I wanted to tell her about Morris.
I wanted to sing his name out into the night.
His name is Morris. He is my Morris and he always been my Morris. He’s a good-hearted man, a special man, a sexy man, a history-loving man, a loyal man, a man who appreciates a good joke, a man of many moods, a drinking man, and a man with whom I can be myself completely.
Yes, I was in the throes of a Malibu-and-Coke-soaked madness, a madness that could lead to the demise of my life as I’d hitherto known it. But I was on the verge.
Donna would finally know who her father really was, behind the façade—the dissembler, the impostor.
It was the right moment. It was the right place. It was the right time. And maybe my daughter would consider me a kindred spirit and stop hating me, because even though she wasn’t my favorite, I still loved her, my first child. I would still kill for her, my first child.
(Actually, looking back, I don’t know if I’d really-a killed for her. We parents say these things and I’m sure it applies when they’re innocent babies, but as soon as they start backchatting you, I’m not so sure we’d be so fast to dive into the swirling rapids after them. Upon occasion we might even be tempted to give them a shove in.)
“Merle,” I said, beginning my speech of a lifetime, “lemme tell you something. I really admire your courage. Most folk pretend they just the same as everybody else because they afraid of negative reaction. But you now, you stay true to who you are, and few from our community is brave enough to do that. However,” I paused, “there comes a time when even the biggest cowards got to—”
At which point Donna cut me off: “Don’t be so bloody patronizing and spare us the lecture, Dad. I don’t need your approval or permission. I’m old enough to do as I please. Who do you think you are, acting the big patriarch? And another thing, I’m not a girl, I’m a woman. Merle, let’s go inside. We need to talk.”
She heaved little Merley up by her arms, but her friend managed to mouth an apologetic “Sorry” before she was propelled into the house.
Lord, but your children can be the most vicious little gits. They think they own the copyright on human feeling and that you don’t have none.
I was left in the dark, in the fug, in the moonlight and the moon pon stick light, waiting for the morning, watching smoke spiral from the cigarettes they’d left behind.
That was the first and last time I had the slightest urge to spill the beans about who I really was.
Soon afterward, Merle dumped my daughter, which came as no big surprise. Actually, if I was an Agony Aunt, I’d have advised it. Next thing you know, Donna refeminized herself and brought a boyfriend home. Thank goodness I’d not confided nothing to her that night, because for sure it would have been related verbatim to her mother as soon as those two became thieving-thick again.
As it was, I got used to entering a room and the conversation goin’ dead.
I would-a lost little Maxine and everything and, if Carmel went full out for revenge, my reputation too.
Cock of the Hackney Walk no more. I might as well have worn a placard with Homo painted on it. Donna never apologized. She don’t even remember it. A couple of years back she told Daniel off for being rude to her and said she’d never have spoken to her parents like that. She wouldn’t-a been able to get away with it.
About a year later I bumped into Merle, sitting on the pavement outside that radical Centerprise Bookshop on Kingsland High Street, begging. I took her inside the café to feed her some of that radical cow-feed they liked to serve up in there. Turned out she was homeless, had no money, no one to turn to, nowhere to go.
Little Merley couldn’t help herself no more.
That very afternoon I moved her into a one-bedroom flat I’d just put on the rental market on Lordship Lane. I stocked up the fridge, sorted her out with some cash, and took her down to the dole office to sign on. I never told no one, not even Morris. She stayed there eleven years at peppercorn rent, picked up the education she lost when her father kicked her out, did a degree in so-called women’s studies (I never said nothing), and now teaches it at the London Metropolitan University.
She only moved out of the flat when she met Hennie from Amsterdam nineteen years ago and they bought a flat together in De Beauvoir Square.
I see them both from time to time when they pop down Ridley Road Market to buy bread and buns and Jamaican patties from Tom’s Bakery—best bakery in London. Except Little Merley is Mama Merley these days, positively matronly, wearing skirts and makeup and everything. They are two chubby, happy women in their prime, and they still humor me when I greet them with, “Hello, Merley from Monsterrat; hello, Hennie from Holland.”
