Authors: Colin MacInnes
I saw the conversation wasn’t a success, and apologised to Mr Tamberlaine. ‘I’m just saying what I think – excuse me if it gives offence.’
Mr Tamberlaine smiled politely. ‘Is no offence, man. You say what’s in your mind, and that’s your liberty. What’s certain, anyway, is that we’re different, Africans and we. We don’t mix much, except when we stand shoulder to shoulder against the white.’
He got up, put on his tailored duffel coat, and said, ‘Now I must get out in the cold and do me pimpin’. You’re not interested in anything I have to offer, I suppose?’
‘Such as what, Mr Tamberlaine?’
‘A little coloured lady for you? You go with her, and add to your education of these different races.’
‘All right. Is it far?’
‘We go down Brixton way, man, and see there. I hope you have money for the taxi, there’s no all-night bus.’
Tamberlaine was bored and silent on the journey, except for occasional altercations with the taxi driver, to whom he gave a succession of imprecise addresses (‘take us just by that football ground, that’s by that Tube station, cabby, and then I’ll tell you …’). We reached the area of chain-store windows, parks fit for violations, and squat overhanging railway bridges, all bathed in a livid phosphorescent glare, when Tamberlaine rapped the glass and shouted, ‘Here now! Here!’, as if the driver should have known our final destination. Tamberlaine strolled away, leaving me to settle, while the driver exhaled his spleen. ‘These darkies should go back home,’ he said, ‘and never have come here in the first place.’
‘They tip well, don’t they?’
‘Either they do, or they run off without paying. But it’s the way they speak to you. Calling me “cabby”!’
Tamberlaine had turned a corner, and I followed him into a tottering street of late-Victorian houses, where lights, despite the lateness of the hour, were shining through many a green or crimson curtain. ‘This is your London Harlem,’ he said to me. ‘Our Caribbean home from home. We try this one,’ and he climbed some chipped steps beneath a portico, knocked loud, and rang.
A head and shoulders protruded from above. ‘Is Tamberlaine,’ he shouted. ‘Gloria, is she there?’
‘No, man. Is here, but not available.’
‘Aurora, now, is she there?’
‘No, man. You come too late to see her.’
We tried at several other houses, without success, till the vexation of a wounded professional pride was heard in Tamberlaine’s voice. ‘Is nothing more to do,’ he said, ‘but go back to the north of London – unless you don’t fear to call upon an African, which after what you say, you shouldn’t.’
‘If you don’t, why should I?’
‘This house is one of Billy Whispers’, who’s the devil.’
‘Oh, I know him.’
‘You do, now?’ Tamberlaine seemed mildly impressed. ‘Come, then, let we go.’
It started to snow, and my West Indian Mercury pulled the hood of his duffel up over his head, drove his hands deep in the pockets, and walked on just in front of me, like some Arctic explorer heading resolutely for the Pole. After twists and turns, of which he gave no warning, we reached a bombed lot with some wreckage of buildings on it. Tamberlaine plunged down the area steps, and
beat with his fingertips on the window. A voice cried, ‘Say who!’, and when he did, Mr Tamberlaine walked inside, and left me standing there.
After five minutes of waiting in the area, and five more strolling round the street outside, I decided to call it a day, and started off up the street. But steps came running after me. I heard a cry of ‘Hey, man!’, and turned to see not Tamberlaine, but Mr Ronson Lighter. He shook hands, caught me by the sleeve, and said, ‘Is all right, you can come. There is a party to celebrate one boy come out of prison, but Billy say you welcome when you come.’
We climbed two floors into a large room, festively crowded, that overlooked the street. Ronson dragged me to a buffet where, under the watchful eyes of a bodyguard of three, stood piles of bottles in disarray, and plates of uninviting sandwiches. ‘Give this man drink,’ said Ronson. ‘Is Billy say so.’ One bodyguard, aloof until these words, poured out a beer glass full of whisky.
