Brixton Bwoy Read online

  Pupatee always looked forward to Saturdays, when Joe would send him down to Brixton to do the shopping. Brixton was full of life, and with all the black people there Pupatee’s imagination would dance with memories of home. All sorts of Jamaican goods were sold in the markets and arcades. You could find mangoes there, and sugar-cane, water coconuts, yams, green bananas, sweet potatoes, coco and dasheen. Pupatee would often stop in delight, unable to believe his eyes, as he discovered some foodstuff he thought he had left behind for ever. When he finished his shopping, he would head over to sister Pearl’s, and play with his nephews Richie and Roland. Roland, who was just a year older than him, he liked especially.

  One morning, walking up from the shops towards sister Pearl’s, Pupatee found Roland in the street and they sat on the steps outside the house, laughing and joking and soaking up the summer sunshine. ‘That’s Trigger and Boobs,’ said Roland, pointing at two boys walking up the street towards them. As they approached, they began to shout at Roland, calling him names. Pupatee thought they were joking, but then Roland suddenly stood up and began to shout back at them, inviting them to follow up their words with action.

  The boys were both bigger than Roland and they lost no time in advancing, saying, ‘So wha, Roland, you a bad bwoy, you want fight?’

  By this time Pupatee had realised it was serious. “We no need to fight,’ he said, getting up.

  ‘Shut up, you fat bastard,’ said the one Roland had referred to as Trigger. His friend Boobs burst out laughing.

  ‘Who you talking?’ Pupatee asked.

  ‘You, you fat blob. You think I’m frightened of you, you fat bastard?’ Trigger and Pupatee were now only inches apart, eyeballing each other. Trigger was taller than Pupatee, but not as well built, and when Pupatee suddenly gave him an almighty push in the chest with both hands, he fell back and hit the floor like a sack of potatoes. Boobs came wading in flailing his arms, but Pupatee lashed out with a kick to the shin-bones and punched Boobs in the belly. Boobs ran back a few steps and stopped to recover his breath. He shouted, ‘Come on, you big fat overgrown gorilla.’

  Furious now, Pupatee charged at him and hit him at full pace, and a moment later Boobs was on his back. Meanwhile, Trigger had recovered and was shouting, ‘Go on, Boobs, go on, me friend.’ But Boobs got to his feet only to scarper down the street, with Trigger close behind him.

  On another day in Brixton, Pupatee got into an argument with a lad named Scoby. He was smaller than Pupatee, but older and wiser, and when Pupatee made his usual challenge, Scoby looked at him cockily.

  ‘You want to fight, no?’ he asked. ‘Wait, ah soon come back.’ With that he left, and returned with his much bigger friend, Mike, dressed in Dr Marten boots, Levi Staypress jeans and a Fred Perry tennis shirt. His clothes alone were enough to make Pupatee feel inadequate. Close behind came Mike’s older and even bigger brother, Big Youth.

  ‘Let we see who we are going to beat up today,’ laughed Big Youth.

  ‘Come off it, lads,’ said Roland, trying to save the situation. ‘This is my uncle and he didn’t mean no harm. Let’s cool it, eh?’

  The three boys stopped in their tracks. ‘OK, Roland,’ Scoby finally said. ‘We’ll forget it, but you’d better tell your uncle to watch who he gets cheeky with in the future.’ And with that they left.

  In all this time, Miss Utel only came back once to the house in Selborne Road. She turned up one day with Lena and Terry. Joe stared at her and said, ‘What do you want?’ Miss Utel tried running her hands through Joe’s hair, but Joe jumped up and protested, saying he wasn’t having any of that. He more or less told her to be on her way back to where she had come from, and shortly afterwards she and the children were gone.

  When Miss Utel had been at home, Pupatee had listened to the names Joe called her – prostitute and whore and the like – and had been surprised that they made her cry. Joe wasn’t hitting her, after all, and as Pops used to say, ‘cuss-cuss never bore hole in skin’. But now, alone in the house with Joe and subject to lashings from his vicious tongue, Pupatee began to see the power of words.

