‘Stop it,’ I said. ‘Stop it, for God’s sake. What’s the matter with you?’
Patrick loosed his hold and stepped away. ‘Trying to shake some sense into him. Make him realise, way he’s going, what’ll happen if he carries on.’
He moved closer to Val and spoke softly. ‘They’ve got your number now, you know that, don’t you? Next time they catch you as much as smelling of reefer they’re going to have you inside so fast your feet won’t touch the ground. And you won’t like it inside, believe me.’
Val closed his eyes.
‘What you need is to put a little space between you and them, give them time to forget.’ Patrick stepped back. ‘Give me a couple of days, I’ll sort something. Even if it’s the Isle of Man.’
In the event, it was Paris. A two-week engagement at Le Chat Qui Pêche with an option to extend it by three more.
‘You better go with him, Anna. Hold his hand, keep him out of trouble.’ And slipping an envelope fat with French francs and two sets of tickets into my hand, he kissed me on the cheek. ‘Just his hand, mind.’
* * * *
The club was on the rue de la Huchette, close to the Seine, a black metal cat perched above a silver-grey fish on the sign outside; downstairs a small, smoky cellar bar with a stage barely big enough for piano, bass and drums, and, for seating, perhaps the most uncomfortable stools I’ve ever known. Instruments of torture, someone called them and, by the end of the first week, I knew exactly what he meant.
Not surprisingly, the French trio with whom Val was due to work were suspicious of him at first. His reputation in England may have been on the rise, but across the Channel he was scarcely known. And when you’re used to visitors of the calibre of Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, what gave Val Collins the idea he’d be welcome? Didn’t the French have saxophone players of their own?
Both the bassist and the drummer wore white shirts that first evening, I remember, ties loosened, top buttons undone, very cool; the pianist’s dark jacket was rucked up at the back, its collar arched awkwardly against his neck, a cigarette smouldering, half-forgotten, at the piano’s edge.
Val and I accepted a glass of wine from the proprietor and sat listening, the club not yet half full, Val’s foot moving to the rhythm and his fingers flexing over imaginary keys. At the intermission, we were introduced to the band, who shook hands politely, looked at Val with cursory interest and excused themselves to stretch their legs outside, breathe in a little night air.
‘Nice guys,’ Val said with a slight edge as they left.
‘You’ll be fine,’ I said and squeezed his arm.
When the trio returned, Val was already on stage, re-angling the mike, adjusting his reed. ‘Blues in F,’ he said quietly, counting in the tempo, medium-fast. After a single chorus from the piano, he announced himself with a squawk and then a skittering run and they were away. Ten minutes later, when Val stepped back from the microphone, layered in sweat, the drummer gave a little triumphant roll on his snare, the pianist turned and held out his hand and the bass player loosened another button on his shirt and grinned.
‘Et maintenant
,’ Val announced, testing his tender vocabulary to the full, ‘
nous jouons une ballade par
Ira Gershwin
et
Vernon Duke, ‘I Can’t Get Started’. Merci.’
And the crowd, accepting him, applauded.
What could go wrong?
At first, nothing it seemed. We both slept late most days at the hotel on the rue Maître-Albert where we stayed; adjacent rooms that held a bed, a small wardrobe and little else, but with views across towards Notre Dame. After coffee and croissants – we were in Paris, after all – we would wander around the city, the streets of Saint-Germain-des-Prés at first, but then, gradually, we found our way around Montparnasse and up through Montmartre to Sacré Coeur. Sometimes we would take in a late afternoon movie, and Val would have a nap at the hotel before a leisurely dinner and on to the club for that evening’s session, which would continue until the early hours.
Six nights a week and on the seventh, rest?
There were other clubs to visit, other musicians to hear. The Caveau de la Huchette was just across the street, the Club Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the Trois Mailletz both a short walk away. Others, like the Tabou and the Blue Note, were a little further afield. I couldn’t keep up.
‘Go back to the hotel,’ Val said, reading the tiredness in my eyes. ‘Get a good night’s sleep, a proper rest.’ Then, with the beginnings of a smile, ‘You don’t have to play nursemaid all the time, you know.’
‘Is that what I’m doing?’
