by Jackie Kay
When I open up the trumpet in its box, it stares out at me, using its dumb keys for eyes. It looks sad. Unplayed. It looks like it is saying to me, where has all the jazz gone? Where is my master? I put my lips to its tight gold mouth. But I can’t make a sound. I put it back, laying it down in its furry case. It is lifeless. I shove it under my bed, the battered case.
His breasts weren’t very big. They flattened easily. Nobody except me ever knew he had them. I never touched them except when I was wrapping the bandages round and around them. That was the closest I came to them, wrapping them up. He put his arms in the air whilst I tucked in underneath and then pinned carefully, making absolutely certain there was no chance in the course of a long day of that pin ever coming undone. That was it. Other than that, they didn’t exist. Not really.
FEATURES
Colman Moody leaves the house of Edith Moore at 9 p.m. He leaves her watching the nine o’clock news. He is carrying the photograph of Josephine, aged seven. Edith Moore has given it to him in a brown envelope. There she is, Josephine Moore at the age of seven, smiling a gap-toothed smile, the first two milk teeth gone missing together. Her hair a mass of black curls. A great big happy grin. She is wearing a white blouse and white ankle socks. Black shiny shoes. A pleated dark skirt. She is standing next to the wall of the house she lived in then. 20 Aberdower Road. Edith told him all the addresses she had ever lived in. She reeled them off with the satisfaction of somebody at last able to remember something accurately. She paused dramatically at the end of each address. Colman stops under a street lamp and stares at the photograph again. He can’t get away with it. Now that he’s seen the little girl, he can see something feminine in his memory of his father’s face that must have been there all along.
The streets are too dark, and the light too dim for him to see the little girl clearly, but he stands and peers just the same. Waiting for something to happen. Some other image to appear behind the one that he is holding in his hand. Some transformation to occur to make sense of it all. He puts her back in her brown sleeping bag and strokes the rough manilla flat. He has a song in his head, the same song his father sang to sing him to sleep. Dreams to sell. Dreams to sell. Angus is waiting with dreams to sell. He carries the photograph gently, making sure he will not damage it.
He strolls down Braehead Road in no hurry. Edith has told him to walk to the Clock where he’ll find the cab office. She said it is quicker than phoning one. He is glad of the walk, of the night air. How could his father have stopped seeing her? What a waste. Colman has had lunch and supper at the house of Edith Moore. He is certain the old woman has fattened him up. Just lifting one foot and then the other, just making the foot take a step in a straight line, just making his free arm swing back and forth is an effort. His whole body is heavy with this thick sadness. It lies across his chest, a fat sleeping dog lying by a fire, a coal fire. Some nameless person from the past of his father has been out to a bunker and shovelled that coal into a tin pail and then shovelled it into the fire. Colman walks slowly, one foot after the other. There is no lightness in his step. He needs to sleep and sleep. He can’t face Sophie Stones tonight. He needs to have a drink, a malt, and drift off. He needs to bury himself in sleep, to go down and down until he is no longer conscious of himself, until he could be somebody else dreaming of himself.
*
He opens his door as quietly as he can. She might be in. He doesn’t want to see her. He is tense. He has to be on the red alert from now on. He tries the stupid little plastic card, disgusted at it. Whatever happened to those big keys, those ones with the huge iron balls at the end to prevent people from stealing them, or forgetting them? Shit, they were better than this plastic nonsense. Red lights and red lights. He finally gets the green light and enters his hotel room silent as a thief. What has he got to be afraid of? He darts into his room, listening out for the sounds of the Journalist. The sounds of the Hack, that’s better. The Hack has got her TV on. He can hear it. He puts his on till he tracks down the same programme she’s watching. Birds of a Feather. He turns his volume down low. His eye catches the phone blinking. It can only be the Hack on the machine. He will not listen to it.
He has to lie down. When has he ever felt like this before? If he can remember ever feeling this way before it will be a relief; he will at least know he is not going stark raving mad. He can’t remember. The phone rings. He jumps. Is it cowardice that is making him worry? Is it the fact that he knows he is weak? The worst kind of coward. A coward that wants to be paid for being a coward. That must be it. Answer the phone, Colman. Tell her to go and raffle herself. If only he could go back to the house of Edith Moore, where it is safe and warm and smells of old woman, old musty woman.
