Cover

BERNARDINE EVARISTO

LARA

Lara is a powerful semi-autobiographical novel-in-verse based on Bernardine Evaristo’s own childhood and family history. The eponymous Lara is a mixed-race girl raised in Woolwich, a white suburb of London, during the 60s and 70s. Her father, Taiwo, is Nigerian, and her mother, Ellen, is white British. They marry in the 1950s, in spite of fierce opposition from Ellen’s family, and quickly produce eight children in ten years. Lara is their fourth child and we follow her journey from restricted childhood to conflicted early adulthood, and then from London to Nigeria to Brazil as she seeks to understand herself and her ancestry.

The novel travels back over 150 years, seven generations and three continents of Lara’s ancestry. It is the story of Irish Catholics leaving generations of rural hardship behind and ascending to a rigid middle class in England; of German immigrants escaping poverty and seeking to build a new life in 19th century London; and of proud Yorubas enslaved in Brazil, free in colonial Nigeria and hopeful in post-war London. Lara explores the lives of those who leave one country in search of a better life elsewhere, but who end up struggling to be accepted even as they lay the foundations for their children and future generations.

This is a new edition of Bernardine Evaristo’s first novel Lara, rewritten and expanded by a third since its first publication in 1997.

‘Lara is a wonderful piece…extraordinarily beautiful… rich and evocative… fascinating in its span of time and continents. Like all the best writing, by the end I felt not only a little older, but a lot wiser’ – ANDREA LEVY.

‘A short, lyrical, vividly real novel-in-verse, dipping 150 years into the past to explore the family history of a British woman with a Nigerian father and English mother. It’s funny, touching, informative, passionate and very easy to read. If you’re tired of novels that all seem the same, this one’s a complete original’ – Daily Telegraph (Books of the Year).

BERNARDINE EVARISTO

LARA

‘the family is like water’

Dedication

For Jack (Obayomi), Charlie (Oladimeji),

Natasha (Iyabo) and Marlon (Akinola)

