City of Spades (15 page)

This Miss Theodora! Outside the Vial man’s flat, I found her with the cat, two legs in each hand, searching the late darkness for a taxi. ‘Let me take it for you, please,’ I said to her. ‘You don’t want it to scratch you on your nylon blouses.’

‘They’re not nylon,’ she said to me, and I saw she was in tears.

I took the animal.

‘We walk a bit together, you and me,’ I said, ‘and get the fresh air in our weary choke-up lungs.’

‘You’ll catch cold without a coat on.’

‘Me? I’m hearty! Walking warms up the circulation.’

After a silent while, she said, ‘I suppose you think I oughtn’t to have done that, Johnny.’

‘Is for you to judge. Each man is jury of his own actions – even women.’

‘I didn’t mind all that much about the cat, but I couldn’t bear them all enjoying themselves so much.’

This cat was wriggling, so I shoved it inside my shirt and buttoned it. ‘Ju-ju is ju-ju,’ I replied. ‘Surely, is best to stay away from watching it, or, if you come, not interfere.’

‘But you took me there to see it.’

A remark how like a woman!

‘African ju-ju, or Haitian voodoo,’ I explained to her, ‘is not to be despised like you do through your ignorance. Medical science is, of course, a European discovery, as we know when we buy our spectacles, or have the appendix out. But living and dying is also very much a mystery of the mind that ju-ju understands.’

With my conversation, and the night air, she was recovering her usual sharp brain. ‘According to what I read,’ she said, ‘the latest European opinion bears you out.’

A taxi sailed by, cruising cautious, slow, and eager for custom like a prostitute would do. I hailed it, and opened up the door. ‘Here is your quadruped,’ I said. ‘What will you call it?’

‘You choose a name.’

I took the cat beneath the taxi headlamps to examine it for sex. ‘Tungi,’ I said, ‘is a nice name for a boy.’ I handed it back, but she grabbed my arm as well as Tungi when I did so. ‘Come home with me, please,’ she asked, ‘just for a while.’

I know what ‘for a while’ means, once a chick’s got you inside her front door … and I wasn’t eager
for any close association with this not so young, young lady. All the same, she’d given me the twenty pounds, and perhaps she might be helpful to me on some later occasion. I climbed in and took the cat again, to make sure I had a good excuse not to hold whatever else that might be offered.

‘And how is Muriel?’ she said, in that voice women use to hide their disapproval.

‘Muriel is well. Her health is good.’

‘Are you fond of her, Johnny?’

‘“Fond of” is not some words I use. Either is “love” or “not love” in my language.’

‘So you love Muriel, then.’

‘Well, yes, I do. She makes me quite mad with all her practical remarks and weepings, but I have some love for Muriel, that’s certain.’

‘So you’ll get married soon?’

‘Who said I would? Did I say so?’ The cat was wriggling once more – I slapped it. ‘Any conversation about loving a woman,’ I exclaimed, ‘ends up always with some talk by her of marriage.’

‘Excuse me, Johnny.’

‘Oh, I excuse you, naturally.’

This argument gave me excellent reasons for saying my farewell to her once delivered safely at her address; but when the cab stopped, she asked me to dig some earth up from the little garden there outside the rails. ‘For the cat,’ she said. ‘He’ll need a tray upstairs. Just bring it up, will you, when you’ve done? I’ll leave the door open.’

This woman beats my time! I gathered up two handfuls, kicked the door closed behind me, and climbed three steps up at a jump, leaving trailings and spots of dirty earth upon the landings. Inside her room, the lights were already on, the radio in operation, and she was pouring out some drink in quite a hurry.

‘Where is this tray?’ I cried.

‘What tray?’

‘For Tungi your dear cat, Miss Theodora. Or shall I lay this soil upon this sofa?’

‘Oh, don’t be so angry with me, Johnny. I know men don’t like being asked to do a menial task.’

Didn’t that make it worse? She handed me some drink. I gulped it, then said, ‘Goodbye, Miss Theodora, Montgomery would not approve if I should stay.’

‘Him? He’s nothing to me! He’ll be out drinking somewhere, anyway.’

‘Nothing to you, you say. Am I then something?’

This chilly lady, all skin and eagerness and spectacles, now flung herself upon me like some jaguar, and covered me in tears and kisses. I could not speak even until I’d wrestled her away. ‘It’s not always Spades, then,’ I shouted out, ‘who try to seduce white ladies, like they say.’

