Black by Design

by Pauline Black

  I fell in love with my newly acquired brother immediately. He worked for Northparkes copper and gold mines near his hometown of Parkes, a seven-hour drive inland from Sydney. After the first couple of pages telling me about his partner and seven-year-old daughter Cree, he launched into the story of his musical career. I was amazed to discover that he had been a bass player in three punk bands in the early ’80s, Suicide Squad, The Kelpies and Soggy Porridge. He had released records with each band too. What joy, a fellow musician, somebody who I shared half my genes with understood the creative and working life of a musician. His astonishing postscript said that Parkes, where he lived, was the official ‘sister’ city of Coventry. Such extraordinary coincidences boded well for our future relationship. I longed to meet him.

  Con Murphy playing bass in 1981, channelling Sid Vicious

  Sally-Ann was more sedate, recently married and worked in a bank. She sent short faxes or telephoned. Her speech patterns were full of long drawn-out vowel sounds, as if talking was an immense effort. Con was the opposite and hardly paused for breath, as though his life was in a constant rush, as indeed it was. Within eight short years he was dead from a heart attack. In photos both siblings were naturally blond, blue-eyed, big-boned and strong like their Irish father Cornelius, Big Con.

  For the first four weeks I was immersed in family history. The three Magnus sisters had certainly been eager to enlarge their gene pools beyond post-war Dagenham. Aunt Margaret had married a Pole, Aunt Jeanette had married a Scotsman, and Mum had married an Irishman from Clonakilty, Michael Collins’s hometown. Obviously my mum had been the most adventurous of the three, having sampled Nigeria along the way. My recently bereaved Aunt Jeanette, the matriarch of the Australian side of the family, imparted some interesting historical revelations. My maternal grandfather had been a bare-knuckle fighter in his youth and a couple of his cousins had sung in the D’Oyly Carte opera. Not a bad set of genes to have inherited in order to deal with the cut and thrust of the music business. Sadly, within a week of my crash landing, her Scottish husband, Charley, had died of a sudden heart attack. He had written one letter to me which ended by exhorting me to read Luke 15, chapters 4–6. I fished out an old school Bible from the bottom of a drawer and dutifully looked up the reference:

  Sally-Ann on her wedding day

  What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders rejoicing.

  And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost.

  I accepted this biblical quote in the spirit in which it was meant. It seemed churlish to point out that nobody had come looking for me, but I couldn’t deny that once they had found me they certainly appeared to be rejoicing. Now that the secret was out, it seemed like everybody could relax and get on with their lives, complete and unburdened. The skeleton was laid bare and the cupboard was empty. Or so I thought. There was one bombshell left to drop and it came from the most unlikely quarter.

  Terry and I decided to visit our new family for most of the month of November. The holiday would be book-ended by a European tour with The Selecter in October and the start of rehearsals for A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Lyric Hammersmith, playing Titania, in December. I was eager to see my new family in the flesh. This news was met with excitement in Australia. Letters took on a fresh intensity as everybody discussed what we would do on our month-long holiday and what clothes to bring for the changeable spring weather. Amid the avalanche of letters, I received one written on bright yellow paper bordered with colourful drawings of sea birds and turtles from my thirteen-year-old second cousin Krystel, who excitedly told me how much she and her five siblings were looking forward to our imminent arrival. Then she proudly announced ‘I’m one of the Jehovah’s Witnesses like my nanny, aunty, uncles, cousins and more of my relatives.’ The sentence after this declaration was: ‘Sorry if my letter is boring…’ Out of the mouths of babes!

  Whoah! This couldn’t be happening. I felt as though I had been given a perfectly wrapped present only to have it snatched back before I had time to open it. Jehovah’s Witnesses? I dimly remembered my adoptive mother talking to strangers on the doorstep when I was a kid, sometimes for more than an hour, before buying a copy of their publication The Watchtower. I used to read it to her, but a comment she made about the contents always stuck in my mind: ‘144,000 people get to go to heaven. Must be full up by now. Why do they want more people to join?’