Some of the guests I knew by sight, and others even better still: there were Johnny’s former landlord, ‘Nat King’ Cole, and the African youth, Tondapo, with whom he’d quarrelled at the Sphere, and little Barbara, the half-caste girl of the memorable evening at the Moonbeam club; and also a contingent from Mr Vial’s disrupted party, among them Mr Cranium Cuthbertson and his musicians, and the dubious Alfy Bongo. Arthur was there, strolling from group to group unwelcome, with his restless smiles; and enthroned on a divan, surrounded by fierce eager faces, his handsome, debauched half-sister Dorothy. Alone by the fire, as if
a guest at his own entertainment, was Billy Whispers; and Mr Tamberlaine, like a suppliant at the levee of the paramount chief, was deep in conversation with him.
Mr Ronson Lighter led me over. ‘Good evening, Mr Whispers,’ I said, raising my voice above the clamour. ‘It’s very kind of you to ask me in.’
‘My party is for this boy,’ said Billy Whispers, pointing with glass in hand to a huge and handsome African, who positively dripped and oozed with mindless masculine animal magnetism and natural villainy, and who now was dancing, proud and sedate, round the room with Dorothy.
‘He came out yesterday,’ said Tamberlaine. ‘This is his homecoming among his people, but the boy is sore. His girl was not true to him while he was away; but as you can see, he’s a type of boy who soon will find another.’
Billy Whispers was looking at me closely: with those eyes which fastened on your own like grappling-hooks, and lured and absorbed your psyche into the indifferent, uncensorious depths of his own malignancy. ‘Tamberlaine say to me,’ he remarked, ‘that earlier you see Jimmy Cannibal.’
‘Yes. There was a fight at Mr Obo-King’s.’
‘You see who fight him?’ asked Ronson Lighter, with an excess of indifference.
‘No. Do you know who it was?’
‘I? Why should I know?’
‘You not tell nobody you see this?’ said Billy Whispers.
‘No, not yet.’
‘Is true, I hope.’
There was a crack like a plate breaking, and a yell. Whispers went over to a group. Someone was hustled out. ‘To fight at a sociable gathering,’ said Mr Tamberlaine, ‘is so uncivilised.’
Dorothy stood in front of me, posturing like someone in a historic German film. ‘Hullo there, stranger,’ she said. ‘Long time no see. How is my little sister Muriel and her boyfriend?’ I smiled at her, and didn’t answer. ‘Oh, snooty,’ she said. ‘Sarcastic and superior,’ and she stalked off in a garish blaze of glory.
During this conversation, I saw Alfy Bongo eyeing me in his equivocal way: with all the appearance of deviousness and cunning, yet openly enough to let you see he knew you realised he was up to something. He sidled over and said, ‘We meet again, Mr Montgomery Pew. Two fishes in the troubled water.’
He sat down beside me. ‘The rumour about me with those who just don’t know,’ he went on, as if aggrieved (and I’d aggrieved him), ‘is that I’m working for the coppers: a nark, like. But do you really think these boys would let me come here if they thought that lie was true?’
‘How should I know?’
‘The Spades trust me, see? They trust the little queer boy because we’re both minorities.’
‘How old are you?’ I asked him.
‘Seventeen.’
‘You’re much too old for your age.’
He sighed and smiled, and looked at me appealingly. ‘I’ve had so hard a life – if you but knew! I was brought up by the Spades – did you know that?’
‘No.’
‘Yes, by them. Fact. I was an orphan, see, and brought up by Mr Obo-King.’
‘Is this true, or are you making it all up?’
‘Why should I lie to you – what’s the advantage? Yes, by Obo-King I was brought up, till I set out on my own.’ He looked sad, and wizened, and resigned. ‘It’s all the same,’ he said, ‘if you don’t believe me. I do odd jobs for Mr Vial and other gentleman, that’s what I do. Make contacts for them that they need among the Spades.’
‘Why bother to tell me?’
He sighed again. ‘You’re suspicious of me – why?’ he said archly. ‘Anyway, I’ll do you one favour, all the same. You’d better be going, because there’s trouble in store tonight for someone.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, you
do
want to know?’ He rose, assumed a bogus American stance and speech and said, ‘Stick around, man, and you’ll see.’
A complete stranger, wearing a dark-blue suit and spectacles, said, ‘Come now, sir. She wait for you, Miss Barbara. Come now with me.’
