He gripped me by my shoulder and spun me round. But not before I’d seen what plant it was in flower-pots inside there.
‘Keep your nose out, Mr Nigeria,’ he said.
So strong was he, I saw I’d better fight him with my brains.
‘It’s smoking weed,’ I said. ‘You give me some perhaps?’
‘You blow your top too much, Mr Stranger.’
We stood there on the very edge of combat. But just then I heard a window scraping and, looking up, I saw a face there staring down at us: a mask of ebony, it seemed to me from there. This face talked to Jimmy Cannibal in some Gambian tongue, and then said to me, ‘You may come up.’
As we both climbed the stairs (this Cannibal behind me breathing hot upon my neck), I got the feeling every room was occupied by hearing voices, men’s and women’s, and sometimes the click of dice.
On a landing Cannibal edged past me, put his head round the door, then waved me in. He didn’t come inside himself, but stood out there on the landing, lurking.
This Billy Whispers was a short man with broad shoulders and longer arms than even is usual with us. Elegantly dressed but quite respectable, as if on Sundays, and with a cool, cold face that gazed at me without fear or favour.
‘You come inside?’ he said. ‘Or do you prefer to stand there encouraging draughts?’
‘I’m Fortune,’ I said, ‘from Lagos.’
‘I know a lot of Lagos boys.’
‘You’re Gambian, they tell me. Bathurst?’
He nodded at me and said, ‘My friend was telling me of your interest in my greenhouse.’
‘I saw you grew charge out there …’
‘You want to smoke some?’
‘Well, I don’t mind. I used up all I had on the trip over …’
‘I’ll roll you a stick,’ this Billy Whispers said.
I sat on the bed, feeling pleased at the chance of blowing hay once more. For much as I care for alcoholic drinks of many kinds, my greatest enjoyment, ever since when a boy, is in charging with weed. Because without it, however good I feel, I’m never really on the top of my inspiration.
Meanwhile this Billy took out two cigarette-papers, and joined them together by the tongue. He peeled and broke down a piece of the ordinary fag he held between his lips, and then, from a brown-paper pack in a jar above the fireplace (a large pack, I noticed), he sprinkled a generous dose of the weed in the papers and began rolling and licking, easing the two ends of the stick into position with a match.
‘But tell me,’ I said, ‘if it’s not enquiring. You didn’t grow all that hemp you have from outside in your greenhouse?’
‘No, no. Is an experiment I’m making, to grow it myself from seed.’
‘Otherwise you buy it?’
He nodded.
‘You can get that stuff easy here?’
‘It can be got … Most things can be got in London when you know your way around.’
He gave the weed a final tender lick and roll, and handed it me by the thin inhaling end.
‘And the Law,’ I said. ‘What do they have to say about consuming weed?’
‘What they say is fifteen- or twenty-pound fine if you’re caught. Jail on the second occasion.’
‘Man! Why, these Jumbles have no pity!’
At which I lit up, took a deep drag, well down past the throat, holding the smoke in my lungs with little sharp sniffs to stop the valuable gust escaping. When I blew out, after a heavy interval, I said to him, ‘Good stuff. And what do they make you pay for a stick here?’
‘Retail, in small sticks, half a crown.’
‘And wholesale?’
‘Wholesale? For that you have to find your own supplier and make your personal arrangement.’
I took one more deep drag.
‘You know such a supplier?’ I enquired.
‘Of course … I know of several …’
‘You don’t deal in this stuff personal, by any possible chance?’
Here Billy Whispers joined his two hands, wearing on each one a big coloured jewel.
‘Mister,’ he said, ‘I think these are questions that you don’t ask on so early an acquaintance.’
Which was true, so I smiled at him and handed him over the weed for his turn to take his drag on it.
He did this, and after some time in silence he blew on the smouldering end of the weed and said to me, ‘And what is it, Fortune, I can do for you here?’
‘I’m Dorothy’s half-half-brother.’
‘What say?’
‘Arthur, her brother, is my brother too.’ And I explained.