City of Spades (7 page)

‘We could walk out that way, this Moonbeam’s open until when the dawn … But first, Johnny, I more like you come over and see your future home with me.’

I had a sudden inspiration. ‘I know,’ I said, ‘a very nice woman to make up the party … a most engaging English girl, called Theodora. I’m sure she’d like to come. Let’s go to my place and ask her. We could have another drink there too, I think and hope.’

We walked out through the Indians’ vague bows into the star-skied town, and hailed a cab. It was the hour at which all honest Londoners have hurried to their beds and wisdom, and when the night owls, brave spirits in this nightless city, emerge to gather in the suspect cellars that nourish the resistance movement to the day.

‘Why have I done this?’ I reflected, as we drove home between rotting Georgian terraces, and the ominous green of the thick trees in Regent’s Park which, when night falls, are reclaimed from man by a jealous, antique Nature. ‘Theodora won’t be in the least bit interested, and no more will these wild Africans be in her.’

We crept stealthily up through the echoing floors of my grim house. There was a light under Theodora’s door. Asking my friends to wait, I knocked, and she bade me enter in her bold, emotionless tones.

It is a curiosity of Theodora’s austere and purposeful nature that she wears intimate clothes of a sensual and frivolous kind. There she was, still typing away, but dressed now in a gown and nightdress made for a suppler, more yielding body.

‘You were a long time at that hostel,’ she said. ‘Did you enjoy yourself?’

‘Theodora. Would you care to go out dancing?’

‘You’ve been drinking again, Montgomery.’

‘Of course I have. Would you like to come into a world where you’ve never set foot before, even though it’s always existed underneath your nose?’

She flipped out the sheet she was typing, and held it on her lap. ‘Go on,’ she said.

‘I have two delightful friends outside most keen to meet you. Would you be willing to receive them, even if in your off-duty dress?’

‘Negroes?’

I nodded.

Theodora took off her spectacles (which suit her), eyed me reflecting, then said, ‘Bring them in.’

The Africans stood looking at Theodora with frank curiosity, an amiable show of modesty, and complete self-assurance. I introduced them.

‘A nice place you have here,’ said Johnny Fortune. ‘You’re an eager reader of literature, too, as I can see.’

‘Miss Pace,’ I said, ‘is a doctor of some branch of learning – economics, I believe.’

‘Letters,’ said Theodora. ‘Montgomery, please go upstairs and fetch back my bottle of gin.’

When I returned, I was disconcerted to hear Theodora say: ‘This legend of Negro virility everyone believes in. Is there anything in it, would you say?’

‘Lady,’ Johnny answered, ‘the way to find that out is surely by personal experiment.’

‘And is it true,’ the rash girl continued, unabashed, ‘that coloured men are attracted by white women?’

‘I’d say that often is the case, Miss Pace, and likewise also in the opposite direction.’

I hastened to pour out gin. I did not like my friend Theodora treating them in this clinical manner.

‘Mr Fortune,’ I said, ‘has come here to study the movement of the isobars.’

‘With what object?’ Theodora asked.

‘Because back home, my studies over, I’ll get a good job upon the airfield.’

‘I see. And you, Mr Ashinowo, as I think it was. What do you do?’

‘Lady,’ said Hamilton, ‘at one time I pressed suits by day and worked in the Post Office by night.’

‘Doing what?’

‘As switchboard relief operator. But I was sacked, you see, for gossiping, they said, with some subscribers.’

‘And you did?’

‘I tried to make friends that way when nice voices called me up for numbers. But this, I was told, was not my duties, and they sacked me.’

‘And now?’

‘I live on hope mostly, and charity from the splendid National Insurance system.’

I broke in impatiently on all this. ‘The point really is, Theodora, would you care to step out with us, for time is getting on.’

But politely, though quite firmly, she replied, ‘No, I don’t think so, thank you, Montgomery. I’m sure you gentlemen will excuse me, but I have work to do.’

‘Do change your mind,’ said Johnny to her. ‘Even a serious lady like yourself must at times relax herself.’

She smiled and shook her head. My two friends knocked back their gins, told me they would be calling home a moment, and gave me directions where to meet them in an hour. I saw them to the door and, like two innocent conspirators, they set off loping and prowling up the street.

Theodora was typing again when I returned. ‘I think I’m in danger,’ I told her, ‘of becoming what Americans call a nigger-lover.’

‘“Negro-worshipper” is the polite phrase, I believe. You spent the whole evening with those people?’

‘Yes. And I say, thank goodness they’ve come into our midst.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they bring an element of joy and fantasy and violence into our cautious, ordered lives.’

‘Indeed. Isn’t there another side to the coin?’

‘There must be, but I haven’t found it yet. Unless it is that they live too much for the day …’

Theodora got up and fiddled with her documents. ‘It’s always a danger,’ she said, ‘to fall in love with another race. It makes you dissatisfied with your own.’ She tucked typed sheets away in little files. ‘Most races seem marvellous,’ she continued, ‘when one meets them for the first time. It may surprise you, Montgomery, but once I was enamoured of the Irish. Yes, think of it!’ (She shuddered.) ‘I loved them for what I hadn’t got. But I’m damned if I love what I found out that they had.’

