12.17pm - 12 October, 1962
The pub’s interior is brown as a cow pat, wet with polished and varnished wood, sour with cigarettes’ yellowing, and dry-crusted with men in woollen, sparrow-coloured jackets and trousers, and wearing hats or with oiled hair. Place huddles, as its patrons huddle - at either end of the bar, at tables pissed on by the sun through panes of emerald glass, or standing close about the walls: a place of furtive conversations. Charlie Williams is sat with a wooden fencepost of a chap. They’ve both bought the other a beer, so there’re four glasses on the table they’ve taken: seems they don’t want to be in each other’s debt.
‘Charlie.’ ‘Edward.’ They toast before they sup. ‘How’s how?’ asks Edward. ‘No complaining. Tricks?’ says Charlie. ‘Same old, you know’ replies Edward. ‘Too bad’ says Charlie. ‘Onwards, upwards’ states Edward. ‘Wise, wise’ says Charlie. ‘Always the way’ says Edward.
Edward Reed. Lanky, sinewy Eddie Reed. Known as ‘Birdie’ Reed, for he’s known to sing. Not your usual grass, Eddie: less an informant or a mouth, more a pivot, a point of balance - maintaining a cosy status quo with a word loosed here, another dealt there. Birdie exists ‘in between’, a nobody who deals in the business of everybody else. Birdie Reed and Charlie Williams were schoolboys together.
‘How’s that boy of yours?’ ‘You read the papers well as me’ Charlie says. ‘He’s not going short’ says Birdie. ‘Doubt the boy ever goes short’ mutters Charlie. ‘Working his arse off, I’m sure’ Birdie chuckles.
The silence that follows locks like stags’ horns.
'How's that boy of yours? That old jew working him like a jew?' 'Wot, my Robert, grafting? Naw, Charlie, the boy's living life in the clouds. He thinks he's James fucking Dean, don't he. Something awry in the boy's bonce, shame to say - but there you are, who of us could ever have guessed the fruit could fall so far from the tree? Take your Kenneth, the tree's in King's Cross and the fruits in the West End...'
The silence that follows sleds like bare knuckles over sweat-greased flesh.
‘Garland Prosser is selling used pairs of Marilyn Monroe’s knickers, a fiver a time. Says they come out of the wardrobe down Pinewood. She did that picture with Olivier back when. Says she changed them every few hours or so, meaning there’s a mountain. Memento mori, of a kind. He’s doing swift business too. Only, I know for a fact, he’s got a couple mange old tarts manufacturing em - they don a pair, couple of knee bends, a good frot and hey presto. Monroe never wore St. Michael’s, no sir’ tells Eddie, a non-sequitur of an olive branch.
‘So, Eddie, am I getting this right: I invest, what, a few quid in this mutt of yours...’ says Charlie. ‘Not mine, an acquaintance’s’ affirms Eddie. ‘I put in the dosh, nothing else, no follow ons, no losses, and before Christmas...’ continues Charlie. ‘... in time for Christmas’ inserts Birdie. ‘...I get three times my money back, guaranteed?’ finishes Charlie. ‘Cert’ says Birdie. ‘How?’ Charlie has to ask. ‘Well, let us say, this certain mutt is a contender, a champion born and bred. Now he could run and win, and he’d take the trophies and he’d pickup the winnings - but he’ll attract lower and lower odds, but the punters won’t bet against him because the mutt’s got the legs, he’ll keep winning. The bookies want an open field, for the punters to risk an outsider or some other contender. What they want is to know who’ll win and who’ll lose, and what will do best by their bankbooks. So, this mutt is primed to run when we want it, trot when we want and walk when we say. See? Only issue being, if and when it’s twigged. The owner would be done for. But, if the owner is untraceable, a conglomerate, a mess of shares, all of impeccable character, who’re they going to pin it on. The monies used to up-keep the mutt have to be clean, and liquid. So, you, and a few more like you, invest cash - that cash is fresh as the driven, it feeds and waters, and you, soon enough, get a dividend’ Birdie explains. ‘If you say so, Charlie says. ‘I say so’ confirms Birdie.
The silence that follows is the tic and whirr of an early IBM computer (taking up a room) calculating.
