Collected Short Fiction Read online

  The taxi driver took me to various rooms, curtained, hot, stuffed with furniture, and squalid enough to kill all thoughts of pleasure. In one room there was even a baby. ‘Not mine, not mine,’ the girl said. I was a little strained, and the driver was strained, by the time we came to the street where he said I would find Henry’s place.

  The brave young man looking for fun. The spark had gone; and to tell the truth, I was a little embarrassed. I wished to arrive at Henry’s alone. I paid the taxi driver off.

  I imagine I was hoping to find something which at least looked like a commercial establishment. I looked for boards and signs. I saw nothing. I walked past shuttered houses to a shuttered grocery, the only clue even there being a small black noticeboard saying, in amateurish letters, that Ma-Ho was licensed to deal in spirituous liquors. I walked down the other side of the street. And here was something I had missed. Outside a house much hung with ferns a board said:

  Premier Commercial College

  Shorthand and Bookkeeping

  H. J. Blackwhite, Principal

  Here and there a curtain flapped. My walks up and down the short street had begun to attract attention. Too late to give up, though. I walked back past the Premier Commercial College. This time a boy was hanging out of a window. He was wearing a tie and he was giggling.

  I asked him, ‘Hey, does your sister screw?’

  The boy opened his mouth and wailed and pulled back his head. There were giggles from behind the ferns. A tall man pushed open a door with coloured glass panes and came out to the veranda. He looked sombre. He wore black trousers, a white shirt, and a black tie. He had a rod in his hand!

  He said in an English accent, ‘Will you take your filth elsewhere. This is a school. We devote ourselves to things of the mind.’ He pointed sternly to the board.

  ‘Sorry, Mr—’

  He pointed to the board again. ‘Blackwhite. Mr H. J. Blackwhite. My patience is at an end. I shall sit down and type out a letter of protest to the newspapers.’

  ‘I feel like writing some sort of protest myself. Do you know a place called Henry’s?’

  ‘This is not Henry’s.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry. But before you go away, tell me, what do you people do?’

  ‘What do you mean, do?’

  ‘What do you people do when you are doing nothing? Why do you keep on?’

  There were more giggles behind the ferns. Mr Blackwhite turned and ran through the coloured glass doors into the drawing-room. I heard him beating on a desk with a rod and shouting: ‘Silence, silence.’ In the silence which he instantly obtained he beat a boy. Then he reappeared on the veranda, his sleeves rolled up, his face shining with sweat. He seemed willing enough to keep on exchanging words with me, but just then some army jeeps turned the corner and we heard men and women shouting. Overdoing the gaiety, I thought. Blackwhite’s look of exaltation was replaced by one of distaste and alarm.

  ‘Your colleagues and companions,’ he said.

  He disappeared, with a sort of controlled speed, behind the glass panes. His class began to sing, ‘Flow gently, sweet Afton.’

  The jeeps stopped at the unfenced lot opposite Mr Blackwhite’s. This lot contained two verandaless wooden houses. Small houses on low concrete pillars; possibly there were more houses at the back. I stood on the pavement, the jeep-loads tumbled out. I half hoped that the gay tide would sweep me in. But men and girls just passed on either side of me, and when the tide had washed into the houses and the yard I remained where I was, stranded on the pavement.

  Henry’s, it was clear, was like a club. Everybody seemed to know everybody else and was making a big thing of it. I stood around. No one took any notice of me. I tried to give the impression that I was waiting for someone. I felt very foolish. Pleasure was soon the last thing in my mind. Dignity became much more important.

  Henry’s was especially difficult because it appeared to have no commercial organization. There was no bar, there were no waiters. The gay crowd simply sat around on the flights of concrete steps that led from the rocky ground to the doors. No tables outside, and no chairs. I could see things like this inside some of the rooms, but I wasn’t sure whether I had the right to go into any of them. It was clearly a place to which you couldn’t come alone.

  It was Henry in the end who spoke to me. He said that I was making him nervous and that I was making the girls nervous. The girls were like racehorses, he said, very nervous and sensitive. Then, as though explaining everything, he said, ‘The place is what you see it is.’

