Was it her imagination, the disapproving stares? Was it?

They’d called her mother white whore in the Fifties

when she’d courted Daddy, threw insults from cars,

and when the tribe swelled around her in ankle socks.

As they neared St Andrews other journeyers hobbled in,

the organ yawned, nuns in lay gear strummed guitars,

harmonised a folk version of The Lord’s Prayer.

CHAPTER 15

London, 1980 –

LARA

I BEGAN to dip into my skin like a wet suit,

toes first, warily, wriggled about, then legs all in.

By summer ’81 I’d zipped up and dived in head first.

That year I started art school, Landscape of the Souls

I called my anarchic blood and black vortices;

I loved exploding the energy of colours, being bold.

Summer heat choked my city’s horizon, sluggish clouds

of fumes were mountains of dirt way up in the ether.

Tourists homed in on Piccadilly like brain-damaged fish.

I barged, my large portfolio an aggressive advance guard,

boarded the bus to Camden Town, my squat room,

all purple walls, pampas grass and Mexican mats.

I boogied on down at the 100 Club on Oxford Street,

where pupil-swimming arousal came in the countenance of Josh.

Under his pillar-propping gaze, I tried to dance cool, slyly

studied the Dreads in corners with towels round necks,

trainers, shiny track-suits – red, gold and green striped,

confidently shuffling, moving just off the beat.

Go slower, syncopate, less movement, more weight.

We exchanged numbers like French kisses and at 2 A.M.

my creamed knickers rode the night bus home.

JOSH, your limbs were waves. I swam.

Your myriad hands smooth-licked me. The sea.

Flesh. Breath. Flesh. Your tongue swelled in me.

Juiced, me. You, carefully entered, sensing your

way in, alert to my every whimper, responding.

Kiss. Kissed my hips like water, every secreted crevice,

seduced, and only when I cried out first did you go

for the shoot, the spawn game, tadpoles into the pond.

At last, on safe ground, at last, I was, on safe ground.

‘Hey, Princess, Let’s take the tube train into darkness,’

your public school tones joked, open Ibo vowels

squeezed into nasal tubes, staccato consonants.

Years before I’d made my teenage foray into Brixton,

awed by the tableaux of Atlantic faces, I was

born into whiteness, this was the moon, I was elated.

‘Sssss!’ The Atlantic Pub, Coldharbour Lane. ‘Sssss!

Yuh look nyice, gyal.’ Red eyes and Tennent’s Extra.

I wore my grandmother’s stiff back, her deaf ear.

‘Tcha! She favour pork.’ I panicked to the station.

With you I merged into Tottenham, the Bush, the Grove,

jostled in markets, pubs under arches, basement clubs.

You squeezed my hand, I was six years old, Daddy?

I poached your easy slope, excited, I was, exalted.

Summer ’81 I was touched by the sun.

I WAS JELLY, you were my mould, yet

I could not set, would freeze or throw a wobbly,

criticised your arrogance, your African-at-Eton act.