Let's Tell This Story Properly

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

  Now, looking at how grown-up Princess Anne was in that picture, Abbey told himself, Ssuuna, if you’re not careful, that boy Charles will become king before you leave this country.

  He looked at the depot’s clock: five minutes.

  He bolted across Bowes Street and down the road until he came to the depot’s main entrance. Neville, the supervisor, was talking to some drivers. Rather than walk past them, he decided to use the side door. Often drivers saw him, and even though he was only going up to Neville to ask for his allocation that day, he saw resentment rise in their eyes. Besides, he did not feel like hearing Hey Sambo, which jungle do you come from? today. He tried the side door: it was locked. He walked to the end of the building and turned back to the Princess Road entrance. Luckily, the men were gone.

  The vastness of the depot never ceased to overwhelm him. Rows and rows of buses stretched as far as he could see. Yet more buses were still arriving to park in rows 17 to 22 at the back. He wished he had a picture of it to take home with him. He turned to the right and walked down row 2, where the number 42 buses were parked. He took the ramp to the sluice to pick up his tools. He hoped Neville would give him row 8 with the number 53 buses as usual. They were the dirtiest because they went to Belle Vue Amusement Park, but Abbey liked that—the dirtier the bus, the more chances of coming across lost property. The rule was that all lost property be taken to the window marked LOST AND FOUND. Abbey always handed over toys, mittens, booties and other items of clothing. But not money. Often, he found halfpenny coins here and sixpences there. Once he found a cloth purse with sequins and pearls all over it and slid it into his underwear. Throughout the shift, it pressed heavily against his crotch. He only took it out when he got home. There were forty-two shillings in total. Abbey had patted the purse on his forehead feverishly, thanking family winds.

  • • •

  By the time he finished his three-hour shift at the depot, Moss Side was asleep, the streets dead. He got to the house without realising. Then stopped. Something was wrong. The lights in Emmet’s quarters were still on. If Emmet was still up past midnight, then Emmet was unhappy. He tiptoed past his window to the back door. He opened it and the pungent smell of cow foot hit him. Kwei, Abbey’s room-mate, was the kind to splash out on such delicacies. He justified it with I don’t know when my day is due: who am I leaving my money for? Let me eat well. Abbey tiptoed up the stairs to the first floor, where his and Kwei’s room was. Emmet was waiting on the landing. Emmet did not mind African tenants, but even he had limits.

  ‘What’s that horrible smell, Abbey?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mr Emmet, I’ve just returned.’

  ‘Well, don’t you smell it?’

  Abbey sniffed the air and shook his head.

  ‘How can you not! The whole house stinks.’

  ‘I do not hear it, Mr Emmet.’

  ‘Hear it? You mean you don’t smell it?’

  Abbey kept quiet.

  ‘Tell your friend, Quway, that I’ll not have you cook tripe or any of the horrible stuff you people eat.’

  ‘I’ll tell him, sir.’

  Abbey walked past Emmet and down the corridor to their bedroom. He listened out before he opened the door. Emmet was going down the stairs muttering, ‘They lie like little children.’

  Abbey opened the door.

  Kwei sat on the bed, pulling his shoes on. There was only one bed in the room but two mattresses. On the rare night when they were both at home, Abbey put his mattress on the floor. Except in winter, when it was too cold to squander each other’s warmth. Abbey was surprised. Normally, by the time he came home, Kwei was gone for his night shift at the Dunlop tyre factory in Trafford Park.

  Abbey hung up his fedora. ‘Emmet is complaining again.’

  ‘Let him complain. He knocked on the door and I ignored him.’

  Abbey laughed.

  ‘All he knows is how to boil rice, then wash it with cold water, add corned beef and call it dinner!’

  ‘They eat cow tongue.’

  ‘Disgusting people: I’ll remind him next time.’

  ‘Thanks for cooking.’

  ‘How is Moses?’

