Authors: Jackie Kay
His father liked going to a barber that was good at cutting black hair and whose customers were almost exclusively black. He liked sitting silent, waiting, watching himself in the mirror whilst the barber took his hair off in slices, slices of hair falling on to the floor. Colman always went with his father when he was a boy. They’d get done together. An initiation ceremony. His father must have had some nerve to sit in a barber’s shop full of black men getting a man’s haircut all the time knowing he was a woman. Must take quite a lot of balls to pull that off. Maybe he enjoyed it. Maybe he liked the danger of it. Maybe it didn’t feel dangerous at all. If he was to have a chance to pull his father back up out of the wet muddy grave, have a chance to wrench open the wooden coffin and sit him up for ten minutes, that would be the first question he would ask him: did he like going to the barber’s?
He stares at the fish in the window as he passes. Ghoulish looking. Dead mouths hanging open. Jelly eyes. Scaly slippery skin. Red mullets. Parrot fish. Grey mullets. Huge strange fish, exotic looking, as if someone from a
children’s story had caught them under the sea in the old world, and brought them back for people to see in the new world. Eyes staring blankly at him as if they remembered nothing. As if they’d forgotten they ever were fish. Some of the guys in the barber’s shop stare like that, empty-eyed, as if they’ve forgotten who they are and have just landed some place without a past. The eyes of fish and the eyes of guys. Colman looks straight ahead down the road. A train passes over the railway bridge. The sky is a burden to itself, grey and heavy and passionate about rain. This is the strangest summer he can remember. Every day is a different weather. Not even the fucking weather can make up its mind.
Three steps at a time, down into the filthy hole of the tube. Down into the underworld of rubbish and stink and piss and poor people with their kids begging and guys holding up bits of brown cardboard that read ‘Homeless’. Gets his ticket from the ticket machines that freak tourists. Remembers to get a single. He’s not coming back. Not for a while. Pats his holdall. He’s packed one pair of black jeans, two long shirts, one pair of brand new trainers – that he’s bought with his card – four pairs of clean boxer shorts, one of them silk, just in case. A couple of sweatshirts and T-shirts, all American. One smart suit.
He passes someone at the bottom of the steps huddled between the entrance to both platforms who says, ‘Any change?’ Change in what? Change in the weather, change in government. Change – what do you mean, any change? Do you mean you want money? Well, why don’t you ask for money? If you’d asked for money I’d have given you
some, asshole. Learn to ask for what you want. Doesn’t say any of this. Thinks it. But the guy shuffles back as he passes him as if he could read his thoughts. The sight of the broken man, with his dirty fingernails, filthy long matted hair, dirty beard, dopey eyes, hangdog look on his chops, and his millions of bits of rags that pass for clothes wrapped round him, his stupid mongrel dog that looks as defeated as him – but protective – infuriates him. It grates, seeing people broken like this. He is repulsed; doesn’t feel any pity or mercy. Just raging fucking irritation. Doesn’t want it in his face. The sight of it, in his face. His mother and his father were always sympathetic to poor people, to people with no money or power but, even as a boy, he wasn’t. He still finds himself thinking these sour thoughts about people like this guy, thoughts that spring right into his head, barking. Barking. He thinks these kind of thoughts every day. Go and get a job, you useless pile of shit. The exact opposite way of thinking to his upbringing. Sponger. Waster. Parasite. Get up and get a job for fuck’s sake.
He panics for a moment. Has he got the tickets that Sophie sent him? The Glasgow tickets? Did he leave them by the phone? He can see them by the phone. Stupid fucker. He calls himself names. This is another thing he has taken to doing recently, calling himself names. He pulls out his wallet and checks through. His head is buzzing, making a high noise inside his ears. There they are. Thank fuck for that. He says that out loud to himself. Thank fuck for that. His father used to say that all the time and he’s always liked the ring of it. He looks into
the eyes of the guy who asked for change. The guy’s actually been thinking he was getting out his wallet to give him some money. He gets a fiver out of his wallet and drops it into the guy’s empty box and says, ‘Now stop staring in my face.’
Colman gets on the tube and turns to look at the homeless guy who is turning the fiver round in his hand, staring at it, pulling himself up, gathering his plastic bags and his sad dog together. He’ll be off to the butcher’s to buy that mutt a bone. Colman pictures the look on the sad dog’s face when the bone is put down in the street for him to pull and tug and crunch and suck in a long, long dance of the bone in a homeless London night.
