Trumpet (15 page)

The place down there: it forces him to witness his own death. He watches open-mouthed the card he’s going to be dealt. He watches himself in flashback. He’s a small girl skipping along an old disused railway line in a red dress, carrying a bunch of railway flowers for her mother. He goes further back till he’s neck in neck with his own birth. There’s the midwife, Kathleen. (His mother always said he was either going to be Kathleen or Josephine.) Kathleen, with her big thick midwife’s hands. The hands of a butcher. Fleshy and too soft. Kathleen pulling the slippery powdery, slimy baby out and up in the air. The cord wound right round. Right round the baby’s neck Kathleen has to unhook the wee girl first before she can cut the cord. ‘A lucky, lucky girl,’ she says to the mother. He gulps on the trumpet. The music has no breath, no air. Small ghost notes sob from his trumpet. Down there at the bottom he can see himself when he was a tiny baby, blue in the face. The trumpet takes him back to the blue birth. In the music at the bottom the cord starts to swing. It swings round and round and up and down until he slices it, cuts the cord and watches the cord slither into a bucket. Looks just like a perm of snakes. The drums start to hiss. His trumpet plays gutbucket. Kathleen scrubs the baby hard and hands the wee black girl to her mother. He turns away, still playing, pulling out the past or the future, looking at the faces. What the fuck are those faces
doing in the music? The mother licks her baby. He licks his trumpet.

The face of his own undertaker scares him the most. Albert Holding. He is wearing a brass sign round his neck. Death hath ten thousand several doors for men to take their exit. He leans out of the music and calls out, ‘See you later.’ When he is in the groove he can see Holding’s long fingers unbuttoning a shirt, his shirt. Unwrapping him. Holding’s hands are cool. His breath hot. His fingers are tough at the edges. He can see him bent over the table he will lie on. Cold, soft, bare. He can see the pine drape. The pad of stiffs. The other unlucky bastards that have quit it at exactly the same time as him. It’s strange to share a birthday, but it’s even stranger to share a deathday. There they all are, his stiff comrades inside their coffins. He can see right through the pine. Snuffed it. All at exactly the same time. This is their meet. One last jam. Dead meat.

The picture changes with the light. He can taste himself transforming. Running changes. The body changes shape. From girl to young woman to young man to old man to old woman. The old woman sits up on the cold table and looks straight into his eyes. She says, ‘Who are you kidding?’ He watches the flame eat the body up. He is an ear man. He can play it all by ear. He is bending the ears of everyone in the bar.

When he starts to come back from the small black point, he finds himself running along the old railway line that his mother never trusted although there were never any trains. Running along he realizes his mother was right
never to trust that track. The trains hurtle alongside him, whistling and steaming. People who fall off the train are met or unmet, loved or not loved. The train charges through the flame. Alongside the track, the yellow railway flowers are in full bloom. He finds himself standing on a stage clapping, standing on the one spot, clapping the blur. He spots Millie and the whole club sharpens. A nose. A laughing face. A clapping hand. A bright red silk scarf.

There is music in his blood.

Stomping, stamping, hooting, whistling, cheering. They want more of him. ‘Talk to me!’ they shout. Talk to me!’ ‘Gone yourself!’ They want more blood. He dives back down again. He has barely come out. When he plays his trumpet, his left leg is uncontrollable. It bends and cracks like a tree in the wind. His foot going out and coming in. His eyes shut tight to keep out the light. He is the music. The blood dreaming. The long slow ache. All the light is in the music – soaring, flying. The trumpet gets him off, takes him up or down. He could float. He could fly. He swings with his cats in the dim light. There is no level ground. He feels himself going down; he feels one of his cats going down too. He can go all the way to the bottomless ground. There’s the sensation of falling without ever stopping. Each time like dying. His number up. Each time he returns to the faces, intent, peering down at his grave, throwing mud on his face, showering him with blooms.

The trip shakes him up. It is painful. But there is nothing like that pain. That pain is the sweetest, most
beautiful pain in the world. Better than sex. Soar or shuffle along, wing or glide, trudge or gallop, kicking out, mugging heavy, light, licking, breaking, screw-balling. Out of this world. He could be the fourth horseman, the messenger, the sender. He could be the ferryman. The migrant. The dispossessed. He can’t stop himself changing. Running changes. Changes running. He is changing all the time. It all falls off – bandages, braces, cufflinks, watches, hair grease, suits, buttons, ties. He is himself again, years ago, skipping along the railway line with a long cord his mother had made into a rope. In a red dress. It is liberating. To be a girl. To be a man.

