City of Spades

3

The meeting of Jumble and Spade


Primed by my brief study of the welfare dossiers, I awaited, in my office, the arrival of the first colonials. With some trepidation; because for one who, like myself, has always felt great need of sober counsel, to offer it to others – and to strangers, and to such exotic strangers – seemed intimidating. Perhaps I should add, too, that I’m not quite so old as I think I look: only twenty-six, Heaven be praised; and certainly not so self-assured as my dry, drained, rarely perturbable countenance might suggest.

Picture my mild alarm, then, when there was a first polite knock upon my door. Opening it, I beheld a handsomely ugly face, animal and engaging, with beetling brow, squashed nose and full and generous lips, surmounted by a thatch of thick curly hair cut to a high rising peak in front: a face wearing (it seemed to me) a sly, morose, secretive look, until suddenly its mouth split open into a candid ivory and coral smile.

‘I’m Fortune,’ said this creature, beaming as though his name was his very nature. ‘Johnny Macdonald, Christian names, out of Lagos, checking to see what classes in meteorology you’ve fixed for me.’

‘My name is Pew – Montgomery. Please do come over to these rather less uncomfortable leather chairs.’

I observed that he was attired in a white crocheted sweater with two crimson horizontal stripes, and with gold safety-pins stuck on the tips of each point of the emerging collar of a nylon shirt; in a sky-blue gaberdine jacket zipped down the front; and in even lighter blue linen slacks, full at the hips, tapering to the ankle, and falling delicately one half-inch above a pair of pale brown plaited casual shoes.

‘Your curriculum,’ I said, handing him a drab buff envelope, ‘is outlined here. You begin next week, but it would be well to register within the next few days. Meanwhile I trust you’re satisfied with your accommodation at the hostel?’

‘Man, you should ask!’

‘I beg your pardon?’

He gave me a repeat performance of the grin. ‘It’s like back in mission school at home. I shall make every haste to leave it as soon as I find myself a room.’

‘In that case,’ I said, departmentally severe, ‘the rent would be appreciably higher.’

‘I have loot – I can afford,’ he told me. ‘Have you ever lived inside that hostel, you yourself?’

‘No.’

‘Well, then!’

The interview was not taking the turn I thought appropriate. Equality between races – yes! But not between officials and the public.

‘I should perhaps warn you at this juncture,’ I informed him, ‘that to secure outside accommodation sometimes presents certain difficulties.’

‘You mean for an African to get a room?’

‘Yes … We have however here a list of amiable landladies …’

‘Why should it be difficult for an African to get a room?’

‘There is, unfortunately, in certain cases, prejudice.’

‘They fear we dirty the sheets with our dark skins?’

‘Not precisely.’

‘Then what? In Lagos, anyone will let you a room if you have good manners, and the necessary loot …’

‘It’s kind of them, and I don’t doubt your word. Here in England, though, some landladies have had unfortunate experiences.’

‘Such as …?’

‘Well, for one thing – noise.’

‘It’s true we are not mice.’

‘And introducing friends …’

‘Why not?’

‘I mean to sleep – to live. Landladies don’t wish three tenants for the price of one.’

‘So long as the room is paid, what does it matter?’

‘Ah – paid. Failure to pay is another chief complaint.’

‘Don’t Jumbles never skip their rent as well as Spades?’

‘I beg your pardon once again?’

‘Don’t Jumbles …’

‘Jumbles?’

‘You’re a Jumble, man.’

‘I?’

‘Yes. That’s what we call you. You don’t mind?’

‘I hope I don’t … It’s not, I trust, an impolite expression?’

‘You mean like nigger?’

I rose up.

‘Now, please! This is the Colonial Department Welfare Office. That word is absolutely forbidden within these walls.’

‘It should be outside them, too.’

‘No doubt. I too deplore its use.’

‘Well, relax, please, Mr Pew. And don’t be so scared of Jumble. It’s cheeky, perhaps, but not so very insulting.’

‘May I enquire how it is spelt?’

‘J-o-h-n-b-u-l-l.’

