Brixton Bwoy Read online

  ‘Oh no, Mama,’ Pupatee stuttered. He was happy at home with Mama and Pops and Carl. But to his horror, Joe agreed.

  ‘I suppose he could wash my car on Sundays,’ he said. ‘You can send him over in a few weeks.’

  And that was that. There was nothing Pupatee could do. Mama had made up her mind and he was going to England. After all, Joe was there and so was another brother and several of his sisters. Pupatee would be looked after fine.

  When the day finally came for Pupatee to leave for England, his father was not his normal self. Pops barely looked at him or said goodbye. He didn’t want his youngest son to go, but he hadn’t been able to persuade his wife. She was a determined woman. Mama, Carl and Pupatee left Pops behind and set out for town, where they stayed overnight, and the next day they made their way to the airport.

  At last the moment came when they all stood by the escalator that would take Pupatee to the plane and away from everything familiar.

  ‘Bye Mama, bye Carl,’ he said quietly, turning to start up the escalator.

  ‘Wait!’ Mama cried. ‘You not going to kiss Mama before you go to England?’

  Pupatee ran back and threw himself at his mother, hugging and kissing her. Then she gently sent him on his way. As he was carried along on the escalator, tears dripped on to his shoes. It was the first escalator he had ever seen.

  2

  Fish and Chips in the Snow

  The world was white and when Pupatee bent down and picked up some of it, it was cold, like the ice he knew from drinks called skyjuice or snowballs back in Jamaica. He shivered and stuffed his hands deep in his pockets and walked out on to the slippery pavement of Selborne Road, Camberwell. The snow was on cars, on rooftops, on the branches of trees. It seemed to have taken the place of leaves. He wondered why there were no leaves on the trees.

  Pupatee watched a group of children across the street playing with the snow, scooping it up and throwing it at each other. A skinny white boy with yellow hair slipped some down the back of a girl and made her scream. A moment later the children were all ducking and sliding and laughing, having the time of their lives. In the distance Pupatee heard a train rattle by.

  He walked on alone, marvelling at the sights of this new world. The people were various colours, black and white and yellow. The streets were filled with cars and lined with huge buildings. It was all so tall and enclosed. Pupatee stepped gingerly along, his feet unsure beneath him in his tightly laced new shoes. Cars slid down the roads, where the white snow had turned to a grey slush. People in thick coats walked hurriedly along. He passed the Odeon picture house and a huge walled building that was King’s College Hospital. A little further along, white people in long coats were queuing up at a window, buying food wrapped in newspaper. The smell of frying oil made him realise he was hungry, so he turned the corner and headed back in the direction of his brother’s house.

  As he approached Selborne Road, he saw the kids had stopped playing with the snow. Some of the faces had changed, but he recognised the skinny boy with blond hair and blue eyes. He was dressed in blue jeans and black boots, and he had a blue and red anorak with a fur-lined hood hanging down behind. A white scarf was wrapped twice round his neck with its ends dangling below his waist. Pupatee felt very underdressed. The boy’s shoulders were hunched and he was hugging himself against the cold. As Pupatee walked by, the boy looked at him and shouted out, ‘Ha, I think I seen you somewhere before, mate. Was it Africa?’ At this, all the other children burst out laughing. Pupatee stood there puzzled. He barely understood the words and he certainly didn’t get the joke. He was so cold his blood seemed to be turning to ice in his veins.

  ‘What’s your name, mate?’ the skinny boy asked, his voice softening as if he felt bad for making fun of him. Pupatee understood this question. ‘Pupatee,’ he replied.

  This set the whole gang laughing again. When they had calmed down, the only black boy among them said, ‘That’s an old man’s name. How old are you, Pupatee? About seventy-five?’ They were all in stitches now, while Pupatee stood there, frozen with misery and shock. ‘Pupatee,’ the black boy said. ‘Pupatee, bet you are the good-looking one in your family.’

  Pupatee understood enough of this to feel the shame begin to burn inside him. While they carried on laughing, he turned down his face. When he found the door, he ran inside and washed his face so Miss Utel, Joe’s wife, would not know Pupatee had been crying.

