recognise it was this Alfy Bongo. ‘Oh, you,’ I said to him. ‘Are you still living?’
‘Why not, Johnny? The devil looks after his own. Won’t you have a coffee with me?’
‘So you are one of these foolish men who try to mess about with Spades in picture-houses?’
‘Oh, I’m a little queer boy, Johnny, that’s for certain; but I didn’t know that it was you.’
‘One day you meet some bad boy who do you some big damage.’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time. Let’s come and have some coffee, like I say.’
‘Why should I come? I enjoy this film in here.’
‘Listen, Johnny. Why are you so ungrateful? Didn’t they tell you how I helped you at your trial?’
‘I hear of this, yes; but is much better that you leave me to fight my trial alone. If this woman you speak to not go into the box, and make her statement, I go free all the same through my good lawyers.’
‘You think you would have? Nobody else does – least of all Mr Vial, I can tell you that. And, anyway, who do you think found your lawyers for you?’
‘Well, what good it do me – that acquittal? They catch me the second time.’
‘I wish I’d known of that. If I’d known, I’d have done something for you … Why didn’t anyone let me know in time?’
I stopped in the street and looked at this cheeky person. ‘What is all this, Alfy, you wish to do such nice things for me? You hope you have some pleasant treatment from me one day that never come?’
‘Oh, no, Johnny, I know you’re square. But I just like helping out the Spades.’
‘You do! Oh, do you!’
‘I wish I’d been born a Spade.’
‘Do you now, man!’
‘Yes, I do. I tell you I do. You have this coffee with me, Johnny, or not?’
‘Oh, if you say so: let us go.’
He took me to a coffee-bar nearby, and there, when he order it, he said to me, ‘And how was it in the nick? Did they beat you in there at all?’
‘No, man, I play so cool. What I like least of all is your British sanitation in that place. Man, in that jail all you turn into is not any human person, but a lavatory machine.’
‘And what do you do now, Johnny, with yourself?’
‘What I do now? Would it surprise you, after how they treat me in those places, if now I start up some really serious hustle?’
‘Don’t think of that, man. You’ve got a record now. Second offence, and they’ve got you by the you-know-whats. What you should do is … Man, why don’t you cut out and go back home?’
‘How can I now, to face my family? They speak about my dad in court – you know of that? They talk about his bravery, which I tell my white friends as a secret, not for them to put shame on my dad by mixing his name up with that charge they put upon me.’
‘I hear Billy’s out. You know what he did with Dorothy?’
‘No. Where she’s gone?’
‘Into hospital. He cut up her face.’
‘Nice. Well, I’m not surprised. That thing come her way some quite long time.’
‘Better be careful – you too, Johnny. Why don’t you leave town a while? Go up to Liverpool Rialto way, or Manchester Moss Side?’
‘Me? For fear of that man Billy? Listen now, Mr Bongo. If he kill me, he kill me. If I kill him, I kill him. Or else perhaps nobody kills nobody. We shall see.’
This Alfy Bongo person was one I couldn’t quite make out. I looked hard behind his eyes, but could not see any real unfriendliness to me, or danger there.
He looked me back. ‘Well, that’s not the great news, is it?’ he said. ‘You know you’re a father now, Johnny?’
‘Yes? No, I not hear …’
‘A boy.’
‘Is it then Muriel?’
‘Yes. She’s called it William.’
‘Well – is nice for her. I hope this William turns out a nice man like his uncle Arthur, that shop me to the Law.’
‘You’re not going out to see your son?’
‘Why, man? Let her keep this William for her pleasure.’
‘She’ll put an affiliation order on you, to support it …’
‘Oh, well. That will be just one more misery I have to suffer.’
This Alfy handed me a cigarette. ‘You’re turning sour, Johnny,’ he said to me. ‘It’s bad in London, when a Spade turns sour.’
I got up to leave him. ‘Spades will stay sour, man, let me tell you, till they’re treated right.’