City of Spades Read online

  ‘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.

  4

  A pilgrimage to Maida Vale

  This Maida Vale is noteworthy for all the buildings looking similar and making the search for Dad’s old lodging-house so more difficult. But by careful enquiry and eliminations, I hit on one house in Nightingale Road all crumbling down and dirty as being the most probable, and as there was no bell or lock and the door open, I walked right in and called up the stairs, ‘Is Mrs Hancock there?’ but getting no reply, climbed further to the next floor. There was a brown door facing me, so I drummed on it, when immediately it opened and a Jumble lady stood there to confront me: wrung out like a dish-rag, with her body everywhere collapsing, and when she saw me a red flush of fury on her face.

  ‘Get out! I don’t want your kind here.’

  ‘I have to speak to Mrs Hancock.’

  At these words of mine her colour changed to white like a coconut you bite into.

  ‘Hancock!’ she called out. ‘My name’s Macpherson. Why do you call me Hancock?’

  ‘I don’t, lady,’ I told her. ‘I merely say I wanted to speak to a lady of that name.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To bring her my dad’s greetings – Mr David Macdonald Fortune out of Lagos, Nigeria. I’m his son Johnny.’

  By the way she eyed me, peering at me, measuring me from top to toes, I was sure now this was the lady of Dad’s story. And I can’t say, at that moment, I quite admired my dad in his own choice. Though naturally it was years ago when possibly this woman was in better preservation.

  Then she said: ‘You’ve brought nothin
g ever to me but misery and disgrace.’

  ‘But lady, you and I’ve not met before.’

  ‘Your father, then. Your race.’

  ‘So you are Mrs Hancock, please?’

  ‘I used to be.’

  ‘Well, I bring my dad’s greetings to you. He asks you please for news.’

  ‘His greetings,’ she said, twisting up her mouth into a mess. ‘His greetings – is that all?’

  I was giving her all this time my biggest smile, and I saw its effect began to melt her just a little. (When I smile at a woman, I relax all my body and seem eager.)

  ‘Your father’s a bad man,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘You look like him, though. He might have spat you out.’

  ‘I should look like him, Mrs Macpherson. I’m legitimate, I hope.’

  This didn’t please her a bit. She stared white-red at me again till I thought she’d strike me, and I got ready to duck or, if need be, slap back.

  ‘So you’ve heard!’ she shouted out. ‘Then why’s your father never done anything for Arthur?’

  ‘Arthur, lady?’

  ‘For your brother, if you want to know. Your elder brother.’

  Clearly she didn’t mean my brother Christmas. Then who? I began to realise.

  ‘I’ve got a half-brother called Arthur, then?’ I said, trying to act as if I felt delighted. ‘Well! Can’t I meet him?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘No! You certainly can not.’

  At this very moment, there glided up beside her a little Jumble girl, quite pretty, seventeen or so I’d say, who I noticed had a glove on one hand only.

  ‘Don’t shout, Mother,’ she said. ‘You’d better ask him in.’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ this Mrs Macpherson said, coming over all weary and looking even ten years older.

  Their room was quite tidy, with assorted furniture, but poor. I do hate poor rooms.

  ‘I suppose I’d better go and make some tea,’ the old lady told us both.

  (These Jumbles and their tea in every crisis!)

  The little girl held out her hand – the hand that didn’t wear the glove. ‘I’m Muriel,’ she said. ‘I’m Arthur’s sister, and Mum’s second daughter.’

  ‘But Miss Muriel,’ I said to her, ‘I can guess by your skin’s complexion that you’re not Arthur’s true sister.’

  ‘I’m his half-sister, Mr Fortune. Me and my sister Dorothy are Macphersons, Mum’s proper children after she got married.’

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘Dad’s dead. They caught him in the war.’

  ‘I’m sorry …’

  ‘Arthur, you see …’ (she looked modest as she spoke, though I wasn’t sure if it was felt or acted) ‘… Arthur was Mum’s mistake before she met our dad.’

  ‘And Arthur: where is he?’

  ‘In jail.’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘He’s always in and out of jail.’

  ‘Oh. For what?’

  ‘Thieving and suchlike.’

  She stood and fiddled with the table-cloth frillings, then said to me: ‘And didn’t your father know about Arthur, and all the trouble Mum’s had with him for more than twenty years?’

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t.’

  But I began to wonder.

  After a polite and careful pause, I said, ‘Then Muriel, you and me are almost relatives, I’d say. We’re half-half-brother and sister, or something of that kind.’

  She laughed at this. ‘We’re not real relations, Johnny. But Arthur is a link between us, I suppose …’ Then she looked up at me and said, ‘But do be careful what you say to Mother. She hates all coloured people now.’

  ‘On account of my dad and Arthur?’

  ‘Not only that. There’s Dorothy – my elder sister, Dorothy.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘She lives with a coloured boy. He’s taken her away.’

  ‘To marry?’

  ‘No … He’s a Gambian.’

  ‘Oh, those Gambians! Nigerians, of course, are friendly folks, and Gold Coast boys respectable often, too. But Gambians! Don’t judge us, please, by them …’

  ‘This one’s a devil, anyway,’ she told me. ‘Billy Whispers is his name, and he’s bad, bad, a thoroughly bad man.’