It rings and rings and rings. Then the machine gets it. The machine plays its own voice then it copies hers. He listens to the copy a few minutes later, pressing the phone to his ear just in case. It has got her exactly right, the machine. Her voice is dripping. And there’s something else. She’s sounding a bit off-key herself, a bit worried. So the Hack is hyped up! He smiles to himself and pulls open the mini bar. The thought occurs to him that she might guess he’s in hiding and come right up to his door and rap on it. Rapid little knocks. What then?
He’s made himself into a hostage. The Hack’s hostage. That’s what he is. He laughs softly. He knocks the fiery drink back in one smooth motion. It burns his throat then his belly. That’s better. He pours another. She’s paying. Let her pay. Let him clean her out.
PEOPLE:
The Old School Friend
In her dream last night, May Hart was the first at the scene of the crash on the M8. The whole thing happened before her eyes, the smash, squash and scream of metal till it collapsed in on itself. The monster lights of the lorry still shrieking brightness.
She would have to stop. She drove right up into the jaws of the crash and got out of her car. Her legs shook inside her trousers as if the night’s fierce wind was trapped inside her bones. The girl was lying on the road face down, still alive, moaning. She moved her into the recovery position she had seen so often on the television. For a moment, in her dream, she considered her own age with total clarity. The absurdity struck her right away. She was too old to be driving, running the risk of running into this. What use was she going to be now at seventy, running for help. She sat put with the girl and took her hand. The very next moment – a young policeman is kneeling over the girl. A large tree has grown up behind him. Its huge branches waving in the accident light. It is only then that May realizes who the girl is. It is Josephine Moore. She hasn’t seen her in years. She is just wondering how come Josephine never aged when the policeman breaks in, pulling her and Josephine apart. A bunch of injection needles in his hand, pointed and thin as a hairline. ‘I’m going to have to inject you. Be a good girl.’ Josephine struggles, wriggling and squirming on the motorway, crawling across the M8 like an injured animal. The policeman rages. His uniform lit up by the lorry’s lights. ‘I said be a good girl,’ he booms. ‘Be a good girl!’ he shouts at the top of his voice. For a moment in her dream she considers getting the policeman’s baton out and knocking him over the head with it. ‘I know her,’ she tells the policeman. ‘She went to school with me.’ He looks at her as if she is mad. ‘I think you’re a bit confused. Wait and I’ll tell the ambulance man to sedate you,’ he orders.
This morning May Hart realized it was talking to that woman that was giving her these nightmares. Josephine Moore has died every night for four nights on the trot. She is always eleven years old. In only one of her dreams was May Hart young with her, but that was the worst dream of the lot. She can’t even remember it now, it was so terrifying.
What did she tell her of any significance? Five days ago, on a Tuesday morning Sophie Stones arrived at 9 Milk Street, Greenock, having phoned May beforehand to explain that she was writing (an article? a book? May forgets which, the call was a surprise) about her old school pal, Josephine Moore. Of course May remembered her. No,
she hadn’t heard of her death. She hadn’t heard of her for years. She just seemed to disappear from Greenock. That was it. The journalist said nothing more. Oh, except that Josephine had become a famous trumpet player. ‘Is that so?’ May had said, amazed and a bit nonplussed, not being interested much in music herself. ‘I wouldn’t know I’m afraid,’ she’d said. ‘I’m not very up on the music world.’
May got out her one copy of the old school photograph as promised. She could not remember everyone’s names now, but she always remembered Josephine. She was the only coloured one in the class. A very pretty girl. Beautiful teeth. Lovely smile.
