City of Spades

11

Back east, chastened, in the early dawn


When Billy was near dying, I let him just breathe, but not till he loose his tight hold of Montgomery. I stood back and waited, ready, in case these two Gambians might start some fight again. But all three in the room – Billy and Ronson Lighter and Montgomery – was rubbing themselves silently in different places. ‘Put your clothes on, Montgomery,’ I said. ‘Is never a good choice to fight without your garments.’

These ponces’ celebration parties! Always they end up in struggles. But when I came down from Theodora’s flat to visit Billy and, I thought, do him a favour by my warning, I did not expect to find this sort of battle. Perhaps soon someone would tell me the reasons of this strange argument.

‘I’m glad to see you, Johnny,’ said Montgomery, when he was more clothed. ‘Who told you I was up here?’

‘That Alfy Bongo. So of course I didn’t believe him, but I came upstairs to check, and heard from little Barbara you was here. Will someone now please explain to me?’ I added, giving cigarettes around, for I wished to show what friendship I could to Billy and to Ronson Lighter, and not make them think the white man could rely on me entirely, always, and for everything.

Ronson speak first. ‘This Jumble shop us,’ he cried out. ‘He sell us to the Law, and come here spying the effects.’

‘What is all this, Ronson Lighter?’

‘I tell you. Tonight we punish Cannibal in the gamble-house. Is I who do it, with the knife I buy. This Jumble see it, and go tell the Law about me.’

‘So it was you, Ronson,’ said Montgomery.

‘You know was I. Tamberlaine tell us what you see in there.’

‘But I didn’t know it was you with the knife,’ Montgomery said. ‘And I haven’t told anyone about it.’

‘A-ha! Can we believe this word?’ cried Billy Whispers.

‘Whether you do or not, you might have asked me before you both attacked me.’

‘Is you who attack us,’ cried Ronson, ‘with this your kettle.’ He picked it up and waved it fiercely. I took it from him.

‘I do not know,’ I said, ‘what my friend Montgomery see. But that he tell the Law, I don’t believe. If he do that to you, then why he dare come here after?’

‘To spy!’ said Billy. ‘To put the eye on us.’

‘You’s foolish, Billy,’ I said to him. ‘If anyone tell the Law of Ronson, it will be Cannibal.’

‘Cannibal not dare to. He know I end his life if he start yapping.’

‘Ronson try to end his life anyway, man. That takes away his fear of speaking to the Law.’

Billy Whispers looked at me as if a knife was all I was fit for too. ‘Fortune, I know you’s not my friend,’ he said. ‘You never was my friend at any time.’

I looked hard at this Gambian, to show I did not fear him. ‘Billy,’ I said, ‘if I am not your friend, there can only be one reason. It is the drug you give to my friend Hamilton Ashinowo, that kill him dead and steal his life away.’

‘Who say I do that?’

‘Cole. I catch him at your party here downstairs and talk to him. He put the blame on you and run away.’

‘And you believe that man?’

‘Is true, then?’

‘And if is true? I sell that stuff to Hamilton. He buy it; he want it; I give it. I satisfy his need.’

‘Then do not wonder, Billy, I am not your friend.’

‘So you betray me. You put the Law on me as well.’

‘Billy,’ I said. ‘What puts the Law on you is your life here with Dorothy. Why don’t you cut out, man, go up to Manchester Moss Side, or go back home?’

Billy rubbed on his throat and said, ‘This is where I stay, here in this city. I fear of nobody. The man who makes me leave town is my master.’

‘All right, Billy Whispers, is your life, is not mine. Now what say we go downstairs and drink a drink and soon forget all this unfriendliness?’

The room was now empty of many of its guests, especially Tamberlaine and ‘Nat King’ Cole. But Cranium and one of his boys was still playing on their drums, and Barbara and Dorothy was yap-yap-yapping by the fire. And shooting dice up on the floor was my brother Arthur and Alfy Bongo, and that gilded man Tondapo with who I had not yet had my explanation of his earlier behaviour to me. ‘Give us some tune, Cranium,’ I said. ‘Come, Billy. Forget your suspecting everyone, and pour some drink.’

‘Drink for you who attack me?’ Billy said to Montgomery and to me.

‘Oh, come now, Billy. Don’t spoil this pleasant evening, or, if you like, we have to go.’

So he poured these drinks. Dorothy she came and stood by Billy, hands on hips, looking so very foolish. ‘What’s all this fighting?’ she cried out. ‘What sort of home do you think you’ve given me?’

Billy gave Dorothy no drink. ‘Be careful, now,’ he said. ‘Be careful what you say to me. Be careful what you say to anybody. The one place for your trap is shut.’