Coming into the club late one evening, I saw him in the company of an American drummer we’d met a few nights before and a couple of broad-shouldered French types, wearing those belted trench coats which made them look like cops or gangsters or maybe both. As soon as he spotted me, Val made a quick show of shaking hands and turning away, but not before I saw a small package pass from hand to hand and into the inside pocket of his suit.
‘Don’t look so disapproving,’ he said, when I walked over. ‘Just a few pills to keep me awake.’
‘And that’s all?’
‘Of course.’ He had a lovely, disarming smile.
‘No smack?’
‘No smack.’
I could have asked him to show me his arms, but I chose to believe him instead. It would have made little difference if I had; by then I think he was injecting himself in the leg.
The next day Val was up before eleven, dressed and ready, stirring me from sleep.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. Just a shame to waste a beautiful day.’
The winter sun reflected from the stonework of the bridge as we walked across to the Ile St-Louis arm in arm. Val had taken to affecting a beret, which he wore slanting extravagantly to one side. On the cobbles close to where we sat, drinking coffee, sparrows splashed in the shallow puddles left by last night’s rain.
‘Why did you do it?’ Val asked me.
‘Do it?’
‘This. All of this. Throwing up your job-’
‘It wasn’t a real job.’
‘It was work.’
‘It was temping in a lousy office for a lousy boss.’
‘And this is better?’
‘Of course this is better.’
‘I still don’t understand why?’
‘Why come here with you?’
Val nodded.
‘Because he asked me.’
‘Patrick.’
‘Yes, Patrick.’
‘You do everything he asks you?’
I shook my head. ‘No. No, I don’t.’
‘You will,’ he said. ‘You will.’ I couldn’t see his eyes; I didn’t want to see his eyes.
A foursome of tourists, Scandinavian I think, possibly German, came and sat noisily at a table nearby. When the waiter walked past, Val asked for a cognac, which he poured into what was left of his coffee and downed at a single gulp.
‘What I meant,’ he said, ‘would you have come if it had been anyone else but me?’
‘I know what you meant,’ I said. ‘And, no. No, I don’t think I would.’
‘Jimmy, perhaps?’
‘Yes,’ I acknowledged. ‘Perhaps Jimmy. Maybe.’
Seeing Val’s rueful smile, I reached across and took hold of his hand, but when, a few moments later, he gently squeezed my fingers, I took my hand away.
Patrick was waiting for us at the hotel when we returned.
‘Well,’ he said, rising from the lobby’s solitary chair. ‘The lovebirds at last.’
‘Bollocks,’ Val said, but with a grin.
Patrick kissed the side of my mouth and I could smell tobacco and Scotch and expensive aftershave; he put his arms round Val and gave him a quick hug.
‘Been out for lunch?’
‘Breakfast,’ Val said.
‘Fine. Then let’s have lunch.’
Over our protests he led us to a small restaurant in the Latin Quarter, where he ordered in a combination of enthusiastic gestures and sixth-form French.
‘I went along to the club earlier,’ Patrick said, once the waiter had set a basket of bread on the table and poured our wine. ‘Sounds as if it’s going well. They want to hold you over for three weeks more. Assuming you’re agreeable?’
Val nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘Anna?’
‘I can’t stay that long,’ I said.
‘Why ever not?’ Patrick looked surprised, aggrieved.
‘I’ve got a life to live.’
‘You’ve got a bedsit in Kilburn and precious little else.’
Blood rushed to my cheeks. ‘All the more reason, then, for not wasting my time here.’
Patrick laughed. ‘You hear that, Val? Wasting her time.’
‘Let her be,’ Val said, forcefully.
Patrick laughed again. ‘Found yourself a champion,’ he said, looking at me.
Val’s knife struck the edge of his plate. ‘For fuck’s sake! When are you going to stop organising our lives?’
Patrick took his time in answering. ‘When I think you can do it for yourselves.’
In his first set that evening, Val was a little below pat, nothing most of the audience seemed to notice or be bothered by, but there was less drive than usual to his playing and several of his solos seemed to peter out aimlessly before handing over to the piano. I could sense the tension building in Patrick beside me, and after the third number he steered me outside; there was a faint rain misting. ‘He’s using again,’ Patrick said. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Anna, come on-’
‘I asked him.’
