Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(25)
There was no way Resnick could have known, but Grabianski’s grandmother—not the Polish one, but the English—had brought him here, to Chapel Market, on her rare trips north of the river. Cheap vegetables, stockings, birthday cards, and cheese, off they would go, staggering home, weighed down with bargains and with young Jerzy struggling to keep his string bag from dragging on the ground. But not before they had shuffled into the eel and pie shop for steak and kidney pie and mash, Jerzy’s head just level with the counter and the edge of his white china plate.
The street that Resnick walked along was thick with refuse from that day’s market, crates and boxes interlaced with bright blue paper, rotting oranges, grapes, onions oozing pus.
The Rhythmic was on the left-hand side, beyond where the market proper ended. The main room was large, larger than Resnick had anticipated, the half immediately facing him set out with tables for dining. He had time to buy a bottle of Budvar and find leaning space along the side wall before the lights dimmed and, after a brief announcement, Jessica Williams came on stage.
Tall, red-haired, and wearing a long, loose flowing dress, she sat at the piano and for a moment fidgeted with the height of the stool. Even before she began playing, fingers hesitating above the keys, Resnick had noticed the size of her hands. Then, without introduction, she launched into “I Should Care.” Almost deferentially at first, brushing the tune around its edges, feeling her way freshly into a melody she must have played—and Resnick heard—a hundred times. Ten minutes later, when she had exhausted every variation, left hand finally rocking through a stride pattern that would have made James P. Johnson or Fats Waller beam with pleasure, she finished to a roar of disbelieving applause.
And paused, eyes closed, waiting for the silence to resume. This time it was a slow blues, building from the most basic of patterns to a dazzling display of counterpoint that recalled for Resnick an old album he had bought by Lennie Tristano—“C Minor Complex,” “G Minor Complex”—bop meets Bach. After that, she clearly felt relaxed enough to talk, and played her way through two sets of standards and originals that held the crowd’s—and Resnick’s—attention fast.
By the time he walked back out into the London night some hours later, he knew he had been in the presence of something—someone—special.
I should care, the words came to him, I should let it upset me. When he dialed Hannah’s number from the callbox on the corner, the answerphone had been switched off and it rang and rang and rang till he broke the connection with his thumb.
Fourteen Resnick had been sitting there no longer than it took to prize the top off his first cup of coffee, when he saw Jackie Ferris approaching from the opposite corner of the square. This morning she was wearing a tan raincoat, open over a rust-red cotton sweater and blue jeans. Black and white Nikes on her feet.
It was a well-kept space surrounded by railings, flourishing shrubs, and trees; flower beds marked the perimeters of close-cut grass. The cafeteria was a low prefabricated building in the northeast corner, a paved crescent in front of it dotted with tables and chairs. On all sides, red or green buses trailed one another through the heavy morning traffic and the pavements were busy with people on their way to work.
“You found it okay, then?”
“No problem.” Russell Square was less than a ten-minute stroll from Resnick’s hotel.
Jackie nodded toward his cup. “Ready for another?”
“Not yet.”
Resnick leaned back against the metal chair and waited; the coffee was slightly bitter but at least it was strong. Jackie re-emerged with a polystyrene cup of her own and two slices of toast on a paper plate. Before trying either toast or coffee, she lit a cigarette.
“So how was last night?”
“Fine.”
“Enjoy the jazz?”
“Very much.”
Watching Jackie Ferris take her first bite, Resnick wished he had ordered himself some toast.
“You know, I read something about her. Jessica Williams, right? One of those magazines. Took her—what?—twenty years before she could get any sort of proper recognition. She’d play around these bars, California somewhere—Sacramento, I think that’s what it said—just waiting for a break. Anyway, according to what I read, it wasn’t just the fact that she was a woman held her back. More that she was gay.” She looked across the table at Resnick, squinting a little behind her glasses. “Did she make anything of that, last night?”
Resnick shook his head.
“And you wouldn’t have known, you couldn’t tell from the way she played?”
“I don’t see how.”
“No.”
Jackie stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette. “It’s easy to get fooled sometimes, you know? You look at someone like k.d. lang filling Wembley Arena umpteen times over and you think things have changed, but really it’s not true. I don’t know, but how many jazz players are there, women who’ve really made it, got through to the top? Not singers, but musicians.”
Barbara Thompson, Kathy Stobart, Marian McPartland—Mary Lou Williams, of course, Melba Liston—that Japanese pianist whose name he could never remember. “Not many,” Resnick said.
“Man’s world, eh, Charlie? Even now.”
“Maybe.”
“Like the police.”