City of Spades

FIRST INTERLUDE

Idyll of miscegenation on the river





A pleasure steamer put out on the river, and seated in its prow alone were Muriel Macpherson and Johnny Macdonald Fortune. His left hand clasped her right, he held both on her lap, the white and brown fingers interlocking.

‘It takes us an hour to reach the palace down the stream,’ she told him.

‘Well, I see they have beer on board, so that don’t matter.’

Beside the helmsman, on the open bridge behind, a hybrid character – nautical in peaked cap and jacket of dark blue, but landlubber from the waist down with grey slacks and sandals – had taken his stance before a microphone. Crackling through amplifiers dispersed about the ship, his voice described, in accents part Cockney, part bogus North American, part the pedantic patronising of the lecturer, the points of interest on either shore, disturbing the peace and contemplation of the few, but delighting the docile many, who swung their heads, as if spectators at a tennis match, towards the curiosities whose histories he recounted.

Muriel said: ‘Do you have rivers in your country, Johnny?’

‘Of course we have rivers: that’s why we’re called Nigeria.’

‘Did you swim in them – like those boys there? You can swim, Johnny, can’t you?’

He leapt, climbed on the railings of the boat, and made as if to dive. Muriel let out a scream, and clutched his ankles. He swayed. Passengers, distracted from the amplifiers, turned, frowned and laughed.

He slipped down on the deck into her arms, and held her tight a moment. ‘You’re a madman, Johnny Fortune! I can’t trust you a split second. I must never let you out of my sight in future.’ Not to be surprised again, when they sat down this time she held him closely round the shoulder.

He said: ‘You’re like my sister Peach. That’s what she says to me as well – ah, women!’

The loud-speaker blared: ‘And opposite the old St Paul’s – turn your heads this way, please’ (the heads switched south) ‘—is the Bankside power station, a controversial electrification project, and there – the small yellow edifice is the one I’m alluding to – the former residence of Sir Christopher himself, from whence he watched across the river the lofty pile of his cathedral rising up, and then, just adjacent, in the district known previously as the “Stews” – with its bear-gardens, and colony of Dutch and Flemish women of easy virtue, as they were called (now all cleaned up, of course) – the site of the old Globe theatre, erected by the brothers Burbage in 1598 for the smash-hits of their mate Bill Shakespeare, who acted there himself in what he termed affectionately his “wooden O” …’

‘What is Peach like?’ asked Muriel.

‘Peach? She is like all our women. The more she loves you, the more she tries to grasp you and take charge of you.’

‘Your women are like that, out there in Africa?’

Johnny frowned.

‘You know something, now? Is a secret I’m telling you, so open up the ears and close the lips. One chief reason why our boys get settled often with your white girls here is that our own back home are such big bosses. They do everything for you, yes, much more than any white girl would, and cook so well, and work, but in exchange for this, they try to gain possession of your private person.’

Muriel mused. ‘But is it true’ (she paused) ‘that some of your boys really prefer us more?’ He didn’t answer, and looked downstream ahead. ‘I mean,’ she went on, ‘like us better just because we’re white?’

He turned towards her. ‘That’s what they say, isn’t it? That’s what the white newspapers all say in their Sunday editions. That all we want is rape some innocent white lady?’

‘You’re not being serious, Johnny.’

‘As if there was any need to rape!’

‘Don’t flatter yourself: you’re all so conceited.’

He preened himself, and looked it.

‘Now on our left,’ the amplifier intoned, ‘we have the Billingsgate fish market and wharves, so named after Belin, legendary monarch of the Britons in their primitive era, and best known now, of course, for the fish porters’ highly coloured language, of which I will attempt an imitation. Why, Gorblimey, you …’ (the loud-speakers emitted only deafening crackles) ‘… sorry, ladies and gents, but I’ve been censored. Beneath us at the moment – that is, beneath the boat and underneath the river bed – is the oldest of the numerous Thames tunnels, now disused, constructed between 1825 and 1843 by Sir Marc Isambard Brunel, the Frenchman. And now, my friends and folks, arising in historic splendour on the northern bank is the ancient Tower of London, celebrated alike for its Traitors’ Gate, Crown Jewels, scaffold, dungeons, ravens, Beefeaters, Bloody Tower and instruments of torture …’

Johnny and Muriel barely glanced, and gazed ahead at castellated Tower Bridge, the last gate before the river becomes the ocean that weds the city to the outer world. She pressed his shoulder down a bit, and laid her head on it. ‘You didn’t answer me properly, though,’ she said. ‘Do you really like us better?’

