by Sam Selvon
The seagull went on Cap bed and stand up there on the pillow, watching him, the head nodding and the eyes bright.
‘Quee-quee,’ Cap say, taking a piece of bread in his hand and holding it out like the people in the park.
‘Quee-quee-quee,’ the seagull say, but it make no move to go to Cap.
Cap drop the bread and make a dive for the bed. He nearly catch it that time, and he thought he had, but when he look is a feather from the tail that he holding.
Now the bird start to fly round and round the room, making circle with the electric light in the centre.
But hunger have Cap desperate now and he making some wild grab that almost catching the bird, but the bird making some kind of fancy swerve every time and getting away.
Cap get so vex that he take a blanket off the bed, and he wait until the seagull coming around in the circle, and he throw the blanket. He bring the bird down, tangle up in the blanket, and he throw himself on the blanket and hold down the bird.
In the two weeks that Cap stay in that top room, he lessen the seagull population in London evening after evening. Not to arouse suspicion he used to put the feathers in a paper bag and when he go out in the night, throw it in a garden or a public rubbish bin.
The menu had him looking well, he eat seagull in all manner and fashion. He recover his strength, and when the landlord tell him that he had to leave, Cap cast a sorrowful glance upwards when he was leaving Dawson Place.
The next place that he went to live, he get a top room again when he ask for it, but seagulls never come on that ledge, though Cap used to put bread out every day.
The changing of the seasons, the cold slicing winds, the falling leaves, sunlight on green grass, snow on the land, London particular. Oh what it is and where it is and why it is, no one knows, but to have said: ‘I walked on Waterloo Bridge,’ ‘I rendezvoused at Charing Cross,’ ‘Piccadilly Circus is my playground,’ to say these things, to have lived these things, to have lived in the great city of London, centre of the world. To one day lean against the wind walking up the Bayswater Road (destination unknown), to see the leaves swirl and dance and spin on the pavement (sight unseeing), to write a casual letter home beginning: ‘Last night, in Trafalgar Square …’
What it is that a city have, that any place in the world have, that you get so much to like it you wouldn’t leave it for anywhere else? What it is that would keep men although by and large, in truth and in fact, they catching their royal to make a living, staying in a cramp-up room where you have to do everything – sleep, eat, dress, wash, cook, live. Why it is, that although they grumble about it all the time, curse the people, curse the government, say all kind of thing about this and that, why it is, that in the end, everyone cagey about saying outright that if the chance come they will go back to them green islands in the sun?
In the grimness of the winter, with your hand plying space like a blind man’s stick in the yellow fog, with ice on the ground and a coldness defying all effort to keep warm, the boys coming and going, working, eating, sleeping, going about the vast metropolis like veteran Londoners.
Nearly every Sunday morning, like if they going to church, the boys liming in Moses room, coming together for a oldtalk, to find out the latest gen, what happening, when is the next fete, Bart asking if anybody see his girl anywhere, Cap recounting a episode he had with a woman by the tube station the night before, Big City want to know why the arse he can’t win a pool, Galahad recounting a clash with the colour problem in a restaurant in Piccadilly, Harris saying he hope the weather turns, Five saying he have to drive a truck to Glasgow tomorrow.
Always every Sunday morning they coming to Moses, like if is confession, sitting down on the bed, on the floor, on the chairs, everybody asking what happening but nobody like they know what happening, laughing kiff-kiff at a joke, waiting to see who would start to smoke first, asking Moses if he have any thing to eat, the gas going low, why you don’t put another shilling in, who have shilling, anybody have change? And everybody turning out their pockets for this shilling that would mean the difference between shivering and feeling warm, and nobody having any shilling, until conscious hit one of them and he say: ‘Aps! Look I have a shilling, it was right down in the bottom of my trousers pocket, and I didn’t feel it.’
‘Boy Moses, if I tell you what happen to me last night –’
‘Boy, you hear of any work anywhere?’
‘Man, I looking for a room.’
‘Boy, I pick up something by the Arch yesterday - ’
Sometimes during the week, when he come home and he can’t sleep, is as if he hearing the voices in the room, all the moaning and groaning and sighing and crying, and he open his eyes expecting to see the boys sitting around.
Sometimes, listening to them, he look in each face, and he feel a great compassion for every one of them, as if he live each of their lives, one by one, and all the strain and stress come to rest on his own shoulders.
‘What you doing, Moses? You still thinking about going back home?’
‘I see they have a lot of tinned breadfruit about the place.’
‘– and if was me I would of thump she –’
‘Moses, how you so quiet, like time catching up with you, boy.’
‘So what happening these days?’
Some Sunday mornings he hardly say a word, he only lay there on the bed listening to them talk about what happen last night, and Harris looking at his watch anxiously and saying that he has an important engagement, but all the same never getting up to go, and Bart saying that he sure one of the boys must have seen his girl Beatrice, but youall too nasty, you wouldn’t tell me where, ease me up, man, I must find that girl again, and Cap smiling his innocent smile what trap so many people, and Galahad cocky and pushing his mouth in everything and Big City fiddling with the radio (Radio Luxembourg always have good fusic), and if Five in town he want to know who going to lime in the evening.
‘Moses, if you hear of anything, let me know, eh.’
‘Boy, it have any rooms down here? Two fellars coming up next week and I can’t get a place for them – you could help me out?’
