City of Spades

2

Appearance of a guardian angel


Since my trouble come, I do not go often to the places where I go before – it is not that I fear the Law, or what it can do to me any more, but that I do not wish to be seen there by my countrymen. To be sent to jail for weed was not the big disgrace, for everybody know they never catch me if they treat me fairly; but to have a Jumble woman who I do not love speak up in court and say she have a child of me, and hear the boys say it was this woman’s lies that set me free on that first charge – this is too big a shame for me. And since the sad death of Hamilton, I have no friend, except for Laddy Boy, who was now travelling again at sea, that I would wish to speak to in this city.

So what I do, as soon as Montgomery goes out, is visit cinemas and sit there by myself, or else go practising my judo and my boxing at the merchant seaman gymnasium. For now I hear that Billy Whispers also has come out of finishing his sentence, I know this boy will one day try to make some trouble for me, because he believes from what they tell him of my trial that when he go into jail, is I who takes his Dorothy.

So I sat in the darkness of the Tottenham Court picture palace this day, thinking; when near to me a white boy asked me for a match, to light his cigarette, he say, and other silly business of holding my hand too long when I pass the box, and when he gives it back to me, so that I know what his foolish hope is, and say to him, ‘Mister, behave yourself, or else you come out with me and I push your face in.’

‘All right, man, I come out with you,’ this white boy whispered. I thought: oh, very well, if he wants hitting, then I hit him, this will be some big relief to all my feelings; but when I see his face outside the dark, I recognise it was this Alfy Bongo. ‘Oh, you,’ I said to him. ‘Are you still living?’

‘Why not, Johnny? The devil looks after his own. Won’t you have a coffee with me?’

‘So you are one of these foolish men who try to mess about with Spades in picture-houses?’

‘Oh, I’m a little queer boy, Johnny, that’s for certain; but I didn’t know that it was you.’

‘One day you meet some bad boy who do you some big damage.’

‘It wouldn’t be the first time. Let’s come and have some coffee, like I say.’

‘Why should I come? I enjoy this film in here.’

‘Listen, Johnny. Why are you so ungrateful? Didn’t they tell you how I helped you at your trial?’

‘I hear of this, yes; but is much better that you leave me to fight my trial alone. If this woman you speak to not go into the box, and make her statement, I go free all the same through my good lawyers.’

‘You think you would have? Nobody else does – least of all Mr Vial, I can tell you that. And, anyway, who do you think found your lawyers for you?’

‘Well, what good it do me – that acquittal? They catch me the second time.’

‘I wish I’d known of that. If I’d known, I’d have done something for you … Why didn’t anyone let me know in time?’

I stopped in the street and looked at this cheeky person. ‘What is all this, Alfy, you wish to do such nice things for me? You hope you have some pleasant treatment from me one day that never come?’

‘Oh, no, Johnny, I know you’re square. But I just like helping out the Spades.’

‘You do! Oh, do you!’

‘I wish I’d been born a Spade.’

‘Do you now, man!’

‘Yes, I do. I tell you I do. You have this coffee with me, Johnny, or not?’

‘Oh, if you say so: let us go.’

He took me to a coffee-bar nearby, and there, when he order it, he said to me, ‘And how was it in the nick? Did they beat you in there at all?’

‘No, man, I play so cool. What I like least of all is your British sanitation in that place. Man, in that jail all you turn into is not any human person, but a lavatory machine.’

‘And what do you do now, Johnny, with yourself?’

‘What I do now? Would it surprise you, after how they treat me in those places, if now I start up some really serious hustle?’

‘Don’t think of that, man. You’ve got a record now. Second offence, and they’ve got you by the you-know-whats. What you should do is … Man, why don’t you cut out and go back home?’

‘How can I now, to face my family? They speak about my dad in court – you know of that? They talk about his bravery, which I tell my white friends as a secret, not for them to put shame on my dad by mixing his name up with that charge they put upon me.’

‘I hear Billy’s out. You know what he did with Dorothy?’

‘No. Where she’s gone?’

‘Into hospital. He cut up her face.’

‘Nice. Well, I’m not surprised. That thing come her way some quite long time.’

‘Better be careful – you too, Johnny. Why don’t you leave town a while? Go up to Liverpool Rialto way, or Manchester Moss Side?’

‘Me? For fear of that man Billy? Listen now, Mr Bongo. If he kill me, he kill me. If I kill him, I kill him. Or else perhaps nobody kills nobody. We shall see.’

This Alfy Bongo person was one I couldn’t quite make out. I looked hard behind his eyes, but could not see any real unfriendliness to me, or danger there.

He looked me back. ‘Well, that’s not the great news, is it?’ he said. ‘You know you’re a father now, Johnny?’

‘Yes? No, I not hear …’

‘A boy.’

‘Is it then Muriel?’

‘Yes. She’s called it William.’

‘Well – is nice for her. I hope this William turns out a nice man like his uncle Arthur, that shop me to the Law.’

‘You’re not going out to see your son?’

‘Why, man? Let her keep this William for her pleasure.’

‘She’ll put an affiliation order on you, to support it …’

‘Oh, well. That will be just one more misery I have to suffer.’

This Alfy handed me a cigarette. ‘You’re turning sour, Johnny,’ he said to me. ‘It’s bad in London, when a Spade turns sour.’

I got up to leave him. ‘Spades will stay sour, man, let me tell you, till they’re treated right.’

‘Cheer up – they’ll be treated better soon. That race crap’s changing fast, believe me, Johnny.’

‘Not fast enough for me, Mister Alfy Bongo. How long you think this rubbish will go on? This big, big problem that they think up out of nothing, and is nothing?’

‘Not long now, man. In ten years’ time, or so, they’ll wonder what it was all about.’

I got up to leave him. ‘Roll on that day,’ I said to him. ‘But I tell you this, man, and remember it. Let them kill every Spade that’s in the world, and leave but just two, man and woman, and we’ll fill up the whole globe once more and win our triumph!’

He asked me to come round and see him in his room in Kensington West one day, but I tell him my life is occupied, and left him and went out and caught my bus. To sleep now would be best, I thought, and I came home to where I am staying with Montgomery. When I turn round the corner to his house, I see standing by the door an African girl, and from this distance I know it is my sister Peach.

I stopped, and think quickly. I want to see Peach, but I do not want to see Peach, so I turned and run. But she see me, come running after, and hold on my coat like she tear it off my body, and there in the street hugged on to me so tight I cannot breathe, and she say nothing.