by Sam Selvon
‘Why you don’t leave that man for good?’ Tanty say. ‘He always beating you for nothing. Why he beat you this time?’
‘The same reason,’ Agnes say. ‘He say that I does encourage other men home while he out working, and I swear to God I never talk to another man.’
‘Moses,’ Lewis say one night, ‘if you was in my position you wouldn’t do the same thing?’
‘No,’ Moses say.
‘Why?’
‘Well you only suspect the wife, you don’t know anything for sure. Listen, women in this country not like Jamaica, you know. They have rights over here, and they always shouting for something.’
‘But you tell me when fellars have night work other fellars go round by the house when the wife alone.’
‘But I didn’t say that fellars does go round by your wife. My mouth ain’t no Bible.’
Still Lewis worried and imagining all kinds of things happening to the wife while he hustling in the factory. At last he put on such a beating on Agnes that she left him for good. Lewis didn’t know, he thought she gone by Tanty house for the usual cool-off and he didn’t bother for two days. But when she didn’t turn up he went to look for she.
‘Where Agnes?’ he ask Tanty. ‘Tell she is all right, she could come home now.’
‘Agnes not here,’ Tanty say.
‘Is all right, I tell you,’ Lewis say. ‘Tell she to forget all about it.’
‘But I tell you Agnes not here,’ Tanty say. ‘What happen, you beat she again last night?’
‘How you mean she ain’t here?’ Lewis say, and he looking all about in the room.
‘Which part she gone?’ he ask Tanty.
‘I don’t know,’ Tanty say. ‘She didn’t come here at all. But if she left you she have a right to.’
‘Where else she could go to but here?’ Lewis ask.
‘Don’t ask me,’ Tanty say, ‘all I know is she not here. You best hads report it to the police station that she missing.’ Lewis start to get frighten, it look like this time Agnes serious. From that minute he start to bite his finger nails, and he bite them so low that he never had finger nail again. He went by the police station in Harrow Road, and he tell the police that his wife missing. They take down particulars, but case like that so common, and it have so many people in London (though it would be easy to spot a spade) that chances look slim: they tell Lewis not to worry that she would turn up any time.
Days go by and Lewis can’t see Agnes, and he biting his fingers. One morning he get a summons and he panic. Agnes charge him with assault. He fly round by Moses.
‘What this mean?’ he ask Moses.
‘It mean that your wife bring you up,’ Moses say, wondering why these sorts of things does always happen to him. ‘You will have to go to court.’
‘To court!’ Lewis say. ‘What you think they will do?’
‘They will lock you up,’ Moses say. ‘It have a jail in Wormwood Scrubs.’
‘It have she address here,’ Lewis say. ‘You think I should go there and see her?’
‘If I was you,’ Moses say, ‘I wouldn’t do that. I would sit down and write she a nice letter to soften she up before you go to court.’
‘I really love that woman,’ Lewis say. ‘But she does make me too jealous.’
‘You better write the letter,’ Moses say.
‘You have any writing paper Moses?’
‘Look some on the table.’
‘What to tell she?’
‘Tell she you sorry,’ Moses say. ‘Tell she come back home and everything would be all right.’
‘That is the usual thing I say,’ Lewis take out a Biro pen and unscrew the cap. ‘She might think I always saying that.’
‘Well what you want me to tell you old man?’ Moses say. He was tired and wanted to sleep as he had a hard night in the factory.
But Agnes never reply to Lewis letter, and in the end she left him and he never see she again. Lewis went by Moses to learn how to live bachelor. He ask Moses all sorts of funny questions, like how he does live alone, what he does do with dirty clothes, how to boil rice and peas. About a month after Agnes left him Lewis get in with a little thing and he forget all about married life.
‘Tanty, you wasting too much coal on the fire,’ Tolroy say.
‘Boy, leave me alone. I am cold too bad.’ Tanty put more coal on the fire.
‘You only causing smog,’ Tolroy say.
‘Smog? What is that?’
