Chapter One

Sticklebacks and Snowglobes

BA Goodjohn

There was a unicorn in my first snow globe. It had ‘With Luck from Ramsgate’ in gold letters on the base. I haven’t got it anymore. Dorothy let all the water out.

I’ve still got twelve. Seven up there on my windowsill, and five on that shelf over my bed. That’s where I put my favourites. I’m going to give ‘Jesus in the Wilderness’ to my sister, though. It’s got yellow snow.

My sister says snow globes are just things in glass balls, but she’s wrong. It’s like the whole world’s inside, ready to shake. You can fit anything in there. Little things like squirrels. Or big things like the Taj Mahal. That’s in India where Keesal comes from.

Before you shake one, everything’s quiet. All the flakes lie on the flat bits of the special thing inside — like in this reindeer one. See? In between his antlers. On his hooves. It’s Christmas in there forever.

You can wish on snow globes. You could pick up ‘Blenheim Palace’, shut your eyes and shout: ‘Roof!’ Then shake. If snow falls on the turrets, like you said, your wish comes true. But it has to be sitting in a thick layer right over the pink tiles. Thick enough for you to dig your nail into. If you could.

It doesn’t count if you shake it again.

Dad’s going to put Dizzy in one. He’s going to fit all of New Orleans in there.

The Ghost Note

Donald Thompson, toasty in red long johns and undershirt, laid his freshly laundered overalls across the ottoman and took his trumpet from its open case on the bed. He pressed his tongue against the brass mouthpiece — he loved the feel of the smooth metal in his mouth — and ran the tips of his fingers across its stone-inlaid buttons, not pressing, merely gauging the coolness of the Brazilian agate.

‘Dizzy had these,’ he said to the fat man in the cheval glass. ‘Dizzy had these and played notes so sweet they sugared people’s hearts.’ He inhaled, blew a note, then tried to stop it with his tongue. It was almost a ghost note, a note that was never there. He filled his lungs and played the opening bars to Nobody Knows, then put the trumpet on the bed, the brass valves disappearing through the looped holes in the crocheted bed cover. He pulled out a creased airmail letter from the case and read it.

A snort from the wardrobe interrupted his concentration. He put down the letter and pulled open the wardrobe door. Inside sat his daughter.

‘Sweet thing,’ he said. ‘What are you doing in there?’

Eight-year-old Tot Thompson was partly obscured by the hems of her mother’s dresses, her small, red, T-bar shoes flanked by high-heeled court shoes and ink-spattered work boots. She was a thin child, her hair a strange mass of orange curls that kinked straight out from her head like a clown’s wig. Her eyes were shut tight, and her pale hands quivered in the air as if playing an invisible piano.

He smiled and picked up the trumpet again. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we have Donald Thompson on the trumpet, accompanied by’ — he gestured to the wardrobe — ‘the one, the only, Ste-e-e-e-vie Wonder!’ He put the trumpet to his lips and picked up where he had left off, the sad strains of the blues classic once again filling the room. The trees through the window waved their bare branches in sympathy with the music’s heartbreak, and a drift of swallows swooped in and around the community-centre eaves.

Reflected in the mirror, he could see Tot’s hands reaching out beyond the wardrobe door, fluttering in the air. All is good in the world, he thought. Just me, the birds, and the sweetest little air piano player to come off the Bishop’s Croft housing estate.

His wife appeared, carrying an armload of laundry. ‘You’re going to be late,’ she said. ‘Are you going to put those overalls on or what?’ She dropped the clothes on the bed.

He turned and watched her sort underwear into ‘his’ and ‘her’ piles.

‘I’ve still got five minutes,’ he said, shining the trumpet’s bell on the hem of his shirt. ‘I thought I’d walk Tot to school on my way in.’

‘I wish I had a minute to spare!’ She reached for her own pile of underwear, each piece a froth of cheap lace and satin ribbon. ‘Seems everyone’s got time around here. Apart from me, that is.’

