A form of Justice?

 <—- Hanging On                                                         Martha’s Revenge —>

Olga’s Diary (Continued)

Dear Diary 

The Convent:   Marie is in boarding school now at Our Lady’s Convent in Dartford and is very nice and lots of posh people’s children go there.  Matron thought I was her nanny when we arrived and didn’t hide her surprise when I said I was Marie’s mother. 

While we talked Marie was crying because she didn’t want to leave me.  I gave her a white lace handkerchief to wipe her tears and she was wiping her little face with it saying

“Don’t go Mummy, please don’t go”.  It upset me.

“Never mind, when you are gone and she sees the other children she’ll be alright” Matron said.  In bed that night I cried my eyes out because I didn’t have Marie with me..

I know this will be good for her because she will be taught how to become a lady and to speak nicely.  The sisters say she will settle down and make new friends and not to worry about her.  Poor Madeline is missing Marie a lot.  

 Mrs Hammell is worried because Madeline is not as strong as other children she might get hurt at school, so she prefers to employ a private tutor for her at home.  I think Madeline would be fine at school.  Mrs H is over protective of her. 

******

 Dear Diary

Madeline and I are getting very excited because Marie is coming home for the holidays. 

Then Mrs Hammell said it wasn’t really convenient for Marie to come home during half term and would I mind asking the nuns if she could stay in the convent instead.

 So Marie stayed in the convent again and I haven’t seen her for such a long time. 

Will have to give both girls lots of special treats.

****** 

Dear Diary

At last Marie is home for the holidays but there is a change in Mrs H’s attitude to me.  She is off-hand with me. 

“Have I done something wrong?”

 She said she was unhappy with my work and thinks I am more interested in Marie than in looking after Madeline.   That’s unfair, and it’s not true, and I told her I go out of my way to pay Madeline more attention than Marie. I took the girls to the Zoo and when we got back home, Madeline came up and hugged me and gave me a kiss to say thank you.

In the evening Madeline likes to come to our room to play with Marie rather than be with her mother.  If I tell her she must stay with her Mummy she gets upset and thinks I don’t want her.

I think Mrs H is jealous because Madeline is very fond of  Marie and me.. 

Mrs H and I have had a little talk.

“I apologise if I was wrong” she said. 

“But, really, Carmen, no mother can look after another person’s child and neglect her own”.

She said she thinks it would be better if I leave. 

Oh dear, I don’t want to, but I suppose she’s right.

****** 

Dear Diary 

Back to the kitchen:   Now Marie is in boarding school I have a better choice of jobs.  I’m working for Googie Withers, the film actress, and her husband, John McCallum, as an assistant housekeeper in their London home.  I keep their house clean and on their cook’s day off, I do the cooking.  I really like it.  They are both very sweet and kind to me.  They have all sorts of interesting people to dinner, other actors and writers, and they’re not demanding.    Mr McCallum is so handsome he makes me swoon.  He’s like the hero in some of Ruby’s stories. 

The only problem is Marie can’t come home for the holidays.  I didn’t tell them about her because otherwise I wouldn’t have got the job.  I know Sister Bernadette is getting cross with me because she thinks I am neglecting Marie.  I promised Marie I would go to the sports day.  She was running in the egg and spoon race but I had to miss it.  I feel simply dreadful and I miss her terribly. 

She wrote me a letter and said she was very upset and crying.

“All the other Mummies came to sports day but not my Mummy”.

It’s no good, even though I like this job a lot, I will have to find another one before Christmas so I can have Marie in the holidays. 

Falling behind on my savings.  

******

 Dear Diary 

I had a letter from my friend Moores today.  I wrote to her to ask her to lend me some money because I have to pay Marie’s school fees.  I hated doing it.  She’s so kind Moores, she always was to me – and she sent me more money than I asked for.  She said she was still in touch with Ethel who was married and has two children.  But Moores isn’t married.  She said she hadn’t found the right bloke.

Moores still kept in touch with some of the other nursing students we worked with and she’d heard that John Edward, Marie’s father, had died in December 1949.  He’d married an American girl and moved to New York and was working as a doctor in one of the hospitals there. He was standing on the subway platform and just fell forward onto the railway lines and was hit by an incoming train and killed outright. Witnesses said he just toppled forward.  Moores said there was a mystery surrounding his death.  An autopsy had revealed nothing unusual and so the medical examiner concluded that he probably had an accidental fall.  But some of his colleagues were sure he’d committed suicide.  Apparently he suffered from depression quite a lot.

Moores asked me if I had worked Obeah on him for what he did to me.  Honestly, how could Moores think I’d do that!   Of course, I didn’t, but if any of my family knew what he had done to me, they would certainly have worked obeah on him.