The morning of the journalist, May got up early, seven-thirty, washed, dressed, black and white checked trousers, green shirt. Not bad for seventy, she thought to herself. Wearing well. The mirror spied one or two weaknesses. A couple of veins were coming through her skin like tiny red roots. She got out her hot curling brush to give her hair a bit of body on the top. She scooshed some hairspray to keep it in place. A soft spray – she loathed those hairsprays that made your hair look petrified. She rubbed some moisturizer into her cheeks. She squirted on some of the perfume that her son had bought her from the duty free. She smelt expensive. She rubbed some foundation cream over the veins. Put on some of the lipstick her daughter had given her in a Christmas stocking. The thought of talking about her childhood was filling her with nostalgia. That early in the morning the past was already bringing about some sort of allergic reaction; she started to sneeze just as she remembered the time she and Josephine had had a schoolgirl crush. She was not going to mention that to this journalist.
She examined her teeth in the mirror, clenching them together and tutting in between the two rows. The top row of teeth were her own. She was more proud of hanging on to them than she was of hanging on to her savings. Many’s the young dentist who has tried to coerce her into parting with them. The middle two slightly overlap to form a tiny cross, that she hated as a young woman; now she felt a daft affection for that quirky overlapping. At regular points in her life she toyed with getting them straightened out but decided it would take away some of her character. You are your teeth, she told herself. More than anything else, more than you are your body, or the food you eat, or the job you do, you are your teeth. Life is just a journey from milk teeth to false teeth with fillings and crowns thrown in between for relief. From the wondrous tooth fairy to the plague of ulcers sprouting underneath the badly fitted plate. The false teeth, planted in her mouth as evidence. She remembered the traumatic day the rich family of teeth moved into the bottom part of her house. They were sly impostors, more suave and glitzy than her real top lot. Those silly sparkling teeth, all ready for the ball, made May realize that her husband didn’t love her. Not properly. He was the one who was behind the move for false teeth because he had a set himself. He was jealous, that’s what she thought, jealous watching her innocently munching and crunching on a red apple.
Looking back on that day through the fug of anaesthetic, billowing like a white skirt in the wind, she realized that it was the true turning point of her life. Without her bottom row in place, she was vulnerable, less articulate, less surefooted. It was true: her teeth going changed the way she walked. You are your teeth.
When she let the journalist into her home, she noticed the young woman had horrible teeth in one so young. They were too large for her mouth and one of them was slightly discoloured. It actually made May think twice about talking to her. What would Josephine have thought of this young woman writing a book about her? She did not look the part. She looked all wrong. Sleek and sophisticated, wearing designer clothes and smile and exuding false charm. The older she has become, the more adept she is at picking out falseness in people. It is too late to turn back. Strange though, the nasty feeling she already had. The sense that something was about to happen.
Sophie Stones seized the school photograph and peered into that old time for what seemed an age. It made May look again at it herself and remember things. Rhona Elliot was red-eyed and crying. She never did like school. Kathleen Baxter already looked like an old woman. Aileen Forbes died of an epileptic fit. Names started returning to her. She could hear Miss Scrivner bark her name out, ‘May Hart.’ Everyone was called the name on the register. At least half the people in her class were not known by those names. Some of them weren’t even similar. They all had two personalities. She was just reconstructing that corner of the playground where she, Josie and Kathy Baxter used to hang out, when she heard Sophie say, ‘Amazing, amazing!’ ‘I know, how we age!’ May said. ‘It sounds daft, but it’s true. You never think it’s going to happen to you. When you are young, you are invincible.’ Sophie Stones hesitated as if she was going to contradict her. ‘You wait. You’ll see,’ May said confidently.
‘So what was she like?’ Sophie asked her still staring, bewitched at the photograph.
‘Oh, great fun. Josie was great fun.’
‘A bit of a tomboy?’
‘No. Not at all.’
‘Where were her parents from?’
‘Well, that was a bit of a scandal. Her mother was from Glasgow, but her father was a black man.’
‘Yes but where was he from?’
‘The West Indies.’
‘The West Indies?’
‘So they said.’
‘Yes, but where about?’
May shrugged and laughed. ‘How am I to know that? He’d been here for a long time as I remember. Even if I’d been told the name, I wouldn’t remember. I’ve always been hopeless at names. He died when Josephine was quite young, eleven or so.’
‘He died!’ Sophie Stones almost shrieked. ‘He died! My God! Of course!’
‘Is this all for the article?’ May Hart asked anxiously.
‘Book,’ Sophie corrected. ‘I’m writing a full length book.’
