Disturbing the Peace-The Beginning

 

It was a dream come true for me.

A regular spot at The Blue Devil Club, playing guitar in a four-piece jazz combo, my three mates on tenor sax, organ and drums. I needed to be good to gig with them, and I was. I'd practised on board the Star Sapphire as a guest musician. And after leaving the sea, I'd honed my talent and skills in Hong Kong, and then Australia. By the time I landed back in London, my itchy feet tempered (for the moment, anyway) I was ready.

We support the main show and the one after-hours, and from time to time we're part of the headliner's line-up.

I'm often wandering off home in a taxi just as everyone else is waking up...the birds sending out experimental morning chirps ahead of sunrise, trains and buses and early cars making their first appearances of the day. I leave my guitars at work—my flat on Pentonville Road is cruise-ship-cabin small. I think that’s what made it appealing. But there’s barely room for my clothes, a nice comfy bed and an equally comfy sofa, let alone show-off space for two solid body Fenders (a Tele and a Strat), a handsome black Phoenix hollow-body—Brian Setzer plays one—and a lovely Gibson ES-175, an archtop, a favourite of traditionalists, though I find it uncomfortable because of an old injury from my Sapphire days.

It was a chilly night in January when my son came to see me. He rang ahead to let me know he’d be there, so I arranged a decent table for him, plus a meal and some drinks. And a bed for the night at my flat. Dom’s at college now, studying film production. He lives with my mum, close enough to London that he can catch a train in every morning. Far enough away that trekking home at that hour of the night wasn’t an option.

My mum’s getting on in years but she looked after Dom when I ran away to sea after Emma died. And the arrangement’s stuck.

“Did you enjoy it?” I asked, outside, desperate for a smoke and hunting for a taxi. It was past three in the morning.

“I did,” he said. “Not my kind of music. But nonetheless interesting within the context of musical divergency.”

He speaks like that now. College has done unforgivable things to his vocabulary.

“I’m going to make a film,” he added. “A documentary. Part of my coursework.”

“About me?” I asked, foolishly, lighting up.

“About Ben Quigley.”

Ben Quigley. Played rhythm guitar for Figgis Green in the late-1960s. He’d disappeared from radar four years earlier.

“Why Ben?”

“He’s a legend,” Dom shrugged. “The quiet guy in the back. And nobody seems to know what happened to him. I’d like to find out.”

 I’d had this driver many times before. He’s from Lucknow and he’s fond of a late-night chat. “Angel?” he checked, though it’s never not.

“Angel,” I confirmed, stubbing out my cigarette on the wet pavement.

“Anyway, I thought you might be able to help,” Dom said, as we climbed into the taxi.

I’m the de facto archivist for Figgis Green. My mum is Mandy Green, the source of one half of the group’s name. The source of the other half was my dad, Tony Figgis. If anyone wants to know anything about the band—its history, obscure details like my dad’s first instrument (it was the piano—when he was thirteen he passed the entrance exams at Trinity Music College in London) or where my mum got her stage clothes (they were created by a fashion design student named Liz), whatever happened to so and so (he’s running a pub in Epsom)—they ask me. I’m in touch with everyone who ever played with the band. The guy on bass was mum’s brother. The drummer was dad’s cousin. And the fellow who played fiddle ended up producing records. Ben Quigley was the only one I’d ever managed to misplace.

And my son was right. He was a legend.

“Have you tried the police?”

“I have,” said Dom, “but there’s no missing person’s file, so they’re not much use.”

“What’s triggered your inquiring mind?”

“Sophie’s sister’s got a job at the bank where he has his accounts.”

Sophie’s his current girlfriend. Her sister’s a temp. She once worked for a guy who went to prison for embezzlement. 

“Nothing’s been touched since 2013.”

“I’m not sure how useful I can be.”

“You know people in the music business. They’ll open their doors to you. You can ask the right sorts of questions. Perhaps jog some memories.”

“He could be dead,” I said.

“He could be,” Dom replied. “But I’d prefer to believe that he’s not. And when are you going to stop smoking?”

