22 minute read
Lily Kelly (by Steve
by NBAA
LILY KELLY
June 1926 by her son STEVE
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Aston Alexander Kelly, my Dad, was Jamaican; slim, dark, handsome, and strict - strict, beating strict. He died when I was eleven, he was forty-six. Do I remember him? I have still got the fucking marks to prove it. (Laughter). He did care and was a provider, done his duty, but as so many Black men were in those days, he was a bit of a whoremaster. But yeah, like me with my children, he didn’t shirk his duty.
My Mum was raised with her grandmother, an Irish woman I think in Scotty Road Liverpool. She had two sisters. One ended up pretty big, posh-ish, the other sister sadly was a prostitute. We are talking obviously the twenties or thirties. Life was pretty tough, I guess. They didn’t have a lot, they had fuck all. She was always cleaning, you know, that was always important to her. Because they had nowt, they obviously kept their houses spotless, and our front step - that was as clean as most of the neighbours’ houses. (Laughter).
In describing my Mum well, instant flush, I wish I had brought you the pictures today because as soon as you see her you know, she looked like an angel. Beautiful blond, medium height, slim, heart of gold, eleven kids. Lily Kelly was from Liverpool. Nine of the kids were hers; three sisters and six brothers. Two of them were her sister’s – the one who was a prostitute. She put her kids into Care and my Mum and Dad didn’t want that, so they took the kids and adopted them so all of a sudden there were eleven of us. And those two are my brother and sister. Owen is a couple of years younger than me and his sister Anita, our sister – is younger too. The father was Black but very pale Black, a White Black sort of thing, so it makes them very pale, but they are Black. Black. OK. Dad trained me. He used to take me on the ships to pick up the weed and shit that the Pakistanis brought in (can I say all this stuff?) to make money. He came to England as a Merchant Seaman then after the first couple of kids were born, he became a chef .
In those days there was just police on the dock gate. We would give them a few beers to look away. Dad would go upstairs to get ready and he would come down you can imagine – Smart; On a mission. We would all be sat there on the couch watching the television. He would just point at me – it was always me, and we would off. He knew….the other kids were jealous about me getting picked out all the time by our Dad. I used to get sly little digs and all stuff like that. They didn’t know what was in his head, they didn’t know he was training me up.
My brother Gary1 was two when my father died. Mum and me, were like soul brother and sister. I don’t know why, but she always chose me. Mum would somehow get the older ones to look after the younger ones while we got the bus down to Walton Hospital to see him. I remember the day he died. We were ready for it because we had been visiting for weeks. We knew but we hadn’t told the kids because we didn’t want them to get upset. I remember walking out of the hospital, and saying to her ‘Mum what are we going to tell the kids?’ I am eleven, but I was a man because she treated me like a man, and she said to me ‘let’s go and have a Chinese son’. And we went over the road (laughter) sat down and decided what we were going to tell them when we got home. Then we went home to tell the kids. It was like he wasn’t my Dad, because I was a bit of a dad, if you get me. He knew he was dying you see which is why; he trained me to stand in for him – he knew he was going to die and leave this squad, and out of this squad, he knew that I was the one who would be responsible enough to look after them.
I think that Mum was ready for him to die because they hadn’t had a great life together. He used to beat her a bit and that shit. What I mean. looking back, she might have been a little bit relieved. Obviously, she never worked. She couldn’t, could she? There was no child care in those days was there? You look after your kids and that is your job and she kept the house as clean as a pin.
We were the sharpest kids on the block. She had us mint2 because she used to say to us ‘let me tell you now son, you will never be stood in a bus shelter waiting for a bus and people be able to say, ‘maybe you should have seen him as a kid’’. We would be walking through the market or whatever and some bastard would say something, and my mother would get one of my sisters and lift up her dress and say ‘Look at these white knickers’. Yeeeah. ‘Are your kids’ knickers as white, and look at her socks?’ Because we were pristine! Great on her, we were all mint. Then she’d say, ‘now fuck off’. She was always ready to stand up for us at the drop of a hat. I used to love when the neighbour would pop one of our balls or something and she would ‘hitch up the skirt’ and leap over the fence. Yes, like that, over the fence, she was just a whippet. Over the fence – ‘what did you just do or say to my kids?’ (lots of laughter). Yeah, me Ma, Lily Kelly. My granddaughter is called Lily Kelly, which is just great.