He watched her expertly manoeuvre the wardrobe door fully open with her knee, her arms laden with laundry. Tot still sat playing piano amongst the shoes, but now a puddle of urine collected around the heels of his wife’s shiny court shoes.

‘For God’s sake, Donald!’ Elaine shouted. ‘She’s had another bloody fit!’ She scooped up the child. ‘Can’t you be trusted to even look after your own daughter?’ She rushed out of the room towards the bathroom, leaving a shower of knickers and camisoles on the floor behind her.

He turned back to the cheval glass, his trumpet hanging from his hand, and shook his head at the man in the mirror. ‘I thought she was doing Stevie. Elaine,’ he shouted down the hall, ‘I thought she was doing Stevie!’

There was no answer from the bathroom, just the drum of water against the basin.

He put the trumpet on the ottoman and stepped into the blue twill overalls. He eased the fabric past the bulk of his stomach and pulled the buttons across to the buttonholes. His fingertips caught on the rough fabric, each tip stained navy from years of mixing ink for the newspaper company across town. Something caught his eye. Tot’s rabbit hopped from the open wardrobe and headed out across the lilac shag-pile carpet. He tried to grab the animal, but it was too quick. All that was left was a cluster of droppings nestled on a pair of his wife’s lacy knickers.

Donald opened the leather trumpet case and slid it onto the padded seat next to him. He drained the last of his whiskey, spinning the ice around in the empty glass. He thought the lunchtime session had gone well. The Blue Notes — himself on trumpet, Ken on drums, Jimmy on sax and Carol, the queen of vocals — had given a good set, starting out with their old favourites, then finishing up with a medley of ragtime classics.

In the back room, Ken was sorting out the wages with the landlord, and Carol and Jimmy sat at the bar chatting with the barmaid. Jimmy’s straw hat lay discarded on the bench by the dartboard. He’d have to have a word with him about that while Ken divvied up the money. After all, the punters came to see traditional jazz and expected to see the boys in boaters and striped blazers.

He watched Carol, the latest member of The Blue Notes. She had her back to him and wore a black sheath dress with a long electric-blue feather in her hair. She always dressed too exotically for the lunchtime slot. When he’d mentioned it to her, she’d shaken her head at him, her blonde hair a mass of plump curls. ‘I’m not like you lot. I’m going to make it big,’ she’d told him. ‘You never know who’s sitting out there in the crowd, Donnie. You’ve got to be ready to make your move.’

At her interview last month in his dining room, she’d told him she wanted fame before she was thirty, to leave England, maybe tour Vegas with a band. His wife, who had been making the tea and eavesdropping, told him that if Carol was in her twenties, she’d lived a hard life. But whatever her age, her voice was something else.

Sometimes, when her voice and his trumpet hit the notes just right, he felt his stomach quiver. It reminded him of the feeling he used to get as a kid swinging on tyres over the river, of that moment when the rope reaches its longest stretch and the tyre hangs in the air, in the second before it rushes back down towards the water. Her voice and his trumpet could take him there. For a moment, he would be held against a memory of water and sky. Those stretched seconds seemed almost mystical, as if there were something or someone else in the room, something blameless and full of light.

He never told her because it wasn’t really about Carol. It wasn’t even about him. It was about her hitting the note and his trumpet bedding down beneath it. There was no other word for it. It was magical.

He unscrewed the mouthpiece and put it away in its leather pouch, then eased the trumpet back into its case, the worn mauve velvet caressing the glow of the brass valves and bell. The set was over and another week of family and factory was about to begin, as it had begun so many times before.

