Trumpet (16 page)

(She writes number two.) To collect any information from any source – old friends, relatives, school.’

‘OK. OK.’

(She’s on a roll now.) ‘Number three!’ (She practically shouts.) ‘To do detailed interviews with the people who knew him/her well.’

Colman interrupts. ‘Don’t bother with this him/her bullshit. That’s bollocks, man. Just say him.’

‘But it’s important that we remember that “he” was a “she” first.’

‘Tell me about it! I’m not fucking forgetting, am I?’

‘Four.’ (A bit deflated.) ‘Describe the house he grew up in.

‘Five. Get the birth certificate.

‘Six. Get all old photos, records, letters, etc.

‘Seven. Trace all living relatives. Get their reaction.’

‘There are no living relatives. What are you talking about?’

Sophie Stones smiles a very small smile into her sleeve.

Colman hadn’t reckoned on any of this. He thought he’d follow his own nose, let one thing lead to another, naturally. But this is more like fucking Operation Transvestite. He hears Sophie saying somewhere in the background, ‘So, I am going to accompany you.’ Shit. ‘Separate rooms of course,’ Sophie says, and pats his leg. He gets a hard-on and feels suddenly embarrassed. Feels himself scrambling around, knowing things aren’t quite right, wishing he had another brain. A sharp brain that could
lay out a different plan. Just like that. All he says is, ‘Did I invite
you
?’ to see if that bothers her, but it doesn’t. ‘No,’ she smiles, ‘but I’m coming. You can’t do without me. Nobody can. You need a journalist’s special powers. People don’t talk any more without this.’ She rubs her thumb obscenely against her fingers. ‘And besides,’ she says, ‘I’ve discovered that Joss Moody’s mother is still alive.’

Some guys said Moody had a baby face, but the drummer didn’t think so. Big Red McCall beat up anybody who came out with those things. One time he caught a guy saying, ‘There’s something strange about that Moody,’ in the Wee Jazz Club not long after they split with the Witnessers and made out on their own as the Boogie Woogie Moody Men. McCall never let anyone get away with anything. McCall was six foot two and weighed twenty-two stone. He cornered the guy, poked him hard with his fat fingers. Who, jab, are, jab, you, jab, calling, jab, strange? The guy stood his ground – ‘Moody’s voice is high like a woman’s,’ McCall knocked him down. He had one of those tempers where he literally saw Red. The minute after he knocked someone down, he’d help him up, spit on his hands and dust down his jacket. ‘Sorry, but I had to do that. It was fucking crucial.’ Then he gave his famous short snorting laugh, which sounded like a pig fucking, went to the bar and growled, Two Scotch on the rocks, please. Moody took his whisky grinning like a man. Big Red winked and said, ‘Canny staund assholes. I’ve no patience for them. Did you see the face on it when I walloped him?’

Big Red’s temper earned him his nickname. He was proud of it. Ever since he was a boy he’s been graffitied with nicknames. ‘Big Man’ at three, his nervous granny set that one rolling. ‘Brassneck’ at around six, after he asked Sandra MacGregor to kiss him and she said loud enough for the whole street to hear, ‘You’ve got a brass-neck, Malcolm McCall.’ ‘Poacher’ at twelve when he was poaching with his great uncle Tummock. ‘Bunk’ for a long time because he was always bunking off school. ‘Malki’ until he was nineteen till when he took up the drums. Malcolm McCall was his proper name, but he’d never answered to it all his life. Who was it who first called him Big Red? He can’t remember. But Big Red spread quicker than wildfire, quicker than blood on a barroom floor.

Big Red was his favourite because he believed in communism and had a red hot temper. Nicknames were magic; they let people know what they were in for. Big Red was all for them. When he was wee, only the unpopular swots were not granted the gift of a nickname. The wee pains in the ass. Some of those clever bastards would skulk into smokers’ corner and make a nickname up for themselves! Then they’d find some sly way of forcing the nickname to catch alight. But it never did. It always spluttered out like the damp match that it was. The boys who were called David, Peter, Walter and John tried to metamorphosize into Mince, Spider, Peanuts and Crow only to find themselves chucked back onto the slagheap of their dull names. Nothing they could do about it. You had to be in the running to be crowned with a
nickname. You had to have a bit of what it takes. Yes. You had to have a bit of this. Panache. You couldn’t try it on if you were just a wee nyaff. Or you had to be so slick your own name sounded too cool for anybody to ever want to change it. Imagine being born with a name like Miles Davis. You’ve already got it made. If you had a name like Miles Davis maybe, you already sounded like you were driving a Mercedes. No need to tamper wey a name like that. Miles Davis. Charlie Mingus. Joss Moody.

