ROSE CITY BLUES
Freelance journalist Dean Wesley is young, ambitious and under-employed. The opportunity to ghost-write the biography of an internationally-known musician could boost his career and satisfy his girlfriend’s craving for fame. When he suggests the story needs more ‘spice’, the musician responds by recounting his part in an unsolved murder. Dean now has to decide whether this ‘death on demand’ is too good to be true – and how should he deter his girlfriend from pursuing a notorious seducer who had a juicier tale to tell. Sorting the lies, deceit and sex scandals is only part of the challenge.	In Store Price: $AU22.95  Online Price:   $AU21.95 ISBN: 1-9211-1858-X Format: A5 Paperback Number of pages: 159 Genre:  Fiction
Author: David Wellings  Publisher: Zeus Publications Date Published: 2006 Language: English

AUTHOR BIO.      

Dave Wellings began writing in the RAF, serving in Germany , Libya and Aden .  

After driving from England to Nigeria (via the Sahara) in a Mini Minor, he settled in Zimbabwe where he worked as a documentary film scriptwriter and sports promoter.  

Adventures and misadventures in Africa provided material for many published articles and short stories; ‘Rose City Blues’ is his first novel.  

He now lives on the Darling Downs, between Toowoomba and Warwick- the Rose City .

Chapter One    

The hotel had seen better days. It had probably seen better nights, judging by the few aging utes parked outside at what was traditionally the drinking hour. It was dusk on a winter’s evening and the low-powered lights were doing little to brighten the gloomy interior as I watched from across the street. The appointment had been made for ‘after work’, a pretension on my part to disguise the fact that there had been no work to prevent an appointment at any other time, day or night. My determination to survive as a freelance journalist had not precluded a weekly search through the ‘Situations Vacant’ column of the local newspaper in the hope of a regular pay packet. And one day, surprisingly, uniquely, there it was: ‘Experienced biographer wanted to ghost-write life story of internationally known musician. Payment by arrangement.’ There was a Warwick telephone number but no name. As far as I was aware, there were no internationally-known musicians in Warwick and therefore the advertiser would not mind that I was not an experienced biographer. Emboldened by this shaky logic, I had called the number early the next day. In retrospect, I should have guessed that internationally-known musicians have frequent late nights and few early morning starts. Leonard Lamont had sounded like a bad-tempered Rottweiler guarding a junk-yard. After a while I realised he was merely coughing while trying to speak and I surmised, correctly as it turned out, that he was a smoker and drinker. Eventually he managed to tell me he was the resident pianist at the Southern and Colonial Hotel – his pause after telling me this suggested I should have known already – then he suggested we meet there. I agreed to call in for a chat after work and now, having wiled away most of the day, I was standing across the street on a wintry evening, looking through the cheerless windows.           

            I was a regular visitor to Warwick , my girlfriend lived nearby but I had not previously noticed the hotel. It was in a run-down part of the town not far from the railway station. Warwick is an inland rural town in southern Queensland . It has many fine sandstone buildings designed in the grand manner of the Edwardian era. The Southern and Colonial was not one of them. It was a two-storey brick structure with a veranda above a colonnade. The timber veranda posts were topped with carved capitals and intricate but rusting iron lace balustrades on the upper floor. A white stone parapet enclosed the roof like a layer of icing on a wedding cake and the date of establishment, 1878, was carved into the highest point of the parapet, hinting at a boom time for the settlement. The fading light was now doing the old place a favour.             The neighbouring buildings were of obviously more recent but less prosperous times and had gradually encroached on the corner site. I crossed the road, stepped over the worn diamond-patterned marble tiles of the entrance and turned the brass doorknob. The sweet and sour smell of stale beer, infused with a current aroma of sautéed onion, came to me, a surprising but not unpleasant combination. To the right of the circular foyer was a raised dais – to call it a stage would be stretching the definition – where a man, presumably Leonard Lamont, was playing a grand piano. He was actually playing Some Enchanted Evening, an ironic choice under the circumstances. A long narrow bar led off to the left with a serving hatch facing the foyer. I ordered a Victoria Bitter from the head at the hatch and took it to one of the low tables against the wall. The centre of the foyer had been left clear, as a dance floor perhaps, but apart from myself there was only a middle-aged couple and they weren’t even speaking let alone dancing. From where I sat in a worn leather armchair, I could see the pianist clearly and for the moment had the advantage of not being identified. It was an opportunity for a last-minute re-think: to chicken out or acquire some Dutch courage. I took a long draught of the VB and sat back to listen to the internationally known musician. He was now playing If I Loved You from Carousel, he played well but he was no Liberace or Billy Joel. They wouldn’t have been playing to an audience of three in a decaying pub – and they wouldn’t be advertising for someone to write their life story. Perhaps ‘internationally known’ meant he had played in another decaying pub in Auckland . Perhaps Leonard Lamont and I needed each other. I took another drink and looked around.

