Jack of Diamonds (87 page)

‘Do your best, Nick,’ I said fervently, ‘and give her my love.’

Nick left without a nod. The more I saw of this remarkable man, the happier I was for my mom.

I’d done my blubbing. Until this moment I’d hoped to get back to my beloved Bridgett but now I felt certain I’d lost her, possibly forever. I dared not tell her my new name. Nick had emphasised that I couldn’t even tell my surgeon because it could compromise Canadian Intelligence, who’d gone out on a limb for me.

I sat silently for a long time, my left hand resting in my lap. It still looked a mess, but the bones had knitted, the skin had healed and, although it was pretty ugly to look at, it had movement. Perhaps one day the feeling would return to my pinky.

I rose and reached for the soft yellow polishing cloth that contained the second-hand harmonica my drunken father had won from a friend at the tavern and given to me as a belated eighth birthday gift. I picked up the battered old instrument and began to play ‘St James Infirmary Blues’. Softly, tentatively at first, then with more confidence.

What the hell! What was to stop me, a guy named Jack Reed, becoming the best jazz and blues harmonica player in the entire world?

PART FOUR

AFRICA

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

AFRICA! IN MY CHILDHOOD
the map of Africa was fairly well covered with red colonies belonging to the British Empire. Perhaps it would be more correct to say the red bits were members of the empire, but as a kid I saw the Union Jack as the proprietorial flag and, in my mind, wherever it fluttered, it signified absolute ownership.

Starting with the books Miss Mony first taught me to read and later with those suggested by Mrs Hodgson at the library, I was able to conjure up the vast African continent from stories of derring-do and adventure. In them, square-jawed men with steely blue eyes served as exemplars of white Anglo-Saxon manhood, willingly giving selfless service, their energy, prowess and knowledge, to bring primitive people those quintessentially British gifts of sound governance, justice, medicine and education.

Alas, very few women seemed to feature in this childhood pantheon of heroes, my notion at the time being that by remaining in their homeland, they were protected from the rampaging lusts of the dark races who had, as a matter of tribal law and absolute entitlement, treated the opposite gender as a possession and, in all senses, as inferior. That white women were oppressed never occurred to me; nor did I ever think that all this spreading of cartographical red ink was largely motivated by greed, natural resources being plundered solely for the enrichment of a nation that then demanded respect, subservience and sycophantic allegiance from the indigenous people they regarded as inferior in every way.

I was taught at school that our white man’s duty was almost a part of the Darwinian struggle; that British law, medical science and industrial might combined with the Christian faith were, in effect, part of a relentless evolutionary process that was necessary, even by the use of force, to overthrow the superstitious, ignorant, heathen tribal ways of the primitive natives wherever they were to be found, and ‘wherever’ often meant Africa.

Patently the motivation of the greatest empire on Earth wasn’t benign, and yet, as a consequence of it, some order was brought to the former chaos, some enlightenment to the indigenous mind, some progress made against ravaging disease and some small steps towards social justice began to appear.

This could not be said for all European conquests of the African continent. The Belgians brought with their possession of the Congo the greatest reign of murderous terror Africa had ever experienced. And yet, until they finally banished slavery in 1807, Britain was second only to Portugal as the nation controlling the slave trade to North and South America. It was Britain that had brought the forebears of Hector and his lovely daughter Sue, Chef Napoleon Nelson, Booker T. and the members of The Resurrection Brothers to America. It should be noted too that the French, Belgians, Portuguese, Germans, Italians and Dutch were also deeply involved in African colonisation.

To all my fanciful fictions of benign British colonial rule had been added the stories of the 1914–18 war, where men had willingly sacrificed their lives in countless numbers to uphold the traditions of the glorious empire. Despite the fact that my own country was not under threat from Germany or Japan in the Second World War, this same sense of duty prevailed when I joined up to fight for the greater good of the far-flung empire. I regarded my tiny contribution as a part of the ongoing tide of good sweeping away the tyranny of evil. The war was a rite of passage for me, as it was for many young men, but it had not changed my life as much as the psychopath Sammy Schischka wielding his ball-peen hammer had.

Even without Sammy, my life would have been changed by the cruel twist of fate that had allowed me to find true love and, almost in the same breath, lose it. I told myself she would forever dwell in my heart and perhaps someday . . . but even before Nick Reed’s warning not to contact her, I’d pretty well decided that my pride simply forbade me from doing so. To become dependant on her love, to try to salvage what was left of my shattered ego, was unthinkable. I was once again on my own and, in effect, scuffing. I was no longer Jack Spayd, or Jack McCrae, but Jack Reed, ex-piano player, now jazz harmonica player and sometime medic, on my way to Africa with a deck of playing cards in my hip pocket, ready to start all over again but with very little idea of where or how to do it.

If all this sounds pathetically melodramatic, then you’re probably right. But at least I had long since given up feeling sorry for myself for my physical condition by the time I set off to build a new life from the smoking ruins of the old one. I’d done my weeping in private and, to be truthful, was somewhat embarrassed by the scale of mine when compared with those I’d witnessed in the physical therapy department of the Albany General Hospital. People recovering from motor and industrial accidents, with arms and legs missing, faces smashed into permanent and nightmarish Halloween masks; people in wheelchairs, their backs broken, who would never walk again. They too had lost their careers and dreams and much more besides, while, I told myself, the sum total of my disabilities was a numb left pinky, a missing earlobe, and fingers that no longer moved sufficiently swiftly for a keyboard virtuoso. I could almost hear Joe saying: ‘Jazzboy, it be time to harden up some. Time to go back to dat harmonica where you done all yo jazz ’n’ blues startin’ out. Time to go forwards by goin’ backwards. Time to meta-phor-i-cally crawl under dem Jazz Warehouse steps once more.’

