Rough Treatment

Nine

Miles met Resnick the instant his feet touched the pavement; the cat had recognized the sound of the car’s engine from the end of the street and come running. Now he made his welcoming cry from the irregular stones atop the wall, strutting, tail hoisted high as he presented, turn upon turn, his fine backside. Resnick reached up a hand and stroked the smooth fur of the cat’s head, behind and below the ear.

“Come on,” said Resnick. “Let’s get something to eat.”

Miles ran along the wall before jumping to the ground, wriggling between the bars of the gate even as Resnick was opening it.

Before he reached the front door, Resnick was aware that Dizzy was there, too; as usual, silent and seemingly from nowhere, he had materialized at the crucial moment. Right now he was nudging Miles out of the way, laying claim to be the first through into the house.

Resnick switched on the light and bent to scoop the post from the carpet. Four envelopes and a business card. He set the chain and slid the bolt.

It struck cold walking through the hallway, and Resnick tried to remember when he had last bled the radiators; maybe it was later than he’d thought and the system had closed itself down for the night.

Pepper had wedged himself between bread bin and coffee maker, two paws protruding. The tip of Bud’s tail showed, a muted white, curling past a leg of the kitchen table.

Miles and Dizzy nudged against either side of Resnick, meowing shrilly.

“Hush,” he said, knowing that it would do no good.

Tin opened, he forked some into each of the bowls, green, blue, yellow, red, then sprinkled a shower of dried heaven-knows-what over the top. The full-fat milk he gave them, keeping the semi-skimmed for himself. What time was it? Once he’d ground two handfuls of dark beans and poured in the water, he felt relaxed enough to remove his coat, loosen his already loose tie, unfasten and ease off his shoes. In the living room he selected some Lester Young from the shelf and switched the stereo on low. New York City with Johnny Guarnieri: three days past Christmas ’43 and just shy of New Year, shining and plump like a fat, silver apple. Back when everything must have still seemed possible. “I Never Knew.” “Sometimes I’m Happy.”

Back in the kitchen Resnick lifted Dizzy away from Bud’s bowl before slicing bread, rye with caraway. He scooped the contents from a tin of sardines in soya oil, sliced a small onion and spread the rings across the fish; there was a large enough piece of feta cheese to be worth grating. He picked up the business card and took it, with his sandwich, towards the music.

Claire Millinder’s signature, diagonally across the bottom of the card, red felt-tip, was rounded and neat. Tried contacting you, work and home, it read. Why don’t you get yourself an answerphone?

“A microwave, that’s the answer,” Graham Millington had told him. “That way, you wouldn’t have to eat those sandwiches all the time.”

“Never quite understood, Charlie,” Jack Skelton had said one strangely slack afternoon, “what it is you’ve got against CD. Exactly.”

“The way Debbie sees it,” he had heard Naylor explaining to Lynn Kellogg, “if we invest in a dishwasher now, the extent to which we’re going to find use of it, well, it’s going to get more instead of less.” Resnick couldn’t remember if that was before she’d had the baby, or after.

Lester was bouncing through “Just You, Just Me,” the first chorus almost straight, a trio of those trademark honks marking his place near the end of the middle eight, perfectly placed, perfectly spaced, rivets driven in a perfect line. Intake of breath, smooth and quick, over the flick of brushes against Sid Catlett’s snares, and then, with relaxed confidence and the ease of a man with perfect trust both of fingers and mind, he made from that same sequence another song, another tune, tied to the first and utterly his own.

What are these arms for?

What are these charms for?

Use your imagination.

The reason Resnick didn’t get an answerphone: how else to keep bad news at bay? The messages that you didn’t want to hear.

He had seen a photograph of Lester Young taken in 1959. He is in a recording studio, holding his horn, not playing. The suit he is wearing, even for those days’ fashions, seems overlarge, as though, perhaps, he has shrunk within it. His head is down, his cheeks have sunk in on his jaw; whatever he is looking at in those eyes, soft, brown, is not there in the room. His left hand holds the shield with which he will cover the mouthpiece, as if maybe, he is thinking he will slip it into place, not play again, it is possible that the veins in his esophagus have already ruptured and he is bleeding inside.

The coffee would be ready. In the kitchen Resnick picked up the envelope that was not brown, the address on which had not been printed via computer. He was trying to work out how long it had been since he had seen that writing. How many years. He wanted to tear it, two and four and six and eight, all the multiples until it was like confetti.

“Here.”

He lifted Bud with one hand and set him back in his lap. The cup of coffee was balanced on the arm of the chair. The first take of “I Never Knew” ended abruptly; some saxophone, a piano phrase never finished. Lester is standing there, tenor close to his mouth, but now he is looking away. As if something has slipped suddenly through that door in 1943, unbidden, out of time. A premonition. A ghost.