City of Spades Read online

  So strong was he, I saw I’d better fight him with my brains.

  ‘It’s smoking weed,’ I said. ‘You give me some perhaps?’

  ‘You blow your top too much, Mr Stranger.’

  We stood there on the very edge of combat. But just then I heard a window scraping and, looking up, I saw a face there staring down at us: a mask of ebony, it seemed to me from there. This face talked to Jimmy Cannibal in some Gambian tongue, and then said to me, ‘You may come up.’

  As we both climbed the stairs (this Cannibal behind me breathing hot upon my neck), I got the feeling every room was occupied by hearing voices, men’s and women’s, and sometimes the click of dice.

  On a landing Cannibal edged past me, put his head round the door, then waved me in. He didn’t come inside himself, but stood out there on the landing, lurking.

  This Billy Whispers was a short man with broad shoulders and longer arms than even is usual with us. Elegantly dressed but quite respectable, as if on Sundays, and with a cool, cold face that gazed at me without fear or favour.

  ‘You come inside?’ he said. ‘Or do you prefer to stand there encouraging draughts?’

  ‘I’m Fortune,’ I said, ‘from Lagos.’

  ‘I know a lot of Lagos boys.’

  ‘You’re Gambian, they tell me. Bathurst?’

  He nodded at me and said, ‘My friend was telling me of your interest in my greenhouse.’

  ‘I saw you grew charge out there …’

  ‘You want to smoke some?’

  ‘Well, I don’t mind. I used up all I had on the trip over …’

  ‘I’ll roll you a stick,’ this Billy Whispers said.

  I sat on the bed, feeling pleased at the chance of blowing hay once more. For much as I care for alcoholic drinks of many kinds, my greatest enjoyment, ever since when a boy, is in charging with weed. Because without it, however good I feel, I’m never really on the top of my inspiration.

  Meanwhile this Billy took out two cigarette-papers, and joined them together by the tongue. He peeled and broke down a piece of the ordinary fag he held between his lips, and then, from a brown-paper pack in a jar above the fireplace (a large pack, I noticed), he sprinkled a generous dose of the weed in the papers and began rolling and licking, easing the two ends of the stick into position with a match.

  ‘But tell me,’ I said, ‘if it’s not enquiring. You didn’t grow all that hemp you have from outside in your greenhouse?’

  ‘No, no. Is an experiment I’m making, to grow it myself from seed.’

  ‘Otherwise you buy it?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You can get that stuff easy here?’

  ‘It can be got … Most things can be got in London when you know your way around.’

  He gave the weed a final tender lick and roll, and handed it me by the thin inhaling end.

  ‘And the Law,’ I said. ‘What do they have to say about consuming weed?’

  ‘What they say is fifteen- or twenty-pound fine if you’re caught. Jail on the second occasion.’

  ‘Man! Why, these Jumbles have no pity!’

  At which I lit up, took a deep drag, well down past the throat, holding the smoke in my lungs with little sharp sniffs to stop the valuable gust escaping. When I blew out, after a heavy interval, I said to him, ‘Good stuff. And what do they make you pay for a stick here?’

  ‘Retail, in small sticks, half a crown.’

  ‘And wholesale?’

  ‘Wholesale? For that you have to find your own supplier and make your personal arrangement.’

  I took one more deep drag.

  ‘You know such a supplier?’ I enquired.

  ‘Of course … I know of several …’

  ‘You don’t deal in this stuff personal, by any possible chance?’

  Here Billy Whispers joined his two hands, wearing on each one a big coloured jewel.

  ‘Mister,’ he said, ‘I think these are questions that you don’t ask on so early an acquaintance.’

  Which was true, so I smiled at him and handed him over the weed for his turn to take his drag on it.

  He did this, and after some time in silence he blew on the smouldering end of the weed and said to me, ‘And what is it, Fortune, I can do for you here?’

  ‘I’m Dorothy’s half-half-brother.’

  ‘What say?’

  ‘Arthur, her brother, is my brother too.’ And I explained.

  ‘But Dorothy she not know you,’ he said to me. ‘Never she’s spoken to me about you.’

  Then I explained some more.

  ‘If that old lady or her sister’s worried about Dorothy,’ he said at last, ‘just tell them to stop worrying because she’s happy here with me, and will do just what I tell her.’

  ‘Could I speak with her, perhaps?’

  ‘No, man. You could not.’

  At this state of our interview, the door was opened and into the room came a short little fattish boy, all smiles and gesticulation, of a type that beats my time: that is, the Spade who’s always acting Spadish, so as to make the Jumbles think we’re more cool crazy than we are, but usually for some darker purpose to deceive them. But why play this game of his with me?

