‘Chile, I tink de balance of de tings is fiyuh,’ he said.
I pulled out a thick green-and-white jacket and matching skirt. A label on the inside of the jacket read: 80% Wool, 20% Nylon. Dry clean only. The label in the skirt said the same thing. I slipped the jacket on and the lining clung to me like an uncomfortable second skin.
‘Dem mus be yuh Hinglan tings,’ Grandpa said. ‘Your mada write dat it will be cold when yuh reach Hinglan. Soh she sen warm tings fiyuh.’
I took the strange clothes to my room and hung them from one of the three wooden hangers in my wardrobe. Although the summer holidays were coming to an end, Grandpa Sippa had suggested that there was little point in me returning to school in September, as my ticket was booked for the twenty-fifth of October.
I went through to the kitchen where Grandpa was boiling a pot of coffee. ‘Erna, chile,’ he said, ‘mi know seh, yuh nuh go happy wit mi suggestion. But yuh Hinglan time a come soon. Yuh nearly fourteen now, chile, and yuh is old enough, so stop up dem tears now.’
But I couldn’t stop the tears. It was my birthday the following day, but with Grandma having been so vague about the dates, I’d never celebrated my birthday before. In fact, it wasn’t until I read the copy of my birth certificate that I discovered the actual date of my birth. But knowing the date meant little to me now: I was leaving my beloved Grandpa and my village forever, right on the cusp of becoming a young woman, and my heart ached with the tragedy of it all. I was going to England.
I tried over and over again to imagine what England would look like, but I couldn’t. Would there be mountains and rivers like we had on our island? Did they have sun there? This question was a real worry, since most of the stories I heard said that it was always cold and usually raining there. I’d also heard about the white flakes that came out of the England sky called ‘snow’ and how they could cover up the whole of the England earth and stop people from even being able to leave their houses. I wondered if they had mango trees. I couldn’t see how I could ever live in a place that didn’t grow mangoes.
The following day, the day of my actual birthday, Grandpa presented me with a large, brand-new brown suitcase.
‘Dis wi fit yuh tings and de tings yuh mada tell me fi sen fi har,’ he said.
I didn’t have much that I could put in it – the few items of clothing that I owned were mostly too tatty, and anyway they probably wouldn’t work in the England weather – but I was still very grateful to Grandpa for my first ever birthday present.
Chapter 18
In the days that ticked by until I left my island, I made a list in an exercise book of the things I wanted to carry with me to England. Top of my list were the complete set of Nelson’s West Indian Readers by J O Cutteridge and my hog-hair comb, as Grandma called it, because it was the only one that could be pulled through my thick hair without snapping in half. I also included a set of soft red woollen ribbons (which had become the must-have fashion item for girls on the island) and a red hobble dress that had been passed down to me by a cousin. The last two items on my list were a chipped white Pyrex mug emblazoned with the words: Out of Many One People – given to all of us school children on the day our island became independent – and a little cloth bag full of the new decimal coins that I had been saving. The suitcase would still be more than two-thirds empty, leaving plenty of room for the provisions that I would be carrying for my mother.
As the date of my departure approached, Grandpa asked his sister Beryl, who lived in a town near the airport, to prepare bammy, fried fish, roast breadfruits and coconut cakes, and anything that she could think of that could be carried safely to England. In my mother’s letter, she’d complained that island food was expensive and hard to find in England. She’d told Grandpa that any little thing he could send would be a big help, and made an extra plea for one or two bottles of overproof white rum to use as medicine.
I began to count down the days with mounting dread. But then, a few days before the actual date arrived, Grandpa Sippa revealed one really good surprise that he had kept back from me.
‘Erna,’ he said, as we worked together in the yard that morning, ‘mi a tek yuh a town fi mi sister house miself. An mi a stay up dere wit yuh till yuh leave fi Hingland.’
It was the best possible news. I’d expected that Mass Charlie would be taking me to the airport, given that Grandpa had never liked bus travel, but he wanted to stay with me for as long as he could. It was much more than I could have hoped for.
The day soon came for me to leave my village. Grandfather locked up the house and we set out in near darkness for Preston. The local bus took us to a depot, where we changed to a second bus for the long-distance ride to Great-Aunt Beryl’s house. We travelled through villages and towns that I was seeing for the first time, and saw some of the big rivers that I had learnt about in school. I even spotted my first waterfall. We finally arrived at my great-aunt’s house, having travelled on the two buses and a taxi over the best part of a day.
I loved Great-Aunt Beryl’s house the moment I saw it. It was made of white-painted wooden slats and stood high off the ground on stilts. All the windows had glass in them. Grandpa Sippa told me that the house was very close to the sea, and, even though the sea couldn’t be seen from it, instead of a usual dirt yard, the ground was covered in fine white sand that must have come all the way from the beach. The town seemed to be filled with children, and underneath the stilt houses was where they all played. I soon discovered that they loved what they called my ‘down a country talk’.
‘Say something, Erna,’ begged an impish albino girl, ‘it nice when you talk country!’