Inheritors of this history…

LARA DA COSTA FAMILY TREE

Epigraph

However far the stream flows,

it never forgets its source

YORUBA PROVERB

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

1. Title Page
2. Dedication
3. LARA DA COSTA FAMILY TREE
4. Epigraph
5. Part One
6. PROLOGUE
7. Sugar cane, damp musky earth, saccharine vanilla
8. CHAPTER 1
9. Oh Mama! Your pride when I boarded the Apapa
10. Sam says this country is like fishermen’s bait, Mama
11. My nickname is Bill now, after William the Conqueror
12. Winter’s arthritic tress lace evening’s broody sky
13. Ellen thought British boys danced like ironing-boards
14. Ellen wanted to marry the Heavenly Bridegroom
15. The supreme test of submission to the Will of God
16. You will go to your husband as an uncrushed flower
17. CHAPTER 2
18. Baby Ellen was the cherished, cuddled, coddled
19. I pour dreams onto Ellen like syrup on treacle tart
20. My husband Leslie walks like a subaltern on parade
21. Peggy invested in the future, the past – a pit to fall down
22. Emma was delivered into her mamaí’s dying arms
23. ‘They want to make us suckle Sasanach words’
24. Sure it’s a peat hovel, but it’s our home
25. I awoke cuddling a chilly bough
26. CHAPTER 3
27. Chintz, carpets, mahogany, marquetry
28. I’m the scullery maid, the skivvy, the flunky
29. Only way to escape is through marriage
30. I’ve already won some green ribbons at the staff fair
31. The miracle of his wet tongue in combat with mine
32. He was so dashing marching in the parades
33. CHAPTER 4
34. The sweaty armpit of London: the seven septic
35. Everything’s all right
36. ‘Henry Robbins of Brackley, Northamptonshire’
37. Twenty of us last time in the Black Maria
38. One hundred children in this classroom and still
39. My hands are crab’s claws
40. No pleasing the narky wife
41. Sebastian Aloysius Burt
42. CHAPTER 5
43. Mary Jane and Sebastian got hitched in Holborn
44. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
45. Mary Jane stitched food into her children’s mouths
46. The past framed itself into a child-crowded doorway
47. ‘The sky’s a bowl of dirty washing-up water’
48. CHAPTER 6
49. The sirens sounded, an eerie deafening wail
50. I was in the kitchen slicing ham for afternoon tea
51. Dew shivers on wild grass blades, tremulous tears
52. Redcurrant, blackcurrant, blackberries, gooseberries
53. Visitors glide through the folly like woodland fairies
54. Dear mummy and daddy, thank you for the choklate
55. Dear Gerard, London is full of broken buildings
56. Dear Gerard, I am now at St Joseph’s Convent
57. CHAPTER 7
58. The year Lizbet is crowned, Everest conquered
59. My dear boy, praise the almighty that you are safe
60. I burn up all night. I burn up
61. Tears are for sissies, women and Nancy-boys
62. ‘Oh! He’s not too dark, is he?’ Edith grimaced
63. A workman’s drill reverberated in Ellen’s head
64. Hope rises with the sun over London’s spring streets
65. Two veiled alabaster Madonnas reside as mantelpiece
66. Gossiping locals are incensed. A nigger! A darkie!
67. Sky rips its sagging grey hymen with a fingernail
68. A rainbow flashes the exhausted sky
69. Peggy’s duck pillows become ponds when Ellen visits
70. ‘And how many wives do you have, Bill?’
71. Disloyalty slimes into my kitchen like slugs at night
72. CHAPTER 8
73. ‘Was born in a fog and been in one ever since’
74. Came into this world covered in boils
75. Peggy’s such a dainty, doll-like little thing
76. My wife and my mother can’t stand each other
77. So when Ellen brought this coloured fellow home
78. CHAPTER 9
79. Louis Wilkening felt like a Teutonic titan
80. Robbed of his clogs, rats chewed his toes, bats
81. The Asylum for the Houseless Poor
82. Sugar baking is ze chit vurk of ze devil
83. Ich bin ein Master Baker, Louis would proudly declare
84. Edwin and George Huxtable, my chums next door
85. A man is not a man until he has produced sons
86. Gladys dreams of a Royal Doulton flushing toilet
87. When hoardings declare war with Germany
88. One sticky summer’s night Woolwich seethed
89. I am a man not a nation, Louis was given to say
90. Part Two
91. CHAPTER 10
92. ‘Ellie, marry me soon, you are of age now’
93. Snowflakes sprinkled down that cold Christmas eve
94. My hands cup two creamy breasts
95. I shot into creation as sperm from my father’s penis
96. I got two big googly eyes an’ tufty hair
97. A fizzy-eyed beauty with Ovaltine skin, Juliana,
98. 173 Eglinton Road, ‘Atlantico’, sits like a fat Victorian
99. If I were a poet, Ellen muses, I’d say life’s a mangle
100. A cats’ chorus rains onto corrugated dustbins
