City of Spades E-Book

Colin MacInnes

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 390

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

London, 1957. Victoria Station is awash with boat trains discharging hopeful black immigrants into a cold and alien motherland. Liberal England is about to discover the legacy of Empire. And when Montgomery Pew, assistant welfare officer in the Colonial Department, meets Johnny Fortune, recently arrived from Lagos, the meeting of minds and races takes a surprising turn. Colin MacInnes gives London back to the people who create its exciting sub-culture. Hilarious, anti-conventional, blisteringly honest and fully committed to younth and vitality, City of Spades is a unique and inspiring tribute to a country on the brink of change.

Leseprobe

City of Spades

COLIN MACINNES

For Ricky

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

PART I: Johnny Fortune hits town

1 Pew tentatively takes the helm

2 Johnny Macdonald Fortune takes up the tale

3 The meeting of Jumble and Spade

4 A pilgrimage to Maida Vale

5 Encounter with Billy Whispers

6 Montgomery sallies forth

7 Montgomery at the Moorhen

8 A raid at the Cosmopolitan

9 Introduction to the Law

10 Hamilton’s sad secret

11 The Moonbeam club

12 Foo-foo in the small, late hours

FIRST INTERLUDE: Idyll of miscegenation on the river

PART II: Johnny Fortune, and his casual ways

1 Pew becomes freelance

2 Misfortunes of Johnny Fortune

3 Pew and Fortune go back west

4 Coloured invasion of the Sphere

5 The southern performers at the Candy Bowl

6 Theodora lured away from culture

7 Voodoo in an unexpected setting

8 Theodora languishes, not quite in vain

9 The Blake Street gamble-house

10 In Billy Whisper’s domain

11 Back east, chastened, in the early dawn

12 Splendour of flesh made into dream

13 Inspector Purity’s ingenious plan

14 Mobilisation of the defence

15 Wisdom of Mr Zuss-Amor

SECOND INTERLUDE: ‘Let Justice be done (and be seen to be)!’

PART III: Johnny Fortune leaves his city

1 Tidings from Theodora

2 Appearance of a guardian angel

3 Disputed child of an uncertain future

4 Back home aboard the Lugard

About the Author

By Colin MacInnes

Copyright

PART I

Johnny Fortune hits town

1

Pew tentatively takes the helm

‘It’s all yours, Pew, from now,’ he said, adding softly, ‘thank God,’ and waving round the office a mildly revolted hand.

‘Yes, but what do I do with it all, dear boy?’ I asked him. ‘Why am I here?’

‘Ah, as to that …’ He heaved an indifferent sigh. ‘You’ll have to find out for yourself as you go along.’

He picked up his furled umbrella, but I clung to him just a bit longer.

‘Couldn’t you explain, please, my duties to me in more detail? After all, I’m new, I’m taking over from you, and I’d be very glad to know exactly what …’

Trim, chill, compact, he eyed me with aloof imperial calm. Clearly he was of the stuff of which proconsuls can even now be made.

‘Oh, very well,’ he said, grounding his umbrella. ‘Not, I’m afraid, that anything I can tell you is likely to be of the slightest use …’

I thanked him and we sat. His eye a bored inquisitor’s, he said: You know, at any rate, what you’re supposed to be?’

Simply, I answered: ‘I am the newly appointed Assistant Welfare Officer of the Colonial Department.’

He closed his eyes. ‘I don’t know – forgive me – how you got the job. But may I enquire if you know anything about our colonial peoples?’

‘I once spent a most agreeable holiday in Malta …’

‘Quite so. A heroic spot. But I mean Negroes. Do you happen to know anything about them?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing whatever?’

‘No.’

He emitted a thin smile. ‘In that case, may I say I think you’re going to have quite a lot of fun?’

‘I sincerely hope so … I have certain vague impressions about Negroes, of course. I rather admire their sleek, loose-limbed appearance …’

‘Yes, yes. So very engaging.’

‘And their elegant, flamboyant style of dress is not without its charm …’

‘Ah, that far, personally, I cannot follow you.’

‘On the other hand, for their dismal spirituals and their idiotic calypso, I have the most marked distaste.’

‘I’m with you there, Pew, I’m glad to say. The European passion for these sad and silly songs has always baffled me. Though their jazz, in so far as it is theirs, is perhaps another matter.’

He had risen once again. I saw he had made up his mind I was beyond hope.

‘And what do I do with our coloured cousins?’ I asked him, rising too.

‘Yours is a wide assignment, limitless almost as the sea. You must be their unpaid lawyer, estate agent, wet-nurse and, in a word, their bloody guardian angel.’

The note of disdain, even though coming from a professional civil servant to an amateur, had become increasingly displeasing to me. I said with dignity: ‘Nothing, I suppose, could be more delightful and meritorious.’

He had now closed his eyes; and stood, at the door, a Whitehall Machiavelli.

‘Some might say,’ he told me softly, ‘that your duty is to help them to corrupt our country.’

Up went my brows.

‘So some might say … their irruption among us has not been an unmixed blessing. Thousands, you see, have come here in the last few years from Africa and the Caribbean, and given us what we never had before – a colour problem.’

