by James Gault
Chapter 8
And so Antonia found herself in another strange place and time. It had been another non-journey. She didn’t really mind. She hadn’t been expecting much. If you don’t get your hopes up, you’re never disappointed.
This time she knew that she herself was different. For one thing, her clothes weren’t right. She couldn’t see them, but she could sense them clinging unnaturally to her. And her skin? It felt as if it were someone else’s. What had Ogg done to her this trip?
She wished there were more light so she could give herself a right good inspection. But they were in a dark, funereal, side street. Tall buildings watched over the solemn blackness, sentinels against the invasion of moonlight. Scattered street lamps cast little puddles of light, tiny candles keeping vigil over secret shadows and subterranean tombs. A hundred metres away, the city was alive. Antonia could imagine she heard the living move busily around town in cars, taxis and buses. But the rumble of the city’s heartbeat faded out before it reached her ears. Only an occasional car horn came to her in an eerie scream. A warm pink glow of activity tried to reach from the civilised main street into the silent darkness, without quite making it to where she was standing, shivering in the summer evening heat.
She clutched Ogg’s arm. He had changed his form again, but she didn’t quite know how. All she could see was that he was dressed in a man’s clothes. He seemed to be taking her towards a heavy wooden door, bathed in a sinister red light. An awning stretched halfway across the pavement in front of it. Her heels clacked on the paving stones and echoes betrayed monsters lying in wait in the darkness. She gripped Ogg’s arm more tightly. She was cold, frightened, and tottering precariously on noisy high-heeled shoes. Where were they? When were they? What had Ogg changed into this time? And what on earth had he done to her?
They were under the awning, bathed in pink. The door in front of them creaked open, and searing white light and loud jazz escaped into the deathly darkness behind them. A liveried doorman stooped before them.
“Welcome madam, welcome sir. This way please.”
They were escorted across an elegant mirrored hall and Ogg was taking a silk evening shawl from her shoulders. At last she could see herself, and she was amazed. She had to look twice to make sure it wasn’t someone else. Ogg had decked her out in a long black satin evening gown. The diamond necklace and matching earrings must have been priceless. And who would have thought that anyone could create such a work of art from her usually straggly hair? And she was wearing make-up, not the teenage dabs she experimented with in the privacy of her bedroom, but genuine sophisticated stuff like you see in fashion magazines. She looked years older than she was, she looked magnificent, but yes it was still her. Was this the look her mother had in mind when her tormented mind struggled over curtain material and sewing box?
“What have you done to me, Ogg?” she whispered.
“Only the best for you, Ant?”
“Why have you dressed me up like a film star?”
“All in the line of duty.”
What duty? She caught another glimpse of them both in a passing mirror. Ogg was a square-cut greying-haired forty-year-old in a dinner suit. What were are a couple of normal sensible people doing in this brash nightspot, impersonating some beautiful show-business couple? Ogg does move in mysterious ways.
They wandered though to a large noisy dining room
“Table for two, sir?’ A bow-tie scraped and bowed before them.
They followed it to a table near the edge of the dance floor. It pulled a chair away from the table and bowed and scraped again
“If you please, madam?”
As Antonia sat down, the bow-tie pushed the chair under her.
“Champagne, sir, for the lady? And whiskey for you?”
Ogg nodded silently.
“I can’t drink champagne, Ogg. What are you thinking of?”
“It’ll only be sparkling water with flavouring. Nothing here’s real.”
Another, less important, bow-tie came with the drinks and the French menus. Antonia puzzled over the florid descriptions of the dishes, in spite of her fluent French. Her bewilderment must have been apparent on her face, because the bow-tie sneered.
“Would madam like the English version?”
“Je vous remercie, mais je comprend très bien celui-ci,” she smiled. The bow-tie looked sheepish and confused.
“Would monsieur like the English version?” she added, mischievously. Ogg shook his head.
As the bow-tie retreated, Antonia hissed.
“Phoney!”
