‘That’s it.’
‘Doing nothing so very special at all, you’d say. Well, that’s interesting to know.’
We went on some way in silence. He had the art which coppers have of inserting his personality, unwelcomed and uninvited, into your own.
‘And how’s young Mr Fortune?’
‘Who?’
‘Come on, now. You know who I’m speaking of.’
I stopped. ‘Is this an official interview?’
‘Not exactly. No, I wouldn’t say so.’
‘Then good night.’
‘So you have seen something of him? I thought perhaps you had. He’s a nice boy, in his way.’ Mr Purity took his hands from his pockets and slapped his flanks. ‘I have my duty to get on with,’ he said briskly. ‘We never rest.’ He walked on ahead and turned the corner. When I reached it, there was no sign of him.
I crossed the neutral ground of Regent Street into the upper regions of Soho. The eighteenth-century houses looked graceful, mouldering and aloof. Beside an electric power station, that had intruded itself among them, I stopped: and wondered whether the time had not now come to ‘cut out’, as Johnny Fortune might have said, from the society of the Spades. They were wonderful, of course – exhilarating: the temperature of your life shot up when in their company. But if you stole some of their physical vitality, you found that the price was they began to invade your soul: or rather, they did not, but your own idea of them did – for they were sublimely indifferent to anything outside themselves! And in spite of their joie de vivre, in any practical sense they were so impossible! ‘They’re dreadful! They’re just quite dreadful!’ I shouted out aloud, above the slight hum of the dynamos.
I turned some corners, and under a lamp saw Africans squatting on their haunches on the pavement. I stepped out on the street to make a circuit, but was hailed by one who ran crying after me, ‘Lend me two pounds, man, or even one!’ It was Johnny’s half-brother, Arthur.
‘Hullo, Arthur. What goes on there?’
‘We’re throwing dice. I lose a bit …’
‘Here in the street?’
‘What’s wrong with here?’
‘Doesn’t anyone interfere?’
‘Oh, we take care. We’re barred at Mr Obo-King’s, you see, and can’t play there.’
‘Mr Obo-King?’
‘He owns the Blake Street gamble-house. You’ll find some people you know there, if you go.’
‘What number in Blake Street is it?’
‘I forget the number, man, but here on this envelope it’s written.’ He pulled out a crumpled one on which I saw:
Mr Arthur,
by the Blake Street Gamble-house,
London, Soho.
The postmark was from Manchester.
‘Somebody wrote this to you there?’
‘Yes, man, a friend. He plays clarinet Moss Side.’
‘And this got delivered?’
‘Oh, everyone knows the gamble-house. It’s raided regular weekends.’
‘Don’t they ever close it?’
‘Why should they, so long as Mr Obo-King pays his fines, and makes his little presents to the Law? Mr Obo owns several places, and they’re never closed. The Law likes to keep them open, so it knows where to look for everybody.’
I gave him ten shillings. ‘Best of luck,’ said.
He snatched it, and cried: ‘Never say “Good luck” to any gambler! You not know that?’
‘No. Sorry.’
‘You see my brother Johnny?’
‘Earlier on.’
‘I must get to meet him again soon. This man owes me everything. I feel real sore about him.’
He ran back to the circle without thanks.
I went on to Blake Street; and only then realised that Arthur’s envelope, after all, had no number on it. I walked up and down, and could find no sign of what looked to be a club, when out of the area steps from a basement I saw a coloured man cautiously emerge and, as he walked towards me, recognised Larry the GI.
‘Man, that sure was some bum evening at Mr Vial’s,’ he said. ‘I pulled out fast when I saw how it was shaping. They was having an orgy when I left, but me, I don’t care for these pig-parties or gang-bangs whatsoever.’
‘Where have you been just now, Larry?’
‘In and out of the gamble-house, to get me some bit of loot.’
‘Did you play in there?’
‘What, me? Among all those Africans when they’re throwing dice? Man, are you crazy? They’d eat me. A soldier can tell dynamite when he sees it.’
‘But you went in there alone?’
‘Oh, no, that Tamberlaine came with me. West Indians I can partly understand, but not these African ancestors of mine.’
‘How did you get the money, then?’
‘Sad – but I had to sell my knife. No other way to get myself back to base. But I’ll find me another there.’ He shook my hands. ‘So I’ll be seeing you,’ he said. ‘Norbert and Moscow has given me your phone number where they’re moving in.’
I walked up the road, and went down the gamble-house steps. The door in the area was open, and there was no one inside to stop you going in. At the end of a dim-lit corridor was another door. I was going to open it, when from inside came shouts and clatterings, two men ran out and started fighting in the area. There was a horrid scream and whimper, and quick, noisy footsteps on the metal stair up to the street. Someone had fallen at the foot of them. I ran over. ‘Can I help you? Are you hurt?’ I cried out.
By the light from the inner door, I could see this man was bleeding. He tilted his face, and I saw Jimmy Cannibal. He gave me a look of intense dislike, crawled to his feet, and lurched slowly up the stair. A voice from behind me said, ‘Who’s you?’
I turned, and saw a very fat man in a fur-lined jerkin.
‘That boy’s been wounded. What should we do?’
He said nothing, and struck a match under the stair. I saw him pick up a knife. He looked at me, still holding it. ‘Who’s you?’ he said again.
