First he felt a rush of dizziness like life was leaving his body, then the world wobbled. Abbey stopped and held onto a bollard outside the Palace Theatre. He had not eaten all day. He considered nipping down to Maama Rose’s for fried dumplings and kidney beans, but the thought of eating brought nausea to his throat. He steered his mind away from food. He gave himself some time then let go of the bollard to test his steadiness. His head felt right, and his vision was back. He started to walk tentatively at first then steadily, down Oxford Road, past the Palace Hotel, under the train bridge, upwards, towards the Grosvenor Picture Palace.
Abbey was set to return to Uganda. He had already paid for the first leg of the journey – the passage from Southampton to Mombasa – and was due to travel within six months. For the second and third legs of the journey – Mombasa to Nairobi, then Nairobi to Kampala – he would pay at the ticket offices on arrival. He had saved enough to start a business either dealing in kitenge textiles from the Belgian Congo or importing manufactured goods from Mombasa. Compete with the Indians even. As a starter, he had bought rolls of fabric prints from Summer Mist Textiles for women’s dresses and for men’s suits, to take with him. All that commercial development in Uganda he had read about – increased use of commercial vehicles; the anticipated opening of the Owen Falls Dam, which would provide electricity for everyone; he had even heard that Entebbe had opened an airport back in 1951 – was beckoning.
But his plan was in jeopardy. It was his one-month-old baby, Moses. Abbey had just returned from Macclesfield Children’s Home, where the baby’s mother, Heather Newton, had given him up for adoption, but he had not seen his son. In fact, he did not know what the baby looked like: he never saw him in hospital when he was born. Abbey suspected that Heather feared that one day she might bump into him and Moses. But Heather was fearful for nothing. Abbey was taking Moses home, never to return.
Suppose the children’s home gave you the child, what then, hmm? the other side of his mind asked. What do you know about babies? The journey from Southampton to Mombasa is at least two weeks long on a cheap vessel. The bus ride from Mombasa to Nairobi would last up to two days. Then the following night you would catch the mail train from Nairobi to Kampala: who knows if it is still running? All those journeys with luggage and a six-month-old ankle-biter on your own. Yet Abbey knew that if he left Britain without his boy, that would be it. Moses would be adopted, given a new name and there would be no way of finding him. Then his son would be like those rootless Baitale children you heard of in Toro, whose Italian fathers left them behind.
He was now outside Manchester Museum, by the university. He was on his way to his second job, at the Princess Road bus depot, where he cleaned Manchester Corporation buses. His shift began at 9 p.m. It was almost 8 p.m., but the day was bright. He could not wait to get home and tell people how in Britain the sun had moods. It barely retired in summer yet in winter it could not be bothered to rise. He could not wait to tell them things about Britain. It was a shame he had stayed this long. But having a job and saving money made him feel like he was not wasting his youth away in a foreign land. His day job paid the bills while the evening job put savings away in his Post Office account. His mind turned on him again: Maybe Heather had a point – you don’t have a wife to look after Moses while you work. You still have five months before you set off; if the home gives him to you, how will you look after him? But then shame rose and reason was banished. Blood is blood, a child is better off with his father no matter what.
He reached Whitworth Park. It was packed with people sunning themselves, young men throwing and catching Frisbees, families picnicking. At the upper end, close to Whitworth Art Gallery, he caught sight of a group of Teddy boys who, despite the warm evening, wore suits, crêpe-soled shoes and sunglasses, their greased hair slicked back. They looked like malnourished dandies. Even though Teddy Boys tended to hunt blacks in the night, Abbey decided against crossing the park. Instead, he walked its width to Moss Lane East. The way the sun had defrosted British smiles. ‘Enjoy it while it lasts,’ strangers will tell you now.
Abbey arrived in Manchester aboard the Montola, a Dutch merchant ship, on 2 February 1950. That morning, the Montola limped into the Manchester Ship Canal on one engine and docked in Salford for repairs. It had been on its way to Scotland when it ran into difficulty. The crew had anticipated a delay of one or two weeks and would then carry on with the voyage. Abbey was hiding in the engine room when Ruwa, a Chagga colleague from Tanganyika, came down from the deck excited. ‘Come up, Abu. Yengland is here.’
Since entering cold climes at sea, Abu had stayed in the engine room. Everywhere else on the ship was freezing. Ruwa, who was a ‘specialist’ on Europe, kept laughing: ‘What will you do when we get to Scotland, the second coldest place on earth?’ (According to Ruwa, Amsterdam held the trophy for coldness.) The unnatural heat in the engine room had so swollen Abu’s hands and feet that his shoes were too tight. At the time, Abbey’s name was Abu Bakri. He had named himself when he first arrived in Mombasa, even though he was not circumcised. Mombasa, especially the port, was run by Arabs and Zanzibaris who had a deep mistrust for non-Muslims and contempt for Africans. Luckily, his skin tone was light enough to pass for a Waswahili. Once he learnt the language, it was easy to pass himself off as Muslim. Soon, he was cursing and swearing like an Arab. When he arrived in Britain he changed Abu to Abbey like Westminster Abbey and Bakri into Baker like Sir Samuel Baker. But his grandfather had named him Ssuuna Jjunju.
