he were a Canadian version of Bertie Wooster, P.G. Wodehouse’s famous character.

Still, he was very kind and helpful and lord knows I needed all the advice I could get. He’d been honest about his own experience and in doing so helped to encourage me to agree to my initiation via the ministrations of a professional.

I told myself that it was all in line with Joe’s advice to get myself some experience of real life. Once, when feeling particularly poetical, as he termed it, he’d sat down at the piano and begun to play and sing. ‘Jazzboy scuffin’ and roughin’, huffin’ and puffin’ when you ain’t got no women and yo drownin’ from swimmin’ ’gainst the waves and you ain’t gettin’ no raves and yo just about beat and there’s holes in yo feet from the soles that wore out and you’re askin’ and prayin’ and nobody’s sayin’ it’s time to get playin’ and your belly it groanin’ and yo angry and moanin’, and yo cain’t take a trick and nobody give a fig you ain’t got a gig, that life, man, that learnin’ to be grow’d up widout no mama to call yo her baby and cook yo no grits that flavoured wid gravy.’