The World in Winter

  ‘No butter,’ she said. ‘It would have run, of course. Anyway, the bread looks appetizing. Are you having the beer, Andy?’

  He nodded. ‘We did well, didn’t we, in our first shot at panhandling?’

  ‘She’s a nice woman. I hope she doesn’t get into trouble over this.’

  ‘Over giving us a little food? How is he to know anyway?’

  ‘He probably has the servants spy on her. I didn’t care much for the look of Carl. Well, let’s hope not, and enjoy our meal; she would want us to do that.’

  Madeleine finished laying things and surveyed the result.

  ‘No knives and forks: I suppose he counts those.’ She lifted the bag and shook it, and another small package fell out. ‘Plastic spoons,’ she said. ‘That’s something. And cigarettes and a box of matches.’

  When they had eaten, she packed away the food that remained. Andrew lit cigarettes for both of them, and gave her one.

  ‘Bicycle,’ he said, studying the packet. ‘A new brand. I suppose one will get used to it. If one can afford the luxury of smoking.’

  ‘How much money have we got?’

  ‘One Nigerian pound. Some shillings and pence.’

  ‘We’ll have to find something tomorrow. Some work to do, somewhere to live.’

  Andrew lay back, looking up at the sky. It was almost dark enough for stars but although he thought he caught glimpses in the corner of his vision, they disappeared when he looked for them.

  ‘Will we see the Southern Cross from here?’ he asked. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Tonight,’ Madeleine said. ‘We haven’t thought about what we’re going to do. We can’t go back to the hotel.’

  ‘They might let us sleep on the floor at the Embassy.’

  ‘At least, it’s warm here.’ She reached out and touched his arm. ‘We can sleep out here, on the beach.’

  ‘It won’t be very comfortable.’

  ‘Clean, though, and quiet. I don’t like the idea of going back into the city.’ She pointed to the carrier bag. ‘And there’s enough left for breakfast.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Did you ever want to do this,’ she asked, ‘when you were a child, at the seaside? I did.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I’d forgotten that.’

  They sat talking quietly for an hour while the stars came out in the indigo sky. Then they kissed good night and settled themselves, by unspoken agreement, in their separate hollows in the sand. A dog howled for a time in the distance, but otherwise there was only the surge of the breakers.

  Andrew went to sleep quite soon. When he awoke there was light from a half moon, just lifting clear of the branches of the trees. Madeleine seemed to be peacefully asleep. He got up quietly, so as not to disturb her, and walked up into the grove. It was somehow lonelier there than on the long deserted beach. He stretched himself; his back and shoulders were stiff and cramped.

  He went back to the beach, but to the other side of the dune. Although the night was still warm, he found himself shivering. He was conscious, in this penetrating shadowless brightness, of all that he had lost. His job, and England itself, seemed unreal when he thought of them. For the boys, who, he now saw, would inevitably drift from him into whatever chequered difficult lives lay before them, he felt a mild regret. For Carol, none; not even disgust. In this night’s limpidity, the things which had belonged to him – which he had thought important – lost all meaning. He had no longing for them.

  What he felt was not, he knew, a sense of loss. It was worse than that: a sense of nakedness, of being stripped down to the poor bones of self and circumstance. The things that had gone had been illusions, but he did not see how he would survive without them. The pain he felt was worse than the pain of love; because in love, always, some hope lingers. He knelt on the sand, leaned forward. It was an attitude of prayer, but he had nothing to pray to or for. He had nothing to offer, either. All he was aware of was the clinging misery of emptiness.

  He did not hear Madeleine until she touched him. She put an arm over his shoulder.

  ‘Andy,’ she said, ‘are you all right?’

  In a dry voice, he said: ‘Yes. Quite all right.’

  ‘I was frightened. I woke up and found you gone.’ He made no reply. ‘Being alone in the night, one becomes a child again. At least, I do.’

  He stayed silent. Her hands went to his face, and he felt her trace the wetness of tears on his cheeks. He would have pulled away, but lacked the will to do anything but stare, blindly, at the waves and the moonlit sand. He did not resist when she pulled him down beside her, cradling him to her against the slope of the dune.

  ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘everything’s going to be all right. Don’t cry, Andy darling. Please, don’t cry.’

  He was shivering again, more violently than before. She kissed the tears from his face, and chafed his hands with hers. After a time she released them and sat up away from him. There was a rustle of clothing before she came back to him. She lay with her head above his now, her cheek against his hair. She had undone her blouse and removed her brassiere: the softness of her breast was against his neck, a warm slow tide of flesh that pulsed across his own. The gesture of maternity, he thought dully, so much more natural to the woman who has suckled no children.

  But the warmth was real, and the softness; the pulse was vivid. Her hands touched his body, moving gently, lovingly, the finger tips counting the lines of rib. His body stirred in the end and he caught her to him, pulling her face down, kissing and being kissed.

  He shelled her from her blouse: shoulders and arms and small pointed breasts had an unearthly beauty – her body was silvery, black and white but all silver. In the pause of watching her, he said:

  ‘Out of pity?’

  She shook her head. In a low voice, she said:

  ‘Perhaps loneliness.’

  ‘It isn’t necessary.’

  ‘It is,’ she said. ‘Darling, it is!’

  They swam afterwards, and then walked on the beach until they felt dry enough to put their clothes back on. After that they lay together on the sand and went to sleep. Andrew woke again to a brightening sky, and Madeleine pulling at his arm to wake him.

  ‘Someone coming,’ she said.

  He sat up. Three men in uniform were approaching along the beach, one of them with an Alsatian straining at a leash.

  ‘Stay quite still,’ he said. ‘We don’t want them to turn the dog loose.’

  ‘Police?’

  ‘I think so.’

  As they got near, the one slightly in advance called:

  ‘Stand up, boss. And you, lady.’

  They stood up. The man was a Sergeant, Andrew saw. He was tall, thin, with sharp nose and mouth and a small moustache. He planted his legs apart and stared at them.

  ‘I guess you know you’re breaking the law, boss,’ he said.

  ‘Surely,’ Andrew said, ‘there’s no law against sleeping on the beach?’

  ‘There’s a law against white vagabonds, boss. You can sleep any place you like so long as you’ve got ten pounds in your pocket. Do you have that money?’

  ‘No. Not with me. I didn’t know there was such a regulation.’

  ‘You new to Lagos?’

  ‘We got in the day before yesterday.’ He hesitated. ‘We had a draft of money to be cashed yesterday, but the currency restriction came first.’

  The Sergeant nodded. ‘I heard about that. And we’ve picked up some others.’

  ‘We have some things at the Hotel Africa – clothes, suitcases. They would fetch ten pounds.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He grinned sardonically. ‘It’s a poor market right now, boss.’

  Madeleine said: ‘Do you have to arrest us, Sergeant? We didn’t know we were breaking the law.’

  He looked at her for a time before answering. Andrew thought at first that the gaze was insolent, possibly lecherous, but when the man spoke it was with a surprising and reassuring softness.

  ‘I know that, lad
y,’ he said. ‘The law, now – it may seem hard, but there’s reasons. We have a lot of white folks around Lagos these days, and a lot of them don’t have money. Some of them have been breaking into houses, stealing and such. They have brains and nerve, and they don’t care what happens. We had a lady badly beaten by a white house-breaker only the night before last. That’s why we have the law, and patrols.’ He nodded towards the Alsatian. ‘And the dog. He was trained on hunting black men – he was a guard dog in the diamond fields up in Sierra Leone – but he finds no trouble in switching colours. He’s a good dog.’

  Andrew and Madeleine were silent. The less one said, Andrew felt, the less likelihood there was of giving offence.

  The Sergeant said: ‘Better not sleep out any more. We have to keep the laws from being broken. You understand.’

  ‘Yes,’ Andrew said. ‘We understand. Thank you, Sergeant.’

  ‘We’re on our way back to the station,’ the Sergeant said. ‘It’s about a mile, mile and a quarter. Could offer you a cup of coffee if you feel like walking along that way.’

  ‘We’d be grateful,’ Madeleine said.

  ‘Come right along, then.’

