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.
By now, Pupatee had started primary school. The school was a collection of tall flats, buildings and houses surrounded by red-brick walls and a strong, tall wire fence. There were three sets of gates leading into the playground, and the big wooden doors were reinforced with iron to make them doubly secure. All the windows were covered with iron grilles secured with padlocks.
It was good forgetting about the house, about Joe, but school wasn’t much easier than home. Pupatee’s English was now much improved, but he could still barely read or write and the teachers didn’t have time to give him the help he needed.
At first he did not understand many of the customs and games. The girls teased him and the boys picked him last in games of football. But one day, Pupatee was given a chance to prove himself at school. He was playing marbles in the playground with Flego, a boy he had become friendly with, when the school bully, Dave, and his gang came over and began to push Flego around about some argument that had happened before Pupatee’s arrival. When one of Dave’s shoves pushed Flego over, Pupatee rushed over to his friend and picked him up.
‘Hey bwoy, go away!’ Pupatee screamed at the bully.
‘What, you want some too?’
Dave came forward, but Pupatee’s childhood fishing and swimming and climbing trees in Jamaica had strengthened him, and the beatings Joe administered had made him resilient, and unafraid of someone as small as Dave. Dave hit out at Pupatee, but then Pupatee threw a punch into his opponent’s belly which felled him. He lay gasping on the ground while Pupatee stood over him.
That earned Pupatee a reputation, and whenever a fight started up in the playground, he was seldom far away. He usually won. He had found a way to impress the other boys and make a name for himself. It did not occur to him that he had learned this talent from Joe, from the very beatings he himself so hated and feared.
Not all Pupatee’s time with boys his own age was spent fighting, though. Out of school, he hung around with the local gang led by Jimmy and Lass. Jimmy was the life and soul of the streets around Selborne Road. He had the blond hair and blue eyes that the girls liked, and a winning combination of mischievousness and vulnerability. He was always the first to come up with something fun to do, the first with a joke.
His father drove a coal truck and Jimmy would often help him, coming home after a session shovelling coal almost as black as Pupatee. ‘Yeah, man,’ Jimmy would say while putting his arm on Pupatee’s shoulders. ‘Dis is my brother, who just come from Jamaica, man.’ And when Jimmy had cleaned himself up, he would pull the same stunt. ‘As you can see, ladies and gents,’ he would declare, ‘I’m a bit paler than my brother today, because I’m a bit ill.’ Although most of the boys were white like Jimmy, black kids like Lass and Pupatee were treated as equals. In Jimmy’s gang, colour counted for nothing.
Gang life revolved around bicycles, and Pupatee was the only one without his own. After school and at weekends and in the holidays, Jimmy and Lass and the others would get on their bikes and pedal off to Ruskin Park or some steep hill they wanted to try out, and Pupatee would be left behind. He soon longed for a bike even more than he longed for his home in Jamaica. Life with Mama and Pops and Carl was a distant dream now, but a