  When a visitor come to the house and asked Joe, ‘Oh, is this your little brother?’ Joe would say something like, ‘No, when my mother gave birth they took my brother and gave her that fucking afterbirth.’ Some visitors would laugh, but others would look pained and tell Joe not to talk like that in front of Pupatee. On their own, Joe would continue with the same theme. ‘You can’t be my brother,’ he would say. ‘There must have been a mistake at the hospital, they must have switched babies to give Mama a little bastard like you.’ Pupatee thought of his friend Jimmy, who had tried to show him that words could cool situations better than fists; and even his nephew Roland seemed to know that. But here in Selborne Road, Joe’s words could break Pupatee’s spirit just as his flex wire bruised the boy’s flesh.

  Once, for some reason Pupatee never knew, Joe took him on one of his driving jobs. He was dressed in his dark grey suit and cap with its British Rail badge on it. They drove in Joe’s Vauxhall down to the depot where they picked up a long vehicle full of goods, and then set off through the city and out into the countryside. It seemed like hours later when they arrived at a big farm. Joe pulled in and they were told to leave the truck to be unloaded and go and have some breakfast. Pupatee followed Joe towards a building, thinking they were heading for a kitchen or a cafe, but as they drew closer Pupatee heard mooing and picked up a strong smell of flesh and blood.

  Only when they entered the building did Pupatee realise it was a slaughterhouse. In Jamaica, Pupatee had killed many small animals and had always wanted to join in the killing of the big fatted calves. But perhaps the years in England had softened him, or perhaps it was the difference between what had seemed natural in Jamaica and what seemed so unnatural here, for the place made Pupatee sick.

  In front of them was a narrow channel, fenced off on either side with metal barriers. Inside was a row of cows. The channel was only just wide enough for a single line of them and they were being slowly driven forward, one at a time. As the animals neared the front, they began to smell and see the fate that awaited them, but there was nothing they could do. They could not turn around in the channel and they could not retreat, because there were more cows pushing from behind. They rolled their eyes in fear.

  Pupatee watched, transfixed with horror, as the first animal reached the front gate. The gate opened, but the terrified creature pulled back in desperation, rearing up slightly and mooing in a horrible way. For a moment, the cows behind bunched up and the one in front managed to hold itself back, but then they were all driven forward and the first cow lurched into the death trap. It was held tightly in place, unable to move as it was finished off. A tool like a screwdriver was fired into its head, and it let out a dying cry and fell to its knees with a jolt. A metal shutter opened, and the corpse rolled out towards the waiting butchers, who set about skinning it with long knives. Steam rose as the beast’s hide fell away from its flanks, and the hot smell of bone being sawn and the sound of flesh slapping against cold stone as other animals were carved up made Pupatee want to sick. He stared at the scene below, like a vision of hell, with tears in his eyes. Then the shutter closed and the next cow fell into the death trap. The whole place stank of stale blood.

  ‘Yeah, take a good look,’ Joe suddenly said. Pupatee had almost forgotten his brother was standing beside him. ‘If you don’t behave yourself this is where I’ll bring you and toss you in there so you can go the same way as the cows.’

  Pupatee had enough sense to realise that Joe didn’t mean what he was saying. He was trying to frighten him to keep him in line, and there was a faint smile on his face, but the words had their effect. Pupatee knew he was no angel, and he deserved some of what Joe dished out to him. His brother was a proud man and an honest man and he wanted Pupatee to grow up better than he saw him doing. But the punishment Pupatee received from Joe was always out of proportion to the crime.

  Despite the fear of
a beating, Pupatee still regularly took out Joe’s bike and went racing. Joe had never found out it was his bike that had caused the damage to that man’s car. One sunny afternoon Pupatee and some other boys were careering through Camberwell when they came to a big hill that led down to Goose Green. Pupatee was in the lead, and he went tearing down that hill at a terrible pace. At the give-way sign at the bottom, he pulled desperately at the brakes and the bike went into a skid. Both Pupatee and his vehicle hit the ground and slid and tumbled down the road.