  As well as the coffee, they got a lift into the city on a police truck. They had also been able to wash and tidy themselves up at the police station, but Andrew was not able to shave: his kit was with the luggage at the hotel. Their pressing need was for accommodation and work, and it seemed worth trying the man whose name had been given at the Embassy; he might have ideas on the second point as well as the first. The address was in a new office building in the Ikoyi district, but it was only just after eight o’clock when they found it, and there was no sign of the day’s activity having begun.

  They were forced to walk around. Newspapers were on sale, but at sixpence they were too dear to buy. They contented themselves with reading the headlines as they passed. They seemed to be chiefly concerned with an internal scandal in one of the Nigerian political parties, but the Bantu atrocity story was still being carried.

  They returned to Bates’s office about nine fifteen. It was a small place on the second floor: basically one room, divided by a lath partition topped with frosted glass. A dark Jewish-looking girl with a small white face was typing in the outer part. She listened to Andrew, and said:

  ‘I’ll see if Mr Bates can see you.’

  She had a middle-European accent; possibly Viennese. She knocked on the door of the inner office and went in. When she came out, a few moments later, Alf Bates was just behind her. He was a short red-faced man, in his forties, with a look of stupidity and cunning. His hand held the girl’s shoulder intimately; he gave her a little push as he greeted his visitors.

  ‘Come right on in,’ he said. ‘Glad you called. Nothing like starting the day early. That’s where we’ll beat the blackies yet. They’ve learned a lot, but they’re still damn lazy.’

  He ushered them to seats, and sat himself behind his desk on a broken-down swivel chair. The desk was badly worn and one side was splintered. Bates brought out a small pad and unclipped a fountain pen from the breast pocket of his shirt.

  ‘Names,’ he said. ‘Let’s get those right for a starter.’ Andrew told him. ‘Mr Andrew Leedon,’ he repeated, ‘and Mrs Madeleine Cartwell.’ Small grey eyes stared at them inquisitively. ‘But you’re in harness – that right? You don’t want a place each?’

  ‘No,’ Andrew said. ‘We don’t want a place each.’

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ Bates said. ‘Live as free as you can. There’s not much free, and less every year. You want a little place? Nothing fancy?’

  ‘I want a job,’ Andrew said. ‘Our money was caught in the sterling freeze.’

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘Yes, all.’

  ‘Ah,’ Bates said. ‘That puts you in a special category – among the dead unlucky. Could be worse, though, couldn’t it? You could be gathering chilblains up in the frozen North.’

  ‘Have you any suggestions?’ Andrew asked him.

  Bates looked at him. ‘For you, it isn’t going to be easy. Apart from the Army there isn’t a hell of a lot you can do.’

  ‘I don’t mind what I do.’

  ‘Nor do most of the whites here – and they got here first.’

  ‘There isn’t something around the television studios? Anything at all?’

  Bates laughed. ‘They’ve got Chiefs’ sons sweeping the floors there. Television mighty powerful juju. No, you can forget that one.’ His gaze was speculative. ‘I don’t think you’ve got the right build for a labouring job, especially in this climate. It’s supposed to be a few degrees cooler these days, but not so as you’d notice.’

  Madeleine said: ‘Is there something I could do?’

  ‘Well now,’ Bates said, ‘I’ve been giving that a little thinking over. I might be able to fit you in across the water.’

  ‘Across the water?’

  ‘The night spots are on the other side of the lagoon. There’s a call for white women, provided they’re young and’ – he grinned at her – ‘attractive.’

  ‘To do what? I can’t sing or dance, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You can shuffle round a floor. You can sit at a table and let someone buy you a drink.’

  ‘A Negro?’

  Bates raised his eyes briefly to the ceiling. ‘Who else can afford to buy drinks? I might get across and buy you one once a fortnight, but it will mean eating light that week if I do.’

  ‘And the pay?’ Madeleine asked.

  ‘Five pounds a week.’

  ‘Judging from the prices I’ve seen here, one couldn’t live on that.’

  ‘It’s nominal. You get a commission on drinks, as well. And tips. And so on.’

