Sidelong

"That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes
Like New Orleans reflected on the water,
And in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes..."

For Sidney Bechet, Phillip Larkin







Content Warning:
Threat, Violence References

Transcript

Sidelong

Norman Unlucky turned off the Highstreet onto the narrower, quieter, darker road where the jazz club, Wilson’s, was located. He carried a strange, old carpetbag in his gloved left hand, florally patterned with many red roses, and which he clasped very, very tightly, tightly enough that an impression of the handle lingered in his palm. The street where Wilson’s was situated had no name. The name the street had once been given, in white, chalky lettering, had faded away completely from the elevated, black street sign that once introduced it. The street was now one of forgotten name, and no-one had deigned to give it a new one. It simply was the street with no name.

Wilson’s was a big square block of dark-bricked building on the street-with-no-name: it looked forbiddingly abandoned when closed, but buzzing and inviting, when lighted by the gentle glow of its big windows from five in the afternoon to midnight. Figures moved in the big windows, always murky with a thin steam of condensation. The establishment was always busy with activity, it was a popular spot. In the cold heartless heart of the winter nights, it had a certain warmth about it. The gentle hubbub of chatter and laughter, popping corks and clinking glasses, cigarillo smoke weightless and spectral in the nocturnal alley, and of course, the noises- drifting like ghosts- of brushed snare, string bass, horn made to warble with a harmon mute, pianokeys, sometimes a sax or clarinet, all, all extended, to those passing in the night, an invitation, cordial and cool. Anyone who could bear jazz and plenty of company were most welcome. The club building was an old inn, converted and modernised within, old tables, chairs, and bar-stools replaced with black sofas and spinning high chairs, the walls showing their bricks rather than plastered over, the whole place given a dim, sultry, shimmering finish. The band, different bands night on night although a few particular groups were quite regular, was usually a quartet or quintet, rarely was it bigger than a sextet. They played on a raised platform by where the baby grand stood at the far end of the room, behind a red cordon-rope.

Norman Unlucky prized Wilson’s as the most favoured of his several haunts about town. Norman liked to listen to the jazz. He would lay his black notebook out upon the table and write down scenes, images, pen a record of the vague wanderings of his consciousness as the music encompassed him, at first incomprehensibly, before beginning to find a way of entering him, of entering his ear, his inner ear, where, within, it finally rested, belonged, and took up some kind of enchanting and curiously destined residence. The other advantage of Wilson’s was that Norman was teetotal, and Wilson’s served coffee until seven-thirty. On a late November night, Norman crossed the threshold of Wilson’s and was met quite pleasantly and quite instantly by a familiar and vigorous whelm of noises and sensations. He looked at his watch, pulling back his sleeve with his right hand, the left still clutching the straps of the carpetbag very tightly: 6.37. He had arrived in good time to order coffee. He ordered at the bar:

“Black coffee please, two sugars, milk on the side. Thank you”.

The barman obliged promptly, producing from the big, silver coffee machine, an excellent cup of coffee. And the milk Norman had asked for, in a miniature bottle. 

“Thank you,” Norman said, picking up the cup of coffee by its saucer in his right hand, not letting go of the carpetbag in his left. 

Norman carried the cup of coffee over to his usual table. He set it down, looped his scarf around it to mark out his territory, and then he returned for the milk, still holding the carpetbag tightly and carrying it with him over to the bar. Finally, milk, carpetbag, coffee, scarf, and Norman were in one place. Norman sat, waiting for the hot coffee to cool, waiting, as the cup slowly ambled- with a rising plume of steam all the while- towards the tepidity of the room, for the spell to work on him. He laid the spoon that was in the coffee on the side of the saucer: he took out his notebook and his pen, placing the pen in deliberate and slow ritual upon the volume’s central seam, surrounded by two fearful, beckoning, teasing blank pages of paper, yellowed, lined. He took off his gloves.

