Free City of Spades by Colin MacInnes Page B

‘You’re not coming to this ball with me, then? Those boys will certainly put it down to colour prejudice.’
    ‘Don’t be so cunning, Montgomery. It’s too transparent. Your friend Fortune wouldn’t think so, anyway. He’s too intelligent.’ Theodora tightened thegown around her waist, smoothed meditatively her lean, albeit shapely, thighs, then turned round and said to me, ‘All right, very well – I’ll come.’
    I gazed at her awestruck. ‘Might I ask, Theodora, why you’ve changed your inflexible mind?’
    There was a pause; then: ‘It will be an opportunity to study conditions.’
    ‘What does that mean, my dear?’
    ‘Conditions of coloured people living in London.’
    ‘But why? Why you?’
    ‘The Corporation might put on a series of talks. It’s a topical and unusual theme.’
    I drew breath. ‘Theodora! I shall not be party to such a plot! If you come out with my friends, it is to come out with them, and not to ferret raw material for impartial radio programmes.’
    There was a silence.
    ‘Very well,’ she said at last. ‘I accept your condition. I’ll get dressed.’

10
Hamilton’s sad secret
    Hamilton and I rejected possibilities of a late tube or bus, and instead sought a taxi among the endless streets that led in the direction of his Holloway home. I cannot tell you what a joy it was to see Hamilton again, just as in youth, and to know of a sure friend in this after all very unknown city. I put my arm through his, and said to him (just near a huge, empty railway station), ‘Oh, Hamilton, one day we’ll return together to set alight to that dreadful mission school.’
    ‘If ever I get home, Johnny, yes, we shall.’
    ‘But surely, Hamilton, you will go back to Lagos in the due course of time?’
    ‘I don’t know. Many things keep me here.’
    ‘What, Hamilton? You love this country?’
    ‘No, no, but I have means to live here in better comfort than I could hope for back home …’
    ‘What means?’
    ‘I tell you this in a bit later time.’
    He’d looked at me with an alarmed expression, quite unlike him.
    ‘That Jumble,’ he said, ‘that Mr Pew. Is he to be trusted, in your opinion?’
    ‘Why not, until he proves us otherwise?’
    ‘I have been here two years, and still I have no Jumble friends.’
    ‘You do not seek for them, perhaps? Whites are all right if you are proud and strong with them.’
    ‘Friendship between us is not possible, Johnny. Their interest is to keep us washing dishes, and in their kindest words are always hidden secret double thoughts.’
    ‘Hamilton, you know, if our people has one bad weakness, it is our jealousy always, and suspicion.’
    ‘Suspicion of Jumbles? Jealousy of them? Why not so?’
    ‘Even for ourselves, our people have that bad feeling. You know it, Hamilton. If one man rises up, the others try all to pull him down – even when there is no advantage to them.’
    ‘That may be true,’ said Hamilton. ‘And certainly these Jumbles are more faithful to each other than we are to our own kind. When the trouble comes, they stick: our people scatter.’
    A taxi cruised by, he hailed it, and gave to the driver no fixed address, but the name of the corner of two streets. Then closing the glass panel, he said to me, ‘Never let your own private addresses be known in this Jumble city, especially to such as taxi drivers who make their report on passengers they carry to the Law.’
    We walked from the taxi stop round several blocks, Hamilton glancing sometimes back along the streets behind, then dived in the basement of a silent house. Hamilton opened, and turned on the lights with a great smile. ‘Welcome to my place,’ he said, ‘which is also to be from now your home.’
    It certainly was a most delightful residence: with carpets and divans, and shaded lamps and a big radiogram and comfort. He turned on the sound which gave out first Lena Home. ‘She! One of my favourites,’ I told him.
    ‘Then listen to her, man, while I go