“Très américaine, Ant”
Antonia sipped her flavoured sparkling water and looked around her. The décor was Mozart and Strauss, but the music was Sinatra and Cole Porter. Small intimate tables for two bordered the dance floor, couples looking exactly like her and Ogg, forty something successes in dinner jackets trailing twenty-something ornaments in satin evening gowns. Deeper into the room, against the walls, larger tables harboured groups of rowdy businessmen of all ages. Armies of scantily-clad girls moved among them, selling cigars and having their bottoms pinched.
A squat balding fifty year old tuxedo with a cigar stood before them.
“You havin’ a good time? I ain’t seen you ‘round here before.”
“We’re from out of town,” Ogg drawled, and Antonia choked on her sparkling water.
“Well, you sure picked the right place for good entertainment. I’m Harry. Harry Biaggi. This is my joint. D’ya like it?”
“Well, yeah, Harry, I do. It’s a real nice place you got here.”
“We try to be classy. Howd’ya find us.” Harry snapped his fingers as he said his and a bow-tie appeared and slid a seat under him. He sat down.
“Well Harry, A friend told us about your place. Big Marty, from Miami. He said you gotta guy working for you that we know. Name of Antonio. An Italian, but he came here from London just after the war.”
“You mean Tony, Tony the Hammer. What’s your connection with Tony the Hammer?”
“My secretary here’s a kinda relative of his?”
“Hey, you from the old country too, lady?”
“Not directly. But I’ve got some Italian connections.”
“Well, whadyya know? What do you guys do?”
“Business,” Ogg said. “Business, Harry. You know what I mean.”
“Oh sure, Mister….Eh?”
“Smith. Ogden Smith. You can call me Ogg.”
“Maybe we can do some business. Big Marty’s one of the people. You know big Marty, it’s a calling card. You got a reputation already.”
“Harry, I’m always interested in business.”
“Well, Ogden, let’s talk! But what about the broad? Dames make me nervous. They ain’t too good at keepin’ their big mouths shut.”
“Harry, Antonia knows all my secrets. I trust her, you can trust her.”
“I know how to be discreet, Mr. Harry,” Antonia chipped in.
While Ogg and Antonia were talking, Harry snapped his fingers. A supplicating bow-tie appeared, Harry whispered to it, and the bow-tie scurried off.
“Young lady, I’m sure you do. But you see, me, I’m an old man. I got my traditions. Women and business don’t mix, see. So here’s what you’re gonna do. Your relative, Tony the Hammer, he’s gonna come over and he’s gonna ask you to dance. And to make an old man happy, you’re gonna dance with the fat creep. You and Tony are gonna catch up on family history, and me and your boss are gonna do some business.”
Antonia recognised the figure standing beside the nightclub owner right away. He had changed a lot, but it was unmistakably her great-grandfather. He was fifteen years or so older than he had been in London. His waist had thickened. His face was no longer fresh. There were lines of worry,
furrows of age, a subservient droop at the corners of the mouth. His over-confidence seemed to have been replaced by under-confidence. The nose she remembered as so fine had been flattened into a sort of amorphous blob. His jaws had fattened and dropped into his squat neck. Most of his hair had gone, leaving a flat square head, the obvious reason for the nickname of Tony the Hammer.
“Tony, this young lady is kinda your cousin. Ask her to dance, willya?”
‘Yes, Mr. Biaggi.”
Antonia was panicking inside. She was far too young to be in a place like this, wearing clothes much too old for her and drinking fake alcohol. How long did Ogg expect her to keep up this façade? And dancing wasn’t one of her accomplishments. She would be caught out now. But Ogg’s silent voice was whispering inside her head.
“It’s OK Ant. Go ahead. I’ll see you’re all right.”
He’d better! She smiled sweetly at her great-grandfather bowing gallantly before her.
“Would you care to dance, miss?”
“Delighted,” she replied and swept to her feet. Tony the Hammer guided her skilfully to the edge of the dance floor.
“Take your time, Tony. We’re talkin’ business here,” Harry shouted after them.
Antonio was amazed at how well her great-grandfather could dance. She was even more amazed that, helped by Ogg’s silent guidance, she seemed to be able to follow him perfectly. As a couple, they danced so well that a number of the other dancers stopped to watch and admire. They glided past an elderly man and woman and Antonia overheard, “They’re so good together you’d think they was family.”