An unmuted trumpet was uttering a lazy, laidback improvisation: very seldom, very staccato. Measures passed, and the trumpet’s brief detached note clusters were surrounded mostly by bar’s rest, filled by nothing but a comping left hand on the piano, the soft bass, and the hiss of the brush going round and round on a cymbal, and the swung interjection of a kicked bassdrum and answering rimshot punctuating every so often, so the bars had metrical shape.

Norman put the carpetbag between his legs and locked his legs around it. Every so often he reached down and patted the carpetbag like a dog, feeling as he did so for the shape of the thing within, but with his palm, not his fingers. He took a sip of coffee. Then added some milk. Malcom X once compared too many white people at a black protest march to too much cream in coffee: too much cream in the coffee, it ceases to be coffee: too many white people at a black march, it ceases to become a march. Very wise, Norman thought, and took Mr. X’s advice, as far as coffee was concerned.

There was a little exclamation of uh-hua! and then a warm New Orleans yeeeeahp! of congratulation. Soft applause broke out, brief, inconclusive, and transitory, so as not to interrupt the music’s continuing flow. The rhythm section was still pulsating like the chambers of a heart. Or something more mechanical, something more weird? Like a ticking-time bomb, like an I.E.D whirring with odd, fake aliveness inside a cow heart. Norman’s mind was thinking now. He took a sip of coffee. He wrote something:

Improvised explosive device (IED) inside a corpse at

Norman looked around. His eye caught the table ahead of him. Table No. 8

Table No. 8

Out of the shadows, a big black man prepared a soprano sax to speak. As it did, a bluish spotlight found him from a little, fairly low-tech lighting booth at the periphery of the lounge. The spot followed him as he strutted, pranced almost, in coy, flirtatious courtship of the music’s sidling, langorous shadow on the stage. The sound of his sax was clear, crisp, feminine. It made Norman think of a woman’s neck, a nice, long piece of neck, pale and pearl.

The pianist showered some twinkling notes out of his scuttling right hand. Like a daisychain of notes, looped artfully around this woman’s neck. Norman wrote 

Long white neck.

in his notebook. Norman looked around the room for a long, white neck. He found one. There was a very elegant woman, her lips painted, her length apparelled in a capacious, languid, long- sleeved piece of eveningwear. She had a long, egret-like neck. She took a sip from her glass of wine. The neck bobbed a fraction with the mouthful of wine. Norman wrote

My hands are around her long, white neck.

Then, as the song of the soprano sax began to intensify, and growl a little in between sportful leaps, Norman wrote

Force-feeding funnel, bottle of Pinot Grigio

Applause broke out, heartier than before as the soprano sax man made an end and withdrew back into the shadows. The pianist, who was the bandleader, called out something during the applause and tapped his head a couple of times. They returned to the Head section, which Norman hadn’t, of course, listened to because he’d come in half-way through the number. Finally, he understood some of what he had heard, what he’d only unconsciously recognised in the trumpet’s stammering utterances and in the saxman’s aria, as the unmistakable rise of Embraceable You burst from trumpet and saxophone in harmony. He aaahed with understanding: so that’s what I am listening to! Norman had some more coffee, diluting it with milk as he drank deeper, and remarked to nobody how much he was enjoying himself. He penned something more, a question in the notebook:

What’s in my carpetbag?

He sniggered with laughter because he knew the answer. He reached down and grasped the outline of the carpetbag’s contents in his right hand. 

A further repetition of the Head moved the music onto its closing strait. Made sentimental and lovelorn by the tunefulness, its recognised and somewhat solemn lilt, Norman’s eyes lit upon something remarkable. His eyes having found the girl, on the opposite side of the room, facing the opposite way Norman was facing, in a little booth that separated her from the lounge’s main seating, they rested upon her. She was so pretty and young and innocent, pleasant. For about twenty precious seconds she was alone. But she had not come alone, as was made clear when a young man who was obviously her date, came back with their drinks and seated himself beside her. Same again, love; same again, bartender. It wasn’t a first date. They were comfortable with one another, each negotiating a considerable closeness, this wasn’t a night for distance. A kiss was on the cards. Norman was furious and sad. He looked fixedly at them, even as he wrote, and his lips moved as he wrote:

