City of Spades (11 page)

Johnny smiled with condescension, rubbed the boy’s back, and pushed him gently off.

‘They all love you, Johnny,’ Muriel said.

‘So long as you do.’

‘I do. Oh yes, I do.’ She stared at him, and clutched as if she feared he’d disappear. ‘I’d do anything for you,’ she said.

‘Anything! Big words.’

‘If you want to stay with me, you can. If you wanted to get married ever, you just say. If you want a child, I’ll give you one – a boy: we’ll call it Johnny-number-two. I’d work for you, Johnny – any work. I’d go to jail for you – do anything.’

‘Muriel! Muriel! What sad thoughts you speak of.’

‘You mean getting married?’

‘I mean all these things that you imagine. You are my girl – it is enough. What else is there?’

‘I love you, Johnny. Once we get into each other’s blood, your race and mine, we never can cut free. All that matters to me is that you’re brave, and beautiful, and you’ve got brains, so I can be proud of you. Nothing else matters to me at all.’

The boy came back. ‘We’re nearing Greenwich Palace now. Do you want to have a look on deck?’

Up in the sun, beneath a pink-blue sky, they watched the stately architectural rhetoric slide into view. ‘I smell the sea,’ said Fortune, sniffing. When Inigo Jones’s splendid white cube appeared between Sir Christopher Wren’s gesticulations, Muriel cried out, ‘That one’s for us! That’s where we’ll live – the little one.’ They stood hand in hand by the railings to be first off at the pier, as the boat swung round the river in a circle. No one else followed them; and when the boat headed back up the river, they saw it wasn’t stopping at the palaces.

Muriel called out to the helmsman. ‘Can’t we get off?’

‘Get off, miss? No, we don’t stop.’

‘But it said it was an excursion to Greenwich Palace.’

‘This is the excursion, miss. We take you there and back, to see it, but you get off where you came from in the City.’

An autumn day, some three months later, found me sitting in a coffee shop frequented by BBC executives, face to face with Theodora and profoundly dejected.

‘You’re out?’ she said.

‘Sacked. My interview was a disaster.’

And it had been.

My chief was one of those who think it best to be kind to be cruel. With the air of sharing a great joke, he said to me, ‘Well, Pew, the blow’s falling, I dare say you expected it,’ and gave me a ghastly grin.

‘Sir?’

‘We’re not taking up our option on you, Pew. I expect you’d like some reasons. I’ll give you three. The police have been making enquiries about you, and we don’t like that. You’ve visited our hostel frequently without authority and behaved oddly, so it seems. And then,
Pew, in a general way, we think you’ve been a little too familiar with the coloured races. Oh, don’t interrupt, I know we’re the Welfare Office, and we’re in duty bound to help these people in their hour of need. But remote control’s the best, we’ve found. Not matiness. Not going native, if I may so express myself.’

‘May
I
make an observation, chief?’ I said, when I saw the game was lost.

‘You may indeed, if it will ease your feelings.’

‘I’m not surprised the coloured races hate us.’

He wasn’t a bit disconcerted.

‘But they don’t, Pew, that’s where you make your second big mistake. They don’t like us, certainly, but they don’t hate us. They just accept us as, I suppose, a necessary evil.’

Determined to have the last word, I said: ‘Nothing could be worse than to be neither loved nor hated. It puts one on a level with the Swiss.’

Theodora didn’t congratulate me on this rejoinder. ‘It’s always best,’ she said, ‘in tricky interviews, to say one word for every six the other person says.’

‘But did I in fact say more! And, anyway, my dear Theodora, you yourself have not always been, of recent months, a model of discretion.’

‘Oh, have I not?’ she said, glancing round at the coffee-swilling executives.

‘This series of talks of yours on the colour question has seemed to call for an awful lot of planning.’

‘All BBC series must be meticulously planned for months ahead.’

