City of Spades - By Colin MacInnes Page 0,21

as if poised with a spear in the deep bush. His face to me was quite invisible, but Johnny said, ‘Is Hamilton,’ and they began a deep conversation in a voluble, staccato rumbling tongue.

‘Hamilton,’ Johnny told me with admiration, ‘escaped the Law’s attention by crouching on top of the lavatory doors. Then he could return, when all invaders left, to pick up the weed he find undetected on the floor.’

‘Come now,’ said Hamilton. ‘I have some VP wine. We go to the Fakir for some necessary eat and drink.’

We walked through the warm night, with a wide white blaze on the city sky where the summer sun refused to set.

‘Johnny,’ I said. ‘You talk to Hamilton in African. But to others you talk in English. Why?’

‘I do not speak with Hamilton in African. I speak to him in the language of our tribe. There is no “African”, but many, many tribal languages.’

‘How many?’

‘More than one hundred in Nigeria. Some I know, like Yoruba, Hausa, Munshi and my own. But others I do not, so I speak English.’

‘So you speak five languages. Bravo!’

‘I teach you some Africa words one day – words of my tribe. Say “Madu”.’

‘Madu. What have I said?’

‘“My friend.” Come, we go eat. You like this Indian food?’

‘No. About Indian food, there’s a great mystery: how can a race so ancient and so civilised have devised anything so repellent? It always seems predigested and regurgitated. And the handkerchiefs it ruins!’

‘Oh? You like that fish-and-chip stuff better? Come, we go in.’

The Indians were, as is usual, a family, and they welcomed my friends with the aloof professional deference that scarcely veils indifference and contempt. Johnny and Hamilton chose a distant corner beside an ash-tray made of an elephant’s foot, and began their surreptitious chemistry with cigarette papers and little packets. After puffs, inhalations and exchange of butts, Johnny handed me the cigarette. ‘It give you appetite,’ he said.

‘No, thanks.’

‘You never smoked this stuff?’

‘As a matter of fact, once, yes. In Egypt. But from a hubble-bubble.’

‘And you liked it?’

‘It had no effect whatever.’

‘Oh-ho! Listen to this experienced Jumble man! Then either, Montgomery, your hubble-bubble contained rubbish, or you took a very feeble drag.’

‘You’ll have to be careful, smoking that stuff here.’

‘Oh, these Indians don’t mind,’ said Hamilton.

‘I mean here in England. Remember Inspector Purity.’

‘Man,’ Johnny said, ‘wherever there are Spades there will be weed.’

‘You smoked a lot at home?’

‘In Africa, with due discretion, you can smoke in even public places.’

‘Not in the main street, naturally,’ Hamilton explained, ‘or underneath the copper’s nose, as that is useless provocation.’

‘Even as babies, we may meet it,’ Johnny said. ‘A mother, to soothe our cries, may ease us to comfort with a gentle loving puff. Later, as boys, we make the experiment as you do here with your tobacco.’

‘And do not forget,’ said Hamilton, waving his hand, ‘that many of us are Mahometans and cannot indulge in liquor. Weed is to us what liquor is to you.’

‘But stronger, surely.’

‘Depending on the quantity you partake.’

‘Liquor,’ said Johnny, ‘opens you outwards and gives you a foolish love of fellow men, the wish to chatter to them in a cheerful, not selective way. But weed, you see, turns you happily inward to sit silent in the greater enjoyment of your personality. Try some?’ And he held out the stick again.

‘But it’s habit-forming.’

‘No,’ they both said. And Johnny added, ‘Charging is different from popping as liquor is.’

‘Popping?’

‘With needles. White stuff – man, that’s danger! But not this – just you try it.’

‘No, thanks. No, not for me.’

In came great piles of the predigested food, and Hamilton uncorked the VP wine.

Looking past his shoulder, I saw a huge shapeless man, but one with eyes a-glint, come lumbering light-toed through the door. Customers, when they saw him, lowered their eyes and talked a little louder. He had on a thick overcoat, despite the summer, and a large felt hat which he did not remove.

‘Say nothing to this person,’ Hamilton told me. ‘He’s Johnson: Johnson the tapper.’

‘What’s a tapper?’

‘Man, you’ll see.’

The huge man drew up a chair, smiled lippily at us all and reached out fat fingers to take food. Hamilton lifted the plates out of his reach. The stranger snatched up a glass of VP wine and drank it. ‘Cigarettes?’ he said to me.

I was getting some out, but felt Johnny’s hand upon my wrist.

‘Then give me one pound or else ten shillings,’ said the intruder.

‘But why?’

He stroked my arm and looked at me sideways. ‘Come now, come now, come