Tell No-One About This

by Jacob Ross

  Mr. James dropped his pencil on the table, then swivelled on the chair to face her. ‘What missin’?’

  ‘Dunno.’ The girl shook her head and dropped back on the sofa. ‘Dunno. Just a feelin, dat’s all.’

  ‘Explain it, then.’

  She threw him a suspicious look. But she saw he was not smiling. A long face, pleated forehead, a moustache that sat like a little black caterpillar under his nostrils.

  ‘Well,’ she said finally. ‘To me is like food – nice food. You eat and eat as much as you want, but it never full you up solid-like. In the end you still left empty. It got the sauce but the dumplin missin, kind of.’

  Mr. James grinned. ‘Nice way ov puttin’ it.’

  ‘You know what missin, then?’

  ‘Is not for me to say, Miss. Is for you to find out. You want to find out?’

  ‘How?’ she asked, her voice sullen, eyes bright with hostility.

  Nita was standing at the bedroom’s entrance, regarding them.

  ‘Well, perhaps if you learn to play music – pan, I mean – you’ll understand what buggin you. You talk like a person who have music in them. You ever hear about Calinagoes? Is my band; I arrange the music.’

  He hesitated, threw a quick glance at Nita. ‘The band-leader don’t like girl-players, though. I could try to bust through his ignorance.’ He took up his sheet of paper, folded it and rose. ‘All I saying is, you couldn say what you just said if you didn have music in you.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘No,’ Nita said.

  ‘No what?’ Mr. James cocked his chin at her.

  ‘I don’ want her mixin with all dem ramgoat who does play steel band.’

  ‘That make me a ramgoat too, because I does play steel band. Not so?’

  ‘I didn’ say dat.’

  ‘So you one ov dem too. I could find a lotta name for people who call us ramgoat. Why you don’t let she decide for sheself?’

  ‘I say, no! And it goin stay no.’ Nita had raised her voice.

  Nuff to wake up every dog in de place, Simone thought.

  Mr. James didn’t answer. He folded the sheet of paper, slipped it into his shirt pocket and strode out the door.

  Simone soon realised that the man’s temper could be just as scalding as her mother’s, but he preferred to battle with Nita outside of her presence. His voice never rose above the confines of the tiny bedroom, though she could hear his rumble rising and falling like the waves on the Carenage during bad weather.

  She followed the arguments by her mother’s responses to the man’s remarks. What did he mean by giving the girl a chance to find sheself? Afraid of what? It was easy for him to say she wasn helpin she daughter by tyin she down because he didn have no girl-chile to worry about. He had no right to ask her if she knew what Sim might be feelin ‘bout all this. What? By limitin the girl she was limitin herself too? What de arse did he know? – sonova…

  Nita must have hit him because Simone heard the thwack of flesh on flesh, then prolonged scuffling that ended abruptly in silence.

  Her mother threw him out the next day, then became miserable in a way Simone had never seen before. She ate little, went to bed early and no longer complained about the ole birds on the hill. There were no new men-friends either.

  Simone counted seven weeks before she decided she could no longer stand the gloom.

  ‘Nita, he goin come back?’

  ‘You want im to come back?’ her mother said.

  ‘Is up to you.’

  ‘No-no-no, is not up to me! You think I should…’

  ‘Sort of… Is up to you, Nita.’

  ‘Is not up to me!’ Her mother’s nostrils flared. She was shifting her eyes from side to side. ‘Is not up to me, y’unnerstan? You – I want you to tell me to talk to ‘im.’

  ‘Well, talk to ‘im, then.’

  Nita smiled. ‘I never see a person selfish like you,’ she said. ‘Leavin everything up to me. No mercy! Dat’s what! You talk like big woman who dunno how to advise people. No heart! I goin’ sorry for yuh husband.’

  Husband! Simone soured her face. Didn’t want no husband. Not if they make a pusson so soft-an-chupid an crazy at the same time. Spoilin a pusson appetite for everything – like this Missa James gone an done to her mother. Mebbe that was the point of growin’ up? To become all softee and weaky and cry-cry. She couldn’t see the sense in it.

