Life's Fare

by Greg Yevko

  He was also used to the customary send-offs as arranged by his lifelong friend Leroy, but this time he had vowed to take photographs at the send-off so as to make sure he had something more than a vague blankness when questioned about the event. He had borrowed Leroy’s 35mm Canon, the latest release from the recently renamed Japanese company Kwanon. Whilst it was widely accepted that Japanese technology in this area was the best around, there were still very raw feelings towards Japan following the war, and the name-change to something more Westernised was seen as an essential business move to improve company image. Stanley’s decision to both capture what was going on that night, as well as being captured himself on film on a number of occasions when Leroy had wrestled the camera back, led to a great amount of mirth for the staff and one case of swooning by a young female assistant at the photographic shop where Stanley eventually got the film developed after landing in England. Some claimed that the photos later turned up in an early edition of the top shelf magazine “Huge Jamaican Ginger Nuts,” thanks to an unscrupulous member of staff who had secretly taken a duplicate set of the prints for his own gratification, but this was never contested in court, and Stanley never knew about the many ladies and the occasional gent who had spent many happy moments alone, admiring his best assets.

  The 492 passengers on the Windrush disembarked at Tilbury docks in Essex on the misty morning of Tuesday June 22nd. The passengers were in the main highly skilled professionals, including Doctors, Engineers, Mechanics and drivers of heavy goods vehicles; all had been attracted by the adverts which had been strategically placed in local cafés and hotels around the main Caribbean islands on orders of the British Consuls. Britain was desperately looking for help to reconstruct its severely damaged economy following the disastrous war years, and the shortage in the UK labour force was a nice match to the under-utilised skills of those looking for work from the Caribbean. Although it could not have been imagined at that time as the 492 got off the boat, in less than fifteen years’ time from then, the British government would have to pass a law to restrict the entry of immigrants, the “1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act.” The adverts that had been posted and subsequent word of mouth from family members already having made the move proved to be more effective than the authorities could ever have believed possible, and soon well over a quarter of a million Afro-Caribbean people had found their way to Britain. This was starting to cause logistical and settling in problems which were now beginning to more than outweigh the benefits that were brought with their professional skills, even the skills of a highly dedicated Bookies’ Runner.

  Stanley walked out of Tilbury docks with a cardboard suitcase in his left hand and his ex-Army duffel bag slung casually over his right shoulder. Other than some scant information that he had managed to glean from fellow passengers following a few friendly card games during the voyage over (most of which had left him slightly up on where he had started the evening), Stanley had very little idea of where he really should be heading. He knew that to head east from Tilbury would only take him towards Southend on Sea (and he had heard that people only went to Southend in order to prepare for death, either self-inflicted or otherwise), heading north would take him to an area where several small towns were in the process of being amalgamated into a new town which, according to his fellow travellers, was going to be called Basildon, which Stanley did not like the sound of at all; so that really only left him the option of heading west towards the throbbing metropolis of London. So, to London it would be. After making enquiries as to where to catch a coach to get from Tilbury to London, he was eventually able to climb aboard a creaking vehicle which had somehow managed to survive the heavy bombardments of the previous years, and took his first trip aboard a non-Caribbean bus. The trip turned out to be infinitely more comfortable than the bus rides he had been used to back home, but for Stanley there was something that detracted from the full enjoyment of his journey. Right in the middle of the seat next to him where he had originally placed his duffel bag was a large, irregular stain. It reminded him of something which he couldn’t quite put his finger on, and to be fair, the last thing he wanted to do was put his finger on it, but it was distracting him and gnawing at the back of his mind as he tried to ignore it and look out the window as the fields, then built-up areas glided past him. Eventually, he could take it no more, and he moved his bag to one side, leaned over and sniffed hard at the stain.