My Mum got a lot of shit, so did my Dad. I remember it like it was yesterday. Where we lived there was only us, as a Black family, and the Contehs’ (the boxer, John Conteh) they lived three, four miles away. So, there was only like a couple of Black families where we lived in Kirby, so it wasn’t good. There were more Black people in Toxteth but that was like seven miles away. We got a lot of shit and we literally had to wait until we grew up knowing that one day we would turn the tables. (laughter) and we did. We got together with the Contehs’ - they had eleven - so we had a little army between us, and we showed them that ‘it’s time to play’ had stopped now because we are not little boys anymore. We are prepared to fight you back (laughter) and that we did.
As kids, we didn’t get into that much trouble, we just toed the line. There were that many of us I guess once a week one of us did something that meant Mum was asked to go to the school. Now and then my Dad went. That was not good because you knew you were in for a whupping. After the Old Man died the house changed to a lighter house. Yeah, you can breathe now. But more pressured because when he
1 He is now Muslin and is called Akeem 2 An expression used to denote as displaying virtually no imperfections
used to go out he’d come back three days later with a bag of money. He ain’t doing that no more, so I guess it became a poorer house, a lot poorer house.
She got a bit poorly with the stress and that made me realise I needed to earn a bit of dough to take the pressure off her. I just dropped out of school and started doing what I had to do. Mum trusted me. She used to give me the fiver on a Saturday. A fiver3, with the pram and the list, a fiver SuAndi. That pram was full to the top when I came back. I had my little job on the market, my wage was ten shillings4 and I would give her five shillings. If she was well off, she would say to me ‘no I don’t want it this week’, but I would make her have it. It was me Ma.
I remember going on little missions with her like when the old fellow had gone off for too long a time - not just three days, but a couple of weeks maybe. Yeah, he liked his woman. Mum used to call him a ‘whore master’. We were skint, so off we went to Birmingham to see if we can either find Pops or find our Aunty, her sister, who was a prostitute. Because we need dough - remember twenty or forty quid5 in those days was dough6. I can’t remember how old I was, but I was young, hell, I must have been. I remember walking through Birmingham, me and her and I’m like looking at the women in the windows pretending it was nothing.
Balsall Heath, was Amsterdam; it was an eye-opener. Wow, in the window just like Amsterdam, wow! It was just a different world, you wondered how they had allowed it. She had a couple of close, good decent friends, but she was a loner my Ma. Yeah, she was a really good looking woman, a beauty. Thank God, she didn’t go to waste; eighteen months, two years after, she went out and met the prince. Ken, pearly White, silver grey hair. A draughtsman, a gentleman, proper educated, diamond. Met my Mum with her eleven Black kids and took her on.
I am twelve or thirteen. I am a pretty good boy. I am a hustler, but I am not a thief. I am not a bad boy – anything I do is legitimate in our world is what I am saying – even though I know that sounds a bit weird. My sisters are at that devil age of seventeen and nineteen when they are wild, and they are not going to have this White man come in to the house just like this – they are just not. Because me and my Mum were soldiers, this one day she said to me ‘Stephen, do me a favour son, go round the corner, you will see a man sat in the car, in a little blue’, a Sunbeam kind of thing, ‘have a look at him and see what you think’. Obviously no one else knew so, ‘Ok Mum’ and I walked round, walked past him.
I think he must have been reading the papers because he was there with his glasses on. I was taken-aback from Black to White, but I got my head around it straight away because I always wanted the best for my Ma, and I could see ‘Wow – this is going to be a different life’. I walked back and checked him out again and I think we looked at each other. He must have known. She must have told him that her kids were Black. Back at the house she asked, ‘what do you think son?’ like you would say to a mate ‘what do you think son? I said, ‘Mum I am impressed, what I mean is I like him’ - ‘Oh that’s good–we won’t tell the kids now’ (laughter). ‘No, no Mum, we will give him a few weeks and see how he is first’. After a few weeks she brought him to meet everyone. The girls weren’t happy, it took her time to really get him as her man. He always had his own place, but he would stay at ours – and then eventually, when Mum got poorly, he literally scooped her away and took her to Wales where they bought a house. I was only seventeen when Stephen was born and he came out pale, all pale. I am seventeen trying to run away from responsibilities. I asked Mum to come and see him, I wanted her approval. She looked
3 Slang in England for a five pound note (£5.00). 4 There were twelve pence in a shilling, and the pre-decimal Pound sterling was equivalent to twenty shillings or 240 pence. 5 One pound sterling. 6 Slang for money
at him and then looked at me and said ‘Yep, yep – he is your son’, and that was my first child. Yes, Stephen7 is a star now . He lives here, he wouldn’t live in America. He is one of us, he is just one of us. If he was sat here with us, he would get stuck in. He would love it, he really would. He has found out all about our family tree. Once he phoned me up about my Dad’s name and where he is from, so he is keen.
