Authors: Sara Sheridan
Outside the Claremonts’ family home the group mustered and politely waited for Mr Claremont to open the door. It wasn’t locked but the custom was that a member of the family had to invite visitors inside.
‘Welcome. Don’t stand on ceremony. Not at a time like this, for heaven’s sake,’ Lindon’s father said as he ushered them into the narrow hallway. He ran his hand over his short, white hair. He was a tall man, but he seemed to have shrunk today, somehow.
Inside, the place was almost unbearably warm. All the fires had been set before the family left for the service and the table was laid ready for a buffet. In their grief the Claremonts had turned to organisation of the practicalities for comfort. A mismatched pile of plates teetered at the edge of the kitchen table as the women put down their dishes and removed the lids. Meanwhile, Mr Claremont opened the back door and rolled in a couple of thick glass flagons filled with homebrew of an alarming yellow colour.
‘I didn’t know you made your own, Mr Claremont,’ Vesta smiled.
His eyes were bloodshot but he was trying his damnedest to keep his spirits up. ‘Oh yes. I’m a master brewer, young lady! Mostly beer, of course, but last year I tried cider. It was a bumper year for apples, and Ella had a friend who got us a barrel very cheap. We had apple cobbler for weeks! Baked apples. Stewed apples. There was apple sauce with everything! Apple this, apple that. I got sick of it, to tell the truth. Your mother made apple jelly.’ He smacked his lips. ‘We didn’t use to tell you about my brewing when you were little. We didn’t want to encourage you kids,’ he said quietly, ‘and in the end that worked out. Teetotal, my lad was. That’s quite something for a sax player, but Lindon stuck to his guns and never touched a drop.’
Vesta bit her tongue. ‘Here, let me help.’ She picked up a glass. ‘If you pour, I’ll serve.’
‘You gotta taste this,’ he insisted. ‘It’s last year’s. It’ll revive you after a long morning. Demon drink notwithstanding, church ain’t always easy, especially today. Not for none of us.’ Vesta took a gulp and froze. The liquid was utterly revolting – it tasted strongly of fermenting grass. The only blessing was that it was so cold the flavour was probably inhibited.
‘Well,’ she said, forcing herself to swallow, ‘that seems to have done the trick.’
‘I always hoped Lindon would get married, you know. Nice girl like you,’ Mr Claremont said ruefully.
Everyone helped themselves to food and drink and then spread around the ground floor, perching on the arms of the Claremonts’ comfortable chairs or standing plate-in-hand in the hallway. One or two of the neighbours, white folks who didn’t attend the First Evangelical, came in by the back door. Everyone was wearing sombre colours for the wake.
Nonetheless, the new arrivals greeted their friends noisily – everyone in the neighbourhood knew each other. One woman flung her arms around Lindon’s mother, and the two of them stood for what seemed like several minutes, just hugging.
‘We thought we’d lost all the young men we were gonna lose when the war wound up. We thought those days were gone,’ the woman sniffed. ‘It’s a tragedy, Ella. He was a fine lad, your Lindon. I don’t care what the papers say. I don’t care about nothing. We knew him and he was a fine lad.’
Vesta busied herself with serving the drinks and surreptitiously disposing of Mr Claremont’s homebrew where people had put it to one side. Everyone was talking about Lindon when he was a child, telling stories of him playing football in the street or practising loudly on his saxophone. He’d often played so late into the night that the neighbours couldn’t sleep and Mr Claremont had had to confiscate the instrument, only letting Lindon practise during daylight and sometimes not even then. Vesta remembered Lindon as a skinny ten-year-old, playing keepie-uppie on a bombsite.
‘Whatcha doing?’ she’d asked.
‘Not playing my horn,’ he’d winked, and mimed holding his saxophone.
In the centre of the room Lindon’s mother sat as if she was in the eye of the storm. She was still wearing her hat and she seemed too delicate, somehow, to survive the huge and unexpected tragedy of losing her eldest son. Vesta could see that the reminiscences swirled around her but none of them was hitting home.
‘Tea,’ Ella Claremont declared suddenly, clapping her hands as she removed herself from the throng and headed into the kitchen to boil the kettle.
There was a knock at the door.
