Cosmo Cosmolino (24 page)

‘
I
know what's next,' said Ray irritably. ‘You'll get glamorous. You'll start singing. The women'd love that. The “girls”. Go on. Go out and get your great big guitar.'

For three beats Alby sat quite still. Then he leaned back, folded his hands behind his neck, and said, ‘Want me to tell you what happened to my guitar?'

Maxine came into the room, carrying a coffee pot and a saucepan of milk. Cups sprouted from her fingers. Hearing his opening line, she rose on tiptoes and pantomimed a self-effacing walk to the table, where she began to arrange her offering. Her red cheeks and complicated demeanour threw Ray into a spasm of frustration.

‘Can't you sit down?' he said. ‘You're always
fussing
.
Sit down.'

Maxine shot him a wounded look and slid on to a chair. Poor Ray. She longed to reach out for his clenched fist, to stroke the tension out of it, but the time for that had passed. She poured the coffee, surprised that her hand did not tremble, and passed the two men their cups. Ray took his without a word; Alby nodded to
her, and showed his chaotic teeth in a smile of theatrical sweetness.

‘Wonderful, Max,' he said. ‘Perfect. And now all I fancy is an apple. One of those green ones you grow down this way, that make your hair stand on end when you bite 'em. Is it the season?'

Maxine raised her shoulders to her ears and giggled. The fruitbowl of course was empty; but if that was what he wanted; if fruit would delay the moment of reckoning—she pushed back her chair and made as if to oblige.

‘Only fooling, dear,' said Alby. He pressed her on to her chair with his callused hand. ‘Stick around. Raymond wants to hear about my guitar. Don't you, Raymond.'

Ray hardly knew whether to laugh or scowl. He subsided. The sooner the performance began, the sooner they could get away.

‘It was a great big Ibanez.' Alby bent his arms and dropped his hands to hip level, wide apart. ‘Huge. Remember, Raymond? So big I could hardly play it. But I was used to it. I'd been busking a lot, up north, making a few bucks, living on it—I was doing all right.

‘Well, on the night in question, round about eleven o'clock, I got an urge to go and see the
Blues Brothers
again. I started walking down the avenue. I was hungry. Pretty soon I saw a McDonald's coming up. I was thinking, oh, I'll have a Coke, or maybe a hamburger;
but before I could get into line, this bloke comes up to me. Drunk, and smelling of it. He engages me in idle chat, then after a bit he says, Look, how's about buyin' me a hamburger? I go, Sure I will. Nothin' special, he says—just a liddle piece of meat. Don't bother with the lettuce or tomato or any of that. No, I say—mate, I'll buy you a jumbo burger. Hang on to this. And I hand him the guitar.

‘I get into the queue. A lot of people there—the place is packed. Ten minutes later I fight m' way back to him, with the food up over m' head, like this—and he's gone. Taken the guitar and run off. Oh, I was thrown. I was foaming at the mouth. What was I supposed to
do
?
Go back along the avenue and start asking
questions
?'

Alby picked bacon from between his front teeth, and ate it.

‘I went to the movie. The shine was taken off it, for sure—but I did quite enjoy it. Then two days later, on the Sunday, I went to church. They have this system—as Raymond knows—where you write down on a bit of paper if there's someone who needs praying for. I thought, Oh, why not. So I wrote down on the paper,
Someone stole my guitar
.

‘When the preacher goes through the little bits of paper, he picks out mine. He goes, Now here's an interesting one! Brother's lost his guitar. Everyone laughs. Don't laugh, says the preacher. It must mean a
lot to him. And he prays.'

Footsteps drummed on the stairs. Alby paused; and Janet, with her head wrapped in a towel, came rushing into the room. Ray averted his eyes.

‘Did you save some?' she cried. ‘Where's mine?'

‘Pipe down,' said Alby. ‘Let me finish my tale.
As I was saying
,
he prays.'

Janet looked at him sharply, then at Maxine; but Maxine was enthralled, Maxine had not even noticed her; so with ironic resignation Janet sat down and began to fossick among the crusts and rinds on the plate.

‘He prays,' said Alby. ‘And afterwards, outside, this bloke comes up to me and says, Alby, I think God's telling me to give you my guitar. It's been lying round the house for years and I never play it. He took me to his place and gave it to me. It's Australian, nice, a Maton, but still
big
.