******

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 <—- Hanging On                                                         Martha’s Revenge —>

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St Giles Cottage Hospital London 1940 – 1941

 

<—Olga, Nursing & a Declaration of War

Olga’s Diary (Continued) 

Life goes on:   A strange thing happened this morning, a gentleman called out.

 “Nurse”

It took a few moments before I realized he meant me.  It was a bit of a shock, but a very pleasant one. 

Sister Tutor says even in wartime there has to be a routine in hospital.  The day always starts the same with Sister re-arranging the flowers and potted plants which had been taken out of the ward the night before and put in the sluice room because Matron says they give off poisonous carbon monoxide during the night.  It’s a hospital superstition, too, that no lilies are allowed in the wards because they’re considered to be unlucky and you never have red and white flowers in the same vase either because that means death.

 I have to clean each marble-topped locker next to the patient’s bed and wipe out the fruit bowl that stands on it.   Then the beds are pulled away from the wall for a maid to sweep the floor and which Matron likes highly polished, which is fine if you are wearing rubber sole shoes, but for the patients wearing slippers it can be a difficult.

 I was helping an old man to the toilet yesterday morning and he was fairly steady on his feet to start with, but suddenly he slipped, lost his balance and ended up on his bottom and me with him.   The other patients had a good laugh at our expense and I thought it was funny too, but Sister Tutor was furious with me.

Everything and everyone has to be neat and tidy ready for Matron’s mid morning inspection.  The staff, including the doctors, have to line up in a row and woe betide us if the ward isn’t up to Matron’s standard.  She expects us to know all the patient’s names and their medical condition.

When war was first declared I was frightened, especially because normal every day things changed.  The cinema and theatres closed, and that upset me, because I’m crazy about films and I used to go every week with Joanne, but now we have to find other forms of entertainment.

 Moores discovered a pub near the hospital and she and some of the other student nurses go there quite a bit, but I don’t drink, so I haven’t been there yet.    Moores and I are working on the same ward at the moment, which is fun, and when we’re doing beds together we get the chance to talk and I hear all about what happened  in the pub the night before.

This morning we were changing the bottom sheet of a bed, with the patient still in it, and Moores was telling me about this Canadian soldier who said he can get her some French champagne and silk stockings.  Each time we moved the patient he broke a little wind and at first we ignored him and carried on chatting, but then he did it again and we started to laugh and couldn’t stop and what’s more neither could the patient, which made him break wind louder and more often and then all the other patients joined in and they didn’t even know what they were laughing about. 

But it was a wonderful moment especially as there was no one around to tell us off.   You need little moments like that because it helps to take away the tension and worry for a little bit, and it’s amazing how much better you feel afterwards.  

Moores is such fun, you know, she says to me

 “Olga, eat life or life eats you”. 

So I’ve decided to have some fun and go out with her tonight, but I won’t tell Joanne because she thinks Moores is a bad influence on me.  Joanne says the first year examination is not easy and I should be studying hard for it. 

 

 The Rose Public House:   I’ve never been inside a public house before but, apart from being very smoky, it was really quite nice.  Moores always finds someone to talk to but I was happy to sit quietly drinking my ginger beer.  For the first time since the war started I felt safe there, perhaps, because it’s used by soldiers and watching people enjoy themselves, laughing and having a good time, makes you forget about how worried you are about the war and exams.

I never go out on my own at night because it’s so dark with all the street lights turned off, but at least the lamp posts are painted white so we don’t bump into them and the edges of the pavements have been painted white too.   Moores, Ethel and I each carry a little torch which we have to shine downwards onto the pavement.  But we had a nasty shock on the way home from a night out.

We were passing a doorway when Ethel let out a  scream.  We looked up and there was a woman’s face lit up in the doorway.  She had a little torch pinned to her coat so that the light shone on her face and she was wearing a fox fur around her neck.   The  fox’s eyes were glinting in the light, its tiny teeth bared in a snarl and it had little paws and a bushy tail that hung loose.   I’m not surprised Ethel screamed, it was a frightening sight.  Moores said the woman was a prostitute waiting for clients.   Moores knows about everything, you know.

 

We’re being blitzed:   It has been difficult for me to write because we have been so busy in the hospital and to be truthful I haven’t felt like it. 

Everything has changed.  

Germany’s planes have been dropping bombs on London day and night and the devastation is awful.  Hundreds of people have been killed, thousands injured and hundreds of thousands are without homes.  The bombing raids can last for hours without any let up.  But, most of all I dread it when the Germans bomb at night, which they do frequently. Every part of London is being bombed including here in Camberwell. 

A landmine exploded nearby and several homes were blown up, many of  the casualties were brought here.  There seem to be fires burning somewhere in London day and night.  Other cities are being bombed as well but the Germans certainly seem determined to destroy London. 