  Miss Utel was in the kitchen. She was short and had shiny dark skin, and when she flashed her smile her single gold tooth would twinkle. Her black hair was bunched on top of her head, streaked with a single block of grey. She wore a thick white woolly pullover and a black knee-length skirt with a big button at the waist. She always wore blue slippers in the house. Pupatee liked her.

  ‘You hungry, Pupatee?’ she called out.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered, when he had finished washing. Strange smells were wafting up from the stove where Miss Utel was cooking. They certainly didn’t smell like ackee and saltfish and Mama’s hot chocolate, and when Miss Utel put the plate down in front of him Pupatee couldn’t identify what was on it. The only thing Pupatee recognised was the egg. The rest were like strangers to him: sausages, fish fingers and baked beans. But he was famished, and he loved eating. He would get used to bland English food, but he would never stop thinking about fried fish and plantain and allspice, and mangoes that tasted like sunshine.

  Brother Joe had gone to work early. Joe and Miss Utel had five children, Johnny, Terry, Tracy, Lena and a baby girl still in arms named Jasmine. The older kids had gone off to school.

  ‘Me ah go school too?’ Pupatee asked Miss Utel. He felt comfortable alone with her and less strange, but he was anxious not to be left out.

  ‘No, Pupatee. You don’t start school until we sort it out with the head teacher,’ she explained. ‘And you must get accustomed to the way they speak in England, because they don’t rate the patois. Pupatee, are you listening to me?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Utel, but me no understand one word yet.’

  ‘Oh dear me.’ She laughed. ‘Try to talk like everyone else in England. You understand that?’

  ‘Me understand little ah it no much,’ he said, confused by this new language.

  While Pupatee ate his food, Miss Utel tried to simplify it for him. ‘Look, Pupatee, patois is broken English,’ she said.

  ‘How dem broke it, Miss Utel?’

  She laughed again. ‘Cho me we mek de kids show you later.’ This time, Pupatee laughed too, as he realised she could talk Jamaican. ‘You understand dat, no?’

  Pupatee nodded, happier.

  ‘You ah fe learn fe chat English,’ she said.

  ‘But me no want talk English, man!’

  ‘If you brother Joe hear you seh dat him beat you, you see, man?’

  ‘How Pupatee talk English?’ The words almost flew out of his mouth. He had already felt Joe’s beating in Jamaica.

  ‘Well, if you no hear wha someone seh, instead you say “wha”, you say “pardon”, or “beg your pardon”, not “wha you seh”.’

  ‘Oh, me see wha you mean.’

  ‘And when you see wha someone mean or you hear wha dem seh, you seh, “Pupatee understand” or “fair enough”.’

  ‘Fear enough,’ Pupatee managed to say.

  ‘Yes, that’s good. I’d better go back to English talk now or when your brother comes home I will say to him, “See you dinner yah!” and he will kill me in this house tonight.’

  There was much to learn in England. Pupatee had already discovered the miracle of lights and light switches. In Jamaica, he had seldom seen electric lights except from afar, twinkling in the dark night. But now he was staying in a house full of lights which he could turn on and off. Then there was the television. He had played at school with a Viewmaster, a plastic box that displayed slides, but television was something else. When it came on that first afternoon he stared in amazement. He tried speaking to the people inside, but they didn’t seem
to hear him. Unworried, he sat down to watch. It seemed only a minute later that his nephews and nieces piled home from school, laughing and shouting. Pupatee stood up and vacated his chair so Johnny and Terry, who were older than him, could claim their places in front of the television.

  ‘Have you all said good evening to your Uncle Pupatee?’ Miss Utel scolded them. ‘Good evening,’ they chorused, and everyone laughed. Pupatee joined in and none of them could stop. For the first time Pupatee almost felt at home. Miss Utel was kind and his nephews and nieces were friendly enough. He hadn’t chosen to leave the sun of Jamaica for this new, cold, white land. But he was ready to make the most of it.

  For the first few days, Pupatee did not see much of his brother. Joe worked as a driver for British Rail and when he came home after work, still in his grey uniform and cap, he would unloosen his tie and put his feet up, and Miss Utel would bring him his dinner. By the time he was finished and ready for a few beers and some television, the children were going to bed.