His eyes opened slowly in a slit. ‘Could it not be,’ I said, ‘that we have given them just that in their own countries?’

‘My dear Pew! Could it be that I positively find myself in the presence of a liberal?’

‘My dear boy, of course you do! What else can one comfortably be in these monolithic days?’

He smiled with every tooth.

‘A liberal, Pew, in relation to the colour question, is a person who feels an irresponsible sympathy for what he calls oppressed peoples on whom, along with the staunchest Tory, he’s quite willing to go on being a parasite.’

Though I sensed it was a phrase he’d used before, I bowed my bleeding head.

‘I own,’ I told him mildly, ‘that I am one of those futile, persistent, middle-class Englishmen whom it takes a whole empire, albeit a declining one, to sustain … Remove the imperial shreds, and I’d be destitute as a coolie, I confess …’

This pleased him. ‘To use the vulgar phrase,’ he said, ‘you must learn to know which side your bread is buttered on.’

But this excursion from the concrete into the abstract seemed to me unhelpful in so far as learning my new job was concerned. I made my last desperate appeal. ‘You haven’t told me, though …’

‘Please study your dossiers Pew: the instructions are pasted inside each of their covers. Look:

Government Hostels;

Landlords taking non-Europeans;

Facilities for Recreation and Study;

Bad Company and Places to Avoid;

Relations with Commonwealth Co-citizens of the Mother Country.

And so on and so forth, dear man. And may I advise you’ (he looked at his watch) ‘to hurry up and read them? Because your clients will be turning up for interviews within the hour. Meanwhile I shall say goodbye to you and wish you the good fortune that I fear you’ll so much need.’

‘Might I enquire,’ I said, reluctant even now to see him go, ‘to what fresh colonial pastures you yourself are now proceeding?’

A look of mild triumph overspread his face.

‘Before the month is out,’ he answered, ‘I shall be at my new post in one of our Protectorates within the Union of South Africa.’

‘South Africa? Good heavens! Won’t you find, as a British colonial official, that the atmosphere there’s just a little difficult?’

In statesmanlike tones he answered: ‘South Africa, Pew, is a country much maligned. Perhaps they have found a logical solution for race relations there. That is the conclusion to which I’ve rather reluctantly come. Because if my year in the Department has taught me anything, it’s that the Negro’s still, deep down inside, a savage. Not his fault, no doubt, but just his nature.’ (He stood there erect, eyes imperiously agleam.) ‘Remember that, Pew, at your Welfare Officer’s desk. Under his gaberdine suit and his mission-school veneer, there still lurk the impulses of the primitive man.’

He waved – as if an assegai – his umbrella, I waved more wanly, and lo! he was gone out of my life for ever.

Alone, I picked up the dossiers, crossed out his name, and wrote in its place my own: Montgomery Pew. Then, like a lion (or monkey, possibly?) new to its cage, I walked round my unsumptuous office examining the numerous framed photographs of worthy Africans and West Indians, staring out at me with enigmatic faces, whose white grins belied, it seemed to me, the inner silences of the dark pools of their eyes.

2

Johnny Macdonald Fortune takes up the tale

My first action on reaching the English capital was to perform what I’ve always promised my sister Peach I would. Namely, leaving my luggages at the Government hostel, to go straight out by taxi (oh, so slow, compared with our sleek Lagos limousines!) to the famous central Piccadilly Tube station where I took a one-stop ticket, went down on the escalator, and then ran up the same steps in the wrong direction. It was quite easy to reach the top, and our elder brother Christmas was wrong to warn it would be impossible to me. Naturally, the ticket official had his word to say, but I explained it was my promise to my brother Christmas and my sister Peach ever since in our childhood, and he yielded up.

‘You boys are all the same,’ he said.

‘What does that mean, mister?’

‘Mad as March hares, if you ask me.’

He looked so sad when he said it, that how could I take offence? ‘Maybe you right,’ I told him. ‘We like living out our lives.’

‘And we like peace and quiet. Run along, son,’ this official told me.

Not a bad man really, I suppose, so after a smile at him I climbed up towards the free outer air. For I had this morning to keep my appointment at the Colonial Department Welfare Office to hear what plans have been arranged there for the pursuit of my further studies.

In the Circus overhead I looked round more closely at my new city. And I must say at first it was a bad disappointment: so small, poky, dirty, not magnificent! Red buses, like shown to us on the cinema, certainly, and greater scurrying of the population than at home. But people with glum clothes and shut-in faces. Of course, I have not seen yet the Parliament Houses, or many historic palaces, or where Dad lived in Maida Vale when he was here thirty years ago before he met our mum …

And that also is to be one of my first occupations: to visit this house of his to see if I can recover any news of his former landlady – if dead, or alive, or in what other circumstances. Because my dad, at the party on the night I sailed right out of Lagos, he took me on one side and said, ‘Macdonald,’ (he never calls me John or Johnny – always Macdonald) ‘Macdonald, you’re a man now. You’re eighteen.’

‘Yes, Dad …’ I said, wondering what.

‘You’re a man enough to share a man’s secret with your father?’

‘If you want to share one with me, Dad.’