‘So I'm glad and I take it; but I'm thinking to myself, one of these days I'm going to buy myself a ukulele, one of those curvy little ones with the singing tone—small and sweet and easy to carry—like a baby. I'm fed up with lugging a huge great axe wherever I go.

‘Next day I'm walking past a secondhand shop, down along the avenue, when as if by magic I spot one, among the junk lying in the window. Oh, it was a beauty. Genuine Hawaiian. It had a lovely little waist on it'—with two hands he made the wavy gesture that used to mean
stacked—
‘and get this: it was only twenty
dollars. The old bloke in the shop had no idea what it was worth. I had to struggle with myself, I can tell you. The devil was abroad that day. Up on Sapphire Street they sell for, oh, four or five hundred!'

Janet leaned forward. ‘You mean
dollars
?'
she said.

Alby nodded.

Ray's face went stern. ‘You don't mean to say you—'

Alby lowered his lids, arched his brows, and held up one flat hand for silence. ‘Don't rush to judgment,' he said. ‘Hear me out.

‘Right. I went into the shop, and I put a dollar down. And then I walked home, to think about it.

‘I came round the corner into our street—and what should I spy out the front of our house but a police car.
Now
what's happening, I thought. Old habits die hard: I felt like ducking into the alley and waiting for them to leave: but I get a grip on myself and I stroll in, cool as a cuke, and find two cops standing in the kitchen with their guns on. Everyone's there, and when I walk in they all swing round and call out in a chorus,
Here he is
!
Believe me, my whole life flashed before my eyes. I had to sit down.

‘But it wasn't me they were after. Turns out a couple of junkies had burgled the house. And what had they knocked off? I don't need to tell you. It was the Maton.

‘I went upstairs and I lay on m' bed, and I thought, Alby, this is a sign. Music is your livelihood. You are otherwise totally and tragically unemployable. This is a sign from the Lord.'

Ray clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes to the ceiling.

‘And I got up,' said Alby, unperturbed, ‘and walked straight back to that secondhand shop, and I bought the ukulele.'

He paused, and ran his half-closed eyes over the listeners' faces. The room was throbbing.

‘Now this particular ukulele,' he continued, changing modes like a champion, ‘was fashioned in the nut orchards of paradise. Through the rent in the ozone layer it dropped, straight out of the celestial meadows where the morning stars clap their hands for joy—and my outstretched paws snaffled it before it could hit the ground. It was meant for me. It had my name on it.

‘From the hole in its belly rose a fragrance like wood; like apples; like the cedars of Lebanon. It was made for the express purpose of accompanying chants of joy. I want you all to know that I was . . .
in love
with this ukulele.'

Maxine glanced at Janet with shining eyes. Janet had her elbows on the table and was gazing at Alby with astonished admiration. Alby nodded superbly, and paused to polish off a tiny morsel of flesh that clung to the dish's rim. He brought his hand away from his lips
in a showy arc that galled Ray into protest.

‘Alby!' he said. ‘I can't
believe
you'd do a thing like that.'

‘Wait,' said Alby, with another splendid gesture of restraint. ‘Vengeance is mine,
I
will repay, says the Lord. Romans twelve nineteen.

‘So. I took the uke home. I sat on the porch steps in the dark, and I worked out the chords of all the songs I knew. It was so easy! Compared with the guitar, its notes just placed themselves under my fingers. It had a human scale. It had a voice like an angel's. Sweet, and clear—it
rang
.
It was the perfect instrument. I was made. My future was assured. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.'

Ray could scarcely contain himself, but when Maxine laid a hand on his arm to calm him he twisted away from her. Alby took a long swallow of lukewarm coffee and set down his cup. Janet sat perfectly still.

‘The very next night,' said Alby, at his leisure, ‘round about a quarter to seven, I put on my good jacket, I picked up my bag, and I set out for the avenue. My repertoire was secure in my head. I was about to pull in a small fortune. I had just the spot in mind where I'd set up—in a certain corner where the acoustics would make me sound gorgeous. I had the uke under my arm, wrapped up in an old jumper and round that a newspaper, to cushion it from jolts. And away I sailed.