I equally liked listening to the town children’s speaky-spokey accents and my last few days on the island were filled with fun and laughter. And although Grandma was rarely far from my mind, I no longer cried when I thought of her. But, as my final night on the island arrived, sleep became impossible: excitement had at last kicked in – not because I was about to leave for a place I had never been before that was half way round the world, but because I was going to get to see the great big aeroplanes close up. My feelings about actually getting on to one and flying away forever were an altogether different matter.
Great-Aunt Beryl’s son Delroy drove Grandpa Sippa and me to the airport in his taxi. We left his mother’s house a whole two hours early, as I wanted to see a little of what Kingston looked like, especially as it was where my mother had lived for a while. It was the most dramatic sight I’d ever seen – first, hundreds of shack houses seemingly piled up in an unholy mess on top of each other, then Delroy drove a short distance and we were surrounded by elegant homes with beautifully tended gardens. There were row upon row of stylish shops, and more people and cars than I had ever seen. Everything jumbled together in one great mass.
Delroy parked up and said, ‘Erna, you might want to come and tek a look. Yuh might not see someting like this again over foreign.’
Grandpa chose to wait in the car.
As we walked over to the sprawling Coronation Market, my eyes were met with a mountain of colours, foodstuffs, clothing, household items, livestock. Dozens of stalls with folks cooking up all manner of food; it was like Sante Fe market magnified hundreds of times.
‘Stop a mi stall noh, young gal,’ said plump woman from behind a glass case filled with delicious looking patties.
I stopped in the hope that Delroy might see his way to buy me one, and sure enough he did.
Back in the car with Grandpa, the energy in the voices of the market traders and their customers, and the smells of all the various produce stayed with me as we drove away from the city.
Then, almost before I knew it, we were at the airport. Delroy carried my suitcase and we made our way towards the airport’s only terminal. Just before we entered, Grandpa pointed to a balcony near the top of the building where a crowd of people stood waving at a steady stream of people as they made their way across the tarmac towards a huge plane with the words Pan American written
on its side. Only Grandpa Sippa and I were allowed inside the terminal. Delroy handed me my suitcase while Grandpa reached inside his jacket pocket for my passport and ticket. A young man walking alongside the queue that my grandfather and I had joined stopped beside us.
‘Sir, how many of you are travelling today?’
‘Jus mi grandaughta hereso,’ Grandpa replied.
‘May I see her passport and ticket?’
Grandpa Sippa handed them over.
‘Ah, she is a minor,’ he said. He turned to me. ‘Is it your first time travelling on a plane, Erna?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sarh. I nevah go on any plane before, sarh.’
‘You will be fine, Erna,’ he beamed, turning back to my grandfather and handing him my documents. ‘Sir, once your granddaughter has cleared security, she will be cared for by a staff member until she lands in London. She will be well looked after, sir.’
Grandpa thanked the man and remained with me until we got to the front of the immigration queue. I felt my body trembling as I stood, not sure whether I was feeling excitement or fear. Then Grandpa took my hand and looked me in the eyes.
‘Erna, yuh a leave wit my blessing,’ he said. ‘Mi wish yuh a safe journey. De good Lord will keep a close eye pon yuh.’
‘Mi going fi miss yuh bad, Grandpa. Mek sure yuh look after yuhself till mi come look fi yuh.’
The customs woman took my papers from Grandpa Sippa.
‘Keep this very safe, young lady,’ she said, as she gave me back my passport – the first page was now sporting two colourful inked stamps.
Suddenly I was being swept through the aiport building in a winding queue of adults, children and babies in arms. We were ushered briskly down a long corridor to a large swing door, which opened on to the tarmac. The massive BOAC aeroplane stood elegant in the distance. Dozens of men were scurrying around, some walking, others driving. High off the ground in the belly of the craft two men off-loaded all manner of luggage from a forklift truck. A man dressed in fluorescent orange clothing stood near the plane just waving a flag. As the various activities continued, airport personnel walked us to the plane. The roar of the engine blocked any thoughts I had in my head in that moment. But as I mounted the last step, I turned and looked back at the airport building. Grandpa was gone, and my whole life up to that point seemed to melt away before my eyes.
Chapter 19
The plane landed with a jolt at London’s Heathrow Airport and raced down the runway as though it had no intention of stopping. I took a deep breath and offered up a silent prayer, overwhelmed with relief that we had actually landed. It was the second time on that long journey that we’d made it back to earth alive, in a machine that seemed to be held up only by great puffs of white cloud and the desperate hope of us passengers to survive. I’d barely moved for hours. When we made our first stop, somewhere in America for refuelling, I risked a trip to the bathroom, but while the aircraft was in the sky I feared that any extra movement would be enough to bring it tumbling to the ground. I might have been able to relax a little if so many people hadn’t been moving aimlessly up and down the aisle like yo-yos, possibly risking everyone’s safety. The hostesses had fussed and constantly asked people if they were okay; of course, no one was okay, we were all trapped! I refused all offers of food and took only tiny sips of water to avoid any further toilet visits. When we finally landed, my hamstrings were so tight that I was unable to stand up straight for several hours. As the moment came for us to disembark, the pretty blonde hostess, who had been so patient and kind throughout the journey, tried in vain to reassure me, ‘Think how lovely it will be to see your mum and dad again!’ she said.