  My mother’s logic did seem to have a point. She also took exception to their attitude on blood transfusions, vociferously saying: ‘I wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for a blood transfusion.’ Whereupon she would relate for the umpteenth time, in blissful anatomical ignorance, her ‘I had it all taken away’ story about her botched hysterectomy in the late ’50s, which had required her to be given eight pints of blood. However, in the catastrophic wake of thousands of haemophiliacs who had contracted Aids from infected blood transfusions in the ’90s, perhaps they were not as crazy as secular society supposed?

  I read some information about Jehovah’s Witnesses on the Internet, but discovered little to allay my fears. Their lives seemed circumscribed by tenets that I could not believe in, however hard I tried. How could we have been on Earth for only 6,000 years? I was a Darwinian through and through. Evolutionary theory worked. I mistrusted anybody who couldn’t bring themselves to admit in the wake of Charles Darwin’s ideas that humankind was descended from apes and had probably been wandering the Earth for the past 200,000 years. But on the other hand, I discovered that people of this faith were sent to the concentration camps in Nazi Germany, just like the Marxists, trade unionists, gays, disabled and Jews. They would not fight in any manmade wars or enter into any manmade politics. Laudable aims. They seemed so contradictory. But then hadn’t much of my life thrived on contradiction? Why had I thought that finding my mum would be problem-free?

  Perhaps my mum wasn’t one? She’d married an Irishman from County Cork in a Roman Catholic church in Clonakilty. I had the photo to prove it. The likelihood was that she was a Roman Catholic and the aunty that my little cousin had referred to was an aunt on her Chilean mother’s side. I tried to convince myself of this, but somehow I knew that Krystel had included my mum in her list of faithful adherents. I felt angry and betrayed that my mum or Aunt Jeanette hadn’t mentioned anything in their letters about their beliefs. Uncle Charles’s biblical quote suddenly made sense in the light of this new knowledge. Anytime any Jehovah’s Witness had knocked on my door and I had entered into discussion with them, I was always impressed by how they had a biblical quote for every eventuality.

  ‘Why can’t people just be honest with me? Why do they have to lie?’ I screamed, throwing the letter down onto the kitchen table, where Terry calmly sat eating his breakfast. ‘That’s it, I’m not going to Australia,’ I announced.

  ‘They haven’t lied,’ Terry answered. ‘They just don’t see this information as the most important thing about themselves. Just like you didn’t want them to think that the only important thing about you was being black.’

  The voice of reason had spoken and he was right. I’d spent my whole life being judged by society’s stereotypes and here I was doing exactly the same thing to good and welcoming people who I’d only known for a few joyous weeks. ‘So stop acting like a spoilt, ungrateful child and let’s go to the travel agent in town and book the tickets today.’

  Two hours later we possessed two return Qantas Airways tickets to Sydney. Terry bought a T-shirt in Coventry market too. It comically depicted the five stages of evolution of Homer Simpson, beginning with a picture of a banana-eating monkey scratching its hairy bum entitled monkey eatalotis and ending with a picture of Homer scratching his white underpants-clad backside with one hand while eating a banana with his other, ent
itled Homersapiens. He promised to wear it en route to Sydney. It’s at times like these that I realize why I married him.

  The following week I went on tour with The Selecter to America. We began on the west coast. On the evening before our first show, I stood on the Pacific shoreline in Santa Barbara watching the sunset set fire to the distant horizon, knowing that diagonally across that vast ocean my mum was watching it rise. From her letters I had learned that she enjoyed getting up at sunrise to walk the dog and going to bed at sunset, an inconvenience that I was soon to learn at first hand. I felt closer to her. I was almost halfway there.

  I had written to her before I flew out to California, asking why she had omitted to tell me that many of the family were Jehovah’s Witnesses. When I returned from The Selecter’s ten-day tour, her return letter was waiting for me. She wrote:

  About my faith and that of Sally, her husband, Aunt Jeanette and your second cousins. Yes we are witnesses. There is always such a lot of adverse publicity about religion, that I wanted to let you get to know us and see us all and meet with us before I mentioned anything about religion. Usually that and politics can be so explosive for some people. Anyway like you said, there will be lots to talk about. If you have asked people that you know about Jehovah’s Witnesses you will get all sorts of opinions and some will be scary. That’s what I mean when I say just take it easy and wait to hear about it from us. Don’t be anxious, just come and enjoy your holiday and stay with us.