Big Red first met Moody when the drummer of the Witnessers took food poisoning. One of his pals asked him to stand in and he did. He went up to Moody and asked him straight, ‘What kind of rhythm shall I play for you?’ From that day on Moody and him were tight as fists. McCall could drum the same rhythm every night. He had total recall for what he’d done before. Moody was private with his trumpet and McCall was extrovert with his drums. They were a great team. McCall’s showmanship was hilarious. He made more verbal asides than a character in a Shakespeare play. He always played with this huge powderpuff for his armpits. He dressed in loud green chalk-striped suits and bright ties. He could roll those drums like thunder. When they started to make records together Joss joked that he would knock the needle off the wax. McCall felt he had a calling for the drums. They were his babies. The big bang and the wee tom-toms. He got them all to practise drumnastics until he got so out of hand Moody told him to cool down or split. He was in danger of nabbing the limelight.

McCall loved nothing better than a wee jam with
Moody. A wee practice. Just the two of them. Blowing room. They’d doodle and noodle and smear. They’d make the odd clinker. It seemed, to Big Red, that they understood each other perfectly like bad twins. There have been more times than Moody was aware of, when Big Red McCall rushed to his defence. Big Red McCall was not the least bit interested in private life. He was no gatemouth. He had never clyped in his life. Some blokes liked to blether and gossip but McCall wasn’t one of them. He accepted Moody had a bit of a squeaky voice. Big deal. Lots of people squeak. As for baby face, millions of jazz men have baby faces. Look at Baby Dodds, Baby Mack, Baby Riley. The jazz world is full of big pudding faces, cheeks like cheese puffs. A man with a baby face could send you to town. A man with a baby face could have you away ta ta on a big raft sailing for an island you’ve never heard of. Big reefs. Rocks the size of drums. Trees playing trombones. Big Red McCall and Joss Moody together had people reeling and begging for more. The claps they got! They weren’t normal appreciation. They were fucking desperate. Jazz was their fix. Jazz was in the veins.

Most of Big Red’s mornings are hangover mornings and all of his friends, acquaintances and fellow bums know better than to ring him before three o’clock. So when the phone goes, when the phone rings and fucking rings and rings, Big Red already knows it is something not nice. And sure enough, right on the end of his line, dangling, is a woman by the name of Sophie Stones. Big Red’s hangover is throbbing enough to make him want to dress to twelve Bessie Smith numbers. He isn’t feeling well.
He isn’t feeling well at all. Non communicado. She says to him, ‘You were Joss Moody’s drummer, weren’t you?’ Big Red said, ‘Aye, what’s it to you? Who is asking?’ The sleek voice comes down the line. ‘My name is Sophie Stones, I work on the
Daily Sky
.’ Big Red is almost ready to hang up. He loathes the capitalist press. What a bunch of weak-willed unintelligent bastards they all were. But he hangs on, out of curiosity.

‘I’m writing a book about the amazing fact that Joss Moody turned out to be a woman,’ she says. ‘Were you aware—?’

He interrupts her, ‘Nope. And you should concern yourself with the music. The guy’s a genius.’

‘Don’t you mean the girl’s a genius?’ Sophie says.

‘Whatever. Christ, do you think I’m bothered? Do you think anybody’s bothered? It’s the fucking music that matters.’ He hears her drawing her breath.

‘But did you know before the funeral?’

‘Nope.’

‘So you must have got quite a shock? Come on. This is somebody you toured with for ten years. How come you didn’t suspect?’

‘A lot of people said Moody had a baby face,’ Big Red says, ‘but I didn’t think so. I beat up anybody who said that.’

‘Can you tell me what Moody did when the rest of you were in urinals?’

‘Women think that men spend all their time gawking at the size of each other’s pricks in the bogs. I’ve more to do than watch men pish.’

‘But that’s just it,’ Sophie says triumphantly, ‘Moody never “pished” in front of you, did he? Did you never notice, touring together like you did?’

‘We were in jazz clubs. We were musicians. We werenie interested in wur wee-wees.’

‘But, come on,’ Sophie says again.

‘Naw, you come on. Away and write yir stupit book. It won’t tell us anything aboot Moody. If you want my advice, you’ll drop it. It ull only upset his family. Anyway, I’m having nothing to do with it. It’s not on.’

Sophie says, ‘We will of course be paying a handsome fee.’

Big Red pulls himself up to his full height in his hall. ‘Are you trying to bribe me? Away and raffle yourself.’ Big Red slams his phone down and goes back to bed. His head is still sizzling and his temples are singing songs. ‘Christ almighty,’ he says to himself, ‘I’m strung oot. Rattling.’ He pulls the covers over his head and mutters to himself, ‘Stupit fucking cow,’ before giving himself up to sleep.

