‘Not just your faces – it’s the way you move. When you walk, you walk from the top of your head right down to the very tip of your toes … You step out as if you owned the world …’
Fortune grew bored by this. Why praise a beauty that was evident to all?
‘And then,’ she went on, as he turned to gaze at the liquor bar and moistened his full lips, ‘you’re such fun to be with. If you say, “Let’s do this, or that,” to a coloured boy, his first answer isn’t, “No.” He’s ready to fall in with any bright idea.’ (Johnny was no longer listening.) ‘Of course, sometimes your boys get sad and gloomy, all of a sudden for no reason … And often those lovely smiles of yours don’t mean a thing …’
Johnny was looking at a merchant ship, sailing stern first towards them down the river to the open sea. ‘Come!’ he said. ‘Let us get ourselves some glass of lager beer.’
The little bar amidships smelt of heat, and airlessness, and stale ale. The boy serving was an undersized lad with a Tony Curtis hair-do, who slopped the lager in the glasses with amateur abandon. He eyed Johnny Fortune with enthusiasm.
‘And for you what?’ Johnny asked the boy. ‘Some orange juice or Coke?’
‘Ta, guv, I’ll have a Pepsi. You’re not a boxer, are you?’
‘Me? No. I box, though.’
‘Of course you do. But I thought you could maybe get me Sugar’s autograph.’
‘I know boys who visit at his camp. Give me your name, and I shall get you this signature of Mr Robinson.’
‘I’m Norman, the captain’s son. Care of the boat will find me. Good ’ealth. I drink beer for choice, but Dad won’t let me on his boat, I’m under age.’
The huge ship passed, and the craft rocked in its wash. Johnny looked through the port-hole, flattening his face. ‘Perhaps she sail out to Africa,’ he said.
‘She’s British,’ said Muriel, squeezing up beside him. ‘What a lot of ships we have.’
‘So many. So old and battered.’
‘We’re a rich country, Johnny.’
‘You? England is quite wasted, Muriel.’
‘Wasted? It’s not!’
‘I tell you. The lands of opportunity are America, and China, and Africa, ’specially Nigeria.’
‘Yes? Who cares, though!’ She kissed him as he was still talking. ‘It’s hot, Johnny. Can’t we get this port-hole open?’
‘Hot! You call this heat? Nigeria would melt you.’ He rubbed a sweaty nose against her own.
‘Wait till the cold comes. Then you’ll see something you don’t know about.’
‘Snowballs, you mean?’
‘Not snow – just cold. You’d better buy yourself a duffel.’
‘You, Muriel, will keep me warm.’
The boy came and wiped the table needlessly. He held Johnny by the arm, delicately feeling his biceps.
‘You coloured boys,’ he said, ‘are wonderful fighters. You’re the tops.’ The blue eyes in his pimply face gazed at Johnny’s own with rapture.
‘We also have intelligent citizens, you know. There are African students who fully understand atomic energy.’
‘Oh, so long as they can fight! You’re brave!’
Johnny smiled with condescension, rubbed the boy’s back, and pushed him gently off.
‘They all love you, Johnny,’ Muriel said.
‘So long as you do.’
‘I do. Oh yes, I do.’ She stared at him, and clutched as if she feared he’d disappear. ‘I’d do anything for you,’ she said.
‘Anything! Big words.’
‘If you want to stay with me, you can. If you wanted to get married ever, you just say. If you want a child, I’ll give you one – a boy: we’ll call it Johnny-number-two. I’d work for you, Johnny – any work. I’d go to jail for you – do anything.’
‘Muriel! Muriel! What sad thoughts you speak of.’
‘You mean getting married?’
‘I mean all these things that you imagine. You are my girl – it is enough. What else is there?’
‘I love you, Johnny. Once we get into each other’s blood, your race and mine, we never can cut free. All that matters to me is that you’re brave, and beautiful, and you’ve got brains, so I can be proud of you. Nothing else matters to me at all.’
The boy came back. ‘We’re nearing Greenwich Palace now. Do you want to have a look on deck?’
