Free City of Spades by Colin MacInnes

wine and drank it. ‘Cigarettes?’ he said to me.
    I was getting some out, but felt Johnny’s hand upon my wrist.
    ‘Then give me one pound or else ten shillings,’ said the intruder.
    ‘But why?’
    He stroked my arm and looked at me sideways. ‘Come now, come now, come now,’ he kept on saying.
    The Africans ate on, taking no notice of him whatsoever.
    ‘Come, little white friend,’ said the tapper, in a soft, gentle, stupid, persistent voice. ‘Give me some sustenance.’ And he began patting me on the back – gently at first, then harder.
    ‘Go away,’ I said, half rising.
    ‘Ignore him, please,’ said Johnny. ‘He will shoot off in time.’
    ‘How can I ignore him?’
    But sure enough, the tapper slowly stopped his patting, sat huddled a while in silence in his chair, then shambled to another table.
    ‘It is useless,’ said Johnny, ‘to instruct a tapper. If you resist, he will create some foolish disturbance. If you play cool, he will lose interest of his profit, and fade away.’
    ‘To be a tapper is a profession,’ Hamilton explainedto me. ‘A horrible one, of course, but these people cannot be dismissed.’
    ‘They are unfortunate, and must not be subject to humiliation,’ Johnny said. ‘Come: do we take some coffee? You, Montgomery?’
    ‘All right.’
    ‘Black?’
    ‘Yes, black.’
    ‘I shall drink white in compliment to you. Then Hamilton will take us to the Moonbeam club, and show us the delights of London’s wicked mysteries. How about chicks to dance with, Hamilton? Are they to be found upon those premises?’
    ‘That GIs’ rendezvous is loaded up with chicks. Chicks of all activities and descriptions, some trading, and other voluntary companions full of hope.’
    ‘There’s a little girl in Maida Vale I’d like to ask – I wonder if she’d come?’
    ‘You know a girl already, Johnny? Speedy!’
    ‘A family friend, Hamilton, that I must see. I have some news for her about her sister. What say we go along and pick her up?’
    ‘We could walk out that way, this Moonbeam’s open until when the dawn … But first, Johnny, I more like you come over and see your future home with me.’
    I had a sudden inspiration. ‘I know,’ I said, ‘a very nice woman to make up the party … a most engaging English girl, called Theodora. I’m sure she’d like to come. Let’s go to my place and ask her. We could have another drink there too, I think and hope.’
    We walked out through the Indians’ vague bows into the star-skied town, and hailed a cab. It was the hour at which all honest Londoners have hurried to their beds and wisdom, and when the night owls, brave spirits in this nightless city, emerge to gather in the suspect cellars that nourish the resistance movement to the day.
    ‘Why have I done this?’ I reflected, as we drove home between rotting Georgian terraces, and the ominous green of the thick trees in Regent’s Park which, when night falls, are reclaimed from man by a jealous, antique Nature. ‘Theodora won’t be in the least bit interested, and no more will these wild Africans be in her.’
    We crept stealthily up through the echoing floors of my grim house. There was a light under Theodora’s door. Asking my friends to wait, I knocked, and she bade me enter in her bold, emotionless tones.
    It is a curiosity of Theodora’s austere and purposeful nature that she wears intimate clothes of a sensual and frivolous kind. There she was, still typing away, but dressed now in a gown and nightdress made for a suppler, more yielding body.
    ‘You were a long time at that hostel,’ she said. ‘Did you enjoy yourself?’
    ‘Theodora. Would you care to go out dancing?’
    ‘You’ve been drinking again, Montgomery.’
    ‘Of course I have. Would you like to come into a world where you’ve never set foot before, even though it’s always existed underneath your nose?’
    She flipped out the sheet she was typing, and held it on her lap. ‘Go on,’ she said.
    ‘I