Love in the Years of Lunacy

by Mandy Sayer

  Sometimes they played imported records in Palings Music Store and he explained why the string section of a certain band was arranged in such a way, or showed her how Ben Webster achieved his breathy, fluffy tone on the tenor sax. He told her about how Glenn Miller stole the riff to ‘In the Mood’ from an old Fletcher Henderson tune, and how Charlie Barnett arranged ‘Cherokee’ in a car on the way to a recording studio.

  He tried to teach her how to play conventional melodies against a Latin rhythm structure. Sometimes she found it hard to follow the intricate flights of his instructions and she simply sat back on the grass and marvelled at how his face and limbs grew light and animated as he lectured. Once, while he was demonstrating a passage of ‘St Louis Blues’, passing children took one another in their arms and cavorted across the buffalo grass, while grown-ups stood at a distance, shading their eyes with their hands and swaying in time with the music. Another time, for a lark, they went busking down at Circular Quay and, after three hours, they’d earned over seven pounds, a bottle of beer, a handful of walnuts and a scattering of religious leaflets.

  They tried as often as possible to meet on Pearl’s two nights off from the Trocadero. Usually, they ended up having supper in the Arabian Café in Kings Cross, where James would jump up and jam with the one-legged pianist, playing melody with his right hand while the pianist played stride chords on the lower register.

  One night, they left the café at closing time and strolled along the footpath, he with his hands wedged into his trouser pockets, she with hers tucked inside the cuffs of her coat to keep them warm. The wind rustling through the plane trees sounded like car tyres against a wet road. The streetlights had been dimmed to a series of cloudy moons vanishing into the darkness ahead. A couple of white GIs lurched out of the Californian Café across the road, dragging with them two women, who were waving fox fur stoles above their heads. One almost tripped over before the men bundled them into a waiting taxi, which promptly took off and turned left into Springfield Avenue.

  Pearl and James continued down the block, the electric lighting gradually disappearing. All the clubs and cafés had closed and, as they crossed Elizabeth Bay Road and rounded the corner into Macleay Street, the world quickly faded to black. Pearl blinked for a few minutes. She could see nothing at first, though she knew that an old mansion stood just ahead to her right, but it was several seconds before her eyes adjusted and she could make out the silhouette of a turret against the stars.

  Emboldened by the darkness she slipped her arm around his waist and dipped her hand into his trouser pocket. Now, with her fingers cupping the curve of his hipbone, it was as if they were a regular couple in a normal world, no longer concerned about the possible reactions of other people—the smirks, the frowns, the possible hostility. It felt so warm being in his arms—so quietly thrilling—that she wanted the sensation to last forever.

  As they passed the Victorian mansion a daring idea occurred to her.

  Pushing open the creaking iron gate, Pearl led James up the path. He didn’t protest or make a sound, but merely followed her. The house belonged to five elderly spinster sisters who, after the Japanese invasion of Sydney Harbour, had fled with their clutch of cats and canaries. They hadn’t been seen for months; the windows were boarded up and the once-manicured garden was a jungle of overgrown grass and dandelions. The front door was locked, of course, so she walked along the veranda, around the right wing, to the backyard. She tried to open a window, then the service entrance, but they too were bolted shut. It wasn’t until she pulled on an iron ring attached to the cellar door that she gained entrance to the grand old manor.

  She expected James to object to her breaking into the house, but as she felt her way down the steps, along the stone walls of the basement and up the wooden staircase that led to the ground floor, the only sounds she could hear were his footsteps padding behind her. Once they were inside, James lit a match and slowly a wood stove, a fireplace and a row of cupboards emerged from the gloom, only to disappear again as the match burned down. He lit another and Pearl glimpsed a candlestick on a sideboard. She picked it up and James lit the wick. Holding the candle, she led him through to a dining room, where a huge oval table set for eight sat covered in a thick layer of dust, as if the sisters had been about to sit down for a formal lunch the moment they’d decided to flee.

