“Let’s face it, MM,” (I am now really irritated) “would you have put up those jokes of yours in an English hospital?”
“Of course I wouldn’t. Never said I would. But the English are not supposed to have a sense of humour to begin with. And this is not England, is it? Look outside. What do you see? Sunshine! Life! Vitality. It says to you: Come out and play. Make love! Live! And these dusky imitators of petit bourgeois Europe corrupted at Sandhurst and London School of Economics expect me to come here and walk about in a bowler hat and rolled umbrella like a fucking banker on Cheapside. Christ!”
We all laugh and applaud the brief oration. Except Dick. He is watching intently as Mad Medico perspiring refreshes his glass with campari and soda, drops in two ice cubes and licks his fingers.
Dick, it turns out, is the founding editor of a new poetry magazine in Soho called Reject. Prompted by Mad Medico he tells the story, at first reluctantly and in instalments of one sentence or two a piece.
“How did it begin? I am sure Ikem will be interested to hear.”
“Oh, simply by placing advertisements in well-known literary journals calling for manuscripts rejected by other poetry magazines. Simple.”
“That was three years ago?”
“Well, almost four.”
“And it caught on?”
“Our success was immediate and total.”
From now something like animation begins to enter his voice. The expression on his face changes too. At first it looks like a sneer but is presumably his own way of pride. He is now more open-handed with information. “In under two years we exploded the pretensions of the poetry establishment and their stuffy party organs. It was the most significant development in British poetry since the war.”
The group gradually splits in two: Ikem and the editor at one end of the bar with Elewa sticking to them, understanding little; and Mad Medico joining Beatrice and me.
“I am sorry to tell you this,” MM says to Beatrice, “but you waited five years too late to meet Chris. He and Sam were much nicer people then.”
“Who wasn’t? But five years ago BB was below the legal age and would have been of limited interest to me.”
“I beg your pardon,” she says.
“Really, they were such fun then, he and Sam,” says MM almost to himself. He stirs the tiny iceberg floating in his Scotch with his index finger. A touch of genuine wistfulness has come into his voice. And his eyes.
“You know, MM,” I say, “you are the only person in this country—perhaps in the whole wide world who calls him Sam still.”
“Yes and I’ll be damned if I should ever join your ridiculous Excellency charade. I would sooner be deported!”
“Sam is even more ridiculous, you know. It’s a name that no longer fits the object. But then you have never been a good judge of what fits or doesn’t… which is your great attraction.”
“Thank you,” he says with an embarrassed, boyish smile. At such moments the mischievous lad living inside him peers through his eyes. Beatrice who has said very little up to now asks pointedly: “Tell me, would you walk up to your Queen and say, ‘Hi, Elizabeth’?”
“To hell, I wouldn’t. But why are all you fellows so bent on turning this sunshine paradise into bleak Little England? Sam is no bloody queen. I tell you he was such a nice fellow in those days. He had a wholesome kind of innocence about him. He was… what shall I say? He was morally and intellectually intact—a kind of virgin, if you get my meaning. Not in its prudish sense, of course. He was more assured, knew a lot more than his fellow English officers and damn well spoke better English, I tell you. And yet he could still be pleasantly surprised by things… I found that so healthy and so attractive… You know I found him a girl once…”
“Who?” asks Elewa shifting sideways on her bar-stool to join our group and bringing Ikem and his poetry friend in tow—the last ostensibly unwilling.
“His Very Excellency, your ladyship,” says Mad Medico bowing. “I found him this girl after he left the Camberley hospital.”
“I had no idea you had a procuring past,” says Dick with a solemnity that seems surprising even for him.
“Well, you might call it that,” says Mad Medico. “You must look at it this way, though. A nice young fellow comes all the way from the warmth of Africa to the inhospitable climate of an English hospital—no pun intended, by the way. And he is recovering miserably from double pneumonia. The least I could do was fix him up with a warm friendly girl to cheer him up. Nothing serious. A reasonable magistrate would let me off, I’m sure.”
“But woman done suffer for dis world-o,” says Elewa.
“A modern Desdemona, I see. Did she cheer him up?” asks Beatrice totally ignoring Elewa’s more basic solidarity call.
“Did she indeed! He couldn’t get her out of his system for years. He called me up the next morning. ‘Uncle John,’ he said, ‘you wicked old soul.’ And the way he laughed and seemed happy with the world after that! I shouldn’t be in the least surprised if he also called long distance to Chris at the London School of Economics… Did he?”
“Well, almost. That was a famous story. He didn’t wait too long to tell me, I can tell you.”
“What did he tell you?” From Beatrice.