I start to shake when I hear the air raid siren sound and even when the all clear is given I’m too frightened to go out.  I’ve been keeping away from Moores and Ethel, using study as an excuse to stay in, because I don’t want them to think I’m a coward, but I’m ashamed of myself too, because the people who are homeless and have lost everything still have their fighting spirit and say they won’t be beaten by Germany.   

Joanne came to see me at St Giles during a break between bombings and made me go for a long walk with her.  I felt much better afterwards, especially, when she told me that she was afraid too.

“Olga, we must do our job and put our trust in God” she said. 

We talked about our families and wondered if they knew how bad things were here in London.  The letters Joanne receives are heavily censored too and so we think the ones we write home are as well.  It’s heartbreaking; I’m desperate to receive news from Mammie and the family and when I do get a letter, line after line has been crossed out with black ink so I’m left with hardly anything to read.  And you feel as if someone is spying on you.  The censors know more about what’s going on with my family than I do.

Joanne says “We should be grateful, at least they open the letters carefully and don’t tear them.” 

  Any day now Joanne’s waiting to hear if she’s passed her final exam so that when the war’s over she can fulfil her dream and go back to Jamaica a qualified nurse.

“And, if you study hard Olga, so will you”

“Who knows, maybe we can work together in Jamaica”. she said

 I’ll tell you something Dear Diary, I struck gold when she sat down beside me that day in Regents Park. 

 

<—Olga, Nursing & a Declaration of War

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Sydney Shoots a Burglar

<– More Spells and Obeah                 Kingston 1938 A Dangerous Place to Live—>

 

 Click to englarge image

Once my Mum (Olga) started to talk about her family to me and what her life was like growing up in Jamaica, she told me about the two biggest scandals in the family (and there were quite a few!).  Both were connected with Sydney, the oldest sibling.  One scandal was to do with him running off with the family cook whom everyone thought was a witch and mad as a hatter and the other scandal was about him shooting a burglar for which he was charged with manslaughter but acquitted on the grounds of self defense.   

 

Olga’s Diary (Continued) 

 

Dear Diary

Sydney and the Burglar:       It’s the middle of the afternoon and, apart from a young woman and an old man, I’m alone in the Cathedral, the only place I know that is peaceful, quiet, and cool. Half my life’s been spent in this church, going to mass, confession, benediction, the stations of the cross.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, Jesus is important to me and I come to church because I want to be close to Him, or, when I want to think, like now. I wonder just how long Sydney and Aggie’s relationship has been going on.

 

I bet you it started with the robbery that time Sydney was working late in the shop. There was a knock on the door one evening and when Sydney opened it there was a tall, black man, with a handkerchief around the lower half of his face. He pushed Sydney back and forced his way inside and put a gun to Sydney’s face threatening to shoot him if he said a word. Then another man came into the house and started to ransack the place looking for money which Sydney usually kept on the premises, but he couldn’t find any money and said so to the man holding the gun.

 

This turned the man with the gun’s attention away from Sydney momentarily, so Sydney tried to grab the gun and there was a struggle when suddenly the gun went off and the robber was shot dead. The second man immediately ran from the shop and Sydney called the police who recognised the dead man as Alphonse Williams and said the other man was probably his brother Didnot.  Didnot was soon picked up by the police and, because he wasn’t wearing a mask, Sydney easily identified him as the second man.

 

Sydney was charged with the manslaughter of Alphonse but at the end of the trial was found not guilty because the jury said it was self-defence and the law says a man is entitled to protect himself.  And that was that, thought Sydney, although to prevent any further thieving Sydney resorted to Obeah.

 

I bet that’s where Aggie Burns came in. He pinned bits of red rag and some bird feathers to the front door of the shop. If any would-be thief saw these items.  Sydney said it would be enough to deter them from going into the shop. But then strange things started happening. A fire broke out one Sunday afternoon, behind the main shop, in the workshop where bicycles are repaired. Mrs Clarkson, who lives next door, saw a small blaze in the workshop and raised the alarm. The fire brigade arrived very quickly, put out the blaze so not too much damage was done.  

And then something else happened that really scared Sydney.

 

He told us he was walking home one night when he felt warm air on the back of his neck which he described like someone’s hot breath. This happened more than once and Aggie Burns said she had found out that Didnot Williams had set a duppy on Sydney and that an Obeah man must have caught his shadow and now the shadow will do whatever the Obeah man demands. Aggie said the best way to stop the duppy from following Sydney was to carry a piece of chalk and, whenever he felt the hot breath on the back of his neck, Sydney was to make an x on the ground with the chalk, representing the figure ten.  Aggie Burns said duppies can only count up to nine and will spend the rest of the night trying to count to x.

