City of Spades (9 page)

‘Number one. Do you agree to total political freedom for coloured races without any restrictions whatever? Miss Theodora?’

‘No.’

‘Mr Pew?’

‘Yes.’

‘Second question. Would you yourself marry a coloured man – or woman?’

‘Yes,’ said Theodora; and added, ‘If I loved him, of course.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Why not, Mr Pew?’

‘For the child’s sake.’

‘It would be racially degenerate?’

‘It would be miserable.’

‘Subject to social pressures? Excluded by both races?’

‘Yes.’

Mr Bo glared at us.

‘That is the familiar argument. But why should such a half-caste race not serve as spearhead for enlightenment? Be necessary victims in the victorious struggle?’

‘Perhaps,’ I could not forbear to say, ‘you should ask the half-caste child what he thinks of that.’

The band stopped, and we all sipped coffee in the silence of misunderstanding. Mr Karl Marx Bo, suddenly, looked bitter.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘you are both nice people, I am sure, but I think you also are what we despise even more than we do those who hate us – you are full-time professional admirers of the coloured peoples, who like us as you like pet animals. Miss Theodora, do you wish to dance?’

‘Alas, Mr Bo! My friend Theodora is unable to.’

‘Speak for yourself, Montgomery. Karl Marx, shall we take the floor?’

And she did, and twirled with him quite creditably. Admirable Theodora!

I looked round the cavern, which had a warm coloured fug and stuffiness – sticky, promiscuous and cloying, a hot grass hut in the centre of our town. The men lounged and watched, languid and attentive, the white girls sat up chattering, playing hard to get. How sad there were no coloured girls there of equal dignity and beauty to the men.

Mr Ronson Lighter came over. He handed me my Ronson lighter. He looked very cross.

‘Oh, thank you,’ I said.

‘Billy say I to give you that.’

‘Much obliged.’

‘Also that you come over to speak with him.’

‘I’m here with a friend.’

‘That you bring her over too. He offers you both coffee.’

Billy was sitting among his henchmen in so dark a corner as to be doubly invisible. He reached up a hand, took mine, and pulled me gently down.

‘Johnny, he still not come here yet?’ he said.

‘No. What can have happened to him?’

‘Perhaps he change his mind. He was with Hamilton Ashinowo?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then perhaps Hamilton will offer him some special entertainment. So he change his mind and stay back home.’ Mr Whispers softly laughed.

This was mysterious. So, ‘Good evening, Mr Cannibal,’ I said. ‘I hope you had no trouble at the police station.’

There was a loud silence.

‘You were in police station tonight, Jimmy?’ Billy Whispers asked him.

‘No.’

Billy looked at me. So did Mr Cannibal: he seemed angry and alarmed.

I said: ‘Perhaps I made a mistake.’

‘I hope you do,’ said Billy Whispers.

The silence continued till the coffee came. ‘You get this your lighter?’ Whispers said to me.

‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘Accidents do happen. My boy did not know you was
a friend of Johnny Fortune’s. He is a nice boy, Johnny. Too nice for this city, I expect. I hope he may soon go back home.’ He turned to a half-caste girl upon the bench. ‘This is Barbara,’ he said. ‘She likes to dance with you.’

‘I don’t dance.’

‘She teach you. Barbara, go with this man on to the floor.’

We went. The girl said, ‘Why did you tell him you saw Jimmy at the station?’

‘Why not? Wasn’t he caught up in that raid like everybody else?’

‘He can’t have told Billy he was there … I can see Billy suspects him of something. It looks like trouble to me.’

‘But Mr Cannibal’s his friend.’

‘Cannibal’s slippery. We all know that.’

She spoke with a Cardiff accent. It came oddly out of her half-African face, the sound so ill assorted with a physical beauty that had reached her from thousands of miles away.

‘You come here often?’ I said.

‘I’m a hostess here.’

‘You work for the management?’

‘No. For Billy Whispers. He controls most of the hostesses here.’

‘The management let him?’

‘These West Indians are frightened of the Africans. They don’t interfere. Can’t you dance any better than that?’

‘No. You were going to teach me.’

‘Just hold on to me, then. Bring your body close and don’t think of your feet. You like coloured girls?’

‘I think so.’

‘You ever been with one?’

‘No.’

Barbara glanced up at me with mild surprise. We passed Theodora and Mr Karl Marx Bo. ‘Come and sit down,’ I said to Barbara, ‘and meet my friend Theodora.’

‘That fish-face woman? Isn’t she a copper?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’

‘Are you one, by the way?’