Wrapped in a blanket coat Ruwa lent him, Abu stepped out of the engine room and onto the short deck to see Yengland. The wind, like an icy blade, sliced through his lips, ears and nose. His puffed body deflated.
On approach, the Manchester Ship Canal seemed vast, wide. But then the Montola had to wait outside the canal as the Manchester Regiment, a monstrosity – imagine a whole village elevated to treetop level – trundled out, making the Montola seem like a dugout canoe. Then they started again, slowly, towards docked ships where everything seemed to be in a rush. Now the canal looked compact, tightly packed. Everywhere, ships, ships, ships. The horizon was masts and funnels and smoke. The mist was dark. Men climbing up and down hulls by means of ropes, men cleaning, men standing on suspended planks painting hulls, cranes loading, cranes offloading, ships departing, ships arriving. The way everyone rushed, the gods must have been stingy with time in England.
‘Look, cotton bales have arrived too’ – Abu pointed at a ship – ‘they’re from home!’
‘They come from all over the world. Everything ends up here. See that building there? Cotton on that ship will go into that mill today, come out as fabrics tomorrow, get loaded on the same ship and head back to the colonies for us to buy.’ Ruwa made a money-counting motion with his fingers. ‘That’s how they make money.’
‘Ah ya, ya, ya! They’re too rich.’
‘Tsk, this is nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
Ruwa did not respond because Abu was gawking and being backward and not hiding it.
‘What’s that smoke doing coming out of buildings; won’t they catch fire?’
‘In this country, you have to light fires to keep warm.’
‘You mean people are in there roasting themselves right now?’
‘Kdt.’
They docked.
A clock across on a building claimed 8.30 in the morning but the sun was nowhere. The world’s ceiling was low and grey, the air was smoke-mist, the soil was black. After a silence of disbelief, Abu whispered, ‘Where is the sun?’
Ruwa laughed.
‘No wonder these people are just too eager to leave this place: the sun does not come out?’
‘Sometimes it does. Mostly it rains.’
‘All this wealth but no sun?’
‘That’s why they love it at ours too much. Always taking off their clothes and roasting themselves.’
Abu wanted to stay on the ship until it was repaired but Ruwa, who had been to Manchester several times, held his hand and led him into Salford. Abu, twenty-one years old, gripped Ruwa’s hand like a toddler. They set off for a seamen’s club, the Merchant Navy Club in Moss Side, where they would know where his friend, Kwei, a Fante from the Gold Coast, lived. Even though he told Abu, ‘Don’t fear; Manchester is alright even to African seamen. It even has African places – Lagos Close, Freetown Close – where Africans stay, I’ll show you’, they walked all the way from Salford to Manchester city centre to Moss Side because Abu would not get on a tram.
‘I know how to behave around whites,’ he said. ‘I’ve been to South Africa.’
‘The British are different, no segregation here.’
‘Who lied you, Ruwa? Their mother is the same.’
For Abu, being surrounded by a sea of Europeans in their own land brought on such anxiety that for the first time he regretted running away from home. To think that it all began with a picture on a stupid war recruitment poster – Our Allies the Colonies. At the time, all he wanted was to join the King’s African Rifles and wear that uniform. To his childish eyes the native in the picture looked fearless and regal in a fez with tassels falling down the side of his face and a coat of bright red with a Chinese collar of royal blue edged with gold. That palm tree trinket on the fez with the letters T.K.A.R. – Abbey coveted it. He wanted to hold a gun and hear it bark, then travel beyond the seas and be a part of the warring worlds. He had heard his father talk about the European war with breathless awe. He had wanted it so desperately he could not wait four years until he was eighteen to enlist. In any case, the war might be over by then. Besides, at fourteen, he was taller than most people. And the British were notoriously blind. Often, they could not tell girls from boys. Also, they were desperate for recruits because recently some Kapere had started to ask men who turned up to enlist ‘Sex?’, which the translator turned into ‘Are you a man or a woman?’ The men just walked away: who had time for that?
Unfortunately, a friend of his father saw him and pulled him out of the queue. When his father found out, he warmed his backside raw. That was when he swore to enlist in Kenya. After the war, he would come home elegant in his red uniform and fez and he would be made head of the royal army. Then his father would eat his words.
With a few friends, Ssuuna had jumped on a train wagon and hidden among sacks of cotton. What he remembered most about that journey was not the incessant jarring and grinding or screeching of rail metal, but the itching of sisal sacks. No one had warned them that Nairobi was frosty in June, especially in the morning. The boys had never known such cold. They thought they would die. And then the British turned them away. Ssuuna was told to come back in two years – the British were blind by two years – and his friends were told to go home to their mamas!
