‘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