‘Well, listen, son. You know I went to England as a boy, just like you’re doing …’

‘Yes, Dad, of course I do …’

‘And I had a young landlady there who was very kind and good to me, unusually so for white ladies in those days. So I’d like you to go and get news of her for me if you ever can, because we’ve never corresponded all these many years.’

‘I’ll get it for you, Dad, of course.’

Then my Dad lowered his voice and both his eyes.

‘But your mother, Macdonald. I don’t very much want your mother to know. It was a long while ago that I met this lady out in Maida Vale.’

Here Dad gave me an equal look like he’d never given me in his life before.

‘I respect your mother, you understand me, son,’ he said.

‘I know you do, Dad, and so do Christmas and Peach and me.’

‘We all love her, and for that I’d like you to send me the news not here but to my office in a way that she won’t know or be disturbed by.’

‘I understand, Dad,’ I told him. ‘I shall be most discreet in my letters about anything I may hear of your past in England when a very young man.’

‘Then let’s have a drink on that, Macdonald, son,’ he said.

So we drank whisky to my year of studying here in England.

‘And mind you work hard,’ Dad told me. ‘We’ve found two hundred pounds to send you there, and when you return we want you to be thoroughly an expert in meteorology.’

‘I will be it, Dad,’ I promised.

‘Of course, I know you’ll drink, have fun with girls, and gamble, like I did myself … But mind you don’t do these enjoyments too excessively.’

‘No, Dad, no.’

‘If your money all gets spent, we can’t send out any more for you. You’d have to find your own way home by working on a ship.’

‘I’ll be reasonable, Dad. I’m not a child. You trust me.’

And afterwards, it was Peach clustering over me with too much kisses and foolish demands for gowns and hats and underclothes from London, to impress her chorus of surrounding giggling girls. I told her all these things were to be bought much cheaper there in Lagos.

And to my brother Christmas, I said, ‘Oh, Christmas, why don’t you come with me too? I admire your ambition, but surely to see the world and study before fixing your nose to the Lands Office grindstone would be more to your pleasure and advantage?’

‘I want to get married quickly, Johnny, as you know,’ my serious elder brother said. ‘For that I must save, not spend.’

‘Well, each man to his own idea of himself,’ I told him.

And my mother! Would you believe it, she’d guessed that some secret talk had passed between Dad and me that evening? In her eyes I could see it, but she said nothing special to me except to fondle me like a child in front of all the guests, though not shedding any tears.

And when they all accompanied us to the waterfront, dancing, singing and beating drums, suddenly, as the ship came into view, she stopped and seized me and lifted me up, though quite a grown man now, and carried me as far as the gangway of the boat upon her shoulders.

‘Write to me, Johnny,’ she said. ‘Good news or bad, keep writing.’

Then was more farewell drinking and dancing on the ship until, when visitors had to leave, I saw that my mum had taken away my jacket (though leaving its valuable contents behind with me, of course). And she stood hugging it to her body on the quay as that big boat pulled out into the Gulf of Guinea sea.

3

The meeting of Jumble and Spade

Primed by my brief study of the welfare dossiers, I awaited, in my office, the arrival of the first colonials. With some trepidation; because for one who, like myself, has always felt great need of sober counsel, to offer it to others – and to strangers, and to such exotic strangers – seemed intimidating. Perhaps I should add, too, that I’m not quite so old as I think I look: only twenty-six, Heaven be praised; and certainly not so self-assured as my dry, drained, rarely perturbable countenance might suggest.

Picture my mild alarm, then, when there was a first polite knock upon my door. Opening it, I beheld a handsomely ugly face, animal and engaging, with beetling brow, squashed nose and full and generous lips, surmounted by a thatch of thick curly hair cut to a high rising peak in front: a face wearing (it seemed to me) a sly, morose, secretive look, until suddenly its mouth split open into a candid ivory and coral smile.

‘I’m Fortune,’ said this creature, beaming as though his name was his very nature. ‘Johnny Macdonald, Christian names, out of Lagos, checking to see what classes in meteorology you’ve fixed for me.’

‘My name is Pew – Montgomery. Please do come over to these rather less uncomfortable leather chairs.’

I observed that he was attired in a white crocheted sweater with two crimson horizontal stripes, and with gold safety-pins stuck on the tips of each point of the emerging collar of a nylon shirt; in a sky-blue gaberdine jacket zipped down the front; and in even lighter blue linen slacks, full at the hips, tapering to the ankle, and falling delicately one half-inch above a pair of pale brown plaited casual shoes.

‘Your curriculum,’ I said, handing him a drab buff envelope, ‘is outlined here. You begin next week, but it would be well to register within the next few days. Meanwhile I trust you’re satisfied with your accommodation at the hostel?’

‘Man, you should ask!’

‘I beg your pardon?’

He gave me a repeat performance of the grin. ‘It’s like back in mission school at home. I shall make every haste to leave it as soon as I find myself a room.’

‘In that case,’ I said, departmentally severe, ‘the rent would be appreciably higher.’

‘I have loot – I can afford,’ he told me. ‘Have you ever lived inside that hostel, you yourself?’

‘No.’

