Trumpet (25 page)

I must get back with my spoils.

Back in room 308, I try them all on again. Round 2. They look different here in the mirrors of the hotel room. I stand on the bed and unbutton my red silk blouse slowly and start to touch myself looking in the mirror all the time. I try his number after I come. No reply. It is 7.30. What is he playing at? I run a bath. Pour two of the chubby little bubble baths in, get a decent lather going. Call room service for a G and T. Wait impatiently for the black suit and white shirt to arrive with it on a tiny tray. I get into the bath, G &T in one hand,
Hello
in the other. Bliss. He’ll be back soon. What is this? Is it The Book Sophie’s bothering about or is it Colman himself? The Mother is not likely to stay up late, is she? Don’t all old people go to bed ridiculously early? They must be catching up, I think, soaping myself, catching up with the past.

I try to act the part of actresses I’ve seen in foamy baths in the movies, but I can’t manage it. The water is irritating. I can’t relax. The bubbles are smothering. I jump out and rub myself viciously. The phone in the room isn’t flashing. I check my mobile to make sure it is turned on and the batteries haven’t run out. I gave him both numbers. Sophie can’t suffer not being rung. I need a flashing machine, a spewing fax, a blinking e-mail to
make me feel loved. Why hasn’t he phoned me? What the fuck is he playing at? Is he playing hard to get? If he is playing games, I can play too. Let him ring and I’ll tell him I’m having an early night.

It is 8.15. I’ve got my TV on. My hair is done. The gel is on. Blusher done. I sit back on the double bed in my room and flick through the channels on the remote control. Remote controls are wonderful. How did people watch TV before they had them? I like the quick pic, seeing something in a flash and moving on. This hotel has Sky and Cable. I stop at the chat show long enough to hear a mother tell how she stole her daughter’s boyfriend; on to
World in Action;
finally, I settle on the last bit of
EastEnders
. I feel like getting into bed, wrapping myself up in the duvet. But I don’t. I lie on top of the covers, fully clothed.

I wrapped two cream bandages around his breasts every morning, early. I wrapped them round and round, tight. I didn’t think about anything except doing it well. Doing it well meant wrapping tight. The tighter I wrapped, the flatter his breasts. That was all he was concerned about. He didn’t care if it was uncomfortable. It probably was a little. I don’t remember us saying anything whilst I did this. I don’t remember thinking much. I had to help him to get dressed so that he could enjoy his day and be comfortable.

I did it without thinking about it. He put a white T-shirt over the top. Over that another T-shirt. Over that, a buttoned shirt. He put on his boxer shorts and I turned away whilst he stuffed them with a pair of socks. He pulled on his trousers, constantly adjusting his shirts and the stuffing. He was always more comfortable once he was dressed. More secure somehow. My handsome tall man. He’d smile at me shyly. He’d say, ‘How do I look?’ And I’d say, ‘Perfect. You look perfect.’

I have some of his bandages here at Torr. I don’t know what to do with them. I can’t throw them away. I can’t
give away these bandages. I can’t burn them or bury them or throw them into the dustbin. They are in the top drawer of my chest of drawers here along with my white cotton underwear. They lie in there curled and sleeping like a small harmless animal. They smell of him still. They smell of his music; the peat smell of jazz. I have the bandages and I have his golden trumpet, his mouth pieces, his battered old box, his last flyer announcing his glorious return for a week at Ronnie Scott’s. These are the most personal things I have.

Once I slept with two bandages under my pillow. That was light years away, in the bizarre couple of days after his death. I don’t remember which days now. All days are the same day. I live the same day again and again and again and again.

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.

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.

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.