Anytime I’m not with Morris, Merle asks after him.
No one need spell nothing out.
Maxine also went through a milder, nonpsychotic version of Donna’s coming-of-rage period, and I came to understand (admittedly years after the fact) that it was the nature of adolescence and not to take it too personally. But by the time I worked out that, in order to become themselves, children have got to disengage from their parents, I’d already been wounded.
Carmel was let off lightly because she played the “victim card.”
Donna, in particular, stored up all her beshittery for her father—who was beshat upon from a great height.
This is what happens when 75 percent of your life is in the past. Each step forward triggers a step backward. All of these memories haunting me but they are also the making of me, here, in Hackney.
* * *
My perambulatory reverie has taken me from the quiet backstreets of Stokey to Newington Green, and I end up in the middle of Kingsland High Street, with its clamorous throng and traffic forcing me into the present tense.
Folk nod at me through the crowds, same way they done since Noah set sail with two of everything.
They think they know me:
Husband of Carmel.
Father of Donna and Maxine.
Grandfather to Daniel.
Retired engine-fitter.
Man of property.
Man of style.
Buggerer of men . . . How I go live with that?
And if I live with Morris, folk will work it out.
This is what’s been stirring inside of me all week while I’ve been alone. The thought of what I’m about to do feels like climbing Kilimanjaro with no clothes, crampons, rope, pick, or SOS flare.
Maybe things should stay as they are.
The Caribbean Canteen is all sunshine-yellow walls, Triffidian parlor palms, and posters of clichéd golden beaches with aquamarine seas. Morris is huddled at the corner wooden table that faces the window. He shouldn’t slouch; it ages him. He must-a watched me cut a distinguished, broad-shouldered swathe through the lumpen proletariat of Dalston.
“Y’all right, boss?”
“Y’all right, boss?”
Morris is always waiting for me. Story of his life. He is of the belief that it’s better to be half an hour early than ten minutes late. Very noble, but I’d rather be half an hour late than ten minutes early. I can tell he’s disgruntled. I can spot his mood soon as I see him, even from a distance. When you’ve known somebody this long, you can read their body language. It’s the same on the telephone: soon as he speaks, sometimes in the split second before he greets me, I know his state of mind.
He’s wearing his Andy Capp tweed hat, even though he’s inside an eating establishment, but I’m not goin’ pull him up on the correct etiquette today. I am his lover, not his father.
The canteen is filled with the yuppies who’ve been colonizing Dalston since they built the tube extension and the rip-off rabbit-hutch development next to it. Years ago only Caribbean people touched Caribbean food. Now even English people realize that the seemingly rotten, decomposing plantain is actually the ripest, sweetest vegetable on earth. We both opt for the breadfruit casserole with slices of buttered hard dough: a lovely thick broth bobbing with meaty and wheaty things.
I de
cide to warm him up with some harmless conversation about the past. This is one of the pleasures of a lifelong friendship: so many of your memories are shared.
I launch myself . . .
“I been thinking about those young radicals who used to hang out here in the ’60s and ’70s. Remember that Shumba-boy Donna was seeing in 1977? That type, yuh know, so up they own arses they need an enema to get themselves down again. I bet him and some of those radical dropouts ended up as investment bankers grouse shooting on the moors with their fellow aristos, and some of those young feministas ended up as housewives in places like Cheltenham and the shires.”
“Why you goin’ on about that now? What they done to you?”
“Because it’s on my mind and, as you my friend, I thought it might be interesting to discourse it with you,” I reply in a reasonable manner.
“You so critical, Barry.” Morris sticks his spoon into his casserole and leaves it there. “It’s fine to be angry when young, but people can’t stay angry forever. Soon as they start having children they want a good job and house in a safe area that is child-friendly with good schools. You should be glad those radicals fought those battles, because it meant we didn’t have to.” He stops and scans the room surreptitiously before whispering, “Like those gay liberationists trying to make life better for our lot.”