‘Well, then!’

The interview was not taking the turn I thought appropriate. Equality between races – yes! But not between officials and the public.

‘I should perhaps warn you at this juncture,’ I informed him, ‘that to secure outside accommodation sometimes presents certain difficulties.’

‘You mean for an African to get a room?’

‘Yes … We have however here a list of amiable landladies …’

‘Why should it be difficult for an African to get a room?’

‘There is, unfortunately, in certain cases, prejudice.’

‘They fear we dirty the sheets with our dark skins?’

‘Not precisely.’

‘Then what? In Lagos, anyone will let you a room if you have good manners, and the necessary loot …’

‘It’s kind of them, and I don’t doubt your word. Here in England, though, some landladies have had unfortunate experiences.’

‘Such as …?’

‘Well, for one thing – noise.’

‘It’s true we are not mice.’

‘And introducing friends …’

‘Why not?’

‘I mean to sleep – to live. Landladies don’t wish three tenants for the price of one.’

‘So long as the room is paid, what does it matter?’

‘Ah – paid. Failure to pay is another chief complaint.’

‘Don’t Jumbles never skip their rent as well as Spades?’

‘I beg your pardon once again?’

‘Don’t Jumbles …’

‘Jumbles?’

‘You’re a Jumble, man.’

‘I?’

‘Yes. That’s what we call you. You don’t mind?’

‘I hope I don’t … It’s not, I trust, an impolite expression?’

‘You mean like nigger?’

I rose up.

‘Now, please! This is the Colonial Department Welfare Office. That word is absolutely forbidden within these walls.’

‘It should be outside them, too.’

‘No doubt. I too deplore its use.’

‘Well, relax, please, Mr Pew. And don’t be so scared of Jumble. It’s cheeky, perhaps, but not so very insulting.’

‘May I enquire how it is spelt?’

‘J-o-h-n-b-u-l-l.’

‘Ah! But pronounced as you pronounce it?’

‘Yes: Jumble.’

It struck me the ancient symbol, thus distorted, was strangely appropriate to the confusion of my mind.

‘I see. And …’ (I hesitated) ‘… Spade?’

‘Is us.’

‘And that is not an objectionable term?’

‘Is cheeky, too, of course, but not offending. In Lagos, on the waterfront, the boys sometimes called me the Ace of Spades.’

‘Ah …’

He offered me, from an American pack, an extravagantly long fag.

‘Let’s not us worry, Mr Pew,’ he said, ‘about bad names. My dad has taught me that in England some foolish man may call me sambo, darkie, boot or munt or nigger, even. Well, if he does – my fists!’ (He clenched them: they were like knees.) ‘Or,’ he went on, ‘as Dad would say, “First try rebuke by tongue, then fists”.’

‘Well, Mr Fortune,’ I said to him, when he had at last unclenched them to rehitch the knife edge of his blue linen tapering slacks, ‘I think with one of these good women on our list you’ll have no trouble …’

‘If I take lodgings, mister,’ he replied, ‘they must be Liberty Hall. No questions from the landlady, please. And me, when I give my rent, I’ll have the politeness not to ask her what she spends it on.’

‘That, my dear fellow, even for an Englishman, is very difficult to find in our sad country.’

‘I’ll find it.’ He beetled at me, then, leaning forward, said, ‘And do you know why I think your landladies are scared of us?’

‘I can but imagine …’

‘Because of any brown babies that might appear.’

‘In the nature of things,’ I said, ‘that may indeed well be.’

‘An arrival of white babies they can somehow explain away. But if their daughter has a brown one, then neighbouring fingers all start pointing.’

I silently shook my head.

‘But why,’ he cried, ‘why not box up together, Jumble and Spade, like we let your folk do back home?’

I rose once more.

‘Really, Mr Fortune. You cannot expect me to discuss these complex problems. I am – consider – an official.’

‘Oh, yes … You have to earn your money, I suppose.’

I found this, of course, offensive. And moving with dignity to my desk, I took up the Warning Folder of People and Places to Avoid.

‘Another little duty for which I’m paid,’ I said to him, ‘is to warn our newcomers against … well, to be frank, bad elements among their fellow countrymen.’

‘Oh, yes, man. Shoot.’

‘And,’ I continued, looking at my list, ‘particularly against visiting the Moorhen public house, the Cosmopolitan dance hall, or the Moonbeam club.’

‘Just say those names again.’

To my horror, I saw he was jotting them on the back page of his passport.

‘To visit these places,’ I went on, reading aloud from the mimeographed sheet I held, ‘has been, for many, the first step that leads to the shadow of the police courts.’

‘Why? What goes on in them?’

I didn’t, perhaps fortunately, yet know. ‘I’m not at liberty to divulge it,’ I replied.

‘Ah well …’

He pocketed his passport, and took me by the hand.

‘Have you any further questions?’ I enquired.

‘Yes, Mr Pew. Excuse my familiar asking: but where can I get a shirt like that?’

‘Like this?’

‘Yes. It’s hep. Jumble style, but hep.’

He reached out a long, long hand and fingered it.

‘In Jermyn Street,’ I said with some self-satisfaction, but asperity.

