In admiration she watched Ella steering the whole operation with ease. With her slender frame, you could spot her easily. Pink hair now gone, she sported a sharply cut black bob and her features while delicate were reminiscent of Popeye’s Olive Oyl, only much prettier. She wore a red jumper and red floral-patterned trousers, as if she’d arranged her outfit to coordinate with the décor. She ran the whole operation effortlessly, gliding from table to table, chatting with people warmly. She’d organised the team of volunteers commandingly, thanking them now for their efforts and seemed to be everywhere at once, cooking, serving, taking orders and liaising with the arts centre staff. She’d hired an artist for a few hours, a scrawny guy with long brown hair, holes in his green jumper and a thick moustache. Queenie got the impression this guy lived on other people’s sofas. He spent his time drawing amusing caricatures of people who captured his imagination and worked on a piece depicting the joyous, chaotic scenes there that he called “The Banquet.” At one point, holding a stack of plates, sweating profusely and balancing three orders on her tongue, Queenie passed Ella by the kitchen. “Oh God! How can you look so calm, it’s chaos out there!”
“It’s great isn’t it?” Ella replied. “From my count we’ve had an even bigger turn out than last year. Inside, I’m not calm, just resigned to the fact that no matter how precisely I plan, something always goes wrong!”
Sure enough it did. The house band Ella booked as part of the evening programme had been double-booked. Mervyn pulled a favour from a ska band he knew called The Pipers. By 6pm the evening programme kicked off; a mix of writers, open mic poets and the band. There was some good poetry and some terrible poetry. The band held it all together nicely, playing infectious, melodious songs to an audience who’d really only turned up for some free food but were happy enough to be entertained. Behind the scenes Queenie and Mervyn exchanged anecdotes.
“Come nuh, did you see that drunken guy reciting the poem about catching his girlfriend in bed with someone else?”
“Oh God! Yes, now I wan you ru die a thousan’ deaths a thousan’ different ways!” Queenie mimicked the poet’s slurred delivery. “I didn’t see the whole thing but I thought he was going to fall off the stage.”
“He did,” Mervyn said, cracking up.
“Are there a thousand ways to die?” Queenie asked.
“Probably.” Mervyn answered and they convulsed with laughter.
At the end of the evening Queenie was exhausted. After the room had been cleared, rubbish tied, leftover food distributed in Tupperware, and volunteers filed out of the back entrance, swathed in her new £15 grey tweed coat from Petticoat Lane Market, Queenie waved an animated wave goodnight to Ella and Mervyn. She walked through the hallway where the large notice board hoarded leaflets that flapped like pinned paper wings whenever the door opened. She felt someone grab her elbow from behind, turned to find Mervyn, one hand buried in his pocket. Cool and casual. “Hey Africa, you escaping already nuh? The night is young. Come for a drink, The Pipers and I are heading to this blues bar. We can give you a lift in the van.”
She noticed specks of food stains on his rolled up blue sleeves, fine hairs on his arm. Her pulse slipped into the face of his gold watch. “I don’t think so, you have a girlfriend remember?” She said, tugging self-consciously at her jacket lapels.
“Oh come on man! Just as a friend. I’d like to hear about Africa, I’m curious. Besides, if I was trying to get you into bed you’d know it, trust me. And…”
“And?”
“You’re interesting but you’re not my type, so rest assured girl, I won’t be pouncing on you any time soon.”
Queenie didn’t know why but a small part of her felt disappointed. Did he really have to tell her that last bit of information? Typical.
Sheepishly she said, “Okay, why not.”
The Blue Havana in Oxford Circus was a cosy, smoky bar with low lighting perfect for shape shifters. Alcohol-lined voices in intimate conversations rose and dipped in cycles. Plush leather chairs and tall, black stools were dotted around a marble bar area. The barman’s weathered face and rough voice gave the impression he’d probably sampled every drink they served. On the tiny stage, a black woman wearing a slinky, long purple dress cried into the microphone under a blue spotlight. A white flower grew out of her head. She sang as though she lived on disappointment, cigarettes and whisky. In that light, Queenie worried Mervyn would see under her skin and realise half of her was mangled. Since she arrived, she’d been walking on a rolling tide throughout the city but something about him steadied her. He was a man who took things at his own pace, even in England. They talked, laughed and talked some more. He watched her knock back shots of rum in amusement, often adding, “Gwaan girl!” and “Is that you?”
He told her about his love of magic, he carried an ace of spades playing card in his pocket wherever he went for good luck. He performed the trick of pulling a perfectly tied red ribbon from behind her ear.
As the night progressed Queenie became drunk. She decided then she’d tell him at least some of her story. She didn’t know why. Maybe it was the loneliness, or the intimate setting, cigarette smoke curling through the room like mist gathering and ash from the embers of stories dying quick deaths in body temperature ashtrays.
Maybe it was the howl of the woman’s piercing voice. Something came undone, floated inside her. She saw her own tongue on stage, wagging underneath the blue spotlight.
“What’s your favourite magic trick?” she asked
Mervyn drained the last bit of cream liqueur in his glass, looked her dead in the eye. “That’s easy, the disappearing act. Vanishing without a trace, it’s the greatest trick of all.”
Fist Of Drum
It was the cool north breeze that swept Sully Morier to the palace gates on the night that was to change his life. They found him, the guards, at the foot of the gates, beaten and bruised with his face buried in a puddle of dirt and rain. They patted his roughened, battered body down gently. He responded by cracking open a blackened eye, mumbling something unintelligible, and then slumping his slightly raised head back to the ground. His long body was strong and firm and as the guards lifted him they humphed under their breath as he began to kick at them in short bursts that were surprisingly well landed. He seemed to be trapped in another moment that refused to let him go. “Hold him!” one guard said.
“I’m trying,” the other guard paused his hand hovering over Sully’s one dropped ankle as though it were a slippery fish he was attempting to outwit. Then a decision was made for him as Sully landed a sly kick that caught the bridge of the guard’s nose. “Fool, the sooner we take this white man inside the sooner we can visit the servant women’s quarters,” guard number one hissed, while the other guard clutched his injured nose, tilted his head back and drew some night air into his nostrils slowly to ease the spreading pain. Then, Sully’s body relaxed, punctuated by a deep grunt. The guard rubbed the knuckles on the hand he had used to quieten Sully, albeit temporarily.
As the guards carried him through to the holding section, lazy moonlight spilled over his body revealing brown khaki trousers and a torn loose cream shirt. There was a thin grape-coloured leather strap wrapped around his waist with two small shallow pockets that had been emptied by roving hands. A bag fashioned out of what looked like an old sack was strapped to his back. His chest bore nicks and cuts crusted with blood. Once in the holding pen, a plain room with shabby straw mats, Sully was left to rest. Half-starved and weak, he spluttered and coughed through the following days that ran into each other, only roused awake by the shuffle of footsteps to look through the blurry recurring crimson mist that clouded his vision when food was brought to him. He ate and found himself clutching his stomach at night despite food like roasted yams and hot vegetable soup sating his hunger. But just as night was showing its hand, a hot spurt of fire would run burning through his stomach. He tried to comfort himself by rocking his body back and forth, ignoring the sting of salty sweat that trickled into his eyes, dousing his lips with a feverish tongue.