101. CHAPTER 11
102. Dawn released London from anonymous night
103. My children will not swim in a lake of lost dreams
104. The key turned, the front door
105. He called me downstairs, potatoes were boiling
106. I want Mummy Cake! I want Daddy Cake!
107. By the sloping woods daffodils bloom in the spring sun
108. Notre Dame’s regime was run by Mother Superior
109. Nineteen Sixty-seven, our father is crying
110. I am a strong man but pain is a warrior too
111. CHAPTER 12
112. An emerald Raleigh cycled through Lara’s childhood
113. Lara’s skin oozed honey in late summer’s oven
114. Tank tops, Curly Wurlys, blue mascara, Top 20
115. ‘Wanna bite, Soos? Wanna bite, La?’
116. ‘Wish I had hair like yours, Soos. It’s so nice’
117. Beneath the squawking eaves of her attic retreat
118. ‘Where’re’you from, La?’ Susie suddenly asked
119. ‘You didn’t do it with him, did you?’
120. His hairy tentacles grope under a silver lurex halter
121. Groovers Disco shimmied with skinny teenagers
122. Home. I searched but could not find myself
123. CHAPTER 13
124. The National Front juggernaut braked in our street
125. Thor Heyerdahl’s books sailed me to Fatu Hiva
126. O to cartwheel knickerless into spring
127. ‘Don’t say hello then, you miserable lot’
128. Evening hit the skyline, diffused the light
129. ‘Yes, you can yawn all right, it suits you’
130. ‘If your Uncle Sam was alive he’d have a story’
131. CHAPTER 14
132. Laudate Dominum, Mozart’s quavers were brown
133. I stand for hours, still Madonna, lachrymose
134. Hidden in the moist entrails of Atlantico
135. ‘There was a child went forth every day’
136. ‘My tribe is Yoruba, that is my language’
137. As Lara approached the terraced box, she chucked
138. No da Costa photos memoried the mantelpiece
139. Your mother should have married Stephen Brown
140. Sunday’s winter powdered suburbia with snow
141. CHAPTER 15
142. I began to dip into my skin like a wet suit
143. Josh, your limbs were waves. I swam
144. I was jelly, you were my mould, yet
145. ‘You’ll not marry a Nigerian if you can’t obey me’
146. Lautrec posters, blue lamps, Portobello pub
147. Fury rode me. A wild buckjumper
148. Ablaze with the sharp and the syrup, yeh
149. I nightmare, damply scream into silence
150. ‘You’re an undressed genius, Lara.’ Trish unwraps
151. It’s pissing down out the jeep, out the door, pissoir
152. Empty roads guzzle us up, frazzled tarmac
153. He smelt of the sea. Hakan. And fish
154. CHAPTER 16
155. I was her daughter for fifty-four years
156. Drizzle. Reluctant Wednesday. Smoker’s sky
157. When Nana died the sea began to surge
158. CHAPTER 17
159. Lara descended fearfully over desert into Lagos
160. Sliced dodo browned, crisped in hot oil pans
161. Central Lagos. December ’93. Sweltering
162. Dazzling. Whitewashed. He leans on the balcony
163. ‘Dead bodies in the streets for days, open sewers’
164. Henrique Oliveira’s cottage is dead
165. CHAPTER 18
166. Lagos Island cooking. It simmers all day long
167. No wind. No air. Red-necked lizards crawl up walls
168. Far from her Sowemima family in Abeokuta, Zenobia
169. The twins grow into podgy little puddings
170. Kehinde will die young, like a butterfly
171. Gregorio, a face serene as a Benin bronze
172. White square room, plastered walls, curtains drawn
173. Cruel harmattans conquered the south, sweeping
174. I am a boy, I go like fire, why walk when you can run
175. Sea-black, wave-curved lips and decayed yellow teeth
176. CHAPTER 19
177. The gods born me on a fazenda in the hills of Brazil
178. Children forget what is too painful to remember
179. Ten blistered summers raised me on that remote fazenda
180. Like a sun-dried tobacco leaf, prematurely aged
181. When Africans came from the coast, I dreamt the ocean
182. We were emancipados, with papers to prove it
183. I took off for the jungle where I could lose myself
184. ‘Candomblé has always been in my blood’
185. My son swam into this world, cooked in Joana’s juices
186. Was this the land of my great-grandmother home?
187. CHAPTER 20
188. Shakespeare, Keats, Socrates and the Romans’
189. Gourd-belled, guava-sweet, crisp as custard apple
190. Sometimes a child drowns in a storm drain
191. She stood there, in her best blue wrapper and head-tie
192. EPILOGUE
193. Corcovado, Christ the Redeemer holds flirty Rio
194. Salvador grips its Yoruba mother like a shawl
195. I cross the state line into Amazon country at 4 A.M.
196. A rainstorm hammers Manaus, rivering streets
197. GLOSSARY
198. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
199. About the Author
200. Copyright

