Swing, Brother, Swing by Ngaio Marsh
‘Why not?’ Rivera said acidly. ‘It is my usual entrance. I perform as I rehearse. Naturally.’
‘That’s right. Naturally. Excuse my fussiness. Let’s go, Syd.’
Caesar rose. ‘It is time? Then I must felicitate our new artist.’
He preceded them across the vestibule where crowds of late arrivals still streamed in. Here they encountered Félicité, Carlisle and Edward. ‘We’re going in to wish George luck,’ said Félicité. ‘Hallo, Syd. Nice of you to let him have his fling. Come on, chaps.’
They all entered the bandroom which was immediately behind the dais end of the restaurant and led into the band alcove. Here they found the boys assembled with their instruments. Breezy held up his hand and, sweating copiously, beamed at them. ‘Listen, boys. Get this. We’ll use the other routine, if it’s all the same with the composer. Carlos doesn’t feel happy about the fall. He’s afraid he may hurt himself on account he’s holding his instrument.’
‘Here!’ said Lord Pastern.
‘It’s the way you wanted it, Lord Pastern, isn’t it!’ Breezy gabbled. ‘That’s fine, isn’t it! Better egzzit altogether.’
‘I faint and get carried out?’
‘That’s right. The other routine. I persuaded Carlos. Everybody happy? Swell.’
The Boys began to warm up their instruments. The room was filled with slight anticipatory noises. The double-bass muttered and zoomed.
Skelton strolled over to Lord Pastern. ‘I had to come in and wish the new sensation all the best,’ he said, looking hard at him.
‘Thank yer.’
‘A great night,’ Caesar Bonn muttered. ‘It will be long remembered.’
‘Would this be a loaded gun?’ Skelton asked, and laughed unpleasantly.
The revolver lay, together with the sombrero, near the drums. Lord Pastern took it up. Skelton raised his hands above his head. ‘I confess everything,’ he said. ‘Is it loaded?’
‘With blanks.’
‘By cripes,’ said Skelton with a loud laugh, ‘I hope they are blanks.’
‘George made them himself,’ said Félicité.
Skelton lowered his right hand and held it out towards Lord Pastern who put the revolver into it.
Breezy, at a distance, sighed heavily. Skelton broke the revolver, slipped a finger nail behind the rim of a cartridge and drew it out.
‘Very nice work, Lord Pastern,’ he said. He spun the cylinder, drawing out and replacing one blank after the other. ‘Very nice work, indeed,’ he said.
Lord Pastern, obviously gratified, embarked on a history of the revolver, of his own prowess as a marksman, and of the circumstances under which his brother-in-law had presented it to him. He pointed out the initials scratched under the butt. Skelton made a show of squinting down the barrel, snapped the revolver shut, and returned the weapon to Lord Pastern. He turned away and glanced at Breezy. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘What are we waiting for?’ He began to heighten the tension of his drums. ‘Good luck to the new act,’ he said, and the drums throbbed.
‘Thanks, Syd,’ said Breezy.
His fingers were in his waistcoat pocket. He looked anxiously at Skelton. He felt in one pocket after another. Sweat hung in fine beads over his eyebrows.
‘What’s up, boy?’ said Happy Hart.
‘I can’t find my tablet.’
He began pulling his pocket linings out. ‘I’m all to pieces without it,’ he said. ‘God, I know I’ve got one somewhere!’
The door leading to the restaurant opened and The Jivesters came through with their instruments. They grinned at Breezy’s Boys and looked sideways at Lord Pastern. The room was full of oiled heads, black figures and the strange shapes of saxophones, double-basses, piano accordions and drums.
‘We’d better make ourselves scarce, Fée,’ Edward said. ‘Come on, Lisle. Good luck, Cousin George.’
‘Good luck.’
‘Good luck.’
They went out. Breezy still searched his pockets. The others watched him nervously.
‘You shouldn’t let yourself get this way,’ said Skelton.