I’d like to put you in my carpetbag

It was as the music’s final held chord was closed off with a concluding thump of the kickdrum and applause, climactic, not transitional this time, resounded all around, that Norman was noticed. Either the boy or the girl noticed Norman staring at them, just staring, solitary, pale, strange, big-eyed. Norman looked somewhere else, as he had another drink of coffee, now tepid, at the musicians probably, and then he looked right back at the girl. The girl and her date were already looking at him, but with worry, a worried wariness, not kindliness. Norman dared himself to keep looking. His regard was so fierce, exact, and penetrating that the boy and the girl were immediately thrown into unease. They shifted around, a few spaces clockwise on the rounded seating of the booth so they were concealed from Norman’s direct line of sight- the position of the booth, and the high screen that bordered it made this possible. That they had been so immediately offended by him and so immediately felt the need to evade him, made Norman feel cross. He continued to fix his gaze in their direction: he could just see the top of their heads. The boy and the girl both looked back over the booth screen, hoisting themselves onto their knee to peer over it, and both saw Norman still fixedly staring at them. That’s when her date went over to Norman’s table. Norman looked elsewhere as the boy approached, as if to play dumb, he looked around coyly. To comfort himself, as the boy approached him, he wrote down

Cunt

The musicians began playing something that Norman did not immediately recognise. Squeezing his legs tighter around the carpetbag, and closing his notebook with his pen marking the page, Norman noticed that the boy was in fact older than he had seemed from a distance. His skin was more creased, and, up close, there were darker, more aged recesses in his face than Norman had been led to expect, a hardness, more tired and weathered, general about him. He spoke:

“Mate, why do you keep looking over at us?” he said.

Norman pretended not to hear, a defensive tactic so as to purchase more time to respond.

“Sorry?” he said in answer.

“Why are you staring at us, mate? My friend thought you were staring at us…her specifically…”

Norman said: “Oh, I’m sorry about that…I wasn’t staring at you or your friend, I promise.”

“Well, you were, because we both saw you staring at us…” he said.

Norman felt himself winning, defending himself more effectively than the boy was able to confront him: “I’m really sorry, I was lost in thought…I know it probably looked like that- but it was an accident, I promise…I wasn’t trying to creep you out or anything…”

The boy seemed to believe Norman. “You’ve just got to be careful these days, you know…I mean, look at that…”

The boy pointed to a public information poster, painted in abstract pink and blue, and in which was centred the word:

Cyberflashing

“What’s that got to do with me?” Norman said. “I don’t even know what that means?”

“Cyberflashing…it’s when you, like, send a picture of your…” he hesitated, selecting the best word: “…bits to someone, unexpectedly,” he finished. 

“And that’s an equivalent wrong, is it?”

“Sorry?” the boy said. He’s not too bright, Norman thought, contentedly.

“That’s like what I just did?” Norman rephrased.

“No no, mate,” the boy conceded. “I just mean you got to be careful. Things are different to how they used to be.”

Norman suddenly felt about seventy: the boy made him feel so.

“Yes, I mean… I’m not actually that old…but, anyway, I’m really sorry. The other thing is that I’m a writer, I peoplewatch, I’m interested in people, I like to look at them in pubs and clubs and parks and what-have-you. Sometimes my eyes sort of…rest on something without my quite knowing why, does that make any sort of sense?”

The boy sighed, he wanted to get back to his date, with his “friend”. 

“I’m really sorry,” Norman said again.

“No look, mate, I’m sorry to rush over like this. We just wanted to check everything was alright. I can see you’re a decent bloke so let’s just move on, alright. Sorry to disturb your evening…”

“I really do apologise if I did anything to upset you,” Norman said.

“No worries, mate. Have a good one, alright…”

“You too, take care, then,” Norman said. 