This was much too close to the truth for Antonia. Besides, with all these people watching someone was going to pierce her thin disguise sooner or later. And they weren’t among the kind of people who would take kindly to discovering they were being tricked. Better to avoid all this attention.
“Could we sit down, Mr Hammer? I’m feeling a bit dizzy.”
“My name ain’t Hammer, honey. That’s just a nickname. On account of my job.”
“You’re a carpenter?”
“Nah!” he laughed. “You got it all wrong. When guys don’t do what they should, I break their arms – with a hammer.”
Well, his appearance might have changed, but his character was still exactly the same. Had the evil spirits taken him over completely, or was there still a residue of remorse somewhere in his psyche?
“Don’t you feel sorry for those poor people whom you so gratuitously injure?”
“ Shucks, no! I figure if Mr. Biaggi wants that I should break their arms, they musta done something real bad.”
“But breaking their arms! Horrible!” Antonia shuddered.
“Hey, I don’t do it all that often. Usually I just shoot them!”
“Why?”
“Mr. Biaggi tells me.”
“You do everything Mr. Biaggi tells you?”
“Sure! He’s a great guy. He’s always looked after me. I got a nice apartment, big car. I eat good. I’m the American Dream. Mr. Biaggi’s always telling me. ‘You done well to stick with me, Tony,’ he says. “Look at you! You’re the American Dream.’ And he gets me broads. Like you, honey.”
He was still recognisably her great-grandfather. In America, ‘Antonio’ had become ‘Tony’ and ‘sweetheart’ had become ‘honey’. But underneath he was the same selfish, amoral lecher.
“Whatever you’re thinking about me, Mr Harry the Hammer, you can just stop it this minute. First of all, I’m a relative. Secondly, I’m much too young for you. And in any case, I came here with Mr. Ogg.”
They were still dancing, and once again Antonia felt herself the centre of attention on the dance floor.
“Please can we sit down?”
“Sure, honey.” He took her to an empty table a long way from where Ogg and Harry Biaggi were discussing whatever their business was. Antonia had resolved to wreak some signs of repentance from her apparently emotionless ancestor.
“And what about your English girl friend, Madge Collins?”
“Hey, how do you know about her?”
“I’m a relative, remember.”
“Oh, yeah!”
This vague remark seemed to satisfy him. Antonia had never come across anyone who displayed such a lack of curiosity.
“Don’t you ever miss Madge?”
Tony the Hammer didn’t answer right away. Maybe he hadn’t heard her. Should she ask him again? Would there be any point? He looked as if he had stopped listening to her.
“You got a photo of her?” he croaked, eventually.
She had a photo. Of Madge Collins, her great-grandfather and his jilted bride, and of Anton Collins senior, her grandfather and his abandoned son. They were standing on a sunny beach, Southend or Margate, she wasn’t sure. It was a holiday photo, from a time when holidays were few, hard won, and a time for exuberant celebration. And yet it was sad photo. The figures in the background were having fun; in the foreground a skinny six-year-old boy was clinging desperately to his mother’s arms, two faces forcing an empty smile for an anonymous photographer. She wished she had it, to show it to this wicked and irresponsible vagabond who was the cause of their grief. But it was safely stored away, among her private possessions, in the second drawer of the bedside cabinet on the left of her bed.
“Second drawer, left hand cabinet, no problem!” Ogg’s voice intruded silently into her thoughts. “I’ll get it and slip it in your evening bag.”
Ogg could be extremely useful sometimes. But she didn’t have the bag. She’d left it on the table where Ogg and Harry were deep in discussion.
“Excuse me!” she said, and shot off. She was back, bag in hand, sitting in front of a worried Tony the Hammer before he could move.
“You shouldn’t have done that. Mr Biaggi don’t like it when broads interrupt his business conversations.”
“He didn’t even see me. Here’s a photo of Madge and your son.”
Tony took a long time over the photo. Did he see their empty smiles and dark faces in the midst of gaiety? Did he realise he who was the reason they were always on the outside of every general celebration? Was he feeling guilty? She hoped so.
“She don’t look no different. She’s a beautiful girl.”
“Don’t you think she looks a bit sad?” Antonia prompted.
