Alan Hunter - Gently Go Man

‘We could talk what up?’ Gently asked.

Deeming grinned. ‘The scene,’ he said. ‘What a screw should know about it. The real jazz. The cool thing.’

‘I might not get that,’ Gently said.

‘Sure, you’ll get it,’ Deeming said. ‘Then you’ll be all clued-in. Like you’re missing something now.’

He signalled the Italian to come over.

‘Pack us a feed-bag, Tony,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a screw coming to supper, so make it crazy, make it wild.’

Eastgate Street was the old town where it merged into the new, a crooked backstreet slanting into one of the overspill highways. It didn’t show many lights, a lot of the buildings were warehouses, but at the further end were new buildings, office blocks, a filling station. Deeming had rooms over one of the warehouses. They were behind the filling station and looked over it to an overspill neighbourhood. The approach from the street was down a side lane fenced from the filling station with square-mesh netting, then through a door and down an unlit passage to some bare stairs and a landing. Off the landing were two doors, one of them lettered ‘W.C.’, the other opening into two rooms which were the extent of the accommodation. Deeming had struck matches on the way up but inside the second door there was a light switch.

‘What they’d call in the Village a cold-water walk-up pad,’ he said. ‘Like it’s de rigueur with the beatniks, but jeebies aren’t so hung up.’

‘You’ve lived in America, then?’ Gently asked.

‘I had two years there,’ Deeming said. ‘Me, I’m a nowhere sort of cat, but I came from Sidney in the first place. But like I couldn’t groove in that scene and I kept on kicking along eastwards. I went up the islands and across to ’Frisco, then coast-to-coast, then away here. Like I was searching for something, screw, and maybe I’ve found it, maybe I haven’t.’

He plugged in an electric stove, waved his hand to a chair. Then he fetched a plate from a cupboard and unpacked Tony’s sandwiches on to it. The room was large with a high ceiling and had probably been an office once. The walls were painted a yellowing cream and the woodwork brown, which was beginning to blister. The wood floor was naked, was kept swept but not washed. The furniture comprised six bedroom chairs, two tables, two cupboards, a dresser and a bench. At one end was a sink and an old gas-cooker. The windows didn’t have curtains. There was an obsolete typewriter on one of the tables, stacks of paper, typed MS. On the other table was a record player, a record case, a guitar. On the floor and everywhere there were books in piles. Most of the books were new, had review slips sticking out of them.

From the other cupboard Deeming took two balloon glasses and a bottle of Spanish Sauternes. He drew the cork, poured into the glasses, put the plate of sandwiches on the table between them. Then he switched on the player, put a record on the turntable. He turned it down very low. It was Grieg’s piano concerto. He sat down opposite Gently.

‘Like you shouldn’t have kept pressuring Bixley,’ he said. ‘That guy couldn’t have busted off Lister, and he flips his lid in two shakes.’

Gently said nothing. He sipped the Sauternes. Deeming sipped his too.

‘He’s a hothead,’ Deeming continued. ‘We all know about that. He was on a jail kick for pitching. Like it’s easy to see how. But you know something,’ Deeming asked, ‘something that isn’t quite so obvious? We’ve cooled him down since he’s been with us, and like he isn’t pushed, he stays cool. And then there’s nothing wrong with that guy. He keeps it down, he’s a cool jeebie. So don’t go pressuring him unless you have to. We don’t like him ribbed into flipping his lid.’

He looked level with his slate eyes, reached for a sandwich and began to eat.

‘We don’t go for flipping lids at all,’ he said. It’s too square, man. It’s torrid.’

Gently nodded, kept sipping. ‘Where were you on Tuesday?’ he asked.

Deeming finished chewing his sandwich. ‘Up at Tony’s,’ he said. ‘Not busting off Lister.’

‘Have you a bike?’ Gently asked.

‘Sure,’ Deeming said, ‘the mostest going. I ride a Bonneville with all the action, sank a year’s loot in it. But man, it hasn’t a scratch on it, nor any notches on the butt. And Johnny wasn’t bust, you know. Let’s talk up things fundamental.’

‘Murder,’ Gently said, ‘is fundamental with me.’

‘You like salami and garlic?’ Deeming said. ‘Latch on to one of Tony’s sandwiches.’

Gently latched on to a sandwich. The Grieg went on thumping and tinkling.

‘Now the way you see this action,’ Deeming said, ‘is delinquent kids kicking it up. The war generation, you say, cocking the stale old snook at their elders. They’ve got a fresh curve, maybe, but it’s the old complaint they’re hung up with. They want to poke the old man’s snot. They want to act themselves big. That’s the way you see this action, and man, you’re not seeing it so good.’

‘I can see it being lawless,’ Gently said.

‘You’ll never change that,’ Deeming said. ‘That’s a perpetual factor in civilization where every law is an experiment.’

‘An experiment backed by consent,’ Gently said.

‘But still an experiment,’ Deeming said. ‘And backed by the consent of its generation, not by the generation that follows. With them the experiment continues, or as you say, they are lawless. And then the laws become modified by a new act of consent. Today they hang you for a shilling, tomorrow they lock up the hangman. Like you’re merely stating the obvious by calling any man lawless.’

‘Yet people suffer because of it,’ Gently said.

‘Sure,’ Deeming said. ‘I’m with you there.’

‘And it has to be checked,’ Gently said. ‘Or the next stage is anarchy.’

‘I’m still with you,’ Deeming said. ‘But that’s the process, for better or worse. Society acts, the individual reacts, there’s a percentage of suffering, and there’s modification.’

‘And there’s individual responsibility,’ said Gently.

‘There,’ said Deeming, ‘is the ground of contention.’

He refilled the glasses, took a long sip from his. From the player came a long trumpet-call melting into the note of a single instrument. Deeming paused, listening to it. He caught Gently’s eye, smiling.

‘Like I’ve made a point,’ he said. ‘Don’t knock this action for kicking the law. They kick it in Sunday school circles and all over Squaresville in general. But maybe it gets kicked less with us, I wouldn’t know, I don’t see the figures. But the cool thing, screw, is to keep it down. We aim not to get hung up with the squares.’

‘You’re still cocking a snook at them,’ Gently said.

‘Sure,’ Deeming said. ‘But let’s get on from there. Because cocking a snook is all the squares see of it, and it’s the way it’s cocked that really matters. Like there’s a change they haven’t noticed. Like it isn’t just growing pains any longer. Like it’s a historic reaction going on against a life direction that’s played itself out. You dig it, man, what I’m giving you?’

Gently nodded. ‘I think I do.’

‘Crazy,’ Deeming said. ‘I figured you were smarter than some of these screws. Like there’s a revolution going on, not just in Russia but everywhere. In Russia and China it’s a mass revolution, but in the West it’s individual. Like we’re dragged to death with this society and its nowhere aims and its chromium shop-front. We just don’t go for it, we’re opting out, we’re leaving it be to hang itself up. We want to live it real, man, to touch the real. We’re sick and tired of the illusion. Christ-ish jazz, we’re tired of that, and piling loot, and conning our neighbour. You can knock Russia for being a police state, but hell, it gives a Russian some real to live with.’