City of Spades

10

In Billy Whispers’ domain


Tamberlaine was bored and silent on the journey, except for occasional altercations with the taxi driver, to whom he gave a succession of imprecise addresses (‘take us just by that football ground, that’s by that Tube station, cabby, and then I’ll tell you …’). We reached the area of chain-store windows, parks fit for violations, and squat overhanging railway bridges, all bathed in a livid phosphorescent glare, when Tamberlaine rapped the glass and shouted, ‘Here now! Here!’, as if the driver should have known our final destination. Tamberlaine strolled away, leaving me to settle, while the driver exhaled his spleen. ‘These darkies should go back home,’ he said, ‘and never have come here in the first place.’

‘They tip well, don’t they?’

‘Either they do, or they run off without paying. But it’s the way they speak to you. Calling me “cabby”!’

Tamberlaine had turned a corner, and I followed him into a tottering street of late-Victorian houses, where lights, despite the lateness of the hour, were shining through many a green or crimson curtain. ‘This is your London Harlem,’ he said to me. ‘Our Caribbean home from home. We try this one,’ and he climbed some chipped steps beneath a portico, knocked loud, and rang.

A head and shoulders protruded from above. ‘Is Tamberlaine,’ he shouted. ‘Gloria, is she there?’

‘No, man. Is here, but not available.’

‘Aurora, now, is she there?’

‘No, man. You come too late to see her.’

We tried at several other houses, without success, till the vexation of a wounded professional pride was heard in Tamberlaine’s voice. ‘Is nothing more to do,’ he said, ‘but go back to the north of London – unless you don’t fear to call upon an African, which after what you say, you shouldn’t.’

‘If you don’t, why should I?’

‘This house is one of Billy Whispers’, who’s the devil.’

‘Oh, I know him.’

‘You do, now?’ Tamberlaine seemed mildly impressed. ‘Come, then, let we go.’

It started to snow, and my West Indian Mercury pulled the hood of his duffel up over his head, drove his hands deep in the pockets, and walked on just in front of me, like some Arctic explorer heading resolutely for the Pole. After twists and turns, of which he gave no warning, we reached a bombed lot with some wreckage of buildings on it. Tamberlaine plunged down the area steps, and beat with his fingertips on the window. A voice cried, ‘Say who!’, and when he did, Mr Tamberlaine walked inside, and left me standing there.

After five minutes of waiting in the area, and five more strolling round the street outside, I decided to call it a day, and started off up the street. But steps came running after me. I heard a cry of ‘Hey, man!’, and turned to see not Tamberlaine, but Mr Ronson Lighter. He shook hands, caught me by the sleeve, and said, ‘Is all right, you can come. There is a party to celebrate one boy come out of prison, but Billy say you welcome when you come.’

We climbed two floors into a large room, festively crowded, that overlooked the street. Ronson dragged me to a buffet where, under the watchful eyes of a bodyguard of three, stood piles of bottles in disarray, and plates of uninviting sandwiches. ‘Give this man drink,’ said Ronson. ‘Is Billy say so.’ One bodyguard, aloof until these words, poured out a beer glass full of whisky.

Some of the guests I knew by sight, and others even better still: there were Johnny’s former landlord, ‘Nat King’ Cole, and the African youth, Tondapo, with whom he’d quarrelled at the Sphere, and little Barbara, the half-caste girl of the memorable evening at the Moonbeam club; and also a contingent from Mr Vial’s disrupted party, among them Mr Cranium Cuthbertson and his musicians, and the dubious Alfy Bongo. Arthur was there, strolling from group to group unwelcome, with his restless smiles; and enthroned on a divan, surrounded by fierce eager faces, his handsome, debauched half-sister Dorothy. Alone by the fire, as if a guest at his own entertainment, was Billy Whispers; and Mr Tamberlaine, like a suppliant at the levee of the paramount chief, was deep in conversation with him.

Mr Ronson Lighter led me over. ‘Good evening, Mr Whispers,’ I said, raising my voice above the clamour. ‘It’s very kind of you to ask me in.’

‘My party is for this boy,’ said Billy Whispers, pointing with glass in hand to a huge and handsome African, who positively dripped and oozed with mindless masculine animal magnetism and natural villainy, and who now was dancing, proud and sedate, round the room with Dorothy.

‘He came out yesterday,’ said Tamberlaine. ‘This is his homecoming among his people, but the boy is sore. His girl was not true to him while he was away; but as you can see, he’s a type of boy who soon will find another.’

Billy Whispers was looking at me closely: with those eyes which fastened on your own like grappling-hooks, and lured and absorbed your psyche into the indifferent, uncensorious depths of his own malignancy. ‘Tamberlaine say to me,’ he remarked, ‘that earlier you see Jimmy Cannibal.’

‘Yes. There was a fight at Mr Obo-King’s.’

‘You see who fight him?’ asked Ronson Lighter, with an excess of indifference.

‘No. Do you know who it was?’

‘I? Why should I know?’

‘You not tell nobody you see this?’ said Billy Whispers.

‘No, not yet.’

‘Is true, I hope.’

There was a crack like a plate breaking, and a yell. Whispers went over to a group. Someone was hustled out. ‘To fight at a sociable gathering,’ said Mr Tamberlaine, ‘is so uncivilised.’

