by Paul Mendez
We drink English tea from the trolley (almost as nice as from back home), serve by a white man in a smart jacket and white glove, his hair part and comb, his teeth white and straight. We look out of the window as the train pull off and follow the curve of the station exit. We pass by apartment block, factory, warehouse and gas tank, under bridge and through tunnel. How fast and smooth this train feel. England in Maytime. The country green—except you can’t see much of the distance because of the tree—not heavy-green like Jamaica but like the estate painting that hang above Mr. Chambers’s bed; I start to look for big house like that but can’t find one. We pass through pretty town call Leamington Spa, with chimney and steeple. Claudette fall asleep on my shoulder. I wonder who driving the train, what view he must see out his window every day. More house, more bridge. House build up on top of bridge. Freight train, shipping container, industrial machinery of a kind I never see yet. This country so big. So much more opportunity than Jamaica. I understand now what Laury did mean, and I hope I can enjoy England like Philip did in his short life. The train stop for a minute and I get to look over the expanse of rooftops, factories all blowing up smoke in the air, a sure sign of industry and prosperity. I wake Claudette just as the train pull into Birmingham Snow Hill station.
Police officer stand on the platform, alert, and watch we. Claudette curtsy. At least that make the police officer smile, and he stand back little bit while the porter bring we luggage off the train. Then I step off; the police officer look on me and his mouth drop down like red carpet will roll out of it.
“Blow me, yo’m a big lad, int ya!”
I don’t understand a word.
“He is a big man, yes, but gentle and nice,” my ever-smiling wife say.
A porter tell we to get another train to the address we have written down, for Bilston about five mile away. So we find the next train, a much smaller one, and we wait for someone to take we bag, but nobody come and the attendant blow his whistle, so we carry them on for weself.
When Bilston come we think it must be a mistake. We eye never fall on so much black in all we life. The building black. The sky black. The people black, and not because they come from where we come from. The dog black. The bird black. Everywhere we look the ground open and something in the middle of demolish. Must be still where the bomb did drop in the war. The war done more than ten year now and they don’t fix it up yet? Plenty job must be here, then.
“Bloody ’ell, look how many there am!” bawl one old woman to her friend, her neck and batty check back like hen, her hand clasp together with black purse over her feathery little wrist, scarf over her head. We look both way on the platform; must be five of we at most step off in Bilston same time, and only we with luggage. The friend stop and look and say, “They’m tekkin’ over, ay they!” and her big daughter, chewing her finger, twist up her head and stare up on me so hard she start dribble.
Better we did stay in Jamaica and move we marriage bed in a bauxite mine. The smile drop from Claudette face when she see the neighbourhood where Laury and his wife Doreen buy, and I don’t see it again for must be one week. Doreen house clean but the other house dark an’ dirty, stack all together like domino except the window black, too. Plenty of them look more suitable to keep chicken than to settle with family. Nothing in Jamaica compare to Bilston. Not a single Bilston wall not line with black soot. Claudette white glove turn grey in a drawer. The street baby run round naked and shit where they squat. Their face blacker than mine, but they’re white; they run up and down the road with nothing on their feet and rusty nail and broken glass in the gutter, but they see me and call out, Nigger! Nigger! Look, Charlie! Nigger! They stop kick tin can and stare up on me, mouth open with wonder like bomber plane land in we street. We leave the Garden of Eden for the Land of Milk and Honey and find Sodom and Gomorrah. Instead of rolling hill, mountain of trash. River of crude oil. Blast furnace for tree. Woman with six children under the age of ten, the oldest boy sent out to work, the oldest girl with her little sister on her hip. I use to box, and take some hit, yet nothing catch me off guard like a fearless little boy with hair like the sun, angelic blue eye and gun for tongue.
I start to get the headache right away. My head hurt, and I sick to my stomach. I fear that my little baby not born yet will have to go to school one day with these badmind child.
