by Hannah Lowe
Aside from playing, he also dabbled in various other gambling-related ventures that might, if they had worked out, have earned him some serious money. The dice tables might have brought in an income if there’d been more demand, as might his foray into betting shops.
Sometime in the late 1960s, just as he met my mother, my father and a fellow called Leslie Jones rented some rooms above a row of shops in Ladbroke Grove. The government of the day made betting shops legal in 1961, but, still not wanting to encourage gambling, had decreed they had to be strictly functional places – no drinks or food, no television or advertising, no carpets, and windows blacked out. The buildings my father and Leslie secured were grand and Victorian. They set about painting and refurbishing the rooms, laying new carpet, buying comfortable chairs and sofas and installing a tannoy system with speakers in each room. There was an entry phone downstairs through which, after word got around, ‘high class’ punters could come to enjoy the ambience of the rooms, be served a drink and place a discreet bet. My father and Leslie laid off the bets to a bigger bookmaker who was willing to take them and who charged them a small fee for doing so. They, in turn, charged a large fee for entrance to the sitting rooms and people were willing to pay.
The place was entirely against the law, but was doing a roaring trade, no doubt because of the exclusivity of the sitting rooms, and because, between races, my father and Leslie would put the tannoy to another use. Leslie knew a prostitute called Gladys in Paddington, who, for a fee, would happily describe her services in great detail over the phone – which they would broadcast to the room. Men would stay for hours, buy more drinks and place more bets.
They should have been rich, but there were two problems. One was that Leslie was a crook with his hand in the till. He was pilfering the profits under my father’s nose, knowing it would take my father a while to get his nerve up to say something. The other problem was my father’s own gambling. He was like a child in a sweet shop, betting on every other race. When the landlord got wind of the illegal goings-on at the sitting rooms he put the rent up, but my father and Leslie were already out of capital. After six months, they had no choice but to close.
My father really was an addict. He lost a fortune on the horses, the biggest cause of gambling addiction. He spent countless afternoons at the local bookmakers, at home among the other punters whose camaraderie he must have enjoyed. All of them knew betting on horses was a losing game, but still they studied the form and hopefully filled in their betting slips. Unlike cards or dice, there was no way for my father to swing things in his favour. He lost like everyone else.
Sometimes he’d put on his best suit and drive to Kempton Park or Epsom. I have an early memory of Goodwood racecourse where my parents sometimes took us for a trip. I’m trackside in my pram, the thunder of the horses’ hooves approaching, and I’m straining out my seat to see them – the sweat-dark animals, the jockeys in their rippling coloured silks. You loved the sound of them, my mother told me. You used to shout out, ‘C’mon horsey! C’mon horsey!’ And I remember how my father lifted me, high up above the crowd, so I could see them galloping past.
We should have been rich, but my father never saved a penny, never planned for a future when his luck had gone, or, more to the point, his health. But financial acumen and gambling don’t go hand in hand – it wasn’t as though casinos offered pensions to seasoned gamblers. Later, when he couldn’t play because he couldn’t take the stress, or his hands wouldn’t work, or because he didn’t have the cash to stake – his addiction showed itself the most. We needed money – to maintain the house or for car repairs – but my father couldn’t make it. He’d take a handful of change to the bookmaker to try his luck, but rarely won.
Instead, he had to rely on my mother, a humiliation he found hard to bear, and she in turn amassed more debt. He couldn’t have borrowed money if he’d tried – he’d never had a bank account and didn’t understand the way they worked. He’d once made an appointment at the bank to enquire about a business loan to open a Jamaican café. He just walked into the local branch in Goodmayes, no business plan, no paperwork. The manager took one look at him and laughed, my mother said. It wasn’t that my father had a bad financial history – he didn’t have a history at all.
In the end he was depressed, frustrated and despairing – crying in the bathroom, his self-esteem crushed by his financial impotence. But more than that, I think he desperately missed his way of life – the thrill of playing through the night, all the shady characters he knew – fifty years of living off his nerve.