  The bike wasn’t badly damaged, but Pupatee was hurt. He couldn’t feel or use his left hand. He took the bike home and then decided he should have his hand looked at, so he walked down to casualty at King’s College Hospital, where he found out his wrist was broken. Bandaged up, he left the hospital sorrowfully. After the last beating, he really didn’t want to go home. He was already injured and it seemed to him that Joe was going to kill him sooner or later. In some ways he would have welcomed death, but he couldn’t face it from Joe. So he turned away from home and walked around until he came to Ruskin Park. Eventually the keeper threw him out and locked the gate. But the park had seemed so pleasant, much more pleasant than what awaited him at home, that Pupatee simply climbed back over the wall.

  The birds were singing their dusk songs, ducks were honking and squirrels were running up and down tree-trunks. Pupatee walked between horse-chestnut trees and sycamores and the overflowing flower-beds. The swings and slides were all empty, but he didn’t feel like playing. He found a group of benches beside a bed planted with roses and, choosing one, lay himself down intent on spending the night there.

  The night grew darker and Pupatee watched the stars come out, one by one. Although he was cold and in pain, he was overcome by that big night sky and for a while he did not sleep. He was content to just lie there, and soon he found himself relaxing. He was away from Joe. Slowly, his eyes began to close. He heard a sound and peering into the night he saw three shadowy figures coming towards the benches.

  At first he thought they might be ghosts. Then he saw them sit down on a nearby bench and draw parcels wrapped in brown paper from their pockets and from inside their raggedy coats and jackets. They unscrewed the tops from their bottles and he listened to the slurps as they drank and laughed. Pupatee was frightened to death, for they were all big and rough looking. He lay still and prayed they wouldn’t notice him, hoping that the morning would come soon with its sunlight and the safety of other people. He would even have welcomed being caught by the park keeper and given a few licks with the stick he used to pick up rubbish.

  And then one of the tramps lifted his head and peered towards him. Excitedly, he touched one of his fellows and pointed at Pupatee. They all began to chatter and they stood up and silently began to creep towards Pupatee, hands outstretched. He closed his eyes, pretending to be asleep, and began to wish he was at home with Joe. Opening his eyes a crack, Pupatee saw them in the full moonlight. Their coats were ragged and their faces harsh and unshaven. They were so close they could have reached out and touched him. Then one put his hands in the air to stop the others.

  ‘It’s just a kid,’ the tramp said. ‘Leave him, he’s just a kid.’

  A sense of ease descended on Pupatee, dissolving after a moment into a faint feeling of regret, for part of him wished to be torn from his life. He would still have to face all his problems in the morning.

  Pupatee was still nervous and lay absolutely still until eventually he must have fallen asleep, for suddenly the sun was up and the birds were singing away. The tramps were gone and the road by the park was busy with traffic. He opened his eyes wide and saw an aeroplane crossing the sky overhead. If only he could be on that plane, flying back to Jamaica, to Mama and Pops and Carl and Gamper, he thought. Then he got up and brushed the thought away. It was not often he turned his mind to Jamaica. He had left the island, left his family, left that part of him behind.

  He walked out of the park and began to follow the roads at random, thinking he should go back to Camberwell. And after a while he began to recognise the streets again and he realised where his mind had secretly been taking him: he was heading towards Brixton. Before long, he was walking through streets he knew well, making his way to Kellett Road and sister Pearl’s house.

  When he knocked on the pink door it was Roland who came to open it. ‘Pupatee,’ he said, with a look of horror and pity on his face. ‘Ah weh you’ been? Uncle Joe ah look everway fe you. Him ah go mad! If me was you, me would ah gone home already.’

  ‘Me frighten him ah go beat me up,’ Pupatee said.

  ‘Den ah wha happen to you hand, man?’

  Pupatee told him the whole story and Roland shook his head. ‘Me tink Uncle Joe phone de Babylon,’ he said. Just then, sister Pearl appeared and when she heard what Pupatee had done she asked why he hadn’t come to her first.

  ‘Joe ah go beat me,’ Pupatee said simply. ‘So me no want go home.’

  Sister Pearl looked at him. She seemed concerned. Then she said, ‘You hungry? Come, Roland mek you some brekfast. Go wash in ah de bathroom upstairs.’