‘You don’t read the papers?’ Tolroy say. ‘All that nasty fog it have outside today, and you pushing more smoke up the chimney. You killing people.’
‘So how else to keep warm?’ Tanty say. You think this is Jamaica? My hand blue. I went out just now and bring back eight pound of potato, and my fingers couldn’t straighten out from holding the bag, I thought I catch a cramp, I hot some water quick and wash my hands.’
‘Old people like you, you only come here to make life miserable,’ Tolroy say. When Ma not there Tolroy used to take lag on Tanty left and right for coming to London.
‘I did know that when old age come is so the children would scorn me,’ Tanty say, she voice low because she tired raising it. ‘What else to expect, oh Lord? I mind you from the time you was a little boy running about naked in the backstreet in Kingston, and this is all the gratitude and thanks I get. Is so life is. What else to expect oh Lord?’
‘I tired hearing that tune,’ Tolroy say. ‘Every time I tell you anything you have to remind me that you mind me when I was a little boy. All right, you mind me, so what? What for you leave that warm place to come up here and freeze to death? I didn’t send for you. I only send for Ma, and what happen? The whole blasted family come to give me grey hair before my time, as if I haven’t got enough worries as it is. Listen, you better advice that Lewis that he better stop beating Agnes. Here is not Jamaica, you know.’
‘Why you don’t tell him yourself? You fraid him?’
‘Who me? Is just that he won’t listen to me. Now Agnes gone and every time he see me he asking me: ‘You know where Agnes gone?’ London not like Kingston, you know. A man could get lost here easy, it have millions of people living here, and your friend could be living in London for years and you never see him.’
‘If you have anything to tell Lewis tell him yourself.’
‘But serious, Tanty, is which part Agnes gone at all? This is the first time she stay away so long. Lewis really love her, you know. He look real miserable. He don’t do any work in the factory all night. Why you don’t tell him where Agnes is?’
‘Tell him where Agnes is! You wait, you will hear just now. Every time he beating the poor girl for nothing, though the Probation Officer warn him. You know what? Agnes going to bring him up for assault!’
‘Bring him up for assault!’
‘Yes, I advice her. That’s the only way to stop him, the way he getting on.’
‘And she say yes?’
‘Yes, she say yes. So you just wait and see.’
‘Well anyway is none of my business. Tanty, make some tea for me, I want to go out.’
‘Why you don’t stay home and sleep, you work all night.’
‘I have to go out. Make haste.’
‘You talking about warning Lewis, but let me warn you, I know where you going. You think I don’t know you have a white girl. You better watch out and don’t get in no trouble. I mind you from a little boy.’
‘All right Tanty. But make the tea quick.’
‘White girls,’ Tanty grumble as she put the kettle on the fireplace fire, ‘is that what sweeten up so many of you to come to London. Your own kind of girls not good enough now, is only white girls. I see Agnes bring a nice girl friend from Jamaica to see us, but you didn’t even blink on she. White girls! Go on! They will catch up with you in this country!’
The place where Tolroy and the family living was off the Harrow Road, and the people in that area call the Working Class. Wherever in London that it have Working Class, there you will find
a lot of spades. This is the real world, where men know what it is to hustle a pound to pay the rent when Friday come. The houses around here old and grey and weatherbeaten, the walls cracking like the last days of Pompeii, it ain’t have no hot water, and in the whole street that Tolroy and them living in, none of the houses have bath. You had was to buy one of them big galvanise basin and boil the water and full it up, or else go to the public bath. Some of the houses still had gas light, which is to tell you how old they was. All the houses in a row in the street, on both sides, they build like one long house with walls separating them in parts, so your house jam-up between two neighbours: is so most of the houses is in London. The street does be always dirty except if rain fall. Sometimes a truck does come with a kind of revolving broom and some pipes letting out water, and the driver drive near the pavement, and water come out the pipes and the broom revolve, and so they sweep the road. It always have little children playing in the road, because they ain’t have no other place to play. They does draw hopscotch blocks on the pavement, and other things, and some of the walls of the buildings have signs painted like Vote Labour and Down With the Tories. The bottom of the street, it had a sweet-shop, a bakery, a grocery, a butcher and a fish and chips. The top of the street, where it join the Harrow Road, it had all kind of thing – shop, store, butcher, greengrocer, trolley and bus stop. Up here on a Saturday plenty vendors used to be selling provisions near the pavements. It had a truck used to come one time with flowers to sell, and the fellars used to sell cheap, and the poor people buy tulip and daffodil to put in the dingy room they living in.
