City of Spades - By Colin MacInnes Page 0,66

we shall see. By the witnesses, we shall see. But what is sure is that Billy will suspect us all – you for what you saw in the gamble-house, and Dorothy that she wants to leave him, and also me.’

‘Why you?’

‘Because Dorothy’s foolish hope is to come and live with me. I must keep clear of that evil little chicken.’

We crossed the Immigration Road.

‘Inspector Purity was asking about you earlier on,’ Montgomery said, and told me of that meeting. ‘Be careful, Johnny.’

‘I am always careful.’

‘You had no weed with you tonight?’

‘None left. Though if they want to take me, they would not mind if I had weed or not.’

‘If that’s so, why didn’t they arrest you there and then? Or any of the others except Ronson?’

‘The knifing was their business this evening. One operation at a time is the Law’s slow and steady way. Perhaps there were also too many witnesses for the frame-up. They have their skill and patience, Montgomery, have the Law.’

Outside my sweet-shop, I said goodbye to him. ‘Do not come in, Montgomery. Muriel and Hamilton will be sleeping. I telephone you.’

‘You promise? Keep in touch, now, won’t you.’

‘I speak to you on the phone tomorrow.’

‘Take care, then. And thank you, Johnny, for helping me with those two boys.’

Helping him! Had I not saved his skin entirely?

‘Is nothing,’ I said. ‘Good night now, Montgomery. I shall see you.’

He walked away, and turned and waved, and I waited till he shrunk right out of sight. Then I went indoors to my misery.

Muriel was up, in spite of it was morning. I kissed her, but she turned her face away.

‘Hamilton’s gone,’ she said. ‘They’ve taken him off to hospital in the ambulance. He had delirium.’

‘It was real bad, this what Hamilton have?’

‘I don’t think he’ll live, Johnny.’

I sat down by her side.

‘Let us go sleep now,’ I said to her. ‘A great many troubles have come my way today.’

‘You’re bleeding, Johnny. Let me wash you.’

‘Wash me, then. But I must sleep.’

She wiped the blood off from my face and fists, and gave me a cup of warm-up tea. ‘You’re back so late. Always back so late,’ she said, taking my clean hands.

‘But I am back, Muriel. Come, we go sleep.’

‘I have to go to work in a few hours.’

‘Before you go to work, Muriel, you sleep with me.’

12

Splendour of flesh made into dream

For several weeks, my life in the flat had been transformed: Norbert and Moscow had made themselves at home. ‘It sure is Bohemian here,’ Norbert said, ‘and we’ll not be in your way.’ They hardly were, indeed; for so much did they overflow about the place, flinging heady articles of clothing everywhere, singing naked on the stairs down to the bath, entertaining, at all hours, their wide circle of acquaintances, that I became almost the interloper in my dwelling, and feared to inconvenience them, rather than they me. Yet though so entirely heartless, and so rigorously selfish, they radiated such bonhomie, were perpetually so high-spirited and so amiable, laughed, danced and chattered so abandonedly, that even Theodora was won over. ‘Of course, I prefer Africans,’ she said, ‘they’re more authentic. But these young Americans certainly have charm.’

Carrying her cat Tungi, she was paying me a morning visit (such as, in earlier days, she’d never made) while my lodgers were out at their rehearsal. ‘I only wish,’ I said, ‘they wouldn’t use the telephone quite so recklessly. I caught Norbert calling up Jackson, Mississippi, yesterday, and really had to put my foot down.’

‘“Put your foot down”!’ Theodora irritated me by repeating with superior disdain. ‘You’re quite unable to say no to them about anything.’

‘And you, my dear Theodora?’ I could not resist asking. ‘Have you not succumbed, despite your initial indifference, even hostility, to coloured people?’

‘My feeling for them is selective, just as it would be with one of us. I don’t admire coloured people in the mass, like you do.’

‘You mean you’ve fallen in love with one individually, and I haven’t.’

Theodora, touched on the raw, assumed her severe departmental manner. ‘For some time now, Montgomery,’ she told me, ‘I’ve been wanting to say just what I think. And it’s this. Your interest in these people is prompted by nothing more than a vulgar, irresponsible curiosity.’

‘Thank you, Theodora.’

‘You like to be the odd man out, and lord it over them.’

‘I’m happy with them. It’s as simple as that.’

‘If you call that happiness.’

‘I do.’

She shifted, woman-like, her ground.

‘It’s the crude animal type that attracts you most of all. It’s