‘Tomorrow’, says Charlie, ‘I can get you eight quid by lunch, meet you here at twelve.’ ‘Fair enough, Charlie boy’ agrees Birdie.
※
5.08pm - 12 October, 1962
Religious books tend to be slim, little more than pamphlets. Some are pamphlets, some of those handmade. Annie Psalms stocks the ‘good word’ in publications ranging from a single page to near one hundred pages in thickness. Some of the books she sells are printed in loud type, shouting type. Not that Annie is evangelical. No, she’s unassuming. She sits there, at her desk, beside a small oil-stove, as orderly as one of the volumes she keeps catalogued on the shelves. She reads. She’s keen on mysteries. Not the spiritual, religiose kind of who-how-dunnits, but Agatha Christie’s, Ngaio Marsh’s, Dorothy L Sayer’s. Annie inherited the shop from her father, who was left the business by her grandfather. They’d once published books as well as selling them. They produced Sunday School workbooks, Psalters, Christian annuals for boys and girls, bespoke hymn books for well-to-do churches, and they vanity-pressed theological tracts and rants and trumpet-blasts. Now, Annie Psalms’ shop is a cubby-hole away from the world. She lets the rest of the old print shop and stores as workshops and offices. Annie spends her days absorbed in cases of poisoning and stabbings. Her customers are readers too, serious folk who open the books and wear them as masks for hours at a time, until a calling from inside seems to lift their minds back out onto the street. Annie is used to these intense people, who mutter in argument with the texts or pray into the leaves. Making money isn’t an issue, the shop is a reason, a purpose. Sometimes, a body escapes from the cold or the street. There are two club chairs in the shop, and a person can catch forty winks pretending to be deep into some doctrine. It’s a chapel, of sorts. It’s hush, comfortable with the scent of wick and wax polish and brewed tea.
Robert Reed, in his biker’s jacket and faded denims, resembles the flick knife he carries proud of his jean’s arse pocket. He’s sharp, skinny-edged, fatless, meatless, all bone and sinew. His face is too taut to be young, too taut to look aged. He’s nineteen. He’d started work for Gramp Liddel straight out of school, packaging and delivering goods about town. It’s easy graft. Gramp deals in whatever he can, bankrupt stock, bulk deals and imports. Robert (always Robert, never Bob, Bobby, Tod, Bert, Bertie or a Rob) drives the company van, he does so like he’s Stanley Baker in Hell Drivers, gripping the wheel with a psychotic urgency, as if holding to the road is a matter of self-will. Robert’s well-known, but so is everyone in his manor, it’s that kind of a place, over-familiar.
Gramp Liddel lets the stockrooms from Annie Psalms. Once a fortnight, on a Friday, Gramp pops into Annie’s bookshop and pays her the rent, as do all her tenants. What Robert Reed has noticed is, Annie never leaves the shop, but for a short walk down to the corner for groceries. Her stock arrives, infrequently, by carrier; her mystery novels come by post. Annie’s needs are easily fulfilled. What Robert Reed has surmised is, Annie must stow the collected rents in her shop or the two rooms in which she lives. Robert Reed hasn’t been able to put the thought of this money out of his head. He spends Annie’s savings everyday, in drifting moments, on cars and motorbikes and clothes and naked women. Annie’s money has become Robert’s, a mental transfer of funds.
t’s a few minutes since Gramp left Annie, she’s still inking his payment in to a ledger, and Robert Reed has entered the shop. Annie doesn’t look up, it’s not her habit, she lets her customers be. Robert makes a flimsy pretence of browsing. He thinks he’s there to suss what Annie does with Gramp’s money. He has visions of a safe tucked away behind a framed engraving of Jesus on the Mount. He wants to believe he’ll cat burgle the shop one night, cracking the safe’s combination by listening for the clack of bolts releasing. Robert Reed thinks he’s capable of such a theft. He rehearses his escape into the night across the rooftops of Clerkenwell. He feels a soft lob unfurling inside his shorts, he’s excited.
