I would also have to learn how the conditions of wickets changed with the weather. And I had to learn something about the English weather! Perhaps the most forbidding of all Tom’s warnings was that, in the League, I would each week be facing some of the best cricketers in the world, each of whom was in the game to earn a living.
Tom Reddick certainly helped me to come to England. More important, he helped me to stay, especially during the early days when, if I had not had his words to hang on to, I might have given it all up and rushed back home.
Tom gave me something as well. He probably didn’t realise it at the time and maybe doesn’t now. After our coaching sessions at the back of his house each night he would invite me in for a drink. This was the first time I had ever entered the home of a white man.
I wish he could have been with me in London nine years later, at a function just before Christmas, 1968. In a room glittering with chandeliers, a hundred or more English cricket celebrities sat down to dinner, elegant in their dinner jackets. The occasion was to present a cricket trophy.
As winner of the Lawrence trophy the previous year, I was there to present the silver cup to the new winner, my county captain, Tom Graveney. I also had to make a speech. I sat at the top table between the M C C President, Mr. R. Aird, and Secretary, Mr. S. C. Griffith. I think that, if Tom Reddick had been there, I might have made him feel a little proud and with a glance I could have told him how grateful I was for preparing me for that moment.
John Kay was waiting for me when I arrived at London Airport. He had been in London the previous night to cover a boxing match and had stayed over to meet me and to take me back to Manchester. I had hoped that he or John Arlott would be there, but I was not prepared for the shock when I reached the doors of the aircraft and started to walk down the gangway.
John Arlott had been broadcasting the previous night and had casually mentioned that I would be arriving the next day. As I soon came to learn, a word lightly dropped is enough for the British journalists and photographers who, so far as I have been able to see, keep their readers better informed than is the case anywhere else in the world.
The day was April the First and, if I had been aware of anything, I would have asked myself what sort of fool I was to be taking this step down a gangway into a sea of faces and flashbulbs which made the grey damp morning seem darker.
Someone in uniform handed me a note. It read: “Don’t say anything. Meet you inside. John Kay.” I thought, “What does he mean? Don’t say anything? What had happened? What had gone wrong?” All I could hear was “Mr. D’Oliveira … Mr. D’Oliveira …”. Somebody was talking about a television room. Would I go there? They wanted me “on camera”. Everyone was staring and I was staring back, hoping to see someone I recognised, someone to hold on to. Normally, there was always someone with me, but here I was on my own. I couldn’t turn to anybody for reassurance. I was in another world. A white man’s world. There wasn’t a black skin in sight. I can’t remember a single question I was asked or any answer I gave. I don’t even remember the moment when John Kay arrived and introduced himself. The first thing that I recall, after the hiatus of arriving, was sitting in John’s car.
We drove to John Arlott’s flat. He looked exactly as I had imagined him to be. In South Africa we had often listened to John’s broadcasts, and his voice, the way he talked about cricket and the humour which he found in little incidents, gave the impression that he was a warm, friendly person. As I stopped in the doorway waiting for him to say, “Come in,” I remember thinking—he looks just like his voice.
Within seconds, he had me chatting like a long-lost friend. I suppose in some ways he was that to me, because he had started mentioning me in his newspaper columns and in broadcasts five or six years before.
Although I knew of him as a writer and a broadcaster, I couldn’t understand why he needed so many books. The room was lined with them.
John tried to reassure me that I would find everybody anxious to help me settle down and made me promise that, if I had any difficulties with which he could help, I had to get in touch with him right away. He was sure that, with John Kay looking after me, I would be protected from the worst that Lancashire could offer!
John Kay had sent back the hired car which we had used from the airport and we travelled to Middleton by train. Each hour brought a new experience. As I stepped aboard the train, another wave of doubt swept over me. I thought, “Oh my God, not one coloured person on the train! What am I getting into here?”
Although my skin is not noticeably different in colour, I was as conscious of the difference as if I had been a coal-black negro. When you have grown into manhood separated always as black and white, never travelling on the same public transport, eating in the same restaurants, going to the same hotels, being in the same house, sitting at the same table, drinking from the same cup, using the same lavatories, it is not easy to begin to do all these things, without an instinctive mental shying away.
As we had walked along the platform to the train, I was fascinated that everyone doing the lifting and the carrying was a white man. Nowadays coloured immigrants are employed in great numbers on the British public-transport systems. I suppose, even when I arrived, there were coloured people working at the station. But, because I saw white men doing the job which I had previously seen only coloured men do, I would not have noticed any coloured workers, even if they had been there.
John Kay took me into the dining car for a meal and he saw that I was now becoming quite frightened. To have sat down publicly at a table for a meal with a white man would have meant trouble for both of us in South Africa. I was so scared that it was only when John reminded me about it later that I remembered that it had happened.
Indeed, I recollect very little about those first twenty-four hours. I can recall getting off the train. I was wearing a green scarf because of the cold. This was high around my face and I could see very little of what was going on. There were five men waiting for us, all of them Middleton officials. One was George Harwood, the secretary. I was put into a car but I didn’t hear what was said or even see what was happening. I heard someone mention a golf club and dinner. All I can really remember of the golf club visit was seeing television for the first time. It was an outside broadcast and the rain was teeming down. I wanted to touch the screen to see if it was wet.
Not until nearly midnight did I arrive at the digs which had been found for me with Mr. and Mrs. Lord, who were to be my “parents” for the next year. They could not have treated me better if I had indeed been their own son. I often look at two photographs—one of my mother and one of Mrs. Lord. Mother is older and her skin is darker, but both are smiling into the camera, both wear glasses and both have the same warm friendly eyes, both the same smile. I can see a likeness, even if others cannot.
That first night Mrs. Lord was worried about me. She was sure that coming from that lovely hot sun into an English night would cause me to freeze to death unless she packed the bed with hot water bottles and blankets and lit every fire in the house. Certainly this was one of those April days in England which would have changed Robert Browning’s mind about wanting to be there.
I must have been completely exhausted when I fell into bed that night. That tiredness, plus Mrs. Lord’s determination to make me comfortable, sent me to sleep until five o’clock the next afternoon!
The following morning I walked the streets of Middleton and I saw the white man as I never thought him to be. To segregated Africans, the image of a white man is a white shirt, a hat, an umbrella and a smart city suit. For the first time, I saw white men wearing overalls, working in the roads, sweeping the streets, emptying the dustbins and delivering the milk. These were jobs which I had seen only coloured people do.
For
