Paid Servant

by E. R. Braithwaite

  “Oh, I’m not afraid of anyone,” he boasted.

  “I’m not the one you need to convince of that, Mr Loomis,” I replied. “You’ll have to prove that to your wife, and even more to yourself. Later on you might find it necessary to prove it to those two sons of yours.”

  He licked his lip, the first sign of nervousness he had shown. Maybe I was getting to him, touching on his vanity. Now that Mrs Loomis was again composed, the boys returned to their game, quickly forgetful in the more serious business of deciding whose turn it now was to be driver.

  “But I don’t know many people,” he said. “I sometimes meet some fellows, you know, West Indians, at L.S.E. and we talk over coffee, but that’s about all.”

  “Well,” I added, “why not begin with them? Invite a few here for a chat, and get to know them. You’ve a nice place here, and it might give your wife something to do, entertaining your friends, sort of in preparation for her future role as Governor’s wife in Grenada.”

  We both laughed at this.

  “Well, it could happen, you know,” he said. A real go-getter, this boy.

  “Sure it could happen,” I agreed, “but you’d have to begin now to make it happen by preparing for it. Already you have most of the ingredients, a lovely wife, a nice house, your studies, your ambitions. Sure it could happen. All you need now is to stop being afraid. Of other men.” I added the last bit harshly, to shake him up. He took it with a smile. I looked at his wife. She was watching him, too, her face relaxed but ready to take a cue from his attitude.

  “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “All this may have seemed silly to you, but … ”

  “Not silly, Mr Loomis,” I interrupted. “If I had been married to such a lovely woman I might have behaved a lot worse, a whole lot worse.” I sneaked a quick look at her; she was smiling shyly. “However, you’re the one who’s going to be the politician, not me. So you’ll have to learn to handle all kinds of opposition.”

  “You make it sound so damned easy,” he replied, then, “Sorry, Selma.” ‘Good grief,’ I thought, ‘he’d write a letter like that about her, but he apologizes to her for saying “damn”. Wonders never cease. Or maybe he was saying “sorry” for something else.’

  “Could you stay for a cup of tea?” she asked, rising.

  “Of course,” I replied. “Me, I’m dry. It’s people like your husband here who have to learn to talk for hours without lubrication.”

  He laughed. We all laughed. Nice and friendly. They’d work it out together, I felt sure. I’d put a little idea in his head and he’d use it. Ambitious types like him would use anything to achieve their ends. Inwardly I wished them luck, especially him. In one way he’d need it, lots of it.

  Over tea, the three of us chatted, chiefly about Mr Loomis and his political ambitions, and then, with a promise to drop in any time I was in the vicinity, I left them.

  The Rosenbergs lived in a large apartment house overlooking Clapham Common, close to the building where Wilberforce and his friends often met to discuss their schemes for bringing about the emancipation of the slaves in British territories. They were both restless, energetic, brilliant people, pursuing their separate careers, together with their joint career of involvement in a host of projects and schemes for helping a wide assortment of social misfits to help themselves. Their apartment was a kind of crossroads, where all kinds of personalities and intelligences met, talked, ate, argued, agreed or disagreed, but rarely rested. The need to understand and cope with urgent human problems seemed to outweigh the need for rest. Sometimes one slept if one had to, and then this was respected and the wakeful, restless ones moved themselves off to the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom or distant corner, and carried on in what they thought were whispers. Their little Clarita, their daughter of three, bobbed about like a small cork on the turbulences of the grown-up world in which she lived; her large, steady grey eyes and serious mien would soon discourage the uninitiated who tried to woo her with baby talk, but would just as readily crinkle up in the most captivating way when she was amused.

  Hardwick answered the door. When indoors he always dressed his tall, gangling frame in thick, chunky sweaters and shapeless corduroy slacks. His greying hair pointed in every direction under the persistent teasing of his restless fingers, as he read, argued or concentrated on problems new or past. Under a large, craggy forehead, his aquiline nose, brown, slightly bulging eyes and wide full-lipped mouth usually gave the impression of professorial ponderousness until he smiled, releasing an irrepressible boyishness. He loved to joke, but invariably in the most unbelievably corny way, so that one was tickled into laughter, not at the content of the joke, but at his crass temerity in hoping for what he invariably got—laughter.

  “Hey, Hannah,” he called. “Rick’s here.” He and I went into the sitting-room and made ourselves comfortable, and were soon joined by Hannah, his wife. Theirs may have been the attraction of opposites, for she was small, blonde and well-formed. Her most outstanding characteristic was not in any physical feature, but in the aura of dynamic energy which surrounded her, whether at home, at a tame social gathering, or on the concert platform where she repeatedly astounded her audience by the amazing dexterity of those small, flexible hands.

  “Come on, tell us about him,” she said, without preamble.

  I told them about little Roddy; all his history as was known or surmised. Then I described the boy, and it may well be that my description reflected my own enthusiasm. At the end of my recital, Hardwick said: “What about the wings?”

  “What wings?” I asked, not getting it.