‘No doubt, though I can’t think why. But I mean you’ve been bringing Johnny Fortune and his pals against their wills into your flat on far too many occasions.’

‘Against their wills? They’ve been delighted.’

‘They’re so polite.’

‘In any case, I’ve not seen Johnny now for a month.’

‘Nor I. He’s disappeared mysteriously from his usual haunts.’

The waitress disgustedly put down the check. I reached for it. ‘No,’ said Theodora. ‘You must economise.’

‘I have in my pocket a month’s salary in lieu of notice.’

‘And then?’

‘Then? Only Australia remains.’

Theodora snatched the check away. ‘Perhaps you could freelance for the Corporation,’ she said. ‘So many mediocrities get away with it.’

‘Thanks, Theodora,’ I said quite bitterly, and arose. She called me back, but not until I was halfway down the stairs. Her face, from that distance, looked agonised and proud. I crossly returned, and she said in a throaty whisper, ‘Find him, Montgomery!’ Then swirled to some raw-boned feminine executives at the adjacent table.

I went out bemused into the chilly morning and, passing despondently by one of the many dilapidated subsidiary buildings near Portland Place that house the detritus of the BBC, who should I see emerging but a resplendent figure whose fortunes, it seemed, had risen as my own had fallen: none other than Mr Lord Alexander in a rose suit – yes, rose – and carrying a guitar case.
I hailed him, and was mortified that at first he didn’t recognise me.

‘You sang for me,’ I reminded him, ‘at the hostel some months ago.’

‘Oh yes – oh yes, indeed, man. Before my unfortunate arrest, which luckily ended only in seven days.’

‘And since then, my lord, since then?’

‘Well, man, I’ve swum into the glory. Radio programmes and cabaret work, and even a number of gramophone recordings.’

‘Congratulations, my dear chap. You’ve written some good new songs?’

‘
All
my songs is good, but ’specially enjoyed are those on British institutions: “Toad-in-hole and Guinness stout”, and “Please, Mr Attlee, don’t steal my majority”, and “Why do I thirst between three and five?” …’

‘Let us thirst no more, Lord Alexander. The pub’s nearby.’

‘Me, I will buy you something.’

Over two light ales, I asked him if he had news of Johnny Fortune. He lowered his voice. ‘They say,’ he told me, ‘that little boy has turned out not too good.’

‘But where is he? I’ve been up to Holloway, I’ve been round all the bars, and he’s nowhere to be found.’

‘The boy’s moved down East End, they tell me, which is a bad, bad sign.’

‘Why so?’

‘There’s East End Spades and West End Spades. West End are perhaps wickeder, but more prosperous and reliable.’

‘Do you know where I can find him in the East End?’

‘Myself I don’t know, but anyone would tell you at Mahomed’s café in the Immigration Road. That is a central spot for all East End activities.’

I bought Alexander a return drink, thanked him heartily, and leapt into a cab.

‘Troubles,’ I said to Hamilton, ‘do not come singly.’

‘No, Johnny.’

‘Never would I think I could be so very foolish.’

‘No, Johnny, no.’

‘Sometimes I even think I must eat up my pride and return to my dad in Lagos like the prodigal son.’

We were sitting in my miserable room, a former sweet-shop on the ground floor of the Immigration Road. Muriel, thank goodness, was out now at her work. But Hamilton and I had little joy in our male company, for we were both quite skinned and destitute.

‘You tell me to use a needle is bad,’ said Hamilton, ‘but to gamble away your wealth – is that not a greater injury? Two hundred pounds fly off, Johnny, in three short happy months.’

‘They rose once to nearly four hundred pounds with all my profits.’

‘But tumbled again to two times zero afterwards.’

I got up and combed my hair, for there was little else to do. ‘Not even a fire, Hamilton. Not even a cigarette. And do you know, my greatest sorrow is the total neglect of my meteorological studies?’

‘Your greatest sorrow is not that – it is that you are boxed up with this Muriel.’

