‘Who?’
‘Irena.’
‘Is she?’
JUST FRIENDS
These things I remember about Anna Shepherd: the way a lock of her hair would fall down across her face and she would brush it back with a flick of her hand; the sliver of green, like a shard of glass, high in her left eye; the look of surprise, pleasure and surprise, when she spoke to me that first time — ‘And you must be Jimmy, right?’
The way she lied.
It was November, late in the month and the night air bright with cold that numbed your fingers even as it brought a flush of colour to your cheeks. London, the winter of ’56, and we were little more than kids then, Patrick, Val and myself, though if anyone had called us that we’d have likely punched him out, Patrick or myself at least, Val in the background, careful, watching.
Friday night it would have been, a toss-up between the Flamingo and Studio 51, and on this occasion Patrick had decreed the Flamingo: this on account of a girl he’d started seeing, on account of Anna. The Flamingo a little more cool, more likely to impress. Hip, I suppose, the word we would have used.
All three of us had first got interested in jazz at school, the trad thing to begin with, British guys doing an earnest imitation of New Orleans; then, for a spell, it was the Alex Welsh band we followed around, a hard-driving crew with echoes of Chicago, brittle and fast, Tuesday nights the Lyttelton place in Oxford Street, Sundays a club out at Wood Green. It was Val who finally got us listening to the more modern stuff, Parker 78s on Savoy, Paul Desmond, the Gerry Mulligan Quartet.
From somewhere, Patrick got himself a trumpet and began practising scales, and I kicked off playing brushes on an old suitcase while saving for the downpayment on a set of drums. Val, we eventually discovered, already had a saxophone — an old Selmer with a dented bell and a third of the keys held on by rubber bands: it had once belonged to his old man. Not only did he have a horn, but he knew how to play. Nothing fancy, not yet, not enough to go steaming through the changes of ‘Cherokee’ or ‘I Got Rhythm’ the way he would later, in his pomp, but tunes you could recognise, modulations you could follow.
The first time we heard him, really heard him, the cellar room below a greasy spoon by the Archway, somewhere the owner let us hang out for the price of a few coffees, the occasional pie and chips, we wanted to punch him hard. For holding out on us the way he had. For being so damned good.
Next day, Patrick took the trumpet to the place he’d bought it, Boosey and Hawkes, and sold it back, got the best price he could. ‘Sod that for a game of soldiers,’ he said, ‘too much like hard bloody work. What we need’s a bass player, someone half-decent on piano, get Val fronting his own band.’ And he pushed a bundle of fivers into my hand. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘go and get those sodding drums.’
‘What about you?’ Val asked, though he probably knew the answer even then. ‘What you gonna be doin’?’
‘Me?’ Patrick said. ‘I’m going to be the manager. What else?’
And, for a time, that was how it was.
Private parties, weddings, christenings and bar mitzvahs, support slots at little clubs out in Ealing or Totteridge that couldn’t afford anything better. From somewhere Patrick found a pianist who could do a passable Bud Powell, and, together with Val, that kept us afloat. For a while, a year or so at least. By then even Patrick could see Val was too good for the rest of us and we were just holding him back; he spelled it out to me when I was packing my kit away after an all-nighter in Dorking, a brace of tenners eased down into the top pocket of my second-hand Cecil Gee jacket.
‘What’s this?’ I said.
‘Severance pay,’ said Patrick, and laughed.
Not the first time he paid me off, nor the last.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
That November evening, we’d been hanging round the Bar Italia on Frith Street pretty much as usual, the best coffee in Soho then and now; Patrick was off to one side, deep in conversation with a dark-skinned guy in a Crombie overcoat, the kind who has to shave twice a day and wore a scar down his cheek like a badge. A conversation I was never meant to hear.
‘Jimmy,’ Patrick said suddenly, over his shoulder. ‘A favour. Anna, I’m supposed to meet her. Leicester Square Tube.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Any time now. Get down there for me, okay? I’ll see you at the club later.’
All I’d seen of Anna up to that point had been a photograph, a snapshot barely focused, dark hair worn long, high cheekbones, a slender face. Her eyes — what colour were her eyes?
She came up the steps leading on to Cranbourne Street and I recognised her immediately; tall, taller than I’d imagined, and in that moment — Jesus! — so much more beautiful.
‘Anna?’ Hands in my pockets, blushing already, trying and failing to look cool. ‘Patrick got stuck in some kind of meeting. Business, you know? He asked me to meet you.’
She nodded, looking me over appraisingly. ‘And you must be Jimmy, right?’ Aside from that slight, quick flicker of green, her eyes were brown, I could see that now, a soft chocolatey brown.
Is it possible to smile ironically? That’s what she was doing.
All right, Jimmy,’ she said. ‘Where are you taking me?’
When we got to the Flamingo, Patrick and Val had still not arrived. The Tony Kinsey Quintet were on the stand, two saxes and rhythm. I pushed my way through to the bar for a couple of drinks and we stood on the edge of the crowd, close but not touching. Anna was wearing a silky kind of dress that clung to her hips, two shades of blue. The band cut the tempo for ‘Sweet and Lovely’, Don Rendell soloing on tenor.
Anna rested her fingers on my arm. ‘Did Patrick tell you to dance with me, too?’
I shook my head.
‘Well, let’s pretend that he did.’
Six months I suppose they were together, Anna and Patrick, that first time around, and for much of that six months, I rarely saw them one without the other. Towards the end, Patrick took her off for a few days to Paris, a big deal in those days, and managed to secure a gig for Val while he was there, guesting at the Chat Qui Peche with Rene Thomas and Pierre Michelot.
After they came back I didn’t see either of them for quite a while: Patrick was in one of his mysterious phases, ducking and weaving, doing deals, and Anna — well, I didn’t know about Anna. And then, one evening in Soho, hurrying, late for an appointment, I did see her, sitting alone by the window of this trattoria, the Amalfi it would have been, on Old Compton Street, a plate of pasta in front of her, barely touched. I stopped close to the glass, raised my hand and mouthed ‘Hi!’ before scuttling on, but if she saw me I couldn’t be sure. One thing I couldn’t miss though, the swelling, shaded purple, around her left eye.
A week after this Patrick rang me and we arranged to meet for a drink at the Bald Faced Stag; when I asked about Anna he looked through me and then carried on as if he’d never heard her name. At this time I was living in two crummy rooms in East Finchley — more a bedsitter with a tiny kitchen attached, the bathroom down the hall — and Patrick gave me a lift home, dropped me at the door. I asked him if he wanted to come in but wasn’t surprised when he declined.
Two nights later I was sitting reading some crime novel or other, wearing two sweaters to save putting on the second bar of the electric fire, when there was a short ring on the downstairs bell. For some reason, I thought it might be Patrick, but instead it was Anna. Her hair was pulled back off her face in a way I hadn’t seen before, and, a faint finger of yellow aside, all trace of the bruise around her eye had disappeared.
‘Well, Jimmy,’ she said, ‘aren’t you going to invite me in?’
She was wearing a cream sweater, a coffee-coloured skirt with a slight flare, high heels which she kicked off the moment she sat on the end of the bed. My drums were out at the other side of the room, not the full kit, just the bass drum, ride cymbal, hi-hat and snare; clothes I’d been intending to iron were folded over the back of a chair.