‘Well, who then?’
‘Tell me about this Maya Angelou,’ I said, not just to change the subject, but because I loved the sound of her name.
Jennifer glanced at me, pleased she had my attention. ‘She wrote this book,’ she said, ‘it came out a couple of years ago. It’s absolutely fantastic, Erna. It’s about things you will relate to.’
‘What’s it called?’
‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.’
I liked the sound of it as much as I liked the sound of her name.
‘Tell me more,’ I demanded.
In the course of the next few hours, Jennifer opened my eyes to a whole new world. I heard about Paule Marshall’s novel Brown Girl, Brownstones and its tale of Selina Boyce, a young girl growing up in a small black immigrant community, and about brand-new writers Toni Morrison and Alice Walker.
We strolled up to St Augustine Church, perched high on One Tree Hill, sat on a bench and gazed over South London towards the Thames, its meandering line marked by the buildings that followed its course.
‘How comes you’re so into black books?’ I asked.
‘I get it from Mum, I suppose. She is proper radical. She’s into all the ‘Black is Beautiful’ stuff and I’m beginning to really understand where she’s coming from, Erna. Mum says that black people have to learn their history or things will never change for us.’
‘What does that mean, what needs to change for us?’
‘Think about it, Erna! You’ve been filling your head with all that romantic crap, but how many times have you found a black character in anything you’ve read? And, if you have, what role does that character have? Do you recognise anything about yourself or our people in anything you read? Do you even know why you read, Erna?’
‘What kind of question is that?’ I said. ‘I read for enjoyment, of course.’ I thought about it for a moment longer and added, ‘Reading takes me to another world, away from the madness of my home life.’
‘But whose world, Erna?’ she replied, ignoring my last statement. ‘I bet it’s not a world you know or understand. Same as on the telly, everything is seen through white people’s eyes. And when black people show up in anything, they’re either slaves or servants or something.’
‘But where do you get the books from? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single book by a black writer in the library.’
‘You haven’t seen any because they’re not there. Mum passes her books on to me when she’s finished reading them. Her cousins send her books from America, but she also goes to this bookshop in Stroud Green called New Beacon Books. It’s amazing, Erna. Honestly, you’ve never seen anything like it, row upon row of books all written by black people!’
I gazed at the South London landscape, leafy and innocent in the sunshine, and suddenly I saw a world entirely different from the one I thought I inhabited. Somewhere down below us, the suburban streets led to Brixton and I had the strongest yearning to be among my own people, the kind of people I grew up with.
‘Come on,’ I said, standing up, ‘let’s get out of here. I’m starving!’
Brixton was the one place in London where I felt at home. Once a month Patsy and I happily accompanied our mother when she went food shopping there. Mother loved the market, because it reminded her of our island. And I loved it for the same reason. We got off the bus outside the Town Hall and crossed the busy junction to reach Coldharbour Lane. Immediately, I could feel the buzz and energy of the place. We turned left down a passageway that led into the maze of streets that housed Brixton market. Reggae music blasted from makeshift sound systems and the sweet smell of Caribbean cooking tantalised my nostrils.
‘I could kill for a piece of jerk pork,’ I said, pointing to one of the barbecue joints where a queue was formed.
‘Must be good, man,’ Jennifer said, ‘look at all those people!’
The dread-man running the stall was inundated by customers, but eventually we reached the front of the queue.
‘Can I have a portion of jerk pork and sweetcorn?’ I asked.
‘Little sista, I man sorry,’ he said, ‘but is bare chicken and corn I man a serve. You can’t insult Rasta like that, little sistreen, yuh mus know seh Rastaman don’t handle pork! But you is young still, so no hard feelings. Try de bal’head stall over there if it’s pork you want.’
The bal’head man’s jerk pork was delicious. Licking our fingers, we took a stroll through the market.
Women with accents from every island wandered up and down the narrow lanes, seemingly unable to make up their minds at which stall to shop.
