She twisted free. ‘You done gone mad, Freddie? Look you eye like you wan’ to eat me.’
‘Yes, sometime I kin eat you.’
In that tight little passage leading into the Tropicana Freddie was confronted with this mere slip of a girl: slim and bright in the manner of the young Nigerian girls of the day. Hair matted and boyish and glistening wet with too much pomade; a sky-blue blouse that exposed a bare graceful neck; slender arms and shoulders; hard breasts, upright.
Her complexion glowed livelier than the twinkling lights of the Tropicana, her ever-smiling teeth, the ripeness of her lips, charged Freddie with a boundless thirst for her. This to him was a discovery. It was the tearing away of a veil from his eyes. She walked out with him, smelling faintly of Miraba, squeezing her way deftly through the taxis which were now piling on both banks of the road while white men, coatless, were paying-off their taxi drivers and hurrying to the Tropicana.
Soon the noise became a murmur.
Nancy said, ‘Freddie, I sure my mother’s in there!’
‘No, Nancy; I should’ve seen ’er.’ He took her arm, and now that it was not so bright she let it be. He felt a sweet thrill run through his veins and he quickly began to tell her sweet words, any words that would keep her from wondering where they were heading for and why.
He himself was driven partly by impulse and partly by instinct. He only felt that he must be with Nancy, must confide in her. It was all rather vague to him and he knew she must be thinking now about the friendship between her mother and Jagua. Sometimes when her mother Mama Nancy came to see Jagua, Nancy came along too and they often found Freddie in Jagua’s rooms. They had all come to accept Freddie as Jagua’s young man, one who had no interest in girls like her. Often they teased him, telling him what a pity it was that he Freddie – young, studious and ambitious, should be the lover of the ageing and experienced woman of the city, Jagua; and though Freddie always spoke up loyally for his mistress he knew that they were genuinely concerned that he had ‘fallen into her clutches’ and were afraid that he could never get out of her control.
‘Freddie, where you takin’ me?’ Nancy asked, as they cut away from the motor road.
Her voice, the female cry of distress, fired his blood. He felt a hot surge towards his eyes. Her hand was slipping back from his and he gripped it firmly: silky and smooth, it warmed the inside of his palm. Her body smelt so different from Jagua’s. Why, Freddie told himself, she was just turned twenty, and Jagua must be we
ll over forty.
‘Siddown, Nancy. I beg you. Sit on de tree. Ah goin’ to tell you everythin’.’
She glanced at the fallen tree over which the ferns grew, matty and damp. ‘What you goin’ to tell me? I can’t sit here, Freddie. I fear for snake.’
‘Snake?’ Though he tried to sound casual and reassuring Freddie remembered going on a car drive with a friend and seeing a mamba lying in the middle of the tarmac, warming its belly. They were standing now in the woods, well away from the motor road. Occasionally distant headlights etched out the trees and lit up her face, but Freddie was sure the shadows concealed them both from passers-by on the main road.
Impulsively he reached out and circled Nancy’s waist and drew her to him. ‘Freddie!’ she whispered. Her sweet breath beat warmly against his lips. The hard slim bust strained closer to his shirt. In that brief contact when her body rubbed against his and she struggled to get free, Freddie experienced a rare elation. Was sex not a monopoly of sophisticates like Jagua? Jagua with her arty make-up, seductive bosom and hips? He felt his heart aglow with the new pleasure. Sweat sprang to his pores and soaked his clothes.
‘Freddie, what you tryin’ to do?’ she breathed. Her secretive voice excited him.
‘Now lissen to me, Nancy.’
‘No, Freddie, is dangerous.’ She drew back.
‘Wha’s dangerous? I done anything to you?’ His hand slid beneath the blouse and grasped the nipple of her breast. It was a hard little breast, fitting into the cup of his hand and bouncing restively within the cup.
‘What you tryin’ to do, Freddie? Is not right.’
‘Nancy, I can’t let you go. I wan’ to tell you somethin’. Stay a little.’
‘No! Le’s go. You kin tell me in de house.’ Her voice was weak and she leaned against him. ‘I afraid, Freddie. I don’ know why. I just fear in my mind.’
‘I feel all hot inside me, Nancy. You know what you doin’ to me?’
‘Go ’way!’ But she was leaning on his arm and holding it dearly. ‘Am a decent gal, Freddie,’ she whispered.
‘But ah love you, Nancy. True!’
‘So you say to every gal. What about Jagua? If she know, she will kill me.’
‘Know what? We done nothin’,’ Freddie cried. ‘What we done?’
‘You soun’ like you vex with me. Because I don’ give you myself quick-quick, like Jagua. Not so? You disappointed wit’ me?’ He detected the note of pleading in her voice. ‘Er? Because we done nothin’?’
‘Lissen, Nancy! Me an’ Jagua, is different from this!’
‘Different?’