Donald and Elaine had moved to Stanley Close in 1965. After their second daughter, Tot, was born, the two-bedroom flat in Harlow wasn’t big enough, and Elaine managed to arrange a council swap onto the Bishop’s Croft housing estate. Tot was perhaps a year old and Dorothy about seven. Elaine spent that first year coping with stretch marks and colour swatches. She’d refused the free wallpaper offered to tenants by the local council. Said she couldn’t live surrounded by embossed bamboo and Chinese temples. Then she made him rip out the old kitchen cabinets and replace them with solid-wood units from John Lewis. He’d told her the council would have their arses in a sling if they found out, but he’d done it anyway.

The last seven years had been hard. The women in the road disliked Elaine. They reckoned she was stuck up, and the men despised him for the pushover he’d become. Their attitude didn’t bother Elaine. She told him that if the residents of Stanley Close had taken them to their hearts, it would have been proof the Thompsons were doing something wrong. And after all, she’d pointed out, it wasn’t as if they would be staying on the estate long, was it?

Still, over the years, he had often wished he fitted in more. It would have been nice to have a chat with the other Stanley Close men over a beer, maybe join in with the general bitching about wives and football. But it never happened. The neighbours smiled and nodded as they trimmed their hedges or mowed their lawns, but they never actually spoke to him. Apart from being on first-name terms with the Deepens family — mainly due to Jimmy’s role as sax player in The Blue Notes — Elaine and her primping and preening had put them outside the group. He didn’t really mind any more. Not after he hatched his plan.

He watched Jimmy finish his beer and drop his sax into a plastic carrier bag. On the walk home, he’d tell him about the letter from America. He’d have a bit of a laugh with him first. Pull his leg about the straw boater and tell him how they all wear them on Bourbon Street. He sipped his whiskey, anticipating the moment when he’d tell young Jimmy about the deal he’d struck.

The bar emptied as the locals finally finished their drinks and went home. Carol still chatted to the barmaid, and Ken was nowhere to be seen. He was polishing his open trumpet case with his handkerchief when someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was Jimmy.

‘No easy way to say this, Don,’ Jimmy mumbled, passing the bag with the sax from one hand to another, ‘but I’m giving it up.’

Donald clicked shut the lid of the case. ‘Giving what up, Jim?’ he said, smiling. ‘The beer? Cathy got you to sign the pledge?’
‘No,’ said Jimmy, looking down at the floor. ‘The band. I’ve had enough of this Sunday lark. I’m getting rid of the sax. Swapping it.’

‘Swapping it? What the hell for?’

‘A set of clubs. Me and the wife are taking up golf. She’s fed up with me being out all the time, what with practising and being up here every Sunday. And now with the promotion, it seems, well ... Cathy reckons it would be a good career move.’

Donald shook his head as if seawater flooded his ears. ‘You can’t let them do this to you, Jim. Let her take up golf. Take the kids pony riding in the Brecon bloody Beacons. Anything. But don’t let her make you give up playing. It’s ... it’s everything.’

Jimmy sat down on the bench opposite and drew patterns in the spilt beer pooling on the tabletop. ‘No, not for me, it’s not, Don. I agree with her.’ He looked hard at Donald. ‘It’s time for me to move up.’

‘But music’s our way up. How many nights have we talked about it, Jim? New Orleans? Bourbon Street? The whole thing. You and me. We’ve talked about it.’

Jim stood and picked up the carrier bag. ‘That was just beer talking, Don. Just the beer. We ain’t ever leaving here. You’ll be playing Stranger on the Shore until you die. “The Blue Notes at The Eagle.” That’s it. That’s all there is.’ He fiddled with his empty beer glass, turning it between his thumb and middle finger.

‘But, Jimmy,’ Donald said, flipping open his case and pulling out the letter. ‘It’s happened. The US of A! We’re out of here!’

‘Never a truer word said, mate,’ Jimmy replied, setting down his glass on the table and pulling on his jacket. ‘I’m gone. I’m late for my dinner.’

‘Read it, for Christ’s sake!’ Donald slapped the letter on the table and pushed it towards Jimmy. ‘I’m talking America, and you’re talking about your stomach?’