Cranium Cuthbertson beat sweetly on, trying, I could see, to give some harmony to everyone’s emotion. Also, he began to sing: a chant like to himself, in his own tongue, about a boy who leave the coast beside the sea and walks all his life right up to Kano, looking for blessings of his ancestors, who came from there. The boys stopped shooting dice, and all began clapping softly to the rhythm, and singing the ‘Ay-yah-ah’ chorus to Cranium’s good song.

But the door came open, and I saw Inspector Purity of the CID and three more of his dicks. Billy had leapt quick under the table, which had a cloth. ‘Stay where you are, everybody,’ this Purity man said. ‘I want a word with Mr Billy Whispers. Where is he?’

No one spoke. Though did I see my brother Arthur smile at Purity and look across the room towards the table?

As feet approached it, Billy did a brave and foolish thing: he rushed and jumped right through the window, glass and everything. Dorothy screamed. Two dicks ran downstairs, one stayed beside the door, and Mr Purity stepped over to the window.

We all stood still, though Cranium beat a note or two upon his drum. Purity shone down a torch. ‘Got him?’ he shouted.

There was a shout up back.

‘What?’ Mr Purity cried out. ‘Well, carry him over to the car. I’ll be right down.’

Dorothy ran up to Inspector Purity and caught hold of his hair. ‘What are you doing to my husband?’ she screamed out.

He pushed her off on to the floor. ‘So he’s your husband, is he?’ said Purity. ‘I think he’s living off your immoral earnings.’

‘Is that the charge? Is that the charge you make?’ said Ronson Lighter.

‘Resisting arrest will be one charge,’ said Purity, ‘and no doubt there’ll be others. Well, let’s take a look at you all and see who we’ve got. Stand up, everyone, with your hands on top of your heads. Come on!’

Everybody stood up except Dorothy, and all put their hands on their heads except Montgomery and myself. Detective Purity walked round inspecting all the party, like a general, and to some he spoke.

‘So you’re here, Alfy,’ he began. ‘One day we’ll have to find a little charge for you. Any suggestions, lad? I’ve got one or two ideas. And you,’ he said to my brother Arthur. ‘You getting tired of life outside the nick? Maybe we could help you back inside again. Dice, eh? That’s gambling. Hullo, Barbara. Aren’t you in need of some care and protection? We’ll introduce you to one of our lady coppers, she’ll see you home to Cardiff. Good evening, Mr Pew, or is it good morning? You keep some strange company, don’t you. And you weren’t altogether frank with me earlier, on about your young friend here … Mr Fortune. How are you, son? Do you know something? We’re going to nick you for peddling weed one day soon, so don’t you think you’d better get aboard a ship? No, don’t bother to turn your pockets out this time, we know you’ve put it on the fire. And you!’ He’d stopped in front of Ronson Lighter, who thought he had been missed. ‘You’d better come along with us as well. There’s been some malicious wounding, and perhaps you can tell us something more about it. Your friend down there seems to be unconscious, and they think he’s broken some legs.’

‘You bastard!’ Dorothy cried out from the floor.

He didn’t look down, but said to her, ‘We’ll be sending for you, Dorothy, when we want you. Don’t leave London just at present, will you? Come on now, you!’ he said to Ronson. And this boy, though if it was a fight he would fear nothing, like so many of our men when big misfortune falls upon them, was quiet and quite helpless in the copper’s hand.

Inspector Purity stopped by the door. ‘I needn’t tell you all to watch your step,’ he said. ‘There’s not a man or woman here we haven’t got a charge for when the time comes, and we feel like paying you a visit.’ Then he went out with Ronson and the other copper, who had stood there waiting and not said one word.

When the door closed, Dorothy scrambled up, opened it again and cried down the stairs, ‘You bastards!’ Then slammed it, turned to us all and shouted, ‘Somebody’s shopped Billy!’

‘Would it be you, Dorothy?’ I said.

‘Me, Johnny Fortune! Call me a whore if you want to, but I don’t shop nobody. Someone here has spoken with the Law. Somebody’s shopped Billy!’

Faces all looked at faces.

‘Come now, Montgomery,’ I said, when looking from the window I saw the Law car drive away. ‘Is time to go.’

Dorothy and Barbara were weeping on each other’s shoulder. ‘I have my car outside,’ said Ibrahim Tondapo, like some emir. ‘I offer you a lift.’

I made no reply to this vain man, but went with the others down the stairs. This Ibrahim insisted foolishly on our company, so we came up to his limousine. Place in the car was refused by me to Arthur and to Alfy Bongo, who walked away chattering in spite together. The passengers I allowed were Cranium and Montgomery in the back seat, and I by Ibrahim Tondapo’s side.

