This part is going on the list of sections that need a substantial improvement in later versions, but it’ll do as a first draft. I hope it makes sense!
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PART 12
“I know who did it, I know why, I just don’t know where they are. ”
Sherman was thinking aloud as he and Janey strode tall, upright, down the winding alleys of the town’s western half. Lester followed, making sure to stay in their shadows, hide in the gloom. In his fantasies he wanted the lime light, but tonight he hid from its lamps. Janey could be trusted, he thought. She had, after all, told him so. Sherman, however, by Janey’s own admission, could not be trusted. But then, if Janey could not be trusted, she would be wrong about Sherman, and so he could be trusted. Either way, he could follow one of them, but not the other. It was just a question of which one, and both had betrayed his beloved mentor Gert.
“You’ve real out-done them tonight, Bralan. They’ll be waiting for you in the Hood, waiting to give you a wham bam knockout, and you’ll be waiting for them in the Moon, making that K.O. Right back.”
Bradley Alan mimed a kung-fu kick in no particular direction. “Pow!”
“So how do we do this?”
“First, tubas. Take out the big guns first. Tried and tested, that one. Next it’s the trumpets and the trombones, deadly combination, those lads. After that it’s pretty straightforward. Easy job. Might give it to you, Lester, if you stand quiet and shut up.”
“Sure, got you.” Janey adjusted the fingers of her gloves, making sure she packed a punch.
Lester didn’t ask. He didn’t really want to know. It was late, and he was missing his bed.
“Leopard got your tongue, Lester? Want to know what we’re up to tonight?”
There was no answer.
“Well, we’ve got to take out some bad guys, movie style. Kind of night you’ll be telling tall tales about in the Moon, when you’re old and stubbly. You got our backs, kid?”
Lester didn’t know whether he had their backs. He didn’t really know what that meant, after all. It was the kind of all-purpose agreement he felt most uneasy about. He might be agreeing to rob a bank, or refusing to give up a seat to an elderly person. Lester had, when little, been told off for failing to make way for an older person, and it had weighed on him ever since.
And, what’s more, he knew that Gert was facing a wham bam knockout, whatever that meant, and Lester was afraid. He considered running to his mentor, but knew he would be too late.
———————————-
You can usually tell a bad bar the moment you walk in. Everyone stops and stares. The Hood and Hangman wasn’t a bad bar in this sense. No-one stopped and stared at Gert when he walked in. No-one broke a bottle to greet him, no-one trod purposefully toward him with folded arms.
No-one greeted him. They were too busy stood in a circle, roaring at two shaven, shirtless men. One, a small, flabby man, stood stock still, hands clasped behind his back, as the other, a tall, leering lemur, front teeth protruding beyond his lips, thumped him hard in the belly. The crowd bellowed.
“Fourteen, fourteen!” they screamed, scoring the game. The lemur gingerly, almost daintily, lifted a shot from a low-lying wooden table. The shot looked steel-grey, foul, and the crowd, men and women alike, cackled as he dregged it to the ends.
Gert, finding his compass in the gloom and the dark, crept sideways, left of violence, voyeurs and viragos. Further left of him was pitch blackness, a corner hidden completely from the light. He proceeded warily, walking a tightrope between the mob and muffled, darkened giggles. Finally, wobbling and balancing, he found the bar.
“What will it be, sir?”
“Oh, I think I’ll have…”
“Well, seeing as it’s your first visit to our establishment, sir, might I suggest you try one of our house specials? Those gents over there” – he pointed to the small, tubby man, who was holding the lerrer in a headlock to roars of ‘seventeen!’ – “they’re sampling our Arsenic Vodka. Alternatively, you could delight your dentistry with our Lime Death Ale, or you could glam in the swank of New York with our Mercury Manhattan. Then there’s the Brain Crusher Brandy, so good you’ll never want to leave. Or be able to.”
“Any rum?”
“We’ve got Inferno Rum. It’s very hot.”
“Oh good, I like spicy things.”