‘You’re swearing, Theodora. It’s unlike you.’

‘You’d better go to bed.’

I drained the gin. ‘You’re not coming to this ball with me, then? Those boys will certainly put it down to colour prejudice.’

‘Don’t be so cunning, Montgomery. It’s too transparent. Your friend Fortune wouldn’t think so, anyway. He’s too intelligent.’ Theodora tightened the
gown around her waist, smoothed meditatively her lean, albeit shapely, thighs, then turned round and said to me, ‘All right, very well – I’ll come.’

I gazed at her awestruck. ‘Might I ask, Theodora, why you’ve changed your inflexible mind?’

There was a pause; then: ‘It will be an opportunity to study conditions.’

‘What does that mean, my dear?’

‘Conditions of coloured people living in London.’

‘But why? Why you?’

‘The Corporation might put on a series of talks. It’s a topical and unusual theme.’

I drew breath. ‘Theodora! I shall not be party to such a plot! If you come out with my friends, it is to come out with them, and not to ferret raw material for impartial radio programmes.’

There was a silence.

‘Very well,’ she said at last. ‘I accept your condition. I’ll get dressed.’

Hamilton and I rejected possibilities of a late tube or bus, and instead sought a taxi among the endless streets that led in the direction of his Holloway home. I cannot tell you what a joy it was to see Hamilton again, just as in youth, and to know of a sure friend in this after all very unknown city. I put my arm through his, and said to him (just near a huge, empty railway station), ‘Oh, Hamilton, one day we’ll return together to set alight to that dreadful mission school.’

‘If ever I get home, Johnny, yes, we shall.’

‘But surely, Hamilton, you will go back to Lagos in the due course of time?’

‘I don’t know. Many things keep me here.’

‘What, Hamilton? You love this country?’

‘No, no, but I have means to live here in better comfort than I could hope for back home …’

‘What means?’

‘I tell you this in a bit later time.’

He’d looked at me with an alarmed expression, quite unlike him.

‘That Jumble,’ he said, ‘that Mr Pew. Is he to be trusted, in your opinion?’

‘Why not, until he proves us otherwise?’

‘I have been here two years, and still I have no Jumble friends.’

‘You do not seek for them, perhaps? Whites are all right if you are proud and strong with them.’

‘Friendship between us is not possible, Johnny. Their interest is to keep us washing dishes, and in their kindest words are always hidden secret double thoughts.’

‘Hamilton, you know, if our people has one bad weakness, it is our jealousy always, and suspicion.’

‘Suspicion of Jumbles? Jealousy of them? Why not so?’

‘Even for ourselves, our people have that bad feeling. You know it, Hamilton. If one man rises up, the others try all to pull him down – even when there is no advantage to them.’

‘That may be true,’ said Hamilton. ‘And certainly these Jumbles are more faithful to each other than we are to our own kind. When the trouble comes, they stick: our people scatter.’

A taxi cruised by, he hailed it, and gave to the driver no fixed address, but the name of the corner of two streets. Then closing the glass panel, he said to me, ‘Never let your own private addresses be known in this Jumble city, especially to such as taxi drivers who make their report on passengers they carry to the Law.’

We walked from the taxi stop round several blocks, Hamilton glancing sometimes back along the streets behind, then dived in the basement of a silent house. Hamilton opened, and turned on the lights with a great smile. ‘Welcome to my place,’ he said, ‘which is also to be from now your home.’

It certainly was a most delightful residence: with carpets and divans, and shaded lamps and a big radiogram and comfort. He turned on the sound which gave out first Lena Home. ‘She! One of my favourites,’ I told him.

‘Then listen to her, man, while I go change my shirt.’

Up on his walls, Hamilton had stuck many photographs: like Billy Daniels, and Dr Nkrumah, and Joe Louis in his prime, and Sugar Ray; and also Hamilton’s acquaintances, all sharply dressed and grinning – rocking high with charge, I’d say, when these snaps of them were taken.

‘Hamilton,’ I called out, ‘who’s this little girl?’

He didn’t answer, so I walked through the door into the kitchen. He was standing over the sink injecting his arm with a syringe.

‘Hamilton!’ I cried, and tried to seize it away.

‘You stand back, man, from me!’

I never saw Hamilton so ferocious. His face looked at my face I thought with hatred.

He popped, then locked his syringe into a drawer.

‘Come back in the big room, Johnny. You should not have left it without my invitation.’

I was silent, and in a short while he was smiling.

‘Hamilton,’ I said, ‘how long you been on that needle?’

‘One year now, I think.’

‘Hamilton!’

‘I’m licensed now, Johnny – no trouble with the Law. I buy my allotment, but sell half of it. That’s one of my ways to live.’

‘Is that the only way possible to live, old friend?’