At this remark of mine, which I agree was not a gentleman’s, like it wasn’t meant to be, she stood up, smoothed all her body down, and said, ‘Accept my apologies. I’m making myself just a little cheap.’

‘If you say so, lady – but I didn’t.’

‘Don’t call me “lady”!’

She was so pale and furious. ‘All right, all right, Miss Theodora.’

‘Or “Miss” anything.’

‘Okay, Theodora. Just play cool.’

She picked up her spectacles from the floor, where they had fallen, and propped her lean body against the fireplace.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘You know I’m in love with you, and you’re not with me, and I’m not fool enough not to know that makes me just a nuisance. All that I ask you, though, is … that if I promise there will be no more scenes like this one, you’ll stay a friend of mine.’

‘Of course. I’m everybody’s friend.’

‘Oh, don’t be so cruel! After all, I’ve helped you once already, and it’s possible – in fact, it’s very possible – I may have to do so once again.’

I got up.

‘You gave me loot, yes,’ I said. ‘You want it back? Well, I’ll have to owe it, because I need it.’ And I went towards the door.

‘Oh, come back,’ she said. ‘Let’s stop quarrelling, and have a drink.’

This seemed quite reasonable to me. We clicked both our glasses, and both sat politely down.

‘Even if you don’t marry Muriel …’ she began.

‘Must we still speak of that?’

‘Yes, because a practical matter’s involved. Even if you don’t marry her, she may have children.’

‘One child she certainly will have.’

‘Already?’

‘So she has said to me.’

She frowned like some prime minister. ‘When you people get independence,’ she said sharp, ‘we’d better change our immigration laws. Otherwise we’ll soon have a half-caste population.’

‘Like in the West Indian Islands, or even in parts of Africa.’

‘People here don’t understand what’s happening.’

‘Then when they do, what splendid opportunities they will have! Always you preach in England against colour bars in other countries! Now you can practise what you preach at home.’

‘They just don’t realise that you’re here to stay. They think you’re all here just temporarily.’

‘Then they must learn.’

‘I suppose we must.’

She reached for a notepad and made some note on it. ‘For your radio programme?’ I enquired.

She nodded. ‘Why won’t you marry Muriel?’ she said.

‘For many reasons. Is a bad family, is one.’

‘You mean her sister Dorothy?’

‘For example, her: I do not wish a sister-in-law who is a prostitute.’

‘How did she become one in the first place?’

‘How should I know? Ask Mr Whispers. These boys meet some foolish chick at a dance. They take her home and give her the good time. Then suddenly – the smiles all disappear, also the money. The chick is afraid to go home to her mother. And so she accepts to step out on the streets and be agreeable …’

‘And what do they earn?’

‘The girls? Now, Theodora! Are these informations also for your broadcast programmes?’

‘No, I’m just curious. Don’t tell me if you don’t want to.’

‘A hundred pounds a week or more, if she is sharp … If less than twenty a day is brought, the man will beat her.’

‘What man?’

‘The ponce. Her man.’

‘Does he take everything?’

‘If she keeps even one shilling from him, he will beat her.’

‘But in return, he protects her?’

‘No – not at all. She does not do her business in the house where they both live … What happens outside is not his concern at all. His only thought is to be where they live at daylight to collect his loot …’

‘Then what does she get out of it all?’

‘She? Love, so she thinks. Also the power to hold him, through fear of the Law, even though he takes everything from her.’

‘And he?’

‘He gets the good time: nice suits, and drinks, and taxi fares, and money to gamble all way. They never save it.’

‘And can they separate if they want to?’

‘The one who first will wish to leave will be the partner who is stronger. If the chick is making a good business, she can turn her eye on a new boy. Or the man may grow up to be a fashion among those women, and all then will try to steal him from his girl. Dorothy, for example: she now wishes to leave Billy Whispers, so I hear.’

‘To go to whom?’

‘I have been kindly suggested by her.’

‘You’d not do that …’

‘Me? No, thank you. I have my family to think of, and my blood.’

‘What will Billy Whispers do if she should go?’

‘Use the razor on Dorothy, I should say. Unless she first shops him to such police officers as Mr Inspector Purity.’

‘But if she does, the case must be proved in court?’

‘With the woman as witness, that is not difficult at all. But when the man comes out of his jail again, that chick should leave town by the first train she can catch.’

I finished my drink, and held out my hand to thank her. ‘Telephone me, Johnny,’ she said. ‘You’ve got the number.’

‘I will.’