  “Aha!” he exclaimed out loud in triumph, much to the surprise of his fellow passengers on the bus, “I knew it – curry!” and with the deep satisfaction of having solved a nagging conundrum that has been playing on your mind for a long time, he settled back in his seat with a serene smile. It’s the sign of a civilised society that enjoys a curry, he told himself, and rolled his lucky bottle top around inside his jacket pocket, lost in his own, deep thoughts.

  Stanley alighted at Victoria station in twelve degrees of warmth and a light drizzle. He closed his eyes and raised his face to the sky; welcome to a summer’s day in England, he mused.

  London was everything that St Lucia was not. There was a continuous cacophony of noise; there were traffic queues which mysteriously expanded and contracted like huge accordions under the conductorship of ever-changing traffic lights; people rushed everywhere, somehow being congested yet isolated at the same time. This is wonderful, thought Stanley as he walked wide eyed along the streets, for ever looking up and around in alternating waves of admiration and trepidation.

  “Oi, mind where you’re going; why don’t you fuck off back home, Paki.” This tirade had come from a bulky local grocer who had been bending over rearranging vegetables in the large baskets at the front of his shop, whom Stanley had inadvertently stumbled over whilst looking up at a particularly intricate piece of carving on the fascia of the flat above the grocery store. Stanley stood back in disbelief. He was not concerned about the swearing, nor even the man’s angry demeanour, he had after all nearly sent him sprawling, but, “Paki”? Stanley was one of the earliest Caribbean settlers to the UK, and as far as a lot of locals who had never travelled very far from their home towns were concerned, anyone whose skin was of a darker hue than a typical Caucasian but was not dark enough to be clearly from Sub-Saharan Africa, then by definition, had to be a “Paki.” This somewhat twisted logic was engendered by the fact that a large number of immigrants had already come over to the UK from the Indian continent, primarily from India itself and its brand new neighbour, Pakistan. Stanley was soon to discover that, as this irate grocer exemplified, not everybody in England was as calm and laid back as the folk were back on his mother island.

  Umhlabathi 2.4 Tuesday 15th March 1949; London

  Stanley was getting thoroughly disheartened at seeing the same sign in the windows of virtually every block of flats or apartments that he came across – “No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish.” Even though he knew that the sign could not refer to him in any technically accurate definition of each of the categories, the number of times his knock on a door had been answered by an unsmiling face pointing to the offensive notice in the window, had started to get to him. Eventually he decided to try one of the less salubrious-looking streets in the even less salubrious district of Hackney. A lot of the buildings still bore the scars from when London was the number one target for wave after wave of Dornier, Junkers and Heinkel bombers, and there were gaping holes like missing teeth in some of the rows of what were once, in their day, magnificent, intimidating terraces.

  He knocked apprehensively on the front door of the nearest building; at least there was no sign in the window of this house. An elderly, slightly surly-looking woman with swept back grey hair opened the door and eyed him suspiciously. She quickly made a decision after looking him up and down just twice with her intelligent, green eyes. “It’ll be ten and six a week, two weeks rent in advance, no parties, no women back to your room and the front door’s locked at 10:30.” Stanley thought he detected a faint trace of an Irish accent trying to be obscured, but he wasn’t s
ure.

  “No problem, I’ll take it,” he replied, and extended his hand to confirm the deal. The woman looked down at his outstretched hand, then up to his expectant face, then back down to his hand, shaking her head slowly in a resigned fashion.

  “You’re new to these parts, aren’t you?” she said with a sigh, ignoring his hand and turning her back on him. “Come on, follow me, I’ll show you your room,” and she proceeded to lead him up two flights of stairs, clutching at the wooden bannister as she went, the whole thing swaying dangerously each time she tugged on it as she pulled herself up to the next level of the house. Stanley followed closely behind, case held tightly in one hand, but not trusting the integrity of the hand rail to his other. He took in as much as he could of the various photos and old pictures that adorned the faded wall paper on the stairway as they went higher. They reached the landing, and she led him past two doors before finally stopping in front of a badly-painted bedroom door with a large number 3 on it made from brass that had dulled to almost black, and had not seen a touch of Brasso for many years. She reached into the front pocket of the flower-covered apron that was tied around her waist and drew out a large key.