Lord Pastern pointed an accusing finger at Breezy: ‘Now perhaps you’ll see the value of what I was tellin’ you,’ he admonished. Breezy shot a venomous glance at him.
‘For Heaven’s sake, boy,’ said Happy Hart. ‘We’re on.’
‘I’ve got to have it. I’m all shaky. I can’t look. One of you…’
‘What is all this!’ Lord Pastern cried with extreme irritation. He darted at Breezy.
‘It’s only a tablet,’ Breezy said. ‘I always take one. For my nerves.’
Lord Pastern said accusingly, ‘Tablet be damned!’
‘For chrissake, I got to have it, blast you.’
‘Put your hands up.’
Lord Pastern began with ruthless efficiency to search Breezy. He hit him all over and turned out his pockets, allowing various objects to fall about his feet. He opened his cigarette case and wallet and explored their contents. He patted and prodded. Breezy giggled. ‘I’m ticklish,’ he said foolishly. Finally Lord Pastern jerked a handkerchief out of Breezy’s breast pocket. A small white object fell from it. Breezy swooped on it, clapped his hand to his mouth and swallowed. ‘Thanks a lot. All set, boys? Let’s go.’
They went out ahead of him. The lights on the walls had been switched off. Only the pink table-lamps glowed. A floodlight, hidden in the alcove ceiling, drove down its pool of amber on the gleaming dais; the restaurant was a swimming cave filled with dim faces, occasional jewels, many colours. The waiters flickered about inside it. Little drifts of cigarette smoke hung above the tables. From the restaurant the band dais glowed romantically in its alcove. The players and their instruments looked hard and glossy. Above them the arm of the giant metronome pointed motionless at the floor. The Boys, smiling as if in great delight, seated themselves. The umbrellas, the sombrero and the tympani were carried in by waiters.
In the band room Lord Pastern, standing beside Breezy, fiddled with his revolver, whistled under his breath, and peered sideways through the door. Beyond the tympani, he could see the dimly glowing faces of his wife, his stepdaughter, his niece and his cousin. Félicité’s face was inclined up to Ned Manx’s. Lord Pastern suddenly gave a shrill cackle of laughter.
Breezy Bellairs glanced at him in dismay, passed his hand over his head, pulled down his waistcoat, assumed his ventriloquist’s doll smile and made his entrance. The Boys played him on with their signature tune. A patter of clapping filled the restaurant like a mild shower. Breezy smiled, bowed, turned and, using finicking sharp gestures that were expressly his own, conducted.
Syd Skelton bounced slightly in his seat. His foot moved against the floor, not tapping but flexing and relaxing in a constant beat and against the syncopated, precise, illogic of the noises he made. The four saxophonists swayed together, their faces all looking alike, expressionless because of their compressed lips and puffed cheeks. When they had passages of rest they at once smiled. The band was playing tunes that Carlisle knew; very old tunes. They were recognizable at first and then a bedevilment known as the Breezy Bellairs Manner sent them screeching and thudding into a jungle of obscurity. ‘All swing bandsmen,’ Carlisle thought, ‘ought to be Negroes. There’s something wrong about their not being Negroes.’
Now three of them were singing. They had walked forward with long easy steps and stood with their heads close together, rocking in unison. They made ineffable grimaces. ‘Peea-nuts,’ they wailed. But they didn’t let the song about peanuts, which Carlisle rather liked, speak for itself. They bedevilled and twisted and screwed it and then went beaming back to their instruments. There was another old song: ‘The Umbrella Man’. She had a simple taste and its quiet monotony pleased her. They did it once, quietly and monotonously. The floodlight dimmed and a brilliant spotlight found the pianist.
He was playing by himself and singing. That was all right, thought Carlisle. She could mildly enjoy it. But a piercing shriek cut across the naïve
Now the spotlight was in the centre of the dais and only the tympanist played, while the double-bass slapped his instrument. The others moved one by one through the spotlight, holding opened umbrellas and turning them like wheels.
It was an old trick and they did it, Carlisle thought, sillily. They underdid it. Lady Pastern during a quieter passage said clearly: ‘Félicité, that is my Ascot parasol.’
