Ibo accent.
‘Yes.’
‘Newcomer to town?’
‘Yes.’
‘Student boy, perhaps?’
‘Yes, Mr Cole. I see you soon be familiar with my personal history.’
He looked at me with no smile at all, and said, ‘I have to be acquainted with the residents of my house. You a gambler?’
‘I might perhaps be one.’
‘We must play cards some day.’
‘If you say so, sir.’
‘Friends come most nights into my room upstairs. You’ll understand this is no common gamble-house like you may find down in the town, but serious.’ He stopped by the door. ‘Do your studies include a knowledge of trigonometry?’ he asked me.
‘Oh, I’m not that far up.’
‘I’m learning it for my hobby. I thought perhaps you’d help me with the problems. But never mind, so long as you can gamble.’
He went away with his valuable pound notes.
‘A mean man,’ said Hamilton, ‘that “Nat King” Cole. Watch out for him.’
‘Mean in what way?’
‘Treacherous. Nothing is meaner, Johnny, than we are when we go sour. I tell you, man, I know the London landlords. Even a white is not so mean as our race can be to us …’
Hamilton was lying back now on the divan, and I saw that his two eyes slowly began to close. ‘Wake up, we’re going to that club,’ I cried to him; but his drug worked its effect, and when I’d removed his shoes and loosened up his clothing, and stood looking sadly at him for a while, I went out once more into the London night.
It was difficult for me to find the home of Muriel and her mother, as I had forgotten the street name and number, and had only the force of instinct to guide me there. Another thought also began to strike me: this was not Lagos, where we never slumber, but a city which after midnight seemed like the Land of Deads. Would I be welcomed by those Macphersons at so late an hour?
But though the street, when I found it, was all in blackness, I was happy to see lights blazing on the Macpherson floor. This time the front door was locked shut, so I stood underneath and called up Muriel’s name; and then, when no answer came, threw little blocks of earth from the outside garden at the window-panes.
With a screech one flew open, and out on to the balcony there stepped Mrs Hancock, or Macpherson. Even I was alarmed at her wild and strange appearance. She was naked except for a short nightdress, her grey hair hung down like ghost upon her shoulders, and in her hand she carried a huge book which she held upwards, like a club.
‘Who is it,’ she cried, ‘that disturbs the Lord’s servants at their midnight prayers?’
‘Good evening, Mrs Macpherson,’ I called up. ‘Is me, Johnny Fortune, your young friend.’
‘What?’ she shrieked out. And to my disgust, I saw she’d snatched away her nightgown to the thigh, which shone all blue and gristly, like a meat carcass, in the electric light.
‘I too,’ she cried out shrill, ‘I too could be evil if I wanted to, like you wicked men.’
At that she hurled the book down on my head. I picked it up: it was a black-bound hymnal. The window shut swiftly with a clatter.
Then the door opened, and out came little Muriel. ‘Mum’s got hysteria,’ she said. ‘Arthur’s come back. He’s been released.’
‘He’s in there too?’
‘No. Mum refused to let him stay, so he’s gone off to the Moonbeam to find some friend he can stop with.’
‘That’s funny, Muriel, because I came here to ask you out with me to just that place – to dance and hear about your sister Dorothy and what I have discovered.’
‘Oh, I don’t want to go to the Moonbeam …’
‘But, Muriel, I must meet Arthur, to see if I can help him. And how will I know him without you there to point him out?’
She looked upstairs. ‘Mum’s so hysterical,’ she kept on saying.
‘Well, give her back her religious volume and leave her make her prayers and singing. Who is it she’s praying for – for Arthur?’
‘No. For suffering humanity.’
‘Oh, come along now, Muriel. I’ll look after you in any place we go.’
‘All right, Johnny,’ she said. ‘I’ll get my keys.’ And taking the hymnal from me, she disappeared into the madhouse up the stairs.
11
The Moonbeam club
Strange girl, Theodora! When I’d taken a quick bath and changed once more (sober dark grey, this time) I came downstairs to find she was resplendently got up: she looked like a lively rector’s daughter’s notion of a