PART ONE

PROLOGUE

Brazil, 1849

SUGAR CANE, damp musky earth, saccharine vanilla

journeys in from Eighteen Forty-Nine, scenting Lara.

Disembodied chords pluck the air.

‘Severina

- the scarred one. They took me while my boys slept,

my bones had shivered all day, I could barely think.

When I bent to work I imagined vultures clawing

my back. When his men came I heard my bones jangle

like wooden sticks shaking in a bowl. His chamber,

sunk in the cellars of that great house, kept for us

women, only. There he pierced me with a bayonet

as I lay on a marble slab, bound. My screams

ricocheted the walls, he ejaculated on my ruptured

body but by then I had become the fire of a naked torch,

until he put me out. Then I jumped a spider,

crept deftly through the warren of cellars into daylight

where a bird swooped me up. I became that bird,

circled the fazenda until a baobab seed rooted

from my droppings. When it broke through earth

into life, I lived in that tree, grew quickly, saw one

of my seeds planted by my stronger son over my husband

Antonio’s dead body, and so it continued. I was carried over

the ocean, burst into life, watched over Baba until

he joined us nearly a century after my death.

So you have it.’

CHAPTER 1

Liverpool, England, 1949 –

TAIWO

OH MAMA! Your pride when I boarded the Apapa.

Your son, a man now, riding the whale to paradise.

Remember the man’s voice from Broadcasting House

calling us over the air waves from England?

‘London calling The Empire! Calling The Empire!

Come in Nigeria.’ I’m coming! I’m coming!

I shouted at night into the warm winds on deck.

Mama, my dreams have been my fuel for years,

all those British films for sixpence at the movie house.

See London, then die. I was desperate to get here.

When I finally landed in Liverpool it was Heaven,

I had hoped for snow but it was just very cold.

These people run everywhere and wear mufflers.

Older cousin Sam came to greet me at the docks,

just as well because I thought the fast automobiles

would kill me. I asked Sam if many people are killed

by cars. He laughed, ‘You will get used to life here.’

The Africans have European wives and sailor’s children.

Sam has a house in Princess Park in Toxteth District,

his wife Maureen is Irish and their six-year-old

daughter is Beatrice. I said, ‘Why a white wife, Sam?’

He replied, ‘When in Rome do as the Romans do.’

Mama, I will write a letter soon, I promise you.

SAM SAYS this country is like fisherman’s bait, Mama.

It attracts, you bite, then you are trapped. I told him

I’d be here five years, get my degree and leave.

Tomorrow I head for London. Centre of the Empire!

Sam drinks stout every night complaining that John Bull

only gives him work on the railways, and I’ve met elders

in the Yoruba club in Croxteth Street who came

in the last century as stowaways and seamen,

fought in two world wars for Britain, but believe

back home is paradise. I argue Nigeria is small time.

Why eat rice and stew when you can taste Yorkshire pud,

meat and two veg? You can buy anything here,

there are so many shops, pubs on every street corner

and houses have all the modern conveniences.

Many people are respectful but some idiots shout

‘Oi! Johnny! Sambo! Darkie! Nigger!’ at us.

The elders tell us to take no nonsense from them,

so if I am abused I say quietly, ‘Just call me Taiwo,’

and boof! I fight them. Even the West Indians say

‘Do you people still live in trees in the bush?’

Mama, in this country I am coloured.

Back home I was just me.

MY NICKNAME is Bill now, after William the Conqueror.

I have found that an African name closes doors.

You would not believe the size of London, Mama,

but people live like mice, scurry into their houses

at night and draw the curtains. The streets are quiet

as cemeteries. You think they are dead, but come

morning they unlock their doors, charge back down

the pavement as if life is somewhere else. If I say

‘Hello’ they are frightened or angry or cross the road.

When we coloureds laugh freely they scowl at us

and on the Underground everyone stares into space.

I need warm clothes because it is so cold and heating

is expensive: the sun avoids this country, Mama.

I found a room in Kilburn for one pound a week,

the family were nice, the wife gave me Sunday dinner

but now I rent a cheaper room in Brixton where many

immigrants live. The landlord is Polish, the wife – Irish

and strict. No phone calls in or out. No visitors.