Jimmy flicked the letter back across the table. It came to a halt in a small puddle of beer. ‘No, I’m talking reality, Don. I’ve got a good job, a son, and another kiddie on the way. You’re talking pipe dreams.’ He drained his pint. ‘Now, I’m off. Tell Ken I’ll pick up my money in the week. I’ll do next Sunday, but that’s it. Weather permitting, me and Cathy’ll be playing golf on Sundays now. Who knows? We may even join the country club!’ Jimmy held out his hand. ‘No hard feelings, Don.’

Donald sat there, shaking his head. Jimmy shrugged and walked out, his bag bumping against the pub door with a tinny thud. Donald put the letter in his pocket and shut the trumpet case. He thought about what Jimmy had said about America being a pipe dream, about it just being the drink talking. He thought about his family, about Tot playing football in the back garden. She took after him, practised for hours and hours. She was the centre forward, the goalie, the crowd; he shut his eyes and could see his eldest running through the piano scales, her tongue clamped between her lips; Elaine in the kitchen, watching some haute-cuisine cookery programme on the portable black-and-white.

He studied Carol at the bar, the beginnings of a potbelly straining at the slippery fabric of her dress. The feather in her hair had come unclipped and trailed across her bare shoulder. Ken reappeared from the manager’s office and slipped onto a bar stool next to her. His hand snaked around her waist and massaged her shiny love handles.

Donald looked away. ‘They don’t get it,’ he said to the empty glass. ‘It wasn’t the drink talking. For me, it was never the drink.’

He parked the car outside his house on Stanley Close and turned off the engine. It was raining and the neat beds of winter pansies that flanked the concrete pathway looked waterlogged and bruised. Next door, their new neighbour, Mr Damson, a macintosh tented over his head, was putting a rake away in his potting shed. He waved and Donald nodded through the rain-beaded glass of the windscreen. He pulled the keys from the ignition, got out and slammed the door. Mr Damson disappeared down his alley, closing his back gate behind him.

Donald walked up the garden path, and before he could slip his key into the lock, the front door swung open and young Lilly O’Flannery, his eldest’s best friend from number seven, rushed out onto the steps.

‘Afternoon, Lilly,’ he said, straightening his blazer. ‘In a hurry?’

‘Sorry, Mr Thompson. It’s my tea. I’m late for my tea.’ She turned and ran across the pavement and over the grass.

He watched her go, her yellow hair streaming behind her, then went into the house and shut the door. In the hallway, he fingered the letter in his pocket, then quietly climbed the stairs.

Downstairs, he could hear his wife chopping vegetables and a discordant piano rendition of Silent Night from the dining room. As he sat down on the bed to reread the letter, something moved in the open wardrobe. He pulled back the door and found Tot sitting amongst the shoes, her rabbit on her lap.

‘Are you alright?’ he asked, placing his hand on her forehead, checking her temperature.

She nodded.

‘I’m sorry about Friday. I didn’t realise. I thought you were being Stevie. You know, playing.’

She stroked the rabbit. The animal chewed on a long strip of carrot. It looked at him and scrunched its nose. Tot put the rabbit in the wire basket with her mother’s underwear. ‘I don’t mind being sick and taking tablets,’ she said, ‘but it’s Barney.’

She looked at the rabbit behind the wire, rare tears collecting in her eyes.

‘What’s wrong with Barney?’

She stroked the animal’s long black ears. ‘I’m frightened I might drop him again. You know, when the fit thing happens. And he might get a broken head. Or a leg. Or he might get away and get eaten by Uncle Ernie’s dog. Or a fox.’

He smoothed her wayward orange hair with his hand.

She looked up at him. ‘I’m not frightened of Kit-the-Fit. I just don’t want him to hurt Barney.’

Donald picked up his trumpet case and took the rabbit from the wire basket. ‘Come on, sweet thing. I’ve got an idea.’

