Jack of Diamonds (33 page)

I soon discovered that it was pointless enquiring after the entertainment manager. Nevertheless, I did the rounds, asking anyone I could find for the name of the manager or person I should ask to see, and writing this down for later. Finally I approached a uniformed bell captain at the entrance to the Brunswick Hotel, a three-storey building that was seemingly one of the best of several hotels in River Street. He was an older man and I introduced myself and asked him if I could see the entertainment manager.

‘What’s your business, Jack?’ He was obviously accustomed to authority.

‘I play piano,’ I replied.

‘What sort?’

‘Jazz . . . ah, just about everything else as well,’ I added quickly.

‘Bit young, ain’t you?’

‘Well, the keyboard doesn’t know my age.’ It wasn’t an original line and could probably have been attributed to Mozart in his day.

‘Hey, I like that!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re going to need all the cheek you got in River Street, Jack. There are more ways to fleece a greenhorn in this street than I’ve found to swear at a bellboy.’

‘Yeah, I must say it’s a bit different to Toronto.’

He laughed. ‘Well, yeah, chalk ’n’ cheese. Moose Jaw is the New Orleans of Canada, and River Street is where a man can find the most joy and trouble in the one place.’ He stuck out his hand. ‘Peter Cornhill.’

‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, Peter.’

‘When’d you get into town?’ he wanted to know.

‘Last night,’ I said. ‘If you hear about anything going on the street, I’d be most obliged.’

Peter Cornhill laughed again. ‘Jack, that’s my job, son. But in my profession the only way to open my ears is to unzip your wallet.’ I reached into my pocket. ‘No, no, not now.’ He grinned. ‘Most musicians are on the bones of their ass. It’s the one trade where money don’t stick. You pay if I deliver the goods, the information you need.’

‘Thanks, Peter, much obliged.’

‘May as well take it easy for the rest of the day, son. Ain’t nothing happens in this street until the girls have risen from their beauty sleep, painted their faces on and are back leaning on the windowsills and showing off their titties. That’s the signal, that’s the time when the joints start jumping and the saloons and the gambling dens get to thinking about the action for the night to come. Come by maybe five-thirty, six o’clock, be someone you can talk to in most places. I’ll have a word to Mr Kerr, the assistant manager, when he comes in. Reggie Blunt, who plays piano here, is getting a mite grumpy, been one or two complaints from the ladies at the Thursday tea party. Do you do, you know . . . light classical? They like that.’

‘You mean Johann Strauss, Franz Lehar, Fritz Kreisler? Yeah, sure, I can do them.’

‘Huh? No, never heard o’ them. Don’t suppose they have neither. You know, English classical . . . “Keep the Home Fires Burning”, “If You Were the Only Girl in the World”, “Roses of Picardy” . . . them?’

I’d come full circle from Dolly and Mac’s ancient HMV gramophone squawking through the ceiling boards and my battered, belated birthday harmonica. ‘Sure, practically play them in my sleep,’ I assured him.

‘I’ll see what I can do, Jack. Come back round about six. Mr Cameron Kerr will be in to get ready for the dinner crowd. He’s a nice guy, bit sharp sometimes but don’t take no notice. Drives a hard bargain but he’ll give you a hearing.’ Peter Cornhill grinned. ‘Old Reggie says he’s getting too old to play ladies’ afternoon-tea-party crap. Says he’s gonna toss it in if he has to play to a bunch of cackling old hens much longer. Long as I can remember he’s bin saying he’s going to live with his son and daughter-in-law in Winnipeg and only play nursery rhymes to his grandchildren. “A definite step up the rungs of the musical ladder, Peter, old chap,” Peter Cornhill mimicked. ‘Only by now his grandchildren must be teenagers.’

‘Thanks, Peter, I’ll be here on the dot.’ I knew just how Reggie Blunt, the resident piano player at the Brunswick, must have felt. I’d never played any of the First World War songs on the piano and it had been a good while since I’d done so on the harmonica, but as I said, I could have played all the sentimental favourites on a comb wrapped in tissue paper and not missed a note.

