City of Spades - By Colin MacInnes Page 0,11
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.
And all this time the nasal calypso permeated the lino-laden passages. As I approached the bright light from a distant open door, I heard:
‘English politician he say, “Wait and see,”
Moscow politician he say, “Come with me.”
But whichever white employer tells those little white lies,
I stop my ears and hold my nose and close my eyes.’
I peered in.
Sitting on the bed, dressed in a pair of underpants decorated with palm leaves, was a stocky youth topped by an immense gollywog fuzz of hair. He grimaced pleasantly at me, humming the air till he had completed the guitar improvisation. Whereupon he slapped the instrument (as one might a child’s behind) and said, ‘What say, man? You like a glass of rum?’
‘I’m looking,’ I told him, ‘for Mr J. M. Fortune.’
‘Oh, that little jungle cannibal. That bongo-banging Bushman.’
‘I take it,’ I said, accepting some rum in a discoloured tooth-glass, ‘that you yourself are not from Africa?’
‘Please be to God, no, man. I’m a civilised respectable Trinidadian.’
‘The Africans, then, aren’t civilised?’
‘They have their own tribal customs, mister, but it was because of their primitive barbarity that our ancestors fled from that country some centuries ago.’
This was accompanied by a knowing leer.
‘And the song,’ I asked. ‘It is of your own composition?’
‘Yes, man. In my island I’m noted for my celebrated performance. It’s your pleasure to meet this evening no less a one than Mr Lord Alexander in person.’
And he held out a ring-encrusted hand with an immensely long, polished, little-finger nail.
‘Perhaps, though,’ he went on, ‘as I’m seeking to make my way in this country, you could help me into radio or television or into some well-loaded night-spot?’
‘Alas!’ I told him, ‘I have no contacts in those glowing worlds.’
‘Then at least please speak well of me,’ he said, ‘and make my reputation known among your friends.’
‘Willingly. Though I have to tell you that I don’t care for calypso …’
‘Man, that’s not possible!’ He stood up in his flowered pants aghast. ‘Surely all educated Englishmen like our scintillating music?’
‘Many, yes, but not I.’
‘Now, why?’
‘Your lines don’t scan, you accentuate the words incorrectly, and the thoughts you express are meagre and without wit.’
‘But our leg-inspiring rhythm?’
‘Oh, that you have, of course …’
‘Mr Gentleman, you disappoint me,’ he said. And taking a deep draught from the rum bottle, he strolled sadly to the window, leant out, and sang into the opulent wastes of SW1:
‘This English gentleman he say to me
He do not appreciate calypso melody.
But I answer that calypso has supremacy
To the Light Programme music of the BBC.’
I made my getaway.
Prying along an adjacent marble landing (affording a vertiginous perspective of a downward-winding, statue-flanked white stair), I saw a door on which was written: ‘J. Macdonald Fortune, Lagos. Enter without knocking.’ I did so, turned on the light, and saw a scene of agreeable confusion. Valises up-ended disgorging the bright clothes one would so wish to wear, shirts, ties and socks predominating – none of them fit for an English afternoon. Bundles of coconuts. A thick stick of bananas. Bottles, half empty. Rather surprising – a pile of biographies and novels. And pinned on the walls photographs of black grinning faces, all teeth, the eyes screwed closed to the glare of a sudden magnesium flare. A recurring group was evidently a family one: Johnny; a substantial rotund African gentleman with the same air of frank villainy as was the junior Mr Fortune’s; his immense wife, swathed in striped native dress; a tall serious youth beside a motor-bicycle; and a vivacious girl with a smile like that of an amiable lynx.
On the table, I noticed an unfinished letter in a swift clerical hand. I didn’t disturb it, but …
Dear Peach,
How it would be great if I could show you all the strange sights of the English capital, both comical and splendid! This morning I had my interview at the Welfare Office with – well, do you remember Reverend Simpson? Our tall English minister who used to walk as if his legs did not belong to him? And spoke to us like a telephone? Well, that was the appearance of the young Mr Pew who interviewed me, preaching and pointing his hands at me as if I was to