Paid Servant

by E. R. Braithwaite

  From a pocket he took a thick, bulky wallet, from which he selected two Post Office Savings books. One of them bore his name, the other the name of Patricia Sweeney.

  “Look at this,” he repeated. “Since Pat was born I opened a savings account for her; instead of paying the money to the Government or the Council as you call them, I put it into her account each week. Look at it. Nobody made me do it, I did it myself. Why don’t you talk to her?”

  I promised that I would. I liked this young man; he seemed ambitious, decent and trustworthy. Perhaps my terms of reference did not include action such as he proposed, but if it would eventually lead to the child having a home with her parents then it was justified.

  Next morning I wrote a letter to Brigid, inviting her to call at my office the following Saturday morning; I wrote a similar letter to Jason, although I did not indicate to either that the other would be present; if they found that out in advance of the day it would be because they had been in touch, and that was all to the good …

  She arrived first, looking quite attractive in a two-piece suit of dark-green woolen material, set off by plain black calf shoes and a tight fitting little black hat which hid very little of her wavy blonde hair; now carefully made-up she looked more youthful than her thirty-odd years. I took her to one of the interview rooms and we chatted desultorily, me playing for time in the hope that he would come. She gave no hint of having seen him, so I guessed she did not know I expected him.

  He was about ten minutes late. When I got the signal that I had a visitor, I left her to fetch him in. She was surprised to see him and blushed in some confusion; he took her presence easily in his stride, but there was no mistaking how delighted he was to see her. Without preamble I set things going.

  “I have spoken with both of you separately and I thought that if we three got together we might be able to work something out for Patricia’s benefit.” I thought I’d play on their love for the child. “I don’t suppose either of you have lived in an institution. From what I know of them I think they’re not bad; they serve a useful and necessary function, for children who have no parents or whose parents are unable to provide a home for them. My job is to try to get children out of these Homes and either back with their own parents or with persons who are willing to assume the position and responsibilities of parents. Your daughter Patricia has spent an unnecessarily long time where she is. In the Council’s opinion one or both of you could quite adequately take care of her. You’re both employed and you both seem to have some affection for her. You, Miss Sweeney, could put her in a day nursery, and collect her each evening; on the other hand, Mr Griffiths assures me that his married sister is willing to take care of the child. So you see, either separately or together, you could provide her with a home.”

  “Well, what do you say, Brigid?” Jason asked. “Why can’t we get married and have her with us?”

  “Yes,” she said. That’s all, but I think her sudden and complete capitulation surprised him. He looked at her, open-mouthed, the arguments he had prepared subsiding in his mind, unnecessary now. All he could do was shake his head from side to side, too astonished for words. Finally: “What about your sister? She’ll have a fit, you marrying a black man.”

  “You’re wrong,” Brigid countered, “She’s nothing against your colour, ’twas just because you’re younger than me.”

  Blushing furiously, she looked at me. At this distance from her sister she was not very formidable, in spite of her size.

  “I’ll leave you two to chat about it for a while,” I said, “while I take a quick look at a few things upstairs. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  About twenty minutes later I went back to them; they were both smoking and smiling at each other. They told me that they had discussed it all and were prepared to try and make a go of it.

  They left my office together, arm in arm, smiling happily at each other, this oddly assorted couple, the slim youngster and the buxom Irish girl, and yet I had the feeling that it would all work out successfully. We could only wait and see.

  Three weeks later Pat went home with them. I dropped in the following Sunday afternoon to see them. It was not an official call; I just happened to be in the vicinity and thought I’d call on them. Wonder of wonders! The elder sister was there, all dressed up, but very much at home in the small basement flat which shone with cleanliness and warmth. I had a cup of tea with them, Brigid’s sister dominating the scene; evidently she had taken complete control of Pat, who spent her days with her instead of at the day nursery, until collected by Brigid each evening. People. Most of them had no idea of themselves and how much giving they were capable of; or perhaps they knew and were afraid to let themselves go.

  There was just one point I had to clear up with Brigid; when I was able to chat alone with her for a moment I asked: “Why didn’t you get the other Welfare Officer to see Jason? All this could have been settled long ago.”

  “It’s the way they look at you as soon as they know you have a child by a black man,” she replied. “I just didn’t want them talking to Jason, they’d think he’s ever so young, and besides, he’s got a very nasty temper when he’s roused. When you came I thought you’d understand.”

  My next case seemed quite hopeless. The file read:

  Institution:

  Falconbridge Residential Home

  Children:

  Diane Cosson. Age: Thirteen years

  Evelyn Cosson. Age: Twelve years

  Marian Cosson. Age: Nine years

  Victor Cosson. Age: Seven years

  Mother:

  Helen Grace Cosson (Mrs). Whereabouts unknown.