  Upstairs, there was an open book on a table, dead flowers in vases, a half-finished painting of a country landscape standing on an easel. The wardrobes and armoires were still filled with long dark dresses, fur coats and stoles. In one of the bedrooms at the end of the hallway a radio still played softly some classical music she didn’t recognise. The atmosphere was both eerie and exhilarating, as if she and James were two ghosts haunting the abandoned mansion.

  Pearl put down the candle, pulled on one of the musty fur coats, and began dancing around the room, pretending she was waltzing with an imaginary partner. When she glided past James, he grabbed hold of her and pushed her down onto the mattress of the four-poster bed. There they made love, on the satin quilt, until the early hours of the morning.

  And so the mansion became their beloved home, the place where they could behave like an ordinary couple. The larder was still stocked with preserves and condiments; the cellar was filled with dusty bottles of wine; the gramophone still worked and a wooden cabinet contained an impressive collection of classical 78s: Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, and even Stravinsky.

  They became so attached to the deteriorating home that when the roof began to leak James crawled into the attic and repaired the damage. When Pearl noticed mould slowly crawling across the kitchen wall, she scrubbed it off with vinegar and baking soda. James fixed a damaged copper pipe in the laundry. Together, they dusted the antiques, brushed away cobwebs and hung mothballs in the musty wardrobes. They even retrieved the mail accumulating in the letterbox by the front gate and left it in a neat pile on a side table in the foyer.

  Late at night they ate food from porcelain plates, drank merlot from crystal glasses and played cards in the back parlour, all within the gentle glow of candlelight. In the bathroom they soaked top to tail in the big old tub, massaging one another’s feet. And each time they visited the mansion they slept in a different bedroom, from the one on the ground floor in the servants’ quarters to the eighth bedroom on the third floor, in the turret. Pearl explained her overnight absences to her mother by saying that she was staying with Nora Barnes.

  One night, as they lazed in a small, high bed in the turret, sipping wine and gazing through the window at the clear night sky, Pearl pointed at Venus and the Southern Cross and outlined with her finger the constellation of Sagittarius. James grew quiet as he stared at the stars—so quiet, in fact, that when she asked him some insignificant question, all she heard in reply was a kind of hiccup.

  When she shifted and caught a glimpse of his face in the candlelight, she realised he was struggling to hold back tears. Fearing he was in some kind of pain, she put down her glass and moved to hold him, but he flinched and she went no further. They sat in awkward silence for a few minutes, still looking at the stars, James occasionally wiping his eyes. He went to the bathroom and she heard a tap running. At last, after what seemed like a long time, he returned, eyes swollen, and poured them each another glass of wine. Then he sat down beside her.

  ‘You all right?’ she asked.

  The rim of the glass clinked against his bottom teeth as he took another swig of his drink. ‘My momma used to do the same thing. Every single night.’

  She wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about. The wine? Some southern ritual he would soon explain to her?

  ‘Yeah, every night,’ he added. ‘There on the front porch. She’d show me Mars. Sirius . . . The North Star.’

  He paused and sipped his drink again, still staring out the window at stars. She wanted to ask him a hundred questions but sensed she should keep quiet.

  ‘One night,’ he continued, ‘she stood up and started drawing the outline
of the Big Dipper with her finger. Right when she reached the top of the curve she began kinda choking and doubled over.’

  Pearl could hear his breath faltering again. She put one hand on his. ‘Hell, I ran to the neighbour’s house,’ he choked, ‘but by the time the doctor came—’

  He bowed his head and took a deep breath. She squeezed his hand and realised that she, too, was blinking back tears. ‘How old?’

  She felt a shudder move through him. ‘Heart attack,’ he murmured. ‘Thirty-eight. Goddamn heart attack.’

  He put his glass on the floor and lay down, turning his back to her. At once, Pearl wanted to hold him tightly, to rinse away his grief, but since she’d never experienced the death of anyone—let alone a parent—she was unsure about how to comfort James or if, indeed, he wanted sympathy at all.