In his dream Moody is there with his shining trumpet. He walks towards him and he says, ‘You’ve heard I’m dead, Big Red.’ In his dream, he hears himself tell Moody, ‘Yes, I’ve heard the news. Every fucker is talking about you. The jazz world is going fucking mental. You won’t believe how much you’re missed.’ Moody says, ‘Is that so?’ Big Red can’t help but notice that dead Moody is the same as live Moody. Big Red reaches out for Moody’s arm. He is about to say, ‘You bastard, I still can’t believe you did it,’ but Moody starts walking backwards through the
club’s doors. They are in a big bright yellow field. Big Red is running after Moody. Moody is fit and Big Red is not. He sweats and runs. Must lose some weight, he thinks. Finally he shouts ahead to Moody, ‘I still can’t believe you did it.’ Moody shouts back, ‘Did what?’ Big Red shouts, ‘Died on me, you fucking bastard!’ In his dream, Moody’s face lights up. ‘Oh that,’ he says. ‘That. You had that coming. You needed to be the bandleader.’ Moody starts to run. In his dream he is the same age that he was when they first met. ‘Was it me?’ Big Red shouts after the running figure in the yellow field. ‘Did I do something?’ Moody turns and shouts, ‘Don’t be soft, McCall. You knew all along!’

McCall wakes, clacking his tongue to the roof of his mouth, wondering what the fuck Moody died of. He can’t remember. With all the hullabaloo, he’s just plain forgotten. Was it kidney problems? Fuck me, Big Red thinks to himself. I don’t fucking know what claimed him. Big Red lies awake in bed, trying to remember deadly illnesses. AIDs, naw, cancer, don’t think so, diabetes, naw, emphysema, no. Glandular fever. Hepatitis. Irritable bowel syndrome. (Can you die of that?) Jaundice. Kidney failure. Liver failure. Meningitis. Narcotics. Osteoporosis. Parkinson’s disease. (Hadn’t Moody been shaking strangely the last time he saw him?) Quadriplegia. Rheumatic fever. Salmonella. Tuberculosis. An ulcer, one of them exploding ones. A deadly virus. White cells. Yellow fever. (Where was the last place they’d been?) Z? Z? What the fuck begins with Z? Big Red has exhausted himself. Maybe he just died in his sleep; maybe that was it – zzzzzzz.

It’s bugging him. He can’t come up with it. He can hardly ring Millie and ask her. Maybe it’ll come back to him. The last time he saw Moody he was looking a bit jaded, but no’ bad. Just tired. He didn’t look like he was dying. If Big Red had realized he would have said different things. He would have handled it differently. It’s awful when you get deprived of a last word. There was Moody going to his grave with most people none the wiser. If he’d known, if he’d been able to tell him, ‘Look, Moody, don’t worry about me because I don’t give a fuck.’ Moody was just the same in Big Red’s head, except Moody was dead. That was the fucking awful thing. Moody was dead. No more Moody Trumpet. No more scooping pitch. No screaming. No hubba hubba. He seemed like he would just go on playing the trumpet till he dropped. Dropsy? Give in. Big Red punches his fist into the pillow saying to himself over and over, ‘I can’t get fucking comfortable.’ He dents and winds and batters the fuck out of his useless pillow until he tastes salt on his lips. It’s been years since he had a cry. At first he can’t believe those are tears sliding down his face. Then the sound comes out of his mouth and he knows. Once it starts it goes on for ages. After a bit McCall gets into it. Just fucking cry, he thinks to himself. ‘Go on, you stupit bastard, you big fat wean, cry your eyeballs out their sockets.’ He doesn’t get a hanky. He lets the snot run down his face till he has to wipe it with the back of his big hand.

Her hand on the envelope. Third letter. Being blackmailed must feel like this. The sight of Stone’s white envelope makes me sink, as if the floor of my house has turned to marshland for a moment. Her handwriting now has a terrible familiarity; I don’t want to recognize it instantly, but I do – the big childish letters, the pretentious ‘e’s’ and ‘a’s.’ She uses a fountain pen evidently.
Mrs Millicent Moody, 10 Sandy Road, Torr, Kepper
. I hold it in my hand gingerly as if it smells. I open it slowly as if it might explode. This time she says I should reply to Glasgow. She says Colman and her are going to Scotland together to write the book. She says they are working together. Will I cooperate? I notice my hand holding the letter. It is an old woman’s hand. I shall keep this one. I can’t keep burning them. I want the evidence now. I want people to know some day that this is what has been done to me. It is like torture. I don’t know who I could trust. I don’t know whose advice to ask. There must have been somebody in that life of ours who would know how to handle this. I can’t think of anybody. I’ve forgotten them all, suddenly.