‘Heaven forfend.’

‘Eh?’

‘What difference does it make what I say, Barbara? Just think what you like about us. Time alone will show.’

‘Tell your friends to come to Billy’s table, then. I have to get back to him.’ She stepped across the floor, professionally swinging her magnificent bottom.

I said to Theodora as we followed, ‘Where
did
you learn to dance so well? You’re a perpetual revelation.’

Lowering her voice, she said, ‘I was at one time in the Wrens, and lived a rather rackety life. It’s a period I prefer to forget about, and I’ll thank you not to refer to it again.’

Billy waved us into his corner with a comprehensive smile. With him now there was an enormous coloured GI, and holding both the GI’s hands a lovely, harsh-faced white girl.

‘Is Dorothy,’ said Billy, ‘and her good friend Larry.’

‘Hi, man. You American or British?’ Larry asked me.

‘British.’

‘Oh, that’s all right, then.’

‘Larry doesn’t like Americans,’ Dorothy explained.

‘But isn’t he one?’

‘Oh, yes, but not an
American
, if you see what I mean.’

She hugged him, then let out a sudden shriek. ‘Look there!’ she cried. ‘It’s my brother Arthur!’

A tall gold-skinned boy came gangling gracefully across the floor, grinning with imbecile guile, his lower lip pendent, his eyes flashing dubious charm. He kissed Dorothy, shook hands with everyone, sat down and put his arms round several shoulders.

‘I come out this morning,’ he told everybody. ‘An’ hitch-hiked up to town. An’ I called at back home and found Muriel. An’ she told me about our new brother Johnny. Have you seen him, Dorothy?’

‘Johnny? Yes, I seen him. He’s a fresh boy, just like you.’

‘Ma wouldn’t take me in, I’ve no place I can go, and I’d like to ask my new brother Johnny to help me with some loot until I can get settled. Unless you can help me, Billy, or you, Dorothy, or someone.’

He gazed lazily around, exuding animal magnetism and anxiety.

‘Larry,’ said Dorothy, ‘you won’t mind if I have this dance with my little brother?’

But Mr Cochrane, the resident manager, who’d been standing by like a janizary, stepped up. ‘I’m sorry,
gentlemen, and ladies too,’ he said, ‘but I cannot permit your wife, Billy, to take the floor in slacks.’

Billy said nothing. Larry the GI took Mr Cochrane’s arm.

‘Listen man,’ he said. ‘Let me instruct you about clothing. All you West Indians go about dressed in zoot-suit styles we’ve thrown away ten years ago, and we don’t complain about you.’

‘It is not a question of styles, but of being costumed respectably for my club.’

‘This girl, man, is smart as any film star. They all of them wear slacks in their off-duty hours.’

‘Flim star or no flim star,’ said Mr Cochrane (and he did say ‘flim’), ‘she must please attire herself in a proper skirt.’

‘Oh, blow, man,’ said Ronson Lighter. ‘Twist now – you dig?’

Mr Cochrane stood his ground. ‘I refuse all permission. I shall stop the orchestra.’

Mr Bumper Woodman arrived with several companions. All the men stood up. I saw Theodora reaching for her handbag.

‘Why, oh why,’ said Mr Karl Marx Bo to Mr Cochrane, ‘do you stir up trouble with your African cousins? If you want to make some trouble, why you not go and fight with Dr Malan?’

‘Me tell you insults is quite ineffectual, Mr Student,’ said Mr Woodman.

‘Oh-ho! Listen to this veteran Caribbean pugilist!’

‘Listen to these Ras Tafaris, all long hair and dirty fingernails.’

‘These sugar-cane suckers! These calypso-singing slaves.’

‘Slave? My ancestor had the wisdom to leave your jungle country.’

‘You ancestor was so no good, my ancestor he go sell him to Jumble slave-ship.’

‘You ras-clot man – you’s wasted.’

‘These bumble-clot men – these pussy-clots.’

‘Come to your home in Africa, man, and we teach you some good behaviour.’

At this moment of clenched fists and hands slipping inside pockets, a very tall slim man, with a piece bitten out of one ear, approached. ‘Now come,’ he said. ‘Come, come, come, come, come.’

‘Mr Jasper!’ cried Dorothy. ‘Are you the boss here, or aren’t you? Tell your men to see reason!’

Mr Jasper listened to several explanations, then said in a high, smooth voice, ‘Miss Dorothy, I lend you a skirt from out of our cabaret costumes. I hope you will accept this solution, Mr Whispers.’