Dorothy stood in front of me, posturing like someone in a historic German film. ‘Hullo there, stranger,’ she said. ‘Long time no see. How is my little sister Muriel and her boyfriend?’ I smiled at her, and didn’t answer. ‘Oh, snooty,’ she said. ‘Sarcastic and superior,’ and she stalked off in a garish blaze of glory.

During this conversation, I saw Alfy Bongo eyeing me in his equivocal way: with all the appearance of deviousness and cunning, yet openly enough to let you see he knew you realised he was up to something. He sidled over and said, ‘We meet again, Mr Montgomery Pew. Two fishes in the troubled water.’

He sat down beside me. ‘The rumour about me with those who just don’t know,’ he went on, as if aggrieved (and I’d aggrieved him), ‘is that I’m working for the coppers: a nark, like. But do you really think these boys would let me come here if they thought that lie was true?’

‘How should I know?’

‘The Spades trust me, see? They trust the little queer boy because we’re both minorities.’

‘How old are you?’ I asked him.

‘Seventeen.’

‘You’re much too old for your age.’

He sighed and smiled, and looked at me appealingly. ‘I’ve had so hard a life – if you but knew! I was brought up by the Spades – did you know that?’

‘No.’

‘Yes, by them. Fact. I was an orphan, see, and brought up by Mr Obo-King.’

‘Is this true, or are you making it all up?’

‘Why should I lie to you – what’s the advantage? Yes, by Obo-King I was brought up, till I set out on my own.’ He looked sad, and wizened, and resigned. ‘It’s all the same,’ he said, ‘if you don’t believe me. I do odd jobs for Mr Vial and other gentleman, that’s what I do. Make contacts for them that they need among the Spades.’

‘Why bother to tell me?’

He sighed again. ‘You’re suspicious of me – why?’ he said archly. ‘Anyway, I’ll do you one favour, all the same. You’d better be going, because there’s trouble in store tonight for someone.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, you do want to know?’ He rose, assumed a bogus American stance and speech and said, ‘Stick around, man, and you’ll see.’

A complete stranger, wearing a dark-blue suit and spectacles, said, ‘Come now, sir. She wait for you, Miss Barbara. Come now with me.’

I followed him to the next floor, where he opened a door with a polite inclination, and shut it after me. Barbara was sitting by a gas fire, reading a ‘true story’ magazine. ‘Oh, hi,’ she said, finished a paragraph, then went on, ‘Tamberlaine said you want to talk with me.’

‘That’s right, Barbara.’ I sat down too.

‘Do you ever read these things?’ she said, handing me the book. ‘But they don’t know nothing about life as it really is.’

‘They say truth is stranger than fiction, don’t they.’

‘Eh? All I know is, if you’ve been a kid like me in Cardiff, and seen what I seen, there’d be more to tell than you could put in any book. I just haven’t had the life at all. Everyone uses me, white like coloured. If you’re Butetown born, down Tiger Bay, your only hope is show business, or boxing if you’re a boy. But me, I can’t even sing a note straight.’ She got up. ‘Well, shall we get on with it? I don’t want to miss the party.’ She began taking clothes off in an indifferent, casual way. ‘Yes,’ she went on, ‘my only hope is to marry me a GI, and get right out of this. Or maybe a white boy if he has some position, that’s what I want, a position. I’m sick of these hustlers with their easy money! And do you know – I couldn’t tell you who my dad is, even if you asked? Even my mum don’t know, or so she says, can you believe it? Can you imagine? Not even to know who it was created you? Why do you leave your socks on last? It makes you look funny.’

‘The linoleum’s cold.’

Billy Whispers and Ronson Lighter came, without knocking, into the room. ‘Go out now, Barbara,’ said Ronson. ‘We talk to this man alone.’

‘But I’m not dressed.’

‘Dress yourself on the landing, out the door. Go, now.’

I began putting clothes on too, but Ronson Lighter snatched away the essential garments, and sat on them on the bed. ‘Just wait now a minute,’ he said. ‘We want to talk with you.’

‘You’re always pinching things, Ronson Lighter. One day somebody will hit you.’

‘Like you will, perhaps?’

I’d noticed a kettle on the gas fire. I edged nearer.

‘We give these clothes back when you speak us what you know,’ said Billy Whispers.

‘Don’t be so African, Billy. You’re so bloody cunning you’ll fall over yourself.’

With which I grabbed the kettle and flung it at Ronson Lighter. It missed, but drenched him splendidly in scalding steam. He yelled, and held his eyes. Billy Whispers lowered his head and butted me in the stomach, which was so horribly painful that I grabbed him in the only grip I remembered from gymnasium days, the headlock, twisted his skull violently, and fell with him on the floor. His face was uppermost, and his killer’s eyes glared with a hunger for death that was beyond hatred or cruelty – a look almost pure. I hung on, he seized me in the most vulnerable parts. I howled: then suddenly he let go, when fingers were thrust into his throat and nose. I saw beyond the fingers the arms and fierce face of Johnny Fortune. Ronson, prancing with rage and agony, cried, ‘You take the side of this white man? You enemy of your people?’ Johnny increased the pressure. ‘You stop now, Billy? You stop and tell me what is this you think you doing?’