The black woman opposite him has a son that looks her double. He’s cute. He’s staring at Colman. He winks at the little man. The boy keeps staring, pleased. So Colman winks again. And again and again. The boy is two or something. He’s still staring at him. Shit, I can’t spend my whole time winking all the way to fucking Euston, Colman thinks, and turns his head away. He’s relieved to see them getting up to get off at Kings Cross. He gives the boy a nod and the boy gives Colman a smile to die for. Doesn’t cost much, Colman thinks, doesn’t cost much to nod at a little geezer and make his fucking day.
Colman never reads a book or a paper on the tube. He likes to keep his wits about him in case somebody tries to do him over. This is a mean city. You’ve got to watch out. London is not the London it used to be. It’s all broken up. It’s defeated. It stinks. He’s relieved to be cutting loose. Going somewhere on a train. Actually
escaping. He is getting the fuck out of it. He feels something in him lift and float, something light and fluffy. Time is a dandelion clock now. He can blow each hour off and make the time up.
The big departure board at Euston blinks down at him with its frightening list of the wrong cities and times. He stares at it panicking. It’s a while since he did this, get on a train on his own. He stares at the wrong cities, sweating. Where is Glasgow? Why isn’t Glasgow up? He realizes he’s looking at arrivals and not departures. Asshole. There it is. Glasgow 11.15. But no platform. Why isn’t the platform number up? Who can he ask? He’ll just need to stand watching the big black board till the number appears. Fuck. The number will appear at the last fucking minute and every anxious fucker will be rushing down the platform, banging their trolleys into the backs of others’ legs and struggling with that tight gang of trolleys to get their quid back. Carlisle. The train is stopping at Carlisle. That’s on the border. ‘The minute I hit Carlisle, I know I’m in my own country. My heart starts beating the minute I cross the border,’ his father would say. Well, why don’t you go back and live there then? Colman would ask him. He’d just shake his head. Not enough work.
Not enough work, my ass. His mother. That’s why he didn’t live there. His mother was alive.
His mother is alive. Does Josephine Moore’s mother know that her daughter is dead? Will he have to tell her? Shit. He rushes and buys a tuna sandwich and a diet Coke. Still no platform number. He scoots into Menzies, gets
one of those puzzle books where you find words, diagonally, horizontally, vertically. They make him feel clever; he can’t do crosswords. He hates crossword people: conceited bastards, always humming to themselves, thinking, thinking with all their thoughts showing on their face, sitting with their sharp pencils or their fancy pens, sly, working out their cryptic clues. Saying ‘Ah’ ostentatiously and triumphantly filling in another anagram. His mother can do crosswords. His mother has tried to teach him the secret of crosswords on and off through the years. His mother would have loved that kind of son; the kind of son who would have listened, got it and in no time been filling in his own puzzles in the
Guardian
.
Colman moves about in the queue from foot to foot. Impatient to get going. What is it about travelling that makes him so anxious? He sees other people looking harassed and wound up, shouting at each other. Over the top. Everybody’s over the top, except for a few business wankers with suits who will probably sit in the first class, cool as fucking cucumbers. Well, he’s cool really. He’s got his ticket, his sandwich, his reservation. Everything’s cool. No problem. No problem.
He strides down the platform, longer steps than usual, easily overtaking all the old people and the women with children. He is looking for H. He can never understand the order of this carriage business. It doesn’t seem to be straightforwardly alphabetical. He has to walk practically the length of the train before he sees the hopeful H. He hopes someone else is not going to be sitting in his seat. He’s had that before and he’s always lost the battle of the
train seat. Even though his ticket has said the same thing. He’s always lost. Got himself into a fight with the railman, the other customer, the other fuckers on the train staring. It is not easy to travel in this country. Black guys like him. People always think they are going to be wrong or they’ve done something wrong or they’re lying, or about to lie, or stealing or about to steal. It’s no fucking joke just trying to get about the place with people thinking bad things about you all the time. He knows they think these things. They don’t fool him with their surprise and pretence. It’s written all over their faces. They are wary of him, scared of him, uptight. How many times has he had to say, Hands up, it’s OK. I don’t bite. He doesn’t want the hassle of it, someone else sitting on his seat and treating him as if he had no fucking right to a seat anyway. Out of the window another train pulls out slowly giving the impression that his own train is already moving. The sensation scares him. He panics, wondering if he is on the right train, or if he should be sitting across the line in that other train with those people that are pulling out. When he hears the word ‘Glasgow’ he relaxes. Should he eat his sandwich now? His stomach is empty and weird. He keeps forgetting to eat. Since his father died, his eating is all over the place. His stomach has started to make weird noises every time he does remember to eat, noises that remind him of science experiments he did at school, bubbling and garbling. He keeps having to fart or burp to get any relief. Just as well nobody is sitting next to him. He decides to open the sandwich at Milton Keynes.
