owing. It comes to sixty-six pounds and fifteen shillings.” Willie ran away again. Now when he went to Percy's parties he looked for the little man with the beard. It wasn't long before he saw him, and the man came up to him, sipping white wine from a wine glass, and said, his breath smelling of garlic and sausage, “Sorry, old boy. But in South Africa we always said that you Indians were loaded, and I thought you would want to help.”
There appeared one evening a man unlike the usual bohemian partygoer. He brought a bottle of champagne for the party, and he presented it to Percy at the door. He was in his fifties, small and carefully dressed in a grey suit with a check pattern, dressed almost to Percy's standards, with the lapels of the jacket handstitched, and the material falling soft over the arm. Percy introduced the stranger to Willie and left the two of them together.
Willie, not a drinking man, but knowing now what was expected of him, said, “Champagne.”
The stranger said, in an extraordinarily soft voice, and an accent that was not the accent of a professional man, “It's chilled. It's from the Ritz. They always keep a bottle ready for me.”
Willie wasn't sure that the man was serious. But the man's eyes were cold and still, and Willie thought that it wasn't necessary for him to decide on the matter. But the Ritz again! How it seemed to matter to them. And to Willie—for whom at home a hotel was the cheapest kind of cheap tea-shop or eating place—it was a strange London idea of luxury: not the drink, not the treat, but the grand hotel, as though the extra price added an extra blessing.
The stranger wasn't going to make conversation with Willie, and Willie saw that he had to do some work.
He said, “Do you work in London?”
The stranger said, “I work right here. I'm a developer. I'm developing this area. It's a rubbish dump now. It will be different in twenty years. I'm willing to wait. There are all these protected old tenants, and they are paying nothing for their accommodation in these big houses, and they're almost in the centre of London. And they really want to live outside. In the leafy suburbs, or in a nice little country cottage. I help them do that. I buy the properties and offer the tenants other accommodation. Some take it. Some don't. Then I break up the place around them. In the old days I would get Percy to send in his darkeys.” He spoke gently, without malice, purely descriptively, and Willie believed him.
Willie said, “Percy.”
“Old London landlord. You didn't know? He didn't tell you.”
Percy said later that evening to Willie, “So the old man cornered you.”
“He said you were a landlord.”
“I've had to do lots of things, little Willie. They wanted West Indian chaps to drive the buses here. But there was the problem of accommodation. People don't want to rent to black people. I don't have to tell you that. So one or two of the island governments encouraged people like me to buy properties and rent to West Indians. That was how it started. Don't get any fancy ideas. The houses I bought were full of people and cost about fifteen hundred pounds. One cost seventeen hundred and fifty. I used to fit in the boys in the spare rooms. I would go around every Friday evening to collect the rent. You couldn't get better people than the boys from Barbados. They were very grateful. On those Friday evenings, just off the London Transport shift, you would find every man Jack of them washed and clean and kneeling down beside the bed in their little rooms and praying. Bible on one side, open at Leviticus, rent book on the other side, closed over the notes. And the notes showing. The old man heard about me and decided to buy me out. I couldn't deny him. It was his manor. He offered me the job in the club. He promised me a piece of the business. When I asked for the piece he said I was being boring. I took the hint and got the college scholarship. But he wants to be friends with me still, and it is better for me to be friends with him. But it worries me, Willie. He wants me to go back to work for him. It worries me.”
Willie thought, “How strange the city is!