I followed him to the next floor, where he opened a door with a polite inclination, and shut it after me. Barbara was sitting by a gas fire, reading a ‘true story’ magazine. ‘Oh, hi,’ she said, finished a paragraph, then went on, ‘Tamberlaine said you want to talk with me.’
‘That’s right, Barbara.’ I sat down too.
‘Do you ever read these things?’ she said, handing me
the book. ‘But they don’t know nothing about life as it really is.’
‘They say truth is stranger than fiction, don’t they.’
‘Eh? All I know is, if you’ve been a kid like me in Cardiff, and seen what I seen, there’d be more to tell than you could put in any
book
. I just haven’t had the life at all. Everyone uses me, white like coloured. If you’re Butetown born, down Tiger Bay, your only hope is show business, or boxing if you’re a boy. But me, I can’t even sing a note straight.’ She got up. ‘Well, shall we get on with it? I don’t want to miss the party.’ She began taking clothes off in an indifferent, casual way. ‘Yes,’ she went on, ‘my only hope is to marry me a GI, and get right out of this. Or maybe a white boy if he has some
position
, that’s what I want, a
position
. I’m sick of these hustlers with their easy money! And do you know – I couldn’t tell you who my dad is, even if you asked? Even my mum don’t know, or so she says, can you believe it? Can you imagine? Not even to know who it was created you? Why do you leave your socks on last? It makes you look funny.’
‘The linoleum’s cold.’
Billy Whispers and Ronson Lighter came, without knocking, into the room. ‘Go out now, Barbara,’ said Ronson. ‘We talk to this man alone.’
‘But I’m not dressed.’
‘Dress yourself on the landing, out the door. Go, now.’
I began putting clothes on too, but Ronson Lighter snatched away the essential garments, and sat on them on the bed. ‘Just wait now a minute,’ he said. ‘We want to talk with you.’
‘You’re always pinching things, Ronson Lighter. One day somebody will hit you.’
‘Like you will, perhaps?’
I’d noticed a kettle on the gas fire. I edged nearer.
‘We give these clothes back when you speak us what you know,’ said Billy Whispers.
‘Don’t be so
African
, Billy. You’re so bloody cunning you’ll fall over yourself.’
With which I grabbed the kettle and flung it at Ronson Lighter. It missed, but drenched him splendidly in scalding steam. He yelled, and held his eyes. Billy Whispers lowered his head and butted me in the stomach, which was so horribly painful that I grabbed him in the only grip I remembered from gymnasium days, the headlock, twisted his skull violently, and fell with him on the floor. His face was uppermost, and his killer’s eyes glared with a hunger for death that was beyond hatred or cruelty – a look almost pure. I hung on, he seized me in the most vulnerable parts. I howled: then suddenly he let go, when fingers were thrust into his throat and nose. I saw beyond the fingers the arms and fierce face of Johnny Fortune. Ronson, prancing with rage and agony, cried, ‘You take the side of this white man? You enemy of your people?’ Johnny increased the pressure. ‘You stop now, Billy? You stop and tell me what is this you think you doing?’
When Billy was near dying, I let him just breathe, but not till he loose his tight hold of Montgomery. I stood back and waited, ready, in case these two Gambians might start some fight again. But all three in the room – Billy and Ronson Lighter and Montgomery – was rubbing themselves silently in different places. ‘Put your clothes on, Montgomery,’ I said. ‘Is never a good choice to fight without your garments.’
These ponces’ celebration parties! Always they end up in struggles. But when I came down from Theodora’s flat to visit Billy and, I thought, do him a favour by my warning, I did not expect to find this sort of battle. Perhaps soon someone would tell me the reasons of this strange argument.
‘I’m glad to see you, Johnny,’ said Montgomery, when he was more clothed. ‘Who told you I was up here?’
‘That Alfy Bongo. So of course I didn’t believe him, but I came upstairs to check, and heard from little Barbara you was here. Will someone now please explain to me?’ I added, giving cigarettes around, for I wished to show what friendship I could to Billy and to Ronson Lighter, and not make them think the white man could rely on me entirely, always, and for everything.