  “Here you go,” she said offering him the key.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” said Stanley, putting down his case and starting to take the key from her. He soon realised that although she was offering him the key, she in fact was still holding onto the end of it very tightly indeed, and what looked like a farcical tug-of-war started to develop as the key moved backwards and forwards between them, either end being held tightly by each of them.

  “Well?” questioned the woman, peering intently into Stanley’s eyes.

  Stanley was initially puzzled by this woman’s sudden interest in his wellbeing, but politely replied, “Fine thank you,” and once again tried to wrestle the key from her, surprised at how strong a grip a relatively diminutive elderly woman could actually achieve.

  “No, I mean, well, where’s the two weeks rent in advance?” she explained, as if to a child.

  Stanley released his grip on the key, suddenly realising that these sorts of transactions were done differently in London than they would have been back on his island.

  “My apologies, ma’am,” he said sheepishly, and taking out his wallet he withdrew a single one-pound note. He looked at it almost reverently as he acknowledged that this would be the first transaction in this new country that would secure what was to be his first home, at least for a while. He sighed as he carefully examined the note, dutifully signed off by the Chief Cashier at the bank of England, Mr K. Peppiatt, and handed it over. The woman took it, but her hand remained held out.

  “Yes, I know,” continued Stanley, “You need a full Guinea,” and he took a shiny one shilling coin from his trouser pocket; he was used to working in Guineas from his experience with the horse-racing world.

  “I think that should be correct,” he said, placing the last of the money in the woman’s hand that wasn’t clutching the key in a vice-like grip. She looked at the money, then quickly thrust it into her apron pocket, at the same time pressing the key into his now empty hand.

  “I appreciate that,” she said, and as she started to make her way back towards the staircase to get back to her kitchen, she called over her shoulder “And to be sure, don’t forget – no ladies, and back by 10:30.” She quietly cursed herself as she descended the rickety staircase as the phrase had slipped out almost of its own volition; whenever you were trying to be something you were not, it would always be the inbuilt life’s reflexes that would give you away.

  Stanley smiled to himself as he put the key into the lock and gingerly turned it. He pushed open the door and then peered in with dismay at the 9x12ft room containing a single bed, a wardrobe with no door and a single wooden chair next to a woodworm-ridden chest of drawers. On top of this stood an enamel bowl with a large, matching chipped enamel jug. He looked around his new home with the peeling wallpaper and large, black damp patches clustering in clouds of unwelcoming mould slowly spreading around the window.

  He thought longingly of the days of his youth with the warmth of the Caribbean sunshine caressing his body as he relaxed on the beaches of Castries. Hackney’s late afternoon drizzle brought him back to the present.

  He lay his standard-issue demob cardboard suitcase in its canvas covering onto the bed.

  “Oh Stanley, what have you done?” he wondered out loud to himself.

  There was one saving grace about Stanley’s new accommodation. The room next to him, where the large brass number 2 had long ago been prised off, just leaving for identification the outline of where it had once been, had been let out to a young Polish man, round about the same age as Stanley, and whose sense of humour and heavy drinking habits were very much in tune with the young man from Castries. The occupant of number two went by the name of Witold Stanislav Raijevksi. Stanley had found it fascinating that the Pole’s middle name was from the same derivation as his own Christian name, and he was convinced that they had been thrown together in this building by some forces Not Of This World, and that fact, combined with their almost equal propensity to enjoy rum, sealed their friendship very shortly after Stanley had moved in.

  Not surprisingly, Stanley had decided that his new friend’s full name was a bit too much of a mouthful, so he decided that it needed toning down to something a lot more manageable.

  “Shit man, I can’t just call you ‘Wit,’” Stanley confided to his friend one evening as they worked their way through yet another bottle of Old Navy, “For a start off, it sounds like I’m saying you’re funny all the time, or worse, before you know it people will be calling you Shit-wit, as that rolls off the tongue just too nicely.”