I have had a lot of money, a very lot, I mean a lot. It was different money. I used to get five grand a week. Every week I gave half of it away and I felt justified then in keeping the other half. I would take my half, give it to Ken and he would put it in the loft to the point when my Mum said to me one week ‘son, we don’t have to have the heating on any more (laughter) the dam loft is insulated’. (more laughter).
I remember as you say the good times with my Mum. I remember when I was going with Helen and it was her birthday – I thought ‘Hmmm ok’. I made her take a day off, and I took her and bought her a brand new car – I forget what it was now, four thousand something – a week’s wages nearly. But anyway, happy as Larry, she was buzzing as you can imagine, but I swear to God as I am driving home, I thought to myself ‘if you can do that for her... Mum’s birthday in ten days. How can I not?’ … I felt obliged, so the day before Mum’s birthday I drove up to Wales. I had already spoken to Ken and he said ‘we’d love a little’ – I forget, a little mini or something so we knew where we were going. The car was brand new in the showroom, you can imagine my Mum’s face.
Obviously, Mum knew I took drugs - I am talking weed– we were mates. But then I fell down the pit and became a heroin addict. I would drive from Manchester to Wales to take the loft insulation and stay for an hour, maybe two. But out of that half the time I would be in the toilet. One day I said to her ‘Just going to the toilet Mum’ She said, ‘SIT DOWN’, I thought shit! She went ‘SMOKE IT THERE’ – ‘what do you mean Mum – smoke it there?’ She’s like ‘SMOKE IT THERE’ – ‘YOU COME HERE FOR F-ING TWO HOURS AND I SEE YOU FOR TWENTY MINUTES. SO, SON, JUST SMOKE THE F-ING THING THERE’. I had to because she would rather me smoke it there in front of her so that we had the time together.
When I stopped the drugs, she was the proudest mother. She used to say to me ‘Stephen man, you are so intelligent, you are so with it, but you are like a dribbling idiot’. It was breaking her heart. So, she is over the moon happy, one happy woman. But she would rather of had the time talking instead of her waiting to say something to me while I tried to waste my life away in the toilet.
Eventually I stopped all my activities, so, slowly the money dries up. I used to get five thousand a week. I used to be paid five thousand a week, (whispering). Now after working for the last twenty-five years, a long stretch without doing any activities. I have never managed to save five thousand. I have got it up to a couple maybe three, then the kids – whoosh, it’s gone! Years back she phoned me and said ‘Right son, me and Ken want to speak to you –we have decided, that out of the eleven of you, you are the only one who has ever done anything for us. I couldn’t argue with her, because most of them had just caused her a lot of grief, ‘So, we are going to give you the house’. I said, ‘but what about the rest?’ ‘That is up to you, we are giving it to you, I know what you are like’ she said ‘so, if you want to give them something, that is up to you’ she said ‘but we are giving this house to you’
I wish I had seen her a bit more, but there was a bit of distance. Guess I wish I had phoned her more often. It is loss isn’t it? It is exactly what it is. She was always ‘not well’, always a bit poorly. I guess she was getting a bit oldish – seventy-six.
On the day my son phoned me and said, ‘right Dad, come and meet me after work, I need to speak to you’. I was tired and I said ‘Ahh can we do it tomorrow?’ He went ‘No, no, no, I just want to speak to you’. I met him at the park. I said, ‘oh lad I am tired’. We walked through the park to where there is an old moat and sat on the bench. I was not in the mood. ‘Sit down Dad’ and I sat down then the penny started to drop a little bit – ‘hang on what are we doing here?’ I am sorry to tell you, but lightening has struck today’ and I said ‘who’ and he said, ‘Your Mum’. (He sighs)
‘Fuck’ – (sighs) and it’s like the bomb is still dropping. It’s pointless in me asking ‘are you sure’? It’s like ‘OK’. Ken had told him because he couldn’t tell me. I went to see Ken, he is a very cool man and doesn’t show his feelings a lot. I was like ‘fucking hell Ken what happened?’ ‘Stephen’ he said, ‘She gave me a five pound note and said, ‘go and get me some milk and bread Ken’. He went to the shop and when he came back, she was laid down, dead on the bed. It was like she just knew, she just knew. She had been a smoker all her life and had the oxygen things and a bit of OCPD or whatever you call it. Still we didn’t know she was going to die like that, but she did.