‘Does who like who?’

‘You boys like us white girls.’

‘Some of us do, perhaps.’

‘Only some, Johnny?’

‘Oh, you cannot judge by England, Muriel. There’s so few of our own girls here, it has to be a white chick or else nothing. And can you imagine us with nothing?’

They kissed discreetly, with a slight grin of complicity.

‘But if you had a free choice,’ Muriel persisted, ‘would you choose one of us? Choose us because we’re different? Or because, if you marry one of us, it’s easier to fit in and make a living?’

‘What is this, Muriel! You make me some proposition of matrimony? Don’t be so speedy, woman – we’ve only met up just one month. It’s the man’s supposed to make that invitation, didn’t you know?’ (She looked demure.) ‘I tell you something, though, and don’t forget it. If ever one of our boys does marry one of you, there’s no doubt who we think is being done the favour.’

Muriel reflected, vexed, then half understanding. ‘It’s true,’ she said, ‘your boys are often better class than girls they marry here …’

‘Is not class I mean. Even when class and wealth is equal, is we who do the favour!’

The boat passed underneath the bridge, and faces suddenly grew darker. Muriel watched her native city as the boat chugged on between Venetian façades of eyeless warehouses, dropping into ancient Roman mud, where barges lay scattered derelicts under lattices of insect cranes. This was her first sight of Dockland, shut off from inquisitive view on land by Brobdingnagian brick walls. Missing familiar pavements and shop windows, Muriel saw her city as a place quite unfamiliar, and wondered what it might do to her, and Johnny Fortune.

‘It’s queer to think,’ she said, ‘how close we are, we two, and yet so far.’

‘We’re close enough.’

‘Don’t choke me, Johnny. No, no, I mean sharing Arthur as a brother, and yet not one drop of the same blood in our veins …’

‘Our blood’s the same colour, Muriel, is all that matters. Everything that comes out of all human body is the same colour – did you think of that?’

She did: ‘Johnny, don’t be disgusting.’

Undaunted by the absence, in these lower reaches of the river, of interesting monuments, and remembering the hat he’d pass round before the journey ended, the resourceful guide still bludgeoned the passengers’ defenceless ears: ‘… Wapping Old Stairs, where the bloodthirsty Judge Jeffreys was arrested in 1688, while attempting to flee the vengeance of the populace in the disguise of a sailor, and just there the former Execution Dock, where Captain Kidd and other notorious pirates were hanged in public in 1701 …’

Johnny tried to light a cigarette, but the breeze was too powerful, and he stubbed it out. ‘You white chicks,’ he said, ‘are all so maidenhood and pure. You’re badly brought up, you know.’

‘We’re not!’

‘You are. And that’s why you have no manners. And why you have no manners is that you let your kids run wild.’

‘Didn’t you run wild once?’

‘I did, yes, but I also was closely instructed in excellent manners to older people and to strangers, unlike here: to say good morning and good afternoon, and always be respectful to the other man until he gave good reason to act different.’

‘But Africans deceive strangers sometimes, don’t they?’

‘We do. We do, but we do not rub the man’s face in the dirt. We may kill and rob him, yes, but we do not make him a shame to himself, like you. Kill a man, and his spirit will forgive you, but make him ashamed, and he will never so.’

Muriel just saw what he meant. She looked round at her fellow countrymen and women, and asked herself if they would. But all were now engrossed in the guide’s tales of opium dens among the non-existent Chinese population of Limehouse Reach.

‘I’ve learnt a lot,’ she said, ‘from Arthur and his friends about how to treat you boys.’

‘You speak as if we were some cattle or baboons. Respect us, that is all.’

‘Oh, yes, you must be polite to coloured boys, always very polite – good manners seem to mean so much to you. But that’s not all. You have to be very patient, too.’

‘Are we so slow?’

‘You’re quick in your minds, but you mustn’t ever be hurried. I can’t say “Hullo – goodbye” to one of you like I can to one of our boys, without you get offended. It seems you think time’s no object …’

‘Time is to be used. When I meet a countryman on the path back home, I talk for five minutes at least before I pass on my way.’

‘That’s what I mean.’

The boat swung south, and sailed down past the Isle of Dogs.

‘What matters most of all,’ said Muriel, softly as if to herself, ‘is that you must never be afraid of a coloured man. If he bluffs you, you must say, “All right, do what you like, I’m not afraid of you,” – and you must mean it.’