  I breathed a sigh of relief that she hadn’t mentioned that my brother Con was a Witness. But I was still like a dog with a bone. I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t feel uncomfortable about my mum’s faith. Almost in a tit-for-tat display of defiance, I decided to ask my mum an uncomfortable question, one that we had both been avoiding. Aunt Jeanette had warned me that my mum didn’t like remembering the events surrounding my birth. She said that the original Magnus family settlers in Britain had been Jewish traders from Greece, who had probably arrived in the middle of the nineteenth century. This meant that part of my genetic make-up was indeed Sephardic Jew. But who provided the other half of my DNA double helix? Who coloured me black? I couldn’t have complete closure on my newfound identity until I understood the enigma that was my father. Curiosity got the better of my sensitivity during a phone conversation with my mum and I popped the question: ‘Do you know who my father is?’

  ‘Yes, dear, he is Nigerian. His name is Gordon Adenle. He was an engineering student studying in London when I knew him.’

  Bingo!

  I wasted no time at all discovering everybody with the surname Adenle in the London telephone directory. Africans usually have huge extended families. I reckoned that there was a good chance that if I could find somebody with that name, then they might be able to point me in the right direction. This premise proved correct. There were two entries. The first entry turned out to be my father’s second wife, Irene. I rang her immediately.

  ‘Hello, is that Mrs Adenle?’

  ‘Yes, who is this?’

  ‘I’m trying to contact somebody named Gordon Adenle. Do you know anybody of that name?’

  ‘Oh, Gordon,’ she said familiarly. My heart skipped a beat. ‘Oh, he died last year of liver cancer.’

  Silence. I was devastated.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I think I’m his daughter.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say, I thought you were one of his girlfriends. Sorry you had to hear the news like that, my dear.’

  I can’t remember much else that was said. She insisted that I visit her as soon as possible. She gave me her address in Waterloo. The next day I took a train to London. She lived in a flat at the top of one of the Peabody Buildings in Duchy Street. She spontaneously burst into tears as I came into sight on the last flight of stairs.

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, you are Gordon’s daughter,’ she hiccupped between sobs. ‘Come in, come in.’

  A plump, elderly lady, walking with the rolling gait of somebody who had endured hip replacements, led me into her tiny, sparsely furnished living room. Above the wood-surround electric fire was a huge ornately framed black and white photograph. I bore more than a passing resemblance to the opulently robed seated man in the picture.

  Irene Adenle, Oba Samuel Adenle (my grandfather), Prince Gordon Olodosu Adenle (my father) in the 1960s

  ‘That’s your father,’ she said, still crying. ‘Wasn’t he handsome?’

  My father was Prince Gordon Olodosu Adenle, firstborn son of Deborah Iyo Adenle, first wife of Oba Samuel Adenle I of Oshogbo. An Oba is a tribal king. He is the ruler of his particular fiefdom within the Yoruba tribe. My grandfather had over twenty wives and probably sired more than a hundred children. Since my father was a prince, Irene reliably informed me that made me a princess. That certainly put a whole new spin on being called a ‘Jewish Princess’!

  The information came thick and fast. Most of it seemed too fantastical to take seriously. Irene was a flurry of activity, despite her infirmity. At last she had somebody that she could talk to about the love of her life. She delved into drawers and cupboards, extracting bits and pieces of memorabilia and African artefacts to illustrate her story. A leather belt, a piece of obviously expensive woven cloth, a traditional horsehair fly swat with an elaborately carved handle, my father’s obituary pamphlet, newspaper cuttings of my grandfather’s state funeral, which was attended by Nigerian Premier General Obasanju, no less, and scenic postcards in my father’s handwriting from Ibadan and Lagos were piled high on the coffee table. As I admired each item in turn, she said: ‘They’re yours, dear. He would have wanted you to have them.’