That was when his troubles began. Returning home was out of the question. Where would he say he had been? His father wanted him to stay in school, but studying was not for him. He wanted to be a soldier, shoot a gun, throw bombs and blow things up, and win a war.
While they waited to grow up, Ssuuna and his friends travelled to Mombasa. Everyone said that there was more life in Mombasa, the gateway to the world. He renamed himself and got a job as a deckhand on ships sailing at first to Zanzibar and Pemba Island, then to southern Africa’s ports and later to West Africa.
But within a year he had lost interest in the European war. It was not just the cynical Arabs, it was seeing Indian coolies, Kenyans, Ugandans and Tanganyikans return on ships from Burma maimed. Lost limbs, lost sight, lost minds, lost comrades whose bodies were abandoned on foreign battlefields like they had no mothers. Apparently, one moment you were whispering to your friend, the next he was shredded meat. A man told of a soldier he saw gathering little pieces of his friend and then starting to put them back together as if bombs were not raining around him. When Abu found out that some of the soldiers never fired a gun but got blown up anyway, he was disgusted. Many of them were mere porters carrying European soldiers’ luggage. Most heartbreaking was the fact that none of the soldiers returning wore the red jackets Abu had seen on the recruitment poster. The King’s Rifles wore khaki and shorts. Apparently the red jacket was for Europeans only; can you imagine? The British were the very Kaffirs! Full of lies. And the way Arabs sneered at Africans who went to die in a war that did not touch them – ‘Europeans are killing themselves, and you Africans want to die for them – why?’ the nahodha of his boat had once laughed. Abu had cast his warrior dreams into the Indian Ocean.
It was approaching ten o’clock when Abu and Ruwa arrived in Manchester. The city centre was at once beautiful and scary. Here was his wish to travel beyond the seas coming true, without him even fighting in a war, but he was petrified just to walk through Manchester. The infrastructure alone – of brick and stone – was forbidding. The skyline – dotted by conical, sharp church steeples and tall chimneys – made him feel trapped. There was a church at every turn. Arches and arches, above doors and windows and on walls on every building. In Mombasa and Zanzibar the Arab culture along the East African coast had conjured a Muslim heaven of domes and large empty rooms with carpets and muezzins. Manchester brought to mind a Christian heaven of arches and arches, spires, steeples, pews and church bells. But why would the British sculpt snarling devils on their walls when they lived in such dark misty environs? Statues, some larger than humans, some tiny, some on horses, some gleaming black, frowned and grimaced. Everywhere he was surrounded by such tall buildings he was dizzy from turning and looking up. Neither gods nor spirits would ever make him go up there.
His neck started to ache.
At ground level, shops had bright striped canopies as if to cheer up the atmosphere. They sold glittering jewellery and sparkly watches and shimmering things for what Abu did not know. White women dressed in long blanket coats and wide-brimmed hats walked with their arms linked with their men’s arms. Abu still hung onto Ruwa. Ruwa kept yanking him off the road, which was dangerous, especially those motorcycles with sidecars whizzing past, not to mention cars and buses everywhere. Then, once in a while, the horses and carts, especially that freaky horseshoe noise coming from behind you. But the pavements were not safe either; you could slip in horse dung or walk into the water and food troughs that had been put out for the horses.
Once they got away from the overpowering spectacle of the city centre, Abu exhaled. Now, bomb sites – former churches and houses – started to appear. Some were being cleared, some being rebuilt, some untouched.
‘Did you see how the men hold the women’s hands?’
‘Because it’s cold: that’s how they keep warm.’
He laughed. ‘But this coldness rules them too much!’
‘Hmm.’
‘Ha, but if Manchester, a younger city, looks like this, what is London like?’
Ruwa clicked his tongue in a Like you even ask? way. ‘This Manchester is rags compared. London is where King George lives. At night, London blinks like a woman, even on the walls, mya, mya.’ He made signs of flashing lights.
Abu pondered this, realised he could not picture a city that blinks like a woman and changed the subject. ‘But why does everyone build similar houses? Does the king not allow different fashions? You could get lost here.’
‘They don’t build their own houses: the king does it for them.’
‘What, he spoils them like that?’
‘Stop asking stupid questions. They pay him, and look, all houses have numbers; you can’t get lost.’
‘Numbers? Like they are too stupid to find their own houses?’
Ruwa shook off Abu’s hands. ‘Walk by yourself; you’re annoy-annoying me now.’
Later, after Abu had become Abbey and settled into Manchester and the city became less forbidding, he would go to Albert Square on a Sunday, when all shops were closed, and sit on a bench. He would marvel at the beauty of the Town Hall. Such intricate masonry. Sometimes he visited Piccadilly Gardens and sat on the slopes, a riot of colours – precise and controlled – below him. The backdrop of brick and stone made the flower gardens seem fragile. Who knew that living in a concrete city would make him yearn for nature? Who knew that one day he would roast himself in the sun? Now he could tell the British apart just from their clothing. If you saw a man wearing a white collar and a suit and a hat, those were the masters, the ones sitting in offices writing and giving orders. They spoke English the same way as the British in East Africa, smooth. The rest were workers. Their English was hard to understand when you had just arrived.