The music is his blood. His cells. But the odd bit is that down at the bottom, the blood doesn’t matter after all. None of the particulars count for much. True, they are instrumental in getting him down there in the first place, but after that they become incidental. All his self collapses – his idiosyncracies, his personality, his ego, his sexuality, even, finally, his memory. All of it falls away like layers of skin unwrapping. He unwraps himself with his trumpet. Down at the bottom, face to face with the fact that he is nobody. The more he can be nobody the more he can play that horn. Playing the horn is not about being somebody coming from something. It is about being nobody coming from nothing. The horn ruthlessly strips him bare till he ends up with no body, no past, nothing.

If it wasn’t for his horn he would be dead and gone. Years ago. Dead in his spirit and still living. It doesn’t matter a damn he is somebody he is not. None of it matters. The suit is just the suit the body holds. The body
needs the suit to wear the horn. Only the music knows everything. Only the dark sweet heart of the music. Only he who knew who he was, who he had been, could let it all go. The sender would shout a word and he would go. The word could be ‘baby’ or ‘cooking’ or ‘take it’.

So when he takes off he is the whole century galloping to its close. The wide moors. The big mouth. Scotland. Africa. Slavery. Freedom. He is a girl. A man. Everything, nothing. He is sickness, health. The sun. The moon. Black, white. Nothing weighs him down. Not the past or the future. He hangs on to the high C and then he lets go. Screams. Lets it go. Bends his notes and bends his body. His whole body is bent over double. His trumpet pointing down at the floor then up at the sky. He plays another high C. He holds on. He just keeps blowing. He is blowing his story. His story is blowing in the wind. He lets it rip. He tears himself apart. He explodes. Then he brings himself back. Slowly, slowly, piecing himself together.

Since his father died, Colman has not seen any of his friends. He has cut himself off from them, cast himself adrift. Brady, Michael, Lucas, Sammy. Sammy is the most persistent. Leaves loads of messages on his machine; has been to his flat and pounded on the door. Colman can’t face him. He’s known Sammy the longest and Sammy knew his father well. Sammy will be gobsmacked.

For a year before his father died, Colman had been working as a courier on a motorbike. He liked it, wearing his big helmet. People made way for helmeted guys like himself. He could see them, but they couldn’t see him. It was like having a disguise. He could hide his laugh behind his visor. He liked the big leather gloves, the tall black boots, and the rest of the gear. It wasn’t the kind of gear he was used to wearing. It made him bigger. His presence loomed in the mirror in his hall. Nobody messed with him. People found him frightening. He found himself frightening. He could jump queues and nobody would challenge him. He could dart in and out of the traffic doing the fingers up to any of the stupid fuckers out there who didn’t realize they had a wing mirror. He’d whizz past them swearing and pointing first to their mirror and
second to his helmet to let them know how stupid he thought they were.

When he was a courier, he felt liberated. Like he could suddenly act the part of the biker and nobody would know any better. Everybody hates bikers. He could just put the gear on and join the clan and nod at other bikers on the road. When he stopped to get a bacon roll, people would instinctively let him go in front of them. It was quite a discovery. Actually the rest of the couriers were just mild men like himself, but nobody let on. When he stopped to deliver a package and get a signature on his board, the signature was always written in a hurry and the door closed before he revved up and screamed away. He was always in a fucking hurry. You had to move fast to make any money. The money was crap actually. The bosses didn’t seem to realize they were working in a totally constipated city. People used to get around faster in London in the days of the fucking horse and carriage. You couldn’t even fart in Piccadilly.

The day after Colman saw his father in the funeral parlour, he went in to work. He thought it would keep him sane. He told the boss that his father had died and he said, ‘Sorry to hear that,’ and continued with what he was doing. So Colman just walked out. It made him angry. He felt angry at every fucker. He didn’t like any of the other couriers anyway. They could all go to fuck.