‘I hear that they looking for the boys to do National Service – watch out, Galahad, you still twenty.’
Sometimes, after they gone, he hear the voices ringing in his ear, and sometimes tears come to his eyes and he don’t know why really, if is homesickness or if is just that life in general beginning to get too hard.
How many Sunday mornings gone like that? It look to him as if life composed of Sunday morning get-togethers in the room: he must make a joke of it during the week and say: ‘You coming to church Sunday?’ Lock up in that small room, with London and life on the outside, he used to lay there on the bed, thinking how to stop all of this crap, how to put a spoke in the wheel, to make things different. Like how he tell Cap to get to hell out one night, so he should do one Sunday morning when he can’t bear it any more: Get to hell out, why the arse you telling me about how they call you a darkie, you think I am interested?
Dress, go out, coast a lime in the park. Walking that way, he might meet up Harris and Galahad, both of them dress like Englishmen, with bowler hat and umbrella, and The Times sticking out of the jacket pocket so the name would show.
Hello boy, what happening.
So what happening, man, what happening.
How long you in Brit’n boy?
You think this winter bad? You should of been here in ’52.
What happening, what happening man.
What the arse happening, lord? What all of us doing, coasting lime, Galahad asking if anybody know the words of the song Maybe It’s Because I’m A Londoner, Cap want two pounds borrow, Five only in town for the night and he want to know if he could sleep in Moses room, Big City coming tomorrow to full up the coupons (I nearly hit them last week), Lewis saying that Agnes come begging and if he should go to live with her again, Tolroy want to send Ma and Tanty back to Jamaica (them two old bitches, I don’t know why th
ey don’t dead).
So what happening, Tolroy? I don’t see you with your guitar these days?
Every year he vowing to go back to Trinidad, but after the winter gone and birds sing and all the trees begin to put on leaves again, and flowers come and now and then the old sun shining, is as if life start all over again, as if it still have time, as if it still have another chance. I will wait until after the summer, the summer does really be hearts.
But it reach a stage, and he know it reach that stage, where he get so accustom to the pattern that he can’t do anything about it. Sure, I could do something about it, he tell himself, but he never do anything. He used to wonder about back home, where he have a grandmother and a girl friend who always writing him and asking him why he don’t come back, that they would go and live in Grenada, where her father have a big estate.
Why you don’t go back to Trinidad.
What happening man, what happening.
If I give you this ballad! Last night –
You went to see the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square?
Harris giving a dance in Brixton next Saturday – you going?
A fellar asking the Home Secretary in the House of Commons: ‘Are you aware that there are more than 40,000 West Indians living in Great Britain?’
‘You know who I see in Piccadilly last night? Gomes! He must be come up for talks of federation.’
One night of any night, liming on the Embankment near to Chelsea, he stand up on the bank of the river, watching the lights of the buildings reflected in the water, thinking what he must do, if he should save up money and go back home, if he should try to make it by next year before he change his mind again.
The old Moses, standing on the banks of the Thames. Sometimes he think he see some sort of profound realisation in his life, as if all that happen to him was experience that make him a better man, as if now he could draw apart from any hustling and just sit down and watch other people fight to live. Under the kiff-kiff laughter, behind the ballad and the episode, the what-happening, the summer-is-hearts, he could see a great aimlessness, a great restless, swaying movement that leaving you standing in the same spot. As if a forlorn shadow of doom fall on all the spades in the country. As if he could see the black faces bobbing up and down in the millions of white, strained faces, everybody hustling along the Strand, the spades jostling in the crowd, bewildered, hopeless. As if, on the surface, things don’t look so bad, but when you go down a little, you bounce up a kind of misery and pathos and a frightening – what? He don’t know the right word, but he have the right feeling in his heart. As if the boys laughing, but they only laughing because they fraid to cry, they only laughing because to think so much about everything would be a big calamity – like how he here now, the thoughts so heavy like he unable to move his body.
Still, it had a greatness and a vastness in the way he was feeling tonight, like it was something solid after feeling everything else give way, and though he ain’t getting no happiness out of the cogitations he still pondering, for is the first time that he ever find himself thinking like that.
Daniel was telling him how over in France all kinds of fellars writing books what turning out to be best-sellers. Taxi-driver, porter, road-sweeper – it didn’t matter. One day you sweating in the factory and the next day all the newspapers have your name and photo, saying how you are a new literary giant.
He watch a tugboat on the Thames, wondering if he could ever write a book like that, what everybody would buy.
It was a summer night: laughter fell softly: it was the sort of night that if you wasn’t making love to a woman you feel you was the only person in the world like that.
THE BEGINNING
Let the conversation begin...
Follow the Penguin Twitter.com@penguinukbooks
Keep up-to-date with all our stories YouTube.com/penguinbooks
Pin ‘Penguin Books’ to your Pinterest
Like ‘Penguin Books’ on Facebook.com/penguinbooks
Find out more about the author and
discover more stories like this at Penguin.co.uk
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguin.com
First published by Alan Wingate 1956
Published in Penguin Books 2006
Copyright © Samuel Selvon, 1956
Introduction copyright © Susheila Nasta, 2006
Cover photograph: Brilliant Spider, East End, London, 1935. Photograph by Felix H. Man. Print courtesy of NMPFT/SSPL. Reproduction by kind permission of the estate.
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-14-119078-5