It is so hard to find a good place to live here

because they do not want us in their houses.

Mama, I have not written you a letter yet but

you must know that I think of you and Kehinde often.

WINTER’S arthritic trees lace evening’s broody sky,

miniature waterfalls mid-motion frozen from sloping

roof gutters; window frames display icicles –

January’s modern sculptures; bushes drip ephemeral jewellery,

coughing coal fires steam quartered panes like frost.

Chimneys, ordered as sentries, discharge bulbous smoke;

buses crawl through blizzards past snow-filled bomb craters,

faceless back-to-backs, timbers dangling mid-air

like dismembered limbs, winds creaking, no-man’s-land.

For men are needed

to replace the fallen dead. In the War like cards

stacked one by one they fell. A clarion call bugled

the colonies, and to a city burnt out from doodlebug

and Luftwaffe, they doffed cap, donned greatcoat,

dreams of prosperity, milk and gold, they were sold.

Now the emperor’s disowned sons

congregate in Commonwealth dance halls.

At the Catholic Overseas Club, Victoria, Taiwo,

proud of his zoot suit and loafers, partners the excited,

nubile paleskins who flock in from the snow

for the heat brought in from the tropics.

Kensington, London, 1953

ELLEN thought British boys danced like ironing-boards.

The students from Strawberry Hill’s Jesuit College

sought the pristine convent ladies of Maria Assumpta

at Kensington’s balls, tantalised by copious layers

of pink sequinned tulle, boned strapless tops, stoles,

corsage, lace gloves, silk purse and score cards.

Fearful of being lumped with the miserable wallflowers,

Mary with the hare lips and Deirdre with the hairy lip,

Ellen waltzed under the ballroom’s cut-crystal chandeliers

with earnest, pallid suitors to bland, suited dance bands

but before the stroke of twelve, Assumpta’s flushed

Cinderellas were gliding exquisitely through hushed

lamp-lit streets to curfew and their rooms in the Square.

Sunday mornings in the refectory, Ellen relished tales,

along with tea and buttered toast, of the Overseas Club, Victoria,

brimming with foreign students of the darker variety,

and before long her twitching antennae led her

to the jumping church hall where she jitterbugged

to rock ’n’roll, did the quickstep to swing, while Taiwo,

from his discreet observation post by the door, beamed

at the homely type in polka dot dress, a shy dimpled smile,

and knew she was the girl he would take for a wife.

ELLEN wanted to marry the Heavenly Bridegroom,

imbued from birth in the sanctity of the Catholic Church,

she worshipped Her Lord in daily prayer, did penance

for man’s original sin and her inherent wickedness.

She embraced suffering for infinite Love and Happiness

awaited her at the Eternal Bridal Feast in the Sky.

A life of love, duty, self-sacrifice to God and souls

would be embodied in her role as a White Sister,

a teaching missionary enlightening the dark continent.

This Assumpta virgin bought black babies from photographs,

paid for their upkeep, for they who were born in the southern wild

(she read) were bereft of light, though their souls were white,

although white as an angel was the English child.

She adored the choir nuns of the Assumption, well-to-do

women who as postulants gave their wealth to the convent,

striking medieval figures in purple habits, lush as drapes,

topped by a cream wimple, leather belt, rosary, crucifix.

Unlike the lay nuns in plain black and white, consigned

to stir the stewing pot with floor-scrubbed hands.

Ripe for the plucking, Her Purity, small wonder, then

that Ellen’s divine lover came in the guise of Taiwo

and in His Vivacious Company her heart was elevated

by cherubim and seraphim who trilled sweetly in her ears

and she was thrilled to be in his Noble Presence.

THE SUPREME test of submission to the Will of God

was the acceptance of pain; life was not to be a joyride,

but during the spring of Nineteen Fifty-two, Ellen,

hitherto shaped in the fashion of clay spun into a pot,

lived with a passion she’d reserved for the hereafter.

With Taiwo umbilically attached she bubbled, unbearably

excited like a five-year-old on Christmas Eve; to him

she revealed the goodies of a country he’d only known

as a stranger peering through snug windows on icy nights.

