And there, wearing dark glasses, and standing among the awaiting pouncers, who should I see but my dearest friend of schooldays in Lagos – Hamilton! ‘Hamilton!’ I cried out. ‘Hamilton Ashinowo, baddest bad boy of the whole mission school!’
Round about he spun, peered, took off his dark glasses (Wow! how that man had been charging, his eyes closed up almost shut), then called out: ‘No! No! Is Johnny! Johnny, since when you arrive, my little boy?’ And he seized me and gabbled at me in our private tribal tongue.
Hamilton, my dear friend at the mission school, had left it by expulsion two years before I came away when he was found by the Reverend Simpson selling palm wine at profitable prices from a canvas bag he kept hidden underneath his dormitory bed. Hamilton was the love and mock of all of us at school. Mock for his tall, wobbling figure, his huge teeth in his pale-pink gums, his arms that hung down to his knees like a chimpanzee, and for the celebrated frenzy dance of all his body when excited, that caused him to leap and break out in sharp cries of gasping joy. But loved by us all for his everywhere good nature to everyone, even those not at all deserving of it from him.
‘Villainous Hamilton!’ I cried out. ‘Let’s have a drink to celebrate this reunion.’
‘Man, in this Cosmopolitan is only coffees, ciders and Coca-Colas, but if you like we can cross the road over to the Moorhen.’
‘No, no, stay here and tell me all your activities since we meet. How did you get here, and what is your full present position?’
‘I came here, Johnny, on a merchant ship.’
‘As passenger? As crew?’
‘As stowaway. Then one month in their English jail, and I’m a free British citizen again.’
‘And how do you live on what?’
‘Ah, now, that …’ He smiled and wobbled. ‘Well, man, I hustle. If you ain’t got no loot from home, and you don’t like the work in the Jumble Post Office, or railways, for six pounds less taxes and insurances, then, man, you must hustle.’
‘And what is your particular hustling?’
‘Oh, Johnny, you ask such private questions! Tell me of you, now. You been here long?’
‘Some few day now.’
‘And you think you like this city?’
‘I think yes I do, but not my lodging. I’m in that Welfare hostel.’
‘Oh, no! That underpaid paradise! You enjoy it?’
‘Mister, I’m moving out before the week is ended. Are rooms in town so very hard to find?’
‘They can be found, yes, though Jumbles that take Spade will rob you in their charge of rent …’
‘Aren’t there no Spades here that have houses?’
‘Oh, yes. They rob you even better, but they leave you free. I live in one such house myself.’
‘And that house is where?’
‘By Holloway. I live out there at times.’
‘At times?’
‘Man, I have several addresses. I keep them for various private reasons of convenience.’
‘Hamilton, all this is so mysterious to me.’
‘I tell you more later, man, far from these overhanging ears. Meantime if you leave your hostel, will you come and live with me if you prefer? The landlord is Mr Cole, an Ibo man. I pay two pounds the week which you can share.’
‘Immediately, Hamilton. I move into your house tonight.’
By this time the Cosmopolitan was getting hotted up. And I was struck to notice that though the band was only Jumble imitation of our style, it was quite a hep combination, with some feel of the beat, not like those dreadful records of the English bands I’d heard back home which never can play slow, and never can play easy to the limbs. Out on the floor our boys were acting cool and crazy, letting their little girls do all the work as they twisted them around; or if any of our boys did break in a quick shuffle, the chicks were left gasping tied in hopeless knots. The English boys, of which a few were out there on the floor, all leapt around their partners like some bouncing peanuts, supposing they would show these easy Spades the genuine hot footwork of the jungle. To ask for partner, as I saw, all you must do was just walk up and grab. Though I did notice some polite student boys with spectacles who bowed and enquired, in Jumble style, for which they got refusal.
Then I saw Billy Whispers’ Dorothy. She danced with a GI, dressed up sharp, with vaseline in his hair