I spent the remainder of the day looking around the centre of the city and walking along both rivers, but it was too cold to go far. Around five in the afternoon I returned to River Street and began knocking on doors. Six premises of various sorts more or less fitted the bill. Three of them featured bands, two were setting up for the night to come, and one place featured a solo piano. For each of the two bands that were setting up, the piano player was the bandleader and both gave me the heave-ho, my feet barely touching the ground. The third band hadn’t yet arrived but the manager asked me to play a medley, and after I’d done so he told me I was too good and would show up the rest of his band, so thanks but no thanks. The solo piano player turned out to be a part owner of the club and asked me to play. I did and he said he’d hire me for the nights he had off and asked me to leave my phone number. Like an idiot I hadn’t asked Mrs H. for the phone number of the boarding house. Some professional I turned out to be. I’d been so intimidated by my landlady that I’d left without thinking of her at all, except to be hugely relieved that she hadn’t turned up in the dining room at breakfast. I could of course have asked the cook or Jim Greer, all the other guests having left or eaten earlier. I told the piano-playing club owner I was new in town and would drop in a contact number as soon as I had one.

I was beginning to realise that most of the musicians were older men, the younger ones having gone off to war. Because I was over six foot and shaved every other day I probably looked a little older than seventeen. In fact, I was pointedly asked by two of the four bandleaders, both short, paunchy and somewhat recalcitrant, why I wasn’t in uniform.

At six o’clock sharp I reported to Peter Cornhill at the Brunswick Hotel who put one of his bellboys in charge of the front door and took me in to see Mr Kerr, whose office adjoined the main foyer. The interior of the hotel smelled of beeswax and floor polish. The assistant manager was busy writing at a small desk when Peter knocked on the half-open door, and before the doorman could open his mouth to introduce me, without looking up he said, ‘Thank you, Peter, that will be all. Please sit down, Mr . . . ?’

‘Spayd, sir, Jack Spayd.’

‘Won’t be a moment, Mr Spayd,’ he said, still not glancing up from his writing. Peter Cornhill touched me lightly on the shoulder, smiled reassuringly and left while I lowered myself into the only chair.

‘Now, what can I do for you?’ The assistant manager looked up at last. ‘Oh,’ he said, obviously surprised, ‘You’re young.’ Then, recovering quickly, added, ‘Mr Spayd, you said? What is it?’

‘Well, I play the piano and I was hoping . . .’

‘What? What do you play?’ he interrupted.

I smiled, attempting to ignore his sharp manner. He obviously saw me as some over-ambitious jumped-up kid. ‘Rachmaninoff to ragtime and most everything in between.’ It was a line I’d rehearsed in bed that morning and I rather liked the sound of it – neat, concise, competent but not overly boastful. But now it sounded pretentious.

The assistant manager of the Brunswick Hotel frowned. ‘I see, a piano hack.’

I smiled, trying to conceal my surprise. ‘No, sir, I’ve had a classical training but I prefer jazz, the blues in particular.’ It wasn’t what I’d intended to say. Jazz still wasn’t all the go in Canada, and way out here on the prairies it may have been even less popular.

‘Jazz? It so happens I know a bit about jazz.’ It was said in a smug, slightly amused manner as if I had trapped myself and he was about to find me out. He gave me a supercilious smile. ‘Care to play for me, Jack?’

‘Be delighted, sir.’

He rose. ‘Follow me. We have a piano in the ballroom. It’s not new but it’s a Steinway and recently tuned.’ He was warning me not to blame the piano. ‘Dinner doesn’t begin until 6.30 p.m., plenty of time to hear you out before Mr Blunt, our regular pianist, arrives for work.’

The clipped manner in which he pronounced the word ‘out’ left me in no further doubt that he wasn’t expecting much and that the word was intended to convey more than the obvious meaning. We reached the ballroom, a big echoing room with pale blue walls, a high white ceiling, and polished wooden floors for dancing, now covered with tables set for a big dinner with white damask tablecloths and napkins, silver and good china. There were wine glasses on the tables too, something you didn’t see very often. The Steinway sat on a bandstand some distance from the tables, as if the music was not meant to intrude on the conversation of the two hundred or so diners the room seemed set up to accommodate.

‘Just jazz?’ I asked.

‘No, give me . . . what did you say? Rachmaninoff to ragtime and everything in between,’ he said, amused, and with his arms clasped about his chest, he chuckled. ‘I want your full repertoire, Mr Spayd.’