Occasionally, a man, a woman caught his eye and smiled discreetly. British humanity, when it flashed, took you by surprise. A stranger chatting to you about where you came from: Let me buy you a cup of tea…What are you doing in England?…How do you chaps really feel about us being in your country? and you said We’re very lucky, sir; you’ve brought for us civilisation and salvation, and he shot you a look, clearly not buying your gratitude. It was a colleague asking about your leg, after a metal detergent bottle you nicked from work – to use as a bed-warmer – burnt you during an exhaustion-induced stupor. It was going to hospital sick with pneumonia and the doctor and nurses treating you delicately and the ambulance dropping you back at your house after you recovered without asking for any money. It was the ticket master at the booking agent for your travel back home who told you about cheaper tickets on a different ship with more comfortable berths, who knew you’d be overwhelmed by the procedures and did everything for you and said, ‘My name is Mitch; when you’re ready to travel, come and confirm your ticket, ask for me and make sure you don’t wait too late because this ticket will expire in six months’ time.’ Then you asked yourself, But who are these other British people?
Abbey crossed Lloyd Street. On his left, on the site of a bombed-out church, children held sticks like guns, shooting Germans out of the sky and off the rubble and out of the burnt-out car nearby. When he reached the Royal Brewery, he turned left onto Princess Road. Down the road was the smaller of the two shopping centres at the heart of the black community in Moss Side. He crossed the road.
Halfway down the road, he caught sight of the Merchant Navy Club. From his side of the road, the club looked like a lazy woman waking up late. A touch of resentment crept up on him as if the club had conspired with Heather Newton to take his child away. The club had been at the centre of his life in Britain. The Africans who ran it had lived in Manchester for a long time: some had come as early as the 1910s; some had fought in the first war, some in the second; all were married to Irish women. They looked out for each other, especially the newcomers. They tipped each other off on available jobs and housing. When a ship arrived from Africa, the club got wind of it first. When seamen Abbey knew arrived from Mombasa, it felt like home had come to visit. Now, as he walked past the club, Kwei’s drunken warning when he and Ruwa had first arrived taunted him. On hearing that the Montola was to be scrapped, Kwei had had laughed, ‘Don’t stay here in Moss Side if you want to return to Africa; go somewhere like Stockport or Salford.’ At first, Abbey thought it was Kwei’s clumsy attempt to get rid of them because he and Ruwa were crowding his tiny room, but Kwei explained, ‘Moss Side is a cruel mistress, pa! You know you have a home to go back to, but she treats you so right you keep saying tomorrow.’
Abbey had laughed. The idea of staying in cold Britain, where even ugly women crossed the road when they saw you coming, was absurd. Ruwa, who saw himself as a son of the sea, shook his head. ‘Me, I can’t stay here; the ground is too wobbly.’
‘And the sea is steady?’
‘That rocking, the swaying you feel on a ship, is steadiness to me.’
‘You see,’ Kwei had carried on drunkenly, ‘in Moss Side people smile so wide, and talk so loud, pa!’
But later Ruwa had whispered to Abu, ‘Me, I’m not working in a place where I am paid half the pay like a woman, however white’ and moved to Southampton. But Abbey knew that Ruwa had money on him and was returning home.
Kwei took Abbey to the labour office on Oldham Street, where he registered as Abbey Baker, got a labour exchange card and National Insurance number. Abbey gave himself two years to work and save for his passage and return home. That was four years ago.
Abbey arrived at the shopping centre. Outside Nelson’s Electrical Repairs, a group of West Indian men formed a circle, talking in Jamaican Patois. Abbey hurried around them. Black men standing in a group like that was the quickest way to get arrested for vagrancy, but West Indian men were defiant. Maybe it was okay for them to be defiant; after all, they had been invited to come and work after the war. Kwei had told him that back when the war ended, the British themselves went to the West Indies and asked people to come and help in the recovery of the mother country. But on arrival, doctors were turned away from hospitals, teachers were not allowed to teach in schools and engineers could only drive trains. Only nurses, cleaners, posties and drivers were wanted. In school, their children were told they could aspire either to singing, dancing or sports – nothing else. Abbey shook his head at the moniker ‘mother country’ because England was one wicked mother. But deep down he blamed the West Indians; why would you trust a mother who had brutalised you from the moment she laid eyes on you just because she had said Come, I need your help? Now many were stuck in poverty with no hope of going back home. He walked past the BP petrol station and crossed Great Western Street.
When he saw the tip of the tower on the bus depot, he slowed down. Most shops were closed. Empty buses whizzed past, drivers impatient to go home. Most bus services stopped at eight. The latest services, those going to hospitals and Ringway Airport, stopped at 10 p.m. Then they all drove back to the depot to be checked, cleaned and fuelled. As he crossed Claremont Road, the clock on the tower read 8.34 p.m. He stopped; now what? He had twenty-five minutes to burn before his shift started. He was contemplating running home to drop off his bag when he heard, ‘Abbey, my friend!’