  Father:

  George Cosson. West Indian. Once operated a barber shop in Brixton; now serving a three-year prison sentence in Manchester

  Welfare Officer:

  Miss O. Spendler

  From various comments in the file it appeared that Mrs Cosson had deserted the children about eighteen months previously; the father had applied to the Council to have them taken into care temporarily while he completed arrangements for them to be sent to his parents in British Guiana, but seven months after they were in residence at Falconbridge, he was imprisoned on a charge of living on the immoral earnings of a prostitute. No further action had so far been taken about the children’s future. They were told that their father was ill and would be unable to see them for some time: the two younger children had soon become adjusted to the new life, but the elder girls repeatedly inquired about his continued absence and the oldest one often was heard weeping in bed at night. The Welfare Officer who dealt with the case had twice written to Mr Cosson, but received no answer from him.

  I went to see Miss Spendler, a short, bustling, jovial person, round-faced, with a quick, infectious smile and restless brown eyes; her handshake was very firm and powerful.

  “I’m worried about those kids, Mr Braithwaite,” she came directly to the point, “especially the eldest girl. Apparently she worshipped her father and now that he is so long absent, she’s taking it hard. I wrote twice to him at the prison, suggesting that he write to them, either directly or through me, but he’s never replied. Probably ashamed or something.”

  “What about their mother? Don’t they inquire about her also?”

  “I wondered about that, too, and asked their housemother. They’re all together in the same cottage with a few other children in the care of a housemother. She says all their talk is about their father and what he used to do for them; take them to the park and the cinema, or buy them this and that. Hardly a mention of their mother, even when they first went to Falconbridge.”

  “Anything known about her?”

  “Not much. The father didn’t come to us until nearly a month after she left. Seems that he tried to manage the home himself, but it was too much for him. When I
took on the case I spoke with some of the neighbours. They said she kept the children clean and fed, but spent a lot of time away from the house. Then one day she was seen leaving with a suitcase while her husband was at work and the children in school. Nobody had seen her since. The neighbours all seemed to be very much in sympathy with Mr Cosson.”

  “Was Mrs Cosson West Indian?”

  “No. English. The children are really lovely kids.”

  “So his detention has nothing to do with his wife?”

  “Oh, no. Apparently that happened after she left. He seemed quite a respectable person when he came here to see us about the children, but you can never tell with people. I can’t understand why they do it, the women, I mean. If they must degrade themselves by becoming prostitutes, why do they then give the money to some man?”

  “Did you attend the hearing?”

  “Me? No. We knew nothing about it until after he was sentenced. I suppose he said nothing to them about his children until he knew he was going to prison. One of the staff here, Mr Cobley, who deals with probation cases, made some inquiries. Apparently the police were on to Mr Cosson for some time. Several women were giving him money, and some of them carried on their business in a room where he lived over his barber shop.”

  While she spoke, the name ‘Cosson’ rang tantalizing bells, barely audible, on the edge of memory. Cosson, Cosson. Then I got it. Of course, it was the same fellow. I’d met him briefly about two years earlier. Briefly, but not pleasantly. One day I had tried, unsuccessfully to get a haircut; at two barber’s shops I had been told, quite courteously, by the barbers, that they had had no experience with Negro heads and were unwilling to take a chance. An acquaintance had given me the address of a barber’s shop in Brixton, where, he assured me, I would have just the haircut I needed. Hopefully I found my way there, undeterred by the sordid locality and the grimy exterior of the shop. I opened the door and walked in. It was awful. The interior complemented the outside with its chronic untidiness and claustrophobic, depressing discomfort, its stale cigarette smoke and body odours.

  Several black men were in the shop, sitting on rickety chairs against the walls, arguing loudly and heatedly about Britain and the discriminatory behaviour of the Jumbles (a corruption of John Bulls). Of the two barber’s chairs, one was empty, the other was occupied by a black client on whose head the barber was busy with comb and clicking scissors. The instruments in his hands were all that distinguished him from the others in the room; he was of medium height, a light-skinned Negro badly in need of a shave himself, with the dead butt of a cigarette resting lightly on the corner of his lower lip, and bobbing up and down as he contributed his observations to the general argument. He wore unpressed grey slacks and a check cotton shirt, the front of which was powdered from the droppings of his cigarette ash, and my eyes followed the rolled-up shirt sleeves, along the light brown arms to the slim agile fingers, noting the blackened fingernails, and the dirty napkin tied around the client’s neck. The floor was littered with discarded cigarette ends, hair and a thick accumulation of dust. I stood within the doorway taking it all in, then the barber looked around at me and nodded towards a vacant chair.

  “Sit down, pal.”

  Obediently I seated myself. Gradually my attention swung from the room and its other occupants to myself, and anger began a slow boil inside me. What the hell was I doing in this place? ‘Sit down, pal,’ he had said, with the casual assurance that I would sit down, that I would accept the crummy place and his own untidy person, and wait patiently for his attention. Why? Why? I asked myself, only half-hearing the rise and fall of the voices around me. Was I accepting this filthy place so obediently, merely because it was operated by a Negro? Did I need a haircut so badly that I was prepared to forgo every hygienic standard? Would I have been prepared to accept the same from a white barber? My anger mounted as the full meaning of my surroundings struck me. This barber probably did not give a damn about me or any of the rest of us who were waiting for his attention. He was doing us no favour. The prices marked up on a fly-specked notice on the wall were the same as those in barber’s shops where the attendants were smart in clean, white smocks, the instruments constantly sterilized, the floor regularly swept and the general hygienic standard high. He knew that English barbers were often either unfamiliar with Negro heads or disinclined to accommodate them; he guessed correctly that many black men, in Brixton and farther afield, had little alternative to his services, so he virtually had a captive clientele. Yes, maybe this fellow knew that most of us would be forced to come to him, so he saw no reason to put himself out for our accommodation.