 

Aggie said duppies are clever, but I wasn’t too sure about that if they can’t count any higher than nine. But she said they are because they can do similar things to living people, like talking, laughing, whistling and singing, even cooking. That made me wonder if Aggie Burns was a duppy too. Anyway, believe it or not, putting a cross on the ground worked for a while and Sydney stopped feeling warm air on his neck and he was more confident walking home.

 

But then one lovely clear moonlit night Sydney and Ruby were walking home together and they saw a big owl sitting in the cotton tree outside Mission House. When Aggie heard she got everybody worked up again and said that was a very bad sign because the duppy was still on Sydney. She said he had now to find a powerful Obeah man to remove the curse or he would be in serious trouble.

 

Of course, Aggie Burns knew one and Sydney agreed to go with her but made me go with him as well. I said I’d only go if Dolly could come as well. And reluctantly he and Dolly agreed.  

So off I go again to another balm yard and went into a very dark, smelly room. I remember it only had one window and the light couldn’t get through it was so dirty and grimy. Oh, Lord, was I terrified.

 

The Obeah man’s name was Ali Acquabar, an old man, with a short sharp looking face. He sat at a table in the middle of the room and beside his chair was a walking stick with the head of a serpent on the top. He told us to sit in the chairs facing him. I noticed a nail with three different size rosaries made out of bloodstained beans hanging from it and there was a mirror on a wall. On the table was a pack of cards and a dark blue piece of cloth with some sulphur, what looked like human hair, small bones and feathers.

 

By now I just wanted to get out of there but, once again, my courage failed me and I stayed. There were two other chairs and on one of these he put a glass and filled it with water and put a 1/- piece in the glass and on the other he put a candle which he had taken from a small bag nearby and asked Sydney to light it. Ali then opened a pack of cards, which he separated into four piles.

 

He selected one and said to Sydney “this is death”; then selected another and said “this is Jesus Christ”;

 

Then he selected a third and said “this is the Ghost” and with the fourth card he looked Sydney straight in the eye and said “Your life is in danger”. Then he took a bottle of rum off a shelf and threw some of it around the room.

 

“I am feeding my ghosts” he chanted and then looked in the magic mirror and turned to Sydney. “It is a pity you are not able to see, if you could, you would behold two duppies who are working on the case against you”. My brother is a tough man, you now, and I didn’t think he could scare easily. But, sitting on that chair, he looked very frightened to me. Ali looked in the glass of water on the other chair and said

 

“It is the brother that is after your life. I charge you £5 to take off the ghosts”. Sydney gave Ali his money and Ali told him they would all have to go to Mission House and “to run the duppies out”. Well, we trooped out and walked home.

 

When we got there Ali told us he would go into the house first and Dolly, Aggie and I should follow in a few minutes but Sydney was to wait outside until he was called. When we went in Ali had already lit three different colour candles in our hallway and then he took out three bottles – one containing some seeds, one with some kind of powder in it and the third with some dirty looking liquid in it. He threw some of the liquid and some of the powder into a cup which Aggie had handed him and he struck a match, lit the mixture in the cup and gave it to Aggie to take outside and bury it at the gateway to the house. Ali then asked Sydney for a further £5 as the job was now completed. The potion was buried at the gateway and this would ensure that no more duppies bothered anyone who lived in this house.

 

After that Sydney was more relaxed because one Obeah man had been knocked out by another and the more I think about it the more sure I am that was when things started to happen between our cook Aggie and Sydney.

<—- More Spells and Obeah                            Kingston 1938 A Dangerous Place to Live—>            

 

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Sydney and the Cook

<—Aunt Lucy & Anancy Stories                              More Spells and Obeah —->

 

Olga’s Diary (Continued)

Letter to Vivie, Miami, USA
from
      Olga, Kingston, Jamaica.      

 

Dearest Vivie 

There’s been a terrible scandal in the family.  You just won’t believe what happened last Saturday morning when we came down to breakfast.

“That’s strange; I can’t smell any burnt toast”.  Dolly said.  You remember how Aggie Burns insisted we eat burnt toast, because for some reason she thinks it’s good for us.  Mammie said Aggie hadn’t turned up for work and she asked Pearl to go to Aggie’s house and see if she was alright.

Pearl said “No, Mammie, I get frightened when I go near that house, it’s full of voodoo stuff”.  Pearl’s right.  If we have a boiled egg for our breakfast, Aggie Burns makes us smash the empty egg shell because she said if we don’t, then witches can use them as boats and control the winds.  What’s wrong with that, I wonder?  

“Aggie lives alone and maybe she’s ill or hurt, after all it’s very unusual for her not to turn up for work”.  Mammie was clearly very worried about her. 

But, as we all know, she doesn’t really live alone.  She lives with talking peacocks, voodoo dolls,  three scrawny chickens, a pet mongoose and that whopping big black cat of hers, called Lucifer, which follows her just about everywhere she goes. 