14
1947
The boy sat on his blue leather trunk on the deck of the Ormonde. Waiting. They were two miles from England, the captain told them, but a thick mist obscured the sight of land. Before they could move on they needed clearance from the authorities, and so the ship was held offshore while it was decided if they would be permitted to dock. No one had expected this.
The boy walked along the deck, pulling his coat around him, so used to the rhythm of the ship on water. He wondered whether he’d be able to walk straight on land. It was March and the cold bit at his skin. All the fellows had their good suits on, polished shoes and smart coats, but the morning’s excitement was waning. They milled around aimlessly, anchored for nearly four hours after three long weeks of sailing. Please God let them land today.
Three weeks. Three long weeks. What a journey. The boy had played cards the whole way, with chaps he’d met on the ship and some he knew from before. Rufus and he had planned to come together, had both bought their passage. But at the last minute – the day before the ship left – Rufus had knocked on the door of the boy’s room to say he couldn’t go. There was a girl he liked. He wanted to stay. So the boy had climbed aboard the Ormonde alone, only to find there were plenty of men he knew – some from Yallahs, some from Kingston and one he even knew from America: on the voyage’s second day, he’d found Enoch Leaford sitting on deck with his nose in a book.
Some of the passengers were ex-servicemen who’d been in Britain before and told the others what they knew about their destination – fish and chips and rain, rain, rain, and documents. You needed paperwork and ration cards. You needed work permits. Others of the group had never left Jamaica, and said they were coming for a quick look-see. And no one planned to stay for more than five years. Make money, go home. Get rich quick, go back.
Among the passengers there was a sense of camaraderie – all of them doing this thing. When they found out there were stowaways on board, no one gave them up. Instead, clean shirts were found and the fellows let them share their sinks because nothing gives away a stowaway more than a dirty collar. When one was caught asleep in a lifeboat, they clubbed together to pay his fare.
Not all the men were Jamaican. En route, the boat had stopped at Trinidad and Havana. The boy had never met a Trinidadian before, but soon he was fast friends with Teddy Lyon from Port of Spain who joined him at the poker table most nights. And two boxers came aboard at Trinidad – Spike and Johnny King, brothers with a sponsor bringing them to England to fight. Most days of the voyage they would spar on the upper deck, marking a ring in chalk on the planking. Short and muscular, they skipped around each other in their long shorts, ducking punches, shooting quick jabs and uppercuts. Soon one of the fellows was running a book on them, and everyone was betting.
The boxers had an address to go to in Liverpool – a landlady their promoter had fixed them up with. They told the boy to come with them when they docked in case there was an extra room. The boy was grateful to them, but he knew why they’d asked him. Johnny King loved to play cards, had spent hours standing at the table, watching the boy shuffle and deal, and other times he’d ask the boy for card tricks – Follow the Lady and Slap the Deck, his eyes fixed to the boy’s hands as though hypnotised.
The boy heard a muffled sound behind him and turned to see Haggai Tucker, a fellow he knew from Yallahs, all dressed up and sniffling into a hanky. ‘Haggai, man. What you crying
for?’ he asked him. ‘The English know we coming. They’ll welcome us.’ He put his hand on Haggai’s shoulder. They had shared the walk to school as boys, chasing snakes and mongooses.
‘I don’t know why,’ said Haggai. ‘Just overwhelmed, is all. Happy too.’
And just then, a boom from the belly of the ship let them know the engine had started, and slowly the boat began moving forward, land appearing through the mist. Was it England? Yes! The sight had the same effect on all the fellows, all one hundred and fifty of them now stood along the rails of the deck in the dull light of March. The engines of the Ormonde were fully running and the ship sailed towards the dock, closer and closer. Were there hands raised in the distance? Yes! A crowd was gathered half a mile off, waving them in. One Jamaican fellow raised his hand, waving at England, then another, then the boy raised his hand, until all of them had raised their arms, and were waving.
And then all heads turned as they heard one splash, then another. ‘Oh God,’ said Haggai. ‘What are they doing?’ They watched as another man further along jumped from the ship into the water and began swimming – fast, frantic strokes towards the coast. ‘There’s got to be crocodiles in there!’ Haggai said, staring into the murky brown water.