  ‘It’s very nice,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t have to flatter me; if you want to stay here, fine; if you don’t want to stay here, that’s fine too.’

  Henry wasn’t yet a character. He was still only working up to it. I don’t like characters. They worry me, and perhaps it was because Henry wasn’t yet a character – a public performer, jolly but excluding – that I fell in so easily with him. Later, when he became a character, I was one of the characters with him; it was we that did the excluding.

  I clung to him that first afternoon for the sake of dignity, as I say. Also, I felt a little resentful of the others, so very gay and integrated, and did not wish to be alone.

  ‘We went out,’ Henry said. ‘A little excursion, you know. That bay over the hills, the only one you people leave us. I don’t know, you people say you come here to fight a war, and the first thing you do you take away our beaches. You take all the white sand beaches; you leave us only black sand.’

  ‘You know these bureaucrats. They like things tidy.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘They like it tidy here too. I can’t tell you the number of people who would like to run me out of town.’

  ‘Like that man across the road?’

  ‘Oh, you meet old Blackwhite?’

  ‘He is going to type out a letter about me to the newspapers. And about you, too, I imagine. And your colleagues and companions.’

  ‘They don’t print all Blackwhite’s letters. Good relations and all that, you know. He believe he stand a better chance with the typewriter. Tell me what you do to provoke him. I never see a man look as quiet as you.’

  ‘I asked one of his boys whether he had a sister who screwed.’

  Amusement went strangely on Henry’s sour face. He looked the ascetic sort. His hair was combed straight back and his narrow-waisted trousers were belted with a tie. This was the one raffish, startling thing about his dress.

  Henry went on: ‘The trouble with the natives—’

  I started at the word.

  ‘Yes, natives. The trouble with the natives is that they don’t like me. I don’t belong here, you know. I am like you. I come from another place. A pretty island, if I tell you. I build up all this from scratch.’ He waved at his yard. ‘These people here lazy and they damn jealous with it too. They always trying to get me deported. Illegal immigrant and so on. But they can’t touch me. I have all the shots in the palm of my hand. You hear people talk about Gordon? Black man; but the best lawyer we have. Gordon was always coming here until that divorce business. Big thing. You probably hear about that on the base.’

  ‘Sure, we heard about it.’

  ‘And whenever I have any little trouble about this illegal immigrant business, I just go straight, like man, to Gordon office. The clerks – you know, those fellows with ties – try to be rude, and I just telling them, “You tell Alfred” – his name is Alfred Gordon – “you tell Alfred that Henry here.” And everybody falling back in amazement when Mr Gordon come out heself and shaking me by the hand and muching me up in front of everybody. “All you wait,” he say, “I got to see my old friend Henry.” And teeth.’

  ‘Teeth?’

  ‘Teeth. Whenever I want to have any teeth pull out, I just run up to old Ling-Wing – Chinee, but the best dentist we have in the place – and he pulling out the teeth straight way. You got to have a philosophy of life. Look, I go tell you,’ he said, ‘my father was a good-for-nothing. Always gambling, a game c
alled wappee and all-fours. And whenever my mother complain and start bawling out, “Hezekiah, what you going to leave for your children?” my father he only saying, “I ain’t got land. I ain’t got money. But I going to leave my children a wonderful set of friends.” ’

  ‘That’s a fine philosophy,’ I said.

  ‘We all have to corporate in some way. Some people corporate in one way, some corporate another way. I think that you and me going to get on good. Mavis, pour this man a drink. He is a wonderful talker.’

  Henry, sipping at rum-and-cokes all the time, was maudlin. I was a little high myself.

  One of the Americans who had been on the excursion to the bay came up to us. He tottered a little. He said he had to leave.

  ‘I know,’ Henry said. ‘The war etcetera.’

  ‘How much do I owe you, Henry?’

  ‘You know what you owe me. I don’t keep no check.’

  ‘Let me see. I think I had a chicken pilau. Three or four rum-and-cokes.’