“Naw! Look, they’re smiling. And the kid, ain’t he just great?”
Great wasn’t how Antonia saw the lonely, fatherless boy.
“He’ll be about fifteen or sixteen now. This has gotta be an old photo.”
‘Much older than you think,’ Antonia thought.
“Why did you abandon them?”
“Huh?”
“Why did you leave?”
“Madge made me come.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I had some problems in London. I was doin’ a job for some guy. Black market, you gotta make a living. Only it all went wrong. I don’t know how it happened, some of these guys was real clever. Anyway, there I was, no merchandise and no dough, with a boss who’d put two other guys in the cemetery the week before. Madge knew about him, though. She was frightened for me. She gave me all her savings, and put me on a boat for America.”
“Why didn’t she go with you?”
“We didn’t have enough money.”
“You could have sent for her. You’re not poor now. You’re the American Dream for goodness sake.”
“Hey sister, keep your hair on! I’m not a bad guy.”
“Oh no! You’re a good guy who abandons little babies. You’re a good guy who breaks people’s arms when you don’t shoot them.”
“I’m just a soldier. I follow orders, see!”
“And what about Madge and her baby?”
“I send them some dough every month. I write her. I’ve asked her to come over a mi
llion times. I’ve sent her boat tickets. She don’t answer my letters. What’s a guy supposed to do?”
Could she believe this? Why would her great-grandmother refuse to come over and join her lover? She loved him all her life, Antonia knew that. She never got married, she never had a relationship with another man. She often talked with Antonia about him. My Antonio, my Italian Romeo – how many times had she heard that? And this American gangster was telling her that her great-grandmother stubbornly refused countless opportunities to make a life with the man she loved so desperately. It wasn’t logical.
“I don’t believe you, Tony,” she said.
“Look lady, why should I lie to you? I ain’t got no reason to sweeten up to you, with your heavy boy friend over there in close with Mr. Biaggi. Besides, I ain’t a clever guy. I’m too stupid to make up lies.”
“You sure are, Tony,” a bow-tie who had suddenly appeared at their table confirmed. “He ain’t the smartest, miss. Tony, you’ve to take the broad back to her boyfriend. Harry’s finished talking business and anyway he needs you for a little job.”
“Is it some bad guy who ain’t been keepin’ in line, Mickey? I gotta have a word with him?”
“It’s a real bad guy, Tony. You’re gonna need your hammer.”
Back at Ogg’s table, with Tony and Harry gone Ogg and Antonia could talk freely.
“Well, how evil has your great-grandfather become?” Ogg asked her. Antonia’s mind was elsewhere.
“Life is complicated, isn’t it, Ogg? I’m not sure if I really understand it. Are we meant to understand it, do you think?”
“Great Philosophical Question, Ant.” But Antonia hardly heard him.
“Do you think Tony could have been lying to me? Why should he? Would there have been any point? Is he still in love with my great-grandmother? Why won’t she come over here and join him? Can we make any sense from all this?”
So many questions; and no answers from Ogg! He knew knowledge was power. And from his experiences with secret weapons, he knew also that power corrupts. If there was one thing he had learned, it was that direct interference in the affairs of man was not the way to improve their lot. He now confined himself to helping them seek the right questions. It was up to them to find the answers themselves.
Yet Ogg’s silence didn’t seem to bother Antonia in the least. Her thoughts had moved on from the concrete to the abstract, as befits one with aspirations in the direction of Great Philosophical Questions. ‘What is truth anyway? Is it fundamental or a product of our circumstances and environment? Is truth universal or can we all have our own version?’
She was interrupted by Ogg.
“Ant, something important’s happening. We have to go!”
Suddenly they were back outside, in a dark creepy city street just like the one she had been in earlier.
“Ogg, I can’t believe you just did that? How could you?”
“What?” While Ogg never answered questions himself, he had different standards for others.
“Leaving that place without paying! What a despicable thing to do!”
“What does paying a drinks’ bill matter when the future of the whole world is at stake?”
“Where would the world be if all Great Beings were prepared to sacrifice morality for expediency? You would be no better than politicians. Go back and pay it!”