Ronson speak first. ‘This Jumble shop us,’ he cried out. ‘He sell us to the Law, and come here spying the effects.’
‘What
is
all this, Ronson Lighter?’
‘I tell you. Tonight we punish Cannibal in the gamble-house. Is I who do it, with the knife I buy. This Jumble see it, and go tell the Law about me.’
‘So it was you, Ronson,’ said Montgomery.
‘You know was I. Tamberlaine tell us what you see in there.’
‘But I didn’t know it was you with the knife,’ Montgomery said. ‘And I haven’t told anyone about it.’
‘A-ha! Can we believe this word?’ cried Billy Whispers.
‘Whether you do or not, you might have asked me before you both attacked me.’
‘Is you who attack us,’ cried Ronson, ‘with this your kettle.’ He picked it up and waved it fiercely. I took it from him.
‘I do not know,’ I said, ‘what my friend Montgomery see. But that he tell the Law, I don’t believe. If he do that to you, then why he dare come here after?’
‘To spy!’ said Billy. ‘To put the eye on us.’
‘You’s foolish, Billy,’ I said to him. ‘If anyone tell the Law of Ronson, it will be Cannibal.’
‘Cannibal not dare to. He know I end his life if he start yapping.’
‘Ronson try to end his life anyway, man. That takes away his fear of speaking to the Law.’
Billy Whispers looked at me as if a knife was all I was fit for too. ‘Fortune, I know you’s not my friend,’ he said. ‘You never was my friend at any time.’
I looked hard at this Gambian, to show I did not fear him. ‘Billy,’ I said, ‘if I am not your friend, there can only be one reason. It is the drug you give to
my
friend Hamilton Ashinowo, that kill him dead and steal his life away.’
‘Who say I do that?’
‘Cole. I catch him at your party here downstairs and talk to him. He put the blame on you and run away.’
‘And you believe that man?’
‘Is true, then?’
‘And if is true? I sell that stuff to Hamilton. He buy it; he want it; I give it. I satisfy his need.’
‘Then do not wonder, Billy, I am not your friend.’
‘So you betray me. You put the Law on me as well.’
‘Billy,’ I said. ‘What puts the Law on you is your life here with Dorothy. Why don’t you cut out, man, go up to Manchester Moss Side, or go back home?’
Billy rubbed on his throat and said, ‘This is where I stay, here in this city. I fear of nobody. The man who makes me leave town is my master.’
‘All right, Billy Whispers, is your life, is not mine. Now what say we go downstairs and drink a drink and soon forget all this unfriendliness?’
The room was now empty of many of its guests, especially Tamberlaine and ‘Nat King’ Cole. But Cranium and one of his boys was still playing on their drums, and Barbara and Dorothy was yap-yap-yapping by the fire. And shooting dice up on the floor was my brother Arthur and Alfy Bongo, and that gilded man Tondapo with who I had not yet had my explanation of his earlier behaviour to me. ‘Give us some tune, Cranium,’ I said. ‘Come, Billy. Forget your suspecting everyone, and pour some drink.’
‘Drink for you who attack me?’ Billy said to Montgomery and to me.
‘Oh, come now, Billy. Don’t spoil this pleasant evening, or, if you like, we have to go.’
So he poured these drinks. Dorothy she came and stood by Billy, hands on hips, looking so very foolish. ‘What’s all this fighting?’ she cried out. ‘What sort of home do you think you’ve given me?’
Billy gave Dorothy no drink. ‘Be careful, now,’ he said. ‘Be careful what you say to me. Be careful what you say to anybody. The one place for your trap is shut.’
Cranium Cuthbertson beat sweetly on, trying, I could see, to give some harmony to everyone’s emotion. Also, he began to sing: a chant like to himself, in his own tongue, about a boy who leave the coast beside the sea and walks all his life right up to Kano, looking for blessings of his ancestors, who came from there. The boys stopped shooting dice, and all began clapping softly to the rhythm, and singing the ‘Ay-yah-ah’ chorus to Cranium’s good song.
But the door came open, and I saw Inspector Purity of the CID and three more of his dicks. Billy had leapt quick under the table, which had a cloth. ‘Stay where you are, everybody,’ this Purity man said. ‘I want a word with Mr Billy Whispers. Where is he?’