  And now the old lady she came shuffling back. It was clear that she’d been thinking, and maybe refreshing herself a bit as well.

  ‘Is your dad rich?’ she said at once.

  ‘He’s reasonably loaded.’

  ‘In business now?’

  ‘Export and import – he has his ups and downs.’

  She stood right in front of me, nose to chest.

  ‘Well, in return for his greetings, will you ask him please to make me some small return for his running away and leaving me to rear his son?’

  ‘I could write to him, Mrs Macpherson …’

  ‘Can you imagine what it was to rear a coloured child in London twenty years ago? Can you imagine what it’s like for an English girl to marry when she’s got’ (I saw it coming) ‘a bastard nigger child?’

  I made no reply whatever.

  ‘Mother!’ cried Muriel. ‘That’s no way to talk.’

  ‘He’d best know what I think! I could have done better than your father, Muriel, if it hadn’t been for that.’

  ‘Mother!’

  ‘And your sister Dorothy’s going the same way.’

  ‘Oh, Mother!’

  ‘I was a pretty girl when I was young … I could have been rich and happy …’

  And here – as I could see must happen – the lady broke down into her tears. I understood the way she felt, indeed I did, yet why do these women always blame the man? I’m sure Dad didn’t rape her, and however young she was, she must have known a number of the facts of life …

  Little Muriel was easing her off into a bedroom. When she came out again, I said to her, ‘Well, perhaps I should go away just now, Muriel. I’ll write to my dad much as your mum requests …’

  ‘Stay and drink up your tea, Johnny.’

  We sat there sipping on the dregs, till I said, ‘What do you do for a living, Muriel?’

  ‘I work in a tailor’s, Johnny. East End, they’re Jews. Cutting up shirts …’

  ‘You like that occupation?’

  ‘No … But it helps out.’

  ‘Don’t you have fun sometimes? Go dancing?’

  ‘Not often …’

  And here I saw she looked down at her hand.

  ‘You hurt yourself?’ I said.

  She looked up and shook her head.

  ‘We must go out together one day, if you like to come with me,’ I said to her.

  She smiled.

  ‘Next Saturday, say? Before I start out on my studies?’

  She shook her head once more.

  ‘Now listen, Muriel. You’ve got no colour prejudice, I hope …’

  ‘No, no, Johnny. Not at all. But you’d be dull with me. I don’t dance, you see.’

  ‘Don’t dance? Is there any little girl don’t dance? Well, I will teach you.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Of course I will, Muriel. I’ll teach you the basic foundations in one evening. Real bop steps, and jive, and all.’

  Here she surprised me, this shy, rather skinny little chick, by reaching out quite easily and giving me a full kiss on the cheek.

  ‘Johnny,’ she said. ‘There’s one thing you could do for me … Which is to get me news of my sister Dorothy. Because she hasn’t been here or written for over a month, and I don’t like to go out and see her south side of the Thames in Brixton, on account of that Billy Whispers.’

  ‘Just give me the address, and I’ll go see.’

  ‘It’s a house full of coloured men and English girls.’

  ‘Just give me the address, will you, Muriel, and I’ll go out that way immediately. I want to get to know the various areas of this city, if it’s going to be my own.’

  5

&nbs
p; Encounter with Billy Whispers

  This Brixton house stood all by itself among ruins of what I suppose was wartime damages, much like one tooth left sticking in an old man’s jaw.

  Now what was curious to me was this. As I approached it, I could clearly see persons standing by the upper windows, and even hear voices and the sound of a radiogram. But when I knocked on the front door of it, no one came down however long I continued on. So I walked all round this building and looked over the very broken garden wall.

  There I saw a quite surprising sight: which was a tall Spade – very tall – standing in a broken greenhouse, watering plants. Now Spades do garden – it wasn’t that – but not ones dressed up like he was, fit to kill: pink slacks, tartan silk outside-hanging shirt, all freshly pressed and laundered.

  ‘What say, man?’ I called out to him. ‘Do you know Billy Whispers?’

  Here he spun round.

  ‘Who you?’

  ‘Fortune from Lagos, mister. A friend of Mr Whispers’ lady’s family.’

  As this man came out of the greenhouse, wiping his hands, I saw by the weaving, sliding way he walked towards me that he was a boxer. Round about his neck he wore a silver chain, another on each wrist, and his face had a ‘better be careful or I slap you down’ expression.

  I waited smiling for him.

  ‘Mr Whispers,’ he said, ‘is not at home to strangers.’

  ‘His lady is?’

  ‘What’s she mean to you?’

  ‘I have a message for her.’

  At this I vaulted, like in gymnasium, over the wall, and went leisurely across to meet him.

  ‘Haven’t I seen,’ I said to him, ‘your photo in the newspapers?’

  Now he looked proud and pleased, and said to me, ‘I’m Jimmy Cannibal.’

  ‘I thought you was. Light-heavy champion till they stole your legitimate title just a year ago?’ (But as is well known, this Jimmy Cannibal lost it on a foul.)

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘You growing tomatoes?’ I asked him, pointing to his greenhouse.

  But he looked fierce again and shook his head.

  ‘What, then?’ and I started over.

  He gripped me by my shoulder and spun me round. But not before I’d seen what plant it was in flower-pots inside there.

  ‘Keep your nose out, Mr Nigeria,’ he said.