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  Gazooka – Gwyn Thomas

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  GAZOOKA

  Gwyn Thomas

  GAZOOKA

  Gwyn Thomas

  Somewhere outside my window a child is whistling. He is walking fast down the hill and whistling. The tune on his lips is ‘Swanee’. I go to the window and watch him. He is moving through a fan of light from a street lamp. His head is thrown back, his lips protrude strongly and his body moves briskly. ‘D-I-X-I-Even Mamee, How I love you, how I love you, my dear old Swanee…’ The Mississippi and the Taff kiss with dark humming lubricity under an ashen hood of years. Swanee, my dear old Swanee.

  The sound of it promotes a roaring life inside my ears. Whenever I hear it, brave ghosts, in endless procession, march again. My eyes are full of the wonder they knew in the months of that long, idle, beautifully lit summer of 1926.

  By the beginning of June the hills were bulging with a clearer loveliness than they had ever known before. No smoke rose from the great chimneys to write messages on the sky that puzzled and saddened the minds of the young. The endless journeys of coal trams on the incline, loaded on the upward run, empty and terrifyingly fast on the down, ceased to rattle through the night and mark our dreams. The parade of nailed boots on the pavements at dawn fell silent. Day after glorious day came up over the hills that had been restored by a quirk of social conflict to the calm they lost a hundred years before.

  When the school holidays came we took to the mountain tops, joining the liberated pit ponies among the ferns on the broad plateaux. That was the picture for us who were young. For our fathers and mothers there was the inclosing fence of hinted fears, fear of hunger, fear of defeat.

  And then, out of the quietness and the golden light, partly to ease their fret, a new excitement was born. The carnivals and the jazz bands.

  Rapture can sprout in the oddest places and it certainly sprouted then and there. We formed bands by the dozen, great lumps of beauty and precision, a hundred men and more in each, blowing out their songs as they marched up and down the valleys, amazing and deafening us all. Their instruments were gazookas, with a thunderous bringing up of drums in the rear. Gazookas: small tin zeppelins through which you hummed the tune as loudly as possible. Each band was done up in the uniform of some remote character never before seen in Meadow Prospect. Foreign Legionaries, Chinamen, Carabinieri, Grenadiers, Gauchos, Sultans, Pearl Divers, or what we thought these performers looked like, and there were some very myopic voters among the designers. There was even one group of lads living up on the colder slopes of Mynydd Goch, and eager to put in a word from the world’s freezing fringes who did themselves up as Eskimos, but they were liquidated because even Mathew Sewell the Sotto, our leading maestro and musical adviser, could not think up a suitable theme song for boys dressed up as delegates from the Arctic and chronic ally out of touch with the carnival spirit.

  And with the bands came the fierce disputes inseparable from any attempt to promote a little beauty on this planet, the too hasty crowding of chilled men around its small precious flame. The thinkers of Meadow Prospect, a harassed and anxious fringe, gathered in the Discussion Group at the Library and Institute to consider this new marvel. Around the wall was a mural frieze showing a long series of clasped hands staring eyes, symbolising unity and enlightenment among such people as might be expected to turn up in such a room. The chairman was Gomer Gough, known for his addiction to chair manship as Gough the Gavel. He was broad, wise, enduring and tolerant as our own slashed slopes. He sat at his table underneath two pictures, one a photograph of Tolstoi, a great shaggy lump of sadness, and the other an impression done in charcoal and a brooding spirit, of the betrayal and death of Llewellyn the Last, and as Gomer Gough had often pointed out, it was clear from this drawing that Llewellyn had never had much of a chance.

  It was on a Tuesday evening that Milton Nicholas took my Uncle Edwin and myself down to the emergency meeting of the Discussion Group. As we walked down the bare corridor of the Institute we could hear the rustle of bodies and the sough of voices from the Discussion Room. We were solemnly greeted by two very earnest ushers who stood by the door week in, week out, whether they were needed there or no. They had heard so many hot, apocalyptic utterances from the Group they just felt it would be wiser to stay near the door.

  ‘Here, Edwin,’ said Milton; ‘and you, Iolo, here in the second row.’

  ‘Stop pulling at me, Milton,’ said Uncle Edwin. ‘Why so far down?’

  ‘This is the place to catch Gomer Gough’s eye for a quick question. Gough’s eye will have to be very alert tonight.’

  ‘What is this crisis, anyway? Show me the agenda, boy. I don’t want to be mixed up in anything frivolous.’