‘Ah! But pronounced as you pronounce it?’

‘Yes: Jumble.’

It struck me the ancient symbol, thus distorted, was strangely appropriate to the confusion of my mind.

‘I see. And …’ (I hesitated) ‘… Spade?’

‘Is us.’

‘And that is not an objectionable term?’

‘Is cheeky, too, of course, but not offending. In Lagos, on the waterfront, the boys sometimes called me the Ace of Spades.’

‘Ah …’

He offered me, from an American pack, an extravagantly long fag.

‘Let’s not us worry, Mr Pew,’ he said, ‘about bad names. My dad has taught me that in England some foolish man may call me sambo, darkie, boot or munt or nigger, even. Well, if he does – my fists!’ (He clenched them: they were like knees.) ‘Or,’ he went on, ‘as Dad would say, “First try rebuke by tongue, then fists”.’

‘Well, Mr Fortune,’ I said to him, when he had at last unclenched them to rehitch the knife edge of his blue linen tapering slacks, ‘I think with one of these good women on our list you’ll have no trouble …’

‘If I take lodgings, mister,’ he replied, ‘they must be Liberty Hall. No questions from the landlady, please. And me, when I give my rent, I’ll have the politeness not to ask her what she spends it on.’

‘That, my dear fellow, even for an Englishman, is very difficult to find in our sad country.’

‘I’ll find it.’ He beetled at me, then, leaning forward, said, ‘And do you know why I think your landladies are scared of us?’

‘I can but imagine …’

‘Because of any brown babies that might appear.’

‘In the nature of things,’ I said, ‘that may indeed well be.’

‘An arrival of white babies they can somehow explain away. But if their daughter has a brown one, then neighbouring fingers all start pointing.’

I silently shook my head.

‘But why,’ he cried, ‘why not box up together, Jumble and Spade, like we let your folk do back home?’

I rose once more.

‘Really, Mr Fortune. You cannot expect me to discuss these complex problems. I am – consider – an official.’

‘Oh, yes … You have to earn your money, I suppose.’

I found this, of course, offensive. And moving with dignity to my desk, I took up the Warning Folder of People and Places to Avoid.

‘Another little duty for which I’m paid,’ I said to him, ‘is to warn our newcomers against … well, to be frank, bad elements among their fellow countrymen.’

‘Oh, yes, man. Shoot.’

‘And,’ I continued, looking at my list, ‘particularly against visiting the Moorhen public house, the Cosmopolitan dance hall, or the Moonbeam club.’

‘Just say those names again.’

To my horror, I saw he was jotting them on the back page of his passport.

‘To visit these places,’ I went on, reading aloud from the mimeographed sheet I held, ‘has been, for many, the first step that leads to the shadow of the police courts.’

‘Why? What goes on in them?’

I didn’t, perhaps fortunately, yet know. ‘I’m not at liberty to divulge it,’ I replied.

‘Ah well …’

He pocketed his passport, and took me by the hand.

‘Have you any further questions?’ I enquired.

‘Yes, Mr Pew. Excuse my familiar asking: but where can I get a shirt like that?’

‘Like this?’

‘Yes. It’s hep. Jumble style, but hep.’

He reached out a long, long hand and fingered it.

‘In Jermyn Street,’ I said with some self-satisfaction, but asperity.

‘Number?’

I told him.

‘Thanks so very much,’ said Johnny Macdonald Fortune. ‘And now I must be on my way to Maida Vale.’

I watched him go out with an unexpected pang. And moving to the window, soon saw him walk across the courtyard and stop for a moment speaking to some others there. In the sunlight, his nylon shirt shone all the whiter against the smooth brown of his skin. His frame, from this distance, seemed shorter than it was, because of his broad shoulders – flat, though composed of two mounds of muscle arching from his spine. His buttocks sprang optimistically high up from the small of his back, and his long legs – a little bandy and with something of a backward curve – were supported by two very effective splayed-out feet; on which, just now, as he spoke, gesticulating too, he was executing a tracery of tentative dance steps to some soft, inaudible music.