After my Dad died and when times were hard, I used to walk to the cemetery in Fazakerley about three miles away and sit there by his grave and ask him things and shit. I don’t even like to go to gravesides. A lot of my mates used to get a whooping, and they were all White. But they didn’t get it like we got it. I think our fathers must have got it a lot worse from their parents; canes and the like. Mind you we got the belt. Still I would rather that he was beating us instead of our Mum. He was calculated. He would be sat in the living room, and if you had done something that day you wondered if he knew. He wouldn’t say anything as he sat there after dinner watching tv. Then he would go like that pointing his finger, to whichever poor bastard, say it was me and he would say ‘Stephen go upstairs and run the bath’. You would think I hope it is for him, ‘for you Dad?’ and he would go ‘no, no, no and don’t put no hot water in’. And it would be like ‘yowl,’. Then just before you left the room he would go ‘you, wait in there until I come’. Yeah in the cold water with a belt man. Obviously, it hurts but, you became immune – never immune, but accustomed. I guess it’s like being in jail and knowing that you have got to do the next days so there is no good crying about it, it’s like - get on with it man.
What I used to hate was when he had overdone it, and you would let out a few yelps because you had taken a few and it would start hurting. Mum would be there busting down the door, ‘that’s enough now’ – and he would open the door and seeing her he would punch her, and it was never just like – it was a punch. She became deaf in one ear, teeth were missing. That used to hurt me more than him hitting me. I used to think ‘if I could take him out. Bang, I would be right out of that cold water like a shark and I would eat him’.
My Dad used to bake bread three times a week and I remember sat there by his grave speaking to him when there was this pungent smell of bread - it was like he was answering me.
Psychologists or whatever they are called would say a child, particularly a man, a boy child, who sees his father beat his mother is going to turn in to a wife beater. Oh my God, how wrong are they. I have never laid my hands on a woman, never – I think it can make you totally the opposite. I think it is either in your genes or it’s not in your genes. No, it’s not, you either can or you can’t, I can’t hit women. It’s just against my grain, no, so that is wrong. Yet my brother, my other brother, he has hit one woman and got in trouble for it. Wow - the total opposite to me.
I mourned my Dad secretly on my own, I didn’t want anyone to know. No one was glad, but everyone was relieved. But I wasn’t because as tough as he was, he did want the best for us. He was a mixed up Black man in the White man’s world. It is only now that I have got older that I have more respect for him, whereas when I was younger, I would just think about the beatings, the way he treated my Mum
and his faults. Sometimes I have to stop and think like now when I get dough, then it’s where has it all gone? – on the kids and the grandkids. When I relate back to him and think he had eleven to look after, it was hard, and he went to jail for just trying to do his duty and make money for us.
Mum was a Jehovah’s Witness. I might have gone with her a couple of times, but she never forced none of us. I think that she wanted us to choose our own. Mum treated everyone the same. She was a sucker for the underdog. She couldn’t pass tramps in the streets without her heart was out, giving them what she didn’t have. She didn’t have nowt, but she would give something, a penny or whatever.
I have never been given, I have always been a giver. Then Ken the Prince asked me to go to theirs (he has a new partner now). He told me he had cashed some bonds in. ‘Stephen, I have cashed some bonds in,’ he said, ‘and I want to give you some money’ and I said ‘Don’t be silly Ken’ I said. ‘Get a new car or do something’ and he went ‘Stephen I don’t need a new car’. I said ‘Ken, there has got to be something you want’ and he said, ‘there is nothing, I would rather give you this money now, whilst I am still alive – I know anyway what you are like Stephen anyway – I know it is not just for you’, he said. I left theirs, I was starving – so I pulled in to MacDonald’s, and sat eating it outside and having a spliff at the same time. I thought ‘shall I? No, no, no’. So, I drove straight to Didsbury to my daughters’, pulled up outside then looked. It was five grand. I was shaking– five grand, no one has ever ...only the Prince.
I have got a little spot that when I am having a drink on my own, I think about my Mum. It’s in the kitchen and in the corner there is, a little…piece of something that sticks out from the wall, it’s there. As daft as it may sound. I don’t sit talking to it (laughing). Sometimes, if I have done something that day, I will speak to her. I thank her for a lot. I thank her, believe it or not, by using religions, because they call God Jehovah, so I thank Jehovah. I can’t sit and pray because I would feel hypocritical, but I know I am a good person. So, what I do is, I thank Jehovah for not giving me pain today, or on a Sunday night I thank Jehovah for keeping all my kids safe that week and I think about my Mum. Am I am allowed to say I am a half caste sixty- one hard-working, family man. My family are three sons. Stephen my oldest is forty six, then we have got Aston who is thirty five, Zak who is twenty one, and Dalia, my daughter, who is thirteen and my saddest regret is that she never got to meet my Mother. My Mother was my queen.
SuAndi: While reading the draft of his chapter the light in the room flickered. Steve just raised his hand and said, “There Mum”. A gesture so full of love. Then we laughed as it flickered again and again as it normally does for some unknown reason but who knows, maybe that night Steve’s Queen was with us.
