Читать книгу Brixton Bwoy - Rocky Carr - Страница 8

The world was white and when Pupatee bent down and picked up some of it, it was cold, like the ice he knew from drinks called skyjuice or snowballs back in Jamaica. He shivered and stuffed his hands deep in his pockets and walked out on to the slippery pavement of Selborne Road, Camberwell. The snow was on cars, on rooftops, on the branches of trees. It seemed to have taken the place of leaves. He wondered why there were no leaves on the trees.

Pupatee watched a group of children across the street playing with the snow, scooping it up and throwing it at each other. A skinny white boy with yellow hair slipped some down the back of a girl and made her scream. A moment later the children were all ducking and sliding and laughing, having the time of their lives. In the distance Pupatee heard a train rattle by.

He walked on alone, marvelling at the sights of this new world. The people were various colours, black and white and yellow. The streets were filled with cars and lined with huge buildings. It was all so tall and enclosed. Pupatee stepped gingerly along, his feet unsure beneath him in his tightly laced new shoes. Cars slid down the roads, where the white snow had turned to a grey slush. People in thick coats walked hurriedly along. He passed the Odeon picture house and a huge walled building that was King’s College Hospital. A little further along, white people in long coats were queuing up at a window, buying food wrapped in newspaper. The smell of frying oil made him realise he was hungry, so he turned the corner and headed back in the direction of his brother’s house.

As he approached Selborne Road, he saw the kids had stopped playing with the snow. Some of the faces had changed, but he recognised the skinny boy with blond hair and blue eyes. He was dressed in blue jeans and black boots, and he had a blue and red anorak with a fur-lined hood hanging down behind. A white scarf was wrapped twice round his neck with its ends dangling below his waist. Pupatee felt very underdressed. The boy’s shoulders were hunched and he was hugging himself against the cold. As Pupatee walked by, the boy looked at him and shouted out, ‘Ha, I think I seen you somewhere before, mate. Was it Africa?’ At this, all the other children burst out laughing. Pupatee stood there puzzled. He barely understood the words and he certainly didn’t get the joke. He was so cold his blood seemed to be turning to ice in his veins.

‘What’s your name, mate?’ the skinny boy asked, his voice softening as if he felt bad for making fun of him. Pupatee understood this question. ‘Pupatee,’ he replied.

This set the whole gang laughing again. When they had calmed down, the only black boy among them said, ‘That’s an old man’s name. How old are you, Pupatee? About seventy-five?’ They were all in stitches now, while Pupatee stood there, frozen with misery and shock. ‘Pupatee,’ the black boy said. ‘Pupatee, bet you are the good-looking one in your family.’

Pupatee understood enough of this to feel the shame begin to burn inside him. While they carried on laughing, he turned down his face. When he found the door, he ran inside and washed his face so Miss Utel, Joe’s wife, would not know Pupatee had been crying.

Miss Utel was in the kitchen. She was short and had shiny dark skin, and when she flashed her smile her single gold tooth would twinkle. Her black hair was bunched on top of her head, streaked with a single block of grey. She wore a thick white woolly pullover and a black knee-length skirt with a big button at the waist. She always wore blue slippers in the house. Pupatee liked her.

‘You hungry, Pupatee?’ she called out.

‘Yes,’ he answered, when he had finished washing. Strange smells were wafting up from the stove where Miss Utel was cooking. They certainly didn’t smell like ackee and saltfish and Mama’s hot chocolate, and when Miss Utel put the plate down in front of him Pupatee couldn’t identify what was on it. The only thing Pupatee recognised was the egg. The rest were like strangers to him: sausages, fish fingers and baked beans. But he was famished, and he loved eating. He would get used to bland English food, but he would never stop thinking about fried fish and plantain and allspice, and mangoes that tasted like sunshine.

Brother Joe had gone to work early. Joe and Miss Utel had five children, Johnny, Terry, Tracy, Lena and a baby girl still in arms named Jasmine. The older kids had gone off to school.

‘Me ah go school too?’ Pupatee asked Miss Utel. He felt comfortable alone with her and less strange, but he was anxious not to be left out.

‘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 lived in Brixton, seven stops away on the 45 or 35 bus, while Ivy was another nine stops on from Pearl. Pearl and Ivy 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 bicycle was real.