No one spoke. Though did I see my brother Arthur smile at Purity and look across the room towards the table?
As feet approached it, Billy did a brave and foolish thing: he rushed and jumped right through the window, glass and everything. Dorothy screamed. Two dicks ran downstairs, one stayed beside the door, and Mr Purity stepped over to the window.
We all stood still, though Cranium beat a note or two upon his drum. Purity shone down a torch. ‘Got him?’ he shouted.
There was a shout up back.
‘What?’ Mr Purity cried out. ‘Well, carry him over to the car. I’ll be right down.’
Dorothy ran up to Inspector Purity and caught hold of his hair. ‘What are you doing to my husband?’ she screamed out.
He pushed her off on to the floor. ‘So he’s your husband, is he?’ said Purity. ‘I think he’s living off your immoral earnings.’
‘Is that the charge? Is that the charge you make?’ said Ronson Lighter.
‘Resisting arrest will be one charge,’ said Purity, ‘and no doubt there’ll be others. Well, let’s take a look at you all and see who we’ve got. Stand up, everyone, with your hands on top of your heads. Come on!’
Everybody stood up except Dorothy, and all put their hands on their heads except Montgomery and myself. Detective Purity walked round inspecting all the party, like a general, and to some he spoke.
‘So you’re here, Alfy,’ he began. ‘One day we’ll have to find a little charge for you. Any suggestions, lad? I’ve got one or two ideas. And you,’ he said to my brother Arthur. ‘You getting tired of life outside the nick? Maybe we could help you back inside again. Dice, eh? That’s gambling. Hullo, Barbara. Aren’t you in need of some care and protection? We’ll introduce you to one of our lady coppers, she’ll see you home to Cardiff. Good evening, Mr Pew, or is it good morning? You keep some strange company, don’t you. And you weren’t altogether frank with me earlier, on about your young friend here … Mr Fortune. How are you, son? Do you know something? We’re going to nick you for peddling weed one day soon, so don’t you think you’d better get aboard a ship? No, don’t bother to turn your pockets out this time, we know you’ve put it on the fire. And you!’ He’d stopped in front of Ronson Lighter, who thought he had been missed. ‘You’d better come along with us as well. There’s been some malicious wounding, and perhaps you can tell us something more about it. Your friend down there seems to be unconscious, and they think he’s broken some legs.’
‘You bastard!’ Dorothy cried out from the floor.
He didn’t look down, but said to her, ‘We’ll be sending for you, Dorothy, when we want you. Don’t leave London just at present, will you? Come on now, you!’ he
said to Ronson. And this boy, though if it was a fight he would fear nothing, like so many of our men when big misfortune falls upon them, was quiet and quite helpless in the copper’s hand.
Inspector Purity stopped by the door. ‘I needn’t tell you all to watch your step,’ he said. ‘There’s not a man or woman here we haven’t got a charge for when the time comes, and we feel like paying you a visit.’ Then he went out with Ronson and the other copper, who had stood there waiting and not said one word.
When the door closed, Dorothy scrambled up, opened it again and cried down the stairs, ‘You bastards!’ Then slammed it, turned to us all and shouted, ‘Somebody’s shopped Billy!’
‘Would it be you, Dorothy?’ I said.
‘Me, Johnny Fortune! Call me a whore if you want to, but I don’t shop nobody. Someone here has spoken with the Law. Somebody’s shopped Billy!’
Faces all looked at faces.
‘Come now, Montgomery,’ I said, when looking from the window I saw the Law car drive away. ‘Is time to go.’
Dorothy and Barbara were weeping on each other’s shoulder. ‘I have my car outside,’ said Ibrahim Tondapo, like some emir. ‘I offer you a lift.’
I made no reply to this vain man, but went with the others down the stairs. This Ibrahim insisted foolishly on our company, so we came up to his limousine. Place in the car was refused by me to Arthur and to Alfy Bongo, who walked away chattering in spite together. The passengers
I allowed were Cranium and Montgomery in the back seat, and I by Ibrahim Tondapo’s side.
‘Where to?’ he said.