‘You promise?’

‘I do.’

‘Kiss me goodbye.’

While holding her, I thought of Dorothy and Billy, and whether I should not go down to Brixton and advise that little Gambian to turn his Miss Dorothy loose before the trouble started. These serious thoughts were interrupted by Miss Theodora, who was saying in my ear, ‘Won’t you just once, Johnny? I promise I’ll never ask you ever again …’

Oh dear, this female person! Where was her modesty? ‘Oh well, if you feel so bad,’ I said to her. ‘Where is it you keep your bedroom in this flat?’

When I left Mr Vial’s party, I wandered across the silent reaches of Mayfair, which, in the middle night, looked like crissed-crossed canals where the water of life had drained away. In a vast, sad, dramatic square, I paused in the lamp- and moonlight, and gazed at the blue foliage of huge, languishing trees. I took out a cigarette. ‘Light, Mr Pew?’ said someone. ‘You don’t remember me?’ the voice continued. ‘I thought we’d be meeting again before too long.’

‘You’re acting mysteriously, whoever you are. You must be a member of the secret service.’

‘As a matter of fact, that’s what I thought you might possibly be.’

I turned, and saw Detective-Inspector Purity of the CID. He was wearing a tuxedo with a considerable air, had his hands in his coat pockets, and an empty pipe
clenched between his teeth. ‘I’m out and about around the clubs tonight,’ he said. ‘Routine check-up, that’s all it is. As I was saying. I know it’s not my concern, but I thought you were doing special work of one kind or another.’

‘Did you?’

He came rather nearer and put the pipe in his breast pocket. ‘It stands to reason, Mr Pew, that someone from the service must be keeping an eye on these coloured folk, and I saw at once an official like yourself wouldn’t be mucking in with them like you did that night we picked you up, unless you had your cover story ready …’

‘If I were what you suggest, of course I wouldn’t tell you.’

‘Naturally … though I could always try to check … But it’s clear as daylight someone is watching these colonials – the troublesome elements among them. First the Maltese come, then the Cypriots, and now this lot! They don’t make the copper’s task any the easier.’

‘You find that colonials are more trouble than the natives?’

‘What natives? Oh, I see what you mean. No, I don’t suppose so, really … but it’s a new problem. When they come unstuck, of course, they get more publicity in the Press than ours do. But I don’t suppose their criminality is out of all proportion … It’s just that they’re there, you see.’

‘I’ll say good night to you.’

‘Yes, I thought we’d be meeting again,’ Inspector Purity said, falling in alongside as I moved away. ‘You’ve been to a party, I expect?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Good one? Jolly? There are some very nice flats around the Marble Arch …’ He stopped a minute. ‘By the way, you didn’t mind me asking you what I did?’

‘About my job? I’ve left the Colonial Department, as it happens.’

‘Yes, I heard that – word gets around.’ He sounded pleased. ‘And now you’re just a private person.’

‘That’s it.’

‘Doing nothing so very special at all, you’d say. Well, that’s interesting to know.’

We went on some way in silence. He had the art which coppers have of inserting his personality, unwelcomed and uninvited, into your own.

‘And how’s young Mr Fortune?’

‘Who?’

‘Come on, now. You know who I’m speaking of.’

I stopped. ‘Is this an official interview?’

‘Not exactly. No, I wouldn’t say so.’

‘Then good night.’

‘So you have seen something of him? I thought perhaps you had. He’s a nice boy, in his way.’ Mr Purity took his hands from his pockets and slapped his flanks. ‘I have my duty to get on with,’ he said briskly. ‘We never rest.’ He walked on ahead and turned the corner. When I reached it, there was no sign of him.

I crossed the neutral ground of Regent Street into the upper regions of Soho. The eighteenth-century houses looked graceful, mouldering and aloof. Beside an electric power station, that had intruded itself among
them, I stopped: and wondered whether the time had not now come to ‘cut out’, as Johnny Fortune might have said, from the society of the Spades. They were wonderful, of course – exhilarating: the temperature of your life shot up when in their company. But if you stole some of their physical vitality, you found that the price was they began to invade your soul: or rather, they did not, but your own idea of them did – for they were sublimely indifferent to anything outside themselves! And in spite of their
joie de vivre
, in any practical sense they were so impossible! ‘They’re dreadful! They’re just quite dreadful!’ I shouted out aloud, above the slight hum of the dynamos.