  “An angel he describes, and wings he forgets!” At his corniest Hardwick was prone to imitate the Jewish stereotype.

  “Give him time,” I said, “they’ll grow.”

  “What do you think?” he asked his wife.

  “Okay with me,” she replied. “The only problem here is how the most important person will react to the idea.”

  “My guess is that he’ll like you both very much.” I said.

  “Sorry,” she answered. “I meant the other important person. Clarita. Everything will depend on how well they get on.”

  “Of course,” I agreed, and went on to explain the carefully planned sequence in all arrangements for fostering or adoption.

  First: To find prospective parents and discuss the case with them, giving them as much as was known of the child, his parents, if any, and background.

  Second: The parents make formal application, for fostering­ or adoption, on prepared forms, giving details of themselves, their occupations, domestic arrangements, financial circumstances, references, et al.

  Third: The parents were taken to the Home and introduced to the new child. In each case the parents saw only the child concerned, as it was very necessary to avoid the temptation to choose one from several likely candidates.

  Fourth: If this introduction went well, the parents visited again, this time together with any child or children of their own. The youngsters were given the opportunity to meet, play together for a while, and size each other up.

  Fifth: Providing all went well so far, the fosteree or adoptee­ was taken for visits to his new home. These were progressive, beginning with a visit of a few hours one afternoon and gradually extending to a weekend, then perhaps a week. Then, if all parties were satisfied, on a subsequent visit the child would merely stay with the family, with no fuss or bother.

  We discussed the matter fully, and when I was sure that they were really enthusiastic about the idea, I brought up the fact of Roddy’s colour, and, in the event of his becoming a part of their family, the difficulties which might later have to be faced.

  “You’ve forgotten one thing, Rick,” Hardwick said, when I had finished. “If the boy becomes a member of this family, that’s just what he will be. Whatever difficulties, as you call them, are to be faced
, will be faced by us as a family. Enough said?”

  “Enough said,” I replied.

  This was the sort of remark and these the sort of people who helped to sustain my faith in mankind; a faith which, during my life in Britain, had often deserted me. This was a Jewish couple, but so complete was their involvement with all humanity that neither of them had asked any question about the child’s religion or that of his parents, if it was known. The fact that they were Jews was very much secondary to the fact that they were human beings.

  I always carried some of the application forms in my brief case, and now they completed one of these, with a certain amount of ribaldry over some of the details.

  The train ride home to Ilford was long, with several changes, and it was with a grateful feeling of something accomplished that I finally crawled into bed.

  Chapter

  Four

  MERELY FOR A CHANGE in the dull, daily routine of riding the Underground to work all the way, I came out at Mile End Station, caught a bus for the rest of the journey, and climbed to the upper deck. It was crowded, but I saw an empty place on one of the two front seats and squeezed my way there. When I had settled myself I noticed that the person sitting beside me was a Negro. His face was turned towards the windows on his side, as if he were deeply interested in the drab sameness of the scene which flitted by. Anyway, I said “Hello, there,” and he quickly turned and smiled, as if he had been waiting for a signal from me before even acknowledging my presence. This did not surprise me, because it was one of the things I had been learning about Negroes in Britain, especially Negroes from the West Indies.

  In their sunsplashed islands, West Indian Negroes are generally gay, friendly, talkative people, accustomed to greeting each other, whether stranger or friend, with a wave, a nod, a wink, or “Hi, man”. They see each other, look each other in the face in hope of recognizing someone from the same town, village, street, school, or place of employment, and if on another island, they look into each other’s faces in the hope of recognizing someone from home.

  In Britain, they behave quite differently. They very rarely look another strange Negro in the face, and yet, should one be bold enough to offer the old familiar “Hi there” or “Hi, man,” the reaction is immediately friendly, as if there is always the hope of being addressed, though veiled by the seeming preoccupation with something else. I have seen this phenomenon very often, and conclude that it is part of the plurality of artifices behind which Negroes in Britain are prone to hide in attempting to evade the manifold face of prejudice. For they frequently find prejudice within their own ranks, brought along with them to Britain to add to the difficulties against which they constantly declaim.

  Although circumscribed, as a group, by the anti-Negro prejudice which shows itself in a variety of ways, they still find time and energy to maintain among themselves the invidious demarcations between manual worker, office worker and student groups; between dark-skinned and light-skinned; between the educated and the unlettered. As a result, they remain dislocated, scattered, leaderless and voiceless, without any positive organization or representation, in spite of the many able and talented ones to be found, at all levels, among them.

  In times of crisis, they mill madly around, striking out blindly against the common enemy, but at the same time fighting among themselves for the elusive laurels of leadership. But as soon as the high point of the crisis is past they quickly revert to self-interest, loquaciously against any suggestion of unified, positive action to establish that group dignity without which all their efforts are largely in vain. At the drop of a hat, or even before, they would engage each other on their favourite topic, racial prejudice in Britain; yet any suggestion that they shoulder some of the responsibility for improvement in inter-racial relationship receives the stock answer, “What can we do in this white man’s country?”

