each hand, searching the late darkness for a taxi. ‘Let me take it for you, please,’ I said to her. ‘You don’t want it to scratch you on your nylon blouses.’
‘They’re not nylon,’ she said to me, and I saw she was in tears.
I took the animal.
‘We walk a bit together, you and me,’ I said, ‘and get the fresh air in our weary choke-up lungs.’
‘You’ll catch cold without a coat on.’
‘Me? I’m hearty! Walking warms up the circulation.’
After a silent while, she said, ‘I suppose you think I oughtn’t to have done that, Johnny.’
‘Is for you to judge. Each man is jury of his own actions – even women.’
‘I didn’t mind all that much about the cat, but I couldn’t bear them all enjoying themselves so much.’
This cat was wriggling, so I shoved it inside my shirt and buttoned it. ‘Ju-ju is ju-ju,’ I replied. ‘Surely, is best to stay away from watching it, or, if you come, not interfere.’
‘But you took me there to see it.’
A remark how like a woman!
‘African ju-ju, or Haitian voodoo,’ I explained to her, ‘is not to be despised like you do through your ignorance. Medical science is, of course, a European discovery, as we know when we buy our spectacles, or have the appendix out. But living and dying is also very much a mystery of the mind that ju-ju understands.’
With my conversation, and the night air, she was recovering her usual sharp brain. ‘According to what I read,’ she said, ‘the latest European opinion bears you out.’
A taxi sailed by, cruising cautious, slow, and eager for custom like a prostitute would do. I hailed it, and opened up the door. ‘Here is your quadruped,’ I said. ‘What will you call it?’
‘You choose a name.’
I took the cat beneath the taxi headlamps to examine it for sex. ‘Tungi,’ I said, ‘is a nice name for a boy.’ I handed it back, but she grabbed my arm as well as Tungi when I did so. ‘Come home with me, please,’ she asked, ‘just for a while.’
I know what ‘for a while’ means, once a chick’s got you inside her front door … and I wasn’t eager for any close association with this not so young, young lady. All the same, she’d given me the twenty pounds, and perhaps she might be helpful to me on some later occasion. I climbed in and took the cat again, to make sure I had a good excuse not to hold whatever else that might be offered.
‘And how is Muriel?’ she said, in that voice women use to hide their disapproval.
‘Muriel is well. Her health is good.’
‘Are you fond of her, Johnny?’
‘“Fond of” is not some words I use. Either is “love” or “not love” in my language.’
‘So you love Muriel, then.’
‘Well, yes, I do. She makes me quite mad with all her practical remarks and weepings, but I have some love for Muriel, that’s certain.’
‘So you’ll get married soon?’
‘Who said I would? Did I say so?’ The cat was wriggling once more – I slapped it. ‘Any conversation about loving a woman,’ I exclaimed, ‘ends up always with some talk by her of marriage.’
‘Excuse me, Johnny.’
‘Oh, I excuse you, naturally.’
This argument gave me excellent reasons for saying my farewell to her once delivered safely at her address; but when the cab stopped, she asked me to dig some earth up from the little garden there outside the rails. ‘For the cat,’ she said. ‘He’ll need a tray upstairs. Just bring it up, will you, when you’ve done? I’ll leave the door open.’
This woman beats my time! I gathered up two handfuls, kicked the door closed behind me, and climbed three steps up at a jump, leaving trailings and spots of dirty earth upon the landings. Inside her room, the lights were already on, the radio in operation, and she was pouring out some drink in quite a hurry.
‘Where is this tray?’ I cried.
‘What tray?’
‘For Tungi your dear cat, Miss Theodora. Or shall I lay this soil upon this sofa?’
‘Oh, don’t be so angry with me, Johnny. I know men don’t like being asked to do a menial task.’
Didn’t that make it worse? She handed me some drink. I gulped it, then said, ‘Goodbye, Miss Theodora, Montgomery would not approve if I should stay.’
‘Him? He’s nothing to me! He’ll be out drinking somewhere, anyway.’
‘Nothing to you, you say. Am I then something?’
This chilly lady, all skin and eagerness and spectacles, now flung herself upon me like some