‘East End for me.’
‘I’ll see you home, Johnny,’ said Montgomery.
‘For me, please, a drop-out at the Trafalgar Square,’ said Cranium Cuthbertson.
Tondapo drove elegantly but too fast, anxious to demonstrate his skill. In the central city we turned Cranium loose, and drove on across the commercial area of the city’s wealth, this Ibrahim trying to make eager conversation with Montgomery and with me. But I silenced my Jumble friend, and would say nothing to this African, for whom I still planned a vengeance for his earlier action in the Sphere. So when we came to the dockside poverty of the Immigration Road, I asked him to take two turnings and then halt.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘You welcome, man. Bygone is bygone.’
‘Your tyre is flat.’
‘No, I not think so, man.’
‘I tell you is flat: your motor rumbles.’
We all got out. Montgomery noticed my intention.
‘No, no, Johnny,’ he cried out. ‘Not any more!’
But I had heaved this Tondapo against the wall and battered him. He fight hard and bravely, but had eaten too much throughout his comfortable life. When I had laid him low, I lifted him and put his groaning body in the back seat of his vehicle.
Montgomery was in rages with me. ‘You must learn to control yourself,’ he said.
‘And you! Fighting with two Africans in your nakedness.’
‘That was a misunderstanding.’
‘Let us not argue, Montgomery. There have been arguments enough.’
We walked through the dim and silence of these evil streets: all tumbling: all sad.
‘Who
did
betray Whispers?’ said Montgomery.
‘It was not you, then?’
‘Oh, don’t be absurd, Johnny. Why should I?’
‘That Alfy Bongo?’
‘I don’t understand that hobgoblin. I don’t think he’s working for the Law … Excuse my asking, but had Arthur anything to do with it, perhaps?’
‘Perhaps so. Or more perhaps is really Dorothy who spoke.’
‘She didn’t act like it.’
‘Dorothy is tired of Billy. Maybe she’s glad to see him go inside for some other charge than laying his hands upon her earnings. If she told the Law about this wounding, and of nothing else, then she will not have to appear in court against him.’
‘Isn’t the simplest explanation that Jimmy Cannibal told them about the attack himself? That Ronson did it, and Billy was behind it?’
‘Could be so. When the court case comes, then we shall see. By the witnesses, we shall see. But what is sure is that Billy will suspect us all – you for what you saw in the gamble-house, and Dorothy that she wants to leave him, and also me.’
‘Why you?’
‘Because Dorothy’s foolish hope is to come and live with me. I must keep clear of that evil little chicken.’
We crossed the Immigration Road.
‘Inspector Purity was asking about you earlier on,’ Montgomery said, and told me of that meeting. ‘Be careful, Johnny.’
‘I am always careful.’
‘You had no weed with you tonight?’
‘None left. Though if they want to take me, they would not mind if I had weed or not.’
‘If that’s so, why didn’t they arrest you there and then? Or any of the others except Ronson?’
‘The knifing was their business this evening. One operation at a time is the Law’s slow and steady way. Perhaps there were also too many witnesses for the frame-up. They have their skill and patience, Montgomery, have the Law.’
Outside my sweet-shop, I said goodbye to him. ‘Do not come in, Montgomery. Muriel and Hamilton will be sleeping. I telephone you.’
‘You promise? Keep in touch, now, won’t you.’
‘I speak to you on the phone tomorrow.’
‘Take care, then. And thank you, Johnny, for helping me with those two boys.’
Helping him! Had I not saved his skin entirely?
‘Is nothing,’ I said. ‘Good night now, Montgomery. I shall see you.’
He walked away, and turned and waved, and I waited till he shrunk right out of sight. Then I went indoors to my misery.
Muriel was up, in spite of it was morning. I kissed her, but she turned her face away.
‘Hamilton’s gone,’ she said. ‘They’ve taken him off to hospital in the ambulance. He had delirium.’
‘It was real bad, this what Hamilton have?’
‘I don’t think he’ll live, Johnny.’
I sat down by her side.
‘Let us go sleep now,’ I said to her. ‘A great many troubles have come my way today.’
‘You’re bleeding, Johnny. Let me wash you.’