The City of Strangers. Michael Russell

There was an edge of anxiety about her. She needed one of the trumpeters in the band with her when she talked to John Cavendish tonight.

      If the captain was going to help her, she wanted him to help her now. She had started to feel he was putting it on the long finger. They needed to talk harder again; the captain, her, the trumpeter; they needed to move.

      But talking to the trumpeter wasn’t the only reason they were there at Small’s Paradise. It was safe, safer than anywhere else. Harlem was the right side of Central Park, that’s to say the wrong side; it was nobody’s territory, at least nobody she knew, nobody who mattered.

      The black trumpeter was playing now, standing up for a short, final solo as the band came to the end of ‘Caravan’. Cavendish knew it; he’d been at Small’s once before when Duke Ellington was playing. He liked swing; it was the sound he heard everywhere in New York. But the man at the piano, with the immaculately slicked hair and the faintest pencil-line moustache, went further than swing. What he played wasn’t just music, it was the city itself; it was as delicate and ephemeral as it was hard and sharp and solid. The piano was the night air in Central Park one moment and a subway train the next. As the trumpeter sat down to a scattering of applause, the piano and the brushed cymbals took over. Cavendish took an envelope from his pocket and pushed it across the table to Kate. The music was louder again now as the band played the last, almost harmonious chord, and the whole club focused on Ellington and his musicians, clapping and shouting.

      ‘That’s the passport I promised,’ said Cavendish. ‘Two. If she needs to travel under another name, there’s not much point you travelling under yours. It’s unlikely she’ll want it going into Canada, but with what’s going on at the moment you don’t need a problem.’

      Kate picked up her handbag and put the envelope in it.

      ‘My problem right now is she’s still there, locked up in that place.’

      The set had finished now, and the fading applause followed Ellington and his band off the stage. Another musician made his way to the piano and started to play, more quietly. Dancers drifted off the floor; the volume of conversation grew; trays of food and drink were coming at greater speed.

      Jimmy Palmer, the trumpeter, pushed his way through the milling customers and waiters and cigarette girls, and sat down at the table with Kate O’Donnell and John Cavendish without saying a word. He lit a cigarette.

      ‘So where are we, Kate?’ he asked.

      ‘John’s at the Canadian border. I haven’t got her off Long Island.’

      She smiled as she said it, but it wasn’t a joke.

      ‘You really think he’s going to come after her?’ said Cavendish.

      ‘We’ve been having this conversation for a month, John.’ Kate was tired repeating herself. ‘You’ve talked about helping us, and then you’ve talked about helping us, then you’ve talked about it a bit more. He won’t let her just go. How many times do I have to say it? She wouldn’t be there in the first place if he was happy to let her go. If you’re not going to do it –’

      Jimmy Palmer just drew on his cigarette and watched.

      ‘I need to be sure how careful we need to be, once we get her out of New York,’ the army officer continued. ‘The answer’s still very. So you get her away from Locust Valley and I’ll make sure you cross into Canada. I’m not trying to find a way out of it.’ He took out a cigarette himself now; he caught the eye of a waiter and gestured for another round of drinks. ‘I’ve said I’ll use my car. There’s not going to be anybody around to make a connection between you and an Irishman taking a little trip upstate –’

      ‘I can get a car.’ It was Jimmy who spoke now. ‘I can do the trip.’

      Kate smiled, reaching out her hand fondly to take his. He spoke with determination. It mattered to him in the same way it mattered to her. It was different for Cavendish; of course it was. He was there for what he could get. But he was the one they needed. He had the false passports.

      ‘I know, Jimmy. But there’s too many connections already. He knows you too. Anybody he sends after Niamh is going to know you. And people are going to notice a black man driving two white women around upstate.’

      ‘Poor old Jim Crow, eh?’

      He gave a wry smile. It didn’t make the truth any easier. Harlem was his place; he was somebody here. Outside Harlem he wasn’t anybody at all.

      ‘I guess I know you’re right.’

      He shrugged; you couldn’t argue much with how things were.

      Kate turned back to Cavendish.

      ‘I have talked to her. I’ve told her what she has to do. It’s not easy. Once she’s out of there it’ll be different. Once she can breathe. Half the time she’s so doped up she doesn’t know what I’m saying. I don’t know who’s listening either. I am sure she can do it. It’s just getting her to walk out –’

      ‘That bit’s down to you,’ said the Irishman quietly. ‘When we’re out of New York it should be fine.’ He picked up his drink. ‘But I still need what I need from her. I need her in a state where she can think clearly.’

      She nodded. He held her gaze for a moment. Maybe there was a part of him that was doing this because he had started to care now, about Kate and about her sister. But that wasn’t why he was there. And Kate knew it.

      ‘Niamh does know that. She has got the information.’

      There was silence. Kate picked up her drink. She was tense again. Jimmy Palmer looked at them both. Whatever they were talking about didn’t include him.

      ‘Does know what?’ he said, his eyes on Kate. ‘What’s this about?’

      ‘It doesn’t matter, Jimmy.’

      She was awkward rather than dismissive, but it came across as dismissive anyway. Cavendish wouldn’t want her to talk about any of that.

      ‘It matters to me. And it sounds like it’s going to matter to Niamh.’

      The trumpeter turned to Captain Cavendish again. He didn’t know him. He didn’t know why he was involved, why he was giving out passports and booking liner tickets. He didn’t like the fact that he was taking things over, in ways that weren’t explained, ways that seemed to be about something a lot more than helping Kate O’Donnell and her sister because he was a nice guy. He had only met the captain three times; he didn’t always feel like a nice guy. He watched people too much. ‘So this’ll be some li’l thing the nigger don’t need concern hisself with, that right Massa John?’

      ‘Come on, Jimmy. It’s nothing of the kind,’ said Cavendish.

      ‘Maybe this nigger should know about it, Kate,’ snapped Jimmy.

      ‘He’s not helping us for love,’ said Kate, shaking her head. ‘You must have worked that out. He wants something out of it. You know what Niamh was doing on the boats. You know she wasn’t just any old courier either. Why should the captain do anything for nothing? Why should anybody? He’s a soldier, an Irish soldier. You know what I’m talking about too.’

      John Cavendish wasn’t comfortable with what Kate was saying, but he didn’t stop her saying it. He looked across at Jimmy Palmer and nodded.

      Jimmy didn’t like it but he could work it out, enough anyway.

      ‘We can’t do this on our own,’ said Kate. It was all she could offer.

      The trumpeter stubbed out his cigarette. The waiter arrived with the fresh drinks and passed them round. Palmer downed his bourbon in one.

      ‘If there’s a deal, then you do your part, Mr Cavendish. She can’t stay there. And days, not weeks. Kate’s seen her. She can’t take much more.’

      ‘I’m ready to go.’ John Cavendish looked from Jimmy to Kate.

      Jimmy