 

#

 

I was a smoker before Emma died. And then I gave it up. A discarded cigarette caused the fire that took her life, and I’d assumed the blame. In the end, it turned out not to be my fault at all.

I stayed away from cigarettes for about five years, and then I started again. My preferred poison these days is Benson and Hedges Gold. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to stop. I do. But my willpower is weaker than my intent.

Ben was a smoker too.

I knew he was missing in action. I’d followed his story, the same way I’d followed Gerry Rafferty’s: with a sinking heart and not much optimism, knowing how musical souls could be battered like the sea crashing up onto Hebridean rocks in a gale.

Gerry Rafferty was ravaged by drink. He’d checked into a five star hotel and trashed his room. A friend had paid his bill and taken him to hospital, but then he’d discharged himself, leaving behind all of his personal belongings. A missing person’s report was never filed with the police. After that, he’d gone to ground…a spokesman said he was in the south of England, being cared for by a friend…a solicitor issued a statement that he was in Tuscany, working on a new album. In truth he was living with the love of his life in Dorset, where his body ultimately surrendered to the devastation of his addiction.

Ben Quigley’s life was similar to Gerry Rafferty’s, but without the six haunting minutes of Baker Street. He was a sensitive soul, an excessive drinker, a musician who’d shied away from the attention Figgis Green had brought him. He hated touring, hated drawing attention to himself. After Figgis Green had disbanded in the 1970s, he’d made it on his own, spectacularly, his soaring successes interspersed with mind-boggling, headline generating crashes to earth.

Had he gone to ground deliberately four years ago? Or had something else happened to him?

I thought I’d start with my mum. She’s got a mind like a steel trap, in spite of her advancing years.

“The last time I saw him was six…no, it was seven years ago, dear.” She slid an ashtray towards me at the kitchen table. She knows me too well.  “It was at the funeral of his daughter. You weren’t here—you’d just begun to work at sea. I thought I’d best go along and pay my respects. There weren’t many others there. Ben was very pleased to see me. He asked about you and Angie.”

Angie’s my sister. She writes best-selling mysteries under a pseudonym. Apparently readers are more likely to buy a novel by an author named Taylor Feldspar than one by Angie Figgis.

Ben Quigley’s only child passed away at the age of thirty-nine of a drug overdose. She was living rough and had been for years. Her mum also died young, from a rampaging tumour that filled her body with its cancerous evil. Ben didn’t marry again.

I’d had a look online, just to reconfirm what I knew about him, and the last time he’d been mentioned anywhere. There really wasn’t much. A Wikipedia entry, a stub which was an offshoot from the main entry about Figgis Green. Where he was born—Mitcham—and when—01 May 1941—and how he came to be the group—he was hired in 1968 after the original rhythm guitarist, Rick Redding, was dismissed for untoward behaviour. Specifically, causing grievous bodily harm to my dad.

I was born in 1968 and I had patchy recollections of meeting Ben a few times while the group was still together. There was one get-together—I think it must have been Christmas because I remember decorations and paper hats and my parents giving me a toy castle with turrets and a real working drawbridge and little warriors in armour and on horseback that I could pit against one another in amazing adventures. I remember it because Ben was there, and rather than mingle with the adults in the lounge, he came upstairs to my bedroom and together we sat on the floor and invented a fantastic battle in the castle.

Kids are natural dreamers. Their imaginations know no bounds. It all gets turned on its head when they go to school and are forced to divert their attention to more mundane things like adding and subtracting and identifying the three different states of water. Ben Quigley was the only adult I’d ever met who had the kind of imagination that I had when I was five. He was Sir Lancelot.

“And did Dominic say why he wanted to do a film about him?” my mother inquired, adding, “He doesn’t tell me anything.”

“He was the quiet guy in the back,” I said.

“Quite a change from his predecessor,” my mum agreed. “He never did like being in the spotlight. Sometimes I used to wonder if he was actually there. I mean, he was there—he was a perfectly accomplished musician and he was very professional and never missed a cue—but his mind always seemed to be somewhere else.”

“Must have driven his teachers mad,” I said.

“He did used to say that, yes, dear. He was always in trouble for not paying attention in school. His mother’s still alive, you know. Although she’s much older than me.”

