City of Spades

2

Johnny Macdonald Fortune takes up the tale


My first action on reaching the English capital was to perform what I’ve always promised my sister Peach I would. Namely, leaving my luggages at the Government hostel, to go straight out by taxi (oh, so slow, compared with our sleek Lagos limousines!) to the famous central Piccadilly Tube station where I took a one-stop ticket, went down on the escalator, and then ran up the same steps in the wrong direction. It was quite easy to reach the top, and our elder brother Christmas was wrong to warn it would be impossible to me. Naturally, the ticket official had his word to say, but I explained it was my promise to my brother Christmas and my sister Peach ever since in our childhood, and he yielded up.

‘You boys are all the same,’ he said.

‘What does that mean, mister?’

‘Mad as March hares, if you ask me.’

He looked so sad when he said it, that how could I take offence? ‘Maybe you right,’ I told him. ‘We like living out our lives.’

‘And we like peace and quiet. Run along, son,’ this official told me.

Not a bad man really, I suppose, so after a smile at him I climbed up towards the free outer air. For I had this morning to keep my appointment at the Colonial Department Welfare Office to hear what plans have been arranged there for the pursuit of my further studies.

In the Circus overhead I looked round more closely at my new city. And I must say at first it was a bad disappointment: so small, poky, dirty, not magnificent! Red buses, like shown to us on the cinema, certainly, and greater scurrying of the population than at home. But people with glum clothes and shut-in faces. Of course, I have not seen yet the Parliament Houses, or many historic palaces, or where Dad lived in Maida Vale when he was here thirty years ago before he met our mum …

And that also is to be one of my first occupations: to visit this house of his to see if I can recover any news of his former landlady – if dead, or alive, or in what other circumstances. Because my dad, at the party on the night I sailed right out of Lagos, he took me on one side and said, ‘Macdonald,’ (he never calls me John or Johnny – always Macdonald) ‘Macdonald, you’re a man now. You’re eighteen.’

‘Yes, Dad …’ I said, wondering what.

‘You’re a man enough to share a man’s secret with your father?’

‘If you want to share one with me, Dad.’

‘Well, listen, son. You know I went to England as a boy, just like you’re doing …’

‘Yes, Dad, of course I do …’

‘And I had a young landlady there who was very kind and good to me, unusually so for white ladies in those days. So I’d like you to go and get news of her for me if you ever can, because we’ve never corresponded all these many years.’

‘I’ll get it for you, Dad, of course.’

Then my Dad lowered his voice and both his eyes.

‘But your mother, Macdonald. I don’t very much want your mother to know. It was a long while ago that I met this lady out in Maida Vale.’

Here Dad gave me an equal look like he’d never given me in his life before.

‘I respect your mother, you understand me, son,’ he said.

‘I know you do, Dad, and so do Christmas and Peach and me.’

‘We all love her, and for that I’d like you to send me the news not here but to my office in a way that she won’t know or be disturbed by.’

‘I understand, Dad,’ I told him. ‘I shall be most discreet in my letters about anything I may hear of your past in England when a very young man.’

‘Then let’s have a drink on that, Macdonald, son,’ he said.

So we drank whisky to my year of studying here in England.

‘And mind you work hard,’ Dad told me. ‘We’ve found two hundred pounds to send you there, and when you return we want you to be thoroughly an expert in meteorology.’

‘I will be it, Dad,’ I promised.

‘Of course, I know you’ll drink, have fun with girls, and gamble, like I did myself … But mind you don’t do these enjoyments too excessively.’

‘No, Dad, no.’

‘If your money all gets spent, we can’t send out any more for you. You’d have to find your own way home by working on a ship.’

‘I’ll be reasonable, Dad. I’m not a child. You trust me.’

And afterwards, it was Peach clustering over me with too much kisses and foolish demands for gowns and hats and underclothes from London, to impress her chorus of surrounding giggling girls. I told her all these things were to be bought much cheaper there in Lagos.

And to my brother Christmas, I said, ‘Oh, Christmas, why don’t you come with me too? I admire your ambition, but surely to see the world and study before fixing your nose to the Lands Office grindstone would be more to your pleasure and advantage?’

‘I want to get married quickly, Johnny, as you know,’ my serious elder brother said. ‘For that I must save, not spend.’

‘Well, each man to his own idea of himself,’ I told him.

And my mother! Would you believe it, she’d guessed that some secret talk had passed between Dad and me that evening? In her eyes I could see it, but she said nothing special to me except to fondle me like a child in front of all the guests, though not shedding any tears.

And when they all accompanied us to the waterfront, dancing, singing and beating drums, suddenly, as the ship came into view, she stopped and seized me and lifted me up, though quite a grown man now, and carried me as far as the gangway of the boat upon her shoulders.

‘Write to me, Johnny,’ she said. ‘Good news or bad, keep writing.’

Then was more farewell drinking and dancing on the ship until, when visitors had to leave, I saw that my mum had taken away my jacket (though leaving its valuable contents behind with me, of course). And she stood hugging it to her body on the quay as that big boat pulled out into the Gulf of Guinea sea.