“Why you bringing them up? You know we don’t business with this gay-liberation stuff.” I stick my spoon in my casserole and leave it there too. “To be quite frank with you,” I add, humoring him by whispering too (even though nobody is close enough to eavesdrop and, like I always say, why the hell would they want to?), “I didn’t really appreciate all of that attention-seeking behavior of those gay liberationists. They should-a kept the noise down a bit. As well you know, I believe in discretion.”
Morris shakes his head. “Yuh talking nonsense again, Barry. I believe in discretion too, but society don’t become more equal unless some brave folk get up on their soapboxes and start revolutions, like in Russia, Mexico, China, France. You see, unlike you, who seems to think you are superior to most people, I believe in equality. I never did like discrimination of any kind.”
Wha wrong wit yuh, Morris? Right. Is fight you want? Is fight you get. Morris has got the hump bad. He knows full well I am an antidiscriminatory person.
“You better watch out, Morris,” I joke, still trying to lighten the proceedings, dipping my bread into my casserole again like he not getting to me. “You starting to sound like a Communist, one of those reds under the bed.”
He shakes his head again, as if I am completely beyond his help. “You will recall the book and telly drama called The Naked Civil Servant in 1975. The one about that real-life gay fella who used to wear makeup and prance around the streets of London from the 1930s onward? Quentin Crisp? I told you about him, remember?”
How could I forget? Morris talked about him for years. Oh, Quentin this and Quentin that, like they was best friends.
“You mean that eccentric pooftah with blue-rinse hair?” I will wind Morris up bad-bad. I will wind him up so much he’ll regret being unreasonable with me when I was trying to discourse pleasantly.
“This is your problem, Barry. He was the same as me and you. So that makes you a pooftah too.”
“I, for one, do not wear makeup, dye my hair, or do the mince-walk like that Larry Grayson in The Generation Game or Frankie Howerd in Up Pompeii, although, to be honest, Howerd was funny as hell. Morris, when did you ever see me flapping about with limp wrists and squealing like a constipated castrato?”
“I don’t understand you, Barry,” Morris says, continuing his moralistic crusade. “You hate it when Merty and that lot chat homophobic nonsense, but look at yourself.”
“Morris, I am an individual, specific, not generic. I am no more a pooftah than I am a homo, buller, or antiman.” I start to quietly hum “I Am What I Am.”
“You homosexual, Barry,” he says, goin’ po-faced on me. “We established that fact a long time ago.”
“Morris, dear. I ain’t no homosexual, I am a . . . Barrysexual!” I won’t have nobody sticking me in a box and labeling it.
“Great, well . . . shut up now and let me finish my story,” he says. “So me, Odette, and the boys began to watch The Naked Civil Servant, not realizing what it was goin’ be about. Soon as the boys realized, you should-a heard them sounding off about how that pansy should be shot dead. Yes, shot dead. Worse, Barry, I was so afraid of implicating myself, I agreed with them. I was a quisling, Barry. I felt so bad I never ever told you about it.” He has gone all moist-eyed.
“So what, we all been quislings at some point or other, Morris.”
“You see, Barry, I didn’t approve of the way Mr. Crisp went about things either, all that makeup and mincing, but I really admired the way he stood up for himself. He used to get beaten up all the time. Now that takes a courage neither of us has had . . . until now.”
No until now about it, my friend. Seriously, though, what seventy-four-year-ole man divorces his wife and moves in with his long-term male lover?
He which hath no stomach to this fight / Let him depart.
“I didn’t sleep good for weeks afterward,” Morris says. “This is why I appreciate what these gay liberationists been doing all these years. They been educating the masses and getting us our freedom . . . should we choose to take it.”
For the first time since I arrived, Morris lightens up. He takes off his hat and puts it on his lap. He stares warmly, lovingly, at me.
What . . . is . . . he . . . up . . . to?
“Today we even got civil partnerships,” he says, weighing his words carefully, like he wants to make sure the scales balance.