A large woman in a bright orange shift dress squeezed an avocado pear at the stall beside us. ‘This pear was picked too young,’ she announced, before replacing it and heading for a different stall.
‘Yuh can chop off a small piece of that yam,’ said a woman in a red and yellow turban, ‘to make me see how it look.’
The stallholder picked up the huge yellow yam and hacked a piece off the end. ‘Nothing but the best here!’ he grinned, exposing a mouthful of nicotine-stained teeth.
‘I’ve just remembered,’ Jennifer said, ‘there’s a lady who sometimes sets up a black book stall in the market. I think she comes over from the bookshop where Mum goes. Let’s see if we can find her.’
We scoured the market, but the lady was nowhere to be seen, so we wandered back on to Coldharbour Lane. A few black men passed us with white girlfriends, and sometimes with a mixed-race child in tow, without drawing so much as a glance from other passers by. As we walked past the Prince of Wales pub, a man fell out of the door and stumbled headlong into us.
‘Oi, watch where you’re going!’ Jennifer shouted, pushing him away from her.
‘Sorry, sister,’ said the man, ‘me jus looking for de toilet.’
‘Ugh, he’s probably going to use a doorway,’ said Jennifer, grabbing my arm. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’
We ran back to the high street and caught a bus up the hill. When I got to my seat on the top deck, I gazed out of the window with a feeling not dissimilar to that of leaving my island. The thought of returning home to Catford filled me with dread.
Chapter 28
The rest of my final year in school passed like a whirlwind. With Jennifer and Katherine’s help, I studied hard and managed to bag myself a handful of CSEs. I soon learnt that there was a two-tier system of examinations, with the kids in grammar schools taking O-levels and those of us in comprehensive schools taking the less well-regarded CSEs. Nevertheless, I was now a ‘proper reader’ and, with a Saturday job in Woolworth’s, I was able to buy books whenever I wanted. I was discovering new writers from across the colour divide, and every possible space in mine and Patsy’s bedroom became a place to store my books.
This was a great annoyance to Patsy, who complained loudly to me one day, ‘Erna, you and your stupid books! You’ve even started putting them in the wardrobe. It’s not like we’re flushed with space in here, is it?’
‘I’m sorry, Patsy,’ I replied, ‘but maybe you should read some of them, instead of just complaining about them?’
She sucked her teeth at that suggestion and walked out of the room.
During my final week of school, Miss Wells gave my class a lecture on the importance of the world of work. Later that day, I discovered that she’d spoken separately to the white girls about the importance of sitting their A-levels and going to university. I was shocked and determined to have it out with her.
The following morning, I stood nervously in the corridor, waiting to talk to her. As soon as she emerged from the classroom, I broached the subject.
‘Erna Mullings, I can assure you, you’re not university material,’ she said, walking briskly towards the staff room.
I had to skip to keep up with her.
‘You must understand, your peers have been educated in the British system since primary age. It’s a matter of familiarity,’ she continued.
‘Yes, Miss Wells. I understand,’ I sa
id in a voice that only thinly disguised the sense of unfairness and underlying anger that I felt. ‘But—’
She cut me off before I could finish my sentence, ‘The school careers officer is working very hard to ensure that all of you girls who have chosen to join the job market will have something lined up before you leave us.’ She gave a tight smile. Then she entered the staff room and slammed the door in my face.
I stood in the empty corridor, trying to think what to do. Nothing Miss Wells said sounded like I had any kind of choice in the matter, so it seemed that I had no other option than to surrender to the inevitable, no matter how unfair it was. When she summoned me to her office on my last day of school, I felt more nervous than on my very first day, when I’d walked into the school and asked to be enrolled.
‘Sit down, Erna, this will only take a minute,’ she said. She looked at a letter on her desk. ‘We have found a company willing to offer you an interview as an invoice typist.’