  From the bathroom, Pupatee heard her call Roland. ‘Go look fe one ah you big T-shirts fe Pupatee wear, and bring down de dotty one him did ah wear fe wash.’

  ‘Yea, Ma.’

  Upstairs, in Roland’s and Richie’s room, Richie was reading a Superman comic. Pupatee went to the window and looked out into the garden. He felt warm and comforted by Sister Pearl’s house.

  ‘Yea man, Joe did come round vex, vex, vex!’ Roland said when he came up.

  ‘Me feel him ah go kill you, Pupatee,’ Richie added.

  Pupatee looked at Richie and wished that he was him, safe and sound in his own family house, without a worry in the world.

  Later that day, Joe came for Pupatee and took him back to Selborne Road. Sister Pearl made a half-hearted protest, but Joe was her older brother. The night Pupatee spent in the park had begun to change things, both in the eyes of his family, and somewhere deep inside himself.

  Pupatee was still cooking for Joe and cleaning the house, but Joe was spending more and more time away in the evenings and at weekends. He would come home, change out of his uniform into his shirt and tie and suit and get in his Vauxhall Victor, looking cheerful and slick, and zoom away. Pupatee never really knew where he was going, though he assumed he must have had women. Joe didn’t often bring friends to the house. He had lost his best friend Cecil when Miss Utel was still living at home. Cecil had visited the house a couple of times during the day, quite innocently as far as Pupatee knew, but Joe had gone mad, calling Miss Utel a whore and threatening Cecil.

  When Joe was away, Pupatee was happy at home. He had the house to himself and didn’t mind the darkness outside. He wasn’t scared. He had grown up in Jamaica where there was no electricity and the nights were pitch black and full of strange noises.

  Pupatee did what he could to have some sort of a life outside home. Though he had given up on the boxing, he signed on for school activities such as swimming and acting. Whenever possible, he headed down to Brixton to visit sister Pearl and Roland. He was even glad enough to work. He had lost his job at Mr Memmet’s shop, and found a new one with another greengrocer down the street. This one, Dave, had a beautiful young assistant, a brunette who always wore miniskirts no matter how cold it was. Dave never left any money lying around for Pupatee to take, but he was a kind employer and would give him as much overripe fruit as he could carry, which meant that some of Joe’s shopping money could stay in Pupatee’s pocket.

  Every so often, Dave and his assistant would disappear into the back room and come out a little later looking exhausted. Pupatee was trusted to keep an eye on the shop, but he didn’t know how to work the till, so when customers wanted to pay he would go out to the back and often caught Dave and his assistant tangled together.

  One day, Dave was out back and the assistant told Pupatee to fetch him into the shop. Pupatee walked back and called out, ‘Dave, your girlfriend
wants you.’ When the greengrocer came out into the shop full of customers, he gave Pupatee a stare, while the assistant had a look of horror on her face. When everyone had gone, including the assistant, Dave took him aside.

  ‘Why did you call her my girlfriend, Pupatee?’ he said. ‘She is not my girlfriend.’

  Pupatee turned away, thinking it better not to say anything. He began to pick up an empty box to take out into the back when Dave said, ‘Tell you what, Pupatee, put a few things in that box for when you go home.’

  ‘OK,’ Pupatee said, and put a few bits of old fruit in as usual.

  ‘Take more, Pupatee,’ Dave said, and he started picking up fresh fruit and vegetables and filling up the box. ‘Have this, and this,’ he said. ‘And take this. How about some of that over there?’

  Pupatee was confused and beginning to get frightened. Joe would never believe he had been given all this. He would assume Pupatee had stolen it.

  ‘Dave, you’ll have to come and tell my brother you gave me all this,’ Pupatee said.

  ‘Look, Pupatee,’ the greengrocer said after a pause. ‘I need a younger boy to work for me now, because you are getting older and I don’t want to pay higher wages.’

  ‘It’s OK, you can pay me anything.’

  ‘No, Pupatee, a younger boy. I can give him a pound and no one can complain.’ Then he took five pounds and stuffed it in Pupatee’s pocket.

  That night, Pupatee got a beating for losing the job.