  Abbey’s smile fell. He opened his hands in helplessness.

  ‘You didn’t see him, did you?’

  ‘He was asleep.’

  ‘Again? Twice you go all the way to Macclesfield for nothing?’

  ‘What could I say, wake him up?’

  ‘Yes. Wake him up for his father.’

  ‘But they don’t recognise me as important!’

  ‘Force them, you’re his father, you decide. The father always decides even among these people. Abbey, you’re too soft.’

  Abbey sat down on the bed and sighed. ‘I don’t know, Kwei. Heather said she didn’t want the child to go to Africa into malaria and snakes and lions and diseases.’

  ‘Didn’t we grow up there? Stupid woman! Next time you go to see Moses, we go together. You’re too timid. Now see how you’ve made me late because I am talking to you! By the way’—Kwei seemed to remember something—‘do you have any Blue Hearts?’

  Abbey gave Kwei two of his awake pills. He had no use for them any more. He used to take them when he and Heather went out, then he would dance non-stop like a marine propeller. Kwei tossed both pills into his mouth without water. Unfortunately, Kwei had been taking Blue Hearts for too long; he no longer functioned well without them. He said goodbye, closed the door and his footsteps rang down the corridor, then the stairs. Abbey fell back on the bed. Heather Newton.

  • • •

  He met her at his day job at the Whit Knitwear factory on Wilmslow Road. She was working as a machinist while she waited for her nursing course to start in Scotland. At first, Abbey did not notice her. She was one of the girls in the tailoring pool, and there were over fifty girls and women in the main hall. The only girls he looked out for were the nasty ones. Besides, Abbey was so weighed down by being black and African he would never assume with white girls.

  One day as she walked past Heather smiled hello. Abbey smiled back. It was brave of her to acknowledge him. She seemed like a good girl: not loud, did not swear and he had never seen her smoking behind the block.

  Months later, Heather stopped to talk to him again. She asked what he did after work. Abbey explained that he had a second job at the Princess Road bus depot and that he was trying to save money to return home.

  ‘Where is home?’

  ‘Uganda.’

  ‘Is that in the West Indies?’

  ‘No, East Africa.’

  ‘Really, you don’t look African at all.’

  Abbey beamed at the compliment.

  ‘You don’t have those big downturned lips, your eyes are not too close together and’—she felt his hair—‘your hair isn’t wiry.’ Then she went, breathless, ‘Did you kill a lion to become a man?’

  ‘No, we don’t do that in Uganda.’

  For a moment, as Heather walked away, Abbey wondered whether he should have lied, but he had never even seen a lion. Two weeks later, he bumped into her again. The other girls had walked on ahead and Abbey expected her to run and catch up with them, but she stopped and smiled.

  ‘So where does Abbey from Uganda go on a night out?’

  ‘At The Merchant Na—’

  ‘The Merchant Navy? I’ve heard about it. Apparently, you blacks get up to all sorts there.’ She prodded his chest playfully.

  Rather than protest that nothing untoward happened at the Merchant Navy, Abbey just smiled. He held in each hand a bin full of cloth cuttings, thread and other couture rubbish. He had been on his way to the outside bin.

  ‘I’d like to see the Merchant Navy. Would you show me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Though they had agreed to meet that Friday night, Heather ignored him for the rest of the week. Abbey understood. Other girls would shun her if they found out she had fraternised with a black. Even then he began to doubt she had really meant it. He was therefore surpri
sed to find Heather waiting outside the depot when he arrived for his shift that Friday. When she saw him, she motioned him to follow her. They went into a side corridor next to the depot. There, she told him that they would meet at the Merchant Navy entrance at 11.30 p.m., and disappeared.

  He arrived at the Merchant Navy twenty minutes early and fretted. Suddenly the club seemed grubby, the people, especially their speech, coarse; look at that litter! Was that a whiff from the toilets at the entrance? He was sure that Heather would walk into the club, wrinkle her nose and walk out.