Berry walked towards him, his arm extended.
‘Is your name still Abbey, as in Westminster Abbey?’
Berry was one of those we’re one people, one black nation, revolt against Babylon oppression kind of people. He was well-meaning but a troublemaker nonetheless. He had wild, wild ideas of being equal to whites in their own country. He was a continual tenant at Greenheys Police Station, something which he wore as a badge of honour. Every time he came out of police custody he bragged about preaching to the policemen about their Babylon and how it was falling.
Berry made Abbey nervous. Not only because being with him could earn Abbey a stint in a Greenheys police cell, but because where Berry was a preacher man, Abbey was a chameleon, a no need to aggravate your circumstances kind of person. He was about to say that all he could remember from history at school was Sir Samuel Baker and Westminster Abbey, where Dr David Livingstone was buried, when Berry added, ‘Africans take naming seriously; could your father have named you after Westminster Abbey, the seat of oppression, and Samuel Baker, the oppressor?’
Abbey looked away, his mouth twitching.
‘Okay, I’ll not hold you, my friend, but be true.’ Berry shook his hand again.
That’s the problem with Berry, Abbey thought as he walked away. Berry had a way of making him feel horrible about his name, but what would he say? That it was better to be West Indian than African? People like Berry did not realise that being black and African was too much. West Indians were ‘at least’ because there was a bit of Europe in them. To be called ‘bongo bongo’ was okay, but to hear Do those chaps still eat each other or Even fellow blacks can’t stand them was crushing.
Another glance at the tower clock said that he still had fifteen minutes. Abbey stopped outside Henry George’s Garments to kill time. He caught the eyes of Henry’s ‘almost-white’ wife through the window and looked away. That woman, Henry’s wife, hated blacks more than white people. Her Henry fought with the RAF, but he runs that shop now. People suspected her and Henry of being spies for the police. One tiny thing happened and the police swooped – how? But they denied it, claiming that Moss Side folk picked on them because they happen to be pale. The previous year at the queen’s coronation, she carried on all euphoric and fluffy, decorating their shop and flag-waving like she was entirely white. Even now, in the window of their shop, she displayed a large portrait of the queen when she had still been Princess Elizabeth, with her children, four-year-old Charles and two-year-old Anne. Abbey stared at the picture. Princess Anne had been born just over six months after he arrived in England. That evening, Emmet their landlord had invited him and Kwei into his lounge to see the occasion on television. Gun salutes in Hyde Park and at the Tower of London, large crowds out to see the royal family, and Emmet cursing, ‘Another one born to piss on our heads!’ Abbey was so shocked to hear a white man curse the royal family he couldn’t believe it. He had seen the notices No blacks, no Irish, no dogs or Help Wanted: Irish need not apply, but he could not tell Irish from Scottish from Welsh from English. Who knew that Britain had tribes, who knew they suffered from tribalism? Still, every time they watched the Remembrance Day commemorations on television, Abbey looked at Emmet as former soldiers marched past being thanked. The fact that Emmet did not know about the coolies and Africans, the fact that those poor souls died for neither Africa nor their mothers but for an oppressor who thought they were less human anyway, churned his stomach.
Now, looking at how grown-up Princess Anne was in that picture, Abbey told himself, Ssuuna, if you’re not careful, that boy Charles will become king before you leave this country.
He looked at the depot’s clock: five minutes.
He bolted across Bowes Street and down the road until he came to the depot’s main entrance. Neville, the supervisor, was talking to some drivers. Rather than walk past them, he decided to use the side door. Often drivers saw him, and even though he was only going up to Neville to ask for his allocation that day, he saw resentment rise in their eyes. Besides, he did not feel like hearing Hey, Sambo, which jungle do you come from? today. He tried the side door: it was locked. He walked to the end of the building and turned back to the Princess Road entrance. Luckily, the men were gone.
The vastness of the depot never ceased to overwhelm him. Rows and rows of buses stretched as far as he could see. Yet more buses were still arriving to park in rows 17 to 22 at the back. He wished he had a picture of it to take home with him. He turned to the right and walked down row 2, where the number 42 buses were parked. He took the ramp to the sluice to pick up his tools. He hoped Neville would give him row 8 with the number 53 buses as usual. They were the dirtiest because they went to Belle Vue Amusement Park, but Abbey liked that – the dirtier the bus, the more chances of coming across lost property. The rule was that all lost property be taken to the window marked Lost and Found. Abbey always handed over toys, mittens, booties and other items of clothing. But not money. Often, he found halfpenny coins here and sixpences there. Once he found a cloth purse with sequins and pearls all over it and slid it into his underwear. Throughout the shift, it pressed heavily against his crotch. He only took it out when he got home. There were forty-two shillings in total. Abbey had patted the purse on his forehead feverishly, thanking family winds.
