City of Spades

2

Misfortunes of Johnny Fortune


‘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.’