Morris, don’t you dare even suggest it.
“Seeing as you say you’re divorcing Carmel, and seeing as I’m chupit enough to half believe you . . .” He grins, tipping his head sideways. “Why don’t we go the whole hog? I’ve looked into Chelsea Town Hall, which has a tiny register room for four persons. We can drag two witnesses off the street. Judy Garland got married there, yuh know. Boss, I feel ready now, again. Wanna join me?”
All of my hunger has gone. The smell from my stew is noxious and making me nauseous.
Now I know why he had the hump when I came in. Whenever Morris wants something badly, he expects a negative response and acts like he’s already got it. Which, in this instance, is foresight.
What kind of tomfoolery preposterous proposal is this, I ask you?
“You know how I said you was suffering from dementia the other night at the dance?” I tell him, straight-faced. “Okay, I meant it as a joke, only now I’m not so su—”
Before I finish my sentence he’s up from his chair and he gone.
Lord have mercy . . . I blown it now. Should I pursue him? Tell him I was only jesting, in the way people do when what they’ve said backfires?
I leave the canteen too and start walking home, barging into any bastard who don’t get out of my way.
This is one holy mess. I have really upset Morris, but I was goin’ do that anyway, wasn’t I? Thing is, I can’t change the way I am for nobody. The development of an individual’s personality stops at the age of eleven. I don’t care what the psycho-tricksters say. Any half-brained person seeing me wearing a homburg and wide-lapeled 1950s suit will understand I am a fella not big on change. I ain’t never worn a pair of jeans in my life, and I like my socks gartered, which says it all.
I never told Morris I wanted to get a civilian partnership or whatever they call it. He’s jumping the gun in wanting to jump the proverbial broom. We are not Elton John and David Furnish. I said I would leave Carmel and that we would move in together, eventually . . . probably. But, given my current state of mind, what seemed like a great idea last Sunday now feels improbable.
How can I take the upheaval of telling Carmel I divorcing her? Fact is, I am too used to being in a prison of my own making: judge, jailer, and jackass cellmate.
Once insi
de my empty house, I take off my brogues and socks and leave them on the carpet by the front door, because Carmel’s not here to cuss me off and, seeing as there is already a certain accumulation of discarded garments—shirts, trousers, underwear—I making it easier for her to lift it all up and walk ten yards to the washing machine in the kitchen instead of hauling the bundle downstairs from the bedroom or bathroom with her dodgy joints.
What I goin’ do now, ehn? I can’t stand it when I’ve upset Morris, or, rather, when Morris gets upset. Not now, Morris, of all times. How I goin’ cope?
First, I will have a little siesta to de-stress myself.
After that I will pick up The Siege of Krishnapur by Mr. J.G. Farrell to bring the repression of the Indian Mutiny into my living room and transport me back in time, away from the trials and tribulations of the mutinous Morris.
Third, I will help myself to some Bacardi and lemon, Bacardi and Coke, Bacardi and soda, Bacardi and Bacardi . . . to help ease the terrible sufferance in my heart.
Eventually, I will make the slow journey toward the household site of human somnambulation. I will therefore ascend the thick, carpeted stairs and I will thenceforth descend into my bed.
On my own—emotionally.
Nothing new there.
8
Song of Prayer
1980
. . . on your own again, isn’t it, Carmel?
late this night, praying up against your bed, waiting for him to come home, knowing he might not come home at all, but you can’t help yourself, can you, acting like a right mug, as the English people say
waiting, waiting, always waiting . . .
can’t help thinking back on the past neither, and wondering what the future goin’ bring you, remembering how your first ten years in this country was spent in a haze and a daze, wasn’t it, Carmel?
1960–1970—you barely left Hackney, raising Donna, goin’ church, goin’ home to Antigua only two times, taking Donna, who hated the heat, missing dear Mommy (now dearly departed)
Barry never came with you because he said he had to supervise building work on his properties during his holidays from Ford’s
Mr. Loverman Page 12