Street Kid (15 page)

I sat there quietly, soaking up the conversation, knowing that in our cabin there certainly wouldn’t be a stocking hanging at the end of my bed. After all, Santa had never managed to track me down before, so he certainly wasn’t likely to do so on board the
Bloemfontein Castle.

I nursed a little hope that I might be able to join in with the other kids on Christmas Day. I’d never known that Christmas could be a time of such festivities. People had been talking about it for days. As well as a fancy dress party, the crew had organized a visit from Santa for the children. Christmas at the orphanage had just meant one thing – more chapel services; and at Wood Street, my dad and Freda used to spend most of the day at church. I didn’t know it could be like this.

Although I’d hoped that this Christmas Day might be different, I wasn’t surprised when my dad made me go down to the cabin after breakfast. As usual, there I stayed until dinner time. Lying there on my bed that day, the silence of the lower deck felt even more godforsaken than before. I knew that, out on deck, there would be games and celebrations all day long and felt a huge, hard lump in my throat.

When Freda came down to the cabin to dress for dinner, I watched her getting dolled up in a satiny gold dress she’d bought at the market. I thought it looked awful as it was slimy-looking and had puke-like swirls all over it. Once she’d finished putting on her make-up she put on
a pair of matching gold slippers. I sat on the bed and thought to myself how incongruous it looked – this hard-faced, unsmiling woman wearing such a twinkly, girlish outfit, the lipstick on her cheeks making her look like a painted clown.

I don’t think I’d ever seen Freda laughing. I don’t think she knew how. She’d certainly never cracked a joke or giggled with her friends in my hearing. Over the years she’d been with my father, her mouth had hardened into a sour expression, with deep lines scored on either side. I wondered if her mouth was actually able to stretch itself into a laugh, even if it had wanted to. I guessed not.

As I looked across the table at Mrs Rippon at dinner, I realized that she and Freda would never be more than civil to each other. Freda didn’t know how to be friends with anyone she couldn’t patronize, and I knew she felt uncomfortable that Gladys was posher and more self-assured than she was. At home, Freda was in the habit of acting the role of spiritual do-gooder, doling out advice – and occasionally food – to the less well-off women in their Spiritualist circle. I used to watch how she acted with her friend Madge, patronizing her in a superior sort of way. It worked with Madge as she was always down on her luck. But with Gladys it was different, and Freda felt ill at ease around her.

My father had no such problem with the Rippons. While Freda sat at the table rather stiffly, he showed an easy familiarity with Alec and Gladys. Considering he was only a factory worker, it was amazing that he could be so charmingly confident around them. My dad had all the oily sociability Freda lacked, and I’m sure that’s why she was drawn to him.

At Cape Town, the ship docked to let some of the passengers disembark and take on new supplies for the final leg of the trip to Durban. Once again, everyone was allowed on shore for the day and the mood was jubilant – especially as they’d at last reached the country that was to be their new home.

Breakfast was at six that day because the tour buses were due to leave earlier than usual. My dad told me I couldn’t go back to the cabin until later, in case I was discovered on board after everyone else had left.

‘The steward will have finished cleaning it in another hour so you can go down then,’ he said. ‘Wait in the dining room and then move when the coast is clear.’

I had no intention of doing what Dad told me that morning, so I waited until I knew he and Freda had left and then, instead of slipping down to the cabin, I went up on deck. The warm air smelt fresh and spicy and I breathed it in hungrily. Freedom felt so good that morning, and I revelled in it.

I was dazzled by the smells, the sounds, the colours of everything around me. On the dockside, native women in the most glorious clothes – rich magentas, greens and golds – had laid out carved animals, jewellery and scarves. I’d never seen anyone wearing that rich, deep orangey yellow colour before. In Manchester people wore only a few colours, and they were always drab and boring.

These woman had gleaming, dark skin and I thrilled to hear them shouting across at each other in a language I’d never heard before. Some of them had babies strapped on their backs, others were carrying baskets of yellow fruit on their heads. It was like one of my storybooks come to life. And it was as different to my life in the grey smoggy streets of Manchester as I could have imagined.