The Labour Exchange send me to a forge. I think to just take the first thing that come along to settle we down, and then we can see about to buy in a nice neighbourhood, maybe one of the white house with little garden. We did see, passing through on the train, that England have more to offer than this, so we keep hope. I don’t trust Laury to get me a job because he say, I’alright, you cya leave one job one day an get nother one the next. And he follow that plan, if I can call it that. One day he work in a steel factory, next day he working on a scrap yard. I don’t know why he don’t stay in the same place for more than two week.
Claudette tell me about the problem Laury and Doreen have already in their marriage. They marry quick in Jamaica because Doreen want to come to England, but it seem that she don’t want to have relation with Laury and she certain she don’t want to have children. Laury is a good man and I know him since about six-year-old, but he not Clark Gable. Sometime a man can make a woman laugh and lie back when otherwise she might scream and run, but Laury is both ugly and a fool. Doreen herself is quite thick-set and vex-looking—though she have nice brown skin and plenty good hair—so they are a good match to marry and migrate. She work plenty hour in a factory, making brick, and he, of course, don’t know what he is doing from one month to the next. He even join me in the forge for must be one week, before he burn his arm and he move on to a foundry.
It was summertime, yet I was melting metal at temperature hotter than the middle of hell that cook you inside and out, so hot you can’t breathe, and what you do breathe full up of black dust. Some of the man laugh and suggest I must use to this kind of temperature, coming from the tropic. Then they ask me if I am not black enough already so I need to come to Bilston to get more black. I don’t even trouble them to light my cigarette. I come up twelve o’clock from the confinement to the light, and once my eye adjust, which take some time, I strip down to my waist and eat the Jamaican bun Claudette have to catch bus all the way near to Birmingham to buy. White girl with pram and half-caste baby side of them walk past, and look on me like I should follow them to their house.
When I get home, Claudette complain that when she push herself to go out to buy food and yarn, too many ugly white face looking on her, and even the face that not looking on her aware that she there. Somebody did throw stone nearby her, and she already knit more clothes for the baby than it will need, with five month left till it even born, and we room, and the share bathroom, corridor and stairs, that not even for her to clean, cleaner than at any time must be since the house first build. There did no point in her trying to get a job, because nobody want a pregnant woman. She say she don’t have anybody to talk to because Doreen out at work all day at the factory. I listen, but I can’t talk back, because my head heavy and sick, and I lie down, and she shout on me not to lie down on her clean sheet in my dirty overall, and tell me I better must wash before she give me dinner, so I get up, and my brain lurch in my head, then my stomach lurch, and she understand right away that something wrong, because she never see her Norman throw up straight out in the sink.
“I am sorry, Claudette,” I say, bend double and breathe hard.
She put her arm around me and lead me out the door, across the landing to the toilet. Somebody in there. I feel another surge come but manage to hold it back. The sweat drip down from my brow, though I feel half cold, half hot. My brain feel like blast furnace raging in my head. I squint my eye tight then open them wide, but they can’t focus.
“You’re not going back to that horrible forge again,” Claudette say. “I will stop by them in the morning to tell them you tak
e sick. Tomorrow we will find a doctor, but darling, we have to get away from here and find a better place.”
I don’t need a doctor tell me I need a different job. I sleep, and Claudette mop my brow. She feed me good hot soup with soft cowfoot and nice thick dumplin I have to chew good to stimulate my temple and muscle from the inside.
I get up seven o’clock next morning, drink tea and eat plantain. I go out to the shop, take five newspaper, set myself up in a phone booth. Plenty people when they hear my West Indian accent tell me rubbish about that the vacancy already gone, but I do get one interview, for a job as a municipal gardener with Sandwell Council.