And what could I say to that? At first I had been fond of that little girl, and she had given me some excellent physical satisfactions. But when all my loot was gone, and the only serious work that I could find, in the building industry, was too poor paid and degradation, she had begun to support me with her pitiful wages from the shirt factory where she was employed.

‘Johnny,’ said Hamilton. ‘You’re quite sure this little girl of yours does work in that shirt shop?’

‘Of course. Now why?’

‘You’re positive she’s not hustling?’

‘Muriel, Hamilton, is no harlot like her sister Dorothy.’

‘Be sure of that. Because to live on the immoral earnings of a woman is considered a serious crime in this serious country.’

‘Muriel is too honest and too simple.’

‘No chick is simple.’

‘That is true …’

‘This child of hers she says is one day to be yours. You believe her story, Johnny?’

‘How can I tell? It could be so …’

‘You will let her have it, Johnny?’

‘Hamilton! I am no infant murderer.’

Hamilton stretched his long body out.

‘Perhaps not,’ he said. ‘But if she has it, and you refuse her marriage, as I expect you to, she can then weep before the magistrate until he grants her an affiliation order. This will oblige you to support her till the infant is sixteen years of age.’

‘Man, I shall skip the country if that happens.’

I looked at my dear friend’s eyes. More sunken away than when first I discovered him again, and his whole body shrivelling up with that evil drug, it seemed to me that only wicked thoughts came now into his mind.

‘Hamilton,’ I said. ‘Let’s go into the street and take the air. Sitting here leaguing all the day in idleness is just a nightmare.’

‘Walking gives me only a hopeless appetite.’

‘When do you draw your drug ration, Hamilton?’

‘Not till tomorrow …’

‘Oh, but come out in the air, man!’

‘No, Johnny. Let me sleep here, or I think I’ll tumble down and die.’

I had no coat since it was in the pawnshop, but I took up my scarf and started for the door.

Hamilton opened up one eye. ‘Those Jumbles, Johnny,’ he said. ‘That Pew and Pace people you used to see. Can’t you raise loot from them?’

‘I have some pride.’

‘You also have your digestion, Johnny, to consider.’

This Immigration Road is quite the queen of squalor.
And though back home we have our ruined streets, they haven’t the scraped grimness of this East End thoroughfare. I half shut my eyes and headed for Mahomed’s café which, though quite miserable, has the recommendation that it’s open both the night and day.

This is due to the abundant energy of Mahomed, an Indian who once worked high up in a rich West End hotel, and serves you curried chicken as if you were a rajah loaded up with diamonds. His wife is a British lady with a wild love of Spades, and a horrid habit of touching you on the shoulder because she says ‘to stroke a darkie brings you luck’. But you can forgive this insolence if she supplies some credit without the knowledge of Mahomed.

The café’s frequented by human dregs, and coppers’ narks, and boys who come there hustling and making deals. The first face I saw, when I went in it, was the features of Mr Peter Pay Paul.

‘What say, man,’ I asked him. ‘You still peddling that asthma cure?’

He gave me his spewed-up grin.

‘I’m legitimate now,’ he said. ‘I sell real stuff. You buy some?’

‘Roll me a stick, and I’ll smoke it at your expense.’

‘That’s not a good business, man.’ But he started rolling.

‘What sentence did you get that day?’

‘Case dismissed. What do you know?’

‘That CID Inspector, that Mr Purity. He didn’t press the charge?’

‘He not in court, man – was quite a break.’

‘You small beer to him, Peter, it must be.’

‘If that’s true, man, it’s lucky. That Mr Purity looked cold hard.’

He handed me the weed.

‘Peter, where you get this stuff?’ I said. ‘Who is your wholesaler?’

‘That is my private secret, man.’

‘Suppose that you cut me in on it?’

‘Well, I might do … if you show some generosity …’

‘Man, I’m skinned just at present. Make a friend of me, and you won’t repent of it.’