‘Get that would you, Vesta, dear?’ she called, her tone of voice exactly the same as when Vesta visited the house as a kid.
Peeling off her cardigan Vesta pushed her way through the crowd into the hallway and turned the doorknob. When she saw who was there she had to struggle to suppress a whoop.
Charlie almost filled the entire doorframe. ‘Sorry I ran out on you,’ he said. ‘Had to catch up with Tombo. And here he is.’
Vesta’s heart was in her throat. ‘I thought you’d gone.’ Charlie looked bemused. ‘Tombo left. And I couldn’t come back without him, could I? I ran to the tram stop and he was still there. I figured you’d be with the others. I hope it’s all right just to pitch up.’
Tombo was staring unsmiling at Vesta. ‘Charlie says you’re looking into things. I can’t tell you much though. No more than I told the rozzers.’
Vesta motioned them inside.
Tombo was as skinny as a rake and wearing a brown woollen suit with patches on the elbows. His tie was so thin that it looked as if someone had drawn a line from his chin down to the buttons of his jacket. Next to Charlie he looked like a tiny totem carved out of dark hardwood. Judging by his accent he was from out west somewhere – past Notting Hill perhaps. They squeezed their way up the hall to the entrance of the kitchen.
‘If nothing else, I’ve figured out why Lindon only drank spirits. Don’t dive into Mr Claremont’s homebrew, okay?’ she whispered. ‘Though you might have to take a glass – to be polite.’
Charlie winked. ‘Roger that,’ he said.
Tombo lit a cigarette. Mr Claremont shook both musicians by the hand, and patted Charlie on the back with unexpected vigour.
‘Friends of Lindon’s? Good to have you here,’ he enthused, pushing glasses of cider their way.
Tombo didn’t heed Vesta’s warning and downed half his glass immediately. He seemed to quite like the stuff.
Charlie sniffed his. He put it down on the table, declined the offer of food from the buffet and eyed Vesta, enjoying the view. She was a fine-looking woman with skin like satin, and not too thin, like some British girls. When she smiled her eyes sparkled.
‘You help yourself,’ Mr Claremont insisted as he disappeared into the front room to top up glasses.
‘So.’ Vesta fanned herself with her open palm. ‘It’s hot in here! Tombo, Charlie said you were at Mac’s on Thursday night?’
Tombo nodded and looked around. ‘We can’t talk about that in here, can we?’
‘Whisper,’ she said, cupping her ear. ‘I’m trying to figure out what actually happened. Tell me, did Lindon leave with the white girl or not?’
Tombo’s eyes dropped to his shiny shoes. ‘Yeah, he did.’ He leaned closer. ‘He left with the girl, all right. About three in the morning, after Charlie left, give or take. They went outside, and I didn’t see Lindon again that night or ever.’
Vesta’s face betrayed her confusion. ‘You sure?’
‘Yeah, course I am. There weren’t that many of us and we all saw them going out together. I’m sorry. Charlie says you’re not sure Lindon did it. I couldn’t tell you whether he did or not. But he left with the girl and that’s for sure. He went outside with all of them, but then the smooth guy and the fat girl came back on their own.’
‘Tell me about the other girl, the glamorous one,’ she asked. ‘What was she doing there?’
‘I dunno. What they all do. She was hanging out for a couple of hours with her friends, I suppose. They arrived after midnight. They were dancing some of the time, sitting up at the back, even though there was hardly anyone in. People think it’s hep – keeping a distance. Too cool for school. It was kind of a mix-up. Then the girl got chatting to Lindon – all crazy about bebop and dropping names like they was going out of fashion. It didn’t take him long. She left with him pretty quickly. The others just ended up dancing.’
‘But that’s not what he said to me,’ she mouthed in disbelief. ‘He said they’d left and he’d stayed. It doesn’t make sense. Do you really think he’d do anything to that girl?’
Tombo shuffled from foot to foot. ‘You can’t ask me that, sister. Not here with Lindon’s family and all …’
Charlie laid his hand gently on Vesta’s shoulder. ‘The police took statements from all the guys. And they all saw him leave.’
Tombo confirmed this with a nod.
‘And the other people she was with? The couple?’