One half-term, when Jimmy and the gang had gone off elsewhere, Pupatee was walking down the street where an African family whose kids went to the same primary school as him were packing their belongings into a big removal van. He stopped to talk to them and the boys told him they were going back to Africa. Pupatee pretended to listen, but what really interested him was the brand new, shiny push-bike in the van. He said goodbye and walked off, but he kept looking behind him, and as soon as the coast was clear he ran back, jumped into the van and took the bike.

All that day, Pupatee taught himself to ride. He fell off a hundred times and kept smashing the bike, and by the end of the day it looked twenty years old. The wheels were buckled and the paint was scratched, but Pupatee wasn’t bothered; he couldn’t take it home anyway. He parked it somewhere it could easily be seen, hoping that someone else would take it. Then he went home where he found Miss Utel cooking. They were chatting happily in the kitchen when there was a knock at the front door. Pupatee went to answer it and his eyes almost popped out of his head with shock. It was the father of the African family.

‘What did you do with my son’s bike?’ the man said. ‘Somebody saw you steal it so there’s no point denying it.’

Miss Utel had come to the door. ‘Can I help you please,’ she said stiffly.

‘I want my son’s bike,’ the man repeated. ‘Somebody saw this boy steal it and somebody else saw him ride it around.’

‘We don’t know anything about your bike,’ Miss Utel said. ‘You will have to come back later when his brother is home.’

‘That bike cost a lot of money, madam.’

‘Come back after six, to see his brother.’

With that, the man reluctantly left, vowing to return at six. Miss Utel grabbed Pupatee. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘you know your brother will half kill you if these people come back and tell him all this, so if you know where the bike is, go give it back quick. You have time.’

Pupatee dashed out to find the bike. But when he reached the spot where he had left it, the bike was gone. He had walked sadly home, certain of a beating now.

Joe walked in not long after Pupatee. Miss Utel softened him up by giving him his dinner and stroking his head and smiling and joking with him. When she thought the time was right, she told him about the bike. Joe threw his tray with all the food aside and dived straight at Pupatee, knocking him to the ground and then pulling him up and punching and kicking him. In the middle of all this, the African man turned up again.

While Joe went to the door, Pupatee fled down into the cellar. He had taken enough and he felt he couldn’t go on with these beatings. Down in the cellar he knew there was some rat poison. He emptied half the box of poison into a cup and added water and then drank it down as quickly as he could. He waited for death more happily than he ever waited for one of Joe’s beatings. But that poison could not have been strong enough, for death didn’t come. It was not his time. And when he crawled to bed that night Pupatee was black and blue from Joe’s beating.

Sometimes Pupatee’s friends took pity on him, and went to places on foot so he could come too; sometimes he managed to borrow a bike and explore further afield with them. Jimmy and the others liked having Pupatee around. He was growing bigger and stronger every day, and if anyone crossed the boys, Pupatee would fight their cause. With every skirmish he won he liked fighting more and more. He watched The Saint, Dangerman and The Man from Uncle on television, and practised hitting and kicking the way the men did in those shows.

One time he and the gang all went down to an adventure playground in Peckham Park. The main attraction was a sliding handle on a rope slung between a platform and the ground. Pupatee had just climbed up to the top of the platform when a white boy slid the handle fast back up the rope and it hit Pupatee smack in the face. He was so surprised he nearly fell off the platform, but he managed to hang on with one hand while rubbing his face with the other. He looked down and saw the boy in stitches.

‘Wha you done dat for?’ Pupatee screamed.

‘You should have caught it,’ the boy laughed back.

That was it. Pupatee couldn’t slide down fast enough and when he hit the ground he confronted the boy. Before they could come to blows, one of the keepers broke them up and threw them both out. They left, followed by the other boys, who wanted to see what would happen. They walked out on to the grass away from the keepers, and it was agreed that Pupatee and the white boy would fight alone. Pupatee was fuming and threw the first blow. The boy came in close and swung at him but Pupatee ducked and then flung himself around his opponent’s middle. They wrestled to the ground, trying to get the best of each other.

The other boy soon began to tire, but Pupatee was still strong. With one hand he held the boy down and with the other he fired a blow to his face. He heard the other’s breath escape and saw his eyes and nose suddenly gush red. He was just about to throw a final punch when Jimmy stepped in. Jimmy was never one for violence – he relied on a quick tongue and sharp humour to win his battles – and he dragged Pupatee off, telling him he did not need to win the same fight twice.

