I’d half expected the conversation to stop; but nobody paid me a blind bit of attention. Which was just as well, because in this company, this spit-and-sawdust setting, I knew I was a sharp contrast, my white designer anorak and grey houndstooth casuals an intrusion as stark as the electronic fruit machine flickering unheeded at the back of the bar. The fluorescent light showed it up all too brutally: the cracked vinyl flooring in its faded gaudiness, the smoke-yellowed walls, the crumpled walnut faces of the old men who were most of its customers, elderly labourer types hunched and shrunken in their grubby raincoats. And deaf, probably, since the loud voices were theirs; the few younger men, mostly fiftyish versions of the same, sat glumly contemplating them like a vision of destiny. By the door a handful of teenage skinheads swilled cans of malt liquor and moaned at each other. I plucked up my nerve, and pushed past them to the bar. The beefy landlord served me my scotch in a glass clouded by scouring, and wrinkled his brow when I asked if a fellow called Jyp had been in.
‘Jyp?’ He stared at me a moment with great incurious ox eyes, then rounded on his regulars, leaning over the peeling varnish. ‘Gentleman asking fer Jyp – anyone know him?’
‘Jyp?’ The old men turned their heads, muttered the name back and forth among themselves. Frowns deepened, one or two heads were shaken, others seemed less sure. But nobody said anything, and the landlord was just turning back to me with a shrug when one old fellow hunched up by the gas fire, browner and more wrinkled than the others, suddenly piped up with ‘Wouldn’t be Jyp the Pilot he means, eh?’
There was a moment’s silence. Then cackling chorus of recognition arose, and the landlord’s brow suddenly lost its furrows. ‘Oh, him! Haven’t set eyes on him in awhile! But –’
And, astonishingly, the whole place seemed to change, as if some subtle shift in the light, perhaps, transformed it. Nothing looked different; but it glowed like a gloomy painting suddenly well lit. Somehow the whole grim tableau came alive with an atmosphere that transcended its grime and depression, made it seem almost welcoming, comfortable, secure, the centre of its own small community. It was as if I was seeing it through the old men’s eyes. ‘Bound t’be around somewhere, he is!’
‘Down Durban Walk, maybe –’
‘Seen him up by old Leo’s yesterday –’
They were transformed too, coming alive, chipping in cheerfully with tips and directions to places I might try. It wasn’t only me who noticed; the skinheads were gaping at the old men as if they’d gone berserk – and at me as well. Finally a consensus emerged; Jyp would almost certainly be having his dinner at the Mermaid. But I’d have to run if I wanted to catch him before he went off to work. That I certainly did; and I tore out of that pub faster than anyone can have in years, though not before I’d settled for the scotch.
Their directions were mercifully clear, and I had the sense not to go back for the car. I tore around alley and lane until I found myself skidding over some of the worst and filthiest cobbles ever, and saw in the narrow street before me an ancient-looking pile that could hardly be less like the pub I’d just left; its irregular three-storey frontage was genuine half-timbering, none of your stockbroker’s Tudor. The sea-breeze was freshening – if that was the word to use of something which stirred up so many remarkable stenches. On the creaking signboard swung a crude painting of a mermaid, bare-breasted and long-haired as usual, but with a sharp-peaked crown and twin curving tails. No name, but who needed one?
I went to the door, found it opened outwards, and down some wooden steps into a smoky room crammed with tables, lit, it seemed, only by the marvellous open fireplace at the back. It was pretty rough-looking, but ten times more alive than the other fleapit. The long tables were crowded with drinkers, mostly arty-looking long-hairs, weirdly got up and arguing noisily, chucking dice, dealing cards and tilting what looked like earthenware mugs – a real-ale place, evidently. Not to mention haggling over mysterious, heaps of leaves on the table, or stuffing long pipes with them, reading aloud to each other from handwritten pages or crudely printed sheets – all this along with, and sometimes accompanying, some pretty heavy necking and groping with the few women visible – sometimes remarkably visible, but I restrained my interest. Too many of their gentlemen friends openly wore remarkably wicked-looking knives on their belts. Just the sort of place Jyp would like, I thought, shuddering slightly; but there was no sign of him, and the only service visible was one fiery-nosed oaf in a leather apron slouching around about four tables away, deaf to louder shouts than mine. I wound my way through to the back by the fireplace, a more respectable enclave with marvellous old high-backed cushioned settles. A couple of middle-aged hippy types were monopolizing the ones nearest the fire as if they owned them. One was short, rotund and piggy, the other middle-sized and balding, with a close-trimmed moustache and goatee. I thought one might be the landlord, but heard them arguing uproariously about literature in flat yokel burrs. I put them down for Open University tutors, but asked them all the same, and was surprised when the taller one very politely directed me to the snug at the side. And there, sure enough, with his lean nose buried in a huge pot of beer, sat the man himself.
He almost dropped the jug when he saw me, and all but overturned his table leaping out. ‘Steve! Told you you’d be back, you hoot-owl! Hey, sit down, have a beer – hell, I gotta get to work, you know, we can’t make tonight that party I promised you, dammit – but we’ve still got time for a beer – or maybe two beers, or three –’ When he’d pounded what little breath I had out of me I managed to break in and let him know I’d something to tell him, something serious. He insisted on getting me beer before I started; but when he heard about the raid on the office he almost choked on his.
‘Obeah? Ouanga? Yeah, I heard of those all right. I’ve sailed those waters, once or twice. And Mazanxas…’ His face wrinkled up as if at some disgusting smell. ‘Them and the Zobops and the Vlinblindingues. They’re bad news. They’re secret societies, brotherhoods of cunning men, warlocks, sorcerers – bokors, they call them. Powerful brotherhoods. And ouanga’s just their style.’
‘Great. And just what the hell sort of voodoo is this ouanga?’
He shrugged. ‘You said it.’
I swallowed my mouthful very carefully. ‘You mean – it really is voodoo?’
He spread his hands. ‘Well – not exactly. Voodoo now, I can guess what you’d think about it, but truth is it’s a faith like any other – still a mite rough at the edges, maybe. Worshippers dance ’emselves into a trance, call down their gods to possess them – but Christians, Jews, way I hear it is they were all doin’ that once. Kind of a stage faith goes through, maybe; I’m no scholard. Only there’s good and bad in any faith. S’pose … suppose it was a stone in the ground, okay, and you turn it over? What’s underneath, darkness and things crawling – that. That’s ouanga.’
I said nothing, and he nodded to himself. ‘Kind of like devil-worship is to us, I guess – only there’s a lot more of it about. Plain voodoo, now, it’s a little wild, maybe, but its gods or spirits – loas, they’re called – they’re mostly good guys, or neutral at least. But the worst of these bokors, they worship with different rites, rites of blood and wrath. They call down different loas – real bastards, mean, destructive, maneaters, the lot. Only – funny thing, this – they’re called by pretty much the same names. As if the rites could somehow twist their natures right about. All got their good counterparts save one, and he’s the one the rites are named for – a shadowy type called Don Pedro. Not a nice guy, by all accounts.’