It have people living in London who don’t know what happening in the room next to them, far more the street, or how other people living. London is a place like that. It divide up in little worlds, and you stay in the world you belong to and you don’t know anything about what happening in the other ones except what you read in the papers. Them rich people who does live in Belgravia and Knightsbridge and up in Hampstead and them other plush places, they would never believe what it like in a grim place like Harrow Road or Notting Hill. Them people who have car, who going to theatre and ballet in the West End, who attending premiere with the royal family, they don’t know nothing about hustling two pound of brussel sprout and half-pound potato, or queuing up for fish and chips in the smog. People don’t talk about things like that again, they come to kind of accept that is so the world is, that it bound to have rich and poor, it bound to have some who live by the Grace and others who have plenty. That is all about it, nobody does go into detail. A poor man, a rich man. To stop one of them rich tests when they are going to a show in Leicester Square and ask them for a bob, they might give you, but if you want to talk about the conditions under which you living, they haven’t time for that. They know all about that already. People get tired after a time with who poor and who rich and who catching arse and who well off, they don’t care any more.
It have a kind of communal feeling with the Working Class and the spades, because when you poor things does level out, it don’t have much up and down. A lot of the men get kill in war and leave widow behind, and it have bags of these old geezers who does be pottering about the Harrow Road like if they lost, a look in their eye as if the war happen unexpected and they still can’t realise what happen to the old Brit’n. All over London you would see them, going shopping with a basket, or taking the dog for a walk in the park, where they will sit down on the bench in winter and summer. Or you might meet them hunch-up in a bus-queue, or waiting to get the fish and chips hot. On Friday or a Saturday night, they go in the pub and buy a big glass of mild and bitter, and sit down by a table near the fire and stay here coasting lime till the pub close. The old fellars do that too, and sometimes they walk up a street in a plush area with their cap in their hand, and sing in a high falsetto, looking up at the high windows, where the high and the mighty living, and now and then a window would open and somebody would throw down threepence or a tanner, and the old fellar have to watch it good else it roll in the road and get lost. Up in that fully furnished flat where the window open (rent bout ten or fifteen guineas, Lord) it must be have some woman that sleep late after a night at the Savoy or Dorchester, and she was laying under the warm quilt on the Simmons mattress, and she hear the test singing. No song or rhythm, just a sort of musical noise so nobody could say that he begging. And she must be just get up and throw a tanner out the window. Could be she had a nice night and she in a good mood, or could be, after the night’s sleep, she thinking about life and the sound of that voice quavering in the cold outside touch the old heart. But if she have a thought at all, it never go further than to cause the window to open and the tanner to fall down. In fact when the woman throw the tanner from the window she didn’t even look down: if a man was a mile away and he was controlling a loudspeaker in the street moving up and down, the tanner would have come the same way. Also, for the old test who singing, it ain’t have no thought at all about where this tanner come from, or who throw it, man, woman or child, it ain’t make no difference. All he know is that a tanner fall in the road, and he had to watch it else it roll and get lost.
When you come to think of it, everything in life like that. Maybe afterwards if a friend go to that woman and say that the test is a lazy fellar and worthless, she wouldn’t throw any more money if he pass up that street. Or if the friend say he is a poor old man having a hard time she will throw a bob the next time he pass.
People in this world don’t know how other people does affect their lives.
Or else, the old fellars go by the people that queuing up for the cinema. Not so much by the one and sixes and two and nines, but by the three and twos and four shillings. And some of them old fellars so brazen that though it against the law to beg they passing the old cap around, and if they see a policeman they begin to sing or play a old mouthorgan. What impulse does prompt people to give no one knows. Is never generosity – you could see some of them regret it as soon as they give. But is a kind of feeling of shame. One fellar give, and the others feel shame if they don’t put a penny in the old man hat.
