she hoped; something different from the usual dried-up bones of the Tropicana girls.
‘Anybody ask of me?’ She covered her hips with a cloth as she talked to Michael. He was only a boy and she appeared naked before him without any hint of self-consciousness. What always amused her was the way he averted his eyes from her breasts and hips when she confronted him, but she had often caught him stealing very grown-up looks at her from behind.
‘One man come here plenty time.’ He rushed downstairs and produced a small notebook. ‘He come here, till he tire. He use to wear long dress and cap. He get money plenty. He never come ’ere before you go home.’
With the help of a neighbour they were able to decipher the scrawl. ‘Taiwo,’ it read. Jagua immediately remembered him as the man who had taken her to the airport the day Freddie was leaving for Britain.
‘Finish, de man who come?’
‘Dem too plenty; but dis man get money pass all!’
Jagua smiled. ‘How you know he get money?’
‘I know, Ma. I see de money for him face!’
Jagua laughed, with her head thrown over her shoulder. She had not finished admiring herself in the mirror. JAGWA. She gave herself the title now, whispering it and summoning up in her mind all the fantastic elegance it was supposed to conjure up. JAGWA. It was like an invocation. She was sure the men would like her much more now. Men, she discovered, found a strange appeal in a woman whom they knew but who had been away on holiday. Again she thought of Freddie and only managed to repress an impulse to go downstairs and ask of him. So Freddie would not be coming to her rooms, crashing into her secret life and starting his jealous quarrels. His jealousy was tough to bear; but Lagos for her also meant Freddie and his quarrels.
She heard the stirring throbs of jazz from a neighbour’s radio. A new record, too. She must go to the Tropicana. Wonder ’bout dem. Mama Nancy still at Bagana. Wish her all de best. She kin marry Uncle Namme if she choose. Must go to Tropicana to forget de worl’. De trouble wit’ de worl’ is dis: people too take life serious. Life is serious, mark you. I don’ deny that. But you mus’ take life easy sometime. Yes. Mus’ go to Tropicana. Dis night too. I know I only jus’ return, but Brodder Fonso not here to stop me an’ talk all him serious talk about Papa an’ Mama. After all who in de fam’ly suppose to look after dem? De men or de women? Am only a woman. Ah marry an’ loss by name to anodder fam’ly. De man name must remain. Is only 8 o’clock now. Time never pass.
‘Jagua? Hel-lo! … Welcome! … You look so well. You enjoy yerself at home? What you bring back to us?’ The girls would want something from her, the hungry sluts. They dug their claw-like fingers into men’s pockets and smoked men’s cigarettes and drank men’s drinks and took men’s money, but they would always dig their hands into their colleagues’ pockets for the odd copper to buy kola nuts to keep them awake and the odd scraps of food to keep them from collapsing. ‘Borrow me your brooch, Esther! Borrow me your shoe, Mary! I wan’ wear am go dance, repairer never return my own. I give am to repair he never come back.’ Tropicana women. She hated them. Yes, they would want her to bring them something; they who had been rooted in Lagos enjoying the limousines and the silky tenor saxes of Jimo Ladi and his Leopards.
She stored away the food, then she took out her towel and went to the bathroom, but when she knocked a man answered her from the inside and she went instead to the lavatory. The same old bucket, piled high; the floor messed about, so she could see nowhere to put her silver sandals. It was all done by those wretched children upstairs. Why blame them when their mothers did not know any better. Where was the landlord? Where was the Town Council Health Inspector? This inspector was supposed to come here once in a while, and whenever he came he made notes in his black book but nothing ever happened. She would talk seriously to him the next time. The unpleasant side of Lagos life: the flies in the lavatory – big and blue and stubborn – settled on breakfast yam and lunchtime stew (they were invisible in a stew with greens). But Jagua closed her eyes and shut her nostrils with her towel.
The bathroom was free now, slippery and green, but thank God for the shower. She was through in a few moments. She stretched her hair, oiled her skin and wore her print dress. Something provincial was there in her get-up. She must find out what it was and eliminate it. This was Lagos and she was Jagwa.