‘Like I said, they came back in.’ Tombo downed the rest of the cider and sucked on his cigarette as if he needed it to breathe. ‘They couldn’t have been outside more than a few minutes. Seeing her off, I guess. They were dancing for a while but we were slowing down by then and when we stopped playing it wound up early. Four, maybe. Round then, anyways when the police arrived.’
‘So,’ Vesta put the story together, ‘Lindon left with three of them, two of them came back in, and you assume that Lindon and Rose ended up together? I mean, you didn’t see that happen. They could have left separately.’
‘Yeah, well, I didn’t see them get in no taxi. That was Barney. And the girl’s friends, of course. I mean, one of them called the police, didn’t she? That’s what I heard. She’d seen everything and so had the white guy – Lindon and the posh bird leaving together.’
Vesta glanced through to the front room where Mrs Claremont was sitting on the sofa. She felt her heart sink as she took a moment to consider Tombo’s story. If it was true, Lindon had lied to her – but what innocent explanation could there be for doing that?
From the other side of the room, out of Vesta’s field of vision, her mother spotted the two young strangers beside her daughter. Her interest piqued, Mrs Churchill worked her way towards them and arrived like a liner coming in to dock, proprietorially linking her arm through Vesta’s.
‘Well, angel, who are these two fine young men?’
Vesta bit her lip. Tombo turned away to pour himself another cider. It was awkward explaining the connections, somehow. Charlie, however, rose to the occasion with a half-bow.
‘Mama,’ Vesta found her voice, ‘this is Charlie. He’s from America.’
‘Mrs Churchill.’ Charlie kissed her hand. ‘Let me introduce you to my friend Tombo.’
Tombo nodded.
‘And you two boys knew Lindon?’ Mrs Churchill checked.
‘We played with him, Ma’am. We’re both musicians.’
‘I’m on horn,’ Tombo confirmed.
‘What happened is a terrible thing.’ Mrs Churchill put her head to one side pensively.
In the front room someone started playing blues guitar. The rhythm spread through the crowd and one or two of the women swayed their hips and made appreciative noises. Tombo beat time on the side of the staircase.
‘We came to pay our respects, Mrs Churchill. That’s all,’ said Charlie smoothly.
‘I’m glad you fellas is here.’ She winked slyly at her daughter. ‘You’re both welcome. I’m happy to meet two of Lindon’s friends. We’re all going to miss him.’
‘Mrs Churchill,’ they both mumbled respectfully.
As she headed back into the sitting room a second guitar joined in.
‘I shoulda brought my horn …’ Tombo sounded wistful.
‘A man should never be separated from his instrument.’
The words filtered through Vesta’s consciousness and something clicked into place. ‘Did he say goodbye to you?’ she asked Tombo.
‘What?’
‘On Thursday night did Lindon say goodbye?’
Tombo snorted with laughter. He lifted his glass and stared at it as if he might find inspiration inside.
Charlie said, ‘When a man like Lindon has a deb on his arm, I mean when a man gets that kind of lucky, he doesn’t go back to say goodbye to his friends, Vesta. Lindon was leaving with a woman, and for him she was probably the woman of his dreams. A golden girl. He wouldn’t go back to the boys. He escorted her, you know.’ Charlie demonstrated escorting a woman with a flourish.
Vesta ignored him. ‘So he didn’t go back to the band?’
‘No. Of course not.’
The men were incredulous.
‘Well,’ Vesta frowned, ‘if he didn’t come over and say goodbye then he didn’t pack up properly, did he? I mean he wasn’t trailing his sax about with him, was he? He wouldn’t have taken it over to a group of people dancing. I’m right, aren’t I? So, what happened to Lindon’s instrument?’
Vesta wanted to catch Tombo’s reaction. A flicker of incomprehension passed across his gaunt face and then he remembered. ‘Barney picked it up. Yeah. You’re right. Barney sorted it all out. He had the case and everything. Said he’d keep it for Lindon.’
‘Thanks,’ said Vesta. ‘There. Well, when Lindon got down to me in Brighton a few hours later, he had his sax. Same old case I’d seen him with before. So, even if he left with Rose, Lindon went back to Mac’s to get it. He saw Barney again. He must have.’
‘Can’t have.’ Tombo shook his head. ‘I stayed till the end. I was there when they locked up after the cops had finished. Barney walked me as far as Piccadilly.’