Moving On
A piece of fiction…and I do believe that work like this is worth paying for, with respect for my paying subscribers…
For Lee
Lee sits on her sofa with a tatty plastic carrier in one hand and a pink catsuit in the other. It's a muggy, grey summer weekend in London in 2017. Her garden is desperate for rain. She has the doors open. She is clearing her house to move after thirty years and is sure the energy stuck in heirlooms and junk needs to be dispersed. So far, clearing things has been simple. But she wasn't expecting the feelings that jumped out of the plastic bag along with this piece of clothing. She's not sure what the feelings are. But they are big. She has had to sit down. Momentarily she's back in Amsterdam in 1980, in another summer's heat.
Mostly, because it is so unusually hot in Amsterdam, the city is asleep. People at home sleep, shopkeepers doze in chairs as if they were by the Mediteranean. On Chopinstraat in a tall, thin house, a menagerie sleeps on the cool tiles under the long dining table. The dog is panting. The cats are barely alert. Even the Delft above the picture rail seems to sleep through time and its companion, the seventeenth century clock, which earned the right to be relaxed, ticks almost, not quite, to time. The shutters are drawn, the dusty plants are still. The dishwasher is un-emptied.
By contrast the whole Mingus band is playing on a recording of The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. The open stairway to the room with the turntable is decorated with photographs of jazz men. The vinyl spins at 33rpm beside a young Lee at a round table covered with books and papers, among the creative chaos. Completely absorbed in her writing, she uses a portable typewriter, brought from England on the ferry with her luggage for the month. Beyond her, doors are open to a shaded terrace, and beyond that a world of colour and glare whites out in the sunlight. She barely sees it.
She manufactures sentences, oblivious to the heat and half-listening to Charles Mingus. Once or twice his linear run coincides with hers and she finds herself listening for his pluck before she hits the full stop. It's her jouissance this meeting of what? Mind? She can hardly claim that. Output perhaps. No matter. She is as relaxed as the old clock as she pounds out timeless words. She is here.
She pauses to think about a name for the father in her story and Maurice pops into her mind. The real Maurice is the bass playing owner of the table where she writes. It may be a good name for a father though. The actual Maurice is on tour somewhere, Lee doesn't know where.
This is Mina's house, where Maurice lives. Mina suggested this room to her, with its fabulous record collection before she left for Spain for the summer. Mina is an interesting, elegant woman. Lee has not confessed even to herself that she thinks of her as a model in the jazz musician's partner role. It's the way Mina seems to accept so graciously that Maurice will have his women and booze on tour that Lee admires. It don't mean a thing. Lee can see they love each other. And Maurice never brings it home. Lee is quite a long way from understanding Johnny, her own partner and his own scavenging. She wonders if, because Mina owns the house he lives in, Maurice respects Mina in a way that Johnny never will.
Lee lives with Johnny in his housing association flat in London. Sex and sax. That's what Lee's life is. And college. She's a mature student. He started as her landlord. She loves all of it, the learning, the proximity of other artists at home, the creative process. Loves listening to them work and talk about work. And to a great extent she loves Johnny. But at times being a woman and unmarried in this early eighties avant-guarde jazz scene is a bit like being a domestic servant in the Victorian era. If you're in the male eye line, you're fair game. The literary boys and girls at college are similar, perhaps a little less predatory but no one she knows is faithful to anyone else.
She has been in Amsterdam three weeks, alone in the summer break. She’s developed a routine that she hopes will one day be her whole life as a working writer. In the mornings she’s up with the lark to walk the dog before breakfast, and then to the market while its still cool enough to buy food. A few mornings she bicycles to visit a park or just to be out in this lovely city. But every day she is home before midday for lunch and a rest before she chooses the next record in Maurice's vast collection. She couldn’t write without jazz. In the evening over the last few days she has also taken to visiting the woman on third floor before she takes the dog out again to the park for dawdling a bit before dinner.
In return for animal care, Lee has the run of this gorgeous house for a whole summer month. She can just make it through on her student grant. She can WRITE. This coming weekend though the routine will break. Johnny's arriving for a gig. The clock strikes three and reminds Lee to break for a drink and a stretch.