  Pupatee slept in a room with Johnny and Terry. On his second or third night, he wet his bed. He was nine years old, and he felt ashamed, so he washed his pyjamas himself and hung them out on the line to dry, as he would have done in Jamaica. That night, he had undressed before he realised his pyjamas were still outside. He ran naked downstairs and out into the garden to fetch them. They were still wet and cold. On his way back, the other children saw him. Their laughter carried through to the sitting-room.

  ‘What is it?’ Joe’s voice boomed through the house. The next thing Pupatee knew he was in the hall, glowering at him.

  ‘Boy, what are you doing, put some clothes on!’ he shouted, taking off his belt as he did so. Pupatee stood there, quaking with cold and fear. Joe raised his belt and then brought it down on his brother’s bare flesh, giving him lash after lash. The children had vanished but Miss Utel came out and cried and pleaded with Joe to stop. Pupatee ran upstairs, dragging the unwearable pyjamas behind him. As he lay shivering in bed, he vowed he would not make any more mistakes and prayed that Joe would not beat him again. It was a prayer Pupatee would repeat over and over until he eventually lost faith in receiving any response. For in that house, Joe’s word and belt were law.

  In those first few weeks, before Pupatee went to school, he set about exploring this strange new world. Selborne Road was as different from the farm in Jamaica as snow from hot sun. There was a constant rumble of traffic along the hard streets, and the only birds he heard were the pigeons cooing on the rooftops. Terraced houses, some with four or five bedrooms and three floors, were packed in side by side, full of people. There were far more buildings than trees.

  Camberwell in those days had a very mixed population. Pupatee had seen different sorts of people in Jamaica, but nothing to compare to this. There were West Indians, Africans, Chinese, Indians and Irish, as well as ordinary white English people, all living close together. Although Pupatee was aware that he was different from many of them, and jokes were made about the colour of his skin, he never thought of it as a problem. Kids of all sorts played together. If there were divisions, they were not between races, but age groups. The kids were in league against the world of adults, and they stuck together.

  Before long, Pupatee began getting to know the local kids. The skinny white boy who had called out to him that first day was Jimmy, a coalman’s son and the leader of all the kids in the neighbourhood. The black boy who had teased him was Lass, Jimmy’s right-hand man. As Lass carried on making fun of him, Pupatee became used to being the object of jokes, and eventually he even began to join in.

  Sometimes Pupatee would accompany the other boys down to Ruskin Park, where he was relieved to see all the big trees, though dismayed at how bare they were. He looked in vain for mangoes or oranges, but these English trees had nothing on them worth eating.

  Pupatee had never seen so many shops. There was a sweet shop and a newsagent that sold papers and magazines and birthday cards, and a big Turkish café near the traffic lights. There was a hardware store crammed to the ceiling with wallpaper, paraffin, brooms, planks of wood and tins of shiny nails. Next door there was a cake shop and Pupatee would always stop to stare at the tarts and pies and pastries topped with fruit icing. There was a shop that sold carpets and a shop that sold musical instruments; toy shops and bicycle shops, a bookie, and a store that was packed with car parts. There was a greengrocer, but it didn’t have any pawpaw or breadfruit. Next to the Odeon there was a pet shop that had mice and goldfish and kittens in the window, a butcher, a flower stall, and a fish-and-chip shop that filled the street with the smells of frying food. Pupatee couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw all these shops. In Jamaica he had only ever known two.

  Pupatee also met some of his family. He had four sisters in England. Kathleen and Annette lived in Birmingham, so he only met them occasionally, but Pearl and Ivy were in London, only a bus ride away, and whenever Pupatee could pluck up his courage he would ask Joe if he could go and visit them.

  Pearl lived in Brixton, seven stops away on the 45 or 35 bus, while Ivy was another nine stops on from Pearl. Pearl and Ivy were hard-working housewives, both of them gentle and kind, mothers of three and four children respectively. Pupatee felt comforted and at ease when he was with his sisters, especially Pearl who lived in Kellett Road with her husband, Mr H, and her three children, Roland, Richie and Selena. Roland was a year older than him and he and Pupatee soon became fast friends. In time, he took the place of Carl, whose companionship Pupatee sorely missed. For the next few years Brixton, with sister Pearl’s love and Roland’s friendship, would be an occasional haven from life in Camberwell with Joe.