‘Number?’

I told him.

‘Thanks so very much,’ said Johnny Macdonald Fortune. ‘And now I must be on my way to Maida Vale.’

I watched him go out with an unexpected pang. And moving to the window, soon saw him walk across the courtyard and stop for a moment speaking to some others there. In the sunlight, his nylon shirt shone all the whiter against the smooth brown of his skin. His frame, from this distance, seemed shorter than it was, because of his broad shoulders – flat, though composed of two mounds of muscle arching from his spine. His buttocks sprang optimistically high up from the small of his back, and his long legs – a little bandy and with something of a backward curve – were supported by two very effective splayed-out feet; on which, just now, as he spoke, gesticulating too, he was executing a tracery of tentative dance steps to some soft, inaudible music.

4

A pilgrimage to Maida Vale

This Maida Vale is noteworthy for all the buildings looking similar and making the search for Dad’s old lodging-house so more difficult. But by careful enquiry and eliminations, I hit on one house in Nightingale Road all crumbling down and dirty as being the most probable, and as there was no bell or lock and the door open, I walked right in and called up the stairs, ‘Is Mrs Hancock there?’ but getting no reply, climbed further to the next floor. There was a brown door facing me, so I drummed on it, when immediately it opened and a Jumble lady stood there to confront me: wrung out like a dish-rag, with her body everywhere collapsing, and when she saw me a red flush of fury on her face.

‘Get out! I don’t want your kind here.’

‘I have to speak to Mrs Hancock.’

At these words of mine her colour changed to white like a coconut you bite into.

‘Hancock!’ she called out. ‘My name’s Macpherson. Why do you call me Hancock?’

‘I don’t, lady,’ I told her. ‘I merely say I wanted to speak to a lady of that name.’

‘Why?’

‘To bring her my dad’s greetings – Mr David Macdonald Fortune out of Lagos, Nigeria. I’m his son Johnny.’

By the way she eyed me, peering at me, measuring me from top to toes, I was sure now this was the lady of Dad’s story. And I can’t say, at that moment, I quite admired my dad in his own choice. Though naturally it was years ago when possibly this woman was in better preservation.

Then she said: ‘You’ve brought nothing ever to me but misery and disgrace.’

‘But lady, you and I’ve not met before.’

‘Your father, then. Your race.’

‘So you are Mrs Hancock, please?’

‘I used to be.’

‘Well, I bring my dad’s greetings to you. He asks you please for news.’

‘His greetings,’ she said, twisting up her mouth into a mess. ‘His greetings – is that all?’

I was giving her all this time my biggest smile, and I saw its effect began to melt her just a little. (When I smile at a woman, I relax all my body and seem eager.)

‘Your father’s a bad man,’ she said.

‘Oh, no!’

‘You look like him, though. He might have spat you out.’

‘I should look like him, Mrs Macpherson. I’m legitimate, I hope.’

This didn’t please her a bit. She stared white-red at me again till I thought she’d strike me, and I got ready to duck or, if need be, slap back.

‘So you’ve heard!’ she shouted out. ‘Then why’s your father never done anything for Arthur?’

‘Arthur, lady?’

‘For your brother, if you want to know. Your elder brother.’

Clearly she didn’t mean my brother Christmas. Then who? I began to realise.

‘I’ve got a half-brother called Arthur, then?’ I said, trying to act as if I felt delighted. ‘Well! Can’t I meet him?’

‘No!’

‘Oh, no!’

‘No! You certainly can not.’

At this very moment, there glided up beside her a little Jumble girl, quite pretty, seventeen or so I’d say, who I noticed had a glove on one hand only.

‘Don’t shout, Mother,’ she said. ‘You’d better ask him in.’

‘Oh, very well,’ this Mrs Macpherson said, coming over all weary and looking even ten years older.

Their room was quite tidy, with assorted furniture, but poor. I do hate poor rooms.

‘I suppose I’d better go and make some tea,’ the old lady told us both.

(These Jumbles and their tea in every crisis!)

The little girl held out her hand – the hand that didn’t wear the glove. ‘I’m Muriel,’ she said. ‘I’m Arthur’s sister, and Mum’s second daughter.’

‘But Miss Muriel,’ I said to her, ‘I can guess by your skin’s complexion that you’re not Arthur’s true sister.’

‘I’m his half-sister, Mr Fortune. Me and my sister Dorothy are Macphersons, Mum’s proper children after she got married.’

‘And your father?’

‘Dad’s dead. They caught him in the war.’

‘I’m sorry …’

‘Arthur, you see …’ (she looked modest as she spoke, though I wasn’t sure if it was felt or acted) ‘… Arthur was Mum’s mistake before she met our dad.’

‘And Arthur: where is he?’

‘In jail.’

‘Ah!’

‘He’s always in and out of jail.’

‘Oh. For what?’

‘Thieving and suchlike.’

She stood and fiddled with the table-cloth frillings, then said to me: ‘And didn’t your father know about Arthur, and all the trouble Mum’s had with him for more than twenty years?’

‘I’m sure he didn’t.’

But I began to wonder.