  ‘He say he goin come back on one condition. I have to give you likkle more freedom – you should play pan if you want to, and explo’ the world. Crazy talk if you ask me, because I never hold you back from explorin de worl’, does I?’

  ‘So you does see ‘im?’

  ‘Not really. I call ‘im once-or-twice on de ole bird phone. Most time he not in office. He never does call back.’ Nita sounded aggrieved.

  ‘You done ask ‘im to come back, not so?’

  ‘What chupidness you askin me? I never answer no chupid-girl question.’

  Simone raised a brow and stared at the light-bulb.

  Mr. James returned and the two were laughing and arguing as though nothing had happened between them.

  The man did not take Simone to join his band. He wanted to teach her the ‘basics’ first, he said. Nita should sit with them while he told them how and why steeldrums were made. At the end of his talk, the girl’s head was buzzing with images of fire, gang wars, police, steel and blood.

  ‘In other words,’ he said, ‘when you hear the sweet notes from a steelpan, you hearin love and violence turn music. The violence ain’t finish yet, or the love.’

  He tried everything to get girls into his band, but Moose, the bandleader, would not have it. They were recruiting new players for the Carnival just three months away. He’d proposed Simone.

  ‘Problem is,’ he scratched his nose and fixed his eyes on some spot above their heads, ‘to get Moose interested I tell ‘im a halflie.’

  ‘What you tell ‘im?’ Nita asked.

  James lifted his shoulders and dropped them. He winked at Nita and smiled. ‘I tell him that the girl in question not just a good player but the best tenor panist this side of St. Georges. She could even teach them a thing or two. I offer to bring she with me in six weeks.’

  Nita cursed him until she was out of breath. He waited until she’d burnt herself out. Then he turned to Simone. ‘Your mother got a temper. One day it goin’ fly up to she head and kill she. Pay attention, girl, because I have just six weeks to make you the best tenor panist this side of St. George’s.’

  From then she recited chords: majors, minors, sharps, flats, sevenths and ninths. The man spoke of melody and phrase, of tempo, timing and attack till her head became a hive of jumbled words.

  The girl had never felt so pushed in her life but at the end of the second week, beats took their places within bars, notes within phrases, phrases within melody – until she could listen to the minuet from the hill, dismantle it and toss it aside until the following day.

  ‘Now take a look at this.’ James placed a sheet of Bristol-board in front of her. He’d drawn a lifesize tenor pan on it. Had even coated the sides in silver paint, and like the real thing, the face of the instrument seemed to belly inward with the notes tapering down to the bottom. The man handed her two rubber-tipped sticks and ordered her to strike the notes. Nita giggled and Simone became numb with embarrassment.

  ‘Shut up!’ It was the first time he’d raised his voice at her mother. Nita muttered something nasty and sulked back into herself.

  ‘Is a waste o’ time,’ Simone said, injecting as much sting as she could in her voice.

  ‘Gimme!’ James snatched the sticks from her and began tapping the drawing, humming the notes as he struck the paper.

  The girl giggled. Nita’s burst of laughter joined Simone’s. Mr. James looked up, creased his forehead and began laughing too. He rested the sticks on the table, told them he was hungry and stepped out to the shop across the street. He returned with three tins of corned beef, condensed mil
k and a large loaf of bread. They feasted until sleep dragged them off to bed.

  Each evening Simone returned early from school, tapped and hummed the notes. She learned to string together melodies and, to stretch herself, she wrestled with Beethoven’s Minuet.

  Mr. James taught her portions of ‘Busy Body’ and showed her how to make runs and extemporise on themes. From time to time her mother would butt in when she thought something didn’t ‘sound right’. By then Simone could close her eyes and locate any note she wanted.

  The six weeks passed. ‘She not ready yet,’ James said.

  Nita told him to get off his magga-bone arse and take them to meet that Calinago Moose fella.

  Calinagoes was a wide, open tin shed with two gas-lamps hanging from the rafters. It stood at the edge of Tanteen playing field. Inside was packed with steelpans of all sizes. Most were hung on stands of metal piping. At the back, the cymbals and high hats of a drum set glowed like full moons. Near the corners stood two sets of full-sized steel drums, six to each set, ranged in such a way that a narrow passage ran between them. Pans of intermediate sizes queued in neat lines in the centre of the structure. At the front were the shallowest instruments of glittering chrome.