His tour began with Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

in the neon-lit cinema of London’s Leicester Square;

boating on the Serpentine’s waveless waters filled

Sunday afternoons along with rambles on Hampstead’s

wild city heath; trains to Epping Forest – picture postcard

picnics of cheese, pickles, apples, orangeade,

under fairytale ancient trees; cycle rides over London’s

evening bridges following the liquid curve of the Thames

from the Tower to the glamorous lights of Chelsea Bridge;

Soho’s tempting finger beckoned on busy Friday nights

to Hi-life basement dives replete with émigrés and sailors,

or quiet tea-sipping at Lyons Corner House on the Strand.

Soon, betrothal to The Son was replaced by devotion

to potential husband and dreams of a huge brood

of children so lots of souls could be saved in Heaven.

ELLEN

YOU WILL go to your husband as an uncrushed flower,

I fondly recall Mother Superior’s eloquent sermon,

delivered to the sixth form, my last day at school.

I am so proud to know that simile will prevail for me.

It is a summer evening, warm as I imagine Taiwo’s land.

I write at my oak desk overlooking Kensington Square;

the scent of honeysuckle travels in through my open window

from the flower-filled gardens where young lovers linger.

I think I have always felt worthless, really, of no account,

yet he makes me feel so important, I am so loved by him.

He phones me every day and I feel cherished.

I cannot believe how my love for Taiwo grows daily.

I love him with every limb, every bone, each beat of my heart,

every thought of my weak brain, every living part of me.

I love him more than life, until I die and go home to God.

I wanted to help Africa but Africa was brought to me.

My friends Mavis, Gwennie and Amy are overjoyed.

We will graduate as teachers, marry our beloveds,

go forth and multiply. My childhood has now been shed

as a caterpillar leaves its chrysalis, only to be recalled

as witty anecdotes to entertain my darling Taiwo

on winter’s cosy, married, muffin-toasting nights.

CHAPTER 2

Abbey Wood, London, 1935 –

BABY ELLEN was the cherished, cuddled, coddled,

much-loved child born to Peggy and Leslie Brinkworth.

Pampered with soaps, creams, powders; babyhood

was a perpetual playpen of squeezy, squeaky, squirty,

soft, fluffy and furry things. Nursery rhymes

seduced her to sleep, tinkering bells roused her awake,

oohs, aahs and eyes followed her every movement.

After seven years of a scrimping and saving courtship

to purchase a new house, cash down (£560) and furnish it,

the wedded two were overjoyed with their reproduction

ensconced each morning, horizontally gurgling,

to take air in her black bassinet perambulator in the garden.

At No 31 Manton Rd in the new town of Abbey Wood,

Peggy, slight of build, sleight of hand, mind revolving

like a Spinning Jenny, was bent all hours over her noisily

whizzing sewing-machine until her vertebrae stiffened

and the usually punctilious stitches ran into themselves.

When Peggy lifted her screaming infant to becalm her,

she felt no dividing line between their warm bodies,

mother and daughter were seamlessly inseparable –

she knew their paths would be overlocked forever.

PEGGY

I POUR dreams onto Ellen like syrup on treacle tart,

she’s growing up a real lady with her bows and ruffles.

Her manners are impeccable, she minds her Ps and Qs,

there are no temper tantrums in public or private

and no playing in the street – she’s not common.

A little on the clumsy side, she’s given to stubborn moods

but I’ll iron that out of her over the next two years.

She’s at St Saviour’s Primary, then she’ll pass the 11 Plus,

get a scholarship to St Joseph’s private grammar in Erith,

then university, God willing, and a successful career.

I’m one of life’s triers. I don’t give up. My home is spotless.

A quick flick with the duster each morning keeps dirt down

then a thorough going-over of a Saturday gets at the invisible.

I detest sloppiness, there’s not a thing out of place in No 31.

From the bay window in my living-room I see ninety degrees

of clear sky. In the summer at sunset it’s so beautiful –

the purples, reds and golds, all smouldering like a coal fire.