  ‘You know me, Edwin. Always earnest. Uriah Smayle, that neurotic anti-humanist from Cadwallader Crescent, has prepared a very bitter report on the carnivals and bands. Uriah reckons the bands are spreading a mood of pagan laxity among the people and he’s out to stop it. I’ve heard you put up some good lines of argument against Uriah in the past, so just tell your mind to gird up its loins and prepare for its sternest fight. He’s a very restrictive element, that Smayle. Any stirring on the face of life and he faints.’

  ‘He’s dead against delight, and no doubt at all about it.’

  ‘All right, boy. I’ll do what I can. Oh, this is a fine gathering, a room full of people, keen, with their minds out like swords to carve their name on the truth.’

  ‘If that article ever gets as far as this on its travels.’

  A man of about forty, ravelled by wariness and rage, looking as sad as Tolstoi but shorter and with no beard and a blue suit, came to sit in the vacant seat just in front of us. He gave us no glance, no greeting.

  ‘Hullo, Uriah,’ said Uncle Edwin.

  ‘Good evening,’ said Uriah Smayle.

  ‘You’re looking very grey and tense tonight, Uriah,’ said Uncle Edwin. ‘What new terror is gnawing at you now? If life’s a rat, boy, you’re the cheese.’

  ‘Well put,’ said Milton. ‘I’ve always said that if anybody’s got the gift of laying on words like a poultice it’s Edwin Pugh the Pang.’

  ‘Mock on, Edwin,’ said Uriah, half rising in his seat, his arm up at angle of condemnation. ‘But some of my statements tonight are going to shake you rodneys.’

  ‘Good,’ said Uncle Edwin. ‘Set the wind among our branches, Uriah, and we’ll make you a bonus of all the acorns that fall.’ His voice was soft and affectionate and he had his hand on Uriah’s arm. He was known as Pugh the Pang be cause he operated as an exposed compassionate nerve on behalf of the whole species. We could see Uriah’s spirit sliding down from its plane of high indignation. But he shook himself free from Edwin’s arm and got back to form.

  ‘Who’s the chairman here?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got a meeting of the Young Men’s Guild to address at eight on prayer as an answer to lust and it’ll be a real relief to have a headful of quiet piety after the chatter of this unbelieving brood.’

  ‘I’m in the chair, Mr Smayle,’ said Gomer Gough, who had just walked in followed by Teilo Dew the Doom, our secretary, who had early come under the influence of Carlyle and very tight velveteen trousers. Gomer paused gravely in front of Uriah before turning to take his seat under the face of Tolstoi. ‘I’m in the chair, Mr Smayle,’ he repeated, ‘and I don’t rush things. This Discussion Group is out to examine the nature of mankind and the destination of this clinker, the earth.’

  Teilo Dew raised his head and winked at Tolstoi and Llewellyn the Last, very sadly, as if suggesting that if he had been a less gentle man he would have told us the black and terrifying answer years ago.

  ‘These are big themes, Mr Smayle,’ went on Gomer, ‘and we favour a cautious
approach. We try not to be hysterical about them, and the best thing you can do is to set a dish of hot leek soup in front of your paler fears.’

  ‘Stop putting yourself to sleep, Gomer,’ said Uriah, ‘and get on with it.’

  Gomer raised his enormous baritone voice like a fist. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Brothers, at this extraordinary meeting of the Meadow Prospect Discussion Group we are going to hear a special statement from Brother Smayle. He thinks the epidemic of carnivals and costumed bands is a menace and likely to put morals through the mincer. And he says that we, serious thinkers, ought to do something about it.’

  ‘Mr Chairman,’ said Uncle Edwin, ‘I want you to ask Smayle to tighten his dialectical washers and define this mincer. Tell him, too, that there never has been any period when the morals of mankind, through fear, poverty, ignorance and the rest of the dreary old circus, have not been well minced and ready for the pastry case.’

  ‘Begging your pardon, Edwin,’ said Gomer, ‘just keep it simmering on the hob, if you don’t mind, until Uriah has had his canter. Carry on, Mr Smayle.’

  ‘Mr Chairman,’ said Uriah, but he had his body turned and he was speaking straight at Edwin and Milton Nicholas. ‘Since these bands came decency has gone to the dogs. There is something about the sound of a drum that makes the average voter as brazen as a gong. The girls go up in droves to the hill sides where the bands practise, and there is a quality about these gazookas that makes the bandsmen so daring and thoughtless you’ve got to dig if you want to find modesty any more. Acres of fernland on the plateau to the west left blackened and flat by the scorch stain of depravity.’