By the time he finished his three-hour shift at the depot, Moss Side was asleep, the streets dead. He got to the house without realising. Then stopped. Something was wrong. The lights in Emmet’s quarters were still on. If Emmet was still up past midnight, then Emmet was unhappy. He tiptoed past his window to the back door. He opened it and the pungent smell of cow foot hit him. Kwei, Abbey’s room-mate, was the kind to splash out on such delicacies. He justified it with I don’t know when my day is due: who am I leaving my money for? Let me eat well. Abbey tiptoed up the stairs to the first floor, where his and Kwei’s room was. Emmet was waiting on the landing. Emmet did not mind African tenants, but even he had limits.
‘What’s that horrible smell, Abbey?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Emmet, I’ve just returned.’
‘Well, don’t you smell it?’
Abbey sniffed the air and shook his head.
‘How can you not! The whole house stinks.’
‘I do not hear it, Mr Emmet.’
‘Hear it? You mean you don’t smell it?’
Abbey kept quiet.
‘Tell your friend, Quway, that I’ll not have you cook tripe or any of the horrible stuff you people eat.’
‘I’ll tell him, sir.’
Abbey walked past Emmet and down the corridor to their bedroom. He listened out before he opened the door. Emmet was going down the stairs muttering, ‘They lie like little children.’
Abbey opened the door.
Kwei sat on the bed, pulling his shoes on. There was only one bed in the room but two mattresses. On the rare night when they were both at home, Abbey put his mattress on the floor. Except in winter, when it was too cold to squander each other’s warmth. Abbey was surprised. Normally, by the time he came home, Kwei was gone for his night shift at the Dunlop tyre factory in Trafford Park.
Abbey hung up his fedora. ‘Emmet is complaining again.’
‘Let him complain. He knocked on the door and I ignored him.’
Abbey laughed.
‘All he knows is how to boil rice, then wash it with cold water, add corned beef and call it dinner!’
‘They eat cow tongue.’
‘Disgusting people: I’ll remind him next time.’
‘Thanks for cooking.’
‘How is Moses?’
Abbey’s smile fell. He opened his hands in helplessness.
‘You didn’t see him, did you?’
‘He was asleep.’
‘Again? Twice you go all the way to Macclesfield for nothing?’
‘What could I say, wake him up?’
‘Yes. Wake him up for his father.’
‘But they don’t recognise me as important!’
‘Force them – you’re his father, you decide. The father always decides even among these people. Abbey, you’re too soft.’
Abbey sat down on the bed and sighed. ‘I don’t know, Kwei. Heather said she didn’t want the child to go to Africa into malaria and snakes and lions and diseases.’
‘Didn’t we grow up there? Stupid woman! Next time you go to see Moses, we go together. You’re too timid. Now see how you’ve made me late because I am talking to you! By the way’ – Kwei seemed to remember something – ‘do you have any Blue Hearts?’
Abbey gave Kwei two of his awake pills. He had no use for them any more. He used to take them when he and Heather went out, then he would dance non-stop like a marine propeller. Kwei tossed both pills into his mouth without water. Unfortunately, Kwei had been taking Blue Hearts for too long; he no longer functioned well without them. He said goodbye, closed the door and his footsteps rang down the corridor, then the stairs. Abbey fell back on the bed. Heather Newton.
He met her at his day job at the Whit Knitwear factory on Wilmslow Road. She was working as a machinist while she waited for her nursing course to start in Scotland. At first, Abbey did not notice her. She was one of the girls in the tailoring pool, and there were over fifty girls and women in the main hall. The only girls he looked out for were the nasty ones. Besides, Abbey was so weighed down by being black and African he would never assume with white girls.
One day as she walked past Heather smiled hello. Abbey smiled back. It was brave of her to acknowledge him. She seemed like a good girl: not loud, did not swear and he had never seen her smoking behind the block.
Months later, Heather stopped to talk to him again. She asked what he did after work. Abbey explained that he had a second job at the Princess Road bus depot and that he was trying to save money to return home.
‘Where is home?’
‘Uganda.’
‘Is that in the West Indies?’
‘No, East Africa.’
‘Really? You don’t look African at all.’
Abbey beamed at the compliment.
‘You don’t have those big downturned lips, your eyes are not too close together and’ – she felt his hair – ‘your hair isn’t wiry.’ Then she went, breathless, ‘Did you kill a lion to become a man?’
‘No, we don’t do that in Uganda.’
For a moment, as Heather walked away, Abbey wondered whether he should have lied, but he had never even seen a lion. Two weeks later, he bumped into her again. The other girls had walked on ahead and Abbey expected her to run and catch up with them, but she stopped and smiled.
‘So where does Abbey from Uganda go on a night out?’
‘At the Merchant Na—’
‘The Merchant Navy? I’ve heard about it. Apparently, you blacks get up to all sorts there.’ She prodded his chest playfully.
Rather than protest that nothing untoward happened at the Merchant Navy, Abbey just smiled. He held in each hand a bin full of cloth cuttings, thread and other couture rubbish. He had been on his way to the outside bin.