‘Down by the station, as I went rolling along, I saw the row of phone boxes there, under the colonnade, and I suddenly thought, Why not ring up this girl I fancied, a great big bustling blonde from church, and see if she felt like hopping on the bus and rocking down to the avenue to see me put on the show of my life? I stepped into a booth and dialled her number. We got talking: I put the hard word on her, and she seemed keen to come; so I told her where to find me, I described the exact whereabouts of my spot; and we hung up with mutual expressions of goodwill.

‘I stepped out of that phone box like a king. My feet weren't touching the ground. It was a beautiful evening. Cool, but clear. The sky was turning a sort of pinkish-green. The harbour down the bottom of the hill was so calm, it could have been a sheet of aluminium. A full moon was bouncing over the cathedral spire like—like the dot on an i.'

‘Oh Alby,' said Janet. ‘I don't think I can bear this.'

‘It's like a poem,' said Maxine faintly, ‘the way you tell it.'

‘Keep going,' said Janet. ‘Don't stop.'

‘I'd got all the way down the hill,' Alby went on with a gracious smile, ‘past the Town Hall and the cathedral, and I was bowling along in front of the Law Courts and the National Library, glorying to myself out loud, when a kid stepped out of a lane and put the
bite on me for a dollar. I laid down my bag and went for my pocket—and that's when the penny dropped. Apart from the bag, I was empty-handed. I'd left the uke on the shelf in that flamin' phone box.'

Maxine gasped. Janet closed her eyes. Ray sat forward.

‘I ran back, of course,' said Alby. ‘I went like the clappers. I was knockin' pedestrians flyin'—I was leap-froggin' cars. But when I got back to the station, the cupboard was bare.'

‘Did you check
all
the boxes?' whispered Maxine. ‘
All
?'
She clasped her hands tightly under her chin.

‘Course I did,' said Alby. ‘No use. The bird had flown.'

Outside, the low morning sun had heaved itself far enough over the house to land its first direct beams on the surface of the white table where they sat, and lit from below by the rebounding shafts, Alby's face, to Maxine, was a mask of drama, its lips hardened by suffering, its eyes sunken almost to vanishing point. She groaned out loud. Ray flashed her a jealous look.

‘I searched for it,' Alby went on, ‘high and low. I resolved to check out every secondhand shop and pawn shop and op shop within a three-mile radius of the station. That's all I did, day in, day out, for a week or more. I tramped the streets. I wore out m' shoes. I made great sweeping reconnoitres. I took no rest.'

He permitted himself a very small sigh.

‘Now in itself,' he said, ‘a ukulele's not such a rare thing. In a day's march you might stumble on half a dozen—but fakes, right? Cheap, stringless, broken ones. Ugly workmanship. Rubbish from Taiwan, poor quality, crudely tacked together, hopeless action, with tuning pegs you can't tighten and horrible sticky yellow varnish. Trash. But you would expect to
find
'em.

‘The funny thing was, though, that search as I might, I never spotted a ukulele. In ten days I did not clap eyes on a single solitary one, of any standard or quality whatsoever. I was bluffed.

‘Then, late in the afternoon of the tenth day, I staggered into a hockshop in a lane off Mandrake Street. They had nothing in the way of stringed instruments hanging in the window, but I went in anyway, according to my vow, and asked the lady behind the counter if she had any ukuleles.

‘Sorry, she says. None left. With my heart in my boots I make as if to leave, but she calls after me in a friendly way and says, Are you with that girl from the Workers' Theatre, are you? I go, No—what girl? Oh, she says, I forgot their show closed last night. What show was that? I say, just to be polite. The show that girl did, she goes, with all the ukuleles. I turn around. Pretty modern show, says the lady. Different. She was in here looking for ukuleles nearly every day. I've been putting them aside for her. She needed one for each performance.'

Breathing more heavily than before, Alby raised his cup and swigged its remaining drops.

‘My knees were knockin',' he said. ‘But I forced myself. I go, How come she needed so many? Well apparently, goes the lady, she jumped on 'em.
Jumped
on 'em? So I'm told, goes the lady. Smashed 'em. Ground 'em to powder, right up there on stage in front of everyone. Kids and everything. She used up eight ukuleles a week. One per night, and the extra was for the Saturday matinée.'