Up in the sun, beneath a pink-blue sky, they watched the stately architectural rhetoric slide into view. ‘I smell the sea,’ said Fortune, sniffing. When Inigo Jones’s splendid white cube appeared between Sir Christopher Wren’s gesticulations, Muriel cried out, ‘That one’s for us! That’s where we’ll live – the little one.’ They stood hand in hand by the railings to be first off at the pier, as the boat swung round the river in a circle. No one else followed them; and when the boat headed back up the river, they saw it wasn’t stopping at the palaces.
Muriel called out to the helmsman. ‘Can’t we get off?’
‘Get off, miss? No, we don’t stop.’
‘But it said it was an excursion to Greenwich Palace.’
‘This is the excursion, miss. We take you there and back, to see it, but you get off where you came from in the City.’
PART II
Johnny Fortune, and his casual days
1
Pew becomes a freelance
An autumn day, some three months later, found me sitting in a coffee shop frequented by BBC executives, face to face with Theodora and profoundly dejected.
‘You’re out?’ she said.
‘Sacked. My interview was a disaster.’
And it had been.
My chief was one of those who think it best to be kind to be cruel. With the air of sharing a great joke, he said to me, ‘Well, Pew, the blow’s falling, I dare say you expected it,’ and gave me a ghastly grin.
‘Sir?’
‘We’re not taking up our option on you, Pew. I expect you’d like some reasons. I’ll give you three. The police have been making enquiries about you, and we don’t like that. You’ve visited our hostel frequently without authority and behaved oddly, so it seems. And then, Pew, in a general way, we think you’ve been a little too familiar with the coloured races. Oh, don’t interrupt, I know we’re the Welfare Office, and we’re in duty bound to help these people in their hour of need. But remote control’s the best, we’ve found. Not matiness. Not going native, if I may so express myself.’
‘May I make an observation, chief?’ I said, when I saw the game was lost.
‘You may indeed, if it will ease your feelings.’
‘I’m not surprised the coloured races hate us.’
He wasn’t a bit disconcerted.
‘But they don’t, Pew, that’s where you make your second big mistake. They don’t like us, certainly, but they don’t hate us. They just accept us as, I suppose, a necessary evil.’
Determined to have the last word, I said: ‘Nothing could be worse than to be neither loved nor hated. It puts one on a level with the Swiss.’
Theodora didn’t congratulate me on this rejoinder. ‘It’s always best,’ she said, ‘in tricky interviews, to say one word for every six the other person says.’
‘But did I in fact say more! And, anyway, my dear Theodora, you yourself have not always been, of recent months, a model of discretion.’
‘Oh, have I not?’ she said, glancing round at the coffee-swilling executives.
‘This series of talks of yours on the colour question has seemed to call for an awful lot of planning.’
‘All BBC series must be meticulously planned for months ahead.’
‘No doubt, though I can’t think why. But I mean you’ve been bringing Johnny Fortune and his pals against their wills into your flat on far too many occasions.’
‘Against their wills? They’ve been delighted.’
‘They’re so polite.’
‘In any case, I’ve not seen Johnny now for a month.’
‘Nor I. He’s disappea
red mysteriously from his usual haunts.’
The waitress disgustedly put down the check. I reached for it. ‘No,’ said Theodora. ‘You must economise.’
‘I have in my pocket a month’s salary in lieu of notice.’
‘And then?’
‘Then? Only Australia remains.’
Theodora snatched the check away. ‘Perhaps you could freelance for the Corporation,’ she said. ‘So many mediocrities get away with it.’
‘Thanks, Theodora,’ I said quite bitterly, and arose. She called me back, but not until I was halfway down the stairs. Her face, from that distance, looked agonised and proud. I crossly returned, and she said in a throaty whisper, ‘Find him, Montgomery!’ Then swirled to some raw-boned feminine executives at the adjacent table.
