Boysie was impressed by the size of the basement. It was well decorated. When Jonesy was doing something else, Boysie looked for signs of bottles, or even wine. But he remembered that he was in a church house, and that such drinks would not be there. He made a wish to have one hell of a party the moment Old Man Jonesy left: next weekend, in this same basement. Back upstairs, in his living quarters, Old Man Jonesy showed him where to sleep. Boysie thought he was going to sleep in Jonesy’s large feather bed.
But Jonesy cleared up that point early. “My madam gone on ahead as you know. She left yesterday. I had to remain to straighten up a few important things such as taking out today’s mails. Now this is our bed. Don’t sleep in it. You isn’ to sleep in it. I will show you where you going sleep. Come, up here.” And he took Boysie up into something, a room with dust and spiders and cobwebs and probably ghosts at night, that looked like a belfry. It was musty too. It was smelly. It was not a belfry. “This is a very nice place, Boysie. You have your own quarters up here. You can use the things in my kitchen. But wash them up after you use them, please. I am going to lend you my alarm clock, and you keep it up here so you won’t tarry in bed and be late for the job. This is a very important job. This is all.”
“That man is a blasted slave!” Boysie was telling Henry, half an hour later. “Ten blasted years it take him to raise two or three hundred dollars! And he telling me all the time ’bout my generation, that my generation o’ Wessindians is too worthliss!”
“Jonesy came to Canada when things was rough. He is a pioneer.”
“Pioneer my arse! He is a slave!”
“Don’t say that, Boysie. Old Man Jonesy represent a certain brand o’ black man who had to creep before they could stand up or walk or even talk. Gorblummuh, it wasn’ no bed o’ roses in Canada in the year 1930-something, as far as a black man was concerned, you understand that?”
“But man, the way that man talked to me! The way he show me round that place, he made me feel he was proud as shite to be a cleaner. And that thing hurt me. Because, man, now suppose I don’t do the job good, and I hate the blasted job … I already hate it … but suppose something happen in Jonesy’s absence, he will think I let him down. First thing I can hear Jonesy saying is, that …”
“You can’t trust coloured people!”
“Gorblummuh!”
Boysie could change instantly from lightheartedness to deepest depression, and this is what happened now. Henry had something else for him to consider, and knowing Boysie, knowing that this depression could go on for many hours, Henry quickly presented his business. “Look here, Boys, old man,” he said going into the clothes cupboard and parting clothes with his hands, like a man opening a window blind, with a flourish. Boysie liked clothes. He had always liked them. But in Canada, without a job, he was unable to afford many of them. “You know I’m getting hitch-up with Agatha in a week or so, and I have to have a good suit for the thing. You know too, old man, that you’s my best man, gorblummuh! and you have a obligation to look damn sharp, too! Well, I have a transaction which I hope you are going to be interested in. Now, I don’t want to tie you down to nothing, old man, because that ain’t the way friends should get on with friends. Not at all. I just want to show you this.” And Henry held the suit in front of Boysie’s eyes like a matador teasing a charging bull. “This suit. And see if you like it enough to want to own one like it.”
Henry knew Boysie didn’t have a suit good enough for the wedding. Dots was saving every penny these days, both for her course in nursing and for the apartment which she wanted to rent as soon as she moved out of Mrs. Hunter’s place. Up until a few days ago, Boysie was hopelessly unemployed. He was down and out and Henry knew this. “Look at this suit, man. Expensive as arse, old man. I am a married-man about-to-be and I can’t be going round wearing a lot o’ damn expensive threads and getting on as if I’m still the greatest bachelor he-man in Toronto. So, I want to give you a good deal. Now this one, the sharp-looking one, is the one I like best. But you is my friend. I think it is a perfect suit for the wedding, too.” That was enough to whet Boysie’s appetite. He sprang up and was standing before the open doors of the cupboard, running his hands over the material of the suits as if they were Brigitte’s luscious thighs and breasts.
“Gorblummuh! this is the material I see one time down in Eaton’s!”
“First class.”
“You not telling me nothing I don’t know, boy.”
“Eighty dollars!”
Boysie had the suit in his hands now. He was pleased that it had a vest too. Henry followed his thoughts as they expressed themselves in his hands as his hands ran over the