“Sorry, Ant.” Then, immediately afterwards, “Done!”
“I’m sure you’ll feel better for it. And you didn’t forget to leave a good tip, I hope.”
Now that she had put an erring Great Being back on the straight and narrow, Antonia took the opportunity to catch up on her surroundings. She had begun to realise that time and space travel with Ogg was extremely disorientating. Knowing where you were was always a problem. There was no helpful ticket specifying your destination, no label on the bus, no railway or airline departures board. You just arrived goodness knows where and had to work it out for yourself. And Ogg’s reticence at answering questions didn’t help. She had thought of pinching the GPS from her Dad’s car, but then she realised that Ogg usually took her back to a time before the satellites these contraptions needed had been invented. And if ‘where’ was a problem, ‘when’ was worse. Her watch, even with a date facility, was useless. And there was no signal on her mobile phone, so that was no help either. Gadding about in time and space certainly made you appreciate the wonders of modern technology.
Right! It was a dark street, sparse street lights, there was even an entrance under and awning. It was bathed in the same red light that she had seen at Harry’s place. It might well be another nightclub. Maybe they were in the same city and time as before. It was a good guess. A car approached. Mid fifties, American, she’d seen them in old films. Who needs technology? That was the trouble with her time, over-reliance on gismos. People ought to spend more time exercising their own brains. A bit of exposure to the problems of time travel would do them all good.
As the car drew to a halt, Ogg said,
“Let’s hide in this doorway. They won’t see us from here.”
“We’d get a better view if we went a bit closer and you made us invisible.”
Ant was undoubtedly right. But she had been exhibiting a growing and worrying interest in the occult recently. She was always going on about the matter-of-fact way he did things. Her suggestion might well be no more than a clumsy trick to get him to perform a bit of magic. It was not to be encouraged. Besides, these guys had guns.
“No. We’ll be much safer in the doorway, young lady.”
Antonia considered this an exceptionally high-handed attitude for someone who was quite prepared to skip out of restaurants without paying the bill. But Ogg’s tone of voice would brook no argument, and she followed him into the safety of the doorway with no more than a pointed sigh.
Four figures emerged from the darkness of the car into the red glow of the awning. They were dressed smartly in tuxedo and black tie, their heads topped with low brimmed soft hats as a concession to being out of doors. Antonia gasped. One of them was her great-grandfather. He walked up to the entrance and pushed what she supposed was a doorbell. The door didn’t open. The figures made a circle around the closed door, one hand inside their jackets.
“The doorman’s gone to get the boss,” Ogg whispered.
The door eventually opened, and out came another four figures. They wore identical clothes to the others, with the exception of the soft hats. They too had one hand stuffed inside their jackets. One of them stepped a pace in front of his companions.
“So it’s you, Tony. Whaddya want?”
“The boss,” Ogg whispered to Antonia.
Antonia’s great grandfather stepped forward, but said nothing. He stared right into the other man’s eyes. Someone behind him answered.
“We got a message from Harry, Al.”
“I don’t wanna hear no messages from that punk.”
“You ain’t been playin’ the game. We had a deal. You got your part of town, Harry’s got his. You’ve been crossin’ borders.”
“Harry’s getting’ old. He’s losin’ it. He’s all washed up.”
“We’re here to show you he ain’t.”
“Yeah, well I got a message for him.”
There was a flash from the open door behind him and a crack of gunfire. Antonia’s great-grandfather slumped to the ground. Another four or five shots rang out, and with each one the body jerked, then lay still. His hat flew off his head and rolled across the street and into the doorway where Antonia and Ogg were hiding. The other gangsters were facing each other, pistols in hand, but no one fired.
“Take your dead friend back to Harry. Present from Alberto. Scram!”
Tony’s body was dragged back into the car and it screamed off. In the doorway, Antonia was sobbing quietly.
“Why did they kill him? He wasn’t so bad. He wasn’t a wicked man, not really.”
She bent down and picked up her great-grandfather’s soft hat.
“He wasn’t wicked. He just did what people told him. He just didn’t think.”
And clutching the hat, she fell into Ogg’s arms in tears. Ogg put his arms around her and said nothing.