City of Spades (14 page)

‘There are the Haitian boys, the drummers,’ Larry said. ‘That’s Hercule La Bataille who’s trying to seduce you, and Hippolyte Dieudonné is this one here.’

I greeted them, disengaging myself with difficulty from the encircling arms.

‘These boys,’ said Larry, ‘will be doing their bit of voodoo at the party tonight.’

‘I turns you into hen, and eat you,’ said Hercule with an abominable smile.

Hippolyte was expressionless, but gave six sharp taps on one of his drums.

‘You turn this Limey into a hen, and I slit your throat,’ said Larry, suddenly producing an enormous knife from inside his clothing, and brandishing it (though sheathed) before the faces of the Caribbeans.

‘Larry, do be careful,’ I cried out. ‘Why on earth do you carry that dreadful weapon?’

‘I’m never without my knife,’ said Larry. ‘Not in any circumstance whatsoever.’

The price Miss Theodora made me pay for that twenty pounds she gave me at the radio corporation building was quite heavy: it was to take me that selfsame evening to a theatre, and show me a play by a French man about nothing I could get my brain to climb around. At a coffee, in the interval (for this theatre had no liquor in its sad bar), I said, ‘Miss Theodora, I know this kind of entertainment is suitable for my improvement, but don’t you think we could now step out into the air?’

‘I did hope you’d like it, Johnny.’

‘Quite over my comprehension, Theodora. Please – can’t we go?’

I could see she was sad that I didn’t rise up to her educational expectancies; but to hell with that, and by some violent smiles I managed to get her up into the street away from that bad place. For compensation of
her feelings, I took her by the hand and pressed and rubbed it nicely as we walked along the paving-stones. Then what should I hear, rising up from underneath my feet, but the sound of real authentic African song and drumming. A door said, ‘The Beni Bronze’, and I pulled Miss Theodora down the steps before she quite knew what.

Just think of my pleasure when I found it was a genuine, five-drum combination, and hardly had I parked Miss Theodora on a seat beside the bar when I stepped across the floor through all the dancers and asked the band leader (who was bald on his head as any ostrich egg) if I could sit in at the bongos for a moment, at which I am quite a product. He gave his permission with a weary smile, and I asked the young bongo player, as I wedged his sweet instrument between my thighs, what this leader’s name was. ‘Cuthbertson,’ this boy said. ‘Generally called Cranium.’

I think to their surprise my performance gave some pleasure, and as soon as we’d ended I asked this Mr Cranium to come over to the bar. Theodora, I could see, was not very glad at the use I was making of the wad of notes she’d given me, and tried some attempt to pay herself, which I soon avoided. (I do hate those women fishing in their handbags. No woman will ever pay a drink for me – unless I hold her money for her beforehand.)

‘And how is our African style appreciated in this country?’ I enquired of Mr Cuthbertson.

‘Just little,’ he replied with sorrow. ‘Only our people
like it, and some few white; but West Indians and Americans – well, they like something less artistic and dynamic.’

‘So you’ve not done so well in England, Mr Cranium?’

‘I tell you something, Mr Man. Before I leave home five years ago, I dream that one day I have a lovely wife, three lovely children and a lot of money.’ Here he pulled out some snapshots from his hip. ‘Well, I got the lovely wife, the beautiful children too, as you can see, but, man, that loot just fails to come my way.’

This gave me a wonderful idea.

‘What you require,’ I said to Cranium, ‘is contacts in the highest type of Jumble high-life. Well, tonight this lady here and I are going to a most special voodoo party, and why don’t you come along with us and play some numbers that will win you good engagements?’

Cuthbertson thought this was a rare idea, full of brilliant possibilities; but Theodora was not pleased to hear I planned to take her to a party without asking her approval. As I waited for the club to close, I had to surmount all her oppositions by pouring gins in heavy sequence down her throat.

The address that Tamberlaine the West Indian had given me was in the fashionable area of that Marble Arch: but there’s fashion and there’s fashion, and none of us quite expected such a glorious block of similar flats. The doorman examined our little group, especially Cranium’s combination, carrying their instruments, and would possibly have been an obstacle if Theodora (who has just that haughty way some Jumble ladies use
back home to drive our people mad with hatred) hadn’t kicked him round the hallway with her tongue, and got us all into a lift built to hold only five. The boys rubbed up against her in their gratitude for her display.

‘Who is our host, Johnny?’ she asked me.

‘Theodora, if only I knew that!’

But no need to worry. It was that kind of party that once you’re there, and look glamorous or in some way particular, they welcome you with happiness and push a bottle in your hand. As soon as they’d tanked themselves up a bit, the boys led by Cranium went into action, and Tamberlaine got hold of me to introduce me to our host.

‘This man’s a counsel in the courts of law,’ he told me, ‘called Mr Wesley Vial. Observe his appearance – like an eagle. Very precarious to be his victim in the dock, man, but full of charm and generosity as a hostess.’

‘A hostess, Tamberlaine?’

‘Well, you understand me, man.’

