City of Spades

6

Montgomery sallies forth


My flat (two odd rooms and a ‘kitchenette’, most miscellaneously furnished) is perched on the top floor of a high, narrow house near Regent’s Park with a view on the Zoological Gardens, so that lions, or seals, it may be, awake me sometimes in the dawn. Beneath me are echoing layers of floor and corridors, empty now except for Theodora Pace.

When the house used to be filled with tenants, I rarely spoke to Theodora. Such a rude, hard, determined girl, packed with ability and innocent of charm, repelled me: so clearly was she my superior in the struggle for life, so plainly did she let me see she knew it. She made it so cruelly clear she thought the world would not have been in any way a different place if I had not been born.

But circumstances threw us together.

A year ago, the property changed hands, and notices to quit were served on all the tenants. All flew to their lawyers, who thought, but weren’t quite sure (they never are, until the court gives judgement), that the Rent Acts protected us. A cold war began. The new landlord refused to accept our rents, some tenants lost heart and departed, and others removed themselves, enriched by sumptuous bribes. When only Theodora and I remained, the landlords sued us for trespass. We prepared for battle but, before the case came into court, the landlords withdrew the charge, paid costs, left us like twin birds in an abandoned dovecote, and sat waiting, I suppose, in their fur-lined Mayfair offices, for our deaths – or for some gross indiscretion by which they could eject us.

Throughout this crisis, Theodora behaved with Roman resolution. Uncertain how to manoeuvre against anyone so powerful as a landlord, I clung steadfastly to her chariot wheels, and she dragged me with her to victory. Small wonder that the BBC should pay so talented a woman a large salary for doing I never could discover what.

Thenceforth, Theodora became my counsellor: sternly offering me advice in the manner always of one casting precious pearls before some pig. (Her advice was so useful that I overcame a strong inclination to insult her.) It was through Theodora, as a matter of fact, that I’d got the job in the Colonial Department.

So on the evening of my first encounter with Johnny Fortune, I returned to my eyrie, washed off the pretences of the Welfare Office in cool water, and went down to knock on Theodora’s door. She shouted, ‘Come in,’ but went on typing for several minutes before raising her rimless eyes and saying, ‘Well? How did it go? Are you going to hold down the job this time?’

‘I don’t see why not, Theodora …’

‘It’s pretty well your last chance. If you don’t make good there, you’d better emigrate.’

‘Don’t turn the knife in the wound. I know I was a failure at the British Council, but I did quite well there before the unfortunate happening.’

‘You were never the British Council type.’

‘Perhaps, after all, that’s just as well.’

‘And until you learn to control yourself in such matters as drink, sex and extravagance, you’ll never get yourself anywhere.’

‘I’m learning fast, Theodora. Be merciful.’

‘Let’s hope so. Would you care for a gin?’

Though she’d rebuke me for tippling, Theodora was herself a considerable boozer. But liquor only made her mind more diamond sharp.

‘Cheerio. What you need, Montgomery, is a wife.’

‘So you have often told me.’

‘You should look around.’

‘I shall.’

‘Meanwhile, what is it you have to do in that place?’

I told her about the Welfare dossiers.

‘It all sounds a lot of nonsense to me,’ she said, ‘though I dare say it’s worth twelve pounds a week for them to keep you. The chief thing for you to remember, though, is that it’s just a job like any other, so don’t get involved in politics, race problems, and such inessentials.’

‘No.’

‘To do a job well, and get on, you must never become involved in it emotionally.’

‘Theodora, do tell me! What is it you do yourself within the BBC?’

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ she said, ‘even if I told you.’

I looked round at the bookshelves, packed to the ceiling with the kind of volume that would make this library, in thirty years’ time, a vintage period piece.

‘I thought,’ I said, ‘I might go down and investigate that hostel this evening.’

‘Why? Is it your business?’

‘To tell you the whole truth, I’m not sure what my business is. My predecessor hadn’t the time or inclination to tell me much, and my chief’s away on holiday for another week. It’s an awkward time for me to take over.’

‘Then leave well alone. Just do the obvious things till he gets back.’

‘But I’ve heard such complaints about our hostel. One student in particular, called Fortune, said it’s quite dreadful there.’

‘It probably is. All hostels are. They’re meant to be.’

She started typing again.

‘I’ll leave you then, Theodora.’

‘Very well. And do learn to use your time and get on with a bit of work. Your biography of John Knox – how many words have you written this last month?’

‘Very few. I’m beginning to dislike my hero so much he’s even losing his horrid fascination.’

‘Persevere.’

‘I shall. May I have another gin?’

‘You can take the bottle with you, if you can’t resist it.’

‘Thank you. And what are you writing, Theodora?’

‘A report.’

‘Might I ask on what?’

‘You may, but I shan’t tell you.’

‘Good evening, then.’