“Okay…bye now!” and off he went, back to his booth, and his date.

Norman shrugged and muttered to himself that the boy wasn’t as big of an arsehole as he could have been. Then he wrote down, reopening the volume and picking up his pen

I’m going to chop you up and put you inside a double bass

Norman chuckled to himself. Measures of music passed. He swooned gently, as in a daydream, not a proper dream, not a deep nocturnal dream. Norman didn’t like dreams. If he was honest he was rather hurt. He felt rather betrayed by everything. He loved this place but he could not dispel a feeling of feeling terribly abused, and let down. He looked down at the carpetbag, traced the curve within with his palm. He couldn’t stop himself. It wasn’t even for security, so critical the contents of the carpetbag: it was the soft, exciting, electric thrill he got from the feeling of the contents of that bag, from proving with his palm- not his fingers!- that the thing he knew to be in that floral bag, was in fact in that bag; without a doubt.  

He finished his coffee, and then the rest of the milk on its own. Norman abhorred waste. He waited until the end of the jazz number, at which point the musicians went off for a cigarette break. Norman felt it time to leave. He smiled, regloving his hands, and folding up and repocketing his notebook and pen. He picked up the carpetbag. He’d looked after it carefully all evening, all afternoon, all day since one thirty when it had been filled. The straps were clasped carefully in his gloved hand. He moved slowly. He was nervous. He’d had an idea. He walked as nonchalantly and purposelessly as he could manage, right past the booth where the boy and the girl were having their date. They were laughing. A kiss was not faroff. Their eyes were on one another and nothing else. They were quasi-oblivious, a few drinks down, a little off their guard. Norman could do this! He could do as he intended. Norman slowed, as slowly as he dared. Very softly, very furtively, and as quickly as he could, like a reverse-pickpocket, he slipped the carpetbag into the booth, into the gap under the table as he walked past. He let go of the straps and resisted the urge to bolt out the door. The boy and the girl didn’t notice that there was now a mysterious carpetbag at their feet, embroidered in red roses and other flowers too. Norman had only ever touched the straps with his hands in gloves. Norman said goodbye to the barman who had served him coffee as he left the premises; Norman was really saying goodbye to the carpetbag, and what was inside it. More to what was inside it, it was the contents, not the vessel, that he had cherished. He emerged into the night. It was raining. He hadn’t noticed the rain begin. There Wilson’s stood, the windows steamed, the interior busy with activities, the music had ceased for a while but it would not be long beginning again. Don’t play the butter notes, Miles once said. 

“Don’t play the butter notes,” Norman said oddly and to nobody.  

Norman didn’t stay to hear the anguish break out, he knew he couldn’t wait in the street-with-no-name, outside Wilson’s, for the consternation and the horror to ring out from within, and for three policecars to arrive, maybe four, for the music to be stopped by the sound of screams, for commotion and confusion to knock a champagne bucket from the table and some poor bitch to take a tumble on the fizz and ice in her highheels. What’s more, the police would find it difficult to get to Wilson’s. It was on the street with no name. Norman was walking on his way, back onto the highstreet and along its tawdry length. He trudged down the light-polluted stretch of shops and amenities and drinking-establishments. He patted the notebook inside the coatlining of his left breast pocket. He was happy to part with his carpetbag. He was a writer! He had a mind, he had his thoughts, his imagination! That’s what matters most, he thought to himself. I don’t need the real thing because I’m a writer! he thought. One thing was for sure, and it made Norman, a strange, dark, gloved, spectacled, mosquito figure in the bright nightly world, chortle as he roamed further up the street: when the contents of that carpetbag were discovered, in the same booth at Wilson’s where those two kids were having their date, even if their having nothing to do with it was immediately apparent, there would be precious little chance of him getting that kiss. Not a person on the pale, moonlit earth- other than Norman perhaps- would feel in the mood for a kiss, once they discovered what was inside that carpetbag; perhaps not even ever again.