Mr Vial was fat, too fat, his flesh was coloured cream, his eyes sharp green, his hands most hairy and his feet small as any child’s. He wore a pleated shirt that was some shirt, and when he shook my hand he held it up and looked at it like it was some precious diamond.

‘You’ve lovely fingernails,’ he said.

‘My toenails also have been much admired,’ I told him.

‘You’re a witty boy as well as handsome. Now I do like that!’

The other guests of Mr Vial’s were strange and fanciful – the whites very richly dressed, whether men
or women, and the coloured so splendid I guessed they’d be Americans in show business at least. And this I soon learnt was so, when Larry the GI appeared with some of this star material from the bathroom. ‘Huntley,’ he said, ‘is going to act a dance.’ And out came a naked boy wrapped round with toilet paper, who pranced among the guests and furniture, which most seemed delighted by – not me. These Americans!

A fierce voice said into my ear, ‘Now listen, Johnny! Why have you brought Theodora here?’

This was Montgomery, bursting with fire and indignation.

‘Monty,’ he said, ‘you really must cease to act the elder brother to me. I have one already, called Mr Christmas Fortune.’

‘Don’t call me “Monty”.’

‘Then what is all this, please, Mr Montgomery?’

‘You’re playing on Theodora’s feelings to no purpose.’

‘Well, if you say so, man.’

‘And sponging on her too, for all I know.’

‘Man,’ said Johnny sullenly, ‘you beat my time. What can I say to calm your interference?’

‘And please,’ I went desperately on, ‘don’t use those awful English phrases they taught you in Lagos high school.’

‘Lagos high,’ he said, ‘is maybe better than is Birmingham low.’

‘I must warn you, Johnny, if you trifle with Theodora, I’ll take steps.’

‘Oh, you win, man. What is it you’ll do to me – you make me one dead duck?’

And away he went, indifferent and debonair, to rejoin Theodora, who, crouched like a flamingo on a cushion, was holding a little court of coloured boys lying round her, relaxed, inquisitive and amused. She was treating them to a display of mental pyrotechnics which delighted them as an athletic performance, however little note they took of what she said. And though her questions and observations were outrageous, they took no offence because they recognised in Theodora what I had never thought her to be – a natural.

Her chief interlocutor was a bland West Indian called Tamberlaine, who said:

‘Oh, calm you English are, certainly, Miss Theodora, like a corpse is, and reliable, as you say; but always reliable for what no man could desire: like making sure he pays his income tax instalments highly punctually.’

‘But what you haven’t got,’ said Norbert Salt (reluctant to see this West Indian steal his American thunder), ‘is the social graces and spontaneous conduct we’re renowned for. Also,’ he said, rising to his feet and clasping Moscow Gentry by the hands, ‘you’ve not got our glorious beauty. See now, what a beautiful race we are!’

The pair posed in an arabesque, like the bronze group above the entrance to some splendid building.

‘I’d like also to rebuke you, if you’ll permit me,’ Tamberlaine went on, his voice rising higher to attract eyes from the arabesque, ‘for the peculiar observations you English make to we people in public houses, omnibuses, and elsewhere.’

‘For instance?’ said Theodora, resolutely impartial, her spectacles aglint.

Tamberlaine ran to the door, and reappeared wearing a bowler hat and an umbrella. ‘Now I shall show you,’ he announced, ‘a conversation between myself and some kind English gentleman. This gentleman, he say to me,’ (Tamberlaine’s accent became the oddest mixture of West Indian and deep Surrey) ‘“I do envy you fellows your wonderful teeth.” To which I reply in my mind, if not with my voice,’ (Tamberlaine removed the bowler), ‘“Well, sir, me don’t envy you your yellow horse-fangs, and if you look clearly down my throat, you’ll see most of me back ones anyway is gold.”’

The performance was applauded. ‘Go on,’ said Theodora, seemingly unmoved.

‘Or else,’ Tamberlaine continued, ‘he come up to me and say,’ (bowler on) ‘“Don’t you miss the hot weather over here?”’

‘Oh, no, man, no, not that familiar saying!’ cried several voices.

‘Sometimes,’ the West Indian dramatist proceeded, ‘this Englishman is a more serious person, with a feeling of sorrow for past wrongs committed. In this case, he will raise his hat to me and say, “I think, sir, that conditions in the Union of South Africa are a scandal.” To which I inwardly reply, “Then please go there and tell Mr Strijdom of your sentiments.” Or else he will look very sad and sorrowful and tell me, “You may find, sir, that there is sometimes a certain prejudice in England, but believe me, sir, that some of us are just as worried about it as you.”’

Laughter and renewed applause.

‘Let me tell you,’ cried Norbert, snatching the stage from Tamberlaine, ‘what’s the craziest thing of all they say. Is this.’ He wheeled, returned with a mincing step, torso rigid, legs flaying like mad stilts, stopped dead, and said, ‘“I like coloured people, myself.”’

‘That one,’ said Moscow Gentry, ‘wins top prize for pure impossibility.’

Theodora was displeased: even saddened, I thought, as if at last minding more for generosity than for justice.

‘You’re all very unfair,’ she said. ‘You must remember our people often mean well, and are only shy. Often they
do
like you, and want to help you if they can, but just don’t know how to tell you.’