‘Don’t be too hard with me, Johnny. You’re new to London, and your dad has loot to send you, don’t forget. Wait till you’re skinned like I was, and then see.’

‘I wish it was not this, Hamilton.’

We sat for a while with only the radiogram breaking silence: then there was a soft knock, and in came a short man wearing some Jumble clerk’s striped trousers, and slippers, and braces over a grease-smeared vest, and a face to match it all – quite uninviting.

‘Oh, Johnny,’ said Hamilton, ‘this is my landlord, Mr Cole, who we call “Nat King” in honour of his great namesake. This is Johnny Fortune, Mr Cole, who’ll be staying with me here from now.’

‘Very pleased,’ said Mr Cole. Then handed Hamilton a little sheet of paper.

‘Papers are not necessary, Mr Cole. I know I owe you all of three weeks’ rent.’

‘Some five it is, Hamilton Ashinowo.’

‘Four by next Friday.’

‘How much is it, Hamilton?’ I said. ‘I can advance you any sum that’s necessary.’

The notes passed to Hamilton and then to Mr Cole. ‘A Lagos boy?’ he said to me in his horrible Ibo accent.

‘Yes.’

‘Newcomer to town?’

‘Yes.’

‘Student boy, perhaps?’

‘Yes, Mr Cole. I see you soon be familiar with my personal history.’

He looked at me with no smile at all, and said, ‘I have to be acquainted with the residents of my house. You a gambler?’

‘I might perhaps be one.’

‘We must play cards some day.’

‘If you say so, sir.’

‘Friends come most nights into my room upstairs. You’ll understand this is no common gamble-house like you may find down in the town, but serious.’ He stopped by the door. ‘Do your studies include a knowledge of trigonometry?’ he asked me.

‘Oh, I’m not that far up.’

‘I’m learning it for my hobby. I thought perhaps you’d help me with the problems. But never mind, so long as you can gamble.’

He went away with his valuable pound notes.

‘A mean man,’ said Hamilton, ‘that “Nat King” Cole. Watch out for him.’

‘Mean in what way?’

‘Treacherous. Nothing is meaner, Johnny, than we are when we go sour. I tell you, man, I know the London landlords. Even a white is not so mean as our race can be to us …’

Hamilton was lying back now on the divan, and I saw that his two eyes slowly began to close. ‘Wake up, we’re
going to that club,’ I cried to him; but his drug worked its effect, and when I’d removed his shoes and loosened up his clothing, and stood looking sadly at him for a while, I went out once more into the London night.

It was difficult for me to find the home of Muriel and her mother, as I had forgotten the street name and number, and had only the force of instinct to guide me there. Another thought also began to strike me: this was not Lagos, where we never slumber, but a city which after midnight seemed like the Land of Deads. Would I be welcomed by those Macphersons at so late an hour?

But though the street, when I found it, was all in blackness, I was happy to see lights blazing on the Macpherson floor. This time the front door was locked shut, so I stood underneath and called up Muriel’s name; and then, when no answer came, threw little blocks of earth from the outside garden at the window-panes.

With a screech one flew open, and out on to the balcony there stepped Mrs Hancock, or Macpherson. Even I was alarmed at her wild and strange appearance. She was naked except for a short nightdress, her grey hair hung down like ghost upon her shoulders, and in her hand she carried a huge book which she held upwards, like a club.

‘Who is it,’ she cried, ‘that disturbs the Lord’s servants at their midnight prayers?’

‘Good evening, Mrs Macpherson,’ I called up. ‘Is me, Johnny Fortune, your young friend.’

‘What?’ she shrieked out. And to my disgust, I saw she’d snatched away her nightgown to the thigh, which shone all blue and gristly, like a meat carcass, in the electric light.

‘I too,’ she cried out shrill, ‘I too could be evil if I wanted to, like you wicked men.’

At that she hurled the book down on my head. I picked it up: it was a black-bound hymnal. The window shut swiftly with a clatter.

Then the door opened, and out came little Muriel. ‘Mum’s got hysteria,’ she said. ‘Arthur’s come back. He’s been released.’

‘He’s in there too?’

‘No. Mum refused to let him stay, so he’s gone off to the Moonbeam to find some friend he can stop with.’

‘That’s funny, Muriel, because I came here to ask you out with me to just that place – to dance and hear about your sister Dorothy and what I have discovered.’

‘Oh, I don’t want to go to the Moonbeam …’

‘But, Muriel, I must meet Arthur, to see if I can help him. And how will I know him without you there to point him out?’

She looked upstairs. ‘Mum’s so hysterical,’ she kept on saying.

‘Well, give her back her religious volume and leave her make her prayers and singing. Who is it she’s praying for – for Arthur?’

‘No. For suffering humanity.’

‘Oh, come along now, Muriel. I’ll look after you in any place we go.’

‘All right, Johnny,’ she said. ‘I’ll get my keys.’ And taking the hymnal from me, she disappeared into the madhouse up the stairs.