‘And you need to know all that, do you?’ May asked her. ‘Very interesting, isn’t it?’
Sophie Stones smiled a creamy smile. ‘Actually, May’ – she snapped open her brown leather briefcase – ‘it’s more interesting than you think. Take a look at these.’ She handed May some photographs of a male jazz musician, handsome, tall man in dark suits, patterned ties. Saxophone in hand.
‘Is that one of the men Josephine played with? Is that a sax?’
‘No, it’s a trumpet,’ Sophie said.
‘Well, there you go, I told you I was ignorant about music.’ May laughed.
‘And that’s not a fellow musician – that’s her.’
‘You’re having me on,’ May said, still laughing. ‘What’s she dressed up as a man for?’ May looked closer at one of the pictures. Underneath the man’s face, she could see the girl she remembered. Josie was there all right in those eyes. Actually, if she just looked at the face, Josie hadn’t changed a bit.
May sat back in her armchair. Josie looked so handsome playing that trumpet! As she stared transfixed at the photograph all the old love came spilling back. There’s no love like the love you have as girls. Not the love she felt for her husband, or any subsequent lover. No love to match that burning, feverish loyalty, that hysterical devotion, that total obsessiveness. As a girl, May Hart would have died for Josie. She loved everything about her. Her hair. Her lips. How her skirt hung just above her knees. Her funny high laugh. The way she grabbed at you and touched you when she was talking to you. May even loved Josephine Moore’s silence. She had a way of being silent that was just perfect! In fact she loved their silences best of all, those shy, silly, moving silences which would only be broken by girlish embarrassment and giggles. Looking at Josie all dressed up as a man, May realized that she’d missed her all her life. Didn’t she have style! Look at that suit! Her Bert never looked like that in a suit. She was moved to tears. Sophie Stones was startled. She was later to write, ‘May Hart was so upset at the deception of her old schoolfriend that she burst into tears,’ in her MOODY notebook.
May Hart was off. Sixty odd years collapsed behind her. Josie and she were
in the woods at the back of St Mary’s borstal school where all the bad children’s fingers were broken by the belt, running to their den. They found the exact opening underneath all the bush. Broken conkers were lying everywhere, the sudden whiteness of their insides, like split pears. Josie and May found some fine unbroken, unsplit conkers, the colour of a beautiful brown horse. They rubbed the conkers on each other’s jumpers till they shone. Beauties. They pierced them with their metal knitting needle that they hid in their school bag at this time of year. The string made it through the tunnel and came out laughing at the other end. They pierced each other’s thumbs whilst they were at it. Blood sisters. Then Josie leaned forward and said to May, ‘Have you ever tried kissing? Shall we practise so that we’re good kissers when we’re grown up?’ They kissed a bit. May liked it but she pulled away. ‘Are we doing something wrong, Josie?’ ‘No, we’re just practising.’
‘It’s a bit of a shock, I know,’ Sophie Stones was saying. ‘Do you know even her son didn’t know she was a woman?’ May looked straight into Sophie Stones’s mouth. Her bad tooth stared back at May like a criminal. She had to get her out of her house. ‘Do you think I could keep one of these pictures?’ she asked. ‘For old time’s sake.’
May watched the journalist get into the taxi. The journalist never waved. She knew she wouldn’t wave. She had to watch to be sure that her judgement was correct. Sophie Stones was not the type to wave to someone after she left. No, no, no. She was staring straight ahead in the black cab, cool as you please. A sick feeling rose up in May’s stomach. What had she done to her wonderful Josephine? Had she harmed her in any way? She would never, never harm Josie for all the world. She picked up the cup that the journalist had drunk from. Lipstick stuck to the edges. She gave it a good clean. Then she scrubbed it some more. Then she threw the cup on the floor and watched the pieces smash. When she had asked the journalist how Josephine had managed to have a son, living her life as a man, the journalist had said, Josephine married a woman and they adopted a son. When she asked her what this woman looked like the journalist had made May Hart deeply unhappy by replying, ‘Beautiful. Really quite stunning. I’ve got a photograph of her here that her son gave to me, if you’d like to see it.’