‘No.’

‘Yes, man.’

‘No, man, no.’

‘Come,’ I whispered to Theodora. ‘This is our cue to leave.’

When I arrived with Muriel outside this Moonbeam club (which every Spade we met seemed heading for, like night beasts to their water-hole), I saw at once, from very much past experience, that trouble was going on inside. People were peering down the entrance stairs and jabbering, and noise of shouts and crashings floated up. I drew Muriel far into a doorway, as I expected any moment the intrusion of the Law.

Then customers came scurrying up too. Among them I see Montgomery, and with him his Miss Theodora. I said to Muriel to wait, and went across to them.

‘Oh, Mr Fortune,’ Theodora cried. ‘There’s fighting going on downstairs.’

‘Your brother Arthur,’ said Montgomery, ‘and Billy and his friends are battling with some wild West Indians.’

Well, I suppose our African troubles aren’t his business,
but all the same, has he not a pair of fists to stay and help my friends?

I’d seen there were two quite old American saloon cars with drivers that seemed Africans to me. I went over quickly and asked were they for hire? They were.

‘What is a place to meet not far from here?’ I asked Miss Theodora.

She said the big radio building of the BBC.

‘Get in,’ I told her, ‘with Montgomery. Muriel,’ I shouted, ‘come over here! Go quickly where this lady says,’ I told the two drivers, putting pound notes in their hands, ‘and all of you wait for me there till I arrive.’

Then I plunged down the Moonbeam stairs.

At the bottom, by the entrance door, I saw Dorothy and Cannibal and various other friends all torn and tattered. The West Indians had expelled them out. I told them where to scatter at the place I’d sent the cars.

‘But, Johnny!’ Dorothy cried out. ‘Billy’s still in there, and Ronson and your brother Arthur.’

‘Do as I tell you, Dorothy, I am always best alone. Cannibal, now, blow with these people to the big radio building. I bring all the others soon whether dead or else alive.’

I heaved and pushed open the club door. The band was still playing, all now up upon their feet. Chicks were standing on the chairs, laughing and screaming, and GIs cheering and acting with no responsibility at all. On the dance floor I saw Billy with Ronson and one other, who were murdering, and being murdered by, the West Indians.

I climbed over the bar counter, and started smashing crates of Coca-Cola by heaving them with loud crashes on the floor. The band stopped and faces began to turn round in my direction. ‘Look, Mr Jasper!’ a tall West Indian cried. ‘Your valuable stock is being depleted.’

I picked up four bottles, and burst through to the dance floor. I grabbed up the microphone, which lay there overturned, and cried out: ‘Billy, we cut out! The Law will soon be intruding! Here, Billy, catch this bottle!’

We battered our way towards the door. The customers were generally friendly, and seemed to regret the ending of this silly mess. ‘Come on, Bumper Woodman,’ they kept crying to a huge West Indian. ‘Show us how you beat Joe Louis to his knees.’

But it was Ronson Lighter he was fighting now, and that crooked boy, even despite his dirty blows, looked like getting massacred by the big West Indian’s bulkiness, till Billy Whispers snatched the microphone from my hands and cracked this Woodman on the skull with a cruel smack. We all beat it up the stairs.

‘Come on, let’s run,’ said Ronson Lighter. ‘I smell the coming of the Law.’ And we saw two beetle cars come sweeping round the distant corner.

‘Not run, no,’ I said, ‘is better stroll rapidly like serious gentlemen.’

‘Thank you,’ said Billy, ‘for your interference.’ He wiped blood from both his hands.

‘Who is this third boy?’ I asked him. ‘Can this be my brother Arthur?’

For I’d seen him fighting also on the Moonbeam floor,
and his certain strong resemblance to my dad, and doing him great credit with his vigorous blows; but as I walked beside him now, and he turned smiling to me, smoothing his knuckles, I also caught his mother’s crazy glance in both his eyes.

‘What say?’ said Arthur, as we turned two swift corners. ‘Bless you, my brother – you’re my boy!’ He put his arm around me and said softly, ‘You’ll help me with some loot now, Johnny, won’t you.’

‘We see about this, Arthur. We talk about all those things.’

By twisting around in zigzag circles, we had now arrived outside a big white block building standing on its own. Our friends were by the cars in a cluster on the street, laughing and chattering in this silent London early dawn.

Billy introduced me round. ‘Come!’ I cried out. ‘What’s needed is to celebrate our survival from these dangers. We all of us go now to my friend Hamilton’s and eat some foo-foo.’