I went out bemused into the chilly morning and, passing despondently by one of the many dilapidated subsidiary buildings near Portland Place that house the detritus of the BBC, who should I see emerging but a resplendent figure whose fortunes, it seemed, had risen as my own had fallen: none other than Mr Lord Alexander in a rose suit – yes, rose – and carrying a guitar case. I hailed him, and was mortified that at first he didn’t recognise me.
‘You sang for me,’ I reminded him, ‘at the hostel some months ago.’
‘Oh yes – oh yes, indeed, man. Before my unfortunate arrest, which luckily ended only in seven days.’
‘And since then, my lord, since then?’
‘Well, man, I’ve swum into the glory. Radio programmes and cabaret work, and even a number of gramophone recordings.’
‘Congratulations, my dear chap. You’ve written some good new songs?’
‘All my songs is good, but ’specially enjoyed are those on British institutions: “Toad-in-hole and Guinness stout”, and “Please, Mr Attlee, don’t steal my majority”, and “Why do I thirst between three and five?” …’
‘Let us thirst no more, Lord Alexander. The pub’s nearby.’
‘Me, I will buy you something.’
Over two light ales, I asked him if he had news of Johnny Fortune. He lowered his voice. ‘They say,’ he told me, ‘that little boy has turned out not too good.’
‘But where is he? I’ve been up to Holloway, I’ve been round all the bars, and he’s nowhere to be found.’
‘The boy’s moved down East End, they tell me, which is a bad, bad sign.’
‘Why so?’
‘There’s East End Spades and West End Spades. West End are perhaps wickeder, but more prosperous and reliable.’
‘Do you know where I can find him in the East End?’
‘Myself I don’t know, but anyone would tell you at Mahomed’s café in the Immigration Road. That is a central spot for all East End activities.’
I bought Alexander a return drink, thanked him heartily, and leapt into a cab.
2
Misfortunes of Johnny Fortune
‘Troubles,’ I said to Hamilton, ‘do not come singly.’
‘No, Johnny.’
‘Never would I think I could be so very foolish.’
‘No, Johnny, no.’
‘Sometimes I even think I must eat up my pride and return to my dad in Lagos like the prodigal son.’
We were sitting in my miserable room, a former sweet-shop on the ground floor of the Immigration Road. Muriel, thank goodness, was out now at her work. But Hamilton and I had little joy in our male company, for we were both quite skinned and destitute.
‘You tell me to use a needle is bad,’ said Hamilton, ‘but to gamble away your wealth – is that not a greater injury? Two hundred pounds fly off, Johnny, in three short happy months.’
‘They rose once to nearly four hundred pounds with all my profits.’
‘But tumbled again to two times zero afterwards.’
I got up and combed my hair, for there was little else to do. ‘Not even a fire, Hamilton. Not even a cigarette. And do you know, my greatest sorrow is the total neglect of my meteorological studies?’
‘Your greatest sorrow is not that – it is that you are boxed up with this Muriel.’
And what could I say to that? At first I had been fond of that little girl, and she had given me some excellent physical satisfactions. But when all my loot was gone, and the only serious work that I could find, in the building industry, was too poor paid and degradation, she had begun to support me with her pitiful wages from the shirt factory where she was employed.
‘Johnny,’ said Hamilton. ‘You’re quite sure this little girl of yours does work in that shirt shop?’
‘Of course. Now why?’
‘You’re positive she’s not hustling?’
‘Muriel, Hamilton, is no harlot like her sister Dorothy.’
‘Be sure of that. Because to live on the immoral earnings of a woman is considered a serious crime in this serious country.’
‘Muriel is too honest and too simple.’
‘No chick is simple.’
‘That is true …’
‘This child of hers she says is one day to be yours. You believe her story, Johnny?’
‘How can I tell? It could be so …’
‘You will let her have it, Johnny?’
‘Hamilton! I am no infant murderer.’
Hamilton stretched his long body out.
‘Perhaps not,’ he said. ‘But if she has it, and you refuse her marriage, as I expect you to, she can then weep before the magistrate until he grants her an affiliation order. This will oblige you to support her till the infant is sixteen years of age.’
‘Man, I shall skip the country if that happens.’