After a polite and careful pause, I said, ‘Then Muriel, you and me are almost relatives, I’d say. We’re half-half-brother and sister, or something of that kind.’

She laughed at this. ‘We’re not real relations, Johnny. But Arthur is a link between us, I suppose …’ Then she looked up at me and said, ‘But do be careful what you say to Mother. She hates all coloured people now.’

‘On account of my dad and Arthur?’

‘Not only that. There’s Dorothy – my elder sister, Dorothy.’

‘Yes?’

‘She lives with a coloured boy. He’s taken her away.’

‘To marry?’

‘No … He’s a Gambian.’

‘Oh, those Gambians! Nigerians, of course, are friendly folks, and Gold Coast boys respectable often, too. But Gambians! Don’t judge us, please, by them …’

‘This one’s a devil, anyway,’ she told me. ‘Billy Whispers is his name, and he’s bad, bad, a thoroughly bad man.’

And now the old lady she came shuffling back. It was clear that she’d been thinking, and maybe refreshing herself a bit as well.

‘Is your dad rich?’ she said at once.

‘He’s reasonably loaded.’

‘In business now?’

‘Export and import – he has his ups and downs.’

She stood right in front of me, nose to chest.

‘Well, in return for his greetings, will you ask him please to make me some small return for his running away and leaving me to rear his son?’

‘I could write to him, Mrs Macpherson …’

‘Can you imagine what it was to rear a coloured child in London twenty years ago? Can you imagine what it’s like for an English girl to marry when she’s got’ (I saw it coming) ‘a bastard nigger child?’

I made no reply whatever.

‘Mother!’ cried Muriel. ‘That’s no way to talk.’

‘He’d best know what I think! I could have done better than your father, Muriel, if it hadn’t been for that.’

‘Mother!’

‘And your sister Dorothy’s going the same way.’

‘Oh, Mother!’

‘I was a pretty girl when I was young … I could have been rich and happy …’

And here – as I could see must happen – the lady broke down into her tears. I understood the way she felt, indeed I did, yet why do these women always blame the man? I’m sure Dad didn’t rape her, and however young she was, she must have known a number of the facts of life …

Little Muriel was easing her off into a bedroom. When she came out again, I said to her, ‘Well, perhaps I should go away just now, Muriel. I’ll write to my dad much as your mum requests …’

‘Stay and drink up your tea, Johnny.’

We sat there sipping on the dregs, till I said, ‘What do you do for a living, Muriel?’

‘I work in a tailor’s, Johnny. East End, they’re Jews. Cutting up shirts …’

‘You like that occupation?’

‘No … But it helps out.’

‘Don’t you have fun sometimes? Go dancing?’

‘Not often …’

And here I saw she looked down at her hand.

‘You hurt yourself?’ I said.

She looked up and shook her head.

‘We must go out together one day, if you like to come with me,’ I said to her.

She smiled.

‘Next Saturday, say? Before I start out on my studies?’

She shook her head once more.

‘Now listen, Muriel. You’ve got no colour prejudice, I hope …’

‘No, no, Johnny. Not at all. But you’d be dull with me. I don’t dance, you see.’

‘Don’t dance? Is there any little girl don’t dance? Well, I will teach you.’

‘Yes?’

‘Of course I will, Muriel. I’ll teach you the basic foundations in one evening. Real bop steps, and jive, and all.’

Here she surprised me, this shy, rather skinny little chick, by reaching out quite easily and giving me a full kiss on the cheek.

‘Johnny,’ she said. ‘There’s one thing you could do for me … Which is to get me news of my sister Dorothy. Because she hasn’t been here or written for over a month, and I don’t like to go out and see her south side of the Thames in Brixton, on account of that Billy Whispers.’

‘Just give me the address, and I’ll go see.’

‘It’s a house full of coloured men and English girls.’

‘Just give me the address, will you, Muriel, and I’ll go out that way immediately. I want to get to know the various areas of this city, if it’s going to be my own.’

5

Encounter with Billy Whispers

This Brixton house stood all by itself among ruins of what I suppose was wartime damages, much like one tooth left sticking in an old man’s jaw.

Now what was curious to me was this. As I approached it, I could clearly see persons standing by the upper windows, and even hear voices and the sound of a radiogram. But when I knocked on the front door of it, no one came down however long I continued on. So I walked all round this building and looked over the very broken garden wall.

There I saw a quite surprising sight: which was a tall Spade – very tall – standing in a broken greenhouse, watering plants. Now Spades do garden – it wasn’t that – but not ones dressed up like he was, fit to kill: pink slacks, tartan silk outside-hanging shirt, all freshly pressed and laundered.

‘What say, man?’ I called out to him. ‘Do you know Billy Whispers?’

Here he spun round.

‘Who you?’

‘Fortune from Lagos, mister. A friend of Mr Whispers’ lady’s family.’

As this man came out of the greenhouse, wiping his hands, I saw by the weaving, sliding way he walked towards me that he was a boxer. Round about his neck he wore a silver chain, another on each wrist, and his face had a ‘better be careful or I slap you down’ expression.

I waited smiling for him.

‘Mr Whispers,’ he said, ‘is not at home to strangers.’

‘His lady is?’