How many years is it since he lived in Scotland? Twenty-five years? His father was always telling him: you are Scottish, you were born in Scotland and that makes you Scottish. But he doesn’t feel Scottish. He doesn’t speak with a Scottish accent. He can do a good one, like all children of Scottish parents, but it’s not him. What is him? This is what he’s been asking himself. It’s all the train’s fault: something about the way the land moves out of the window; about crossing a border; about seeing a cow’s tail spin round and round its arse to get the flies away. Why is he even on this train in the first place? He is going to find out about his father. That’s right, isn’t it? He’s going to meet the woman who is supposed to be dead. Find out about his father’s real life.
He looked real enough playing that horn in those smoky clubs; he looked real and unreal like a fantasy of himself. All jazz men are fantasies of themselves, reinventing the Counts and Dukes and Armstrongs, imitating them. Music was the one way of keeping the past alive, his father said. There’s more future in the past than there is in the future, he said. Black people and music. Black people and music; what would the world be without black people and music. Slave songs, work songs, gospel, blues, ragtime, jazz. (‘Rap?’ Colman would say. ‘What about rap?’ ‘No, that’s just a lot of rubbish,’ his father would say quite seriously. ‘A lot of shite. Rap isn’t music. Rap is crap. Where’s the story?’) The stories in the blues. All blues are stories. Our stories, his father said, our history. You can’t understand the history of slavery without knowing about the slave songs. Colman doesn’t feel as if he has
a history. Doesn’t feel comfortable with mates of his that go on and on about Africa. It feels false to him, mates that get dressed up in African gear, wank on about being African with a fucking cockney accent, man. Back to Africa is just unreal as far as Colman is concerned. He’s never been to Africa, so how can he go back?
Where is he supposed to begin? Who is he meant to start talking to? Sophie Stones says she is going to find old school friends, neighbours. People come crawling out of the woodwork if you offer them a bit of dosh, she says. The thought of talking to anyone who knew his father when he was a girl makes Colman feel dizzy. Staring out the window, swallowing hard, his throat still sick and sore, seeing a black horse gallop along with the train and then disappear into the distance, Colman tries to imagine himself back in that place of his childhood, in Glasgow, walking down Accident Street, turning the corner. That sweet shop, the one where the weird sweet-shop man liked children too much, what was its name? He always gave you extra pokes. The thought of arriving at Glasgow Central fills him with excitement. He hadn’t reckoned on feeling this way. He hadn’t reckoned on feeling anything at all.
He can’t go through with it. He can’t go and talk to all these people who used to know his father. It’s not possible. It’s crazy. He’s crazy but he’s not that crazy. He’ll have to tell her. Just tell her. What can she do to him? She can’t make him do it. He’ll visit his father’s mother. He’s got to do that. He’s got to see her. See what she’s like. See if she actually looks anything like his father.
His father never talked much about having a white mother. Didn’t like the subject. Know who you are and it doesn’t matter where your mother or father was from, he said. Did he? Did he really say that? How could he when he didn’t fucking know if he was a man or a woman? Black men need to be more gentle, his father would say. They could learn a lot from women. What a laugh. What a laugh he must have had to himself in bed at night. Chortling and choking. What a fucking scream. Colman likes talking about white people. He likes talking about black people and white people and how they do or do not get on. His father liked talking about the past. Colman said to him once, why are you always on about the past, old man? What’s Martin Luther King doing for you now? Is he going to help sell your new album? It incensed his father, talk like that. How can I have such a stupid son? What did I do to deserve you? All the black guys his father loved to talk about were American, black Americans. Black Yanks, Colman would say. You spend your whole time worshipping black Yanks: Martin Luther King, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis Black Yanks all of them. You are not American, are you? Colman grins to himself munching his tuna sandwich, remembering. I never said I was an American. What is the matter with you? No, that’s right, you’re Scottish, aren’t you? Proud to be Scottish. Why don’t you get a kilt and play your horn in a kilt? The jazz world would love that. And you know you are not allowed to wear anything under a kilt, don’t you. The
Boogie Woogie Moody Men would have a brilliant time, peeking up your kilt.