‘I’ll consider your request, Johnny Fortune. Give me some drag.’

Mahomed came up and bowed as he always does: this because he likes to win the affection of violent Spades who can help him if ever trouble should arise.

‘An English gentleman was here looking for you, Johnny.’

‘What name?’

‘He tell me to say Montgomery was asking for you.’

‘Ah, him. What did he need?’

‘Johnny, isn’t that a copper? His name was quite unknown to me, you never tell me he was a friend of yours, so I sent him farther on east down Limehouse way.’

‘I don’t live there.’

‘To confuse the man. I said to call at 12 Rawalpindi Street, but so far as I know there isn’t any such address.’

Mahomed gave us a sly, silly smile to prove his clever cunning.

‘Mahomed, you’re too smart. If that man calls here again, please tell him where I live.’

‘He’s a friend, then?’

‘Is a friend, yes.’

‘Oh, I apologise. You eat something?’ I shook my head. ‘On me,’ said Mahomed, and cut out behind his counter with another little bow.

I saw an old African man was watching us. ‘Who is that grey old person?’ I asked Peter Pay Paul.

‘That old-timer? Oh, a tapper. He’s always complaining about we younger boys.’

‘I no tapper,’ the old gentleman said. ‘But all I can tell you is you boys spoil honest business since you come. Before the wartime, before you come here in all your numbers, the white folks was nice and friendly to us here.’

‘They spat in your eyes and you enjoyed it, Mr Old-timer.’

‘You go spoil everything. You give me some weed.’

‘Blow, man. Go ask your white friends for it.’

After Mahomed’s sodden chicken, we walked down the Immigration Road, Peter Pay Paul holding his weed packets in his hands constantly inside his overcoat pockets as these weed peddlers do, ready to ditch them at the slightest warning.

‘I must cut out of this weed racket soon, Johnny,’ he said. ‘No one lasts more than three months or so, because the Law puts the eye on you before too long goes by.’

‘How will you live, man, if you give it up?’

‘There’s the lost-property racket, but there’s not much
loot in that … You go round lost-property offices asking for briefcases, say, or gold-topped umbrellas, and claiming the nicest object you can see.’

‘They give them to you without any proof?’

‘You speak some very bad English, and act ignorant and helpless to them, when they ask for explanations. They end by yielding up some article which then you can sell … If only I could get a camera from them, though.’

‘To take street photograph?’

Peter Pay Paul stopped and laughed.

‘Man,’ he said, taking me by the scarf, ‘you’re crazy. No. Hustling with Jumble queers. You get yourself picked up by them, taken home, then photograph them by flashlight in some dangerous condition and sell them the negative for quite a price. Or sell a print and keep the negative for future use … Or else beat them up and rob them, but that’s dangerous, because sometimes they turn round and fight you back …’ Peter walked on again. ‘No, straightest of all, man, is finding sleeping accommodation and company for GIs, or buying cheap the goods they get from PX stores, but for this you need quite a capital. Best of all, of course, is poncing on some woman, but I haven’t got the beauty enough for that. Why don’t you try it, Johnny?’

‘My sex life is not for sale.’

‘Ah, well …’

We turned down a side street through an alleyway into a big empty warehouse. We climbed up some wooden steps, and Peter Pay Paul knocked on a three-locked door.

‘Say who!’ a voice cried inside.

‘Peter, man. Let me in.’

The door opened two inches, and we saw an eye. ‘And this?’ said the voice behind the eye.

‘My good friend Fortune, out of Lagos. Let us both in.’ And he whispered to me: ‘A Liberian – beware of him.’

This wholesale weed peddler was a broad-chested cripple, who dragged his legs when he moved about the room, never keeping ever still. His eyes were very brown-shot inside their purple rings.

‘Good morning, Mr Ruby,’ said Peter Pay Paul. ‘Perhaps I could introduce you a new customer.’