‘It’s the stowaways,’ the boy said. ‘I hope they make it.’ There were eight men in the sea.
Haggai pulled himself up the rails. ‘God be with you!’ he shouted out to them. There were other calls along the deck.
‘Good luck!’ shouted the boy.
‘Let them make it.’ Haggai said. ‘Please God, please God.’
♦
After the paperwork, the offloading and the long wait for stamps and documents, a nervous man from the Council stood on a crate at the side of the dock and spoke slowly to the Jamaicans, as though he were speaking to children. ‘Some of you will go to London, under the care of the West Indian Servicemen’s Association. Some of you will remain here in Liverpool to look for employment. Whichever the case, we wish you all good luck, and welcome you to England.’
The stowaways sat shivering in blankets on the dock, a policeman guarding them. They had been pulled from the water by the police and were to appear in court the next day, but all of them were fine. They raised their hands to wave as the other fellows began to disperse.
The boy went with the boxer brothers, each of them with a holdall, leaving trunks they’d come back for when they found the address of their digs. The sun was going down and it was freezing as they trudged uphill. Liverpool looked as uninviting as any place the boy had ever seen, with its ugly red-brick walls and ugly houses. The three of them walked in the direction they’d been pointed in, the address scrawled on a piece of paper, and the boy felt the eyes of everyone they passed on them. Suddenly he missed his old neighbourhood in Kingston, even the small room with its hard bed and leaking tap. He thought of the shop in Yallahs – the tumbledown shelves, the orange trees with their waxy leaves and heavy fruit. He thought of his father, the sun coming up there and James Lowe standing in the doorway of the shop with his cigarette, the first customers walking the road for cups of flour and jugs of milk. Something fell away inside of him. It was the talk of the boxers that kept him going, and the fact they were moving on either side of him that made him move too. All the excitement had transformed into a thick knot in his stomach, a sick feeling. He turned round and from the top of the hill could still see the funnels of the ship in the dock. The sea was a flat, grey sheet frozen on the grey sky. Where am I, he thought – Lord God, what am I doing?
15
Can the Subaltern Speak?
Turn your lights down low
– Bob Marley and the Wailers, Exodus (1977)
It didn’t take me long to fall in love with Brighton – the tall fairy-tale houses in pastel blues and pinks, the narrow lanes of ramshackle shops selling Chinese lanterns, incense, bohemian clothes. It was so pretty compared to Ilford. I went on long wintry walks along the seafront, the heavy grey waves crashing on the shale, and along the old wooden pier with its tea shops and seafood stalls and the ancient arcade. There were sweet little cafés and old, cramped pubs in which I drank with girls I’d met in my halls.
‘Adam really likes you,’ Jenny told me, over our pints of cider. ‘You can tell by the way he looks at you.’ Adam was a boy downstairs in my hall, whom I liked too. The day before, we’d been for a long walk over the South Downs, just the two of us. It was cold and misty as we stalked up the hill. I was perfectly capable of clambering over fences, but I’d let him help me, and I thought he might have kissed me when we stopped so he could tie his stripy scarf around my neck. Instead, we both blushed and bumped into each other as we turned to walk back down.
I’d met him on the stairs of our halls on the second day. He was settling in, stepping around the stacks of records that took up half his floor space. He’d pinned an enormous poster of Bob Marley to his wall and one of Che Guevara. If these were student clichés, I didn’t know it then. When we’d exchanged the niceties that characterised all my conversations that week – where we lived, what A-levels we’d taken, what we were here to study – and established that Adam was a devoted Tottenham Hotspur supporter, he invited me into his room.
‘What sort of music are you into?’ I asked, as he cleared a space on his single bed for me to sit.
‘I like lots of stuff, but reggae the most.’ I watched him moving things around. He had thick auburn hair, longish and a bit wild, and his features were strong – a long nose, thick eyebrows. He looked clever. ‘I’ll put some on,’ he said, carefully slipping a record from its cover and resting it gently on the turntable. What he played wasn’t like anything I’d heard before. A thick bass line resounded, pulsing slowly below electronic bleeps and reverb, and intermittently, the syncopated guitar of reggae and a man singing would filter in and out.