‘What’s she mean to you?’

‘I have a message for her.’

At this I vaulted, like in gymnasium, over the wall, and went leisurely across to meet him.

‘Haven’t I seen,’ I said to him, ‘your photo in the newspapers?’

Now he looked proud and pleased, and said to me, ‘I’m Jimmy Cannibal.’

‘I thought you was. Light-heavy champion till they stole your legitimate title just a year ago?’ (But as is well known, this Jimmy Cannibal lost it on a foul.)

‘That’s me.’

‘You growing tomatoes?’ I asked him, pointing to his greenhouse.

But he looked fierce again and shook his head.

‘What, then?’ and I started over.

He gripped me by my shoulder and spun me round. But not before I’d seen what plant it was in flower-pots inside there.

‘Keep your nose out, Mr Nigeria,’ he said.

So strong was he, I saw I’d better fight him with my brains.

‘It’s smoking weed,’ I said. ‘You give me some perhaps?’

‘You blow your top too much, Mr Stranger.’

We stood there on the very edge of combat. But just then I heard a window scraping and, looking up, I saw a face there staring down at us: a mask of ebony, it seemed to me from there. This face talked to Jimmy Cannibal in some Gambian tongue, and then said to me, ‘You may come up.’

As we both climbed the stairs (this Cannibal behind me breathing hot upon my neck), I got the feeling every room was occupied by hearing voices, men’s and women’s, and sometimes the click of dice.

On a landing Cannibal edged past me, put his head round the door, then waved me in. He didn’t come inside himself, but stood out there on the landing, lurking.

This Billy Whispers was a short man with broad shoulders and longer arms than even is usual with us. Elegantly dressed but quite respectable, as if on Sundays, and with a cool, cold face that gazed at me without fear or favour.

‘You come inside?’ he said. ‘Or do you prefer to stand there encouraging draughts?’

‘I’m Fortune,’ I said, ‘from Lagos.’

‘I know a lot of Lagos boys.’

‘You’re Gambian, they tell me. Bathurst?’

He nodded at me and said, ‘My friend was telling me of your interest in my greenhouse.’

‘I saw you grew charge out there …’

‘You want to smoke some?’

‘Well, I don’t mind. I used up all I had on the trip over …’

‘I’ll roll you a stick,’ this Billy Whispers said.

I sat on the bed, feeling pleased at the chance of blowing hay once more. For much as I care for alcoholic drinks of many kinds, my greatest enjoyment, ever since when a boy, is in charging with weed. Because without it, however good I feel, I’m never really on the top of my inspiration.

Meanwhile this Billy took out two cigarette-papers, and joined them together by the tongue. He peeled and broke down a piece of the ordinary fag he held between his lips, and then, from a brown-paper pack in a jar above the fireplace (a large pack, I noticed), he sprinkled a generous dose of the weed in the papers and began rolling and licking, easing the two ends of the stick into position with a match.

‘But tell me,’ I said, ‘if it’s not enquiring. You didn’t grow all that hemp you have from outside in your greenhouse?’

‘No, no. Is an experiment I’m making, to grow it myself from seed.’

‘Otherwise you buy it?’

He nodded.

‘You can get that stuff easy here?’

‘It can be got … Most things can be got in London when you know your way around.’

He gave the weed a final tender lick and roll, and handed it me by the thin inhaling end.

‘And the Law,’ I said. ‘What do they have to say about consuming weed?’

‘What they say is fifteen- or twenty-pound fine if you’re caught. Jail on the second occasion.’

‘Man! Why, these Jumbles have no pity!’

At which I lit up, took a deep drag, well down past the throat, holding the smoke in my lungs with little sharp sniffs to stop the valuable gust escaping. When I blew out, after a heavy interval, I said to him, ‘Good stuff. And what do they make you pay for a stick here?’

‘Retail, in small sticks, half a crown.’

‘And wholesale?’

‘Wholesale? For that you have to find your own supplier and make your personal arrangement.’

I took one more deep drag.

‘You know such a supplier?’ I enquired.

‘Of course … I know of several …’

‘You don’t deal in this stuff personal, by any possible chance?’

Here Billy Whispers joined his two hands, wearing on each one a big coloured jewel.

‘Mister,’ he said, ‘I think these are questions that you don’t ask on so early an acquaintance.’

Which was true, so I smiled at him and handed him over the weed for his turn to take his drag on it.

He did this, and after some time in silence he blew on the smouldering end of the weed and said to me, ‘And what is it, Fortune, I can do for you here?’

‘I’m Dorothy’s half-half-brother.’

‘What say?’

‘Arthur, her brother, is my brother too.’ And I explained.

‘But Dorothy she not know you,’ he said to me. ‘Never she’s spoken to me about you.’

Then I explained some more.

‘If that old lady or her sister’s worried about Dorothy,’ he said at last, ‘just tell them to stop worrying because she’s happy here with me, and will do just what I tell her.’

‘Could I speak with her, perhaps?’

‘No, man. You could not.’

At this state of our interview, the door was opened and into the room came a short little fattish boy, all smiles and gesticulation, of a type that beats my time: that is, the Spade who’s always acting Spadish, so as to make the Jumbles think we’re more cool crazy than we are, but usually for some darker purpose to deceive them. But why play this game of his with me?