‘I’d like to see the Merchant Navy. Would you show me?’
‘Of course.’
Though they had agreed to meet that Friday night, Heather ignored him for the rest of the week. Abbey understood. Other girls would shun her if they found out she had fraternised with a black. Even then he began to doubt she had really meant it. He was therefore surprised to find Heather waiting outside the depot when he arrived for his shift that Friday. When she saw him, she motioned him to follow her. They went into a side corridor next to the depot. There, she told him that they would meet at the Merchant Navy entrance at 11.30 p.m., and disappeared.
He arrived at the Merchant Navy twenty minutes early and fretted. Suddenly the club seemed grubby, the people, especially their speech, coarse; look at that litter! Was that a whiff from the toilets at the entrance? He was sure that Heather would walk into the club, wrinkle her nose and walk out.
Heather was already excited when she arrived. She did not seem to notice anything amiss. Abbey was most attentive, buying her drinks he would never dream of wasting his savings on. The music was so loud, the hall so crowded, smoke everywhere, and Abbey was tense. It was not until Heather shouted above the music, ‘This is fun,’ that Abbey relaxed. They danced until Nelson turned off the music and forced the crowds out after 2 a.m. Abbey was wondering what now? – he had not expected Heather to stay this long – when she suggested that they go to the social centre on Wilbraham Road. Someone she knew was having a bash there. It was not a long walk. Then they arrived in a different world. White women with black men, mostly black Americans (who could not get over the fact that there was no segregation in Britain) and African students. Though there was a hall, the party was outdoors in the gardens. There was a lot of American alcohol as well. ‘It’s from the American air base,’ Heather whispered.
Then she introduced him to her friends. One of them remarked, ‘So, this is Heather’s African.’
‘Are you a prince?’ another woman asked. Before Abbey answered, the woman turned to Heather and said, ‘Most of these fellows claim to be princes.’
Abbey denied being a prince even though his grandfather was Ssekabaka Mwanga. He denied it because once he had heard a shine girl call her African father, who claimed to be a prince, a liar. Abbey had to stop himself from spitting in her face because how would she know that, on the one hand, princes in Africa tended to end up fugitives in Europe fleeing from assassination, and on the other, they were privileged to travel abroad? He had developed an unhealthy hate for shine people who seemed to hate the black in them, who presumed to be superior because of the whiteness in them.
He noticed that there were neither black nor shine girls at the party. The white men present were waiters, but Abbey did not ask why. A door to an exclusive world of white women going with black men had opened to him and he was going to enjoy it, however ephemeral. At the Merchant Navy, when people saw him with Heather, they had looked at him with concerned surprise, others with hurt astonishment as if it was an act of betrayal. Here, no one cared. They danced until six in the morning, when Heather caught the early bus back home.
The following weekend she suggested they go to the Mayfair. Abbey asked how she knew about black people’s clubs.
‘Girls say the most exciting things about black people’s clubs. You must take me to the Cotton Club and Frascati.’ They even went to Crown Kathy on Oldham Street, the only pub which admitted blacks.
When Kwei found out about Heather, he warned Abbey that for a seaman saving to return home, going out with a woman was an expensive venture. And for timid Abbey a white woman would devour him like mashed potatoes.
‘It’s a story to tell though, when I return home.’
‘If you return.’
Abbey and Heather went out another three weekends. When he was with her, everyone noticed him. They glanced at her and then at him. When white men glared at him Abbey felt alive. When Heather said, ‘You’re painfully tall’, he walked at his full height. Once an old white man spat in Heather’s face and Abbey didn’t know what to do. He pretended not to see when white people gave Heather dirty looks. Some black men glanced at him with a so you’re like that look. But it was black women, even shine girls, who gave him the withering looks reserved for war deserters.
One time, Berry came to them on the dance floor. He was polite to Heather but turned to Abbey and said, ‘I hope you don’t have an Othello complex!’
‘What’s Othello?’
Heather went red and Berry smiled. ‘Never mind, Abbey: be true.’
Abbey felt that black folk were being unfair. Black women were few; they were either circled or good churchgoing daughters. Shine girls would never look at an African man. African girls who came to study had contempt for African men who lived in England. If you asked them out they said, ‘I am sorry but I don’t wish to be domiciled’, meaning they would never go with a man paid as much as a white woman. ‘I’ll be returning home soon after my course’, meaning to men who are not eunuched. But when you touched a white woman then it was betrayal.
One Friday, after close-down at the Merchant Navy, rather than go partying elsewhere as they normally did, Heather said she was tired and wanted to lie down. As she could not go home – it was past two in the morning – she asked Abbey to take her to his flat. Abbey could not believe his ears. Firstly, people said Africans stink: hadn’t Heather heard? Secondly, what if Kwei had splashed out again and their room stunk of cow foot?