  Earlier, they had been deep in discussions about what would be the best way to get their own back on The Right Honourable Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary, whom they mistakenly held as being personally responsible for the way all foreigners to the UK were viewed by the general public. However, as the rum started to take more and more of a hold, they had decided that a far more important and urgent issue was that of the Pole’s name. Once his friend had confirmed that, in spite of the odd-looking spelling, his name was actually pronounced, “Vituld Stanislav Rye-ev-ski,” Stanley leapt on the alcoholic connection and immediately announced, “Excellent; from here on in, I shall refer to you as my friend Rye,” and the pair had raised their glasses and clashed them noisily together before downing the contents in a couple of hefty gulps; a quick shake of the head, an exhaled “Mwah” accompanied by the raising of eyebrows as the eyes widened, then they were ready for another.

  Stanley unscrewed the cap from the rum bottle once again, then rolled it around in his callused hand a few times. He smiled to himself as he thought about his own lucky charm, and how, with all of the hundreds of thousands of buildings around, he had ended up in this house in a place the size of London, next door to this fine Polish young man now sat opposite him. The world turns in mysterious ways, he told himself.

  Umhlabathi 2.5 Saturday 30th July 1949; Lyons Tea Room

  Stanley’s early days in London had consisted of getting casual labour wherever he could, usually working in hotel kitchens or back rooms of cafés where just about enough money could be made to cover the rent, essential food and drink, then have a little left for a small treat now and again. Invariably this small treat would involve Rye and rum, but every now and again, Stanley decided that he needed to see a bit more of the English culture that he had heard so much about.

  On one such occasion, he thought he would check out what it was really like in the famous Lyons Tea Room that he had read about in the volumes of information he had picked up about London, since he had now decided to make this his first real home-base outside of St Lucia on his journey through life, at least for the foreseeable future. Rye was already occupied that Saturday afternoon in the company of a young Polish girl who was one of the cleaners at the same hotel that he worked at in the kitchen, so Stanley wa
s visiting the tea room on his own. As he walked into the beautifully decorated room with the symmetrically lined tables, out of the corner of his eye he spotted what he could only describe to himself later as A Vision Of Loveliness, a young waitress immaculately attired in the traditional Lyon’s black and white uniform, serving at a table where a family of four sat eagerly, and she was smiling broadly. Stanley did not know it then, but that lady was to become the future Mrs Marley.

  Mrs-Marley-To-Be had not had a good day. Not only had a foreign customer been extremely and unnecessarily rude to her earlier in the day (there had been a genuine misunderstanding in a reference to “Spotted Dick” on the menu), but also a number of over-ardent male diners in a group on one particular table had taken the opportunity to pinch Mrs-Marley-To-Be’s rear with exclamations of “How’s that for a Nip?” There really were no puns left that the Nippies, by which the waitresses at the Lyons Tea Room were affectionately known, hadn’t heard a hundred times or more before. Sometimes they cursed their own efficiency in their ability to quickly dart through the tables bringing customers their orders at remarkably impressive speeds which had forever saddled them with the label.

  Stanley watched for a short while as he worked out which of the tables each waitress serviced, then seated himself strategically at a table for two. Sure enough, in a very short space of time, his Vision Of Loveliness approached him, pad in hand.

  “Hello, how are you doing?” Stanley let the emphasis hang on the word “doing” in the way only someone from the Caribbean could, and he gave her his best winning smile. After her earlier encounters during the day, Mrs-Marley-To-Be was feeling very wary, and she eyed him suspiciously. Shit, he thought, why is she looking at me like that? That’s not the response I usually get.

  “The lardy cake is particularly good today,” countered Mrs-Marley-To-Be, pad and pencil held firmly in front of her, eyes slightly narrowed. This was her standard form of defence when not sure how to parry as yet unasked-for attention.