‘Hullo, hullo, man,’ he cried to me, grasping at both my hands. ‘I ain’t seen you around before … Shake hands with me, my name is Mr Ronson Lighter.’ And he let off his silly sambo laugh.

I said, ‘What say?’ unsmilingly, and freed my hands. ‘What say, Mr Ronson Lighter. Did your own mother give you that peculiar name?’

He giggled like a crazy girl.

‘No, no, no, mister, is my London name, on account of my well-known strong desire to own these things.’

And out of each side coat pocket he took a lighter, and sparkled the pair of them underneath my eyes.

Still not smiling, I got up on my feet.

And as I did – smack! Up in my head I got a very powerful kick from that hot weed which I’d been smoking. A kick like you get from superior Congo stuff, that takes your brain and wraps it up and throws it all away, and yet leaves your thoughts inside it sharp and clear: that makes all your legs and arms and body seem like if jet propelled without any tiring effort whatsoever.

But I watched these two, Billy Whispers and this Mr Ronson Lighter, as they talked in their barbarian Gambian language. I didn’t understand no word, but sometimes I heard the name of ‘Dorothy’.

So I broke in.

‘I’d like to speak to her, Billy, just a moment, if you really wouldn’t mind.’

They both looked up, and this Mr Ronson Lighter came dancing across and laid his hand upon my head.

‘Mister,’ he said, ‘that’s a real Bushman hair-style that you’ve got. Right out of the Africa jungle.’

‘You got any suggestions for improving it?’ I said, not moving much.

‘Why, yes. Why don’t you have it beautifully cut like mine?’

His own was brushed flat and low across his forehead, sticking out far in front of his eyes as if it was a cap that he had on.

‘I’ll tell you of my own personal hairdresser,’ he said. ‘The only man in town who cuts our fine hair quite properly. He’ll take off your Bushman’s head-dress,’ and he messed up my hair again.

‘But possibly your hair’s so elegant because you wear a wig,’ I said to him. And taking two handfuls of his hair, I lifted him one foot off the floor.

He yelled, and in came Jimmy Cannibal, making a sandwich of me between the two of them.

‘Mr Whispers,’ I said, easing out as best I could, ‘I don’t like familiarity from strangers. Can you tell that, please, to these two countrymen of yours?’

Billy was smiling for the first time. He had some broad gaps between all his short teeth, I saw, and pale blue gums.

I was planning perhaps to leap out through the window when the door opened yet once more, and there stood a girl that by her body’s shape and looks was quite likely to be Muriel’s sister. But what a difference from the little chick! Smart clothes – or what she thought was smart – bleached hair, and a look on her face like a bar-fly seeking everywhere hard for trade.

‘What’s all the commotion?’ she enquired.

‘Get out to work, Dorothy,’ said Billy Whispers.

‘Oh, I’m going, Billy.’

‘Then move.’

She leant on one hip, and held out her crimson hand.

‘I want a taxi fare,’ she said. ‘And money to buy some you-know-whats.’

Whispers threw her a folded note and said, ‘Now go.’

Still she stood looking what she thought was glamorous, and it’s true that, in a way, it was. And me still between these two bodyguards, both of them waiting to eliminate me.

‘You’re a nice boy,’ she said to me. ‘Where you from – Gambia too?’

Billy got up, strolled over and slapped her. She screamed out louder than the blow was worth, and he slapped her again harder, so she stopped. ‘Now go,’ he said to her again. ‘And see that your evening’s profitable.’

She disappeared out with a high-heel clatter. I slipped away from among the two bad boys and took Mr Billy by the arm.

‘Billy Whispers,’ I said, ‘do you want a scene with me too here in your bedroom?’

He looked at my eyes and through beyond them, adding up, I suppose, what damage I’d do to any life, limb or furniture, before I was myself destroyed.

‘Is not necessary,’ he said, ‘unless you think it is.’

‘By nature I’m peaceable. I like my life.’

‘Then shoot off, Mr Fortune, now …’

The two started muttering and limbering, but he frowned at them only, and they heaved away from me.

‘Goodbye, Mr Whispers,’ I said. ‘I dare say we’ll meet soon once again, when I’ll offer you some hospitality of mine at that future time.’

‘Is always possible, man,’ he answered, ‘that you and I might cross our paths some more in this big city.’

6

Montgomery sallies forth

My flat (two odd rooms and a ‘kitchenette’, most miscellaneously furnished) is perched on the top floor of a high, narrow house near Regent’s Park with a view on the Zoological Gardens, so that lions, or seals, it may be, awake me sometimes in the dawn. Beneath me are echoing layers of floor and corridors, empty now except for Theodora Pace.

When the house used to be filled with tenants, I rarely spoke to Theodora. Such a rude, hard, determined girl, packed with ability and innocent of charm, repelled me: so clearly was she my superior in the struggle for life, so plainly did she let me see she knew it. She made it so cruelly clear she thought the world would not have been in any way a different place if I had not been born.

But circumstances threw us together.

A year ago, the property changed hands, and notices