My mum was born in the same year as Ben. A war baby.

“How do you know that?”

“I read about her. Just let me think…where was it now?”

I waited while she went through the process of association and elimination.

“Oh yes, that was it, dear. She’d won a large sum of money in a contest and the local paper had thought it was interesting so they’d sent a reporter and a photographer round to the care home where she was staying and they’d written a story about her.”

“Do you remember the name of the care home or where it was?”

“I’m afraid I don’t dear, no. Somewhere in London. I was reading it online. I wasn’t actually paying attention to the name of the newspaper.”

Online. The magical words.

“Edith Quigley,” my mum added, helpfully. “She’d be in her 90s.”

 

#

 

Ninety-six, to be exact. I looked her up on Ancestry. Quigley’s an uncommon name, and I didn’t have to search too hard. Edith Cross, who married Joseph Quigley sometime in the first three months of 1939 in Surrey Mid-Eastern.

A quick online search for Edith Quigley brought up the local south London newspaper that had reported her contest win and gave me the name of the care home. I was lucky—she was born in Mitcham and she’d married in Mitcham and she’d lived in Mitcham all of her life. I wasn’t going to have to travel far to find her.

I took my car. I do drive, though I gave it up when I was at sea, and didn’t bother with it when I was living in Hong Kong and Australia. I always think of cars as I would a horse…stabled somewhere nice and clean and warm, all wants and needs taken care of, and regularly taken out for a trot round the track.

My horse is an old silver Volvo V70. It’s fast, reliable and tough, and has room for all my gear in the back if I’m playing a gig somewhere that isn’t The Blue Devil. I bought it second-hand from the police.

Edith Quigley’s home was a little flat in a newish building that offered extra care housing, bingo on Tuesdays, hot meals in the restaurant and a sheltered garden at the back—although it was mid-January and far too chilly and wet to sit outside. It would have been lovely in the summer.

A woman named Maureen took me to see Edith in the residents’ lounge. “She’s all there,” she whispered, confidentially, as we walked through to the big open room where Edith was sitting in her wheelchair, a little tank feeding oxygen through a transparent tube into her nose. “But her mind does wander a bit. I should warn you that she does tend to go off on tangents.”

“My grandmother was the same,” I said, easily. It was true. From my gran I learned patience and how to listen. And how to gently nudge a meandering memory back into the present.

Ben Quigley’s mum was a little bird of a woman, nothing like my gran, who I remembered as comfortable and cushiony and smelling of face powder and lavender. Maureen brought us cups of tea and a plate of chocolate digestives and then, with a cheery wave and a warning about no smoking or open flames, disappeared.

“What did you say your name was?” Edith asked, her voice as tiny as her body.

“Jason Davey,” I said, and then I corrected myself. “Jason Figgis.” David is my middle name, and I’ve used Davey professionally for as long as I can remember.

“Oh, Figgis,” she said. “Yes. You’re Tony’s boy, aren’t you?”

Maureen was right. Edith was totally on the ball.

“I am.”

“Figgis Green was my Benny’s favourite band. He enjoyed playing with them.”

“I know he did.” Time for a gentle nudge. “I’m trying to locate Ben, Edith. And I’m not sure where to start looking. Have you heard from him recently?”

“Oh yes. Quite recently.”

Little lights and bells started going off in my mind.

“How recently?”

“I had a letter. It came in the post. Let me think.”

I waited.

“No,” she said, “it’s left me. If you’d like to take me to my room, I could show you the letter.”

I wondered about the propriety of wheeling Edith into a private part of the home. Where was Maureen?

I spotted her, offering plates of biscuits to two other elderly residents sitting by the window.

“Would it be all right if I went with Edith to her flat?”

“Yes, of course. I’ll be here if you need me.”

Edith’s room was an open-plan studio affair, with a private loo that had a shower you could walk—or wheel—into, and lots of hand rails. There was a tiny little kitchen in the corner with a microwave and a fridge and a sink—not designed for real cooking, but meals were taken in the restaurant anyway. And the main part of the room had a comfy armchair and a neatly made bed and the sorts of knick-knacks you’d expect from a lifetime of mantelpieces.