She found the Tropicana much the same: entrance through a hole in the wall. A smile from the proprietor standing dark-haired in his shirtsleeves under a harsh light. She bought a kola-nut from the Hausa hawker who had a pitch inside, near the manager. Jimo Ladi and his Leopards had not begun to play yet, but they were all there on the bandstand. The women smiled at her.
‘Jagwa. You return? Welcome! How’s home?’
They flocked round her and teased her and she was glad. They said she looked young and fine. She told them that ‘one man wan’ to marry me, one Chief!’ And when they expressed surprise, she reeled off the whole story, down to the detail of the reconciliation she had brought about. This story made her feel important. Unlike so many of them, she was not coming to the Tropicana out of necessity, but because it had become a part of her. She knew from the silence on their lips that she had succeeded in putting across that impression. The loudspeaker began to scratch out a tune. The girls went to their tables and sat with eyes trained on the door. But there was one girl who lingered.
Years later, Jagua remembered this particular night. It was the memorable night on which she saw more closely the young woman called Rosa. Rosa had a ready smile and a charming way of speaking. She said she had come to Lagos, from the East. She had nowhere to stay in Lagos. Could Jagua help her? Jagua took pity on her and promised, rashly, to do something. ‘If you come to my place, sometime I kin fin’ somethin’ for you.’ She quickly dismissed Rosa from her mind, but later that evening it flashed through her consciousness that Rosa could well live with her. Rosa could be her companion, in Freddie’s absence. Lagos then, might have a new meaning. Rosa could pay something towards the rent, help with the cooking, washing and cleaning. The idea was worth considering.
At the moment, Jagua was far too occupied with shaking her hips to Jimo Ladi’s High-life. Everyone was on the dance floor stomping and rocking with complete abandon.
She walked along the front of the Tropicana, among the taxi drivers and sellers of soap, candles, matches, sardines, toasted corn and peanuts. The lights played with her and she was glad. Glad to have been at the Tropicana. She heard the steady sound of footsteps behind her. Without glancing back she whispered to herself: ‘Dem done start to follow me, awready! Ja-a-gwa!’ The sensation of being followed brought with it a new kind of self-importance. She tried to guess from the rhythm of the steps what kind of a person it was. Not an old man, certainly. The steps were light, but hesitant. When she stopped, the sound ceased. She looked round and saw him: a young man.
He had one hand in his trousers pocket. ‘Ma’am, I see you for Tropicana.’
Jagua looked at him, young, arrogant, smart in his open-neck shirt. ‘You see me?’ He could not be older than Freddie Namme, and she thought: ‘Dese young men, dem never use to get money. Only sweet-mouth.’
‘I see you for Tropicana, an’ I say, even if I die, I jus’ mus’ speak wit’ you.’
‘How? I no understan’ you.’
‘I don’ mean to offend you, Madam. I get some plan.’ The hand stuck in the trousers pocket came out in one swift movement. He was holding a small packet and Jagua watched him open it. She drew in her breath.
‘Gold?’ she said. ‘Who get de trinket?’ She could hardly control her excitement. The trinkets were worth at least one hundred pounds. She recognized them as a complete set, suitable for use with native costume on special occasions only – funerals, naming ceremonies.
‘I only wan’ ten poun’ for de whole. Cash. You kin do what you like wit’ am, I no care. Melt de whole ting down and make new set, if you no like dis one.’
The chance was not one to be missed. ‘Follow me,’ Jagua
whispered. ‘I no hold de money here. Follow me to mah house.’
She took him to her room. He sat on the edge of the chair, the young man, nervous. She talked to him while undressing carelessly and then she left the room and went and showered her body with cold water and scented her armpits with something Oriental. When she came back she was wearing only a transparent chemise. She sat on her low carved stool with her little mirror propped between her bare knees, gazing at her wet hair. Her arms and shoulders were bare and she sat with the chemise bunched between her thighs so that the mirror bit into the skin between her knees.
Jagwa. She raised her arm and ran the comb through the wiry kinks of hair and her breasts swelled into sensuous arcs and her eyes tensed with the pain as the kinks straightened. And the hour was not less than three in the morning, with everywhere a dead quiet, and the light in the room low and sleepy. The young man sat on the nervous edge of the seat, gazing at her killing him off with temptation and he sat tense and said nothing.