Johnny Fortune laughed at her. ‘I see you make a careful study of our peculiarities.’

‘I’ve made no study, Johnny. I think you understand a man you love, that’s all.’

Even to her embarrassment, he wrapped her in his arms and gave her, in full view of the passengers, a sexy squeeze. Losing interest in the guide, the tourists had taken increasing notice of the couple in the prow. They beamed at the embrace: this was how they expected a coloured man to act.

‘I tell you one thing,’ said Johnny, hugging her to death. ‘What little white girls like most of all is force.’

‘Oh, do they!’

‘They do. All the boys say so.’

‘Not the nice girls, they don’t.’

‘Oh-ho!’ Johnny glared at her like a witch-doctor, and spoke in a throaty whisper. ‘If you touch them gently, they just scream. So what you do? You take them to some little room up in some empty house, far off from ears, and say to them, “Scream now, lady! Scream!”’

‘I wouldn’t come.’

‘You would. Oh, yes, you would!’

‘I mean you wouldn’t have to do that with me … If I love a boy, I love him. If I didn’t, I’d never be alone with him.’

‘So you are an African! Tell me, then, Africa woman! Truthfully, now, Muriel. Why do you love us so?’

‘I don’t love you all – I love you.’

‘Why so?’

‘Because of what you said: those lovely manners you all have. And because you’re all so beautiful to look at.’

‘You think our ugly faces are so beautiful?’

‘Not just your faces – it’s the way you move. When you walk, you walk from the top of your head right down to the very tip of your toes … You step out as if you owned the world …’

Fortune grew bored by this. Why praise a beauty that was evident to all?

‘And then,’ she went on, as he turned to gaze at the liquor bar and moistened his full lips, ‘you’re such fun to be with. If you say, “Let’s do this, or that,” to a coloured boy, his first answer isn’t, “No.” He’s ready to fall in with any bright idea.’ (Johnny was no longer listening.) ‘Of course, sometimes your boys get sad and gloomy, all of a sudden for no reason … And often those lovely smiles of yours don’t mean a thing …’

Johnny was looking at a merchant ship, sailing stern first towards them down the river to the open sea. ‘Come!’ he said. ‘Let us get ourselves some glass of lager beer.’

The little bar amidships smelt of heat, and airlessness, and stale ale. The boy serving was an undersized lad with a Tony Curtis hair-do, who slopped the lager in the glasses with amateur abandon. He eyed Johnny Fortune with enthusiasm.

‘And for you what?’ Johnny asked the boy. ‘Some orange juice or Coke?’

‘Ta, guv, I’ll have a Pepsi. You’re not a boxer, are you?’

‘Me? No. I box, though.’

‘Of course you do. But I thought you could maybe get me Sugar’s autograph.’

‘I know boys who visit at his camp. Give me your name, and I shall get you this signature of Mr Robinson.’

‘I’m Norman, the captain’s son. Care of the boat will find me. Good ’ealth. I drink beer for choice, but Dad won’t let me on his boat, I’m under age.’

The huge ship passed, and the craft rocked in its wash. Johnny looked through the port-hole, flattening his face. ‘Perhaps she sail out to Africa,’ he said.

‘She’s British,’ said Muriel, squeezing up beside him. ‘What a lot of ships we have.’

‘So many. So old and battered.’

‘We’re a rich country, Johnny.’

‘You? England is quite wasted, Muriel.’

‘Wasted? It’s not!’

‘I tell you. The lands of opportunity are America, and China, and Africa, ’specially Nigeria.’

‘Yes? Who cares, though!’ She kissed him as he was still talking. ‘It’s hot, Johnny. Can’t we get this port-hole open?’

‘Hot! You call this heat? Nigeria would melt you.’ He rubbed a sweaty nose against her own.

‘Wait till the cold comes. Then you’ll see something you don’t know about.’

‘Snowballs, you mean?’

‘Not snow – just cold. You’d better buy yourself a duffel.’

‘You, Muriel, will keep me warm.’

The boy came and wiped the table needlessly. He held Johnny by the arm, delicately feeling his biceps.

‘You coloured boys,’ he said, ‘are wonderful fighters. You’re the tops.’ The blue eyes in his pimply face gazed at Johnny’s own with rapture.

‘We also have intelligent citizens, you know. There are African students who fully understand atomic energy.’

‘Oh, so long as they can fight! You’re brave!’

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.’