  Several young men were hanging out at the front of the shed with sticks in their hands. Their voices dropped to whispers when they arrived. Four girls were sitting with their heads together, on the grass at one side of the shed.

  Mr. James left and returned with a sour-faced young man. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt, a red cap turned back to front. A gold tooth glimmered from his slightly parted lips. ‘She the one?’ he pointed at Nita.

  ‘So what if is me?’ Nita said.

  ‘Is this young lady here.’ James nodded at Simone.

  ‘And you say she could play?’

  ‘Boss, man.’ James didn’t sound sure of himself.

  ‘You could play?’ The young man rested deep brown eyes on Simone.

  ‘She could play.’ Nita said.

  ‘I not custom to no girls in my…’

  ‘We went through that already,’ James cut in.

  ‘I givin you a test,’ Moose told her.

  Simone followed the man on shaky feet. He led her to the big drums at the back.

  Sensing the drama, the girls on the grass stopped their chattering, stood up and drew closer.

  ‘Run something on this.’ Moose pointed at a rusting tenor pan. Simone looked at the man, then at the pan. The light was weak in that corner of the shed. She bent over the instrument.

  ‘Can’t see the notes,’ she said feebly.

  ‘You need to see the notes?’ Moose grumbled.

  ‘Nuh… Not, not really.’

  ‘Play then.’

  She selected a note and touched it gently, humming as she was used to. She tapped each one, pulling her brows together when a couple refused to yield the expected sound.

  Moose’s voice blasted her ears. ‘I thought you could play.’

  The girl straightened up, the sticks pressed against her chest.

  Mr. James rushed over. ‘You can’t see the pan not tuned? Is a condemned pan you give she.’ He shook a finger at the row of shiny instruments up front, took Simone by the elbow and placed her before one of them.

  ‘C’mon,’ he whispered. ‘Just relax and blast those buggers to pieces. O God, girl! You can’t fail me now.’

  Again she explored the surface of the pan. The notes rang true.

  Tentatively, she began stringing the notes of a melody together. It trickled out of the instrument at first, became an easy stream, swelled and spattered in torrents around her.

  She heard Nita’s shriek of delight, looked up to see Mr. James, his body thrust forward in that way only Nita and herself would understand. He was telling her to attack. Now she felt strong and spiteful. She began teasing from the instrument notes that were bright and round and clean. Then with a flick of her wrists, she launched into ‘Busy Body’, holding down the rhythm with her tapping feet, and smiling.

  One of the boys made his way to the congas at the back of the shed. The rhythm came in gently on her, then grew into a pulsing tempo that never rose above the tune.

  She stopped abruptly and left the music hanging.

  ‘We want her!’ the drummer shouted.

  Moose threw him an irritated look.

  ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Not bad! She good!’ One of the girls threw back.

  ‘I take you for a couple months – on probation and if…’

  Mr. James raised his head at Moose and squared his shoulders. ‘Lissen, man. I can’t tell you how to run your band. But if you decide to put this girl on probation, I finish with you, and I take my arrangement with me.’

  ‘I like your arrangement, man.’

  ‘That is not the issue now.’

  ‘Okay, I decide to take she.’

  ‘No conditions?’

  ‘No conditions. Now all them little ‘ooman going pressure me to join.’

  ‘Is about time.’ James turned his back on him.

  The young drummer – he called himself Steve – followed Simone around the shed naming the different pans for her. ‘You play in band before and you dunno the difference between cello, double-tenor, bass…’

  ‘Me – I was too busy playin to learn all them names.’

  James threw his arms around Simone’s and her mother’s shoulders and jigged them all the way home.

  From then, the man talked only of Carnival and winning the Panorama competition with his ‘Busy Body’ arrangement.

  They went to practice everyday except weekends. Occasionally, Nita tagged along, in worsening mood each time they returned home after midnight.

  More and more, Simone found herself explaining combinations to her companions. But she could never please Moose. He accused her of adding her own colour to the tunes and lost his temper when the others said they preferred it.