I went upstairs sadly, and changed into my suit of Barcelona blue: a dazzling affair that makes me look like an Ealing Studio gangster, and which I’d ordered when drunk in that grim city, thereby, thank goodness, abbreviating my holiday in it by one week. As I drank heavily into Theodora’s gin, the notion came to me that I should visit these haunts against which it was my duty to warn others: the Moorhen, the Cosmopolitan dance hall, and perhaps the Moonbeam club. But first of all, I decided, adjusting the knot of my vulgarest bow tie (for I like to mix Jermyn Street, when I can afford it, with the Mile End Road), it was a more imperative duty to inspect the Welfare hostel. So down I went by the abandoned stairs and corridors, and hailed a taxi just outside the Zoo.

It carried me across two dark green parks to that SW1 region of our city which, since its wartime occupation by soldiers’ messes and dubious embassies, has never yet recovered its dull dignity. Outside an ill-lit, peeling portico the taxi halted, and I alighted to the strains of a faint calypso:



‘I can’t wait eternally

For my just race equality.

If Mr England voter don’t toe the line,

Then maybe I will seek some other new combine’

somebody was ungratefully singing to the twang of a guitar.

I gazed up, and saw dark forms, in white singlets, hanging comfortably out of windows: surely not what the architect had intended.

I walked in.

There I was met by three men of a type as yet new to me: bespectacled, their curly hair parted by an effort on one side, wearing tweed suits of a debased gentlemanly cut, and hideous university ties. (Why do so many universities favour purple?) They carried menacing-looking volumes.

‘Can I be of assistance to you?’ said one to me.

‘I should like to speak to the warden.’

‘Warden? There is no such person here by nights.’

‘We control the hostel ourselves, sir, by committee,’ said another.

‘I, as a matter of fact, am the present secretary.’

And he looked it.

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘is Mr Fortune possibly in? A Lagos gentleman.’

‘You could find that for yourself, sir, also his room number, by consulting the tenancy agenda on the public information board.’

He pointed a large helpful finger at some baize in the recess of the dark hall. I gave him a cold official smile, ignored the baize board, and walked upstairs to examine the common rooms and empty cubicles.

This Colonial Department hostel smelt high, I soon decided, with the odour of good intentions. The communal rooms were like those on ships – to be drifted in and out of, then abandoned. The bedrooms (cubicles!), of which I inspected one or two, though lacking no necessary piece of furniture, yet had the ‘furnished’ look of a domestic interior exhibited in a shop window. And over the whole building there hung an aura of pared Welfare budgets, of tact restraining antipathies, and of a late attempt to right centuries of still-unadmitted wrongs.

And all this time the nasal calypso permeated the lino-laden passages. As I approached the bright light from a distant open door, I heard:

‘English politician he say, “Wait and see,”

Moscow politician he say, “Come with me.”

But whichever white employer tells those little white lies,

I stop my ears and hold my nose and close my eyes.’

I peered in.

Sitting on the bed, dressed in a pair of underpants decorated with palm leaves, was a stocky youth topped by an immense gollywog fuzz of hair. He grimaced pleasantly at me, humming the air till he had completed the guitar improvisation. Whereupon he slapped the instrument (as one might a child’s behind) and said, ‘What say, man? You like a glass of rum?’

‘I’m looking,’ I told him, ‘for Mr J. M. Fortune.’

‘Oh, that little jungle cannibal. That bongo-banging Bushman.’

‘I take it,’ I said, accepting some rum in a discoloured tooth-glass, ‘that you yourself are not from Africa?’

‘Please be to God, no, man. I’m a civilised respectable Trinidadian.’

‘The Africans, then, aren’t civilised?’

‘They have their own tribal customs, mister, but it was because of their primitive barbarity that our ancestors fled from that country some centuries ago.’

This was accompanied by a knowing leer.

‘And the song,’ I asked. ‘It is of your own composition?’

‘Yes, man. In my island I’m noted for my celebrated performance. It’s your pleasure to meet this evening no less a one than Mr Lord Alexander in person.’

And he held out a ring-encrusted hand with an immensely long, polished, little-finger nail.

‘Perhaps, though,’ he went on, ‘as I’m seeking to make my way in this country, you could help me into radio or television or into some well-loaded night-spot?’

‘Alas!’ I told him, ‘I have no contacts in those glowing worlds.’

‘Then at least please speak well of me,’ he said, ‘and make my reputation known among your friends.’

‘Willingly. Though I have to tell you that I don’t care for calypso …’

‘Man, that’s not possible!’ He stood up in his flowered pants aghast. ‘Surely all educated Englishmen like our scintillating music?’

‘Many, yes, but not I.’

‘Now, why?’

‘Your lines don’t scan, you accentuate the words incorrectly, and the thoughts you express are meagre and without wit.’