  By this time, Joe was beating Pupatee regularly. Pupatee had quickly learned not to put even the smallest foot out of place in Joe’s house – but something would always go wrong. One day, Pupatee was playing with his nephews Johnny and Terry in the back yard, and he forgot himself and swore. Johnny ran inside like a bullet. ‘Mum, Mum, Pupatee said “blood claat”.’

  ‘What?’ Miss Utel said. ‘Pupatee, come here! What kind of bad words are you using in front of the children?’

  ‘Ah no dat me seh, Miss Utel.’

  ‘Never mind, man, tell it to your brother when he comes in.’

  His worrying started there, for Joe was due home any minute, and it was not long before he arrived like the Devil himself.

  I’m glad you’ve come in time to talk to your brother,’ Miss Utel said. ‘Swearing in front of the children.’ She must have known it would mean a beating for him. Swearing was strictly forbidden.

  ‘What!’ cried Joe, and before Pupatee could move he was slapping him with his hand. Then he took off his belt and lashed him with it repeatedly. When it was done Pupatee crept to bed, frightened and lonely. He lay there miserably, thinking how far he was from home – but it was no use hoping Mama or Pops could help him now. He would write a few clumsy words to them whenever Joe told him to, and from time to time they would write back. But they were a long way off, and he couldn’t tell them how he really felt. They were in Jamaica and out of sight, and he was here in England with no prospect of going home. So as time passed and Pupatee learned to be self-reliant, his parents slowly faded further and further from his thoughts.

  Even when Joe was out, Pupatee was never entirely happy, for Joe’s behaviour hung over his life like a shadow. After a while, whenever six o’clock drew near, Pupatee would start to feel sick and tired, for that was the time when Joe came home and he was likely to get another beating. The worst thing was when he had done something early in the day, and Miss Utel would tell him that Joe would hear about it later. Sometimes he did not understand what it was he had done wrong, and it seemed even she had given up on him. But on the occasions when he was aware of his crime, the anticipation and fear would ruin his whole day just the same. And when Joe came home and heard what Pupatee had done Pupatee would see the rage spreading over his brother who would bite his lip at the prospect of the punishment he would exact. He
would order the boy upstairs, and tell him to take off all his clothes except his underpants and wait for him there.

  One black day, after a beating with Joe’s belt, Pupatee foolishly told the children it hadn’t hurt. He was overheard by Joe and Miss Utel. Miss Utel only laughed, but Joe started biting his lip and giving Pupatee that crazed look. The next time Pupatee was judged to have done something wrong, Joe really beat him, using flex wire from an old electric heater. The wire was thick, and plaited together. That beating really hurt.

  Sometimes Miss Utel would feel sorry for Pupatee. Joe would beat her too. In the time Pupatee lived in the same house as Miss Utel, blows from Joe broke her nose and her arm. Joe was easier on his own children, but even they were frightened to death of him. But he reserved his best – or his worst – for Pupatee. Everything Pupatee did was wrong. Unlike Pops, who had stopped beating Pupatee when he thought he had hurt him, Joe had no pity. ‘Get up the stairs!’ he would shout, and his voice echoed in Pupatee’s mind like Big Ben tolling the time.

  Pupatee tried everything, from begging Joe for mercy to letting the flex hit him across the face and putting his hands to his eyes and screaming, ‘Lord, bredda, me eye, woo ho, please bredda, do!’ But somehow it seemed that this only got Joe more excited and angry. Once, Pupatee tried the trick that had worked so well with Pops and pretended that Joe had beaten him unconscious. But it didn’t dampen Joe’s enthusiasm for the task, and he just carried on with the beating until the licks made Pupatee revive again. ‘Bredda, no lick me no more, do!’ Pupatee cried, and then Joe only lashed him harder for having played dead and tried to decoy his way out of the punishment.