  Eventually, he slid down and fell asleep against the pillows, still dressed in his uniform. She rested beside him, gazing at his long eyelashes, his childlike pout, the silver trace of a tear on his cheek, the rise and fall of his chest. All at once she could see in him the grief-stricken young boy still pining for his mother, the tough yet vulnerable teenager, and the determined, almost hardened musician who would not let anything or anyone get in his way. And as she watched him sleep, she realised she’d fallen in love, hopelessly in love, with a man she adored but did not know.

  6

  One Saturday night, during their last break at the Trocadero, before the final set of the evening, Pearl—flushed with love—confided in Nora Barnes. They were standing in front of the soda fountain, watching the eighteen-piece men’s band playing on stage, when Pearl, sipping from a flask of brandy, and feeling a little tipsy, declared, ‘I love him more than anything. Or anyone.’ She passed the flask to Nora. ‘I just don’t know if we’ve got a future together.’

  Nora swigged from the flask. ‘But he loves you, too. Doesn’t he?’ She passed back the flask and Pearl, contemplating her answer, took another gulp.

  ‘He loves living together at night,’ she said. ‘In the mansion. For sure.’ Her head was spinning and the music suddenly seemed louder and closer. ‘But out in public—I don’t know—he seems like another person. Quieter, you know? He kind of pretends we’re not together.’

  ‘Ahh, come on, Pearly,’ said Nora. ‘He’s in a strange country. With strange customs.’ Nora seized the flask, and drained it. ‘And he’s going out with a strange Australian girl—with an even stranger best friend!’ Nora let out a loud burp and Pearl, in spite of herself, burst into laughter.

  Her brother, though, was not so warm and sympathetic. Roma had suddenly packed her bags and fled back to Dubbo, leaving behind a depressed and increasingly drunk Martin, who refused to discuss her sudden departure with anyone. According to James, the rumour going around the Booker T. Washington Club was that Roma had fallen pregnant, but when Pearl asked Martin about it he was adamant that the stories were all bullshit.

  As if this weren’t enough for him to deal with, the week before, Martin had received government papers instructing him to register for a daytime Manpower job. Now he was working in a factory forty hours a week while still playing at the Trocadero every night.

  While they lingered by the soda fountain waiting to play their last set, a bus boy rushed up and handed Pearl a note. She unfolded it: Front doors. Emergency!

  Nora stuffed the flask back into her cleavage and they both strode through the crowd, weaving between tables, to the foyer. Nora, quite tipsy by now, was a little unsteady on her feet. They had to hurry because the men were playing their last tune for the set—‘Airmail Special’—and soon the stage would begin to revolve. As the men slowly slid away to the right, the girls’ band would circle into the ballroom from the left, as if they were all on some musical carousel. Lionel Bogwald, the English conductor, was a strict taskmaster, and any band member—man or woman—who was not in their seat backstage by the time the stage began its revolution would be sacked immediately.

  On the front steps they discovered Pookie, the doorman, arguing with a tall American soldier. ‘I’m sorry, mate,’ he was saying, ‘but those are the rules.’ He was a rotund man in his thirties, slightly balding, wearing a scarlet uniform and a gold-braided cap.

  Pearl, still holding the message, brushed against the tall American from behind and, when she looked up, was startled to see a frowning James, who rested one hand on her shoulder and declared, ‘See? I’m with her.’

  Pookie stared at Pearl with a mixture of puzzlement and horror. Pearl sighed. She and James had arranged to meet a little later, after her last set.

  She nodded at Pookie. ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘He’s with me.’

  Pookie glanced between the two of them and shrugged. ‘Nothing to do with me. All I know is that we’re not allowed to let coloured folks in. That’s the law.’

  ‘Ooooh, come on, Pookie!’ said Nora. She pulled the flask from her cleavage, flipped the cap, and offered him a drink. The doorman’s eyes lit up and he looked nervously from side to side. He clearly wanted a sip from Nora’s flask, but that, too, was against the rules. He shook his head.

  ‘He can sit in a corner.’ Nora grabbed his coat sleeve and tugged on it playfully. ‘No one’ll see him.’