They walked out to the landing and into the bathroom, closing the door behind them. He gently placed the rabbit in the bathtub and rested his trumpet case on the basin.

‘Go on, jump in,’ he said.

Tot climbed into the bath and sat cross-legged at the plug end. The rabbit scrabbled about on the slippery porcelain surface, but despite several efforts, could not scale the sides.

‘You see,’ he said. ‘If Kit-the-Fit comes calling now, you won’t drop Barney, and he can’t run away.’

‘But we can’t stay in the bath forever.’

‘No, not forever, sweetie. But it’s nice now and again, isn’t it? Not having to worry.’

‘Yeah,’ she agreed. ‘Can I have that towel?’ She pointed at the rack on the wall behind him, and he passed her a fluffy green towel. She wound it round her head like a turban. ‘So I don’t hurt my head if Kit comes back. Now I don’t have to worry about anything.’ She smiled and played with the soap dish, filling it up with a handful of carrot strips from her skirt pocket.

‘You know, Tot, that’s all I want.’ He pulled a sheet of music from his trumpet case and stuck it to the mirror with a blob of toothpaste. ‘Can you keep a secret, a big secret?’

She nodded.

‘You see,’ he said, not looking away from the music, removing the mouthpiece from its pouch, ‘Daddy might be going away. To New Orleans. I got this letter from your Uncle Trevor.’ He pulled out the envelope from his pocket.

Barney lost his grip on the side of the tub and slid back down to the tap end, coming to a halt by Tot’s knees and the soap dish. The rabbit chewed on a carrot strip, the pair of them watching Donald from the bathtub.

He screwed the mouthpiece gently into the receiver. ‘Your Uncle Trevor’s bought another bistro. Not on Bourbon Street, but close by. But I need to make sure you’ll all be alright. If I go, like.’

Tot picked up Barney and placed him in the plastic tidy behind the taps. ‘Is N’Orleans in America?’

‘Yes, in the south. The home of jazz, they say. It’s where Dizzy used to play. I’ve told you about Dizzy, right?’

Tot chewed on her lip for a moment, then nodded. ‘He was the man with the ’narmonies.’

He smiled. ‘Trevor wants me to come in with him, you see. To expand. You know — get a licence, put on live music at the weekend. I mean, who knows where we could go?’ He turned back to the sheet music and played a pure note. ‘Dizzy was the first, true, bebop trumpet player. He was the king of rhythm.’

The rabbit nibbled on Elaine’s natural sea sponge, brown fronds spilling out the sides of its mouth.

‘I’ve got to go, Tot. It’s an opportunity of a lifetime.’

‘Can we come?’ Tot scratched the animal’s ears.

He shook his head as the rabbit spat out a brown mass onto the tiled splash back.

‘Will you bring me back a present?’ she said, mopping up the mess with a cotton-wool ball.

‘I’ll send you something. What would you like?’

‘Another snow globe. N’Orleans in the snow.’

Donald nodded. He put the trumpet to his lips and tears rolled slowly down his face, then trickled into the corners of his mouth. He inhaled, breath building in his lungs. He closed his eyes, slowly forced the air smoothly through the mouthpiece, then pressed his tongue against the brass opening. The ghost note filled the small, square bathroom, echoed off the clean, white-tiled walls, and disappeared before it had even begun.

Sometimes you can have too much.

Take marbles.

I’ve only got pee-wees — the ones that look like they’ve got twisty fish in the middle — and if someone plays me for keeps and I lose them all, I can buy some more when I get my pocket money. But if someone’s got a bag of swanky agates, like from their grandma or something, and their best is a blue and red corkscrew, and even their worst one is a lemon oxblood, and they play me and I win them all, they’ve lost everything. It’s ... all ... gone.

Never play marbles with Michael O’Flannery. He calls his ballbies, but they’re really ball-bearings his dad brings home from the ink factory. They’re okay with pee-wees, but they’ll smash an oxblood to smither-bloody-reens.