“More flamey than spicy, actually. There’s a hint of tumeric in it, but our customers tend not to notice, what with all the burning insides.”
“A tip, laddie,” came a voice from Gert’s right, “if you’re a wee bit lightweight, get yourself a Lime Death Ale. Won’t actually hurt ye, it’s just a bit sour from all the gone-off limes.”
Gert nodded. “One Lime Death Ale please, and go easy on the death.”
“Right you are, sir.” The barman picked up a glass, an ale and five discoloured limes, laying them on the counter. He turned to fetch something from a cupboard.
“Aye, and while you’re paying, hand the barman me card. You’ll get fifty pence off.”
“Card?”
There was a smash of glass as the barman laid about Gert’s beer bottle with a hammer, letting the ale trickle into the drinking glass. Gert watched as the barman proceeded to whack the limes into the glass as well, sending juice flying everywhere.
“Ach, those limes,” complained the card-carrying customer, wiping sour fruit juice from his Liverpool football shirt. “But here’s the card. Hand it over,” he urged, “it won’t do anything to you. Just give you an extra fifty pence to spend on that rum of yours.”
Gert, hesitantly, handed the card over. “What do you get out of it?”
“It’s me loyalty card, pal. Loyalty card. Shows I’ve been loyal.”
“What, five Arsenic Vodkas and a half price Mercury Manhattan? Ten Brain Crusher Brandies, get the eleventh free?”
“No, laddie, it’s me loyalty. Every five times it’s not signed, I receive an unnecessary surgery.”
“Ugh.”
“Don’t want you to get a loyalty card yet. Not on your first visit.”
“How does everyone know it’s my first visit?”
“Outsiders survive best here. Not enemies yet, see? If no-one knifes you, you’re new, pal.”
He clapped Gert on the back. “Best get out of here quick, before they get to know ye.” He laughed and strode away, card triumphantly in hand.
Gert had no intention of being known. He took his Lime Death Ale from the bar, looking for a spare table, or any sign of being sought after. This is an awkward enough process in most bars. Gert was used to staring contests with total strangers, each trying to surmise what on earth the other was looking at them for. There was a different kind of awkwardness in the Hood.
Tables at the Hood ink-blotted the floorboards. There were two kinds of group: yelling, roaring, bawling, groaning gatherings, and hushed, conspiratorial whisperers, plotting some malevolence. The gloomy, jostling chamber didn’t do moderation. Two women were wrestling on the pool table, disputing a minor foul. On a tall precarious bar stool sat a shaking, long-faced young woman, quickly sharpening a pen knife. Behind her three hooded figures muttered urgently to one another. Gert was sure he heard the words ‘public funeral’ as he passed, but he couldn’t be sure. Clearly, there was no-one here waiting for him, or if there was, they didn’t want to be found.
Just when Gert had found an empty, half-broken bar stool to perch upon, he noticed, through the choking mist – violating the smoking ban, not that he cared – another blackened corner, just behind the death metal jukebox. The Hood clearly went in for dark corners, he thought. And as he peered in he noticed a subdued figure, with back turned towards him.
“Sit,” the figure commanded, “We don’t have much time.”
The voice was oddly familiar.
Gert trod towards the figure. There was a broken stool in the way, and he noticed the low hanging beams above. He ducked his head, and cramped his shoulders away from a candle holder on the wall, pulling the broken wood from his path, and the figure turned towards him.
The figure was certainly familiar.
————————————–
“Wait here. I just need to pop inside.”
The three had arrived at a small, unremarkable town house. Lester and Janey waited as Sherman dashed indoors.
“Janey, Gert… what, why?”
“Why have I sent him to the Hangman?”
“Yeah, who’s Sherman? How do you know him? What’s happening? Why, why… I don’t understand.”
“Hey kid, I can explain! I’ve not betrayed Gert. I need him. We need him. The town needs him. Hell, he’s important, Lester.