‘Well, Maman, I believe it is.’
‘Your stepfather had no right whatsoever. It was a wedding present of great value. The handle is jewelled.’
‘Never mind.’
‘I object categorically and emphatically.’
‘He’s having difficulty with it. Look, they’ve stopped turning their parasols.’
The players were all back in their seats. The noise broadened and then faded out in an unanticipated wail and they were silent.
Breezy bowed and smiled and bowed. Rivera looked at Carlisle.
A young woman in a beautiful dress and with hair like blonde seaweed came out of a side door and stood in the spotlight, twisting a length of scarlet chiffon in her hands. She contemplated her audience as if she was a sort of willing sacrifice and began to moo very earnestly: ‘Yeoo knee-oo it was onlee summer lightning.’ Carlisle and Edward both detested her.
Next Syd Skelton and a saxophonist played a duet which was a tour de force of acrobatics, and earned a solid round of applause.
When it was over Skelton bowed and with an expression of huffy condescension walked into the band room.
In the ensuing pause, Breezy advanced to the edge of the dais. His smile was broad and winning. He said in a weak voice that he wanted to thank them all very very much for the wonderful reception his Boys had been given and that he had a little announcement to make. He felt sure that when he told them what was in store for them, they would agree with him that this was a very, very special occasion. (Lady Pastern hissed under her breath.) Some weeks ago, Breezy said, he had been privileged to hear a wonderful little performance on the tympani by a distinguished—well, he wouldn’t say amateur. He had prevailed upon this remarkable performer to join the Boys tonight and as an additional attraction the number given would be this performer’s own composition. Breezy stepped back, pronounced Lord Pastern’s names and title with emphasis and looked expectantly towards the door at the rear of the alcove.
Carlisle, like all other relations, distant or close, of Lord Pastern, had often suffered acute embarrassment at his hands. Tonight she had fully expected to endure again that all too familiar wave of discomfort. When, however, he came through the door and stood before them with pink cheeks and a nervous smile, she was suddenly filled with compassion. It was silly, futile and immensely touching that he should make a fool of himself in this particular way. Her heart went out to him.
He walked to the tympani, made a polite little bow, and with an anxious expression, took his seat. They saw him, with a furtive air, lay his revolver on the dais close to Félicité’s chair and place his sombrero over it. Breezy pointed his baton at him and said, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen: “Hot Guy. Hot Gunner.”’ He gave the initial down-beat and they were off.
It sounded, really, much like all the other numbers they had heard that night, Carlisle thought. Lord Pastern banged, and rattled, and zinged much in the same way as Syd Skelton. The words, when the three singers came out, were no sillier than those of the other songs. The tune was rather catchy. But, ‘Oh,’ she thought, ‘how vulnerable he is among his tympani!’
Edward thought: ‘There he sits, catsmeat to any satirist who feels as I do about the social set-up. You might make a cartoon of this or a parable. A cartoon, certainly. Cousin George, thumping and banging away under Breezy’s baton and in the background a stream of displaced persons. The metronome is Time…finger of scorn…making its inane gesture to society. A bit top obvious, of course,’ he thought, dismissing it, ‘false, because of its partial truth.’ And he turned his head to watch Carlisle.
Félicité thought: ‘There goes George. He has fun, anyway.’ Her glance strayed to Lord Pastern’s sombrero. She touched Edward’s knee. He bent towards her and she said in his ear: ‘Shall I pinch George’s gun? I could. Look!’ She reached out towards the edge of the dais and slipped her hand under the sombrero.
‘Fée, don’t!’ he ejaculated.
‘Do you dare me?’
He shook his head violently.
‘Poor George,’ said Félicité, ‘what would he do?’ She withdrew her hand and leant back in her chair turning the white carnation in her fingers. ‘Shall I put it in my hair?’ she wondered. ‘It would probably look silly and fall out but it might be a good idea. I wish he’d say something—just one thing—to show we understand each other. After this we can’t just go on for ever, pretending.’