  Uriah rocked a little and we allowed him a minute to recover from the hubbub created in his mind by that last image. ‘And as for the costumes worn by these turnouts, they make me blink. I am thinking particularly of the band led by that Powderhall runner there, Cynlais Coleman the Comet, who is sitting in the fourth row looking very blank and innocent as he always does but no doubt full of mischief.’

  We turned around to greet Cynlais Coleman, whom we had not seen until that moment. He was craning forward to hear the whole of Uriah’s statement, looking lean, luminous and virgin of guile. Cynlais had aroused wrath in Uriah during his active years as a foot-runner shooting through the streets of Meadow Prospect on trial runs in very short knickers. After he had given us a wide smile of friendliness he returned to looking astounded at what Uriah had just said.

  ‘Who, me?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, you.’

  There was a rap from Gomer’s gavel and Uriah addressed the chair once more.

  ‘I’ve always known Cynlais to be as dull as a bat. How does he come to be playing the cuckoo in this nest of thinkers, Gomer? What sinister new alliance is this, boy?’

  ‘Keep personalities out of this, Mr Smayle,’ said Gomer.

  ‘Do you mind if I ask Cynlais a few questions about his band?’ said Uriah. ‘Mr Ephraim Humphries, the ironmonger, has been requested by some of us to serve as moral adviser at large to the carnival committees of the area and he wants me to prepare a special casebook on Cynlais Coleman.’

  ‘Do you mind being questioned, Cynlais?’ asked Gomer in his judge’s voice.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Cynlais. ‘You know me. Gomer. Very frank and always keen to help voters like Mr Smayle who are out to keep life scoured and fresh to the smell.’

  A lot of voices around Cynlais applauded his willingness to undergo torment by Uriah’s torch.

  ‘Now tell me, Cynlais, my boy,’ began Uriah. ‘I have now watched you in three carnivals, and each time you’ve put me down for the count with worry and shock. Let me explain why, Mr Chairman. He marches at the head of a hundred young elements, all of them half naked, with little more than the legal minimum covered over with bits of old sheet, and Cynlais him self working up a colossal gleam of frenzy in his eye. He does a short sprint at Powderhall speed and then returns to the head of his retinue looking as if he’s just gone off the hinge that very morning. Cynlais is no better dressed than his followers. His bits of sheet are thicker and whiter but they hang even looser about the body. He also has a way, when on the march, of giving his body a violent jerk which makes him look even more demented. This is popular among the thoughtless, and I have heard terrible shrieks of approval from some who are always present at these morally loose-limbed events. But I warn Cynlais that one day he will grossly overdo those pagan leaps and find his feet a good yard to the north of his loin cloth, and a frost on his torso that will finish him for such events as the Powderhall Dash, and even for the commonplace carnality that has been his main hobby to date. His band also plays “Colonel Bogey”, an ominous tune even when played by the Meadow Prospect Silver Jubilee Band in full regalia. But Coleman’s boys play it at slow march tempo as if to squeeze the last drop of significance out of it. Now tell me, Coleman, what’s the meaning of all this? What lies behind these antics, boy? What are you supposed to be, and I ask with a real fear of being answered.’

  ‘Dervishes,’ said Cynlais Coleman. ‘We are dervishes, Mr Smayle.’

  ‘Dervishes? What are they?’

  ‘A kind of fanatic. We got the idea from Edwin Pugh the Pang there. When we told him that we were very short of fabric for our costumes and that we’d got no objection to going around looking shameless, out he came with this suggestion that we should put on a crazed, bare, prophetic look, as if we’d just come in from the desert with an old sunstroke and a fresh revelation.’

  Uriah was now nodding his head and looking horrified as if his finger, eroded and anguished by a life’s inquiry, had now found and fondled the central clod from which all the darkness of malignity flowered.

  ‘You’ve been the tool of some terrible plotters, Cynlais. And is that leap to show that you are now shaking the sand out of your sash?’

  ‘Oh no. I’m not worried about the sand at all, Mr Smayle. This leap in the air is just to show that I am the leader of these Dervishes, the Mad Mahdi. I got a lot of information about him from that very wise voter who never shifts from the Reading Room downstairs, Jedediah Knight the Light.’

  ‘I’m here,’ said a voice from the back. It was Jedediah Knight, resting his eyes in the shadows of the back row and looking, as he always did, shocked by understanding and wearied by the search for things that merit the tribute of being understood. ‘But I told him that the Mahdi would never have advanced against the Empire playing so daring a tune and with so little on.’

  ‘What do you say to these charges, Cynlais?’ asked Gomer.

  ‘Fair enough, Gomer,’ said Cynlais. ‘When we get enough money for new costumes we’ll come in out of the Middle East at a fast trot.’