I hadn’t given much thought to the actual type of job I might be offered. Apart from a vague idea that it would be nice to be a writer, I had little idea of what jobs were out there in the big bad world. ‘What’s an invoice typist, mam?’ I asked. I hadn’t used the term for a long time, but my nervousness had got the better of me.
It still irritated Miss Wells. ‘How many times, Erna? Do not refer to me in that manner, and for God’s sake don’t call anyone at your new job that either!’
‘Sorry, Miss Wells,’ I muttered. Then I lifted my head and stared straight at her. ‘It’s just that I had set my heart on becoming a writer, Miss.’
A look of contempt spread across her face. ‘You’re setting your sights way above your station, young woman. Do try and remember where you came from!’ She picked up the letter from her desk and handed it to me. ‘I’m sure you’ll do very well here.’
It was pointless arguing with her, and so it was that two weeks later I went to work as an invoice typist for Jenkins & Jones, a commodities importer based in a dilapidated four-storey building off Tottenham Court Road. At the same time, Jennifer was sent to an international engineering firm in Paddington where she’d been found a role as a booking clerk.
‘I’m giving this a year,’ Jennifer told me, the day before we embarked upon our new careers. ‘Mum says it makes sense to get a bit of money behind me, but then I’m off. I’m going to study law at university.’
As always, I was impressed by Jennifer’s determination, and wished that I had the same faith in myself. But soon the mind-numbing routine of my job made me think that perhaps Jennifer was right, and that maybe I should follow my dreams, after all. Day after day I punched out numbers on an old Imperial typewriter, surrounded by the clatter of typewriter keys and the chatter of the other typists in the office. The high point in my working day was the rattle of the tea trolley being pushed along the corridor by a sad-looking woman named Norma. My short lunch break was usually spent in a little park in Soho Square, catching up on my reading. The one solace I had was day-dreaming about life on my beloved island, and soon the idea of returning there became an obsession. I decided that the only reason I was doing this job was to make enough money to go back.
Chapter 29
My life had become one of routine and predictability. In the end, I barely noticed that time was passing – I’d been working at Jenkins & Jones for over two years and the situation at home had hit rock bottom. The relationship between my mother and the ugly Satan devil man had never been affectionate, but at least I’d never seen him being physical with her; it was everyone else he took his frustrations out on. But now her mental state seemed to be deteriorating almost daily, and the arguments between them spiralled; physical violence quickly became a feature of their relationship. On one particularly bleak winter morning as I got myself ready for work, I heard an argument erupt between them downstairs. I opened the bedroom door just in time to witness his heavy hand slap my mother’s face so violently that her head rocked backwards with the blow. I raced down the stairs, missing every other step, and leapt between them.
‘Touch her one more time,’ I screamed, ‘and so help me I will find a way to fuck up your life once and for all!’
He was clearly shaken by my intervention and he raised his hand as if to hit me, but my eyes held his and the offending hand froze for a second in mid air before dropping back by his side.
‘Yes, you wouldn’t want to do that,’ I challenged him, ‘you really wouldn’t want to do that.’
He stood gazing at me with hate in his bloodshot eyes, but, before I could say anything more, my mother rushed out of the house without her coat or even her shoes. The ugly Satan devil man made no attempt to stop her, and my anger with her for marrying him meant that I did nothing to prevent her from leaving either. Instead, I went back upstairs and finished readying myself for work, relieved to be escaping the nightmare for the rest of the day.
But escape was only temporary. The moment I walked back into the house that evening, Patsy confronted me in the hallway. ‘They’ve taken her to the hospital,’ she said. ‘The Maudsley, the same place where she works.’
‘Oh my God, what happened?’ I said, removing my coat.
‘She was found by some woman who lives in our street, wandering way down the hill near the high street, barefoot and cold, talking about “God coming for his world.” The woman waved down a passing police car and they called an ambulance.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘The police came round just after I got back from school.’
I looked at my sister’s stony face and realised that she was either in shock, or felt no sympathy at all for our mother. Or maybe both.