Lady Pastern thought: ‘There is no end to one’s capacity for humiliation. He discredits me and he discredits his class. It’s the same story. There will be the same gossip, the same impertinences in the paper, the same mortification. Nevertheless,’ she thought, ‘I did well to come. I did well to suffer this torment tonight. My instinct was correct.’ She looked steadily at Rivera who was advancing into the centre of the stage. ‘I have disposed of you,’ she thought triumphantly.
Lord Pastern thought: ‘No mistakes so far. And one, bang and two bang and one crash bang zing. One two and three with his accordeen and wait for it. This is perfectly splendid. I am this noise. Look out. Here he comes. Hi-de oh hi. Yip. Here he comes. It’s going to work. Hot gunner with his accord-een.’
He crashed his cymbal, silenced it and leant back in his seat.
Rivera had advanced in the spotlight. The rest of the band was tacit. The great motionless arm of the metronome stabbed its pointer down at his head. He seemed rapt: at once tormented and exalted. He swayed and jerked and ogled. Although he was not by any means ridiculous, he was the puppet of his own music. The performance was a protracted crescendo, and as it rocketed up to its climax he swayed backwards at a preposterous angle, his instrument raised, the pointer menacing it as it undulated across his chest. A screaming dissonance abruptly tore loose from the general din, the spotlight switched abruptly to the tympani. Lord Pastern, wearing his sombrero, had risen. Advancing to within five feet of Rivera he pointed his revolver at him and fired.
The accordion blared grotesquely down a scale. Rivera sagged at the knees and fell. The accordion crashed a final chord and was silent. At the same moment as the shot was fired the tenor saxophonist played a single shrill note and sat down. Lord Pastern, apparently bewildered, looked from the recumbent Rivera to the saxophonist, paused for a second and then fired three more blanks. The pianist, the trombone, and finally the double-bass each played a note in a descending scale and each imitated a collapse.
There was a further second’s pause. Lord Pastern, looking very much taken aback, suddenly handed the revolver to Bellairs, who pointed it at him and pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked but there was no discharge. Bellairs aped disgust, shrugged his shoulders, looked at the revolver and broke it open. It discharged its shells in a little spurt. Breezy scratched his head, dropped the revolver in his pocket and made a crisp gesture with his baton-hand.
‘Yipee,’ Lord Pastern shouted. The band launched itself into a welter of noise. He
‘Hell!’ Edward ejaculated, ‘at this pace he’ll kill himself.’
Breezy Bellairs had got a large artificial wreath. Dabbing his eyes with his handkerchief he knelt by Rivera, placed the wreath on his chest and felt his heart. He bent his head, groped frantically inside the wreath and then looked up with a startled expression in the direction of the tympani, where the spotlight revealed Lord Pastern in an ecstatic fury, wading into his drums. His solo lasted about eighty seconds. During this time four waiters had come in with a stretcher. Bellairs spoke to them excitedly. Rivera was carried off while the saxophones made a grotesque lugubrious sobbing and Lord Pastern, by hitting the big drum and immediately releasing the tension, produced a series of muffled groans.
The metronome clacked to a standstill, the restaurant lights went up and the audience applauded generously. Breezy, white to the lips and trembling, indicated Lord Pastern who joined him, glistening with sweat, and bowed. Breezy said something inaudible to him and to the pianist and went out followed by Lord Pastern. The pianist, the double-bass and the three saxophonists began to play a dance tune.
‘Good old George!’ cried Félicité, ‘I think he was superb, Maman darling, don’t you? Ned, wasn’t he Heaven?’
Edward smiled at her: ‘He’s astonishing,’ he said, and added: ‘Cousin C, do you mind if Lisle and I dance? You will, won’t you, Lisle?’
Carlisle put her hand on his shoulder and they moved away. The head-waiter slid past them and stooped for a moment over a man at a table further down the room. The man rose, let his eyeglass fall and with a preoccupied look passed Carlisle and Edward on his way to the vestibule.