I looked at my dear friend’s eyes. More sunken away than when first I discovered him again, and his whole body shrivelling up with that evil drug, it seemed to me that only wicked thoughts came now into his mind.
‘Hamilton,’ I said. ‘Let’s go into the street and take the air. Sitting here leaguing all the day in idleness is just a nightmare.’
‘Walking gives me only a hopeless appetite.’
‘When do you draw your drug ration, Hamilton?’
‘Not till tomorrow …’
‘Oh, but come out in the air, man!’
‘No, Johnny. Let me sleep here, or I think I’ll tumble down and die.’
I had no coat since it was in the pawnshop, but I took up my scarf and started for the door.
Hamilton opened up one eye. ‘Those Jumbles, Johnny,’ he said. ‘That Pew and Pace people you used to see. Can’t you raise loot from them?’
‘I have some pride.’
‘You also have your digestion, Johnny, to consider.’
This Immigration Road is quite the queen of squalor. And though back home we have our ruined streets, they haven’t the scraped grimness of this East End thoroughfare. I half shut my eyes and headed for Mahomed’s café which, though quite miserable, has the recommendation that it’s open both the night and day.
This is due to the abundant energy of Mahomed, an Indian who once worked high up in a rich West End hotel, and serves you curried chicken as if you were a rajah loaded up with diamonds. His wife is a British lady with a wild love of Spades, and a horrid habit of touching you on the shoulder because she says ‘to stroke a darkie brings you luck’. But you can forgive this insolence if she supplies some credit without the knowledge of Mahomed.
The café’s frequented by human dregs, and coppers’ narks, and boys who come there hustling and making deals. The first face I saw, when I went in it, was the features of Mr Peter Pay Paul.
‘What say, man,’ I asked him. ‘You still peddling that asthma cure?’
He gave me his spewed-up grin.
‘I’m legitimate now,’ he said. ‘I sell real stuff. You buy some?’
‘Roll me a stick, and I’ll smoke it at your expense.’
‘That’s not a good business, man.’ But he started rolling.
‘What sentence did you get that day?’
‘Case dismissed. What do you know?’
‘That
CID Inspector, that Mr Purity. He didn’t press the charge?’
‘He not in court, man – was quite a break.’
‘You small beer to him, Peter, it must be.’
‘If that’s true, man, it’s lucky. That Mr Purity looked cold hard.’
He handed me the weed.
‘Peter, where you get this stuff?’ I said. ‘Who is your wholesaler?’
‘That is my private secret, man.’
‘Suppose that you cut me in on it?’
‘Well, I might do … if you show some generosity …’
‘Man, I’m skinned just at present. Make a friend of me, and you won’t repent of it.’
‘I’ll consider your request, Johnny Fortune. Give me some drag.’
Mahomed came up and bowed as he always does: this because he likes to win the affection of violent Spades who can help him if ever trouble should arise.
‘An English gentleman was here looking for you, Johnny.’
‘What name?’
‘He tell me to say Montgomery was asking for you.’
‘Ah, him. What did he need?’
‘Johnny, isn’t that a copper? His name was quite unknown to me, you never tell me he was a friend of yours, so I sent him farther on east down Limehouse way.’
‘I don’t live there.’
‘To confuse the man. I said to call at 12 Rawalpindi Street, but so far as I know there isn’t any such address.’
Mahomed gave us a sly, silly smile to prove his clever cunning.
‘Mahomed, you’re too smart. If that man calls here again, please tell him where I live.’
‘He’s a friend, then?’
‘Is a friend, yes.’
‘Oh, I apologise. You eat something?’ I shook my head. ‘On me,’ said Mahomed, and cut out behind his counter with another little bow.
I saw an old African man was watching us. ‘Who is that grey old person?’ I asked Peter Pay Paul.
‘That old-timer? Oh, a tapper. He’s always complaining about we younger boys.’
‘I no tapper,’ the old gentleman said. ‘But all I can tell you is you boys spoil honest business since you come. Before the wartime, before you come here in all your numbers, the white folks was nice and friendly to us here.’
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