I wondered if I would ever see Joe again or Miss Frostbite, or Mac and the twins, or even Mrs Hodgson, but, most of all, my darling mom and Nick Reed, whom she loved so dearly. Then, of course, there were the coloured folk, Chef Napoleon Nelson, Hector, Booker T., the people who had worked in the kitchen or as cleaners, and The Resurrection Brothers – people who had given me so much joy and happiness and, as Bridgett and Pastor Moses had pointed out, so much love. I couldn’t bear to think I might never see Bridgett again.

I took the train to New York, booking a private compartment in the name of Jack Reed; my first public act using my new name. I found a small, cheap and essentially nondescript hotel in the East Village, then spent the next two days in the New York Library, getting rid of the crap in my head about Africa and replacing it with some facts that might help me find useful employment in a place where I could remain well hidden.

I wasn’t sufficiently foolish to think that Africa needed a harmonica player of jazz and blues, but I was equipped for little else. Barney de Andrade, the bartender in the GAWP Bar, had taught me how to mix cocktails but it wasn’t a skill that I imagined would be in demand at my level of proficiency. Perhaps in South Africa, in some second-rate cocktail bar in Cape Town or Johannesburg, although I’d already decided that the attitude of the whites to coloured folk in Africa was even worse than in America and, besides, large cities would not be sufficiently remote to keep me safe from the Mafiosi.

Then, purely by chance, my eye caught an article that was buried in the business section of the
New York Times
and had the headline: a place in the sun for shady people. It explained that the world was seriously short of copper, due to demands during the Second World War, and now the Korean War. The ‘Copperbelt’, situated in Central Africa and incorporating the mines in the Belgian Congo and Northern Rhodesia, was a major source of supply outside of Chile. Professional South African goldminers could triple their income in the copper mines, where few questions were asked and skilled men were well rewarded. This also attracted men who kept their past a secret and had felt the need to leave their country of origin, among them war criminals and other white men with no mining experience. The article mentioned a mining company called the British American Selection Trust, an American-financed mining group that operated the Luswishi River Copper Mine in Northern Rhodesia, the richest of its kind in the world.

Bingo! I’d found my red patch, almost plumb in the centre of Africa. It didn’t take me long to locate their New York office and telephone to ask if I could see someone about employment opportunities in Central Africa. To my surprise I was put through to a Miss Truscott, the personal secretary of a Mr Leslie, Global Vice President of Mining Recruitment. She had me wait a few minutes, then came back and made an appointment for three o’clock the following day, asking me to bring my resumé with me. So much for no questions asked or skills required.

I spent an hour that evening preparing my resumé or, rather, trying to improve it, for the preparation took less than fifteen minutes. War medic and piano player just about summed it up, unless I included my skills as a poker player or cocktail mixer, but somehow that didn’t seem appropriate. The result was pretty pathetic. I most definitely fell into the unskilled category mentioned in the newspaper article. Perhaps the only thing I had going for me was the set of papers my stepfather had prepared detailing my career as an army medic, including several references to courses I’d undertaken, some of which I barely remembered, involving medical knowhow I’d long since forgotten. Still, emblazoned with the regimental insignia, and with Nick’s signature and impressive qualifications as well as that of the regimental commander, they looked reasonably professional and impressive. Among them was the recommendation that I study medicine at the conclusion of the war and the fact that I’d qualified for an ex-serviceman’s grant to do so.

To my surprise, Mr Leslie seemed impressed after reading the top page outlining my pathetic employment history. ‘Your medical background in the Canadian army could be very useful to us, Mr Reed,’ he said enthusiastically.

‘Oh? I’m not a doctor, sir,’ I hastened to say.

‘No, man, that’s not important.’ He spoke with a fairly guttural South African accent. ‘Are you prepared to work underground?’ he asked.

I shrugged. ‘I guess we’re all going to end up there one day,’ I quipped.

‘Hey, man, that’s very funny!
Ja
, I guess you’re right. The pay is good. I guarantee you can’t make this sort of money as a medic anywhere else in the world.’

‘What would I be expected to do?’ I asked, adding, ‘For instance, will I work under the supervision of a doctor?’

‘Mr Reed, I’m going to be honest with you. This is the
bundu
, man!’

‘The
bundu
?’ It wasn’t a word I knew.

‘The backwoods, the bush,’ he explained. ‘The Copperbelt is mining country – nothing else there, no farming, no industry – everything depends on the mines. Yes, there are some small towns – Ndola, Luanshya, Chingola, Kitwe, Luswishi River – but this is a British protectorate, so, apart from the civil servants and public utilities, police, hospitals, that sort of thing, everything else is linked to the mining industry. In Ndola, there is a proper hospital – even looks after blacks – and in the other towns, there are cottage hospitals for whites only. We have one with twelve white beds, run by a nursing sister who is also a midwife. Some of the miners, the professionals – diamond drillers, engineers, hoist drivers, administration – they have families and we have a special section on the mine where they live, and that’s where the cottage hospital is situated.’ It was all said with hardly a pause.

‘Oh, I see, so the white miners are in the majority, then?’ I made a mental note to ask him what the hell a diamond driller was doing in a copper mine.