Do you remember when Aggie first started working for us it used to follow her here and, because Mammie wouldn’t allow it in the house, it used to curl up under the cotton tree out the front and wait for her to leave at the end of the day.  I tried to stroke it a couple of times but it would hiss at me.  

I certainly didn’t want to go to Aggie Burns house and neither did Ruby, so Mammie said she’d go, but in the meantime Cassie was to get  breakfast ready while Ruby went upstairs to wake Sydney, because he hadn’t appeared either.  Well, within minutes Ruby came running down the stairs and into the kitchen very excited and announced that Sydney’s bed hasn’t been slept in all night.

Now that’s quite unusual for Sydney I know, but I told Mammie that Sydney had probably been working late and fallen asleep on the couch in the office at the back of the bicycle shop. 

“I expect he’ll come home shortly to wash and change his clothes.  After breakfast I’ll go with you, Mammie, to Aggie Burns’ house” I said.

So, just as we’re finishing breakfast in walks Sydney and we all heave a sigh of relief.

He sits down and says “I have something to tell you” and without even pausing for breath he says “I’m getting married”. 

Mammie throws her arms around his neck and gives him a big hug; there’s lots of excitement and laughter. And then he says

 “I’m going to live with Aggie Burns”. 

Well, I don’t mind telling you, Vivie, there was silence, a big silence.  He’s not serious I thought.  Never mind she’s black, she’s a witch for heaven’s sake. 

How can the head of the Browney family live with a witch?    What will people think?  What will Father Butler think?  It’s quite common for Jamaicans to just live together without being married, although respectable people are expected marry. But Sydney is still married to Janetha and the Catholic Church doesn’t allow divorce so that’s why they’re going to live together.

Our faces must have shown the disbelief and disappointment we all felt. 

Ruby got up and quietly left the room.  Dolly and I followed leaving Mammie and Sydney to talk, but the talk didn’t last long or go well because Sydney came roaring out of the dining room saying he would never set foot in the house again and slammed the front door as he left. He was in a big rage Vivie.  Mammie started crying and in between her sobs she asked me to contact Cissie and Dyke in Montego Bay.  So, I left and sent Cissie a message.

 

Telegram to Cissie, and Dyke, Montego Bay fromOlga,  Kingston              Urgent. Come quickly.  Sydney gone off  with  the cook .

 

Dolly ran to Boysie to tell him what had happened.  He came round straightaway and gave Mammie a big hug and told her not to worry, he would talk to Sydney and everything would be alright. 

Later on, who do you think walked in, Vivie, none other than Aggie Burns herself, all dressed up and wearing, I must admit, a very nice straw hat with flowers all round the brim. 

“I’ve come for some of Sydney’s possessions”.

“Why would you want Mr Sydney’s things, Aggie” Mammie asked her.

“Because we are in love and he’s living with me now”.   Honestly, she was so cocky I wanted to hit her.  

“I’ve brought a suitcase with me so I’ll just pop upstairs and get a few things”. 

“Pop upstairs” sounded funny coming from Aggie Burns, it’s so English and she’s so witchy. 

And then she said to Mammie

“He won’t be giving you any more money.  He will need all his money for the family I will give him”. 

As she turned to go upstairs, Mammie jumped up, rushed over to Aggie Burns, put her hands on her shoulders and pushed her away from the stairs.  Dolly, Ruby and I joined in and the four of us pushed her right out the front door and told her never to set foot in our house again.   

The next day Cissie came up from Montego Bay and took charge of the kitchen.  She did lots of cooking, baking bread, bulla cakes and biscuits.  Oh, she was wonderful and she gave Mammie some money to stop her worrying. 

Boysie and I continued to go to the shop but Sydney didn’t appear for about a week and when he did he and Boysie went into the back office to have a little chat. Boysie was concerned that even though we were giving Mammie nearly all our wages now, we were still short of money.

 “It’s not like you can’t afford it”, Boysie told Sydney.  But Sydney wouldn’t budge.  He said he was going to start his own family now and was not prepared to support us any more.  Boysie was horrified, and what started off as a calm conversation developed into a huge quarrel with Boysie finally saying he was ending their partnership and wouldn’t be coming to the shop again. 

Now Sydney was coming to the shop every day but Boysie wasn’t.   I wasn’t happy working there and wanted to leave, but, couldn’t.   I’m trapped here, Vivie.  I hate him.    All my love,     Olga.