Tamberlaine looked slightly vicious: he no doubt felt he’d got her on the run.

‘Well, lady,’ he said, ‘all that may be. But please remember this. We’re not interested in what your kind ideas about us are, but chiefly in your personal behaviour. We even prefer the man who doesn’t want to help us, but is nice and easy with us, to one who wants to lecture us for our benefit.’

There was a loud clap of a pair of hands. Mr Vial stood on an occasional table in the middle of the room, supported round the hips by willing hands of manicured white guests and long Caribbean fingers.

‘Miss Isabel Cornwallis,’ he announced, ‘has telephoned to say she can’t be with us.’ There were polite, disappointed cries of ‘Ah!’ Mr Vial hung his head as if dejected; then, raising it up, with a bald, beaming glare, he cried, ‘But the voodoo will take place all the same!’

The lights went out.

A hand took mine. ‘It’s all right, hon’,’ the voice said. ‘I’m Louisiana.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘You’ll see. Sit down here. Cornwallis never meant to come – this party’s not up to her degree of expectation.’

‘How does she know it’s not?’

‘I called her up at her hotel to say so. I’m her spy, you see, in the company. I keep her informed of what’s going on.’

An anglepoise lamp, operated by the dim, green cheeks of Mr Vial, shone on the naked torso of the dancer Jupiter, who stood immobile. Hercule La Bataille and Hippolyte Dieudonné entered, carrying what looked to be a cat in a waste-paper basket. The two Haitians knelt on either side of the basket (which they had upended, cat inside), and, with Jupiter towering motionless above, began chanting. It was wonderful to look at for a while, but it went on, and on, and on, and on, and on. The white guests, and even the West Indians, became restive. A Caribbean voice said, ‘When you going to slay this pussy, now, man? We want some whisky down our throats.’ Unmoved, the Haitians chanted. ‘It usually lasts an hour,’ Louisiana whispered, ‘before they kill the animal.’ Really, I thought! Even for the sake of higher mysteries, I can’t allow that; and was about to do something inelegant and British, when I was anticipated by Theodora, who strode briskly from the floor, seized cat and basket from between the Haitians, and stumbled off into the gloom.

The three performers looked nonplussed and shocked. The lights came on, and our host Mr Vial, his face really
‘distorted with fury’, as they say, cried out, ‘What does that bitch think she’s doing?’

‘She ain’t no bitch, she’s my lady,’ said Johnny Fortune. ‘Is me who bring her here.’

‘You little bastard,’ said Mr Vial.

Johnny reached up and pulled the knot of Mr Vial’s blue bow tie undone. ‘You sure you not say, “little
black
bastard”?’ he asked the lawyer mildly.

Mr Vial bulldozed his face into a smile. ‘Just little bastard,’ he said gently.

‘Oh, well, I’m legitimate, so there must be some mistake,’ said Johnny. ‘I see you again some day soon, my mister.’ He followed Theodora out of the room.

There was a pause in the proceedings, and a certain amount of hard looks and shuffling. ‘I guess everyone,’ said Larry the GI, ‘is behaving most peculiar. Why don’t we put on some discs and dance?’

I found myself sitting next to the star performer Huntley, who had removed the lavatory paper he had pranced in, and attired himself, instead, in a pair of Austrian
lederhosen
he had found in his host’s bedroom. ‘These niggers,’ he said. ‘It’s always the same when you have them at a party.’

‘But, excuse me, you …’

‘Oh, I work in a coloured company, sure, and half of me belongs to them, I guess, but they’re just so dreadful! So hopeless, so dreadful! There’s always this confusion whenever they’re around. Man, they can’t even
work
– and I should know, I’m their ballet master. “Work like niggers” – whoever thought up that one?’ He drank a glass of neat
whisky and arose. ‘I just can’t bear them,’ he said. ‘I’m going back to sleep at my hotel. I’ve bought me a marmoset here in this city, and it’s better company to me than they are.’

The party, it seemed to me, was deteriorating. I rose to go also, but was overtaken by Norbert Salt and his friend Moscow Gentry.

‘Moscow and I,’ said Norbert, ‘have been thinking. And what we think is, it would be cheaper for us if instead of spending money at our hotel, we moved in with you. Now, you’ve got an apartment, haven’t you?’

‘That is, if it’s not too far out from the city centre,’ said Moscow Gentry.

I handed them the keys. ‘If I ring the bell,’ I said, ‘I hope you’ll be kind enough to let me in.’

‘Oh, sure.’

‘And thanks.’

In the hall there was a white boy in a barman’s jacket, reading an evening paper and sipping a glass of wine. He looked up.

‘I think I’ve seen you earlier,’ he said.

‘Yes? I don’t remember.’

‘My name’s Alfy Bongo.’

‘I don’t remember you.’

‘I work here for Mr Vial on special evenings,’ said this person, taking me with two fingers by the arm. ‘He’s a very much nicer man than you might think.’

‘And so, I’m sure, are you,’ I said to Alfy Bongo, as I opened the mortice lock of Mr Vial’s front door.