‘It’s dub reggae,’ he said. ‘Mixed up at Studio One in Kingston.’ I hadn’t a clue what he meant but I loved the sound. He reached into a drawer and pulled out a pack of Rizlas and a bag of bright green weed, rolling a long thin joint he tapped against his hand then lit. We smoked, listening to that feverish music, both lying back on his bed in a sweet cloud of smoke.
In the weeks to follow, Adam’s room became a congregation space for dub reggae lovers – mostly white, middle-class boys – and the smell of cannabis wafted down his corridor to the hall’s reception, the first thing you smelt when you came through the door. ‘Blimey,’ said the security guard to me one evening as I came down the stairs, flapping his hand in front of his nose, ‘even I’m stoned! It’s like this every year, I tell you, but this year is the worst!’
♠
‘God, it’s really white down here, ain’t it?’ said Holly, when she came to visit. We were in my room. ‘And everyone’s posh.’ It was November, raining hard outside, the water streaming down the glass in grey streaks. I’d been so glad to see her when she arrived, dumping her bag and umbrella on the floor, flopping onto the bed and lighting a cigarette. Brighton was an hour from home by train, but I felt a million miles away, distanced more by the new people I’d met than by physical space. But I could tell Holly disapproved of my new life and friends when we went to the pub that night, and after, back in Adam’s room, where a crowd of us got stoned, Holly sat back, quietly observing. ‘Hannah’s dad’s from Jamaica,’ Adam told the room. ‘Mad, eh?’ Holly pulled a face, and I cringed, seeing things through her eyes.
‘No way, man,’ said Piers, one of the dreadlocked regulars. His father was a millionaire who apparently owned a third of the world’s rubber, but Piers always looked unwashed, wore ripped jeans and flip-flops even in winter. His only concession to the cold was his brightly coloured Ecuadorean cardigan. ‘You don’t look it, man,’ he said to me, and I think I detected a trace of a put-on Jamaican accent. Holly tried not to laugh.
I had told Adam that my dad was Jamaican, but he hadn’t met him, and I suspected he and the others might have thought my dad was an old Rastafarian sat
at home in Ilford smoking from a chillum. But my father had liked jazz and blues and had left Jamaica way before reggae music had come around. At the time he’d lived there, Rastafarians were looked down upon, in fact. I wonder what he’d have made of those wealthy white kids with their dreadlocks and tie-dyed clothes. How different his Jamaica was from the one of their imagination.
‘So, let me get this right,’ Holly said the next morning. ‘The boys smoke dope all day, and think they’re black.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘Rich idiots,’ she declared. I was annoyed at her for judging so quickly, but there was truth in what she said. There was the wealth of the solid middle classes there. Most students I’d met had been to private school. Most were white. There were a few Asian students in the halls, but I’d not met anyone black.
‘How the other half live, eh?’ Holly said. ‘Spending Daddy’s money on a big bag of weed and their designer hippy clothes!’
♥
I spent most of my time that first term lying on Adam’s bed, listening to reggae. We were a couple by then and I was a permanent fixture in his room, sleeping every night in a cannabis haze to the percussive hiss of a record still rotating on the turntable, the purple light of a lava lamp swirling low on the walls.
Late in autumn we caught the coach to London to the big student protests, marching with thousands of others through Piccadilly and Trafalgar Square. Afterwards, he took me to his parents’ house, a big Victorian semi on a leafy street in north London. ‘They’re not back from France until Sunday night,’ he said in his bedroom, ‘but they can smell dope at a mile’s distance.’ I’d not met his parents, only knew his father was Hungarian and his mother was French. When he went home to watch the football, she sent him back with delicious tarte Tatin we’d devour at midnight, stoned and ravenously hungry. Now we leant out of his window, exhaling smoke into the cool evening air. Red leaves dropped from the trees onto the wide lawn. He pulled me closer. ‘I love you,’ he said and kissed me.
