City of Spades

4

Coloured invasion of the Sphere


Montgomery and me left Mr Peter Paul at the Aldgate station, and started the long bus ride through the City to the west. I chose the special seat which bus constructors made for those who smoke hemp (I mean the private seat, top floor at rear, which nobody can overlook), and there, while Montgomery grew more nervous, I folded up little saleable packets of my weed. ‘I must kick my heel free of this miserable life,’ I told Montgomery. ‘I must climb back again into prosperity.’

‘You might marry a fat African lady whose father owns acres of groundnuts,’ he said to me.

‘Oh, I could do that, perhaps, you know. But I want to go back home well loaded from this city …’ I folded a little packet and said to him, ‘Has Miss Theodora money?’

I saw he didn’t approve of this request of information, though a natural one, I thought, among two men.

‘She’s only her salary, I think,’ he told me. ‘But you mustn’t play about with Theodora’s feelings.’

‘Why not? She likes me – no?’

‘And you her?’

‘I could do, if it should prove necessary …’

‘I’d rather you ran a whore, like Billy, than do that. Business and no pretences …’

What did my nice English friend know about that kind of life? ‘I may come to do just that,’ I said to him.

‘I hope you don’t mean it …’

‘This Dorothy pursues me some time now. Pestering and giving me no peace at all. She wishes to leave Billy, and for me to take possession.’

‘From what I can understand,’ Montgomery said, ‘it’s the woman who takes possession of the man. She can sell him down the river any day she likes.’

Well, that was true enough from all I know of how those bad boys live – trembling, however brave, at every knock of the front door, and so afraid of the loot their women give them that they throw it all away in gamble-houses as soon as they’ve snatched it from her handbag. ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, ‘these whores are always masters of their ponces. One word to the Law, and the lucky boy’s inside.’

Montgomery sat looking sad, like the Reverend Simpson. ‘I don’t like to think of you in that miserable world,’ he said.

I smiled, and patted on his anxious back. ‘No real ill luck can come to me, Montgomery,’ I told him. ‘Look!’ And I opened my tieless shirt and showed him the wonderful little blue marks tattooed upon my skin by Mum’s old aunt, who knows the proper magic, and also the mission school badge I wear around my neck upon its chain. ‘These will protect me always,’ I explained.

‘You believe that, Johnny?’

‘So long as I believe it,’ I said to him, ‘they will protect me.’

Though it was well after morning opening time when we reached the Moorhen public house, we were surprised to find it absent of any Spade. ‘There must have been some raid,’ I told Montgomery. But no. A strange old Jumble man he knew, who looked at me as if I wasn’t there, said all my race had left the pub and moved to another further down the road, one called the Sphere.

‘But why have they gone?’ Montgomery asked him.

‘Because they’ve shut the dance hall opposite – and high time too.’

‘The Cosmopolitan? Why did they do that?’ I asked.

‘Moral degeneracy,’ the old man said fiercely at me. ‘Didn’t you read it in your Sunday paper?’

‘Good heavens!’ I cried out. ‘Have these Jumbles no mercy on our enjoyment?’

‘This place is improved out of all recognition now,’ the nasty old man informed us.

Dismal, dark, dreary, almost empty, I suppose that was improvement to his eyes.

We found that this Sphere was a small pub divided into more segregated sections than is usual even in these English drinking dens. Boys flitted in and out from one box to the other, and the publican, I could see, was not used to our African habit, which is to treat such places like a club, with no dishonour to be there even if you have no loot to spend. The barman, a young boy with a face like cheese, seemed worried also; and as I held my lager beer, casting my eyes around, I spoke to him freely of his look of great mistrust.

‘But those lads over by the piano,’ he said to me. ‘They come in here for hours and never buy a thing.’

‘Why should they not? This is their meeting-place, for exchange of gossip, information, and other necessities of life.’

‘But if they come in here, then they should spend.’

‘Man,’ I explained, ‘you will find when they spend, they do spend. You will make more profit from them in one evening than of your bitter-sipping English customers in a whole week.’

He seemed to doubt me. ‘The guv’nor tried turfing them all out at first,’ he said, ‘but he’s given up the struggle.’ He leant across the counter. ‘Tell me something,’ he went on. ‘You don’t mind me asking?’

‘Speak, man. I listen.’

‘How do you tell which is which among you people?’

‘You mean we all look the same, like sheep?’

‘No, not exactly. I mean, which is African, and which is West Indian – all I can tell is the Yanks, and then only when they open up their mouths.’

I shook my head at such enormous ignorance. ‘Do you know,’ I said to him, ‘my grandmother cannot tell any one Englishman from another?’ I left Montgomery with his whiskies, and went round into the larger bar to look for customers.

And there I caught sight of many quite familiar faces: Ronson Lighter, playing the pin-table, and Larry the GI, and also my brother Arthur, who I was not all that pleased to talk to because of the theft of all that loot my dad sent his mum, and also, lurking away in an evil corner underneath the stairways, that one-time champion boxer, Jimmy Cannibal.