 

<—Aunt Lucy & Anancy Stories                               More Spells and Obeah —->                               

 

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Pops, Aunt Martha and Marcus Garvey

<-Vivie, Sydney & The Den of Inequity     A Loose Cannon & The Catholic Church–>

 

 

 

Some might say that dysfunctional would be an appropriate word to describe my mother’s family, but I prefer the word colourful!  Mum had described her family to me as high Catholics, a phrase I have never understood the meaning of, but she would say it with such pride and a complete lack of irony, which amused me, particularly when I heard about some of the things the family got up to and which went completely against the teachings of the Catholic Church. 

 

For example they practiced Obeah – a form of witchcraft which was illegal and, if found guilty of practising it the penalty was flogging and/or imprisonment.

 

Some of them were involved in an illegal gaming club where prominent Jamaican men could be entertained by women in private rooms upstairs in the Den of Inequity – isn’t that called a brothel?

 

My Aunt Vivie was having an affair. 

 

My Aunt Chickie had an illegitimate son called Maurice.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say that illegitimacy was the norm in Jamaica at that time, but it certainly wasn’t as frowned upon in Jamaican society as it was in England where the stigma attached to unmarried mothers was huge. 

 

My Aunt Gwennie had a very unpleasant boyfriend, Keith Rousseau, who used to beat her up and ended up in Court on a charge of causing her bodily harm.  The Daily Gleaner reported that he was fined £15, which I thought was a huge amount in those days – early 1930s.   His mitigating circumstances were that he had had too much to drink and couldn’t help himself! 

 

There were to be many more revelations in store for me on this journey discovering my Mum’s past – some not good at all, but some great, like hearing from Mum about my grandfather Henry, or Pops as she called him.  My grandfather was a bit of a rogue, by all accounts, and I have no idea whether we bore any similarities.  However, we did have two things in common.  We both had the same hero – Marcus Garvey and we both disliked my Great Aunt Martha, my grandmother’s (Becky) sister.  

 

 Olga’s Diary (Continued)

 

                 Pops:     My Pops lives in one roomed shack behind the meat market now that he doesn’t live with us any more.  Mammie threw him out because of his womanising ways and drinking.   He has a meat stall in the Victoria Market down on the harbour side and every Saturday morning, regular as clockwork, I have to go down there and collect the meat for the weekend.

                 We always have a little talk before he hands over our meat.  You see, that’s Pop’s way of contributing to the family.  He always asks after Mammie.  I feel sorry for him, he’s all alone and I think he still loves Mammie.

  My brothers and sister don’t often see him.   I think it’s because he’s black.  To be honest, I don’t like being seen with him really either, but he is my Pops and I do it because Mammie asks me to.

 

In spite of his drinking, Pops is a proud and dignified, but lonely man who collects his memories in a big thick scrapbook;   things that have a special meaning, like the letters Mammie wrote to him before they were married.  He says when he reads them they remind him of how much they were in love and how they thought they could break down the colour prejudice barriers that there were because a black man and a white woman “had the temerity” to marry. “

 

“That was what people said” he’d tell me.   Pops likes to mimic the posh British accent.

 

“Mammie and I had the temerity to marry, Olga, isn’t it simply awful, my dear”.  He can be very funny sometimes.

 

Pops has a big stamp collection as well and, do you know, I have no idea where he gets those stamps from because the only people I know who live abroad are my sister, Birdie and Aunt Martha and I know Birdie doesn’t write to him and Aunt Martha and Pops don’t even speak to each other let alone write, they hate each other so.   Pops knows I want to go to England for six months so I can study at the same dance school as Birdie and Mammie will only agree to my going if I stay with Aunt Martha. 

 

It was my Pops who first called Aunt Martha the “White Witch of Paddington” hinting that she was like Annie Palmer, a well known, but evil woman, from Jamaica’s past. 

 

Annie Palmer was known as the “White Witch of Rose Hall” and married John Palmer who owned a Great House, called Rose Hall, which had been built at great expense on a hillside overlooking their vast plantation and the Caribbean. 

 

Annie Palmer practised Obeah, smoked ganja, drank heavily and was often seen dancing naked in the moonlight.  She also tortured her slaves, murdered three previous husbands – poisoning one, stabbing another and then, if that wasn’t enough, poured boiling oil into his ears, and she strangled the third husband.  Eventually one of her slaves murdered her in her bed.

 

I didn’t think there was that much similarity between Aunt Martha and Annie Palmer, except maybe their height, Annie Palmer was 4’ 11” and Aunt Martha’s not much more, but Pops said if I was ever unlucky enough to get to know Aunt Martha better,  I’d be able to work out for myself the similarities between them.

 

“Don’t trust her, particularly if she’s being nice, because she’s bound to be plotting something” he once told me.

 

On the front cover of Pops scrapbook are photographs of all of us at various stages in our lives, usually to do with a religious occasion. 

