Chapter One
Singer Mickey Kent announced the Charleston, and the gentlemen of the Aristippus Club and their lady guests whooped their approval.
As the band struck up the familiar tune, a startlingly beautiful young thing, her face aglow and her headdress askew, loudly proclaimed the dance to be ‘the capybara’s spats’, earning her a cheer of her own.
Skins Maloney looked out from behind his drum set at the wildly flailing dancers and smiled.
He caught the eye of his old friend Barty Dunn and nodded towards a particularly uncoordinated gentleman dancing near the front of the low stage.
He was half a beat behind the band, and his swivelling feet seemed in constant danger of tripping him up, but such was the look of unselfconscious pleasure on his doughy face that it was impossible to do anything but share his glee.
Dunn grinned round the neck of his double bass and inclined his head towards another candidate. This one had no chin, and a neck so thin that his shirt collar appeared to be floating freely in mid-air, but he, too, was lost in the joy of the dance. His delight was equally infectious.
His dance partner was less impressed. Twice now she had been jabbed in the ribs by an errant elbow, and she was trying to put some empty air between them to save herself from further injury.
It had been, as always, quite a night. The Dizzy Heights had been the club’s resident band for some months, and it was the club, not the band, who thought themselves the lucky ones.
Aspiring bands fought eagerly for even the sniff of a chance of a ‘residency’, no matter where, but the Dizzy Heights had long since passed ‘aspiring’ and were well on the way to ‘highly respected’.
Their reputation among jazz aficionados in London was such that clubs were chasing them rather than the other way round.
They had regular spots at a couple of the more fashionable jazz clubs on weeknights and kept Saturdays open for ‘special’ bookings (of which there was never a shortage).
But Friday nights were spent at the Aristippus Club, a gentleman’s club in Mayfair that was experimenting with providing regular entertainment for its younger members.
The older members had a more traditional view of what a gentlemen’s club should be and still tutted impatiently if anyone so much as breathed too loudly in the reading room, but there was a new generation coming through and they wanted some fun.
A delegation had approached the band and a deal had been struck, not least because Skins was so amused by the club’s nickname: ‘Tipsy Harry’s’.
It was always a lively crowd, who made up for in enthusiasm what they lacked in dancing talent and musical knowledge, and the band always had a splendid time.
This evening’s crowd – many of whom were there to celebrate the birthday of one of the members – had been among the most enthusiastic they had played for, and this, the third Charleston of the night, was the raucous climax to an already-exuberant affair.
There were cheers and applause as the band brought the song to a close.
‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Mickey through his tin speaking trumpet. ‘You’ve been a wonderful audience and we’ve been the Dizzy Heights. Enjoy the rest of your evening. Goodnight.’
More cheers and applause followed, mingled with a few shouts of ‘Shame!’ and ‘Just one more song!’
‘Black Bottom!’ called the capybara’s-spats woman.
‘I told you to be careful where you sat,’ was the inevitable reply from her friend.
Laughter. More cheering. The band left the stage and retired to the back room that had been reserved for them. Bottles of beer and a heaped plate of sandwiches awaited.
‘This is better than working for a living – eh, lads?’ said Skins as he put his drumsticks in his old army pack and helped himself to a cheese sandwich.
Dunn was looking for a bottle opener. ‘How would you know?’ he said. ‘You’ve never done a day’s work in your life.’
‘Well, no,’ conceded Skins. ‘But I’ve got a cracking good imagination. And my old man worked on the railways. I saw what proper work did to a bloke. And all I’m saying is I’d rather play a couple of hours for a bunch of “bright young things” than break my back laying track like my dad.’
Eustace Taylor, the band’s trumpet player, had come into the room behind him.
‘Well, you’d do better to put a bit of effort into it, if you don’t want to find out first-hand what it’s like laying track,’ he said.
‘Your timing was out in the middle eight of “Fascinating Rhythm”. And do try to keep that blasted cymbal under control during my solo in “Dippermouth Blues”, there’s a good chap. ’
Skins rolled his eyes and shook his head, but said, ‘Right you are, Eustace. Always happy to receive your notes.’
Eustace frowned. ‘Yes, well,’ he said. ‘Just you be careful.’
Skins had been playing ragtime since before the war and had been one of the first to bring proper American jazz to the London clubs as soon as he’d been demobbed.
Eustace, meanwhile, had spent the years before his call-up playing second trumpet in the Dorsetshire Philharmonic.
