him a menacing infant …
Ah!
‘… I have made visits, too, this afternoon, both of which will interest Dad – tell him I’m writing more about them, but don’t please tell our dearest Mum or Christmas that I give you this message. Just now I have returned here to my miserable hostel (hovel! – which soon I shall be leaving permanently) to change to fresh clothes and go out in the town when it’s alight.
And Peach! It’s true about the famous escalator! It can be done, early this morning I made the two-way expedition, easily dashing up again until …’
Should I turn over the sheet? No, no, not that …
I closed the door softly and walked down the chipped ceremonial stair. At its foot, the secretary waylaid me.
‘And did you then discover Mr Fortune?’ he enquired.
‘No.’
‘Will it be necessary for me to convey to him some message of your visit?’
‘No.’
He frowned.
‘As secretary of the hostel committee, may I ask of your business on our premises?’
I gave him a Palmerstonian glare, but he met it with such a look of dignified solemnity that I wilted and said, ‘I am the new Assistant Welfare Officer. My name is Montgomery Pew.’
‘And mine, sir, is Mr Karl Marx Bo. I am from Freetown, Sierra Leone.’
We shook hands.
‘I hope, sir,’ he said, ‘you have not the same miserable opinion of our qualities as he who previously held down your job?’
‘Oh, you mustn’t think that. Come, come.’
‘May I offer you a cup of canteen coffee?’
‘I’d love it, but really, I’m in somewhat of a hurry …’
I moved towards the massive door. Mr Bo walked beside me, radiating unaffected self-righteousness.
‘Here in London, I am studying law,’ he told me.
‘That means, I suppose, that you’ll be going into politics?’
‘Inevitably. We must make the most of our learning here in London. Emancipation, sir, is our ultimate objective. I predict that in the next ten years, or less, the whole of West Africa will be a completely emancipated federation.’
‘Won’t the Nigerians gobble you up? Or Dr Nkrumah?’
‘No, sir. Such politicians clearly understand that national differences of that nature are a pure creation of colonialism. Once we have federation, such regional distinctions will all fade rapidly away.’
‘Well, jolly good luck to you.’
‘Oh, yes! You say so! But like all Englishmen, I conceive you view with reluctance the prospect of our freedom?’
‘Oh, but we give you the education to get it.’
‘Not give, sir. I pay for my university through profits my family have made in the sale of cocoa.’
‘A dreadful drink, if I may say so.’
He tolerantly smiled. ‘You must come, sir, if you wish, to take part in one of our discussions with us, or debates.’
‘Nothing would delight me more, but alas, as an official, I am debarred from expressing any personal opinion, even had I one. And now, for the present, you really must excuse me.’
And before he could recover his potential Dominion status, I was out of the door and stepping rapidly up the moonlit road. ‘To the Moorhen public house,’ I told a taxi driver.
He was of that kind who believe in the London cabby’s reputation for dry wit.
‘Better keep your hands on your pockets, guv,’ he said, ‘if I take you there.’
7
Montgomery at the Moorhen
Though fond of bars and boozing in hotels, I’m not a lover of that gloomiest of English institutions – the public house. There is a legend of the gaiety, the heart-warming homeliness of these ‘friendly inns’ – a legend unshakeable; but all a dispassionate eye can see in them is the grim spectacle of ‘regulars’ at their belching backslapping beside the counter or, as is more often, sitting morosely eyeing one another, in private silence, before their half-drained gassy pints. (There is also, of course, that game called darts.)
It wasn’t, then, with high eagerness that I prepared to visit the Moorhen. Nor was I more encouraged when the driver, with a knowing grimace, decanted me on a corner near the complex of North London railway termini. The pub, from outside, was of a dispirited baroque. And lurking about its doors, in groups, or half invisible in the gloom, were Negroes of equivocal appearance. One of these detached himself from a wall as I stood hesitating, and approached.
‘What say, mister?’ he began. ‘Maybe you want somesings or others?’
‘Not that I’m aware of,’ I replied.
‘Oh, no?’
‘No …’
‘Not this?’
Cupped in the hollow of his hand he held a little brown-paper packet two inches long or so.
‘And what might that be?’
‘Come now, man,’ he said with a grin