  ‘Any more, Mr Smayle?’ asked Gomer.

  ‘A lot more. I have a pint of gall on my mind about that woman’s band organised by Georgie Young but that will have to wait.’

  He made for the door with long, urgent strides and the two ushers fell back.

  ‘Goodnight,’ we all shouted, but the sound that came back from Uriah was just a blur.

  ‘Come on, Edwin,’ said Milton Nicholas. ‘Let’s go and have some tea and beef extract at Tasso’s.’

  Later that night, at Paolo Tasso’s Coffee Tavern, my Uncle Edwin was a lot less serene than usual. Over a glass of scalding burdock, which he drank because someone had told him it made a man callous and jocose, he admitted that he’d been thinking a lot about what Uriah Smayle had said. He made it clear to us that he was in no way siding with Uriah. The pageantry of life had long passed us by in Meadow Prospect and he was glad of the colour and variety brought into our streets by the costumes worn by some of the boys. It would help us, he said, to recover from the sharp clip behind the ear dealt us by the Industrial Revolution. But all the same, he claimed, he could see dangers in this eruption of Mediterranean flippancy and joy.

  ‘We have worn ourselves over the years bald and bandy try ing to bring a little thought and uplift to this section of the fringe. Not even a Japanese shirt shrink
s more swiftly than awareness. It’s been cold, lonely work trying to push the ape back into the closet. Now with all these drum beats and marching songs the place could well become a mental boneyard overnight.’

  There was such a plangent tolling in his voice that the steam ceased to rise from his burdock and Tasso offered to warm it for him again, but Uncle Edwin said that at that moment a stoup of cold cordial was just the thing for him.

  But few of us agreed with Uncle Edwin. For all the young a tide of delight flowed in with the carnivals. At first we had two bands in Meadow Prospect; Cynlais Coleman’s Dervishes and the Boys from Dixie. The Boys from Dixie wore black suits and we never got to know where voters with so little surplus to buy bottles ever got the cork from to make themselves look so dark. They were good marchers, though, and it was impressive to see these one hundred and twenty jet-black pillars moving down the street in perfect formation playing ‘Swanee’ in three lines of harmony.

  There were some who said it was typical of a gloomy place like Meadow Prospect that it should have one band walking about in no tint save sable and looking like an instalment of eternal night, while another, Cynlais Coleman’s, left you wondering whether to give it a good clap or a strong strait-jacket. But we took some pride from the fact that at marching the Boys from Dixie could not be beaten. Their driller and coach was a cantankerous and aged imperialist called Georgie Young the Further Flung, a solitary and chronic dissenter from Meadow Prospect’s general radicalism. Georgie had fought in several of our African wars and Uncle Edwin said it gave Georgie some part of his youth back to have this phalanx of darkened elements wheeling and turning every whipstitch at his shout of command.

  Most of the bands went in for vivid colours, though a century of chapel-bound caution had left far too little coloured fabric to go around. If any voter had any showy stuff at home he was well advised to sit tight on the box, or the envoy of some band would soon be trundling off with every stitch of it to succour some colleagues who had been losing points for his band by turning out a few inches short in the leg or deficient in one sleeve. We urged Georgie Young that the Boys from Dixie should brighten themselves up a little, with a yellow sash or even a scarlet fez, a tight-fitting and easily made article which gave a very dashing look to the Tredomen Janissaries, a Turkish body. But Georgie was obdurate. His phobias were down in a lush meadow and grazing hard. It was black from tip to toe or nothing, he said. However, he relented somewhat when he formed the first women’s band. These were a broad-bodied, vigorous crew, strong on charabanc outings that finished on a note of blazing revelry with these elements drink ing direct from the petrol tank. Their band had uniforms made roughly of the colour and pattern of the national flag. The tune they played on their gazookas was ‘Rule, Britannia’. They began well every time they turned out, but they were invari ably driven off-key by their shyer members who could not keep their minds on the score of ‘Rule, Britannia’ while their Union Jacks kept slipping south with the convulsive movements of quick marching on sudden slopes. They had even called in Mathew Sewell the Sotto as musical adviser and Mathew had given them a grounding in self-confidence and sol-fa. But they went as out of tune as ever. Jedediah Knight the Light, fresh from a short brush with Einstein, said that if they got any worse they would surely reach the bend in musical space which would bring them willy-nilly back to the key first given them by Sewell the Sotto on his little tuning fork. Nevertheless, both of Georgie’s bands, the dour Boys from Dixie and the erratic Britannias, had a smartness that completely eclipsed Cynlais Coleman’s bedraggled covey in their flapping fragments of sheet.