How had the male warder got hold of Aina’s message? Were there love affairs behind the barbed wire between prisoner and captor? Sango stood thinking about Aina’s power over men and he could not but hand it to her. From an adjoining store a girl – also in a numbered white uniform – came in carrying a freshly-filled winchester bottle of medicine. Amusa’s heart missed a beat.
‘Aina!’ He almost shouted out the name.
She was quite changed. It was incredible, but she was becoming plumper, more seductive. There was a new and wicked glint to her eye. He steeled himself against the choking sensation in his chest. Her suggestive curves showed even in a uniform designed to reduce feminine charms to the barest minimum. Few women with their hair shaved off could have been exciting as Aina was.
The female warder who had brought them down was standing with the other prisoners in the waiting-room, checking stocks. Sango went over towards her, but before he spoke she fixed him with a hostile look.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, in answer to his request. ‘You cannot see Aina. It is forbidden. Law-abiding citizens are not allowed to speak to prisoners. You may see her on visiting day, next Sunday.’
Sango had seen the flash of eager joy in Aina’s eyes. Her eyes were downcast when she knew Sango could not see her. But between the crime reporter and the girl a smile of understanding had passed. Sango felt the sadness and mystery of the whole episode.
4
All day long and all night long, wherever he went, the thought of Aina obsessed him. It seemed as if, in going to jail, she had left behind her something more distracting than her own presence: the silent accusation that he had deserted her in her moment of need. When the knock sounded on his door, he half expected to see her or her mother and would have been grateful to put aside the article he had been trying to work on so unsuccessfully.
It was Bayo. He had a habit of dropping in on Sango whenever he felt like jazz. Sometimes he came alone, sometimes with his friends in their narrow trousers, pointed shoes and dark sun goggles.
He breezed in now. ‘Amusa Sango!’
Sango in a shirt and loin cloth was chewing the end of his pencil and puzzling out an article on ‘Sporting Criminals’. He looked up grudgingly.
‘Hello, Bayo!’
‘Always busy!’
Bayo unbuttoned his coat, displaying his zebra-striped shirt. He fanned his face with a newspaper.
‘I’ve got a dame with me,’ he confided. ‘She’s crazy about jazz. I’ve told her about your records.’
‘Where’s she? So few people appreciate real jazz —’
‘Don’t start lecturing yet. May I go and fetch her? I left her at the street corner. Thought you’d be too busy to have us.’
‘Not at all.’
‘Shan’t be long!’ Bayo went out. Sango got up to tidy the room. His working table was in a hopeless mess. The armchairs were untidily set on the lino. He straightened the cushions. There was a knock at the door and they came in.
‘Sango, Miss Martins – Dupeh Martins.’
‘How’re you?’
She smelt sweet. Sango took her soft hand gently in his, looking into the black eyes. She was a girl in that dangerous age which someone has called ‘the mad age’: the mid teens. Her eyes held nothing but infatuation for Bayo. This was a girl who belonged strictly to the city. Born in the city. A primary education, perhaps the first four years at secondary school; yet she knew all about Western sophistication – makeup, cinema, jazz . . . This was the kind of girl whom Sango knew would be content to walk her shoes thin in the air-conditioned atmosphere of department stores, to hang about all day in the foyer of hotels with not a penny in her handbag, rather than live in the country and marry Papa’s choice.
As she sat down, Sango put her age definitely at sixteen. Do not be deceived by those perfectly mature breasts. Girls ripen quickly in the city – the men are so impatient. But why did she put rouge on her naturally blooming cheeks? She was pretty enough without it; and besides, it did not blend.
‘Well, what will you have?’
‘Beer,’ Bayo said. ‘Brandy for the girl.’
He rose and shuffled towards the gramophone. Sango went out to give Sam instructions. From the corridor he could hear Basin Street Blues. Bayo lost no time. He commented: ‘One thing I like about Armstrong – he’s very original.’
‘Sure,’ Sango agreed. ‘Some good scat singing there.’
‘Listen to that! Listen!’ He waved his hand to the music. ‘Cau! That’s the part I like best. Terrific!’
The girl smiled. ‘It send me – oh!’
Sango said: ‘There’s plenty more there.’