  Heather was already excited when she arrived. She did not seem to notice anything amiss. Abbey was most attentive, buying her drinks he would never dream of wasting his savings on. The music was so loud, the hall so crowded, smoke everywhere, and Abbey was tense. It was not until Heather shouted above the music, ‘This is fun,’ that Abbey relaxed. They danced until Nelson turned off the music and forced the crowds out after 2 a.m. Abbey was wondering what now?—he had not expected Heather to stay this long—when she suggested that they go to the social centre on Wilbraham Road. Someone she knew was having a bash there. It was not a long walk. Then they arrived in a different world. White women with black men, mostly black Americans (who could not get over the fact that there was no segregation in Britain) and African students. Though there was a hall, the party was outdoors in the gardens. There was a lot of American alcohol as well. ‘It’s from the American air base,’ Heather whispered. Then she introduced him to her friends. One of them remarked, ‘So, this is Heather’s African.’

  ‘Are you a prince?’ another woman asked. Before Abbey answered the woman turned to Heather and said, ‘Most of these fellows claim to be princes.’

  Abbey denied being a prince even though his grandfather was Ssekabaka Mwanga. He denied it because once he had heard a shine girl call her African father, who claimed to be a prince, a liar. Abbey had to stop himself from spitting in her face because how would she know that on the one hand, princes in Africa tended to end up fugitives in Europe fleeing from assassination, and on the other, they were privileged to travel abroad? He had developed an unhealthy hate for shine people who seemed to hate the black in them, who presumed to be superior because of the whiteness in them.

  He noticed that there were neither black nor shine girls at the party. The white men present were waiters, but Abbey did not ask why. A door to an exclusive world of white women going with black men had opened to him and he was going to enjoy it, however ephemeral. At the Merchant Navy, when people saw him with Heather they had looked at him with concerned surprise, others with hurt astonishment as if it was an act of betrayal. Here, no one cared. They danced until six in the morning, when Heather caught the early bus back home.

  The following weekend she suggested they go to the Mayfair. Abbey asked how she knew about black people’s clubs.

  ‘Girls say the most exciting things about black people’s clubs. You must take me to the Cotton Club and Frascati.’ They even went to Crown Kathy on Oldham Street, the only pub which admitted blacks.

  When Kwei found out about Heather, he warned Abbey that for a seaman saving to return home, going out with a woman was an expensive venture. And for timid Abbey a white woman would devour him like mashed potatoes.

  ‘It’s a story to tell though, when I return home.’

  ‘If you return.’

  Abbey and Heather went out another three weekends. When he was with her, everyone noticed him. They glanced at her and then at him. When white men glared at him Abbey felt alive. When Heather said, ‘You’re painfully tall,’ he walked at his full height. Once an old white man spat in Heather’s face and Abbey didn’t know what to do. He pretended not to see when white people gave Heather dirty looks. Some black men glanced at him with a so you’re like that look. But it was black women, even shine girls, who gave him the withering looks reserved for war deserters. One time, Berry came to them on the dance floor. He was polite to Heather but turned to Abbey and said,

  ‘I hope you don’t have an Othello complex!’

  ‘What’s Othello?’

  Heather went red and Berry smiled. ‘Never mind, Abbey: be true.’

  Abbey felt that black folk were being unfair. Black women were few; they were either circled or good churchgoing daughters. Shine girls would never look at an African man. African girls who came to study had contempt for African men who lived in England. If you asked them out they said, ‘I am sorry but I don’t wish to be domiciled,’ meaning they would never go with a man paid as much as a white woman. ‘I’ll be returning home soon after my course,’ meaning to men who are not eunuched. But when you touched a white woman then it was betrayal.

  One Friday, after close-down at the Merchant Navy, rather than go partying elsewhere as they normally did, Heather said she was tired and wanted to lie down. As she could not go home—it was past two in the morning—she asked Abbey to take her to his flat. Abbey could not believe his ears. Firstly, people said Africans stink: hadn’t Heather heard? Secondly, what if Kwei had splashed out again and their room stunk of cow foot?