‘What say, man,’ I said to Ronson Lighter. ‘Long time no see.’

‘Well, look now, who’s here! Where you been hiding yourself, Mr Fortune? Somebody here’s been searching out for you.’

‘Called what?’

‘A seaman from back home who won’t tell his real name, but says just to call him Laddy Boy. He has a letter for you from your sister Peach.’

‘He’s in here now, this seaman?’

‘I haven’t noticed him around yet, but if he calls, I’ll hold him for you.’

‘Thank you, my man. And tell me now. I’m in business, Ronson Lighter, in this article,’ (and I showed him some). ‘You interested at all?’

Ronson put his body so as to hide mine from the general view. ‘Be careful of that little white boy Alfy Bongo,’ he advised me. ‘He comes here to meet our African drummers, so he says, but I think he’s a queer boy, and you cannot trust them.’

I looked at this blond and pimply creature, chatting and giggling to some West Indians, and I made a clear note of his skinny, feeble frame in my recollection.

‘I’ll take a stick or two,’ said Ronson Lighter.

‘Here, man. How’s our Billy?’

‘I’m worried about that man, Johnny, and so is he. He thinks the Law has got the eye on him real hard. The house is being watched, we know.’

‘Why should they turn the heat on Billy after all this time?’

‘Is averages, Johnny. Six months they turn you loose, then one month they turn the heat. Nobody knows why. Perhaps you’re next man on their Vice Department list, that’s all. Or perhaps somebody been talking. Cannibal, say.’ (And Ronson Lighter looked across at him.) ‘Or maybe even Dorothy.’

‘Not Dorothy?’

‘I don’t know why, man, but I believe this Dorothy plans to cut away from Billy, and she thinks the best way is to get him put inside. Perhaps,’ said Ronson, lighting up his charge, ‘it is because of you, who she prefers to Mr Whispers.’

‘I’m not even slightly interested in that chick.’

‘Oh, I believe you man, if you say so, of course.’

Ronson was dragging now, but still hadn’t paid me any money. I touched on his arm and gently held out my hand.

‘Will you take one of these instead?’ he asked me.

They were pawn tickets for various articles. All city Spades hold pawn tickets, and if the man’s honest they’re quite as good as money, often better if you can get them with the discount. I took my pick.

‘And Hamilton,’ said Ronson Lighter. ‘How does he keep?’

‘Bad. He’s using all his dope allowance now, not selling any. Even buying more of that poison whenever he can.’

Ronson lowered down his voice. ‘You know who put him on the needle and supplied him? It was that “Nat King” Cole.’

I said to Ronson: ‘Was it only Cole who did this injury to my friend? No one else you know of who was the person?’

‘Who else could it be, man? No one else.’

‘I thought maybe you could tell me who.’

Ronson was silent. ‘No man, not me,’ he said.

By now my brother Arthur had detected me, and over he came, as happy as a smiling hyena. ‘How’s Muriel?’ was how he greeted me.

‘She’s well.’

‘Ma’s told the Law you’ve taken her.’

‘She’s not under sixteen, is she?’

‘She’s a minor, brother, in need of care and protection. Ma wants her sent off to a home.’ Now he approached me closer. ‘Johnny,’ he said, ‘do something for me. Lend me loot.’

‘You spent all that which you took away from Mrs Macpherson?’

He smiled at me some more: I grew to hate that smile. ‘All gone,’ he said. ‘The gamble-house way, like you did. It sure goes so fast away in there.’

‘You get no more from this side of the family, Arthur.’

‘Listen, now,’ he said. ‘I see you’s selling weed. I’d like I go partners with you. I’d get you customers.’

‘Thanks, brother. I prefer I operate alone.’

‘You’re wasted, Johnny. No good to me at all.’

I saw the human being called Alfy Bongo standing just behind me. ‘What can I do for you, mister?’ I said nasty.

He answered me in a great whisper, with a lot of winks. ‘They tell me you’ve got some stuff.’

‘I don’t like your face,’ I said to him. ‘And if you speak to me again without you’re spoken to, they’ll have to send you into some hospital or other.’

This didn’t seem to be my lucky day for gay society, because the next person who accosted me was no one less but a well-known idiot from back home called Ibrahim Tondapo, a thoroughly gilded youth who, just because his dad owns two small cinemas that regularly catch on fire and burn up portions of the audience, allowed himself in Lagos great airs of class distinction, earning hatred and laughter everywhere around. He looked at me up and down and shook his body in his expensive suit as if he was shivering cold water off it. So ‘Hullo, chieftain,’ I said to him. ‘How is each one of your six mothers?’ (this being a reference to his not knowing really who his mother was, because his dad is volatile, and he quite unlike any of his brothers.)

At which this foolish man spat on the floor.

I ought not to have said what I did, of course, but nor ought he to spit – is an unhealthy habit. So I slapped him on his face, and a fight began, and I was seized on by eight people and thrown out through the doors. Stupid behaviour, with my pockets stuffed with weed, but poverty and misery cause you to act desperately, as all know.