“We don’t have much time, but here’s the deal – Sherman’s a Hunter. He’s been hunting all his life, ever since he first went down the pit as a little one.”
“Hunter? What, like a fox hunter? A deer hunter? A…” he paused, scared for what he was about to say, “a man hunter?”
“No, kid, no, not a man hunter. He’s… well, you’ll see soon. None of those things. Not something you’ve heard of, unless your brain’s made of crazy pavings.
“But yeah, Bralan’s here for a bit, because he knows what to do. And Gert, well, this is way beyond Gert’s eyes. We need him, though, sure. Someone wants Bralan in the Hood and Hangman tonight, maybe for some chopping, maybe for some misleading, maybe for some storytelling, maybe just to be out the way. We have to know. If there’s some cat with a long tail of terror then we better hear it. If them villains want Bralan on a one-way highway then they’d better think he’s started on the road to nowhere. You see?”
“But you can’t just send Gert into danger like…”
“Oh yeah, we can. He ain’t a fighter, our Gert, and that’s why he can take it. If there’s danger you don’t want a fighter, you want a runner. And he’ll run from anything, that cat. Nine lives.
“He”l turn out just right, Lester, don’t you worry.”
“So you’re not betraying him.”
“No. I’m not betraying him. We’ve got a job to do.”
The front door opened as if it were skimming a stone. Sherman skipped out, long legs making the steps look small. He held a small fish and a long fishing rod.
“Got it.”
They had clambered a full twenty metres, Sherman almost skipping, Lester definitely scurrying, before Lester let his curiosity go.
“Are we going fishing?”
“No. I’m holding a fish. Why would we be going fishing if I’m holding a fish?”
Lester considered this for a moment.
“Why do you have a fish?”
“It’s a piano tuna.”
This didn’t really answer the question, or make any sense at all, so Sherman briefly paused his trot and turned to face Lester.
“Look, we’ve got to do some de-tuning, okay? And the rod’s to catch their tuna. Got it?”
Lester clearly hadn’t got it, whatever it was.
“Janey, did you even explain to him what’s going on?”
“Well, I started moving it all up, but you weren’t gone for long.”
There was a spot of anger in Sherman’s eye, but he quickly replaced it with his best television-presenter grin. “Oh, never mind. Let’s get on.”
And with that he continued at his former pace. They had nearly reached their destination, the grand old Moon On The Hill.
———————————-
“Gert!” Her eyes were wide in shock, making Gert feel deeply ashamed. “How, why….”
He sat down on the long bar-chair, feeling in the gloom lest there be some concealed weapon on his seat.
“I was expecting Mister Sherman! Are you… did he send you in his place?”
Her eyes were still as wide as they could go, and now creased slightly at their edges with the strain.
Gert rested against the back of his chair, lifting his glass to his nose. He knew how to deal with shame, and the solution generally involved alcohol. “This Lime Death Ale doesn’t really live up to its name, does it? The lime’s off, it isn’t very deadly, and it’s actually a lager.”
“Gert!”
“Sorry, Sadie. I just like my ales to be ales. I don’t have anything against lagers, but…”
“Gert! Why are you here?”
“Oh, I’m still investigating, see. My case, whatever that Northerner thinks. I’m a sly one,” he explained, tapping his nose, because noses and slyness are notorious partners in crime.
“But you weren’t investigating! You were drinking all the time. I waited as long as I could, just to see if you’d care, but you did nothing. I had to go to Sherman. There’s a man who can get things done around here.”
“Sherman couldn’t get anything done. He thinks he’s so big, with that suit and that smile and those big teeth, but he’s a wolf in wolf’s clothing, that one. Better tell me what you need to say.”
She thought for nights a moment. “All right. But Sherman had better hear it from you. I’m not telling it twice. My life’s in danger. I can’t spend my days chatting in pubs.”
“That’s exactly what I’d do if I was in danger. That is what I’m doing now my life’s in danger.”
“Quite. So, do you remember the story Maximilian told us at the Lady Luck?”