The grocery it had at the bottom of the street was like a shop in the West Indies. It had Brasso to shine brass, and you could get Blue for when you washing clothes, and the fellar selling pitchoil. He have the pitchoil in some big drum in the back of the shop in the yard, and you carry your tin and ask for a gallon, to put in the cheap oil burner. The shop also have wick, in case the wick in your burner go bad, and it have wood cut up in little bundles to start coal fire. Before Jamaicans start to invade Brit’n, it was a hell of a thing to pick up a piece of saltfish anywhere, or to get thing like pepper sauce or dasheen or even garlic. It had a continental shop in one of the back streets in Soho, and that was the only place in the whole of London that you could have pick up a piece of fish. But now, papa! Shop all about start to take in stocks of foodstuffs what West Indians like, and today is no trouble at all to get saltfish and rice. This test who had the grocery, from the time spades start to settle in the district, he find out what sort of things they like to eat, and he stock up with a lot of things like blackeye peas and red beans and pepper sauce, and tinned breadfruit and ochro and smoke herring, and as long as the spades spending money he don’t care, in fact is big encouragement, ‘Good morning sir,’ and ‘What can I do for you today, sir,’ and ‘Do come again.’
All over London have places like that now. It have tailor shop in the East End, near Aldgate Station, what owned by a cockney Jew fellar. Well papa, when you go there on a Saturday you can’t find place to stand up, because the place full up with spades, and the Jew passing round cigars free to everybody. (Cigars is on Saturday, if you lime during the week he give you cigarettes.) Is a small shop, and on the walls have photo of all the black boxers in the world, and photo of any presentation or function what have spades in it.
‘Friend,’ the Jew say, lighting up the cigar, ‘when I make a suit and you go to the West End, people stand back and look at you. If I do anything y
ou don’t like, bring it back and I will fix it immediately. If you still do not like my work, I will refund your money. Who told you about this place, my friend?’
‘A fellar I know.’
‘Ah! Yes, I do a lot of business with you boys, and guarantee complete satisfaction. Have another cigar to smoke later.’ And the test pulling cigar from all about and passing round to the boys.
This time so the assistant measuring up with tape, asking who want tight bottoms and loop in the waist for belt, and pulling down all kind of Cromby from the shelf to show the boys. By the time you ready to leave the shop the fellar have you feeling like a lord even if you ain’t give an order for a suit and you have him down one cigar.
‘Come again, my friend,’ he say as he give you another cigar for the road, and with the other hand he pull out a card from the top jacket pocket and hand you. ‘Here is my card, and there is the telephone number. Open the door Jack,’ and if the assistant too busy he himself hustling to open the door for you.
Another Jew fellar in Edgware Road does come out on the pavement when you looking in the show-window and hold your elbow and push you in the shop, whether you want anything or not. But he too cagey: once he make a cheap garbadeen suit for a Jamaican and hit him twenty-five guineas, and since that time the boys give the shop a long walk. This fellar also used to put cloth in the window with a certain price, and when you go inside the price gone up couple guineas.
Well Tanty used to shop in this grocery every Saturday morning. It does be like a jam-session there when all the spade housewives go to buy, and Tanty in the lead. They getting on just as if they in the market-place back home: ‘Yes child, as I was telling you, she did lose the baby … half-pound saltfish please, the dry codfish … yes, as I was telling you … and two pounds rice, please, and half-pound red beans, no, not that one, that one in the bag in the corner …’
All poor Lewis business talk out in that shop with Tanty big mouth, for it ain’t have no woman like stand up and talk other people business like Tanty, and it didn’t take she long to make friend and enemy with everybody in the district. She too like the shop, and the chance to meet them other women and gossip. She become a familiar figure to everybody, and even the English people calling she Tanty. It was Tanty who cause the shop-keeper to give people credit.