Jazz in the Rose Garden - from Phil

My husband was mad about jazz.  Not the kind of experimental, fusion type jazz featuring atonal honking and other unlistenable elements, but the smooth kind, with lyrics about being a fool and dancing beside the water’s edge.  He loved the nostalgia, the special innocence.  I found all of it saccharine, sweetened with pretend emotions, not that my opinion meant much to my husband.  These days, we rarely went out to see live jazz, so last weekend was a Special Occasion. 

“I have tickets for Jazz in the Rose Garden,” my husband announced like he had won a prize.  So off we went that Saturday night.  I prepared us some sandwiches and hardboiled eggs, and we took one of those gin-and-tonics-in-a-can each too.  My husband had retrieved some old camping chairs from the attic days before so we brought those along with us.  When we arrived in the park, there weren’t many other jazz-lovers about.  Some members of the band were mooning about behind their music stands, scaffolding for the passé.  We settled on a position to one side of the rose garden not too close to the front but not at the back, of course.  Sipping G&T, I looked at the other people and the trickle of arrivals through the pretty arched gateway.  Most were our age, that is, resolutely middle-aged, although there were some younger people.  I suspected that, for them, this evening was just a little diversion from a hectic social life with cocktails and flirting.  I tried to summon some distaste for them, play my role, but wasn’t able to.  I was fascinated by their optimism.  I knew my husband would be thinking – what do you know about jazz?  Ever since our son had left the nest, as they say, my husband had no time for young people.  People no more than thirty-five, that is. 

By the time the air was cooler and the place full, if not crowded, it was time for the band to begin.  The conductor came forward for his preliminaries.  He was big, with a square jaw and elegantly styled grey hair.  His dinner jacket fitted beautifully; conducting a community jazz orchestra was not his day job.  The conductor spoke with a soft American accent, a look of wry amusement around the edge of his mouth as he introduced the band and the programme for the evening.  I was simultaneously repulsed by and drawn to him.  His ego masked the band behind with ease, yet he looked everyone in the audience in the eye and spoke like he was whispering directly into your ear. 

He turned and conducted the band through a tour of old standards, like he was pushing us along the Grand Canal in a punt, a recycled trip.  The conductor moved so little, I felt resentful towards his importance.  I didn’t understand how he could come to be the leader, why on Earth he mattered.  My husband was thoroughly relaxed into the music, even closing his eyes during some passages.  Closing his eyes!   After a while, a break in the dulcet sound, and the conductor came forward again.  He suggested that people got up to dance during the next track.  He called it that, a ‘track’, as though he was talking to record executives.

Almost immediately as the band struck up again, a couple stood up and began dancing together.  They were probably a similar age to my husband and I, but quite a different proposition to an outside observer, I would think.  She was slim, with a pink dress on and a cream blazer.  She showed plenty of her shapely legs.  Her hair was touched-up blonde, her complexion straight from a beauty cream advertisement.  He was dapper in chinos and loafers, a snappy sports coat the paragon of smart-casual.  He had professorial half-framed glasses, excellent cheekbones and dark hair with a striking grey streak extending backwards from his left temple, which served to give him a distinguished look.  The pair danced with practised composure, all the while gazing into one another’s eyes like they were actors on stage, which I suppose they were.  As I watched them, I felt less envy, more a kind of resignation.  I knew they were an intrinsically different kind of people to my husband and I, something altogether more glamorous and unreachable.  I wondered if they had any children. 

My husband took a good look at them too, and I tried to read his expression.  His scorn for such public displays of anything at all was a noose around his deeper sensibilities.  When we said goodbye to our son at the university halls of residence, my husband just grasped his elbow as they shook hands, politicians on a conference stage. 

Dancing continued through this second act, including some spinning around of toddlers by happy dads.  The affection between them made me far more jealous than the well-heeled couple.  I gazed at the dancing partners, ignoring the music until it ran out. 

Back in our vacated, vacant home, my husband banged around.  A retired man, he had little jobs to do, which he set himself.  He would work on them at odd times so it seemed like he hadn't enough hours in the day.  To me, it appeared that things such as descaling the cistern and putting National Geographic magazines in chronological order could wait.  Preferably until the end of time.

I went into our son’s empty room.  Not long gone, but long gone, if you know what I mean.  For now, anyway, we still had his band posters up and his old stereo still stood on a bookshelf, some CDs scattered around it.  He was presumably through with them, but I had a compulsion to listen to something other than jazz standards.

I put the first one to hand into the stereo, aware that I was pushing the buttons with my fingertip in that cautious way that mums do.  The CD was called ‘The Steal’, which seemed apt.  Turning the volume up as loud as it reached, I lay down on the floor and absorbed the thrashing sound and screamed vocals.  Incomprehensible as it was, I could imagine my son listening carefully, evaluating it intelligently like he does.  He had the maturity to take anything seriously, or perhaps you’d say the immaturity.  Staring at the ceiling until patterns emerged where there were none, I became aware of the door opening by the changing light and shadows cast.  My husband stepped in without a word and lay down beside me.  He grasped my hand down at my side and we listened to that album all the way through, thinking our recurrent thoughts and feeling old, old.