  ‘Hullo, hullo, man,’ he cried to me, grasping at both my hands. ‘I ain’t seen you around before … Shake hands with me, my name is Mr Ronson Lighter.’ And he let off his silly sambo laugh.

  I said, ‘What say?’ unsmilingly, and freed my hands. ‘What say, Mr Ronson Lighter. Did your own mother give you that peculiar name?’

  He giggled like a crazy girl.

  ‘No, no, no, mister, is my London name, on account of my well-known strong desire to own these things.’

  And out of each side coat pocket he took a lighter, and sparkled the pair of them underneath my eyes.

  Still not smiling, I got up on my feet.

  And as I did – smack! Up in my head I got a very powerful kick from that hot weed which I’d been smoking. A kick like you get from superior Congo stuff, that takes your brain and wraps it up and throws it all away, and yet leaves your thoughts inside it sharp and clear: that makes all your legs and arms and body seem like if jet propelled without any tiring effort whatsoever.

  But I watched these two, Billy Whispers and this Mr Ronson Lighter, as they talked in their barbarian Gambian language. I didn’t understand no word, but sometimes I heard the name of ‘Dorothy’.

  So I broke in.

  ‘I’d like to speak to her, Billy, just a moment, if you really wouldn’t mind.’

  They both looked up, and this Mr Ronson Lighter came dancing across and laid his hand upon my head.

  ‘Mister,’ he said, ‘that’s a real Bushman hair-style that you’ve got. Right out of the Africa jungle.’

  ‘You got any suggestions for improving it?’ I said, not moving much.

  ‘Why, yes. Why don’t you have it beautifully cut like mine?’

  His own was brushed flat and low across his forehead, sticking out far in front of his eyes as if it was a cap that he had on.

  ‘I’ll tell you of my own personal hairdresser,’ he said. ‘The only man in town who cuts our fine hair quite properly. He’ll take off your Bushman’s head-dress,’ and he messed up my hair again.

  ‘But possibly your hair’s so elegant because you wear a wig,’ I said to him. And taking two handfuls of his hair, I lifted him one foot off the floor.

  He yelled, and in came Jimmy Cannibal, making a sandwich of me between the two of them.

  ‘Mr Whispers,’ I said, easing out as best I could, ‘I don’t like familiarity from strangers. Can you tell that, please, to these two countrymen of yours?’

  Billy was smiling for the first time. He had some broad gaps between all his short teeth, I saw, and pale blue gums.

  I was planning perhaps to leap out through the window when the door opened yet once more, and there stood a girl that by her body’s shape and looks was quite likely to be Muriel’s sister. But what a difference from the little chick! Smart
clothes – or what she thought was smart – bleached hair, and a look on her face like a bar-fly seeking everywhere hard for trade.

  ‘What’s all the commotion?’ she enquired.

  ‘Get out to work, Dorothy,’ said Billy Whispers.

  ‘Oh, I’m going, Billy.’

  ‘Then move.’

  She leant on one hip, and held out her crimson hand.

  ‘I want a taxi fare,’ she said. ‘And money to buy some you-know-whats.’

  Whispers threw her a folded note and said, ‘Now go.’

  Still she stood looking what she thought was glamorous, and it’s true that, in a way, it was. And me still between these two bodyguards, both of them waiting to eliminate me.

  ‘You’re a nice boy,’ she said to me. ‘Where you from – Gambia too?’

  Billy got up, strolled over and slapped her. She screamed out louder than the blow was worth, and he slapped her again harder, so she stopped. ‘Now go,’ he said to her again. ‘And see that your evening’s profitable.’

  She disappeared out with a high-heel clatter. I slipped away from among the two bad boys and took Mr Billy by the arm.

  ‘Billy Whispers,’ I said, ‘do you want a scene with me too here in your bedroom?’

  He looked at my eyes and through beyond them, adding up, I suppose, what damage I’d do to any life, limb or furniture, before I was myself destroyed.

  ‘Is not necessary,’ he said, ‘unless you think it is.’

  ‘By nature I’m peaceable. I like my life.’

  ‘Then shoot off, Mr Fortune, now …’

  The two started muttering and limbering, but he frowned at them only, and they heaved away from me.

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Whispers,’ I said. ‘I dare say we’ll meet soon once again, when I’ll offer you some hospitality of mine at that future time.’

  ‘Is always possible, man,’ he answered, ‘that you and I might cross our paths some more in this big city.’

  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.