  The doorman was blushing by now and found it hard to look at Nora directly. Instead, he addressed Pearl. ‘If I let him in, I’ll get the sack.’

  James shrugged and murmured something about leaving, but Nora was drunk and determined. Throwing her arms around the doorman she kissed him so deeply he nearly fell backwards. When they finally pulled away from one another, the doorman’s face was as red and swollen as a boiled beetroot. But then a smile spread across his face and he declared, ‘Your mate still can’t get in, but whaddya say I buy youse all a drink after the show?’

  Pearl hardly ever bathed anymore; she liked walking around with the smell of James on her skin. Love-struck Nora had given her the idea: she and Pookie had quickly fallen for one another and now Nora was turning up for work smelling of her beau’s spicy aftershave. To Pearl’s surprise, mere weeks after Nora and Pookie had started dating, Nora announced that the two of them were resigning from the Trocadero. It turned out that Pookie, whose father had died recently, had just inherited a large property in the Blue Mountains, and the two of them were moving up there to live.

  When Pearl wasn’t playing at the Troc or sneaking about with James, she stayed down in the basement, practising what he’d taught her. Swing rhythms rose through the house like a tide and the constant repetition of the same phrases over and over drove her mother and father wild with frustration. It would have driven Martin mad, too, but these days he was rarely home.

  Gradually, her tone improved and, after weeks of her pestering him, James agreed to teach her about harmonics and improvisation.

  ‘But we need a piano,’ he said.

  There was a piano at her house, but Pearl knew he’d refuse to go back there again. She thought for a few moments, then led him out of their usual spot near the rose garden, through the gates, and into the Conservatorium of Music, where she’d studied as a child. They prowled the corridors until they found an empty rehearsal room on the second floor. James sat at the piano and began playing a set of chord changes on a tune that she recognised as ‘Cherokee’. When he told her to play along, she lifted the alto to her lips and joined in. She’d played this tune many times at the Troc, and when he nodded at her to take a solo, she blew the melody with the minor ornaments and embellishments she’d memorised, note for note, from a Johnny Hodges record. At the end of the chorus he waved at her to stop.

  She asked him if her tone was too thin, but he merely frowned. Had her tempo been dragging, then? He snorted and shook his head.

  ‘Pitch is off?’

  James sighed and swung himself around on the stool to face the piano. ‘Okay, just listen to this.’

  He began playing the tune again. She stood by the piano and watched the ballet of fingers across the keys. After the second chorus, wit
h every chord, his right hand began improvising up and down the piano in a way that seemed as if he were constantly veering away from the key of B flat, but somehow remaining just within it. Occasionally, she recognised phrases and arpeggios repeating or inverting themselves in slightly different keys until, just when the whole harmonic scaffolding threatened to collapse beneath his fingers, he miraculously slipped back into the chorus without playing a bum note or missing a beat.

  ‘How’d you do that?’ She laid one hand on his shoulder, as if the answer could be transmitted magically through his skin, his army shirt, and into her.

  James explained that every time she played a solo, she played it exactly the same way.

  She frowned, not comprehending what he was getting at.

  ‘You gotta learn how to improvise,’ he said. ‘Take risks. Ain’t no risk playing the same lines over and over every time with a few embellishments. You remind me of some old guy who gets up every day and walks exactly the same way to work that he’s been walking for forty years, head down, never seeing or hearing anything new. You wanna be like that all your life?’

  Pearl, embarrassed, insisted that she tried new things all the time.

  He fixed her with a hard stare. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like . . . like you.’

  ‘I ain’t a melody, Pearl.’

  ‘No, but you’re a risk.’

  He slid around on the stool. ‘What kind of risk?’

  She paced the length of the room and turned. ‘Well, if I’m some bloke walking the same old path to work every morning, what do you make of a man who can’t even hold his girlfriend’s hand as they walk down the street? You talk about taking risks. About being adventurous . . .’ She knew she was going too far, but she couldn’t stop herself.