JACK OF DIAMONDS

i

Reggie sat on the train holding the violin case as though his life depended on it; considering where he was bringing it, he thought, it could very well be true. Dressed in the only suit he owned, he hardly felt like the gentleman he was supposed to look like. Wearing a dark brown pinstripe, a colour which Claire said did nothing for him, he pulled his tie loose and looked out of the window at the slowly disappearing countryside. The lush, green rolling hills of Devon had given way to the stark industrial reality of what would soon be London. That was the moment he realized he hadn’t missed it. He shifted uneasily in his seat, his hip feeling sore because of the time he’d spent sitting in the one position.

It had been more than five years since he’d last been to London—has it really been that long? he wondered—realizing that he’d left London to get away from the dirt and squalor of what his life had to offer before the War. He imagined it would be the same dirt and squalor for a great many people still living there; he needed the peace and quiet of the countryside, though. And while he knew the man he’d been before the War would’ve never thought it possible to leave that life behind, now he wondered how he could’ve lived like this in the first place.

It’s the colour, he told himself, shifting in his seat again. Devon is all greenery and open fields, and London, well, London’s London, isn’t it?

There was plenty to see and do in a place like London, he knew, and he was sure Claire would’ve loved the idea of coming along, but that part of London had never interested him. He wasn’t a man who enjoyed art, or architecture. That was Artie’s world, he’d told her; a man like himself was never meant to be a part of that world. While people would do what they could to enjoy the natural beauty of the city’s parks and walkways, he was more concerned with trying to escape the noise and confusion of a burgeoning traffic problem that seemed to crop up with the new century.

Reggie would only see London as a place he was trying to get away from.

That’s the way life was, or is, in the city, he told himself. While before the War…well, it always comes down to that, doesn’t it, for all of us.

His had been a life of violence and crime, and it took a War for him to realize that life was more precious than that; there was more to life than London’s streets, he told himself, stepping out of the train at Paddington. The cold hit him and he felt it in his hip as it sifted through his pants, reminding him of what the cold could be like. He was woefully unprepared, he realized.

Gloves would’ve been nice, he thought, or maybe a heavy coat.

Death had always been the only price to pay when he was younger he thought, making his way out of the crowded station. He’d be glad to get away from these shunting trains with their sibilant whistles of steam pissing out of unseen valves. The crowd was enormous, reminding him of how much he hated being here.

Give me the peace of the countryside, he thought, quick to realize there was nothing left for him here. His father had been a miserable drunk more inclined to beating his children than providing them with a safe haven. His sons would have a different life, he swore. It was nothing to shiv a man in an alleyway and take whatever he had, simply because you were bigger, badder, and meaner. Men like him were feared because they lived outside the law, and when you lived beyond the law, the rules of Man didn’t apply—not if you were smart, he thought. If you let yourself get beaten down, if you didn’t fight for yourself, no one else was going to do it for you. As soon as he’d understood there was no one to watch his back, or to watch over him—that he had to take care of himself because there was no one else—that was the moment he realized his life could be moulded into whatever he wanted to make of it. That was when he’d learned how to fight. As a child, he’d been beaten by his father, his brothers, as well as the older children in the neighbourhood. By the time he was a teenager, he could see he’d never live to see old age. Boys like him were not meant to live long he remembered one old codger from the streets telling him.

Cannon fodder, he’d called me.

And while it may not have mattered when he was a young London tough walking the streets of Soho in the rain, things were different once he’d found himself laying in a foxhole with a shattered hip, the big guns blasting overhead, and all the while him praying none would fall on him—and then praying they would. He remembered laying on his back, his hands pressing his helmet down, while sobbing into the mud and fighting the pain down as the shells burst around him. Your bones would rattle, and the concussion would blow you off your feet if a shell dropped nearby—which had happened to him, he remembered.

If it was too close, it’d blow your insides out through your asshole.

There were no atheists in foxholes.

He remembered hearing that once, but he couldn’t tell you where he’d heard it; except that he’d add: just rats. Five days in agonizing pain. No food, or water—but plenty of rats, he reminded himself, plenty of rats—until he was forced to drink the muddy water he was laying in. It wasn’t hard to see how a man’s life might take on new meaning having faced certain death from the moment he woke up, until the moment he lay down. He’d been lucky to maybe catch three or four hours of sleep—and that only when he passed out from the pain. It’s hard to believe in the future when everything you believe in is dying around you.

It wasn’t the same here in London, and don’t no one tell me different, he thought, his hip already burning. There was no future for him here, and he wanted nothing more than to embrace the future.

But not in London, he told himself, looking into the eyes of every man he approached with a sense of defiance; daring them to try and stare him down. He couldn’t say what it was he was looking for, until he saw the flash of a hammer hanging from the inside of a coat. It was subtle, but enough that he’d seen it. He kept his eye on the lad as he crossed the terminal.

It’s good to know that Charlie’s boys are still applying their trade.

Hammerboys. Looking for targets—rubes and marks like himself, he thought.

He instinctively held the violin case closer.

Once he left Paddington Station, he began making his way out to Soho. The prospect of a long walk after sitting in the train for all those hours didn’t appeal to him, and he knew it would probably aggravate his hip, but he didn’t have a lot of money and couldn’t see himself wasting it on a Tube system he didn’t understand. Besides, he liked to know where he was, and there’d be no way of knowing that if he couldn’t see where he was. The buses were just as bad. He’d looked at a schedule, but it made no sense to him.

Before the War, he would’ve waved down a hack, because in those days people knew him; they were willing to take him where he wanted to go because he paid, and paid well. He could see those days were gone, and set out for London Street, heading toward Hyde Park. From there it would be a short trek through Mayfair and into Soho.

Thirty minutes.

Tops.

He’d always liked the Mayfair neighbourhood, with it’s rich, in-your-face opulence. He was never one to hold wealth against a person if a person earned it, it was another matter if it was inherited; those people felt they were entitled, like the six families back home in Devon, he reminded himself. Mayfair may have been home to the aristocracy a hundred years ago, but now it was just as likely to be home to a business tycoon who fought his way up from the streets. There was something to be said about how far a man might reach with no regard to class or titles.

The wind blew the same in Mayfair as it did in Devon, he thought, and picked up his pace, feeling the pain in his hip like a dull throb—the same pain one might feel having been beaten with a cricket bat, he told himself. The trees lining the streets of what was Hyde Park on his right had all turned colour, their leaves all but gone now with the wind, and he could see the fragile husks of what were once leaves blown up against walkways and buildings, chasing the wind, or being chased, it didn’t matter he told himself.

He soon found himself skirting through the Park, feeling the wind cut through him as he swore at himself again for not having worn a heavier coat. He left the Park and crossed over to Oxford Street, surprised by the sight of heavy traffic on the wide open avenue. It had become a major thoroughfare since his last being in London; gone were the horse and wagons of his youth, now replaced with omnibuses and lorries, automobiles the likes of which he’d never see in the countryside—except maybe a few. It was the noise that struck him, though. In his youth, there would be the endless chatter of horse hooves on the paving stones and the screams of hawkers selling their wares, as children played endless games, stealing fruit from vendors. Now, it was the chugging machinery of motorcars, lorries, and omnibuses; the sound of horns blaring endlessly, the squeal of rubber tires, and the smell of exhaust that seemed to hang in the air as thick as fog.

If you want your name in the story—as a gangster or some such thing—leave me a tip. The bigger the tip, the bigger the role.