Plenty door I get lead through behind the secretary woman, who always check behind her like she worry that I watching her little bottom in her high-waist skirt and heel, and everybody look up and watch me pass. Mr. Parker seem nice from the minute I see him. Tall, not as tall as me but I think that why he respect me straight away. Grey hair, comb immaculate. Grey suit, blue eye. Thick, dark eyebrow and moustache. And he get up from his great big desk with bright window behind, take off his spectacle and rush out to shake my hand. Never did I ever sit in a chair so comfortable in all my life. He smile on me and ask all these question about Jamaica, and tell me he always want to go. I compliment him on the flower arrangement behind him—peony, rose, lily, lisianthus, alstroemeria, amaryllis—and he tell me that hardly anybody who come to interview for gardening job know anything about flowers. I tell him I use to be a groundsman for a hotel in St. Ann’s Bay, then for Mr. Henry Chambers of Weymouth House. Mr. Parker start to look on me all confidential. He pace up and down with his hand in his pocket in front of his window and think out loud to himself…then he offer me the job! I don’t say more than few word, but he shake my hand and tell me, We’ll see you Monday! just like that. He say that there is a job for life at the council if I did want it, that I can take exam and train to become horticulturalist. He say I can be one of the new wave of coloured professional in the U.K. When I come home and tell Claudette she scream like I get groundsman job for the Queen.
It easy to get a council house when I work for the council, and we move into one on a nice estate in West Bromwich, close to Swan Village Gas Works. Doreen sad to say goodbye to Claudette but Claudette not sad to move in a much nicer neighbourhood where there is more space between the house and where there is a common across the road. The house come with three bedroom and a big garden front and back. We try not to look at the tall, big, grey gas tank that fill up the sky from we back garden. She can walk not too far to Great Bridge, a good market street with butcher, fishmonger, grocer, wallpaper shop, coffee house, cinema, post office, chemist, Woolworth, Tesco, anything she could want.
December come, and Claudette gone into labour. They rush her straight into the birthing room and out follow we firstborn, bawling up in the air, the strongest, hardest chest I ever hear come from a baby. Robert James Alonso is sitting on my foot, playing with his toy, still making plenty noise. He eat good and start walk early, talk early and do everything early. He will make all of we proud, make his Uncle Philip proud, make his grandfather Barrington proud, make his daddy Norman proud, make his own son proud.
* * *
I work with a white man name Peter, who wear dirty overall like factory man and stop every minute what he is doing to comb his hair back. He is what they call a Teddy Boy. He chat rubbish, tell me he love cricket and he don’t mind Learie Constantine, but he think the government should stop the immigration of coloured people to England. He use England test victory against the West Indies as proof that the black don’t have anything to offer white people. I don’t listen to him. He don’t listen to me, either. He did apply for a big job in the council, but he don’t get it, for he is idle. He start rant and rave and lose his mind. He say how much he in debt, how he got three children already, that he twenty-six and need to make more money for his wife pregnant again. All the time his friend come by and he stop and chat to them half-an-hour leaning on his spade plant in the ground. He stand over me while I dig out weed and ask me what I know about English soil—I don’t live in a tree? Then he say that coloured people who can’t even speak English good are taking all the opportunity, because the politician can say Britain don’t segregate like America, and that we must be better than them, but the common white man like himself can’t rise up.
The gaffer—maybe he know it will rattle him—tell Peter listen to Norman. Do what Norman do. Peter must think that if he working alongside a nigger then he must be a nigger too, and if he taking order from a nigger then he must worse than a nigger. And what kind of white man worse than a nigger? He don’t think about all the time he is late to start work because he did drunk the previous night. He don’t think about how I am better than him at my job, how I work two time as hard and how I have so much more knowledge and experience. He smoke his cigarette and say:
“How d’ya get this job? Let that old queer suck your big black cock off in his office, did ya?” And then he dash his cigarette butt right where I am about to plant a bulb.
I don’t say anything to Mr. Parker, but Peter soon lose him job anyway.