‘
Foo-foo
?’ said Miss Theodora, needlessly wrinkling up her nose.

‘Is a standard African dish, lady, like your English shepherd pie, but I think nicer.’

This English lady smiled and shook her head.

‘Then let us drop you off, Miss Theodora,’ I said, ‘at your house, or any other convenient point of your selection. Billy, you take Montgomery and some of us in this one car, and Miss Theodora and we here will travel in the other.’

Of course Billy understood what I intended, and our cars shot ahead through the dark, wide thoroughfares. When Miss Theodora saw we were not going near her house at all, she turned to me and said, ‘Am I being kidnapped?’

I said, ‘No, lady, just forcibly invited. And you have your good friend Montgomery to take care of you as well as me.’

I felt Miss Theodora next to me relax.

At my new Holloway home, I found that Hamilton had partly returned to life, and was wandering about, holding a coffee cup, with just some slacks on, and talking to Mr Cole, who was in striped pyjamas. I told them to make themselves suitable to welcome all my guests, and I took Mr Cole upon one side.

‘These are good friends,’ I said, ‘and perhaps you could fix some liquor at a reasonable price for their entertainment that will do honour to your house.’

‘You have the loot for that now?’

I gave him more pound notes, and he looked dignified, and blew.

Billy asked for the necessary meat and semolina to make foo-foo, and Hamilton took him and Cannibal and Ronson Lighter to the kitchen. Arthur all this time was following me about, his eyes with a look of admiration, and his arm always on my shoulder. ‘There you go, man!’ he kept saying to me. ‘There you go!’

‘Take it easy, bra,’ I said to him. ‘I see you straight tomorrow morning.’

‘Tell me about my dad. Is he a rich man? Is he loaded?’

‘He’s a fine man, our dad.’

He looked at me hideous all at once. Even I was just a little scared.

‘Then why’s he left me skinned in hopeless destitution?’

I took no notice of this foolishness, and put some Billy Eckstine on to Hamilton’s radiogram. Soon Mr Cole appeared with armfuls of Merrydown cider and Guinness stout and VP wine. All the while I saw that this companion of Montgomery’s, this Miss Pace, examined me as if I was a zoological exhibit. I went and sat down beside her on the collapsible settee.

‘So you are in the employment of the BBC, Miss Theodora,’ I said to her. ‘That’s a real serious occupation.’

‘I’d thought,’ she said rather rapidly, ‘of putting on a series of talks in which colonial citizens would relate their experiences when they arrive here.’

She looked at me. I said nothing.

‘Though I’m wondering if, to tell anything like the truth, these talks might perhaps reveal more than our listeners would stand for.’

Now I can tell as well as any when a chick has been reduced by my physical appearance, and behind this white girl’s word I read a positive design to drag me between sheets before too long. But this was most unattractive to me in her case, particularly as little Muriel, who was much more to my liking and intention, was standing by.

‘Oh, yes, Miss Theodora?’ I said, playing cool.

‘“Theodora”,’ she told me, ‘please, no “Miss”. If I do decide to go ahead with the talks, would you consider taking part?’

I told her politely it would no doubt be a pleasure; and thinking I’d done my duties as the host, I was leaving her for Muriel when she shook my hand and said, ‘Then won’t you dance with me?’ Someone had now swept Muriel away, so I smiled at this not so tempting girl and took her hands.

But even above the high cry of Billy Eckstine we all heard a wild scream, and there was Hamilton, still half naked in his slacks in spite of what I tell him, standing stiffly by his empty bed, pointing and gazing down at it and crying, ‘This poor little boy is dead!’

‘Hamilton!’ I ran over and held his shaking shoulders. ‘What little boy?’

‘Me, Johnny! Look! There I am – dead!’

‘Man, you’re still high! Sit down now, and act serious. There’s company present all around you.’

‘I’m not dead then, Johnny?’

‘Oh, Hamilton!’

He began to sob.

‘Come with me in the kitchen and cool down, man. You’ll find they’re making foo-foo there. Eat some, it will calm you. Really, my dear friend Hamilton,’ I said when I’d got him past the door, ‘you must get off that needle – it will kill you dead.’

‘You’ll have to help me, Johnny.’

But out in the kitchen, though the pots and pans were simmering, there were no Billy, Cannibal or Mr Ronson Lighter. I sat Hamilton down, gave him a cigarette, and went and looked out through the back door to the garden.