            A staircase faced the front entrance but the light was too dim to reveal much on the upper floor. On the ground floor, archways rather than doors led off to the bar and dining room which both had pressed metal ceilings. The ceiling in the bar was stained a dun brown from generations of smokers. In 1992 laws prohibiting smoking in public areas had yet to be introduced and the five men seated at the bar had created their own blue canopy. Poker machines, on the other hand, had been introduced long before and were seen in virtually every pub in Queeensland – except this one. There wasn’t even a television. Leonard Lamont, now playing No Other Love Have I, had no other competition. I was disappointed that he wasn’t someone famous. I would have recognised a famous musician, even a slightly famous musician, I was fond of music. I would even have recognised the drum major of the Warwick Thistle Pipe Band – but I didn’t recognize Leonard Lamont.

            He had dark, swept back hair and a trimmed moustache; the black turtle-necked jumper under his cream jacket was probably a concession to the chilly room rather than to some notion of fashion. His black leather shoes were highly polished and the fine gold chain around his neck occasionally glinted in the beam of a small spotlight. His face reminded me of an unforgiving headmaster’s and it was only when he had come to the end of the Richard Rogers’ medley that his severe expression eased and he turned his head in my direction. The middle-aged couple remained sullenly mute and I hesitated to applaud alone in case it would be interpreted as sarcasm so I smiled back and nodded, like a Japanese businessman. When we had spoken on the ‘phone, he had told me, in a slightly surprised tone, that so far I was the only applicant. Like Leonard Lamont, I had no competition. I finished my drink, stood up and walked self-consciously to the dais.

            “Mr Lamont? I’m Dean Wesley; I answered your ad in the ‘Daily News’.”

            His eyebrows rose slightly and I suspected he was as disappointed in me as I was in him. He stood up and offered his hand. Allowing for the dais, I guessed we were of the same height, around 1.76m, but on closer examination I estimated his age to be in the mid-fifties rather than the mid-forties I had allowed him from across the room.

           “I was expecting someone … older.”

            Did he mean more experienced?

            “I’m 23 – nearly 23,” I corrected.

             “But you have …?”

            Left school? Permission to stay out after dark? I had to wait while he controlled a fit of coughing which he did by draining the dregs of whiskey from a glass on the piano. I knew it was whiskey, I had already smelled it on his breath.

            “… You have qualified as a writer, you’ve written books before?”

            “Not books as such – but I did take a Fine Arts degree in Journalism from USQ – and I’ve written lots of biographical profiles for …” He wasn’t really interested in my Second from Toowoomba or my prolific profiles; his eyes were commuting from the empty glass in his hand to the empty glass in mine.

            “Can I get you another?” I asked belatedly.

            “Would you? Double scotch and a splash, a mere raindrop. Just ask Nick for my usual.”

            Nick’s head was presumably the one I’d seen at the hatch. Waiting for the drinks gave me time to compose my thoughts, I realised I wasn’t making a good impression. As I went back with the double scotch and single raindrop, Leonard Lamont stepped down from the dais and waved me towards the low table where I had previously been drinking.

            “Let’s sit down and have a chat, we’re not busy in here tonight.”