People were still streaming off the ship, and as I looked down at the gangway I saw a woman on her own, struggling with two kids and a pushchair. I knew I shouldn’t speak to anyone but I found myself moving forward to help her anyway.

‘Thank you, dear,’ she said to me gratefully. ‘If you wouldn’t mind carrying my little girl, that would be a great help.’

When we reached the bottom of the gangway, I was about to turn and push my way back up when I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. I spun round in panic.

‘You wait here.’ A man in uniform stood beside me, looking stern.

I almost gave a sob, feeling overwhelmed with panic.

I’ve got to get away. He’ll find out who I am. My dad will kill me.

It never occurred to me that the man was simply holding me back so that I didn’t get in the way of the other passengers. Instead, I was immediately convinced that I was going to be taken away and never seen again. My dad’s horror of officials had rubbed off on me to the extent that I couldn’t imagine any other scenario.

I knew I had to escape and cast around desperately for an opening in the crowd, but the people were still streaming down the gangway.
Come on! Hurry up!
I willed them to stop dawdling. Then I saw a gap and, giving a sharp wriggle, violently tore myself away from the man’s grasp.

‘Hey, you!’ he shouted after me. ‘What do you think … ?’ But I didn’t hear the rest of his words as I’d already gone.

I was convinced that the official would come after me in his heavy boots and that he might find me if I went down to the cabin. So instead I went down to the first-class deck and looked for a place to hide. I found a broom cupboard
and sat there for hours in the dark. The smell of polish reminded me of St Joseph’s.

Sometime in the afternoon, a steward opened the door to fetch a broom and nearly got the fright of his life when he saw me.

‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ he said. ‘You’re a naughty boy, playing games in here and giving honest people a fright.’

I shrank back from his wagging finger.

‘Now get lost. I don’t want to see you again.’

I didn’t need to be told twice and in a few seconds was back in our cabin. Lying in my prison cell was preferable to the beating I’d get from Dad if he discovered I’d been outside.

We finally reached Durban on 31 December 1956, after a journey of almost four weeks. During that time I had hardly left our dank and airless cabin. I felt an enormous sense of relief wash over me as I left my prison cell behind.

As I stood in the baking sun, outside on the dockside, I noticed a banner attached to the rails which read ‘Happy New Year’. I wondered then what it would bring in this new land, full of possibilities.

Chapter Fourteen

D
urban was blisteringly hot. I reckoned it was easily hotter than any day we’d ever had in Manchester. I stood on the station platform and looked around me. In the glare of the shimmering sunlight a host of lean black porters strode back and forth, carrying bags. They looked like glossy, ebony carvings, and I couldn’t help feeling a buzz of excitement as I took in the scene.

My father was in his element, wearing a new khaki safari suit, the jacket tied at the waist with a belt. In his new suit and hat, I thought he looked like someone out of a Tarzan film, and I could tell he was really into the idea of himself as some sort of colonial grandee. As we had to carry our own bags, though, I’m sure everyone else recognized we were just steerage passengers on a ten-pound immigration ticket.

We stayed one night in Durban. As we walked to our hotel, along a street lined with palm trees, I thought how wonderful this wide avenue was after our narrow cobbled streets in Hulme. I was even more amazed to see that natives in costume were running along it, pulling brightly painted carts behind them. They were wearing huge headdresses and had tinkling bells around their ankles.
I heard Gladys Rippon explain to Cathleen that the little carriages on poles were called rickshaws. White people were sitting inside them, some of them dressed in safari suits like my dad’s.

Next day we took a long train ride to Johannesburg. I spent the whole time looking out of the carriage window, marvelling at the scenery. I couldn’t get over how wide and bright the sky was or how far the horizon stretched. In England I’d never seen the long edge of the sky as all the grey roofs and chimney pots, churchtowers and factory chimneys got in the way. Now, as I saw the bushveld in all its glory, the flat sandy expanse of it, the scrubby bushes and strange reddish mountain ridges in the distance, I felt very much alive.