  ‘Good,’ Henry said. ‘You just pay for that.’

  The man paid. Henry took his money without any comment. When the man left he said, ‘Drink is never any excuse. I don’t believe people ever not knowing what they do. He not coming back in here. He had two chicken pilaus, six rum-and-coke, five bottles soda water and two whiskies. That’s what I call vice.’

  ‘It is vice, and I am ashamed of him.’

  ‘I will tell you, you know.’ Henry said. ‘When the old queen pass on—’

  ‘The old queen?’

  ‘My mother. I was in a sort of daze. Then I had this little dream. The old man, he appear to me.’

  ‘Your father Hezekiah?’

  ‘No. God. He say, “Henry, surround yourself with love, but avoid vice.” On this island I was telling you about, pretty if I tell you, they had this woman, pretty but malevolent. She make two-three children for me, and bam, you know what, she want to rush me into marriage.’

  The sun was going down. From the base, the bit of the tropics we had created, the bugle sounded Retreat. Henry snapped his fingers, urging us all to stand. We stood up and saluted to the end.

  ‘I like these little customs,’ he said. ‘Is a nice little custom you boys bring with you.’

  ‘About this woman on the pretty island with two or three children?’

  Henry said, ‘I avoided vice. I ran like hell. I get the rumour spread that I dead. I suppose I am dead in a way. Can’t go back to my pretty little island. Oh, prettier than this. Pretty, pretty. But she waiting for me.’

  We heard hymns from the street.

  ‘Money,’ Henry said, ‘all you girls got your money ready?’

  They all got out little coins and we went out to the pavement. A tall bearded man, white-robed and sandalled, was leading a little group of hymn-singers, six small black girls in white gowns. They were sweet hymns; we listened in silence.

  Then the bearded man said, ‘Brothers and sisters, it is customary on such occasions to say that there is still time to repent.’ He was like a man in love with his own fluency. His accent was very English. ‘It is, however, my belief that this, at this time, is one of the optimistic assertions of fraudulent evangelists more concerned with the counting of money than what I might call the count-down of our imminent destruction.’ Suddenly his manner changed. He paused, closed his eyes, swayed a little, lifted up his arms and shouted, in an entirely different voice: ‘The word of the Bible is coming to pass.’

  Some of Henry’s girls chanted back: ‘What word?’ And others: ‘What part?’

  The white-robed man said, ‘The part where it say young people going to behave bad, and evil and violence going to stalk the land. That part.’

  His little chorus began to sing; and he went round collecting from us, saying, ‘It is nothing personal, you understand, nothing personal. I know you boys have to be here defending us and so on, but the truth is the truth.’

  He collected his money, slipped it into a pocket of his robe, patted the pocket; then he seemed to go on patting. He patted each of his singers, either out of a great love, or to make sure that they had not hidden any of the coins they had received. Then: ‘Right-wheel!’ he called above their singing; and, patting them on the shoulder as they passed him, followed them to the grocery at the corner. His hymn meeting continued there, under the rusty corrugated-iron eaves.

  It was now dark. A picnic atmosphere came to Henry’s yard. Meals were being prepared in various rooms; gramophones were playing. From distant yards came the sound of steel-bands. Night provided shelter, and in the yard it was very cosy, very like a family gathering. Only, I was not yet of the family.

  A girl with a sling bag came in. She greeted Henry, and he greeted her with a largeness of gesture which yet concealed a little reserve, a little awe. He called her Selma. I noted her. I became the third in the party; I became nervous.

  I am always nervous in the presence of beauty; and in such a setting, faced with a person I couldn’t assess, I was a little frightened. I didn’t know the rules of Henry’s place and it was clear that the place had its own rules. I was inexperienced. Inexperienced, I say. Yet what good has experience brought me since? I still, in such a situation and in such a place, move between the extremes of courtesy and loudness.