‘Range or repertoire, sir?’ I queried, hoping to gain a little respect.

‘Range,’ he snapped, clearly annoyed at me for picking him up on his misuse of a word.

He still hadn’t called me Jack, which wasn’t a good sign. I sat down and started with the main theme from the second movement of Rachmaninoff’s
Second Piano Concerto in C Minor
. So as to continue the mood I did a couple of Chopin
Preludes
, then moved effortlessly into the first movement of Beethoven’s
Moonlight Sonata
. I looked up and smiled to indicate my confidence (ha ha) before moving into ‘Tenderly’, a slow jazz piece in the Art Tatum manner, though, of course, with nothing remotely like the master’s effortless finesse, switching from style to style. Part of Art Tatum’s genius was his marriage of classical and jazz and it was this I was now trying to emulate. From here I eased into ‘St James Infirmary Blues’ and then bridged this with Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ from
Porgy and Bess
, his recent musical. After this soft, tender and beautiful melody, I opened up and thumped my way merrily through ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’, grinning and stomping. Finally, so as not to exclude the Thursday ladies’ tea party, I ended with ‘Roses of Picardy’, actually singing the lyrics, my voice having long since turned from boy soprano to baritone.

Closing the piano I waited for the assistant manager’s reaction. To my mind I’d played reasonably well but wasn’t sure what he expected or wanted, if anything at all. Maybe he was simply humouring me.

‘Jesus! What are you doing applying for a hotel job, Jack?’ Cameron Kerr cried. ‘You’re concert material!’ His expression indicated that he was more than mildly impressed.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief. ‘Not quite, sir,’ I grinned. ‘Jazz is a difficult medium and I’m still too young to fully grasp its nuances,’ I said pretentiously.

‘Well, I can tell you you’re the best we’ve heard around these parts for a while. What brings you to Moose Jaw?’

‘Learning to grow up some before joining the army, sir.’

He grinned and came towards me with his hand extended. ‘What can I say? You’ve got the job.’

‘Thank you, sir . . . thank you very much,’ I said, stretching out my hand to shake his. Then, stupidly, in spite of Joe’s warnings, I said, ‘But what about Mr Blunt?’ I could hear Joe Hockey’s words clearly in my head. ‘Jazzboy, you on yo own in the wide wide worl’. Don’t do no softhearted non-sense, you hear? No free, no one-week trial wid no pay. Do that you soon gonna starve yo’self to death. Scuffin’ means every man fo’ hisself, tramping over and stomping on ever-body to get yo sweet ass on that there pee-ano stool.’

‘What about Reggie Blunt?’ Cam Kerr asked.

‘Well, ah, the doorman, Peter, told me he, Mr Blunt, was the resident pianist and an elderly man. Be hard for him to get another job . . .’

Cam Kerr laughed. ‘Jack, he’s been threatening to quit for years. Wants to go live with his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren in Winnipeg. He’s not broke and he only plays piano for his stake so he can play and lose at poker every week. He keeps the local gamblers in pocket money. Don’t worry, he’ll be secretly pleased. He can never make up his mind, not about cards, not about anything. Now it’s done for him, he can go and see his grandchildren.

‘Can you play here tonight? This Saturday’s a big night for us, it’s the annual Rotary shindig. The police chief will be attending, as well as some of the big wigs from Regina. We have a band coming – couldn’t get the one we wanted, this one’s second-rate – but I’ll put them in the fine dining room. I want you to play as you’ve just done for me, Rachmaninoff to ragtime, and everything in between. You’ll knock their socks off, Jack.’ Cam Kerr had transformed from cynic to enthusiast.

‘Sure, be a pleasure, sir.’

‘It’s Cam. Call me Cam. Musicians aren’t formal. Always wanted to be a musician,’ he chuckled. ‘Never got past “Tea for two”!’

‘Pretty sophisticated if you’re Art Tatum; it’s practically his signature tune,’ I replied.

‘Not with two fingers,’ he laughed again.

I swallowed. ‘Cam, ah . . . what about . . . you know?’

‘Oh, yes, almost forgot. Your salary? How does eleven dollars a week sound, dinner thrown in?’

This time I took Joe’s advice. ‘Fifteen. I’ll bring in new customers. Younger crowd. Give me a few weeks and I’ll be on your billboard.’