It was too late, because they were walking past Greenheys Police Station, towards his home. Mercifully, the room was clean and tidy. He had been ready to spend his savings on a hotel room if he saw Heather wrinkling her nose. She seemed too tired to notice that the room was bare save for the bed. He offered her their bed while he slept on the mattress on the floor. But after a while, Heather asked him to get in bed with her and hold her.
When he told Kwei about it the following day, Kwei prophesied, ‘You’re on the hook, Abbey: forget home.’
Abbey started looking forward to Fridays. At work, it started to hurt when Heather ignored him.
They had been seeing each other for five months when Heather stopped coming to work. Unfortunately, Abbey could not ask anyone why. Two months later, when he had decided that she had started her course in Scotland, she turned up at his house. It was a different Heather. She was fearful and angry. Abbey was confused. Heather needed a room to stay but would pay her own rent. She did not want him to look after her but she needed him to go to the shops for her. Yes, he was responsible for her condition but she was giving up the child for adoption. She cried a lot and blamed him for the loss of her job and course. Abbey insisted that as long as she carried his child he would come to see her. Sometimes he knocked on her door but she did not open up. Abbey was proud he was going to be a father, moreover to a shine child! Often, he laughed when she shouted at him. Until she handed his son up for adoption.
It was by chance that he found out when Heather went to have the baby. Her landlady told him that she had been taken to St Mary’s Hospital the day before. When Abbey got to hospital, Heather was about to be discharged. The baby had been taken.
He made a scene. Who gives their child away to strangers? She did not even breastfeed him? What kind of woman does that? To get rid of him, the hospital gave him the name of the home the baby had been placed in. They told him and Heather to go and sort it out there. Before they left hospital, Abbey demanded to have his name put on the child’s birth certificate. Heather disappeared.
The following week, when Abbey and Kwei arrived at the children’s home in Macclesfield the matron pretended not to see them. This made Abbey more nervous but Kwei went up to her and said, ‘We’ve come to see our son.’
‘Who is your son?’
‘Heather Newton’s son; we call him Moses.’
‘You’re not his father.’
‘In our culture, my brother’s son is my son.’
‘That child’s process is complete. A nice couple have finalised the adoption process. They’ll give him the life he deserves.’
‘Ah?’ Abbey, who had left Kwei to do the talking, gasped. ‘But you say he’s sleeping every time I come. Why lie?’
‘His mother wanted him adopted. She never identified you as the father. We have her name on the records but we don’t have yours.’
‘Which mother, the woman who would not put him on her breast?’
‘Show her a copy of the birth documents they gave you at the hospital, show her.’
The woman looked at them and shook her head. ‘We never saw that one. We were never told about a father. Why didn’t you come with the mother to confirm you’re who you say?’
‘She’s hiding. Besides, why would I want a child that’s not mine?’
‘We’re doing what is best for the child.’
‘Ooh, you see them, Kwei? You see how they take people’s children just like that?’
‘I am only following instructions. In this country, it’s brave and selfless to give up a child to people who will love him and meet his needs.’
‘Brave? In my country, a parent will die first before they give up a child to strangers.’
‘Bring his records. We need to see his records first.’ Kwei banged the desk. ‘Bring them here now.’
‘You need to calm down, the both of you! I can’t listen to—’
‘Calm down, calm down, would you calm down when you’re losing your child?’
‘I’ll bring the records,’ the woman said, ‘but you need to calm down.’
When she left the room Kwei whispered, ‘They don’t know how to deal with us when we’re angry. We frighten them. But if you stand there speaking softly like they tell you how, then they’ve got you.’
The woman returned with a blue folder. Adopted was stamped across the cover. Abbey and Kwei stared in disbelief.
‘He’s been taken?’
‘How would you look after him: are you married?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me, hmm? Why didn’t you tell me every time I came?’
‘He was only taken this morn—’
‘Thieves, oh, but these people are thieves! They don’t just steal kingdoms, they steal children too.’
‘We want our child back.’
‘There’s nothing I can do, Mr Baker.’
Now Abbey broke down. ‘How can I go home, Kwei, how can I leave my child here?’
Even the woman softened. ‘Look, I am really sorry, but in this country—’
‘Don’t tell me about this country, you’re not good people. You don’t care who you hurt, you’re selfish. You’re—’
‘We were thinking about the child, which obviously you have not!’
‘Abbey,’ Kwei started quietly. ‘Write, write down everything. Our blood is strong, Moses will come looking.’ He turned to the woman. ‘You’ve made Moses an anonymous child, you’ll take that to your grave.’
Abbey picked up a pen and opened the file. First, he wrote the child’s name, Moses Bamutwala Jjuuko. Under Father, he wrote, Ssuuna Jjunju. In brackets, he wrote, son of Mutikka Jjuuko of Kawempe, Kyadondo, Uganda. He paused for a second and then he signed with the flourish of a man creating his self-worth on a piece of paper. He put the pen down and walked out. He heard Kwei say, ‘I’ll write down Uncle Kwei’s contacts as well’, but Abbey did not stop.