‘You and I,’ I shouted back at Tondapo through the door, ‘will meet each other shortly once again.’

Out in the street, the boys were charging in the light of day, a habit dangerous in this city, where now the notable sweet smell of this strong stuff is well known to curious nostrils. So I crossed the road to where some builders were erecting a new construction, and among them I was surprised to see a tall West Indian toiling, one that I’d known in gamble-houses in my prosperous days. We gazed at each other quite politely, and he came over to say his word to me.

‘Just look at me,’ he said. ‘A member of the labouring classes.’

‘If a brick falls on your head, man, you’ll certainly go straight up to heaven for this honest labour.’

‘Yes, man, that’s authentic. But wouldn’t I much rather be sitting there in the Sphere consuming Stingo beer or something of that nature.’

‘You’re Mr Tamberlaine,’ I said to him. ‘I see you round some time ago, you may remember. Introducing people one to the other was your speciality.’

‘Yes, that’s exactly so. Pimping about the city, as you might call it, if you wanted to.’ And he gave me his harmonious smile.

‘And that’s all over now, that kind of business?’

‘Oh, no. I’m still in the market in the evenings, but find it prudent, don’t you see, to have some part-time occupation in the days to justify my movements and existence if there’s any police enquiries.’

‘Wise, man. You’s real educated.’

‘There’s something,’ he said, ‘as might interest you at a party taking place this evening, which is an exhibition by some boys from Haiti that I know of their special voodoo practices. So if your luck’s not all you’ve been aspiring to, you’ve only to come and ask them for their kind assistance to alternate your fate.’

While I said yes, that I’d accept this invitation, Ronson Lighter called to me from the public house. ‘This seaman’s here,’ he shouted out. ‘This Laddy Boy.’

He was a muscle man, this individual, his arms like legs, his legs like elephants’, and with a lot of rings and gold teeth and a happy look about him that these strong men have, especially when they’re loaded up with loot, as merchant seamen always seem to be. He gave me the note from Peach, which, when I opened it, said this to me:

Macdonald, what is this we hear? Bad news has reached us, by boys returning home, that you have engaged yourself with evil company, and thrown away money that Dad gave you, and broken the sequence of your serious studies. Dad says, ‘He’ll find his feet.’ But I do not believe this, nor does Mum, and she will send you the fare home (paid to care of the travel company, not in cash to you), if you agree that is what’s sensible to do, which our brother Christmas also thinks it is. Be wise, Johnny, and return among your own people for all our sakes that love you as you know we do.

I tell you, your younger sister Peach is worried. And if you do not return home before New Year, let me tell you of my intentions. They are to come out to England there, to train as nurse, which full enquiries prove can be arranged. And if I do, you know you will have me watching you each second I am not on duty, which will make you ashamed of yourself before the other men.

But come back freely, Johnny. It would be so much better for us all.

Dad says he thank you for what you discover of those Macpherson people. He has done what he can and will do no more at all.

Mum adds: a cable, and you have the fare home in a fortnight.

Your sister, and you have no other,

Peach.

‘You saw my sister?’ I asked Laddy Boy.

‘Your family entertained me very kindly, Johnny, at your home.’

‘They’re all of them well back there?’

‘They’re well, man, but a little worrying about you. You know why. Is not my business, countryman, but you know why … You take a drink?’

‘I’m barred inside that pub.’

‘Not with me, you’re not, man, no. You’re not barred in any public house that I go into.’

He took me inside, and there was no more reference to my recent wild behaviour. While I sipped my drink, I thought quite deeply. Yes, home would be beautiful again, but surely my duty was to try to rescue myself by my own efforts before seeking family aid?

In the nearby bar, I saw Montgomery talking with Larry the GI. This gave me a new idea of how to raise some loot quickly in a last attempt, before throwing in my sponge and going back to Lagos tail between the legs.

I went to the phone box and asked for the radio corporation of the BBC, and for Miss Theodora Pace. After some secretaries, her voice came clear over the line towards me.

‘Miss Theodora, this is Johnny Fortune.’

‘Oh. One minute, please.’ I heard some mutter, and a door close. ‘Yes, how are you? What can I do for you?’

‘You remember those radio talks we spoke about, Miss Theodora? With me as possible performer in them?’

‘Yes … Why’ve you not contacted me again?’

‘Oh, there have been things, you know, so many. But this is to say I’m willing now, though there is one stipulation I should like to ask about.’

‘Yes?’

‘Would your officials consider a small payment in advance? Of twenty pounds?’

I knew, of course, that this was asking Theodora for the loot, but it seemed a way of doing so that could satisfy both our dignities.

‘When do you want it?’

‘Today. The soonest would be the best.’

There was quite a pause here before she said: ‘I dare say that could be arranged. Come to the building, and ask for me at Reception, please.’

The Sphere was now closing for the afternoon, and the Spades were scattering all over town on their various errands, from this their daily joint collecting-point. I went off myself quite quietly, without telling Montgomery of my personal intentions.