But his claim to a formal musical education (he was always suspiciously vague about where and with whom he had studied) gave him an all-too-apparent feeling of superiority over the lesser mortals in the band, despite having come to jazz comparatively late in life.
‘How is it that you’ve never decked him?’ asked Dunn once Eustace had retired to a corner of the room to annotate his trumpet score.
‘Well, he’s about six inches taller than me, for a start,’ said Skins. ‘I’m not sure I could reach. But you reckon I’m a good drummer, right?’
‘Best in London.’
‘That’s what it says on the posters,’ said Skins. ‘But I’m all right. And the audiences? What do you think they reckon?’
‘I don’t think most of them would know a decent drummer from a coalman, but they don’t complain.’
‘Right,’ said Skins. ‘So, if you think I’m all right, and I think I’m all right, and the buck-and-wing and Charleston brigade think I’m all right, what do I care what the second trumpet in the Seaside Philharmonia thinks? Let him have his moment.’
‘You’re a better man than I am,’ said Dunn.
‘Never been in question, old son, never been in question. Hello, ladies.’
The band’s saxophonists, Blanche Adams and Isabella ‘Puddle’ Puddephatt, always stuck together.
‘How the devil are you, Skins?’ said Blanche. ‘Nice work in “Fascinating Rhythm” tonight. Well done. Loved that syncopation in the middle eight. Gave it a lovely feel.’
‘Why thank you, ma’am,’ said Skins, doffing an imaginary hat. ‘What about you, Puddle? Did my humble efforts please you?’
‘Everything about you pleases me, sweetie, you know that,’ said Puddle. ‘Is there any gin?’
‘Just beer,’ said Skins. ‘But there’s plenty of it.’
‘That’ll have to do,’ she said. ‘Pour me one, would you?’
Skins opened another bottle of beer and poured two glasses. He handed them to the woodwind section.
‘This happens week after week,’ said Blanche, pointing at the bottle. ‘It’s a bit much asking a girl to swill beer when there’s gallons of champagne out in the other room. You got us this gig, Skins dear – do something about it, would you?’
‘I sorted out the regular booking,’ said Skins. ‘But I didn’t get involved in the catering.’
‘Well, then, who did?’
‘Elk, I think,’ said Dunn. ‘He served with the club’s wine steward at Ypres. Or something. I forget the details.’
‘We need a manager to sort these things out. Someone who can get us something other than beer to drink, at least. We can’t leave it to the banjo player.’
Elk turned round. ‘Did someone mention the banjo player?’ he said.
‘They did, mate,’ said Skins. ‘Blanche thinks you did a rubbish job sorting out the catering.’
Blanche scowled. ‘I said nothing of the sort. I merely suggested that it shouldn’t be up to the banjo player to have to arrange everything like this. We need a manager.’
‘You’d get no complaints from me,’ said Elk. ‘It was a nightmare. You have no idea how much trouble I had to go to just to get them to put beer back here. They thought champagne would do. I mean, I ask you.’
Blanche shook her head.
‘Not a bad night, though,’ continued Elk, obliviously. ‘Cool new bit in “Fascinating Rhythm”, Skins. Nice one.’
Skins raised his glass. ‘And that, my old mate,’ he said to Dunn, ‘is why I’ve never taken the trouble to lamp our trumpeter.’
The Dizzy Heights had been formed in 1923 by Ivor ‘Skins’ Maloney and Bartholomew ‘Barty’ Dunn.
The two men had made a name for themselves in the years before the war, performing the new ragtime music that had made its way over from America in the 1900s.
They had played in several bands of varying degrees of competence and popularity before striking out on their own as musical mercenaries, billing themselves as ‘The Greatest Rhythm Section in London’.
Skins had been a lively boy, always quick with a joke and quicker to dodge out of the way of the cuff round the ear that inevitably followed his cheeky remarks. His grandmother had delighted in telling him, ‘You should be on the stage, little Ivy.’
Indulgently, he had always said, ‘You reckon, Nan?’
And she would say, ‘Yes, son. Sweepin’ it.’ She would cackle wheezily at her own comic brilliance, and little Ivor would smile kindly and scamper off to find fresh mischief.
But he’d loved the music hall, and he actually did want to be on the stage.
He was so often seen hanging around the stage door that the stagehands came to know him, and occasionally enlisted his help fetching and carrying for them.
As a reward, they would let him in from time to time, to watch a show from the wings.
He learned the comic routines and knew all the songs, and dreamed that one day, just as his nan had said, he really would be on the stage where he belonged.