City of Spades

3

Pew and Fortune go back west


I meandered about Limehouse docks an hour or more before I realised that Indian had made a fool of me: there was no Rawalpindi Street. So I walked back, through the ships’ masts and abandoned baroque churches of Shadwell, in the direction of the Immigration Road. On the corner of a bombed site, surviving by the special providence that loves brewers, I found a pub called the Apollo Tavern. Coloured men inside were dancing softly with morning lassitude, and behind the counter there was an amiable Jew. I asked him for a Guinness, and he said: ‘One Guinness stout, right, I thank you, okey-doke, here it is, one and four, everything complete.’ His wife, if she was, a grim-faced Gentile, gazed at me with the rude appraisal only women give.

I sat down. A voice said: ‘So you’s come movinx into this areas of London eastern populations?’

It was the Bushman. I shook his hand. ‘And how is your instrument?’ I asked him.

‘Sold, man. Bisnick is bads juss at this mominx.’

‘I, too, have been unfortunate of late. This doesn’t seem to be our lucky month.’

There was a gentle tap on my shoulder, and a black hand protruded holding two double whiskies in its fingers. ‘Who are these for?’ I asked the Bushman.

‘For you, man, and for me.’

‘But who is this kind person?’

‘Is my tribesmans. He offer some drinks to his sief’s son and to his sief’s son’s friend.’

I turned and looked round. The donor was joining three others, all neatly dressed, who raised their glasses politely to the Bushman.

‘But who are they, Mr Bushman?’

‘I tells you: is my tribesmans. I come to this Immigrasions Roats for some tribal tributes. Here they will pay some offerinx to their sief’s son.’

The Bushman caught me eyeing his soiled and greasy clothes.

‘Soon they will takes me out to eat him foots,’ he said, ‘and make me comfortables and give me presinx. Stay, now, and you will enjoy them toos.’

‘But why don’t you speak to them, Mr Bushman?’

‘When I reaty, I spik to them. They waits for me. Then I spik.’

The offer of liquor was repeated several times. After the third double, I gave up. ‘Your father,’ I said, ‘must be a very powerful man.’

He grunted with satisfaction. ‘And one day I. Then I invites you to my jungle home, and you stays with us for evers.’

‘I look forward immensely to it.’

‘Stay with us for evers, or we puts you in a pot.’

‘I’m bony – only good for soup.’

‘All him sames, we eats you as special favour.’

‘Thank you so very much. Goodbye now, my kind friend.’

The Bushman shrieked with laughter, and, as I went out, I saw the tribesmen approach him with deferential smiles.

Possessed now by that early morning drunkard’s feeling which suspends time by making all time worthless, and gives the daylight a false flavour of the dark, I sauntered up the Immigration Road. A girl’s voice hailed me from a ground-floor window. It was Johnny Fortune’s young friend Muriel.

‘Come in,’ she said, opening the door, ‘I want to speak with you.’

Muriel was cooking something cabbagey. The boy Hamilton was snoring on a bed. She wiped her hands on her skirt, told me to sit down, and gave me a cup of very sweet thick tea.

‘Johnny will be coming in for his dinner,’ she said, ‘and I know he’d like to see you.’

‘Oh, I’ve been looking for him. He lives here now?’

‘Yes, here with me. I work round the corner, and cook him all his meals.’

‘And Hamilton?’

‘Hamilton has no room just now, so he’s staying here.’

She sat down too, and leant across the oil-cloth. ‘Can’t you do something to help Johnny?’

‘In what way, Muriel?’

‘With money.’

‘Surely he has some …’

‘It’s all been spent.’

‘Oh. Can’t he work?’

‘Johnny won’t work for less than twenty pounds a week. I tell him only clever men get those jobs, and he says he is a clever man. But he doesn’t get one …’

‘I could lend him something …’

She stirred a cup. ‘If only we could get married,’ she said. ‘I’d help him in any job he wanted.’

‘Can’t you get married?’

‘He doesn’t want to.’

She began to cry. Women are so immodest in their grief. Even when you don’t care for a woman much, to see her misery openly expressed is painful.

‘These boys are all the same,’ she said. ‘Never anything fixed or steady, they just drift …’

There was a clatter at the door, and in came Johnny with Mr Peter Pay Paul.

A change had come over Johnny Fortune. His body still had its animal grace and insouciance, but his face wore at times a slanting, calculating look. And though the charm was as great as ever, he was more conscious of it than before. He greeted me with what seemed genuine affection.

‘Where have you hidden yourself, Johnny?’ I asked him.

‘Oh, times have been difficult, man. And with you? You look sharp – real smart!’ And he fingered my third-best suit.

‘With me, times have been disastrous.’ And I told him about my exit from the Welfare Office.

‘That is one big pity,’ he said gravely, ‘because I thought perhaps you could help me with some new business.’

‘What is it? Perhaps I can.’

‘Come on one side.’

He led me over to the window, though he stood away from view of the street in the half light.

‘This pack,’ he said, pulling a large oblong piece of newspaper from inside his shirt, ‘is wholesale weed. Five pounds’ worth, which I can sell in small packs for ten to twenty pounds if I can find five pounds now for Peter Pay Paul.’

‘Here they are, Johnny. Are you going to earn your living that way?’

‘Thank you, man. Well, what else can I do? I know no trade, no business …’

‘Wouldn’t your father send you money?’

‘No, Montgomery, I cannot tell my dad my loot is gone and that I’m not studying meteorology. Also, he has sent loot at my request to Muriel’s mother. But my brother Arthur, so I hear, has stolen it away from her …’

‘Perhaps the time’s coming, Johnny, when you should think of going home.’

‘Not till I make some fortune from this city, man. To go empty-handed home would be my shame.’

He gave the notes to Peter Pay Paul and, after removing a handful of weed, pushed the paper package up the chimney.

‘And how is Miss Theodora?’

‘Missing you, Johnny.’

Muriel heard this.

‘She’d better keep on missing him.’

‘Who spoke to you, Muriel?’

‘Aren’t you going to give me some of that money? How do you think we’ll live?’

‘Be silent, woman. Go on with your cookery.’

‘I’m not an African, Johnny. You can’t treat me like I’m a household slave.’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Come, Montgomery,’ he said. ‘This woman troubles me with her yap, yap, chatter, chatter, chatter.’

Muriel clutched his arm. ‘But don’t you want your dinner, Johnny? It’s all cooked.’

‘I have had chicken. Hamilton, wake up! We leave this sad East End to go up west.’

But Hamilton kept snoring, and Muriel wept again into the steaming pot as we went out.