Samuels

This week we present the second in a series on the book, The Triangular Route, written by Jamaica-born author Errol Samuels. Part one was published last Monday.

At age six, Errol Samuels and his mother went to New York en route to join his father, who had migrated to England some months before. It was a very exciting time in Errol's life, as he found a whole new world revolving about him in the big city, but he was also to find out, painfully, that the sunny Jamaican weather was not to be taken for granted.

"I saw snow for the very first time and wallowed in this new delight." But that would be short-lived. "My leg became numb from the cold and, once inside the apartment, they began to thaw, causing excruciating pain. I bawled like only six-year-olds can, not caring who heard as my aunt applied liberal amounts of rubbing alcohol," he recalls.

After staying with his aunt and family for three weeks, it was off to England by ship. Along the way the vessel made brief stops in Halifax, Canada and the Canary Islands. His excitement again was met with a rude awakening because, for the entire two weeks that the journey took, he had severe bouts of seasickness.

Cold and dark

It was great relief for Errol when the ship arrived in Southampton, but he found England, in 1954, to be "strange, dark, cold, and unfriendly". By train they travelled to Stirchley in Birmingham, an industrial city that was leading the charge in Britain's recovery after the devastation of World War II. Birmingham was a dreary, smoked-filled place, where there was an abundance of immigrants from the British Commonwealth.

Errol's father had rented a room in a house occupied by other sets of tenants, but the fact that the houses in Birmingham didn't have inside toilets shocked him. "Toilets were located in outhouses in the back yard. They were dark and smelly. I refused to go unless escorted by either or both of my parents," he says.

Living in that house also exposed him to Indian culture, music and food. Most of the exposure was done through Ram, an Indian tenant. Ram became his friend and everything Indian - curry, roti, chapattis, the music, the mystique of the nation and the facial beauty of Indian women - captured his heart and soul. Yet, he was also to see the negative side of Ram, whose wife and daughter joined him shortly after Errol had arrived.

One summer evening, Errol and his family heard a loud banging on a downstairs wall. His father went to investigate and was shocked. "Ram (was) slamming the head of his wife repeatedly against the kitchen wall, her long hair wrapped tightly around his fist."

Errol's father, always a gentleman, shouted at Ram to stop and insisted on knowing what had led to this savage assault.

Ram was punishing his wife because she had walked in the back garden barefooted after she was warned not to do so while she was in England. She should have left her native habits at home in India.

If Errol was delighted by Indian food, he was, to say the least, nauseated by British meals. Errol: "English-prepared food was bland and insipid, definitely not pleasing to the palate. My six-year-old stomach often rebelled when I was offered corned beef sandwiches by white neighbours. They simply sliced the cold meat straight out of the tin and devoured it uncooked."

Strange practices

There were other practices that Errol also found strange, such as the wrapping of fish-and-chips in newspaper. "Even more unusual and, in fact, disgusting, was to see bread being delivered and placed on doorsteps by the bread delivery man; bread that was unwrapped, exposed and unprotected from the elements of wind, sun and rain."

But while Errol was revolted by these "unsavoury and unhygienic" habits, he himself became a curiosity of sorts, being the only black child in his neighbourhood and school. His exotic appearance caused him to be invited to virtually every house on his street to meet with white families and watch television. "Several parents were surprised that the palm of my hand was a lighter shade in colour than the other parts of my body. They also found my nappy hair fascinating, one going as far as to snip a few strands for a souvenir," he recollects.

Though some people wondered where Errol had learned to speak English, he was not confident when it came to speaking in class. He was very well ahead of his peers in maths and reading, though he believed his classmates were more lucid than he was. "While I struggled to articulate ideas when asked by the teacher, they were fluent and I wished I could speak as well as they did. I also had to quickly learn how to speak with a British accent, as many of them could not understand my thick Jamaican accent."

There was no permanent escape from his Jamaican roots, however, as his family moved into a two-storey tenement - at 73 Landsdown Road, in a suburb of Birmingham called Handsworth - run by "a coarse-mannered Jamaican [man] from St Mary, who lived in one of the upstairs rooms and whose all-seeing eyes observed every move the tenants made".

Greater learning experiences

The building was a little piece of Jamaica in Birmingham. The dinning room was where everybody gathered to eat, drink liquor, play dominoes, listen to music, cuss, poke fun and to chat about their hopes and dreams. "This forum was, perhaps, one of the greater learning experiences of my youth. The underbelly of adult relationships, their fears, their beliefs, their wants and needs were all exposed to me in this overpopulated rooming house," he says.

That rooming house, like the other houses in Birmingham, didn't have bathrooms. As such, bathing at public baths was a "fortnightly ritual" for Errol. At the baths, an entrance fee had to be paid, then patrons were given a small bar of soap and two thin towels, and assigned a cubicle that contained a large bath tub, half filled with hot water.

Errol: "I would then get into the tub and he would lather and scrub me and then rinse me off ... My father had no qualms about scrubbing until it hurt and the six-year-old would holler and moan. Afterwards, feeling bruised but squeaky clean, I would wait outside while my father and mother took their baths."

Life in England was routine, consisting of going to the park, reading comic books, visiting friends, and the nasty, rainy English weather was unbearable. "English rain could be a slow steady drizzle, lasting for days and creating a dampness which seeped into the bones." And into Errol's bones and muscles it did creep. He became sickly, having terrible bouts of flu and cold, and so his parents decided to send him and a brother who was born in England back to Jamaica.

"I had not adapted well to the English winter, even though I was forced fed doses of Scott's Emulsion and other elixirs to build resistance ... My departure from England was imminent and my journey back to Jamaica, the third leg of the triangle, was about to begin."

paul.williams@gleanerjm.com