We didn’t arrive in Johannesburg until late in the evening. The warm night air smelt of flowers and spice. We passed through streets of white wooden houses encircled by verandas and finally came to the hotel we were to spend the night at, the Casa Mia. It seemed very grand to me. I had never had a bath with hot water coming out of the tap before and was very impressed. I spent as long as I could in it that night, topping it up with steaming water again and again until the hot ran cold.

The next day we took our bags further down the same road to our boarding house. The Allendene Residential Hotel wasn’t half as impressive as the Casa Mia. In fact, it was pretty dilapidated. It was a typical refuge for poor white immigrant families in Berea, a decaying area of Johannesburg. We were shown to our room by the landlord, Mr Adams, who was a lardy, pasty-faced man with greasy strands of hair pasted over his bald head.

‘Here you are, then,’ he said. ‘Tea’s at six, breakfast between five-thirty and seven. Bath at the end of the
corridor. Not to be used more than once a week for the kids.’

We put our cases down and looked around the room. I noticed that the window was cracked and stuck up with tape. The floor was bare wooden boards. Freda went over to the double bed and pulled back the cover. A couple of brown cockroaches skittered across the mattress. They must have been all of three inches long.

‘Bloody hell, Jack,’ she sighed. ‘This place is a bit of a dump.’

My father just ignored Freda and, with his back to her, began to unpack his suits and shirts and hang them in the wardrobe.

‘Just remember who’s paying the rent,’ he reminded her curtly, without turning round. ‘And don’t go shouting your mouth off about it and moaning to Gladys and Alec.’

To give them their due, the Rippons didn’t make a single complaint themselves when we all collected downstairs in the dining room later. The general scruffiness of the Allendene must have seemed a shocking change for them – a far cry from their comfortable Victorian house back home in Manchester. Gladys was definitely tougher than her manicured hands and carefully applied make-up would lead you to imagine. She had clearly resolved to support Alec one hundred per cent in his mission to do Christ’s duty. I’d always thought, with her posh voice like a teacher’s, that Gladys was like royalty. Now I was even more impressed by her.

At one point, a cockroach scuttled across our table and I saw Gladys’s eyes flicker. Cathleen let out a small squeal.

‘Shush, Cathleen,’ her mother admonished her. ‘Just remember what I said.’

This is what God has meant me to learn,
I read in her eyes.
We have to do these things, even when it’s hard.

After tea, I went outside. In the hour or so before it got dark I wandered about the streets nearest the Allendene. The houses in Berea had obviously been built in better times and although they were dilapidated now, I still thought they looked very grand. The large wooden bungalows had elegant verandas at the front and their gardens were full of exotic trees and shrubs. All along the roadside were heaps of blossom, little mauve trumpet-shaped flowers, that had fallen from the trees.

In Hulme, people always sat indoors in the evenings, doing their sewing or listening to the wireless; but here it was different. I walked past the houses, enjoying watching groups of people sitting on the verandas or on low walls, laughing and talking with each other. Some of them had brought their radios outside and they chattered away over the sound of the dance music, drinking Coca-Cola from the bottle. I noticed there wasn’t a black person among them.

‘I just think you could tell me where you’re going, that’s all.’

It was our third week in the Allendene and it was clear that things weren’t going well for Freda.

‘Just let me get on with my business, will you?’ My father had his back turned away from Freda in their double bed. He was lying as far away from her as he could possibly get.

‘And what am I meant to do while you’re in the surgery with Gladys all day?’ Freda almost spat her name.

‘Look, we’re all working bloody hard here to set up the sanctuary, so just shut up and give me a break, will you?’

My father and Alec had rented a room downtown in an office block. This they’d furnished as a surgery for the Triangle Band Healing Sanctuary, which they’d set up for a new Spiritualist circle they’d got in with in Johannesburg. The only trouble was that Freda had not been invited to join in. It was Gladys who had been kitted out in a smart new nurse’s uniform. Freda was hopping mad about it. After all, she’d been promised by my father that she’d be the one sitting at his right hand and sharing in the glory once they’d set up the new sanctuary.