you?’
‘You know very well, Mr Bo, that African music is too real, too obsessive, too wonderfully monotonous, too religious, for Europeans ever to put up with it. We like something much less authentic.’
‘I see you are a serious student of our art.’
‘Of course I am. I don’t speak of what I don’t know about.’
‘Theodora, your conceit’s repulsive.’
‘Be quiet, Montgomery. Go on, Mr Bo. Why do you all come here?’
Beneath her fierce onslaught, Mr Bo looked dreamy, seeming to retire within himself. ‘Some boys are afraid of curses,’ he said softly.
‘Of spells? Of witchcraft?’
‘I see you smile, Miss Pace. You should not smile. I could show to you boys here, even scientific students, who believe that family of theirs have died from spells, and fear the same themselves if they return.’
‘And you: you surely don’t believe such nonsense yourself?’
‘Anything many people believe is not exactly nonsense, Miss Theodora. You are, of course, superior to such superstitions, but then perhaps you have no wonderful sense of magic and mystery any more.’
A shrewd thrust, I thought, and Theodora clearly didn’t like it. She hitched her Italian gown, and returned to the attack. ‘That might account for a few dozen who stay here,’ she said, ‘but not for thousands.’
Mr Bo looked at her through veiled eyes, ironically. ‘Others,’ he said, ‘come here to flee their families’ great love. A family in Africa, you see, is not like here. Our whole life and business belong to every second cousin. A family only loves you and gives you some peace when you let it eat you.’ Mr Bo chuckled warmly, and flung up his hands. ‘Some boys are here who wish to escape those circumstances. Here you can live out your own life, even if it is miserably.’
Theodora, in the realm of the mind, is like a huntress who’s not satisfied until she’s bagged her lion. ‘That can’t be the only reason,’ she said, stabbing her coffee cup with a spoon quite viciously.
Mr Bo lit two cigarettes in his lips, and passed her one.
‘You seem so obstinately inclined,’ he said, ‘that I shall tell you the real reason for your satisfaction. It is this.’ He gazed at her, and said: ‘The world has broken suddenly into my country: and we are determined to break out equally into the world.’
‘Go on.’
‘At home there is reasonable happiness, yes, and comfort. But when in a cinema we see the London streets shining, gleaming and beckoning, we stop and think, “Here am I, shut in my prison, cut out from where there is creation, and riches, and power in the modern world. There, in that distant place, the life is bigger, wider, more significant. That is something I must see, and show I can be master of it.” So we come wandering here, like the country boys back home who dream to visit the big town.’
Theodora gazed back, visibly entranced. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘you all come here. And what do you find?’
‘Find almost always great deception. Hard times, or else, like these children you see in this club here, living prosperously for a while with little crimes. In either case, it is failure for us here.’
‘Then why don’t you go back?’
‘Because of shame. The country boy can’t go back home from the city until he makes some fortune. But opportunity for this is denied to us by you.’
‘Because there’s a colour bar, you mean?’
‘Is there a colour bar in England, Miss Theodora?’
‘You know there is.’
‘If you say so, then, I say it too. Universal politeness, and universal coldness. Few love us, few hate us, but everybody wish we are not here, and shows this to us by the correct, stand-away behaviour that is your great English secret of public action.’
‘And you resent it.’
‘No, I do not resent it. Me, I laugh. For very soon this colour bar will die away.’
‘You think so?’
‘I do. When we have African prime minister, who will say: “Mr England, I have a million pounds to spend in Birmingham with you, but perhaps I go spend them in Germany, or in Tokyo, Japan.” This speech by our prime minister will change more hearts of yours in half a day than nice-thinking people among you fail to do in all these years. All else is useless propaganda: I mean all statements of clergymen about brothers under the skin, all efforts you make to banish your shame at ancient conduct to us by being kind to us, and condescensious.’
‘I am never condescending, and not particularly kind.’
‘No, lady.