* * *
—
Summer ’57, I help Mr. Parker in his own garden on a Saturday. He live in the most sweet little house I ever did see in my life—with weeping willow tree and hydrangea bush at the front, a little pond with goldfish and a rockery at the back—by himself, for his wife dead and his children grow up and gone. We strip down to we vest in the sun and drink lemonade, and he play Louis Armstrong from his gram, while we turn the bed and water everything with his hosepipe, prune bush and cut grass. He take me in his Rover for drive out of town and we come across one little cottage, deep in the field. People who see we together look shock that a gentleman like him can walk round with a black man but he don’t seem to care. When they stop to talk to him they can hardly look me in the eye, and when he introduce me, they can hardly reach to shake my hand. He sit me down in the shadow of an old oak tree, run in the pub and come back with two beer. He is like Clark Gable. The light tint with orange and pink as the sun start to set. He talk about his family, and I talk about mine; he ask me how I can leave two son in Jamaica to come to England.
I don’t know why I tell him that. He seem like the sort of man you can tell your life story to. When he sit and listen, you talk. When he talk, you listen. He tell me I can call him Clifford. Lynval and Gregory born to Lerlene. When we split up, she keep them. I never love her; I hardly know how I come to be father to two children with her. Lynval the clever one, light skin, coolie hair, handsome, the girl dem sugar, good dancer. Gregory more sensitive, considerate, darker. Robert favour Gregory more than Lynval. I send them money, letter and photograph, but she have a new man now and they’re happy, which is all that matter. And I am happy as well with Claudette, and we new family with Robert. If only Claudette can see me now, I think, lie down in a field in the hot sun, drinking beer with Clifford, talking private things, blue sky and cricket whistle like back-home country. We go back to his house and he play Elvis and Johnny Cash record, we drink whisky, smoke cigarette and dance. After, he drop me back at the station, and I go home to my wife.
* * *
Claudette and me spend Christmas at home with we baby in front of the fire, and Laury and Doreen come by we on Boxing Day. Back home we did dream of snow in the English winter, like on Christmas card, and think about build snowman—we even dream about which tie we will put on him, and Claudette did even knit one red-and-green wool one—but we don’t realise how cold it get even without snow; none of we did pack good boot or heavy coat; we don’t realise, when snow fall, if it rain first it don’t stick; we don’t realise, when the snow mix with rain and wind, how it chop up your face like blade and prickle your ears-hole like needle; we don’t realise, when the snow stick hard, you can’t leave your house without spade to cut out path; you can’t walk down road without fall, you can’t reach work on tim
e, because somebody, if they see you with spade, is going to ask you to cut their path too. The television doesn’t work, your children get sick, and you can’t see doctor because everybody children sick; you get sick too but you still have to go to work, because nobody will pay your bill or rent or put food in your children belly if you can’t. Your finger them want to drop off from sweeping up the leaves, from knocking the snow off the tops of trees. It take plenty money just to heat up the house, so you have to squeeze up, and you can’t even make love with your wife because your children there in the bed with you, separating you like jealous dog. Your big pink lip jam up and make you talk like you’re sick in the head; nothing come out right, and the white people, like Teddy Boy Peter, think you’re simple, inferior, black, stupid.
* * *
—
Maurice, one Jamaican man who live round the corner, that I make friend with since we move here, tell me he did go to the Black Swan, and like we always do in Jamaica he knock his fist on the bar to get the attention of the bartender. Maurice, who work for one builder’s merchant in Great Bridge, is the sort of man who always chewing something, toothpick or fingernail, chicken bone or bottle top, whatever he can find, and he make noise with it, so I understand why some people might not love him soon as they see him. But what a way one dart player did walk up to him—when the sound of Maurice ring and watch bracelet on the bar did trouble him—to tell him he can’t behave in England like he is still in the jungle! No, sir, I say. I can’t believe that! I tell Maurice he is a liar, that a lie he tell me, just like Laury lie through his teeth when he write letter to say England the best country in the world, and that we must all stop slave in Jamaica one time and move here. A lie he did tell!