  They polished pans, welded new stands and added wheels to the floats that would carry the instruments along the road. She went often to the back of the shed to watch Steve on the six bass drums. The youth played every instrument in the band. On the bass drum he would throw his arms back and forth, drawing heavy, healthy music with two extra-large sticks tipped with rubber balls. It seemed impossible that a single person could play six drums at the same time, but the boy did it with joy.

  ‘You like that boy,’ Nita said.

  ‘Which boy!’

  ‘De ugly likkle kobo-face one who play dem drum back dere.’

  ‘I tell you I like ‘im?’

  ‘Don’t give me no rudeness!’

  ‘I like to see ‘im play, that’s all.’

  ‘You have yours to play, not so?’

  ‘Tenor and bass different: them look different; them sound different!’

  Mr. James stepped between them. She couldn’t stop Simone now. That was what she was about to tell her mother. She couldn’t. There would be trouble if she tried. And that was all.

  ‘Something not right with you,’ Mr. James said later that night. ‘I feel it. You bring out dem notes with conviction and everything, but you not happy. When dem fellas play is like the water of life they bend over to wash dem soul in. They play as if pan is the world. But you – you find out what missin from the minuet? No? Well, I think I know the problem. We goin see.’

  Mr. James put her on the bass drums on Wednesdays – the day Moose stayed home and left the band to him. The big six-pan bass fought her and drained her but she couldn’t wait to return to them the following week.

  Moose dropped in one Wednesday and caught her. He stood with his hands on his hips, his mouth half-open. He spent the rest of the night teaching Simone to keep up with a calypso version of Beethoven’s Minuet in G.

  ‘Busy Body’ had finally become the band’s own. They had given it shape and colour. The runs were glorious, shooting in bright cascades into the night, drawing crowds that would later become supporters of the Calinagoes tribe.

  *

/>   They were halfway through practising the road march when Moose shot a hand in the air and cut the music. He shouldered past the cluster of girls who came everyday now to watch her play. The bandleader stood over her, staring into her face. ‘All dese people here think you playin great. Even you think so. Well I tellin you right now, you not. Bass is not dem six oil drum you beatin up. Anybody could do dat. Bass is what come outta you.’

  He looked as if he was waiting for a retort from her. She said nothing.

  ‘I see how yuh mother siddown on you an tie you up. I watch how she does fret you. All de things you want to say to she; everything you want to tell yuh teachers when dem downpress you…’ He jabbed a finger at the drums. ‘Dat is where you say it.’

  He turned and went back to his pan. Simone laid her sticks on the drum and told Mr. James she wanted to go home.

  He looked surprised. ‘You tired? Pan don’ make people tired… Not if they… Gimme a coupla minutes.’

  She shook her head and left.

  At home, she stretched out on the settee, closed her eyes and replayed in her head what Moose had said to her. They felt like the truest words she’d ever heard.

  The following day she stayed home, laid back on the settee and stared at the ceiling. On the third day she returned to the band.

  From that evening, the crowds began gathering at the back of the shed to watch her play.

  ‘That whip-ov-a-girl – who happen to be my creation,’ Mr. James said grinning at Nita, ‘See how she makin big-people fight for space just to watch she kick-up-an-stir murder with she bass-line – how you feel ‘bout that?’

  Her mother, who’d come along with them, said nothing for a while and Simone sensed the hurricane beneath the quiet. She didn’t want her daughter to play on no govment road with a whole heap ov jumping ramgoats round her, she said at last. Panorama – the steelband championship – was alright with her. But not the street jump-up.

  Simone observed the sidelong look Mr. James threw at her – the way his eyes narrowed and his mouth clamped down. He too kept his silence.

  Panorama came. Eight bands were lined up for the vast, floodlit island that was the stage. Calinagoes was fifth in line. Somewhere in the crowd Mr. James and Nita sat. The rivalry between the bands was there in the smiles and the sheen of sweating faces. Most bands had girl-players. Like her, they were dressed in the colours of their band. Simone eyed them; they eyed her back. Calinagoes had been losers for the past five years; they were expected to lose again.