‘You asked him and he said no?’
‘Yes.’
‘Scout’s honour, cross my heart and hope to die. That kind of no?’
I pulled away from him. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘Do what?’
‘Treat me as though I’m some child.’
‘Then open your eyes.’
‘They are open.’
Patrick sighed and I saw the grey of his breath dissipating into the night air.
‘I’m not his jailer, Patrick,’ I said. ‘I’m not his wife, his lover. I can’t watch him twenty-four hours of the day.’
‘I know.’
He kissed me on the forehead, the sort of kiss you might give to a young girl, his lips cold and quick. A long, low boat passed slowly beneath the bridge.
‘I’m opening a club,’ he said. ‘Soho. Broadwick Street.’
‘You?’
‘Some friends I know, they’re putting up the money. I thought if Val were interested it would be somewhere for him to play.’
‘What about the police? Isn’t that a risk still?’
Patrick smiled. ‘Don’t worry about that. It’s all squared away.’
How many times would I hear him say that over the years? All squared away. How much cash was shelled out, usually in small denominations, unmarked notes slipped into side pockets or left in grubby holdalls in the left luggage lockers of suburban railway stations? I never knew the half of it, the paybacks and backhanders and all the false accounting, not even during those years later when we lived together – another story, waiting, one day, to be told.
‘Come on,’ he said, taking my arm. ‘We’ll miss the second set.’
When we got back to the club, Val and the American drummer were in animated conversation at the far end of the bar. Seeing us approach, the drummer ducked his head towards Val, spoke quickly and stepped away. ‘It’s not me you have to worry about, you fucker, remember that.’ And then he was pushing his way through the crowd.
‘What was all that about?’ Patrick asked.
Val shrugged. ‘Nothing. Why?’
‘He seemed pretty angry.’
‘It doesn’t mean anything. That’s just the way he is.’
‘How much do you owe?’
‘What?’
‘That bastard, how much do you owe?’
‘Look-’
‘No, you look.’ Patrick had hold of him by the lapels of his coat. ‘I know him. He was busted in London last year, thrown out of Italy before that, jailed in Berlin. He’s a user and a dealer, the worst kind of pimp there is.’
‘He’s OK-’
Patrick pushed Val back against the bar. ‘He’s not fucking OK. You hear me. Keep away from him. Unless you want to end up the same way.’
On the small stage, the pianist was sounding a few chords, trying out a few runs. ‘I’ve got to go,’ Val said, and Patrick released his grip.
All of Val’s anger came out on stage, channelled first through a blistering ‘Cherokee’, then a biting up-tempo blues that seemed as if it might never end.
Patrick left Paris the next day, but not before he’d set up a recording date for Val and the trio at the Pathé-Magellan studio. The producer’s idea was to cut an album of standards, none of the takes too long and with Val sticking close to the melody, so that, with any luck, some might be issued as singles for the many jukeboxes around. Val always claimed to be less than happy with the results, feeling restricted by the set-up and the selection of tunes. Easy listening, I suppose it might be called nowadays, dinner jazz, but it’s always been one of my favourites, even now.
It was when we were leaving the studio after the last session that the pianist invited us to go along later with him and his girlfriend to hear Lester Young. Val was evasive. Maybe
oui
, maybe
non.
The one night off from Le Chat, he might just crash, catch up on some sleep.
‘I thought he was one of your favourites,’ I said, as we were heading for the Métro. ‘How come you didn’t want to go?’
Val gave a quick shake of the head. ‘I hear he’s not playing too well.’
Young, I found out later, had already been in Paris for several weeks, playing at the Blue Note on the rue d’Artois and living at the Hotel La Louisiane. A room on the second floor he rarely if ever left except to go to work.
Val had brought a few records with him from England, one of them an LP with a tattered cover and a scratch across one side: Lester Young, some fifteen years earlier, in his prime.
Val sat cross-legged on his bed, listening to the same tracks again and again. I poured what remained of a bottle of wine and took my glass across to a chair opposite the door; traffic noise rose and faded through the partly opened shutters, the occasional voice raised in anger or surprise; the sound of the saxophone lithe and muscular in the room.