He has Gramp’s cash in his hand. He has Annie by the throat, he’s shaking her. ‘The money, all the fucking money’ he’s saying to her. She tries to stand, he forces her to remain seated. She lifts the hem of her skirt. ‘The money. I ain’t concerned with no crust old cunt’ says Robert Reed. He realises his mistake, seeing the hem of Annie’s skirt is misshapen, weighted. Letting Gramp’s notes fall, he tears at the fabric. Annie is light and Robert’s efforts pull her legs off the chair, she slides to the ground. He still has her by the throat. Needing two hands, Robert clouts Annie in the side of the head to subdue her. Her forehead catches on the seat of the chair, it bleeds. Robert can’t rip through the woollen fabric. He looks up at the desk for a knife or something. Annie shifts, trying to regain composure. Robert leans forward to pull open a drawer, his knee ploughs Annie’s side, gutting her of breath. The contents of the drawer spill out. There’s nothing he can use. It’s only now he recalls his own knife, it being more decorative than a practicality. Reaching about to his arse pocket, Robert pushes Annie’s upper torso down and away, lifting her legs onto his lap, he’s knelt as if in prayer. Annie isn’t struggling, but her body is trying to move, as instinctive as a sleeper in bed getting comfortable. He hacks into the skirt. He beats out Annie’s movement like a flame wafted by a draft, until one stroke puts out the light. Annie has four rolls of notes stitched into the hem.
Standing, Robert Reed pockets the money, looking at Annie laying askew behind the desk. Her left eye bats through the blood slicking from her temple. Robert scrambles for Gramp’s rent. Annie spasms, scaring Robert beyond his own imagining. He kicks out at her, over and over, dropping Gramp’s cash again. He becomes calm. He returns his flick knife to his back pocket. He shakes his head, and crosses to the door onto the street. He lights a smoke and exits, not looking up from the pavement, heading for a side street.
There's few lads from Robert’s manor haven’t had a run-in with the law, Robert's no exception. His dabs are lifted from the drawer he opened, again off the shop door. Next day, he's apprehended, held over. The police can’t find the cash he’s stolen. A barman, the barmaid and his mates give Robert an alibi. Gramp insists he sent Robert to pay Annie Psalm, explaining the fingerprints. The police can’t even prove any money was stolen. Robert is tried three times, not one jury capable of reaching a verdict.
※
12 October, 1962
Town Hall, NYC
— What tha fat man sayin?
— Git your monies back. He’s saying it ain’t going to be no concert gig, something bout a recording.
— Shit, man, just play the shit!
— Mingus! Mingus!
— That’s one confused motley of jazzmen. Look at them shuffling sheets like overwhelmed bureaucrats. Cats in want of catching a scent of a mouse of a tune. Mingus, he’s writing this live, it would seem, scribbling and delivering. Crazy jazz machine. Recorded rehearsal, no issue with that, but Charles, he’s not keen, well, nobody would be, to have all-comers watching their baby being born, an audience scrutinising your woman’s cunny open wide. We’re a pressure, and that milk baby’s sweating. Fussing. Nothing yet but instruments and breath being cracked like eggs into the air. Bake us a cake.
— Mingus looking at us, what you folks still doing here. Mingus, his face saying fuck off out of here. But we’re staying, while there’s a chance of us hearing something fresh. It might turnout to be one of those moments, you know, I was there times. And, fuck, I am here, there. I’m in New York. I’m at the Town Hall. I’m seeing Charles Mingus. Just the day before yesterday I was walking through King’s Cross kicking a can down the street. Life’s too much, always going to take you places, never in a hurry but it will. You ain’t suited to the line of business Uncle said, and, boy, you are so full of yearnings, you’re head’s wanting to take you places, if you don’t follow now you’ll live mummified with regrets and that’s no life. Uncle sits my mother down, Misha, I’ve decided not to take Davey on - before you bewail, I’ve made arrangements with Saul Turps (your Pieter’s cousin, used to own the shop on Southampton Row, oil paints and canvases and such), he runs a business in New York transporting works of art and antiques and whatever, Davey’s going to work for him. Mum is laughing with sorrow, crying with joy. So, I’m seeing Charles Mingus. He ain’t touched his bass. Saul Turps is sat beside me. Tall docker of a man with a right shock of wiry salt and pepper hair. He’s fifty odd, but cool, dark glasses cool, in a black polo neck, denim jeans and a white wind cheater. Davey, sleep my child, sleep today all day, for tomorrow I’m going to introduce New York - Davey, New York - New York, this is Davey - it’ll be a high dive into a deep pool, you’ll feel like you’re drowning maybe, but you’ll always surface exhilarated, it will seem like a lifetime before you can pull yourself out and onto the side, so, Davey, sleep, sleep, and tomorrow we’ll climb to the high board.