“Now where did I put it?” Edith wondered, her eyes darting everywhere. She decided on a large wicker basket beside the bed which seemed to contain a collection of completely unrelated articles: a box of tissues, a package of biscuits, two pairs of reading glasses, a rosary, a pair of scissors, and an A to Z of London from about 1975. As well as the letter from Ben, which she handed to me.

It was still inside its envelope. I looked for a return address but there was nothing written on the front or the back. I checked the postmark. Sent from London. On the 23rd of June 2013.

“Four years ago,” I said, to Edith, pulling the single sheet of paper out and glancing over the brief, handwritten scrawl.

“Has it been that long? Dear me.”

Hello mum. How are you? Just a quick note to say I’m well. Still playing some concerts here and there. The old fans still remember. And now they’re bringing their grandkids. I’m booked to do a music festival next month. Love, Ben xxx

“Did he ring you or write to you at all after this letter?”

“No, he didn’t. It was very naughty of him. His father was the same. Just after I married him he was sent off to fight somewhere and he didn’t write either. Though of course he likely wasn’t allowed to because of the secrecy. He was away more than he was home.”

She leaned forward, a little conspiratorially.

“I’m afraid I was very naughty too. I met a handsome Yank soldier while Joe was away and I had a little fling.”

I didn’t say anything. It happened a lot during the war.

“And that’s how Ben got started. My handsome Yank was shipped out and then Joe came home, and we had about a month together and then he was killed in an air raid. So there I was, all alone, and me pregnant with Ben, so I went to live with my aunt and her house had been bombed. They’d put a tarpaulin over a hole in the roof. Two rooms weren’t habitable so I slept downstairs on the sofa. When we weren’t in the shelter. And my uncle, of course, was an ARP warden so he was out all night. They had a son, my cousin, ever such a lovely young man…”

I didn’t like to cut her off. I’d learned, with my gran, that sometimes a wandering mind was just a sign of needing to talk to someone—anyone—who was willing to share a little time listening.

And so I sat, and heard about the lovely young cousin who’d died in a bomber, and how the V1 and V2 rockets came over Mitcham and nearly made another hole in Aunt Bobbie’s roof, and how part of what used to be over the way was reduced to rubble and the road was renamed and rerouted, and how Ben used to play in the ruins when he was small, because they took a long time to be cleared away after the war ended.

“Dear me,” she said, after about ten minutes. “I’ve forgotten what it was you asked me.”

“Did Ben write to you or ring you or come to see you after he sent that letter?” I asked.

“He didn’t,” Edith said. “I haven’t heard from him at all since. Although it’s not unusual. He’s dreadful about staying in touch. I used to take him to task about it. But he’d always say he meant to, and he’d apologise. I once asked him what he was doing with all of his time. And he said he was thinking up stories.”

“Stories…? Did he want to be a writer?”

“Perhaps,” Edith mused. “Though he never wrote anything down. I remember when he was small he used to tell himself stories in bed. I once listened at his door and he was amusing himself with a tale about a boy who lived in a tree and didn’t go to school. But he had to fight off magical dragons and he had a best friend who was a fairy. A boy fairy. With wings. And short trousers.”

I laughed. That sounded just like the Ben I recalled from that Christmas with my toy castle and Sir Lancelot.

“Ben didn’t involve you in any of his financial affairs, did he?” I asked.

“He pays for this flat,” Edith said.

“Does he?”

“Oh yes. An amount is automatically withdrawn every month from his bank.”

Damn, I thought. No human intervention required. I wondered about the legalities of having a word with Sophie’s sister.

“You’ve been very helpful,” I said, getting to my feet. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Your father isn’t alive, is he?”

“He isn’t,” I confirmed. “He died in 1995.”

“Far too young,” Edith said.

“He was,” I agreed.

“Your mother must still be alive though.”

“She is.”

“Mandy Green. I must remember to send her a little note.”

“She’d like that. I’ll have her send you one so you have her address.”

I let myself out, and said goodbye to Maureen, and walked back to my car for a smoke.

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