If you work hard your dreams do come true, I’m proof.

The neighbours are a bind, a nosy lot, as soon as I step

outside nets start twitching. But I’m no cause for complaint.

I make sure my windows are as spotless as anybody’s.

MY HUSBAND Leslie walks like a subaltern on parade,

stiff as wood and sticks his chest out like a peacock.

German, on his mother’s side – the Wilkenings.

As for his father’s side: uncouth with no table manners.

Leslie’s a Master Dairyman, clippity-clops

his horse and cart at dawn. Likes the silence, he says.

He wears thick glasses so I can’t always read his thoughts.

He’s sweet but ineffectual. No ‘Get-up-and-go,’ I tell him.

One of his sisters, Vera, died before he was born.

Always one who dies. Our Edna went at twenty-three,

When I visited the hospital with little Ellen, Winnie

cried because she couldn’t cuddle her. Contagious.

We were all screened. It was a terrible time.

I’m closest to Violet, she works in the Gillette factory.

Dora’s the youngest, we pay her fees for teachers’ training college.

She’s being courted now by Jacob: a doctor, a German, a Jew.

You should’ve seen Ma when she met him. She almost fell

on her knees and kissed his hands like he was the Pope.

A doctor in the family. Well, we’re all hoping.

Clerkenwell, ‘Little Italy’, London, 1911

PEGGY invested in the future, the past – a pit to fall down,

but sometimes memory was stronger than the mind

and there she was, sweet Margaret ‘Peggy’ Robbins,

whose long brown ringlets bounced down to her waist,

whose white cotton petticoats were always starched,

whose button-up boots were always hand-me-downs,

looking up as the strange Zeppelin bird glided overhead,

or the wonderful Corpus Christi procession paraded

before her in Little Italy where they lived, the dazzling

monstrance held up by the priest, golden rays shooting

out from The Host, older Italianate girls from church

wearing white veils and walking ceremoniously behind

a statue of Our Lady on a stretcher, scattering petals.

Or long-dead Gran appeared at No 31, Old Emma Robbins –

an apparition in front of the front parlour’s coal fire,

come to pull Peggy back to a childhood where Gran

was a shapeless sack of black in front of the hearth:

black bonnet, rustling skirts, gnarled, brown-spotted

hands knitting blankets. Not talking to anyone – ‘living’,

muttering in a language only she could understand.

Birr, Ireland, 1849 –

EMMA was delivered into her mamaí’s dying arms

in a damp cottage in the frozen wasteland of winter

just as the reign of the Great Hunger was coming

to a close. Its monster jaws had ravaged the island

for four murderous years, masticated the emaciated

bodies of a million poor souls, sucked the flesh

off them and buried their bones in earth blighted

with potatoes rotting with black and green mould.

Britannia, the Protestant Conqueror, who’d long ago

throttled Catholic Hibernia between her two

mammoth hands and stamped it to the ground,

did little to help, inventing scapegoats instead.

Ireland is a human swinery, an abomination,

a black howling Babel of superstitious savages –

like Widow Caitlin, who raised her grandchild Emma

in the iron crook of her arm; who’d lost five daughters

to the Hunger, her husband to Typhus, her only son Lorcan

to the exodus to find work overseas. But oh no not she.

Caitlin swore to the Good Lord that she would raise

at least one grandchild in her beloved homeland

and she made young Emma swear on the Holy Bible

never, ever to abandon Ireland.

‘THEY WANT to make us suckle Sasanach words,

to cut out our own sweet Gaelic tongue at the root,’

Caitlin told Emma, gripping the skipping child

in the vice of her hand as they crossed the sun-sprinkled

fields after Sunday’s long morning service,

their bare feet sinking into the swill of the rains.

‘A curse be upon those that invented laws

to persecute Catholics in this, God’s own country.’

In the woods, Emma ran ahead to pick bluebells,

the sun dappled her tattered cream smock,

long black hair a twisted rope down her back.

‘How dare they rob us of our right to Home Rule.

The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!

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