“About Abraham and his mate and the storm?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. Abe goes out to the sea, hit by a storm, lost his SatNav, gets home alive. Well, that’s not the whole story. Not one bit.”
“We all reckoned not. A friend who dies for carp. I like fish as much as the next landlubber, but not that much.”
“No, that bit was true. His friend really did like carp. But he liked something else too. Something…
“Look, you won’t tell anyone about this, will you?”
“You asked me to tell Sherman, now you ask me not to tell anyone? Your story’s not straight!” he shouted triumphantly, leaping to his feet. “That won’t stand up in a court of law!”
Gert would certainly stand up in a court of law. He enjoyed standing up.
“Gert, I’m a witness, not a suspect. You want my story to be straight.”
“Oh.” His joy fell to a minor chord. “In that case, carry on.”
“It’s just that if, if you tell anyone but Sherman… my life’s in danger. I can’t stress that enough. Actually, I shouldn’t be here, I should be gone. They can’t ever know I’m here.”
“Don’t go. You’re here now, they won’t trust you anyway.”
“Thanks Gert, really reassuring. Don’t become a diplomat.”
“I have no idea what that is.”
Sadie sighed. “Anyway, so, yeah, so Abe takes his ship out, but he isn’t trying to save the town, oh no. You see, Abraham… there wasn’t much to do back on the Irish coast, growing up. He had a lot of time on his hands. And he used to listen to the old songs. Not the old Irish folk songs, those are grand. Everyone should listen to those.”
“No, he listened to…” She turned her head round, looking for something, anything that might do her harm.
“He listened to all the old music hall songs.”
She paused, waiting for Gert to understand . He did not understand. He understood no more than Lester, across town, was understanding Janey.
“Music hall?”
“Yeah, music hall. Oh you don’t know, do you?” She thumped her hand on the table. It hurt. “This little town. It’s great and everything, but no-one knows anything about the outside world, the universe, the possibilities.
“Music hall. The damage it did. The pain it wrought. The needless suffering of millions. All the old worn-out common songs. Don’t you know your history? Clearly not,” she continued, seeing Gert’s big amused grin.
“You ever wondered why the British Empire grew so big? Music hall. All those mediocre entertainers. Took over the world they did, blared into every corner of the globe. A third of the world fell under its spell. These days they’d call it hypnosis. It wasn’t rational, wasn’t logical, whatever it was. Nobody likes music hall, nobody ever did. They just get sucked in, see? Britain’s army was small, but its power was great. And they piped those songs out all the time. Made a fortune on it, and suppressed the world.
“But one day, something changes. And that something is a kid from Texarkana. As a boy, he was under music hall’s spell, just like all the rest. He grows up loving variety theatre, comedy tunes, jingles of the imperial yoke. It’s a fine Texas morning in his teenage years. At least, it seemed a fine Texas morning. He’s out the back, whistling a tune, when there’s a light shower of rain, delicate and moss-thin, and it taps on the ground. Tap tap. Makes a melody, a fine melody, one so sweet and light, like the gentle tinkle of a piano.
“And over all that variety theatre, he hears the sound of falling rain. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard it too. Maybe you’ve been in a crowded, noisy hotel bar and you’ve stepped into the lobby for some light. Maybe the receptionist had some old-time classical piece on the radio, just all soft and sensual, soothing the tired moonlight, and all you ever wanted was peace. That’s how this young boy felt. And he wants to spread it, share it with the world.
“And he can share that sound, all right. The kid can play. His fingers whizz along those keys. He knows where to play, too. All the way up in Chicago, there’s a World’s Fair. The whole world will be watching and maybe, just maybe, if he hits the right note, the whole world will forget its mistakes and dance to the sound of the falling rain.
“It’s a long way from Texas to Chicago, especially for a poor Texas labour boy. There’s only one way to it though, and so Scott wheels his piano out into the road, and he hitches a lift. Can only get into trucks, mind, since that piano takes some shifting, but there’s plenty of trucks who’ll carry a musician if they’ll just give over a tune.