I turned some corners, and under a lamp saw Africans squatting on their haunches on the pavement. I stepped out on the street to make a circuit, but was hailed by one who ran crying after me, ‘Lend me two pounds, man, or even one!’ It was Johnny’s
half-brother
, Arthur.

‘Hullo, Arthur. What goes on there?’

‘We’re throwing dice. I lose a bit …’

‘Here in the street?’

‘What’s wrong with here?’

‘Doesn’t anyone interfere?’

‘Oh, we take care. We’re barred at Mr Obo-King’s, you see, and can’t play there.’

‘Mr Obo-King?’

‘He owns the Blake Street gamble-house. You’ll find some people you know there, if you go.’

‘What number in Blake Street is it?’

‘I forget the number, man, but here on this envelope it’s written.’ He pulled out a crumpled one on which I saw:

The postmark was from Manchester.

‘Somebody wrote this to you there?’

‘Yes, man, a friend. He plays clarinet Moss Side.’

‘And this got delivered?’

‘Oh, everyone knows the gamble-house. It’s raided regular weekends.’

‘Don’t they ever close it?’

‘Why should they, so long as Mr Obo-King pays his fines, and makes his little presents to the Law? Mr Obo owns several places, and they’re never closed. The Law likes to keep them open, so it knows where to look for everybody.’

I gave him ten shillings. ‘Best of luck,’ said.

He snatched it, and cried: ‘Never say “Good luck” to any gambler! You not know that?’

‘No. Sorry.’

‘You see my brother Johnny?’

‘Earlier on.’

‘I must get to meet him again soon. This man owes me everything. I feel real sore about him.’

He ran back to the circle without thanks.

I went on to Blake Street; and only then realised
that Arthur’s envelope, after all, had no number on it. I walked up and down, and could find no sign of what looked to be a club, when out of the area steps from a basement I saw a coloured man cautiously emerge and, as he walked towards me, recognised Larry the GI.

‘Man, that sure was some bum evening at Mr Vial’s,’ he said. ‘I pulled out fast when I saw how it was shaping. They was having an orgy when I left, but me, I don’t care for these pig-parties or gang-bangs whatsoever.’

‘Where have you been just now, Larry?’

‘In and out of the gamble-house, to get me some bit of loot.’

‘Did you play in there?’

‘What, me? Among all those Africans when they’re throwing dice? Man, are you crazy? They’d eat me. A soldier can tell dynamite when he sees it.’

‘But you went in there alone?’

‘Oh, no, that Tamberlaine came with me. West Indians I can partly understand, but not these African ancestors of mine.’

‘How did you get the money, then?’

‘Sad – but I had to sell my knife. No other way to get myself back to base. But I’ll find me another there.’ He shook my hands. ‘So I’ll be seeing you,’ he said. ‘Norbert and Moscow has given me your phone number where they’re moving in.’

I walked up the road, and went down the gamble-house steps. The door in the area was open, and there was no one inside to stop you going in. At the end of a dim-lit corridor was another door. I was going to open it, when
from inside came shouts and clatterings, two men ran out and started fighting in the area. There was a horrid scream and whimper, and quick, noisy footsteps on the metal stair up to the street. Someone had fallen at the foot of them. I ran over. ‘Can I help you? Are you hurt?’ I cried out.

By the light from the inner door, I could see this man was bleeding. He tilted his face, and I saw Jimmy Cannibal. He gave me a look of intense dislike, crawled to his feet, and lurched slowly up the stair. A voice from behind me said, ‘Who’s you?’

I turned, and saw a very fat man in a fur-lined jerkin.

‘That boy’s been wounded. What should we do?’

He said nothing, and struck a match under the stair. I saw him pick up a knife. He looked at me, still holding it. ‘Who’s you?’ he said again.

‘A friend of Johnny Fortune’s.’

‘I think I hear about you. What did you see out here?’

‘You know what I saw. A fight.’

‘Is best you saw nothing.’ He picked up a piece of newspaper, and wrapped the knife in it. ‘Who did attack him? You saw that?’

‘No. It was too quick.’

‘Is best you saw nothing, then. You come inside now?’

‘I don’t think I will.’

‘Best you come in till they scatter up there in the street. Give them the time to scatter.’

He propelled me in, and shut the outer door. We stood in the dim corridor.

‘How’s Johnny? That boy got some loot again just now?’

‘Not much.’

‘He ought to get some, then. A boy like him could make some easy, and then lose it all to me.’ He let out a laugh as big as his body. ‘And you, are you loaded?’