There, in the early light, I saw Billy and Ronson Lighter beating Jimmy Cannibal. This man was a boxer, yes, but Billy, I could see, was a little killer, and Ronson grabbing at Cannibal in evil places.

I opened the door and shouted: ‘What is it, Billy?’

Cannibal broke free and scrambled over the garden wall.

‘What for you mix in this?’ cried Billy. He raised up his hands against me, then he said, ‘Oh, well …’ smoothed down his clothes, and came to the kitchen door. There was blood on Ronson Lighter’s coat, and I led him to the tap.

‘That Cannibal has been making a friendship with the Law,’ said Billy.

‘How you know that?’

‘That Jumble friend of yours saw him talking with coppers in the station.’

‘Montgomery tell you that? But I was there with him too.’

‘You were? All the time with him?’

‘No, not all the time … Why didn’t that foolish man tell
me
about he see Cannibal?’

‘Is that Jumble to be trusted?’

‘I think so.’

‘He’d better be.’

‘Billy,’ I said, ‘if Cannibal was with the Law, how do you know they didn’t just pull him in for something? What make you think he’s blowing off his top?’

‘He tell us, when we ask him, he was not in there at all. So if he was, it must be for some evil purpose. I
finished with that man, and if he’s said a word against me … Well, if ever the Law puts the hand on me, that boy had better leave town.’

‘Billy, you get so excited. And your foo-foo will all be burning.’

He came over to the stove and dished it out on the big plate. ‘You can’t trust even your own people in this country,’ he said. ‘This country turns men bad.’

‘Well, Billy, you was never one big angel yourself, were you?’

He gave me a sideways smile. ‘Maybe I not, but I not shop my friends like Cannibal.’

Mr Cole came through the kitchen door. ‘Did I hear fighting noises? I must have no fighting on my premises.’

‘Play cool, man. There’ll be no more battle.’

‘This Hamilton,’ said Mr Cole. ‘He must control his conduct.’

‘Who sells him this bad stuff?’ I said. ‘He can’t get all that bad on just his legal ration.’

I caught the glance of Billy and of Cole, who looked at each other.

‘Whoever sells my friend that stuff,’ I said, with a hard stare at each of them, ‘is going to find himself an enemy of mine. And you, Hamilton, you’d better change your habits of life unless you wish to die when still quite young.’

We all drank some ruby wine in silence; then carried the dishes in among the dancers of the bigger room.

We passed round the water to wash, and everyone sat down upon the floor: even the Jumbles, who we
showed how you crouch around the dish, and take up your wad of semolina, dip it in the red peppery gravy, and scoop up your piece of meat. They did it quite free and nicely, though burning painfully in the mouth, and with sometimes the unnecessary dribbles.

‘And how is recent developments in Africa?’ said Mr Cole to me.

‘Oh,’ I told him, ‘it looks like in one or two years’ time we have our freedom.’

‘What you need in Africa, Africa man,’ said Arthur, ‘is a blow-everyone-up party, including your own crooked Africa politicians.’

‘Tins man is talking ignorant and foolish,’ said Mr Karl Marx Bo. ‘What’s needed is more education, and more honesty.’

‘They’ll never let you govern yourselves, man,’ said Larry the GI.

‘They will, because we’ll make them,’ said Mr Bo. ‘And then we Africans come across and free our poor American brothers, who all they do is sit on their seats and sing their spirituals.’

Little Barbara thought this so funny, and let out a cheap laugh.

‘If we don’t get this freedom soon, we take it, like the Mau Mau do,’ said Mr Ronson Lighter.

‘Mau Mau haven’t managed to take much,’ said Miss Theodora, in a sharp way, ‘except a lot of African lives.’

‘Oh, stop all your politics,’ cried Dorothy, ‘while we’re eating food.’

‘We shoot you like Mau Mau, man,’ said Ronson Lighter, pointing a pepper-pot with an evil grin upon my friend Montgomery.

‘If you was in Kenya, Mr Montgomery,’ said Billy Whispers, ‘what side would you be?’

‘My own people’s, of course,’ Montgomery replied. ‘When trouble comes, you must go with your own tribe.’

‘Oh-ho! And if I take you prisoner, you know what I do?’ said Ronson Lighter to him.

I broke in. ‘If I take my friend Montgomery prisoner,’ I said, ‘I grab away his weapon, yes, but maybe himself, I turn him loose.’

Muriel smiled up at me, and move much closer.

Hamilton jumped up. ‘This man’s an African!’ he cried, taking Montgomery round his neck. ‘I know my brother, because I see he is an African.’

‘No, no, not me.’