‘Where to?’ he said.

‘East End for me.’

‘I’ll see you home, Johnny,’ said Montgomery.

‘For me, please, a drop-out at the Trafalgar Square,’ said Cranium Cuthbertson.

Tondapo drove elegantly but too fast, anxious to demonstrate his skill. In the central city we turned Cranium loose, and drove on across the commercial area of the city’s wealth, this Ibrahim trying to make eager conversation with Montgomery and with me. But I silenced my Jumble friend, and would say nothing to this African, for whom I still planned a vengeance for his earlier action in the Sphere. So when we came to the dockside poverty of the Immigration Road, I asked him to take two turnings and then halt.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘You welcome, man. Bygone is bygone.’

‘Your tyre is flat.’

‘No, I not think so, man.’

‘I tell you is flat: your motor rumbles.’

We all got out. Montgomery noticed my intention.

‘No, no, Johnny,’ he cried out. ‘Not any more!’

But I had heaved this Tondapo against the wall and battered him. He fight hard and bravely, but had eaten too much throughout his comfortable life. When I had laid him low, I lifted him and put his groaning body in the back seat of his vehicle.

Montgomery was in rages with me. ‘You must learn to control yourself,’ he said.

‘And you! Fighting with two Africans in your nakedness.’

‘That was a misunderstanding.’

‘Let us not argue, Montgomery. There have been arguments enough.’

We walked through the dim and silence of these evil streets: all tumbling: all sad.

‘Who did betray Whispers?’ said Montgomery.

‘It was not you, then?’

‘Oh, don’t be absurd, Johnny. Why should I?’

‘That Alfy Bongo?’

‘I don’t understand that hobgoblin. I don’t think he’s working for the Law … Excuse my asking, but had Arthur anything to do with it, perhaps?’

‘Perhaps so. Or more perhaps is really Dorothy who spoke.’

‘She didn’t act like it.’

‘Dorothy is tired of Billy. Maybe she’s glad to see him go inside for some other charge than laying his hands upon her earnings. If she told the Law about this wounding, and of nothing else, then she will not have to appear in court against him.’

‘Isn’t the simplest explanation that Jimmy Cannibal told them about the attack himself? That Ronson did it, and Billy was behind it?’

‘Could be so. When the court case comes, then we shall see. By the witnesses, we shall see. But what is sure is that Billy will suspect us all – you for what you saw in the gamble-house, and Dorothy that she wants to leave him, and also me.’

‘Why you?’

‘Because Dorothy’s foolish hope is to come and live with me. I must keep clear of that evil little chicken.’

We crossed the Immigration Road.

‘Inspector Purity was asking about you earlier on,’ Montgomery said, and told me of that meeting. ‘Be careful, Johnny.’

‘I am always careful.’

‘You had no weed with you tonight?’

‘None left. Though if they want to take me, they would not mind if I had weed or not.’

‘If that’s so, why didn’t they arrest you there and then? Or any of the others except Ronson?’

‘The knifing was their business this evening. One operation at a time is the Law’s slow and steady way. Perhaps there were also too many witnesses for the frame-up. They have their skill and patience, Montgomery, have the Law.’

Outside my sweet-shop, I said goodbye to him. ‘Do not come in, Montgomery. Muriel and Hamilton will be sleeping. I telephone you.’

‘You promise? Keep in touch, now, won’t you.’

‘I speak to you on the phone tomorrow.’

‘Take care, then. And thank you, Johnny, for helping me with those two boys.’

Helping him! Had I not saved his skin entirely?

‘Is nothing,’ I said. ‘Good night now, Montgomery. I shall see you.’

He walked away, and turned and waved, and I waited till he shrunk right out of sight. Then I went indoors to my misery.

Muriel was up, in spite of it was morning. I kissed her, but she turned her face away.

‘Hamilton’s gone,’ she said. ‘They’ve taken him off to hospital in the ambulance. He had delirium.’

‘It was real bad, this what Hamilton have?’

‘I don’t think he’ll live, Johnny.’

I sat down by her side.

‘Let us go sleep now,’ I said to her. ‘A great many troubles have come my way today.’

‘You’re bleeding, Johnny. Let me wash you.’

‘Wash me, then. But I must sleep.’

She wiped the blood off from my face and fists, and gave me a cup of warm-up tea. ‘You’re back so late. Always back so late,’ she said, taking my clean hands.

‘But I am back, Muriel. Come, we go sleep.’

‘I have to go to work in a few hours.’

‘Before you go to work, Muriel, you sleep with me.’