A new name and a new job, that’s what he’d like. A new start in life. The thought of carrying the name Moody around with him for the rest of his life is no joke. Maybe he should change back to his original name. What would
William Dunsmore do for a living? Insurance? Insurance against shit happening. A doctor? A doctor who would specialize in – what? Plastic surgery? Sex changes? Hormones? Christ. Where is this coming from. Is it coming from him? Is he spinning out or what? His brain is mince. William Dunsmore. William Dunsmore. He would do something plain and ordinary with no element of risk in it. What job has no risk at all? He can’t think. He just can’t think. Fucking forget William Dunsmore. He won’t fucking come to life.

Colman Moody is convinced he has started to grow backwards. He is watching
Star Trek
, the new one, even though some bald bastard has taken over the Enterprise. He is eating cornflakes, at least ten bowls a day. He is reading the
Beano
. He’s got out his old copies of
Oor Wullie
and
The Broons. The Broons
upset him so he stops reading them. They remind him of his father. How his father liked them all to have Scottish things, daft naff Scottish things to keep them in touch. Every time they went to Torr they returned with packets of tattie scones, slices of square sausage, bottles of Barrs irn bru. Shortbread. Black bun.

He gets up and pours himself a very large Jack Daniels. It’s a night for the box, he can’t handle anything else. It’s knackering talking to that Sophie Stones about his father’s life. Half the time he imagines his mother sitting in the corner of that hotel room just staring at him, just fucking staring at him. It gives him the creeps. Today, for a minute, his father even put in an appearance. The worst of it all was he was smiling, smiling at Colman
as if he didn’t have a care in the world. It made him waver a bit. But then he thought of the money.

He gulps down his whisky. Jack Daniels. You are a traitor, he tells himself, drinking JD instead of a good Scottish malt. There is a crap murder on the box. Just the business. He settles himself down, knocking back his drink and pouring another one. He imagines lifting Sophie Stones onto the desk in the office he has not seen. He pulls down the zip of his jeans. He gets it out. He runs his finger up the crack of her arse. This is what she’ll like. All tabloid hacks must like it. Fucks full of cruelty and sleaze. He mutters filth into her ear. Moves it slowly back and forth. His cock seems bigger since his father died. Bigger and harder. He has a slow smile on his face. He’s shoving it right up her, swearing at her. He pulls at his balls, grasping them and then pulls his cock faster till he lets it out, swearing to himself, ah fuck, fuck, fuck, till it is everywhere, too much of it, too much. How many kids could he make with that? A fucking population. He could make a whole generation with that. There’s more come too since his father died. That’s weird, but it’s definitely true. He’s losing it. He gets up and gets some toilet paper, wipes himself down, doesn’t do up his zip, and sits watching the rest of the murder with his Jack Daniels in his hand.

He’s meeting her this morning. She wants the letter. He puts it in the front pouch of his bag and pulls the zip. His father’s handwriting startles him each time he gets
the letter out to look at it. He gets dressed: loose baggy top and baggy trousers made in America. Pulls on his white sports socks and his big trainers. He is particular about the way he does his laces. He does not tie a knot, but tucks them in at the side of the tongue, so that they look done and undone. He pulls at the fat tongue till it sticks out properly. He looks in the mirror. Shaves thoughtfully and dabs some of his aftershave on. He finds his place very silent at the moment, unsettling. Why is it so quiet? No music, that’s it. Since his father died, he’s stopped playing music. He didn’t even realize it until now. He can’t wait to get out. Get the fuck out, he says to himself, patting his hair into shape. Get out, you asshole. He smiles at himself. Women tell him he is handsome. But he was not a handsome boy. His glasses spoiled it. He was the last one to get a girlfriend in his class. He still can’t see himself as handsome, but everyone tells him. Sophie Stones will be after him. He will have to be careful. It’s been a long time since he got his rocks off.

Sophie Stones is armed with tape recorder and notepad and fancy fountain pen. ‘Let’s write down our objectives vis-à-vis going to Glasgow,’ she says, scribbling as she speaks. Colman looks at her blankly. (She has a great weakness for the word
objectives
. As soon as she says it she can start writing, but not before.) ‘Right,’ she says, happily. ‘Objectives. What are our objectives? Well, for starters’ (she writes number one) ‘to find out about Joss
Moody/Josephine Moore’s childhood. What else, what else? Let’s see.’