robber and found that, while not exactly stopping me by standing full in my tracks, they presented hard shoulders that made progress difficult.
When at last I reached the corner, I saw an ancient hair-stuffed sofa tottering against the wall. On it were seated Mr Cannibal, the little nuisance who’d taken my lighter, and a third man who wasn’t talking, only listening. He was small, tightly built into his suit, at ease, alert, alarming, and compact. He glanced up at me: our eyes locked: his glare had such depth that my own sank into his, and while for two seconds I stood riveted, this stare seemed to drain away my soul.
I blinked, hemmed in behind a wall of dark faces and drape suits. Abruptly, I shook my brain, moved a pace towards the thief, and said to him: ‘Can I have my lighter?’
The gabbling conversation in jungle tones went on until the third time of asking. Then the little thief looked up and said, ‘What is this stranger? You ask for some light from me, or what?’
It was a shock to see how with this race, even more than with our own, an expression of great amiability can be replaced, on the same face, within seconds, by one of cold indifference and menace.
‘No,’ I said, enwrapping myself with draped togas of torn Union Jacks. ‘Not a light, but the lighter.’
He took it out of his pocket and tossed it up and down in his hand.
‘You wish to buy this?’ he asked.
‘No. Merely to have it back.’
‘You mean you say that this my lighter is your lighter?’
‘Well, my dear chap, you know it is.’
The giant got up, and so did the lighter-lifter, but not the third man, who sat looking at eternity through his lashes.
‘Then what I ask,’ said the culprit, ‘is if your words mean that you call me now a thief?’
The giant stood looking like the Black Peril. The third man now glanced up at me again. When his eyes fixed once more on mine, I felt myself absorbed into a promiscuity of souls closer even than that which can bind, and then dissolve, two animal bodies in each other.
‘No,’ I said, faltering. ‘Keep it.’ And as I moved off: ‘I hope it brings you luck.’
Rage and disgust filled my heart. ‘That idiot at the Welfare Office was right!’ I cried out to myself, as I heaved back through the crowd. ‘Disgusting creatures! Bring back the lash, the slave trade! Long live Dr Malan!’
Standing in the doorway was a figure different from the gaudy elegants inside – one dressed in dungarees, half shaven, with anthropoid jaws and baby ears, more startling even than alarming. He gave me a great meaningless grin, held out a detaining hand and said (this is the rough equivalent), ‘You want some Mexican cigaleks?’
‘No, no.’
‘At sree sillins for twentik, misters …’
‘Oh, really? Well, yes, then.’
He slipped them to me discreetly. Lighting up, awaiting for the return of my shattered poise, I asked him, ‘How do you get these, then?’
Conspiratorially, he replied: ‘From him GIs who sells me in cartoons wisouts no legal dutiks. So you better keep him secrix.’
‘They sell them to you here?’
‘No, out in him streek, because of Law and his narks that put the eye insides. Anysing from GI stores you wants I gess you: sirts, soss, ties, jackix, nylons, overcoats, socolates or any osser foots …’
‘You make a good profit?’
He looked bland.
‘I muss have profix for my risks. That is my bisnick.’
‘Do other boys here have things to sell?’
‘Oh, misters! Here is him big Londons Spadiss markik place! Better than Ossford Streek hisself!’ And he roared out laughing loud, doubling himself up and slapping himself all over. Then he looked coyly discreet. ‘Those bad boys,’ he said, ‘they relieves you of somesink?’
‘Yes. You saw? They stole my lighter.’
‘A Ronsons?’
‘Yes.’
‘Of course. Was Mr Ronson Lighter who took it. That is his professins: when he sees Ronson lighter, he muss steal him.’
‘And who are his friends?’
‘The Billy Whispers peoples. Gambian boys, real bad. Billy his self, and Jimmies Cannibals and Mister Ronson Lighter, this that robs you.’
‘What do they do for a living?’
‘Prey!’
His eyes gleamed sympathetically and, I thought, with envy. Then he went on:
‘That is their seats over in him corners. This is the seats of all bad Asfrican boys where they go gather makin’ deals. No Asfrican boy who is not top London hustler go near their corners, and no Wess Indians dare go by never. Mister, if you have loot, or