  The manual workers give their attention and time to earning enough to provide food, clothing, shelter and ‘something to put by’ against that glorious day when they can shake the dust of Britain forever from their feet. They live with high hopes that that day would easily be realized in five, seven or ten years of careful living and saving, but often discover to their cost that they had not taken into account one factor which very often wrecks their most careful plans; the rapacity of landlords, many of them Negroes, who take full advantage of the prevailing anti-Negro prejudice in housing accommodation, and mercilessly bleed the unfortunate immigrant in the filthy, overcrowded slum ghettos which are generally the only places open to them.

  The office worker very often has deliberately cast himself adrift from the West Indies and has no intention of returning there. Usually of middle-class West Indian stock, he retains his many middle-class West Indian prejudices, and wants little else than to settle down eventually in middle-class British surroundings, and increase the areas of difference between him and the manual workers with whom he claims to have very little in common.

  The student groups are separate from both of these, but among them are two main striations of studentship; bona-fide full-time students who may be supported by wealthy parents or grant-aided by Government scholarships; and the part-time worker-students at various stages of study and at any age from twenty to fifty or over. They spend periods of from one to five years or longer in Britain, preparing for the day of triumphant return home with the ‘open sesame’. They are readily articulate about prejudice in Britain, and claim to know exactly what should be done to bring about a change in the inter-racial status quo. But they themselves do nothing and excuse themselves either with the ready-made device of claiming pressure of academic work (an excuse which seems strangely inadequate when it is noticed how much time they can spare to meet and discuss what ought to be done, by someone else) or by insisting that they are transients and therefore free of any responsibility for action, either on their own account, or on behalf of others.

  This is especially true of the law students, and other embryonic political leaders. They dilate at length on the million and one injustices perpetrated by colonialists, and quote chapter and verse of historical data to back up their statements. They claim to know exactly what must be done to improve conditions in the separate West Indian islands, and to make the idea of a Federal entity become an effective reality. They talk glibly about leadership, but studiously avoid any contact with the open opportunities available at close hand for practical exercise in the things they talk about.

  They avoid the workers, and the workers, in turn, despise them and consider them little better than erudite windbags. Having at close hand observed the snooty, supercilious attitude of many of these people, I once suggested that because many of them have their scholarship grants paid out of taxes collected from these sweat-grimed workers, they should be required to give a little of their time, a few days each year, in social work, as a small token return. It might help them to appreciate the relationship between them and those less fortunate than themselves. Each year, West Indian immigrants in Britain send more than a million pounds sterling back to the West Indies as savings or aid to relatives they left behind; if it were possible to keep close track of this money, I am sure it would be discovered that some of it found its way eventually into the pockets of these grant-aided students who so readily dismiss their unlettered brethren as being several miles beneath their contempt.

  But for worker and student the main preoccupation is invisibility. They go to and from college or place of employment fully retracted within themselves, their eyes seeing but not seeing, their ears deaf to everything which is not intimately related to work and home. Their chief concern is to be unobserved, like blank spaces in the ranks of white men. Yet in the very act of hiding, they are acutely conscious of the presence of discrimination and prejudice and embittered by the deep assaults made on their dignity. This is further complicated by the knowledge of conditions ‘back home’, and the unhappy comparisons which this produces.

  Per
haps, for the first time in his life the new citizen is in regular employment, receiving a wage which allows him to pay for his everyday needs, enjoy some of the things which had hitherto seemed beyond his reach, make a small regular saving, and send something back home to help a needy relative or pay off the instalments of money borrowed to make the trip. Perhaps, for the first time in his life he is free of the fear of illness and unemployment and the threat of debt or death with which these were previously associated. And perhaps, for the first time in his life, he owns something, a house, a car, a radio or TV set, or maybe a bed, but something, and this is important. Therefore he is preoccupied with keeping himself to himself, to have and to hold what he has, and to expose himself as little as possible to anything which might take it away from him. Social benefits, whether in the form of Old Age pensions, unemployment or maternity payments, or educational facilities for his children are accepted and exploited as fully as possible, but generally from the position of outsiders benefiting by accident, rather than as citizens participating in a progressive social evolution; and, as outsiders, when hurt by indignity or malpractice, they make no positive, collective protest, but withdraw farther and farther within their unhappy caves of bitterness and despair.

  The young man beside me was talking.

  “Working around here?”

  “Yes,” I replied, “on the other side of the river, Brixton way.”

  “You’re lucky,” he said. “I’m going to the Labour Exchange, but I know it’s a waste of time; yet if I don’t go, that’s always the time somebody says they were taking on men.”

  “How long have you been out of work?”

  “Nearly ten weeks. Every day it’s the same. Nothing today. Nothing today. All the time you see the notices up with jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs and every one of them with the f—ing N.C. on it. The white men don’t want the jobs, but still they write the f—ing N.C. on them.” His voice became flat with hate. “You know what I think, pal? I think they don’t really have any jobs. I think they just make up those cards and put the N.C. on them just to show us that they think we’re shit. That’s what it is. Just to let us read it and know they don’t want us. Christ! I’d like to take all those cards and stuff them up their ass.”