  My father

  ‘But how can you be so sure I’m his daughter?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s in the eyes, dear. All in the eyes.’

  And she was right. When I looked into the eyes of the man in the giant photo on the wall, it was like looking into my own in a mirror. As a mixed-race person, it was easier for me to identify with the black side of my family than the white family in Australia. Society defines me as black by virtue of my skin colour. It would be absurd for me to say: ‘I’m half white.’

  I also looked like him. I recognised the assertive way that he held his head, his poker-straight back, the sardonic set of his mouth. I felt a physical connection with him, which I hadn’t felt when I saw photos of my mum.

  Once I had agreed with Michael Jackson when he sang ‘I don’t want to spend my life being a colour’ in his hit ‘Black or White’, but as I strode down the street to Waterloo tube station I wondered, why not? I’d named myself by that very colour. Why not wear it with pride? For the first time in my life I was perfectly comfortable in my black skin, particularly now that it was a snug fit. If it was good enough for my father, then it was good enough for me.

  Terry and I flew to Australia on 16 November 1996. Somewhere between Singapore and Sydney I had a crisis of confidence and fled to the cramped toilets on the Qantas flight to change my clothes. I opted for a new, conservative, navy-blue mid-calf dress that I’d packed in my hand luggage instead of the edgy black trousers and shirt ensemble that I was wearing. Then I took a brush to my short, straightened hairstyle and with the aid of water fashioned a small neat Afro. Most of the passengers were asleep, but if any had observed me on my way to the toilet, they would not have recognised me as the person who reappeared fifteen minutes later. I looked unnervingly like my younger self in one of the photos that I had sent my mum with my introductory letter. She had commented favourably on this particular photo, so I think my subconscious asserted itself and hastily manufactured a transformation once I was over Australian airspace, so that I could give the most favourable first impression to my mum.

  Pathetic really, but I think I was desperate for her to like me. I couldn’t bear the thought of her rejection again. Terry did a double-take as I sat down beside him in my aisle seat, but, probably recognising the uptight look on my face, decided not to say anything. The plane landed in Australia on time at 6.35 a.m. The
interminable wait in Sydney’s draconian Customs Hall increased my anxiety threshold tenfold, so that by the time we found ourselves outside in the passenger terminal, we were half-asleep and rather fractious.

  If I am honest, I did what everybody does when something is about to happen of paramount importance – I built a perfect fantasy. The drama queen in me scripted the tumultuous event that was about to happen; it went something like this:

  Sydney airport interior, early morning.

  Pauline immediately recognises Mother among the throng of people, a broad smile breaks out on her face as she rushes into her outstretched arms.

  Mother sobs uncontrollably.

  Soft focus camera, slow motion close-up. Paul Simon strums ‘Mother & Child Reunion’ as background music.

  You get the gist? I needed to assign an easy narrative to the reunion. And then in crashed reality, in the shape of a tall, sturdily built woman, large of bosom and big of smile, with piercing blue eyes and a messy grey-haired up-do, striding towards me at breakneck speed. It was the eyes I noticed first – piercing, watchful and sea-blue. In that moment I floundered in their depths like a freshly hooked fish before it is landed. Would I be found wanting? Did she look disappointed? Did I look too much like my father? Would that upset her? Deeply unsettling questions whirred in my mind, until suddenly she broke into a broad smile and warmly declared: ‘Daaaaaaaahling.’

  Next thing I was enveloped in forty-two years worth of unreserved love. The surrounding hustle and bustle receded and I felt as though I had entered an unexpected limbo land, where everything that had previously happened to me and my mum was put on hold, while we selfishly tried to backtrack and sew together the ends of the severed umbilical cord that once united us. But the passage of time had worn the frayed ends too much for such easy closure. The moment passed. Wonder dissolved into incredulity. I just couldn’t get to grips with her living, breathing self. Terry looked similarly overwhelmed at being embraced by a mother-in-law who was only two years older than him. If she noticed his T-shirt, she said nothing.