‘But our leg-inspiring rhythm?’

‘Oh, that you have, of course …’

‘Mr Gentleman, you disappoint me,’ he said. And taking a deep draught from the rum bottle, he strolled sadly to the window, leant out, and sang into the opulent wastes of SW1:

‘This English gentleman he say to me

He do not appreciate calypso melody.

But I answer that calypso has supremacy

To the Light Programme music of the BBC.’

I made my getaway.

Prying along an adjacent marble landing (affording a vertiginous perspective of a downward-winding, statue-flanked white stair), I saw a door on which was written: ‘J. Macdonald Fortune, Lagos. Enter without knocking.’ I did so, turned on the light, and saw a scene of agreeable confusion. Valises up-ended disgorging the bright clothes one would so wish to wear, shirts, ties and socks predominating – none of them fit for an English afternoon. Bundles of coconuts. A thick stick of bananas. Bottles, half empty. Rather surprising – a pile of biographies and novels. And pinned on the walls photographs of black grinning faces, all teeth, the eyes screwed closed to the glare of a sudden magnesium flare. A recurring group was evidently a family one: Johnny; a substantial rotund African gentleman with the same air of frank villainy as was the junior Mr Fortune’s; his immense wife, swathed in striped native dress; a tall serious youth beside a motor-bicycle; and a vivacious girl with a smile like that of an amiable lynx.

On the table, I noticed an unfinished letter in a swift clerical hand. I didn’t disturb it, but …

Dear Peach,

How it would be great if I could show you all the strange sights of the English capital, both comical and splendid! This morning I had my interview at the Welfare Office with – well, do you remember Reverend Simpson? Our tall English minister who used to walk as if his legs did not belong to him? And spoke to us like a telephone? Well, that was the appearance of the young Mr Pew who interviewed me, preaching and pointing his hands at me as if I was to him a menacing infant …



Ah!



‘… I have made visits, too, this afternoon, both of which will interest Dad – tell him I’m writing more about them, but don’t please tell our dearest Mum or Christmas that I give you this message. Just now I have returned here to my miserable hostel (hovel! – which soon I shall be leaving permanently) to change to fresh clothes and go out in the town when it’s alight.

And Peach! It’s true about the famous escalator! It can be done, early this morning I made the two-way expedition, easily dashing up again until …’

Should I turn over the sheet? No, no, not that …

I closed the door softly and walked down the chipped ceremonial stair. At its foot, the secretary waylaid me.

‘And did you then discover Mr Fortune?’ he enquired.

‘No.’

‘Will it be necessary for me to convey to him some message of your visit?’

‘No.’

He frowned.

‘As secretary of the hostel committee, may I ask of your business on our premises?’

I gave him a Palmerstonian glare, but he met it with such a look of dignified solemnity that I wilted and said, ‘I am the new Assistant Welfare Officer. My name is Montgomery Pew.’

‘And mine, sir, is Mr Karl Marx Bo. I am from Freetown, Sierra Leone.’

We shook hands.

‘I hope, sir,’ he said, ‘you have not the same miserable opinion of our qualities as he who previously held down your job?’

‘Oh, you mustn’t think that. Come, come.’

‘May I offer you a cup of canteen coffee?’

‘I’d love it, but really, I’m in somewhat of a hurry …’

I moved towards the massive door. Mr Bo walked beside me, radiating unaffected self-righteousness.

‘Here in London, I am studying law,’ he told me.

‘That means, I suppose, that you’ll be going into politics?’

‘Inevitably. We must make the most of our learning here in London. Emancipation, sir, is our ultimate objective. I predict that in the next ten years, or less, the whole of West Africa will be a completely emancipated federation.’

‘Won’t the Nigerians gobble you up? Or Dr Nkrumah?’

‘No, sir. Such politicians clearly understand that national differences of that nature are a pure creation of colonialism. Once we have federation, such regional distinctions will all fade rapidly away.’

‘Well, jolly good luck to you.’

‘Oh, yes! You say so! But like all Englishmen, I conceive you view with reluctance the prospect of our freedom?’

‘Oh, but we give you the education to get it.’

‘Not give, sir. I pay for my university through profits my family have made in the sale of cocoa.’

‘A dreadful drink, if I may say so.’

He tolerantly smiled. ‘You must come, sir, if you wish, to take part in one of our discussions with us, or debates.’

‘Nothing would delight me more, but alas, as an official, I am debarred from expressing any personal opinion, even had I one. And now, for the present, you really must excuse me.’

And before he could recover his potential Dominion status, I was out of the door and stepping rapidly up the moonlit road. ‘To the Moorhen public house,’ I told a taxi driver.

He was of that kind who believe in the London cabby’s reputation for dry wit.

‘Better keep your hands on your pockets, guv,’ he said, ‘if I take you there.’