            Not busy? No one would have noticed if he’d set fire to the piano. I sat back in the same worn leather chair and took a slurp of my second VB. “Mr Lamont …”

            “Leonard,” he insisted.

            “Leonard, I think you might already be familiar with some of my work: I used to write ‘The Indefinite Article’ every week in the Downs Editor.”

            “Oh, that was you, was it? Haven’t seen it for a while.”

            “Well, no, you wouldn’t. The paper went under six months ago.”

            I was beginning to wonder how many of his ‘usuals’ was usual and what effect they’d had over the years. Perhaps he wanted to tell his life story before it became confused with alcoholic fantasy.                                      

            “It was my first job after graduating. I was a D Grade reporter, in fact, I was the court reporter, the sports reporter – and the theatre and music critic of course – I covered pretty well everything except the front page lead and civic affairs, which old Mr Grantham covered himself. After a year, he invited me to write a weekly article about local people in the news, it was a general brief, nothing specific, that’s why I called it ‘The Indefinite Article’. I had a free hand, it was great experience.”

            Leonard sipped his drink and closed his eyes. I wasn’t sure if he was even listening.

     “In September,” I blundered on, “I wrote about the lady who organised the Carnival of Flowers in Toowoomba. And in May, for the Clifton Race Day, I interviewed two apprentices about life as a jockey. It was a humorous piece: they answered every question with a reference to food – or lack of it. It was sub-titled: ‘Hungry for Success’.”

            Leonard showed no flicker of recognition.

            “I wrote the last profile in the New Year. It was about this old gentleman who had been awarded an Order of Australia Medal for raising funds for a medical evacuation helicopter. He’d driven an ambulance in the First World War, served in the Medical Corps in the Second and then, in his 90s, was still selling raffle tickets every week, out in all weathers. His life spanned the century, from horse-drawn ambulances to choppers. A good story, a potted biography really.”

            Leonard was unmoved.

            “Anyway, Mr Grantham’s health wasn’t too good and the big media groups were targeting his advertisers, so he shut up shop.”

            “And now you are unemployed,” Leonard added without much sympathy.

            “No,” I countered, a little too quickly. Under-employed perhaps. Anxious for more income, certainly but not yet officially unemployed. “I’m a freelance writer,” I said, trying to make it sound like a step up from a regularly paid reporter. “I contribute to rural magazines and cover football at weekends – and anything else that comes along.”

            It was a cue for Leonard to explain what he had in mind but he merely turned to nod to another middle-aged couple heading across the foyer towards the dining room.

            “I’d better get back to the Joanna,” he said and stood up, empty glass in hand.

            “But what about the book?”

            “Hmm, are you sure you can handle something this big? And get it published?”

            I could understand why he would prefer to wait for a famous author to come along to write his biography and have publishers fighting over the contract. I would have preferred a subject whose mere name guaranteed a best-seller but we can only play the hand that fate deals us.

            “I can’t guarantee publication,” I admitted. “That would depend on the content and how it was presented – but yes, I can handle it.”

            “Hmm,” he hummed again, less than convinced. “The content won’t be a problem; I’ve performed all over the world. And as a pianist in a hotel lobby one gets to see everything, all the comings and goings. You’d be surprised.”

            I probably wouldn’t; a ticket collector at a railway station could say the same thing but I didn’t want to spoil my chance by mentioning it. Leonard made a decision. “Look, why don’t we have dinner together on Sunday night. Give me a quote, a ball park figure for ghost-writing the book and – and we’ll take it from there.”

            “Here?” I asked doubtfully. 

            “Yes, I don’t work on Sundays but I’ll be here.” He gave me a reassuring wink and turned away. He paused at the hatch for another scotch and raindrop and then returned to the piano. He launched into a piece I recognised from one of my Dad’s old vinyl LPs: it was The Dream of Olwyn. I reckoned he was showing off.  

Click on the cart below to purchase this book:                 

HOME PAGE

(c)2006 Zeus Publications           All rights reserved.