‘What about…him?’ I had to ask.
‘I haven’t seen him,’ Patsy replied, before trudging upstairs to our bedroom.
The prospect of having the ugly Satan devil man in the house without my mother around was not appealing, but fortunately Auntie Madge stepped into the breach and dealt with everything in her usual efficient manner. When I spoke to her on the phone the next day, she told me she’d been to visit her sister, and that she was okay, although a bit confused about what was going on. She said the ugly Satan devil man had been there too, but she didn’t know where he was now. She assured me she’d go in every day to check up on Violet, which was a huge relief.
As it turned out, the devil man took no responsibility whatsoever for the younger children while Mother was in the hospital, leaving Patsy and me to handle everything: cooking, washing, organising the boys and the twins, while at the same time juggling work and school. Thankfully, Auntie Madge and Uncle Herbie were never far away and would arrive at the house with cooked meals every other day, as well as providing Patsy and me with some extra cash to tide us over.
At work I put on a brave face and greeted my colleagues with a warm smile, but inside I was burning with a fiery rage. Unfortunately, there were days when my distress was evident, at least to Mrs Partridge, the office manager.
‘Erna, what is it that’s preoccupying your mind so much that you can’t concentrate on your work?’ she asked one day, waving an invoice that I’d mistyped in my face.
‘My mum is a bit poorly at the minute,’ I replied. ‘She’s in hospital and a lot of stuff at home has fallen on me.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, Erna. I hope she feels better soon,’ Mrs Partridge said, peering at me over her half-moon specs. ‘But you do still need to concentrate on your work.’
‘Yes, mam… Mrs Partridge,’ I said.
She handed me the offending invoice and I returned to my desk, relieved that she hadn’t asked me any more questions. Work, dreary as it was, had become a sanctuary from the crazy world at home. It was a few months since I had turned eighteen and I yearned for escape. My thoughts began to turn dark.
One night, when the twins wouldn’t go to sleep and Patsy had retreated moodily to the bedroom, I had a wild vision of myself tiptoeing on to the landing on hearing the ugly Satan devil man’s
heavy footsteps climbing the stairs. In my mind, I waited for him to reach the top step and then jumped out and shoved him forcefully in the chest, sending him tumbling back down, his body landing on the hallway floor with a mighty thud. Whatever the horrible orange-and-brown carpet was hiding underneath, it was hard enough to crack his skull wide open. Blood gushed from the wound, creating a massive red patch on the carpet. I imagined myself walking casually down the stairs to where he was lying, kneeling beside him, and whispering in his ear, ‘It’s only what you deserve, you ugly Satan devil man.’ As I looked down on his twisted body, the swirling clouds of darkness, which seemed to hang perpetually over the house, lifted. It was only a fantasy, but it proved to be eerily prescient.
Chapter 30
Apart from reading, Jennifer was my only solace. We met up one lunchtime a few weeks before Christmas at a café near Oxford Circus. Once we’d sat down with our sandwiches and coffee, Jennifer gazed at me with concern etched on to her face.
‘What’s going on, Erna? You look really tired.’
‘Thanks!’ I laughed.
Jennifer just sat there, looking at me, waiting for me to continue. And everything came gushing out, accompanied by floods of tears.
‘Oh my God, Erna,’ Jennifer said, when I’d finished my sorry tale and was drying my eyes with a paper napkin, ‘it all sounds horrendous! We’ve got to think of a way of getting you out of there.’
‘That’s easier said than done,’ I sniffed.
‘I know that,’ she replied, ‘but at least you can start making steps towards it.’
‘Like what?’
Jennifer took a sip of coffee and looked at me over the top of the cup.
‘Well, how about giving up that awful job and taking the university plunge? You’re always on about wanting to be a writer. Why don’t you look into something along those lines?’
‘I don’t know really. I can still hear Miss Wells’ words ringing in my ears. Do you remember when she told me that I was not “university material”?’
The Day I Fell Off My Island Page 20