‘A friend of Johnny Fortune’s.’
‘I think I hear about you. What did you see out here?’
‘You know what I saw. A fight.’
‘Is best you saw nothing.’ He picked up a piece of newspaper, and wrapped the knife in it. ‘Who did attack him? You saw that?’
‘No. It was too quick.’
‘Is best you saw nothing, then. You come inside now?’
‘I don’t think I will.’
‘Best you come in till they scatter up there in the street. Give them the time to scatter.’
He propelled me in, and shut the outer door. We stood in the dim corridor.
‘How’s Johnny? That boy got some loot again just now?’
‘Not much.’
‘He ought to get some, then. A boy like him could make some easy, and then lose it all to me.’ He let out a laugh as big as his body. ‘And you, are you loaded?’
‘I have some money, yes.’
‘Come inside, then. I give you some good excitement before you say goodbye to it.’
‘Are you Mr Obo-King?’
‘That’s what they call me. They should so, is my name.’
He led the way into a large room with little chairs and tables where chicken and rice and foo-foo were being served. Some boys were playing a juke-box, and Mr Obo-King called to one of them, ‘Take a bucket out there, man. There’s some mess to wash away.’ He turned again to me. ‘The gambling’s through here. In this next door.’
‘I’ll come in later. I want to eat.’
Mr Obo-King looked at me. ‘Then come later. I give you some good excitement before I skin you.’
I sat down, asked for foo-foo, and looked around. Some of the men and women were dressed like birds of paradise, so that you’d turn and look at them in the street; though down here they seemed right enough, in spite of the resolute squalor of the place, and even though other customers were in the last degrees of destitution. A few seemed
to have camped there for the night, for they’d kipped down on window-shelves and tables, snoring, or dreaming, possibly, of ‘back home’. A short boy with a pale blue-green pasty face and enormous eyes came up and said, ‘Buy me a meal, man.’ As I called for it, he suddenly lifted his sweater and showed me, on his naked stomach underneath, an enormous lump. ‘Hospital can do nothing – what is the future?’ he said, and carried his plate away. From time to time customers emerged, always disconsolate, from the gambling room, and started long public post-mortems on their disasters. Soon the West Indian Tamberlaine came out, and said to the company in general, ‘Well, I not had much, see, so I not lose much.’ He spotted me, and accepted an offer of coffee. ‘So voodoo is not for you,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you like this place better.’
‘Who comes here mostly, Mr Tamberlaine?’
‘If white like yourself, they’s wreckage of jazz musicians, chiefly, a lot on the needle and full of despair; if coloured, well, ponces and other hustlers like myself.’
‘You’re a hustler, then?’
‘You might say I pimp around the town, picking the pounds up where I can. I don’t often gamble, though, because the winner is the table, and like all these boys I never know when to stop if fortune does the bitch on me like she do. But coloureds like gambling, don’t you see – it’s part of our carefree nature.’
He gave me a sarcastic grin. ‘Who gambles mostly?’ I said. ‘Africans or West Indians?’
‘What! You recognise some difference? Ain’t we all just coal-black coloured skins to you?’
‘Don’t be offensive, Mr Tamberlaine. Like so many West Indians I’ve met, you seem to have, if I may say so, a large chip sitting on your shoulder.’
‘Not like your African friends? They have less chip, you say?’
‘Much less. Africans seem much more self-assured, more self-sufficient. They don’t seem to fear we’re going to take liberties with them, or patronise them, as you people do.’
‘Do we now!’
‘Yes, you do. Africans don’t seem to care what anyone thinks of them. So even though they’re more clannish and secretive, they’re easier to talk to.’
Mr Tamberlaine considered this. ‘Listen to me, man,’ he said. ‘If we’s more sensitive like you say, there’s reasons for it. Our islands is colonies of great antiquity, and our mother tongue is English, like your own, and not some dialects. So naturally we expect you treat us like we’re British as yourself, and when you don’t, we suffer and go sour. Why should we not? But Africans – what do they care of British? For African, his passport just don’t mean nothing, except for travel, but for us it’s loyalty.’
I couldn’t resist a dig. I’d had, after all, to take so many myself in recent months. ‘I think,’ I said, ‘it’s easier for them than it is for you. They know what they are, and you’re not sure. They belong much more deeply to Africa than you do to the Caribbean.’
‘My ears is pointed in your direction,’ said Mr Tamberlaine, sipping his coffee, ‘for some more ripe instruction.’
‘Here it comes, then. They speak their own private tongues, their lives are rooted in their ancient tribes, so that even when they’re lonely or miserable here they feel they’re sustained by the solid tribal past at home. But you, you’re wanderers, cut off by centuries from Africa where you first came from, and ready to move off again from your stepping-stones strung out across the sea.’
‘Our islands is stepping-stones? Thank you now, for what you call them so.’
‘Wouldn’t you all move on to North or South America, if they’d let you in?’
‘Well, yes, perhaps we would, the way they treat us here, and how it is back home.’
‘You see, then. You’re not sure what you are – African, Caribbean, or American – and so you’re quite ready to be British.’
‘Thank you for the compliment to our patriotism. So many of our boy who serve in RAF would gladly hear your words.’
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.’
10
In Billy Whispers’ domain
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.
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