•
‘Ah – Mr Sango,’ said a grey-haired old man, rising. He was very much a part of the Brazilian-type house, one of the legacies of the early Portuguese invasion of the city. His hand-clasp was crushing for one of his age. Over his shoulder Sango could see large framed diplomas that proclaimed his membership of the Ufemfe society. ‘Sit down and make yourself at home. Beatrice and her mother will soon be here.’
Sango walked on the welcoming carpets with some gravity. This was no rent-grabbing type of house but a real home. He felt uneasy in his stiff collar and bow tie. There was too much starch in his white coat so that it creaked like a rusty door every time he craned his neck to speak to Beatrice’s father. He envied the man in his bright robes and handsome necklet of beads.
‘I’ve been anxious to make your acquaintance since that day when you saved my daughter’s life. She speaks highly of you.’
Sango smiled. ‘She’s a wonderful girl; I’ve never met anybody like her.’
A servant entered, bearing a bowl of kola nuts. He set this down on the little table on which stood decanters and all kinds of drinks.
‘Yes,’ said the old man, offering Sango a nut. ‘She’s a wonderful girl! Just like her two sisters – they’re married now. One married an engineer and the other a lawyer. Beatrice is the youngest and we dote on her. Yes, we do. But we can’t keep her too long. Her fiancé, who is studying medicine at Edinburgh, is pressing for her to join him. It will break our hearts to lose her.’
No words could have torn Sango’s heart into more painful shreds. He lost all hope of ever winning Beatrice. He cursed himself for ever having linked his ambitions with hers.
Beatrice’s mother had a beaming countenance that spelt happiness. She was plump, but her loose blouse and beautiful jewellery gave her a dignity that stirred all Sango’s feelings for a home. She stood for a moment by the large velvet curtains, then came in and shook Sango’s hand, warmly appraising him. At that moment all Sango’s past despondency vanished and was replaced with a new desire: to be one of this proud family.
‘So you are Amusa Sango! Welcome, thrice
welcome!’
But if Sango had hoped to have Beatrice the Second to himself – even for two minutes – he was soon disillusioned. She came in a few moments before the meal was served: a younger edition of her mother – slighter of build, therefore looking taller. Less gold and jewellery about her throat and bare arms, and a haircut like a boy’s. She smiled very sweetly when her eyes met Sango’s but often he caught her in a brown study.
She sat on her father’s right, while Sango sat on her mother’s right and felt honoured but tantalized. They had jolof rice and smoked antelope. Beatrice’s father was one of the few men in the city who believed in bush meat. He criticized the offerings of the butchers’ stalls as ‘tough and stringy’.
‘How do you expect meat to taste good when the cattle walk eight hundred or more miles to the slaughter-house? I have my own hunter!’
He talked about his youth and the days when the Portuguese and the Brazilians, the French and the Dutch, the British and the Germans were fighting for trade supremacy on the West Coast of Africa.
‘I was a small boy then, and never dreamed of marrying my wife. Now, after fifty-odd years of British rule, we hear talk of self-government.’
He believed in the Realization Party, though people accused it of belonging to the ‘upper classes’. And why not? Was he himself not of the upper classes? When, after a chieftaincy battle, he had fled across the mangrove swamps of the Gulf of Guinea to this city – all the way from Dahomey – had he not himself been a chief over thousands?
‘I believe in the past,’ the old man said, when the meal was over. ‘It is when you know the past that you can appreciate the present. We need something like the Realization Party to preserve our kingship, our music, art and religion!’
‘You have come with your old talk, Papa Beatrice! The young man wants to talk to Beatrice. Let us leave them to play music and talk in their own way.’
Sango’s ears stood open expectantly.
‘Yes, Mama Beatrice, that is right. But this is a thinking young man – that is why I talk in this manner. Is that not so, Mr Sango? Are you tired of my company?’
‘No, no, no! Not in the least. I enjoy listening to our history from a man who has lived through it!’
‘Fine!’ He smiled triumphantly and tapped his snuff-box. ‘In my days when a man went to marry a woman it was a family affair. For instance, this medical student who is engaged to Beatrice. I know his father and mother. They are people who matter. They can offer my daughter security. I am proud to link my name with theirs, and they in turn are flattered. People talk loosely of love! Lovers cannot exist in a vacuum but in a society. This society demands certain things of them . . .’
He went on, harping on his point till Sango became suspicious. This old man was trying to discourage him; but at the end of the evening, he was more resolved than ever to win her, obstacles notwithstanding.
When he got home he wrote to his mother about Beatrice. Then he took the first step towards reinstating himself in a job. He wrote to various government departments – the last thing he had vowed to do in his life. It was all a farce, and when later on the replies came to say there were no vacancies he was not surprised or disappointed. Now he was well and truly up against the city which attracted all types. He had been very smug in his job as crime reporter for the West African Sensation.
•
At night he stood in for other people in their own bands. His motto had become money, money, money. This was the way the people of the city realized themselves. Money. He saw the treachery, intrigue, and show of power involved. Sometimes he earned twenty shillings a night for blowing his trumpet within smelling distance of a wet and stinking drain. He discovered the haunts of the sailors whose ships had anchored off the lagoon for a mere five days.
In these dens the girls were slick with too much of everything: too much lipstick, so that their lips were either caked or too invitingly moist: too much hips, too much of their thighs showing beneath their unfashionable skirts, too much breast bursting the super-tight blouses.
‘But I have to stick it,’ Sango murmured, and tightened his mind against the sordidness of his surroundings. ‘Beatrice the Second must never know my humiliation.’
One evening, in the heat of jiving and jostling a white man slipped in. He was by no means the only white man there for most of the sailors were white, but this stranger had the rare look of a gentleman and was decidedly out of place. Where everyone had on a loud coat-type shirt outside pole-clinging trousers and pin-point shoes, he came in evening dress with the Savile Row cut, and worn in that way peculiar to the well-bred Englishman away from home. He certainly could not be expected to ‘dig’ the others.