By now he was thoroughly sent, as he would have put it in the old days. He had heard that a barbecue had to do with cooking out of doors, but had always assumed that this here was a different use or even a different word, perhaps a corruption, and that 'some barbecue' meant a fine fancy woman and no mistake. Seeing such a one pass by, people would say in wonder and admiration, 'Now that's what I _call__ a barbecue!' Malcolm had never strutted or, assuming to strut was to dance, danced in any fashion with such a woman, nor was he really pretending to now, just going off on a heel-and-toe shuffle round the small circuit of the room.
Breaking his stride when the doorbell pealed made him stagger. Until he saw that yes, he had pulled the curtains, he was afraid he might have been observed from outside some treat for the neighbours, an oldster capering about on his own like a mad thing. He straightened his jacket, wiped his eyes, squared his shoulders and went out to the hall. Voices could be heard from the far side of the door.
When he opened it, two persons at once entered with all possible certainty of being expected. One of them was Garth Pumphrey, the other a taller, perhaps younger man Malcolm half took at first to be a stranger. This second visitor had a full head of white hair, very neatly cut and combed, and a tanned skin. The combination gave him something of a look of a photographic negative, or perhaps just of an old cricketer; in any case his wide brown calm eyes made the negative idea worth forgetting. He turned his head when he caught the music from the sitting- room.
'Hold the door a minute, Malcolm,' said Garth - 'Peter's on his way now.'
'Oh, right.'
'You remember Percy, don't you, Malcolm?'
Of course he did immediately: Percy Morgan, builder, husband to Dorothy, to be seen from time to time dragging her out to the car after the end of a party, encountered less often, not for about a year indeed, up at the Bible. Garth's occasional usefulness with this sort of reminder was to be set to his credit, against his rather more fluent and famous senility-imputing introductions of Charlie to Alun, Alun to Malcolm, Malcolm to Tarc Jones, etc.
After a short interval marked by awkward standing-about in the hall Peter toiled up the garden path, groaning and muttering as he came, and the party moved into the sitting-room. The Feetwarmers sounded very loud in here - they had started on 'Wild Man Blues' by now - and Malcolm reduced them somewhat before offering drinks, wondering as he did so how far his just-over-half-bottle of Johnnie Walker would go among four - five, rather, which raised a point.
'Alun's coming, is he?' he asked Peter.
'Is he, I've no idea. I say, do you mind turning down that noise?'
'I thought you used to like that old New Orleans stuff Jelly Roll Morton, George - '
'If I ever did I don't now. If you don't mind.'
Percy Morgan looked up from turning over some of the records when Malcolm approached.
'Have you any Basie or Ellington? Or conceivably Gil Evans? Thanks.' The thanks were for an offered glass of whisky and water. 'I can see it's no use asking for Coltrane or Kirk or anybody like that.'
'Not a damn bit of use, boy,' said Malcolm with slight hostile relish. 'And my Basies stop in 1939 and my Ellingtons about 1934. And no, no Gil Evans - I seem to recall a baritone man of that or a similar name playing with somebody like Don Redman, though you obviously don't mean him.'
He reached out to lower the volume as requested, but Percy Morgan held up a demurring hand and indicated that he should attend closely to the music. A clarinet solo was in progress. 'You wouldn't call that melodic invention, would you, seriously?' asked Percy at the end of the chorus.
'No. I wouldn't call it anything in particular. Except perhaps bloody marvellous.'
'He was just running up and down the arpeggio of the common chord with a few passing-notes thrown in.' Not a vestige of complaint or dissatisfaction coloured Percy's tone. He seemed perfectly resigned, seeing it as quite out of the question that the performance could ever have been different.
'Was he now.' This time Malcolm did manage to turn down the sound. 'No doubt he was, I don't deny it.'
'Oh, don't turn it down, Malcolm,' said Garth in real protest. 'I love these old Dixieland hits, they really swing, don't they?' He mimed a bit of simplified drumming, hissing rhythmically through his teeth. 'Which lot is this?' Malcolm passed him the sleeve. 'Oh yes. Papa... Oh yes. Have you got any, any Glenn Miller-discs?'
'I'm afraid not.'
'Any Artie Shaws?'
'No.'
Malcolm was as close as he usually came to being angry at the way his quiet drink and unburdening chat with an old friend had been turned, without anywhere near as much as a by-your-leave, into a jazz discussion group. Not that he would in the least have minded the right son of attention being paid to his records: a respectful, if possible attentive, silence broken only by a personnel inquiry or so and one or two - not over-frequent - appreciative cries of 'Yeah!' He realized he had been half hoping for this son of outcome ever since the three had arrived and longer than that in the case of Alun. Yes, and where the hell was Alun?
He was on the doorstep a couple of minutes later with Charlie at his side, crying out in loosely intelligible greeting and apology, pressing on his host an unopened bottle of Black Label - like old times, except then it would have been a flagon of John Upjohn Jones nut-brown.
'I hope you don't mind me bringing these boys along,' said Alun. 'Only Tarc was calling stop-tap and they all seemed to feel like another.'
'I see. No, that's all right. Of course.'
Charlie crossed the threshold with real dignity. 'Or even him sending them on ahead. Known as the advance-guard or covering-patty tactic.'
'I'm sorry,' said Malcolm, 'I don't-'