— ‘Epitaph’. Throbbing stuff, a mess of themes wrestling, pulling this way and that, about to break apart. How’d you express a life lived, summarise it, and it’s absence, what’s been lost in its passing. Synchronicity, the simultaneous parts of a whole. Mingus isn’t dead, but every failed suicide’s a death, a rebirth. Mingus always shines, his music’s a light show. The night in Mingus is walked through without fear or melancholy, it’s looked at, into, the dark just another colour. Dark is just another colour. This is a premature baby, born into an incubator, wanting a mother’s tit. It’s a glorious misfire, a backfire alert to what will come. Why is it we prefer our Art to seem to be birthed by immaculate conception, for it to spontaneously be. A thing is made of a mess of spunk and jelly, of emotion felt, spent and rent, of fluid, of piss and shit, of meat: we want a thing with its ablutions done and detached from any coital connotations. Mingus is having sex live on stage. That might be the banner, LIVE SEX, MINGUS. Doubt they’ll let that through editorial.
— My theory, and nobody’s interested in hearing it, so I’m telling myself like I’m talking to somebody, my theory is we all is jello. Yeah, we is all jello, and I’ll tell you for why: we’s just a substance waiting to be moved, acted upon. That’s why these good folk gathered here tonight, to be shaken, to be reverberated by the moving sound of Mingus, of Jazz. And, oh God, I can feel the wobble going through me right now. This is not the best, but, man, it is effective. I can say I’m alive. She knows I’ll roll back home filled with vibrations, and wanting to share the shake, make her tremor too. It’s why she allows me here, to such events. She don’t let me just anywhere. Clifford, don’t you think you is bowling with those rascals, all they wants is to see me in tears and you lost in the bosoms of a harlot. Now, Cliff, hon, you wouldn’t even think of leaving me a weekend alone, just so you might fill a kettle with fish - why, you can stay home and do the same, baby. ’Ford, don’t you entertain the notion of no bachelor party, I gave a solemn oath to Tonia I’d not let her Kenyon fall into no wickedness, was a holy oath too. You want to go listen to Charlie Mingus, why babe (who’s going? Just you and Scoop?) I’m for it, don’t I know how you love that shit but I isn’t ever going to come between you and your noise. I do recall strongly what I felt when I wed the women. It’s what tempers my temper. She jealous of all womankind, keeping me to herself, and who could blame her. I seen drink and easy women corrode a man like they an acid. So, come nowadays, I’s a fine connoisseur of that dark wine Jazz, and she got to let me loose of her attention cos it’s deep, deep like thoughtful, which is close enuff to being college educated, and of that she is mighty proud. Oh, my man, Clifford, he’s always listening to or talking Jazz, that’s too ‘abstract’ he says and I ain’t a clue what he’s on about, but he sits absorbed, reading or just adrift, smoking his tobacco, he scholarly with it, you know, jotting down notes on the record sleeves, he got a wall that’s just discs, says he’ll write an article for one of those magazines he subscribe to, I wouldn’t be surprised if does, he got Jazz like my mama got religion. Thing is, it’s true enuff, I am besotted. I’m jello found my shaking. But, shit is to be human, it ain’t Scoop I concert with. Marie, Marie. Darker than my shadow. She a lady of honeyed perfumes that lift as she warms, as she heats, taken up on the rhythm and contrapunction and the body song, seated there, tight beside me, lost in our being involved, as Parker, Davis and Monk are rapt. Marie alive with me. Girl’s hair is untamed, she got country teeth and library spectacles, and she not what I’d allot a beauty, but she is living, I feel her alive against me. And me and Marie, it exists only in the Jazz, nothing but a note passed, a ticket left to be collected, the occasional sighting in between the gigs. We is Jazz lovers. Pure and simple. Jazz lovers.