  Or perhaps, another thought intruded, the bastard knew no better. He may have learned his trade in similar crude surroundings, had never known anything better, and was merely continuing in a familiar pattern. It was easy for me to backtrack through the years to memories of British Guiana. There were barber’s shops of all types, some elegant, others mediocre, and others little more than a crudely assembled tin shack with a smooth dirt floor. But memory was strong on one point. They were kept clean. The nicest were the open-air ones, just a chair or packing-case under a spreading mango tree and the barber was in business on Sunday mornings. Perhaps this man was attempting to transpose that sort of casual, catch-as-catch-can situation to the English scene …

  Snatches of the conversation got through to me, the all too familiar chorus of complaints … “the Jumbles don’t like us, Man,” “They won’t rent me a room, Man,” on and on and on, while they sat in this sty without seeing the filth. Christ, if this barber liked them and treated them in this way, what should they not expect from people who disliked them, or hated them. I was now really angry, mostly with myself for letting him do this to me. I stood up. I had had enough.

  “What’s up, pal?” the barber asked.

  “I’m leaving,” I replied, coldly and pointedly.

  “What’s your hurry? I’m nearly finished here and you’re next. These Spades are only shooting the breeze.” He nodded towards the talkative men, all of whom laughed heartily at his reference to them as ‘Spades’. Funny, they’d laugh when he called them spades, but the sparks would fly if a white man made a similar remark.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” I answered. I suppose my manner and tone of voice reflected my displeasure, but I did not care. Conversation around me slowed down and then died, as they all turned to stare at me. Down inside I knew that I should walk out without further comment, but some perverse inclination kept me there, insisting that I make my protest somehow.

  “So what did you come here for?” the barber asked, his voice still slow and casual, his eyes assessing me with calculated indifference.

  “A haircut.”

  “Then sit down, if that’s what you want.”

  “I don’t think I’ll bother,” I replied, deliberately looking around the shop, that he might not mistake my meaning.

  “Then f—k you, pal.” He returned his attention to his work. I opened the door and walked out, closing it on the thick hostility which had so suddenly been generated in the room. I don’t suppose my gesture meant a damned thing to him, yet I felt better for having made it. Probably the others hated me for it; they might so easily have considered it as snobbishness on my part, as another instance of ‘uppitiness’ by those black men who, with a little education, looked down their noses at their humbler brethren. Oh, well, to hell with them and what they thought. If they imagined that the situation of which they complained would improve itself magically while they sat on their arses and grumbled they’d have a long wait. If they did not mind the dirt and stink in the barber’s shop, probably they might not mind it in their homes. When they acquired guts enough to demand higher standards among themselves, and the self-respect to insist on those standards, they would take the first steps towards earning the respect of the host community.

  With these thoughts rampant in my mind, I caught a train to Vic
toria, then travelled by Underground to Bond Street to make a few purchases at one of the large department stores in Oxford Street; while shopping I noticed a sign ‘Gentlemen’s Hair-dressers, Third Floor.’ I went up, was courteously received and served, and it cost no more than I would have paid at Brixton.

  Now, listening to Miss Spendler, I remembered the shop, the man and the name. It was Cosson. Small world.

  “What is it that the Council wants to do in this case? From reading the file I could see that things had reached an impasse, but I wasn’t sure what was expected of me.”

  “Before Mr Cosson went to prison he had been trying to get his children sent to their grandparents. Perhaps, everything considered, it would be the best thing for them. Maybe you could get in touch with him and see whether it can be arranged?”

  “Were the children all born in Britain?”

  “Yes.”

  “If, as you say, they are so attached to their father, it might not be an easy thing to sort of pack them off to strangers whom they have never seen, no matter what the relationship.”

  “But it might be better for them to be among their own people,” she said. I did not feel in the mood to discuss that.

  “I think I’ll see the children, then arrange to visit the father in prison. I’ll let you know what happens.”

  “Best of luck, Mr Braithwaite.”

  Falconbridge lay deep in the Sussex countryside, a collection of pleasant, red-brick houses dispersed over several acres of meadowland. Tall, spreading oak-trees, rough lawns and flowering shrubs and the warm afternoon sunlight conspired to present an air of peace and contentment; somehow I had expected something different, less orderly. A network of paved roadways led from the main administration building through shady trees to the houses, each of which was centrally divided to accommodate two ‘families’, a housemother and her children; each residence had a nameboard on the door. The Cossons lived in ‘Perivale House’. The housemother, Miss Bancroft, answered my knock and invited me into a comfortable room which bore all the signs of being used by many children; it was disorderly, but pleasant and relaxing. I explained the reason for my visit.