  She said slowly: ‘In other words, what you’re really suggesting is prostitution. There’s a certain demand for white female bodies. That’s it, isn’t it?’

  ‘Mrs Cartwell,’ Bates said, ‘I’m not suggesting anything. I’m putting you in the way of a job. After that, it’s up to you. Some women like it over there, some don’t. No one forces anybody to like it or dislike it, and no one forces anybody to take the job or to stay in it. It doesn’t worry me, either way.’

  Andrew stood up, and Madeleine followed suit.

  Andrew said: ‘What about losing your commission, Mr Bates? Doesn’t that worry you?’

  Bates smiled without annoyance. ‘I get a flat rate for introductions. They can leave the same day, and I’m not hurt.’

  ‘Flat-rate pimping,’ Andrew said. ‘Less remunerative, probably, but less trouble as well. And quite reasonably profitable providing the turn-over’s high enough.’

  ‘If insults upset me, Mr Leedon, I’d have retired with stomach ulcers ten years ago. I take it you don’t want the job, Mrs Cartwell?’

  ‘No,’ Andrew said, ‘she doesn’t. Thank you for the offer. Good-bye.’

  ‘Sit down,’ Bates said. Andrew halted by the door. ‘Come back and sit down. It’s a big city in a big country, and you’re on your own in it. No jobs and nowhere to live. It’s worth putting up with my company a little longer.’

  It was Madeleine who came back first and took her seat.

  ‘That wasn’t hurt pride, Mr Bates. I thought we’d exhausted the possibilities as far as you were concerned.’

  Bates opened a packet of Bicycle, and offered it across his desk. ‘Cigarette? Go ahead. Bought out of the property side, I guarantee, not the white slave traffic.’

  When they had lit up, he went on: ‘I think I can get you a job at the hospital, Mrs Cartwell.’

  Her face brightened. ‘I’ve had some nursing training …’

  He took his cigarette out and pulled a shred of tobacco from his lip before answering.

  ‘Benson & Hedges I used to smoke. I like a good cigarette. The job wouldn’t be nursing. There’s no shortage of nurses. It would be ward-maid or cleaner.’

  Madeleine looked at him steadily: ‘And the pay?’

  ‘Roughly eight pounds a week.’ He shrug
ged. ‘Not a fortune. And no dash. The nurses get the dash. I’m told it used to be a penny a time for fetching a bed-pan. It’s a shilling now, and that’s the minimum. It goes up to half a crown, where they can afford it and the need’s urgent. There’s inflation for you.’ His eyes came back to Madeleine’s face. ‘But, as I said, you wouldn’t be in on that. They fetch the bed-pans and get the dash. All you do is clean them. And scrub floors, and so on.’

  ‘Have you anything else to suggest?’ she asked. ‘Private domestic service, for instance.’

  ‘No. They only keep white people for show, and not all of them like doing that. And there’s an over-supply. The rich blackies are rich enough, but there aren’t as many of them as you might think.’

  ‘All right,’ Madeleine said. ‘I’ll take the hospital.’

  Bates scribbled a few words on the back of a visiting card.

  ‘Give this to the Secretary,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a word with her first on the blower.’ He grinned. ‘No commission on this one: just for the goodness of Alf Bates’s heart.’

  Madeleine said: ‘Thank you.’

  Andrew said: ‘I’d rather there was something for me. I don’t mind what.’

  Bates pushed his tongue round the front of his teeth.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But not easy, as I told you. And you want somewhere to live?’

  Madeleine said: ‘Yes.’

  ‘I hope you can take it straight. You’re going to have to live in a poor quarter. A very poor quarter. You can’t even afford one of the little places at Sbute Metta or Yaba. For the time being it’s going to be Ikko itself.’

  ‘Ikko?’

  ‘That’s the vernacular for the island. Lagos: the city. The place I’m going to direct you to is going to cost three pounds a week – it was thirty bob a month not so long ago – and when you first look at it, you aren’t going to believe anyone could live in it. But you’re going to live in it because you have no choice. You’ll think you’d rather live out in the open, but you can’t do that because the police won’t let you.’