 

There’s one of Birdie being confirmed, Chickie cradling her son, Maurice, after he had been baptised, and a separate one of Dolly, Ruby, Pearl and me, after we’d made our First Holy Communion wearing our long white dresses with wreaths in our hair, and a beautiful wedding photograph of Boysie and Minah and all the family outside the Holy Trinity Cathedral.  But in pride of place, right in the middle of us all is a cutting from the London Evening News.

 

Pops’ hero is Marcus Garvey.  He gets his cuttings from the supply of old newspapers he keeps to wrap the meat in that he sells.

 

 

Extract from Marcus Garvey’s Speech to an audience at The Royal Albert Hall, London, 1928 

  

“….you can enslave as you did for 300 years the bodies of men, you can shackle the hands of men, you can shackle the feet of men, you can imprison the bodies of men, but you cannot shackle or imprison the minds of men.  No race has the last word on culture and on civilisation.  You do not know what the black man is capable of; you do not know what he is thinking and therefore you do not know what the oppressed and suppressed Negro, by virtue of his condition and circumstance, may give to the world as a surprise”

 

           

We all know Marcus Garvey.  He’s a bit of a troublemaker.  Mad as a hatter going round preaching and stirring up trouble.  The first time I heard his name was a few years ago and I’d gone down to the market to pick up our meat. Wherever I looked on the docks there were hundreds of red, black and green flags tied to everything and anything, all waving in the wind.  Pops told me that all the decoration and bunting was for a “glorious man” The Hon. Marcus Garvey, D.C.L. who was arriving from the United States.  When I asked him what D.C.L. stood for he said “Distinguished Coloured Leader”. 

 

Garvey is Jamaican and from a big family too.  His parents were poor and as a child he knew about hunger and colour prejudice and some people say that’s why Garvey hates white people.  But he says what he hates is the system in Jamaica which keeps the poor man down and the poor are mostly black people. 

 

Pops says black people lack self-esteem and Garvey wants them to have sense of pride in their race, colour and country.  Garvey encourages them to “study hard and go into business and unite and help each other and become independent of white Jamaican society who have created two Jamaicas, one white or near white and wealthy and the other black and poor”.

 

 Sydney hates Garvey and says he’s a troublemaker, a swindler, a crook only wanting to get rich quickly and Vivie says he practises Obeah. 

 

Well, honestly, doesn’t everybody?

 

Garvey holds political gatherings in Edelweiss Park where he puts on entertainment, shows, dance contests, musical presentations, plays and boxing for the benefit of the black people in Kingston.  Ruby, Dolly and I were forbidden to go to his rallies, but in true Jamaican tradition, we go in secret. 

  

<–Vivie, Sydney & The Den of Inequity             A Loose Cannon & The Catholic Church—>

 

 

 

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Obeah

<—Colonising the “land of wood & water        Becky’s Diary – My 1st Encounter with Obeah–>              

Even though my mother was deeply religious, and obeah was against the teachings of the Catholic Church, Mum couldn’t let go of the culture that had been so much part of her life growing up in Kingston, Jamaica.  I grew up in Brighton on the south-east coast of England in the 1950s, where there were no obeah practitioners to work their ‘magic’, but Mum often told me stories of how when someone upset any member of her family – her mother, my grandmother Becky –  would contact their local obeahman to make a spell so the person would be punished for their wrongdoing.  

 

As far as I could work out from my research, obeah’s power lay in a practitioner working on the fears of a people who were fundamentally superstitious to start with and that included my Mum.  Since just about every black and coloured person in Jamaica during the 1920-30s (and the years beyond)  believed in obeah, once they knew it was being worked against them, they were convinced they were doomed to either some kind of  excruciating pain or worse, death. 

 

Obeah practitioners had other skills too and were often consulted over medical problems rather than a conventional doctor.  They were very knowledgeable about plants and herbs that grew in Jamaica, information which had been passed down through the centuries from generation to generation. They would successfully prescribe herbal remedies for a variety of ailments, not only for coloured and black Jamaicans, but white also.  

 

The South East of England is not the West Indies, so when I was ill as a child I wasn’t treated with exotic herbs.  My alternative treatments were more down to earth – I can’t tell you the number of times I had boiled onions wrapped in muslin and tied around my feet to bring my temperature down or had to put a matchstick behind my right ear to get rid of some pain I had – usually a  stomach ache.  Mum told me her mother, Becky, used to do this for her when she was a child.  She said it worked for her and it did for me too.  Power of suggestion, maybe?                                             

 

<—Colonising the “land of wood & water           Becky”s Diary “My First Encounter with Obeah”   —>

 

 

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St Andrews, Jamaica

<— London 1900                                        My First Contact —>

 

My Great Aunt Lucy was a sweet, gentle and intelligent lady who loved to sketch and paint.