Pupatee allowed himself to be pulled away, but he felt better for that fight, as he always did when he won. Without his realising it, he had learned from Joe that there was pleasure to be had from violence. He enjoyed the power his growing physical strength gave him, and being victorious over others in the playground made the beatings from Joe easier to tolerate. But he also envied Jimmy’s way with words, and listened to his friend.

One evening, not long after the fight outside Peckham Park, Pupatee went round to Jimmy’s house to see if he would come and play.

Jimmy’s mother said hello to him, and then she called up the stairs, ‘Jimmy? Pupatee is here. Get out of that bath, you’ve been in there long enough.’

Jimmy didn’t answer.

‘He’s been in there for ages,’ Jimmy’s mum said. ‘Jimmy!’ she bawled out again. ‘Jimmy!’

She shrugged her shoulders and turned and went up the stairs to get him. Pupatee listened to her footsteps on the landing as she called out his friend’s name again. There was still no answer. He heard her knock and then the creak of the opening door.

‘Oh, my God! Mick! Oh, my God!’ The words were screamed through the whole house. Jimmy’s dad and brother came out of the living-room. ‘What is it?’ they called.

‘Oh, my God, get an ambulance! Jimmy’s drowned!’

Jimmy’s dad and brother ran up the stairs. Pupatee still stood by the open front door listening to the despairing talk. He heard Jimmy’s father say that it must have been the boiler; the pilot light must have gone out and the gas had leaked, putting Jimmy to sleep and then he had drowned. By this time, half the street had come out of their houses to see what the screaming was all about.

‘He’s not dead, is he?’ someone asked.

Pupatee stood there in shock, fighting back the tears. No, Pupatee told himself, Jimmy couldn’t die just like that.

‘Someone call an ambulance,’ screamed another voice.

‘It’s already on its way.’

And so everyone waited on their doorsteps and on the pavement, wondering when the ambulance would come. But it took half an hour to get there, and when it did finally arrive Pupatee was even more frightened, as he saw them take his friend out on a stretcher. They had put tubes in his mouth to feed oxygen to his lungs, but he looked pale and lifeless.

There was a whole crowd now, screaming and crying, as well as Jimmy’s family and friends. The ambulance drove away up the Selborne Road to King’s College Hospital, but it did not bring Jimmy back. A little later, Pupatee went over to the hospital and saw Jimmy’s brother coming out.

‘Is he all right?’ Pupatee asked.

‘He’s dead,’ his brother managed to get out. This brother was normally a big strong young man, but now he seemed to have shrunk with distress and sorrow. Pupatee stood outside the hospital for a while, and then made his way back to the house. Pupatee thought Jimmy would come running out to play any minute. He couldn’t accept that his best friend would no longer laugh with him again.

Jimmy was buried the following Friday in the pouring rain at the cemetery in Peckham. The church was filled with mourners of all ages and colours. There were many boys from Jimmy’s school, and girls and boys from other local comprehensives. They were all gathered around Jimmy’s coffin. The priest gave his sermon. He said that Jimmy had been robbed of his life which had only just begun, but that he could only be going to a better place from this world of devastation in which we must try to continue our lives. And then everyone sang ‘Rock of Ages, Pledge for Me’ and they went outside into the graveyard, towards the hole which had been dug, ready for Jimmy. Pupatee saw Jimmy’s mum and dad. Both were dressed in black. His mum, who had always been such a cheerful, beautiful woman, had turned old and withered. The priest said some prayers and then sprinkled earth on top of Jimmy’s little coffin. Jimmy’s dad looked down into the hole as if to say: Don’t go, son, come back to your dad, and he seemed to want to jump into the grave. It took his friends to hold him back.

You couldn’t see the tears for the rain. There were red eyes and running noses. Pupatee thought of the funeral he had gone to in Jamaica with all the laughter and music, the feast of food and drinking, the singing and the wailing and the praying. And then he, too, noticed that he was crying and he took out his handkerchief to wipe the rain and the tears from his face.

The priest left and the mourners slipped away, taking Jimmy’s mum and dad with them. It was the saddest thing Pupatee had ever seen. A few weeks later Jimmy’s family moved away from Camberwell. Pupatee never saw them again.