“And he gave them a tune, all right. The kind of tune they’d never heard before. One trucker had lived his life on vaudeville and variety, but renounced his deeds and went to pray in Nashville, Tennessee. Another bawled his eyes out. Said it reminded him of his poor dear mother, who he’d done wrong. A third went back to his darling angel wife, telling how Scott’s angel playing could save this whole damn botched civilisation.
“So Scott gets up, and he gets on. Playing his way up to the north, and the highway is like one long blazing trail of light, lighting up America in salvation. By the time he gets to Chicago he’s written two whole songs. One of them, well, that song’s going to save the whole of North America. The U.S never really fell to the imperial yoke, but Canada did. He’ll save them first. The second… I’ll get to the second later.
“First, young Scott needs some glad rags, something to wear in the bright lights. So he takes his piano to a department store, tells them all about how music can really save their soul, and he plays them a little melody. Tearful, overjoyed, saved, they give him the finest suit you ever did see, and they tell him to wear it always. Overwhelmed by their generosity and by the power of his piano, he names all his songs after their garments. The clothes, the songs, they’ll be rags together, he says, and so every song he ever wrote was called a rag from then on.
“There’s still a month to the World’s Fair. Scott’s got time to kill. So he hops north of the border, takes his tunes. Plays his first. It’s called the Maple Leaf Rag, written just for Canada. So he tinkles and he taps, and Montreal’s got the bug, and it’s never going to leave them. Revolution, well, it’s planted, just as surely as Canada’s national tree, right there in that cold, cold soil.
“Luckily for Scott, America and the world never really cared what was going on in Montreal, so he wasn’t known back in the States. He can flit back to Chicago, just in time for the world’s ears to lean in. Scott plays some music halls, a few concerts, making sure to stick the old stuff, the tried and tested stuff of fairs and suburban pleasure gardens. He’s a fine player and, sure enough, the authorities put his name on the bill. Scott Joplin, music hall master, the posters said. Little did they know the truth.
“It’s time for the World’s Fair. Everyone’s there. The Swiss have taken over the river side, and they’ve got big displays of fancy pen knives. The Russians are there, all in good cheer. Even we Brits turn up.
“Day turns to night, and the world packs into Chicago’s finest music hall. Acts come and go, all the usual, but Scott Joplin is announced, the boy from Texarkana who made it good, and the crowd roars. It’s going to be a comedy song, they announce. Good, think the crowd. They love their comedy songs.
“And it is a comedy song. But not the sort of comedy song anyone’s ever heard before. It’s satire. It’s mocking. It’s mocking music hall. It’s a serious point all wrapped up in humour, like a rapier in a woollen blanket. The song’s called The Great Entertainer. The entertainer is your run-of-the-mill music hall act, and Joplin lampoons him big time. Up, down, up, down, the song says, all posturing and ridiculous. The song’s only a few minutes, but it lays bare just how pointless music hall is, how little variety there is in variety, how vaudeville has no style or substance.
“There’s uproar. A shot fired out across the world. No-one, having heard the song, could ever go back to music hall. The British Empire collapsed, a sham, no style or substance to it, the flan in the cupboard. Scott’s a hero, the man who brought down empires with the dexterity of his fingers. From Scott’s music eventually came jazz, and rock n’ roll too. The rest is history.
“And that’s the story of Scott Joplin. The era of empire it was over. Now it was rag time.”
She ended, impressively, folding her arms in triumph. Gert looked puzzled.
“Okay great, that’s all good. But what does this have to do with Abraham and the sea? What does the sea have to do with Abraham’s death? Why is your life in danger? What are we even doing here?”
“Oh, you were listening! Fantastic. That’s more than I expected from you.”
She smiled, if a little nervously.
“Okay, I was just getting to all that. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever heard a little song called ‘Oh, I Do Like To Be Beside The Sea Side?’”
TO BE CONTINUED
Jezknee 