Becky and Lucy had aways been close and Becky missed Lucy a lot.   They were similar in looks and demeanour – slender with fair hair and blue eyes.  However, neither of them was close to their sister Martha, who actually didn’t resemble anyone in the Ross family.  She was short and stout with a badly pockmarked face as a result of chicken pox when she was a child.  Harriet woud bandage her hands so she couldn’t pick the scabs from her face, but it didn’t work.  Lucy reckoned that it was because of the pock mark scars on her face that contributed to Martha’s transition from normal chid to cantankerous young woman.  But even without the scars, Martha bore little resembance to her siblings. 

But what my Great Aunt Martha lacked for in looks and grace she made up for in talent.  Martha worked as a seamstress for the Drury Lane Theatre in London and was, by all accounts, one of the best.

Lucy wrote to Becky reguarly keeping Becky constantly in touch with her life in Jamaica.  For Becky, who would read Lucy’s letters over and over again, usually on her way home from work, freezing cold and trudging through London smog, snow or rain, Jamaica must have seemed magical, like  paradise.

 

Letter from Lucy Sincair, Constant Spring Hotel, St Andrews, Jamaica
to 
Becky Ross, Droop Street, Paddington, London, England

March 1901

Dearest Becky 

 Bertram Pollock is a charming man, born and bred in Jamaica.   I like him a lot and John speaks favourably of him as a man who is fair and reasonable.   The plantation is a few miles outside of Kingston, at the foot of the Blue Mountains.  Because our new home is not ready to live in, John is boarding in a room above the stables on the estate and I am staying here at the Constant Spring Hotel, which is quite nearby.

 

I have been here a short amount of time Becky and have seen little of the island, but already I have discovered so much beauty here. 

 

Jamaica attacks one’s senses, the sight of brightly coloured parrots, mocking-birds, sugar birds or to use their more common name, the banana quit and right now, Becky, as I sit here in the hotel’s gardens writing to you, flying in and out of the trees and shrubs are beautiful long-tailed hummingbirds. 

 

The other day I saw a sinister looking blue black bird with a huge beak.  I’m told it’s called a john crow bird and is the most often seen bird on the island.  It’s a great scavenger, very clumsy and ugly on the ground but so beautiful and majestic in flight Becky. 

 

Jamaica is full of vibrant colour and beauty and is a naturalist’s paradise.  The spectacular scenery is enriched by the vivid flowers and scent of the roses that abound, roses and bourgainvillea in every conceivable colour, as well as bright yellow allamandas, the annatto which has rose coloured flowers and purplish pods, the ebony which has yellow flowers and always comes out after rain and the pale blue flower of the lignum-vitae which grows over most of the island.  To wake early and see the stars fade away and in their place watch a glorious sunrise and at sunset every night the frogs, crickets and fireflies all make their presence felt and voices heard. 

 

From the fruit trees which are everywhere Becky, you can just pick and eat mangos, guava, papaw, oranges and other more exotic fruits that I have never heard of like ackee, which is very popular here.  And if you can find something sharp and heavy enough to crack open a coconut, you can drink the milk from it. 

 

I long to be settled in our house so I can explore the island more and paint instead of the pencil sketches I continually do whenever I’m out and about.   

 

Socially, Jamaica has a lot to offer, but, I do miss the theatres, art galleries and museums in London.  But in spite of that, I am convinced we made the right choice about coming here.  In fact I have almost forgotten what my former life in London was like because we have both settled down so well. 

 

Tell Martha that Jamaican women are very fashion conscious and do seem to spend a lot of money on clothes which are certainly more expensive here than in London and I’m told they often arrange for material and patterns to be shipped over fromLondon.

 

We must persuade Pa to let you visit.

Your loving sister (signed “Lucy”)

 

<— London 1900                                            My First Contact —> 

 

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London 1900

<— But First the History Bit                                    St Andrews, Jamaica —>

 

In 1900 the head of the Ross family was Samuel Ross, a constable with the Metropolitan Police, somewhat overbearing but a pillar of the community and living in Droop Street, Paddington, London. His wife, Harriet, was the opposite of Samuel, quiet and timid. They had three daughters, Lucy, Rebecca (known to all as Becky) and Martha. They family were devout Catholics and never missed attending confession on Friday evening and mass on Sunday morning.

Also living with them was Lucy’s husband, John Sinclair, a young man from Inverness in Scotland, who had a small inheritance as a result of selling his family’s farm after the death of his parents.  John had seen and responded to this advertisement in The Times below: 

It was as a resut of his successful application that a few weeks later my Great Aunt Lucy and John were on their way to Jamaica where John was to take up an apprenticeship post working for Bertram Pollock on his plantation just outside Kingston, in the foothills of the Blue Mountains. 

When Lucy and John arrived in Kingston they found a boom town and fell in love with the island almost immediately.

<— But First the History Bit                                         St Andrews, Jamaica —>

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