‘I don’t want to see her, and my father don’t live in England,’ I replied crossly. Each time she gently mopped the tears that poured from my eyes, another torrent cascaded down my face.
The room where I waited for the immigration lady to complete the seemingly endless pages of different-coloured forms for my entry into the UK was dank and cold, and the suit my mother had sent me to wear offered little protection against the autumn chill. My knees visibly shook and my teeth chattered as my skinny body struggled to cope with the cold that seemed to invade every inch of me. I tilted my head as far back as I could in a desperate effort to stem further tears, but come they did, accompanied by my uncontrollable wailing. I felt as though I’d been torn from my island with no way of ever getting back. When the immigration lady finally handed back my plane ticket, I focused on the word ‘minor’, wondering over and over again what I’d done to find myself in such a terrible place.
‘Ready to go, Erna?’ she said. ‘Your father is waiting for you.’
Oh, dear God, no. Please don’t let it be the ugly Satan devil man, I thought.
‘Where’s mi mada?’ I asked the kindly hostess who had waited with me in immigration.
‘It’s your father who’s come to collect you, dear,’ she said. ‘Maybe your mother stayed behind to prepare a nice welcome for you?’
I felt like I was stuck in a nightmare with no way out. I was thousands of miles from everything I knew, trapped in this cold foreboding place full of people who looked extremely odd and talked in the strangest manner. I didn’t want to be here in this England place. Something in the faces of the strangers told me that they didn’t want me here either. To complete my misery, my mother had sent the one person I disliked most in the entire world to collect me.
I didn’t look at him as I climbed into the back seat of his clapped-out Ford Cortina, ignoring his suggestion that I sit in the front. We travelled in silence along streets paved with asphalt, just like the big ones on my island; there wasn’t a hint of gold anywhere. Peering into the semi-darkness, I could just make out endless rows of grey houses, all squashed together, each one with its own little front garden. Dense black smoke billowed from the rooftops. It was as uninviting a vision as I could imagine. Finally, the car came to a halt outside a house that looked exactly like all the others we passed. The front sloped down into what I at first thought was some kind of gully, but turned out to be a lower living area. Why would anyone want to live underground? I thought. Surely that was a place for the dead! Above the battered black front door stood a further three floors of heartless red bricks.
The ugly Satan devil man turned a key in the lock and the door swung open on to a hallway that felt even colder than outside. The only apparent warmth came from the hideous clash of flowery patterns on the carpet and wallpaper. He ushered me into a large living room and then left. A gas fire with pretend flames hissed out the possibility of warmth from an alcove. I sat at the end of the sofa closest to the fire. My stomach churned with fear. I focused my attention on the room, in which every surface was taken over by ornaments and plants. A cage full of plastic birds had prime position on a low glass table; a gangling rubber plant and a straggling geranium struggled for space in the far corner. The clash of patterns continued in the curtains, rugs and sofa; the one note of consistency was that everything was some shade of orange, red or brown. I shifted a little on the sofa and stared vacantly at the blank television screen – the first TV I’d ever seen – when a photograph in a wooden frame on the shelf above it caught my eye. It was the photograph we’d had taken before our mother left for England over three years ago. I stood up and studied it carefully. All four of us children appeared to have eyes too big for our faces, staring with bewilderment into the camera. Our mother stood tall behind us, her beautifully elongated neck beneath her sharp-jawed face with eyes that seemed to veil some secret pain.
‘Your mother gone to Brixton to get food shopping,’ the ugly Satan devil man said, sticking his head around the door frame. ‘She should be back in the next half hour or so. I suppose you can’t wait to see her?’ he offered.
I didn’t respond. I just sat and waited.
Suddenly, the front door slammed and I sprang to my feet. My mother walked past the open living room door, pushing a huge Silver Cross pram. Inside it, facing each other, were
two fat baby girls, dressed identically in thick knitted pink dresses and matching bonnets, and obviously twins. Following sluggishly in her wake were three more children, a girl and two boys. They looked thinner than I remembered. Patricia still had very short hair, but her face resembled that of a much older person to whom life had been unkind. The boys no longer had their little bellies, and their bones stuck out. And Sonny now had a thick head of hair, instead of that shiny, smooth little head our grandparents so loved to rub.
My mother parked the pram at the far end of the hallway leaving the twins strapped in. I could hear them babbling to each other in a kind of call-and-response, one prattling away for a short time, then the other taking over when she stopped. The next thing I knew my mother was standing in front of me.
‘Hello, my dear,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you arrived safely.’
She too looked strangely altered. Her head was covered in a flowery scarf, but the wisps of hair that escaped from underneath it were not her own but some kind of wig. She was wearing a thick brown coat and black wellington boots. I didn’t respond to her greeting – I was afraid of giving her the impression that I was actually happy to be there.
The Day I Fell Off My Island Page 15