‘I’m a welder now but I’m saving my money to study.’

‘Oh.’ Her elongated vowel suspended itself

over the table like a full colostomy bag. It was the Oh

she’d learnt from the la-di-dahs years ago, omnipotent,

it hovered long after the speaker had gone. Ellen

blurted out, ‘Taiwo can quote Shakespeare and Shelley.’

Peggy’s head revolved like a ventriloquist’s dummy,

her eyes mocked Ellen as if she was completely bonkers.

‘She does not see me,’ Taiwo thought, ‘only a coloured.’

Leslie cleared his throat, the throttle of a car starting.

Taiwo looked curiously at this blank page in the story.

‘I don’t care where you’re from, just look after my Ellen.’

Peggy snapped a Digestive, Ellen restrained a giggle,

Taiwo’s shoulders dropped four inches. Beautiful.

I will remember his words until the day I die.

DISLOYALTY slimes into my kitchen like slugs at night.

Dissension in the ranks. I won’t have it, not from anyone.

Mice breed more mice if you don’t cheese and snap ’em

so I told Leslie to keep his interfering opinions to himself.

I feel bleached, boiled, scrubbed, rinsed, wrung out

and crucified on a washing line to blanch and stiffen.

I could never love darkie grandchildren. I’ve told her.

But she’ll not listen to me or Father Augustus who said

that taking the word of the Lord to the primitives

is one thing, but it’s quite another lying down with them.

Chocolate sauce on cod, for Christ’s bloomin’ sake!

Jacob tried to deflate that silly souffléd head of hers,

explained the vices of racial mixing, the ostracisation,

the children who’d inherit the weaknesses of both races,

who’d bleach their skin white like the American negroes.

Then Violet had a word, surprised her at college, railed on

about the headstrong young who later regret their actions.

Fat lot of good that did, too. Ungrateful little tyke.

As for me, I’m a sandcastle my child’s just kicked in.

No, I’m a kettle – screeching, dried out, explosive!

CHAPTER 8

Abbey Wood, London, 1930 –

LESLIE

‘WAS BORN in a fog and been in one ever since.’

Leslie was given to say, usually to himself

or Ellen, as they were the only people who listened,

far as he was concerned, not that he was complaining, mind.

Six mornings a week at 3 A.M., when Manton Rd

lay under a mantle of darkness and the night was a cosy

warm, tucked-up, sweet-dreamy sleeping breath,

Leslie wrapped himself up in his woollen overcoat

to begin the hour-long trek from Abbey Wood

to United Dairies in Cemetery Lane, Charlton.

The scuffle of his boots amplified in the empty streets,

until he mounted the last steep hill to the dairy.

He’d see to Sheila first, his ageing mare, whose job

it was to haul both him and his cart in delivering

milk to hundreds of households for their morning