‘I have some money, yes.’

‘Come inside, then. I give you some good excitement before you say goodbye to it.’

‘Are you Mr Obo-King?’

‘That’s what they call me. They should so, is my name.’

He led the way into a large room with little chairs and tables where chicken and rice and foo-foo were being served. Some boys were playing a juke-box, and Mr
Obo-King
called to one of them, ‘Take a bucket out there, man. There’s some mess to wash away.’ He turned again to me. ‘The gambling’s through here. In this next door.’

‘I’ll come in later. I want to eat.’

Mr Obo-King looked at me. ‘Then come later. I give you some good excitement before I skin you.’

I sat down, asked for foo-foo, and looked around. Some of the men and women were dressed like birds of paradise, so that you’d turn and look at them in the street; though down here they seemed right enough, in spite of the resolute squalor of the place, and even though other customers were in the last degrees of destitution. A few seemed to have camped there for the night, for they’d kipped down on window-shelves and tables, snoring, or dreaming, possibly, of ‘back home’. A short boy with a pale blue-green pasty face and enormous eyes came up and said, ‘Buy me a meal, man.’ As I called for it, he suddenly lifted his sweater and showed me, on his naked
stomach underneath, an enormous lump. ‘Hospital can do nothing – what is the future?’ he said, and carried his plate away. From time to time customers emerged, always disconsolate, from the gambling room, and started long public post-mortems on their disasters. Soon the West Indian Tamberlaine came out, and said to the company in general, ‘Well, I not had much, see, so I not lose much.’ He spotted me, and accepted an offer of coffee. ‘So voodoo is not for you,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you like this place better.’

‘Who comes here mostly, Mr Tamberlaine?’

‘If white like yourself, they’s wreckage of jazz musicians, chiefly, a lot on the needle and full of despair; if coloured, well, ponces and other hustlers like myself.’

‘You’re a hustler, then?’

‘You might say I pimp around the town, picking the pounds up where I can. I don’t often gamble, though, because the winner is the table, and like all these boys I never know when to stop if fortune does the bitch on me like she do. But coloureds like gambling, don’t you see – it’s part of our carefree nature.’

He gave me a sarcastic grin. ‘Who gambles mostly?’ I said. ‘Africans or West Indians?’

‘What! You recognise some difference? Ain’t we all just coal-black coloured skins to you?’

‘Don’t be offensive, Mr Tamberlaine. Like so many West Indians I’ve met, you seem to have, if I may say so, a large chip sitting on your shoulder.’

‘Not like your African friends? They have less chip, you say?’

‘Much less. Africans seem much more self-assured,
more self-sufficient. They don’t seem to fear we’re going to take liberties with them, or patronise them, as you people do.’

‘Do we now!’

‘Yes, you do. Africans don’t seem to care what anyone thinks of them. So even though they’re more clannish and secretive, they’re easier to talk to.’

Mr Tamberlaine considered this. ‘Listen to me, man,’ he said. ‘If we’s more sensitive like you say, there’s reasons for it. Our islands is colonies of great antiquity, and our mother tongue is English, like your own, and not some dialects. So naturally we expect you treat us like we’re British as yourself, and when you don’t, we suffer and go sour. Why should we not? But Africans – what do they care of British? For African, his passport just don’t mean nothing, except for travel, but for us it’s loyalty.’

I couldn’t resist a dig. I’d had, after all, to take so many myself in recent months. ‘I think,’ I said, ‘it’s easier for them than it is for you. They know what they are, and you’re not sure. They belong much more deeply to Africa than you do to the Caribbean.’

‘My ears is pointed in your direction,’ said Mr Tamberlaine, sipping his coffee, ‘for some more ripe instruction.’

‘Here it comes, then. They speak their own private tongues, their lives are rooted in their ancient tribes, so that even when they’re lonely or miserable here they feel they’re sustained by the solid tribal past at home. But you, you’re wanderers, cut off by centuries from Africa where you first came from, and ready to move off again
from your stepping-stones strung out across the sea.’

‘Our islands is stepping-stones? Thank you now, for what you call them so.’

‘Wouldn’t you all move on to North or South America, if they’d let you in?’

‘Well, yes, perhaps we would, the way they treat us here, and how it is back home.’

‘You see, then. You’re not sure what you are – African, Caribbean, or American – and so you’re quite ready to be British.’

‘Thank you for the compliment to our patriotism. So many of our boy who serve in RAF would gladly hear your words.’