  Selma was unattached and cool. I thought she had the coolness that comes either from ownership or from being owned. It was this as much as dress and manner and balance which marked her out from the others in the yard. She might have been Henry’s girl, the replacement for that other, abandoned on the pretty little island; or she might have belonged to someone who had not yet appeared.

  The very private greetings over, Henry introduced us.

  ‘He’s quite a talker,’ he said.

  ‘He’s a good listener,’ I said.

  She asked Henry, ‘Did he hear Priest talk?’

  I answered, ‘I did. That was some sermon.’

  ‘I always like hearing a man use language well,’ she said.

  ‘He certainly does,’ I said.

  ‘You can see,’ she said, ‘that he’s an educated man.’

  ‘You could see that.’

  There was a pause. ‘He sells insurance,’ she said, ‘when he’s not preaching.’

  ‘It sounds a wonderful combination. He frightens us about death, and then sells us insurance.’

  She wasn’t amused. ‘I would like to be insured.’

  ‘You are far too young.’

  ‘But that is just the time. The terms are better. I don’t know, I would just like it. I feel it’s nice. I have an aunt in the country. She is always making old style because she’s insured. Whenever she buys a little more she always lets you know.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you buy some insurance yourself?’

  She said, ‘I am very poor.’

  And she said the words in such a way that it seemed to put a fullstop to our conversation. I hate the poor and the humble. I think poverty is something we should all conceal. Selma spoke of it as something she was neither proud nor ashamed of; it was a condition which was soon to be changed. Little things like this occur in all relationships, little warning abrasions in the smoothness of early intercourse which we choose to ignore. We always deceive ourselves; we cannot say we have not been warned.

  ‘What would you do if you had a lot of money?’

  ‘I would buy lots of things,’ she said after some thought. ‘Lots of nice modern things.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘A three-piece suite. One of those deep ones. You sink into them. I’d buy a nice counterpane, satiny and thick and crisscrossed with deep lines. I saw Norma Shearer using one in Escape.’

  ‘A strange thing. That’s all I remember of that picture. What do you think she was doing in that bed then? But that was an eiderdown she had, you know. You don’t need an eiderdown in this part of the world. It’s too warm.’

  ‘Well, whatever you call it, I’d like that. And shoes, I’d buy lots of shoes. Do you have n
ightmares?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘You know mine?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I am in town, you know. Walking down Regent Street. People staring at me, and I feel: this is new. I don’t feel embarrassed. I feel like a beauty queen. Then I see myself in a shop window. I am barefoot. I always wake up then. My feet are hanging over the bed.’

  I was still nervous. The conversation always seemed to turn away from the point to which I felt I ought to bring it, though to tell the truth I had lost the wish to do so. Still, we owe a duty to ourselves.

  I said, ‘Do you come from the city?’

  ‘I come from the country.’

  Question, answer, fullstop. I tried again. Henry was near us, a bottle in his hand.

  I said, ‘What makes a girl like you come to a place like this?’ And, really, I was ashamed of the words almost before I said them.

  ‘That’s what I call a vicious question,’ Henry said.

  At the same time Selma slapped me.

  ‘You think that’s a nice question?’ Henry said. ‘I think that’s a vicious question. I think that’s obscene.’ He pointed through the open doorway to a little sign in one of the inner rooms: Be obscene but not heard. ‘It’s not something we talk about.’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘It’s not for me that I am worried,’ he said. ‘It’s for Selma. I don’t know, but that girl always bringing out the vice in people. She bring out the vice in Blackwhite across the road. Don’t say anything, but I see it in his eye: he want to reform her. And you know what reform is? Reform mean: keep off, for me alone. She bring out the vice in Priest. He don’t want to reform. He just want. Look, Frankie, one set of people come here and then too another set come here. Selma is a educated girl, you know. Cambridge Junior Certificate. Latin and French and geometry and all that sort of thing. She does work in one of the big stores. Not one of those little Syrian shops, you know. She come here every now and then, you come here. That is life. Let us leave the vice outside, let us leave the vice outside. A lot of these girls work in stores. Any time I want a shirt, I just pass around these stores, and these girls give me shirts. We have to help one another.’