City of Spades Read Free

wish three tenants for the price of one.’
    ‘So long as the room is paid, what does it matter?’
    ‘Ah – paid. Failure to pay is another chief complaint.’
    ‘Don’t Jumbles never skip their rent as well as Spades?’
    ‘I beg your pardon once again?’
    ‘Don’t Jumbles …’
    ‘Jumbles?’
    ‘You’re a Jumble, man.’
    ‘I?’
    ‘Yes. That’s what we call you. You don’t mind?’
    ‘I hope I don’t … It’s not, I trust, an impolite expression?’
    ‘You mean like nigger?’
    I rose up.
    ‘Now, please! This is the Colonial Department Welfare Office. That word is absolutely forbidden within these walls.’
    ‘It should be outside them, too.’
    ‘No doubt. I too deplore its use.’
    ‘Well, relax, please, Mr Pew. And don’t be so scared of Jumble. It’s cheeky, perhaps, but not so very insulting.’
    ‘May I enquire how it is spelt?’
    ‘J-o-h-n-b-u-l-l.’
    ‘Ah! But pronounced as you pronounce it?’
    ‘Yes: Jumble.’
    It struck me the ancient symbol, thus distorted, was strangely appropriate to the confusion of my mind.
    ‘I see. And …’ (I hesitated) ‘… Spade?’
    ‘Is us.’
    ‘And that is not an objectionable term?’
    ‘Is cheeky, too, of course, but not offending. In Lagos, on the waterfront, the boys sometimes called me the Ace of Spades.’
    ‘Ah …’
    He offered me, from an American pack, an extravagantly long fag.
    ‘Let’s not us worry, Mr Pew,’ he said, ‘about bad names. My dad has taught me that in England some foolish man may call me sambo, darkie, boot or munt or nigger, even. Well, if he does – my fists!’ (He clenched them: they were like knees.) ‘Or,’ he went on, ‘as Dad would say, “First try rebuke by tongue, then fists”.’
    ‘Well, Mr Fortune,’ I said to him, when he had at last unclenched them to rehitch the knife edge of his blue linen tapering slacks, ‘I think with one of these good women on our list you’ll have no trouble …’
    ‘If I take lodgings, mister,’ he replied, ‘they must be Liberty Hall. No questions from the landlady, please. And me, when I give my rent, I’ll have the politeness not to ask her what she spends it on.’
    ‘That, my dear fellow, even for an Englishman, is very difficult to find in our sad country.’
    ‘I’ll find it.’ He beetled at me, then, leaning forward, said, ‘And do you know why I think your landladies are scared of us?’
    ‘I can but imagine …’
    ‘Because of any brown babies that might appear.’
    ‘In the nature of things,’ I said, ‘that may indeed well be.’
    ‘An arrival of white babies they can somehow explain away. But if their daughter has a brown one, then neighbouring fingers all start pointing.’
    I silently shook my head.
    ‘But why,’ he cried, ‘why not box up together, Jumble and Spade, like we let your folk do back home?’
    I rose once more.
    ‘Really, Mr Fortune. You cannot expect me to discuss these complex problems. I am – consider – an official.’
    ‘Oh, yes … You have to earn your money, I suppose.’
    I found this, of course, offensive. And moving with dignity to my desk, I took up the Warning Folder of People and Places to Avoid.
    ‘Another little duty for which I’m paid ,’ I said to him, ‘is to warn our newcomers against … well, to be frank, bad elements among their fellow countrymen.’
    ‘Oh, yes, man. Shoot.’
    ‘And,’ I continued, looking at my list, ‘particularly against visiting the Moorhen public house, the Cosmopolitan dance hall, or the Moonbeam club.’
    ‘Just say those names again.’
    To my horror, I saw he was jotting them on the back page of his passport.
    ‘To visit these places,’ I went on, reading aloud from the mimeographed sheet I held, ‘has been, for many, the first step that leads to the shadow of the police courts.’
    ‘Why? What goes on in them?’
    I didn’t, perhaps fortunately, yet know. ‘I’m not at liberty to divulge it,’ I replied.
    ‘Ah well …’
    He pocketed