  It was too late, because they were walking past Greenheys Police Station, towards his home. Mercifully, the room was clean and tidy. He had been ready to spend his savings on a hotel room if he saw Heather wrinkling her nose. She seemed too tired to notice that the room was bare save for the bed. He offered her their bed while he slept on the mattress on the floor. But after a while, Heather asked him to get in bed with her and hold her.

  When he told Kwei about it the following day, Kwei prophesied, ‘You’re on the hook, Abbey: forget home.’

  Abbey started looking forward to Fridays. At work, it started to hurt when Heather ignored him.

  They had been seeing each other for five months when Heather stopped coming to work. Unfortunately, Abbey could not ask anyone why. Two months later, when he had decided that she had started her course in Scotland, she turned up at his house. It was a different Heather. She was fearful and angry. Abbey was confused. Heather needed a room to stay but would pay her own rent. She did not want him to look after her but she needed him to go to the shops for her. Yes, he was responsible for her condition but she was giving up the child for adoption. She cried a lot and blamed him for the loss of her job and course. Abbey insisted that as long as she carried his child he would come to see her. Sometimes he knocked on her door but she did not open up. Abbey was proud he was going to be a father, moreover to a shine child! Often, he laughed when she shouted at him. Until she handed his son up for adoption.

  It was by chance that he found out when Heather went to have the baby. Her landlady told him that she had been taken to St Mary’s Hospital the day before. When Abbey got to hospital, Heather was about to be discharged. The baby had been taken.

  He made a scene. Who gives their child away to strangers? She did not even breastfeed him? What kind of woman does that? To get rid of him, the hospital gave him the name of the home the baby had been placed in. They told him and Heather to go and sort it out there. Before they left hospital, Abbey demanded to have his name put on the child’s birth certificate. Heather disappeared.

  • • •

  The following week, when Abbey and Kwei arrived at the children’s home in Macclesfield the matron pretended not to see them. This made Abbey more nervous but Kwei went up to her and said, ‘We’ve come to see our son.’

  ‘Who is your son?’

  ‘Heather Newton’s son; we call him Moses.’

  ‘You’re not his father.’

  ‘In our culture, my brother’s son is my son.’

  ‘That child’s process is complete. A nice couple have finalised the adoption process. They’ll give him the life he deserves.’

  ‘Ah?’ Abbey, who had left Kwei to do the talking, gasped. ‘But you say he’s sleeping every time I come. Why lie?’

  ‘His mother wanted him adopted. She never identified you as the father. We have her name on the records but we don’t have yours.’

  ‘Whic
h mother, the woman who would not put him on her breast?’

  ‘Show her a copy of the birth documents they gave you at the hospital, show her.’

  The woman looked at them and shook her head. ‘We never saw that one. We were never told about a father. Why didn’t you come with the mother to confirm you’re who you say?’

  ‘She’s hiding. Besides, why would I want a child that’s not mine?’

  ‘We’re doing what is best for the child.’

  ‘Ooh, you see them, Kwei? You see how they take people’s children just like that?’

  ‘I am only following instructions. In this country, it’s brave and selfless to give up a child to people who will love him and meet his needs.’

  ‘Brave? In my country, a parent will die first before they give up a child to strangers.’

  ‘Bring his records. We need to see his records first.’ Kwei banged the desk. ‘Bring them here now.’

  ‘You need to calm down, the both of you! I can’t listen to—’

  ‘Calm down, calm down, would you calm down when you’re losing your child?’

  ‘I’ll bring the records,’ the woman said, ‘but you need to calm down.’

  When she left the room Kwei whispered, ‘They don’t know how to deal with us when we’re angry. We frighten them. But if you stand there speaking softly like they tell you how, then they’ve got you.’