Resnick divided the omelette on to two plates. ‘You want to bring that bread?’ he said. ‘We’ll eat in the other room.’
The boldest of the cats, Dizzy, followed them hopefully through. The Clifford Brown Memorial album was still playing. ‘Theme of No Repeat’.
‘They’re all dying} Charlie.’
‘Who?’
‘Every bugger!’
And now it was true.
SILVER Edward Victor Suddenly at home, on February 16, 1993. Acclaimed jazz musician of the be-bop era. Funeral service and memorial meeting, Friday, February 19 at Golders Green Crematorium at 11.45 am. Inquiries to Mason Funeral and Monumental Services, High Lanes, Finchley.
Resnick was not a Guardian reader; not much of a reader at all, truth to tell. Police Review, the local paper, Home Office circulars and misspelt incident reports, Jazz Journal - that was about it. But Frank Delaney had called him Tuesday morning; Frank, who had continued booking Ed Silver into his pub long after most others had turned their backs, left Ed’s calls unanswered on their answer-phones. ‘Seen the Guardian today, Charlie?’ Resnick had taken it for a joke.
Now he was on the train as it approached St Pancras, that copy of the newspaper folded on the seat beside him, the debris of his journey – plastic cups, assorted wrappings from his egg mayonnaise sandwich, bacon and tomato roll, lemon iced gingerbread – pushed to one side of the table. There was the Regent’s canal and as they passed the gas holders at King’s Cross, Resnick got to his feet, lifted his coat down from the rack and shrugged his way inside it. He would have to walk the short distance from one terminal to another and catch the underground.
Even at that hour, King’s Cross seemed jaded, sour, down at heel, broad corners and black cabs; bare-legged girls whose pallid skin was already beginning to sweat; men who leaned against walls and railings and glanced up at you as you passed, ready to sell you anything that wasn’t theirs. Ageless and sexless, serious alcoholics sat or squatted, clutching brown bottles of cider, cans of Special Brew. High above the entrances, inside the wide concourse, security cameras turned slowly with remote-control eyes.
The automatic doors slid back at Resnick’s approach and beyond the lights of the computerized arrivals board, the Leeds train spilled several hundred soccer fans across the shiny floor. Enlivened by the possibility of business, two girls who had been sharing a breakfast of chips outside Casey Jones, began to move towards the edges of the throng. One of them was tall, with badly hennaed hair that hung low over the fake fur collar of her coat; the other, younger, smudging a splash of red sauce like crazy lipstick across her cheek, called for her to wait. ‘Fuck’s sake, Brenda.’ Brenda bent low to pull up the strap of her shoe, lit a cigarette.
‘We are the champions!’ chanted a dozen or more youths, trailing blue and white scarves from their belts.
In your dreams, Resnick thought.
A couple of hapless West Ham fans, on their way to catch an away special north, found themselves shunted up against the glass front of W.H. Smith. Half a dozen British Rail staff busied themselves looking the other way.
‘Come on, love,’ the tall girl said to one of the men, an ex-squaddie with regimental colours and a death’s head tattooed along his arms, ‘me and my mate here. We’ve got a place.’
‘Fuck off!’ the man said. ‘Just fucking fuck off!’
‘Fuck you too!’ Turning away from the tide of abuse, she saw Resnick watching. ‘And you. What the hell d’you think you’re staring at, eh? Wanker!’
Loud jeers and Resnick moved away between the supporters but now that her attention had been drawn to him, Brenda had him in her sights. Middle-aged man, visitor, not local, not exactly smart but bound to be carrying a quid or two.
‘Don’t go.’
‘What?’
The hand that spread itself against him was a young girl’s hand. ‘Don’t go.’
‘How old are you?’ Resnick said. The eyes that looked back at him from between badly-applied make-up had not so long since been a child’s eyes.
‘Whatever age you want,’ Brenda said.
A harassed woman with one kiddie in a pushchair and another clinging to one hand, banged her suitcase inadvertently against the back of Brenda’s legs and, even as she swore at her, Brenda took the opportunity to lose her balance and stumble forwards. ‘Oops, sorry,’ she giggled, pressing herself against Resnick’s chest.
‘That’s all right,’ Resnick said, taking hold of her arms and moving her, not roughly, away. Beneath the thin wool there was precious little flesh on her bones.
‘Don’t want the goods,’ her friend said tartly, ‘don’t mess them about.’
‘Lorraine,’ Brenda said, ‘mind your own fucking business, right?’
Lorraine pouted a B-movie pout and turned away.
‘Well?’ Brenda asked, head cocked.
Resnick shook his head. ‘I’m a police officer,’ he said.
‘Right,’ said Brenda, ‘and I’m fucking Julia Roberts!’ And she wandered off to join her friend.
The undertaker led Resnick into a side room and unlocked a drawer; from the drawer he took a medium size manila envelope and from this he slid onto the plain table Ed Silver’s possessions. A watch with a cracked face that had stopped at seven minutes past eleven; an address book with more than half the names crossed through; a passport four years out of date; dog-eared at the edges: a packet of saxophone reeds; one pound, thirteen pence in change. In a second envelope there were two photographs. One, in colour, shows Silver in front of a poster for the North Sea Jazz Festival, his name, partly obscured, behind him in small print. He is wearing dark glasses but, even so, it is clear from the shape of his face he is squinting up his eyes against the sun. His grey hair is cut in a once-fashionable crew cut and the sports coat he is wearing is bright dog-tooth check and over-large. His alto sax is cradled across his arms. If that picture were ten, fifteen years old, the other is far older – black and white faded almost to sepia. Ed Silver on the deck of the Queen Mary, the New York skyline rising behind him. Docking or departing, Resnick couldn’t tell. Like many a would-be bopper, he had been part of Geraldo’s navy, happy to play foxtrots and waltzes in exchange for a fervid forty-eight hours in the clubs on 52nd Street, listening to Monk and Bird. Silver had bumped into Charlie Parker once, almost literally, on a midtown street and been too dumbstruck to speak.
Resnick slid the photographs back from sight. ‘Is that all?’ he asked.
Almost as an afterthought, the undertaker asked him to wait while he fetched the saxophone case, with its scuffed leather coating and tarnished clasps; stuck to the lid was a slogan: Keep Music Live! Of course, the case was empty, sax long gone to buy more scotch when Ed Silver had needed it most. Resnick hoped it had tasted good.
In the small chapel there were dried flowers and the wreath that Frank Delaney had sent. The coffin sat, cheap, before grey curtains and Resnick stood in the second row, glancing round through the vicar’s perfunctory sermon to see if anyone else was going to come in. Nobody did. ‘He was a man, who in his life, brought pleasure to many,’ the vicar said. Amen, thought Resnick, to that. Then the curtains slowly parted and the coffin slid forward, rocking just a little, just enough, towards the flames.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
If the women don‘t get you, the whisky must.