Lisa Smith Extract from The Land of Milk and Honey

Lisa Smith

Extract from The Land of Milk and Honey January 1981

At home time there was the usual procession of mums and children snaking towards the Geoffrey Chaucer Estate. Most of the pupils at Samuel Pepys Primary lived in the silver-grey maisonettes, which sprawled northwards from the school gates, until eventually nestling at the banks of the Thames. Some also lived in the two tower blocks that rose from the centre of the housing complex: Becket House and Pilgrims Court, each twenty-four floors of concrete, steel and glass. I’d heard that all the homes on the estate had fitted kitchens, modern bathrooms and central heating blowing out through vents in the wall. Mum had put her name on the waiting list for a flat on the Estate four years ago. We were still waiting. I lived in a house on a street the council had earmarked for demolition in the 1960s, but had never got around to pulling down. 59 Lime Grove had draughty sash windows and an ice-cold bathroom squashed between the kitchen and the outside loo. The house belonged to my Auntie Sybil and her husband Earl. They and their four children slept in the three bedrooms on the first floor, while Mum and I had the attic room. Miss Gladys slept on the ground floor, in what had once been the dining room. I was standing at the pelican crossing. The cold seeped through the knit of my scarf, so I wound it around my neck once more, doubling its thickness. I pressed the button again. “You walk home by yuself?” Connie said, arriving at my side. “Yeah. I’m almost eleven,” I said without looking at him, willing the green man to appear. “So you nuh live in the flats over there-sah?”

“No.” “Me have an orange me save from lunch, you want some?” “No. Thank you.” All day I’d been trying to be helpful to the new boy without giving him, or anyone else, the impression that just because we were both black, we were the same. I’d only spoken to him when it was absolutely necessary during lessons and had expected that after his run in with Mark Barrett he would follow my example of how to behave. Connie, however, made no attempt to keep his head down. He volunteered to hand out textbooks, collected our grammar test sheets and put his hand up every time he knew the answers to questions. While I could see that some of our classmates were irritated by his enthusiasm, Connie seemed deaf to their half-whispered cusses. During afternoon playtime he leaned against the wall with his hands in his coat pockets, watching the boys play football. Although I reminded myself that it wasn’t my job to look out for him, I found myself willing the ball to stay on the pitch, or at least to never go out of play close to where he was standing; that way another confrontation with Mark could be avoided. The traffic lights finally changed and I started to cross the street, just managing to keep abreast of Connie’s languid strides. “You ah go t’rough the park now?” he said, his tone bright. “Yes. Why?” “Me ah go that way too. Is okay we walk together?” “It’s a free country,” I muttered, keeping my eyes fixed ahead, walking a little quicker. There were privet hedges around the entrance to the park, so once inside you couldn’t be easily seen from the road. I decided that I could afford to be friendlier towards the new boy now we were a bit further away from school. Perhaps I could make him understand the rules. I was still deciding where to begin when Connie spoke up. “Miss say you come from Jamaica but you no sound like it.” “That’s because I was born here. My mum is from Jamaica, she came here in 1961.” “Oh. You ever been to Jamaica?” “No, but my Grandma’s told me loads about it. She came over in

the 70s, when I was still a baby. She was lonely in Jamaica on her own –although she still misses the sunshine.” “Eh-eh! I know how she feel. Me never able to see me breath before me come here.” Connie opened his mouth and exhaled a cloud of white vapour. Then came a slow, husky giggle, his shoulders rising and falling in time with his laughter. I smiled, then quickly pressed my lips together to conceal it. “When did you arrive in England?” I asked. “A couple weeks ago,” said Connie. “Althea have t’ings to sort out before me could start ah school.” “Who’s Althea?” “Me muddah.” “How come you call her Althea?” Connie shrugged. “I call her that from when me was small. She say when me call her mama it mek her feel old. Me lickle breddah call her mummy though, but him only a year old so she nuh mind that much. Althea’s a top-notch hairdresser yuh know, she plan to open up her own salon and call it Noir, which mean black in French. At the moment she have to work for a witch called Mrs Samuels, but she intend to have her own place in the next four years, by the time she reach thirty.” “What? Your mum’s only twenty-six!” Connie smiled, a small dimple appeared in his left cheek. “Nearly, her birthday not ‘til July. I’ll be eleven on April 16th. When yuh born?” “May,” I said. “Yuh Taurus or Gemini?” “I dunno. Gemini I think.” “Good. An air sign. Althea say Fire and Air get on well...” My Mum said only eediats believed in horoscopes, but I didn’t say that to Connie. He carried on talking about his mother and her plans, his face all smiles and his accent thickening. I calculated that Althea must have been fifteen when she had Connie; Auntie Sybil was always on at the twins, Marcia and Margery, about the misery, shame

and hardship of being a teenage mum. Yet Connie’s mum hadn’t been held back, she’d travelled halfway across the world. I silently mouthed her name, letting my tongue savour the softness of the syllables, Althe-a. I decided to add it to my list of favourite names, which currently included: Sasha, Sabrina and Veronique. My Mum’s name was Alma, which I once read meant nourishing, kind soul. When I suggested that her name went well with her job working as a nurse, she kissed her teeth. “Me could ah name Florence Nightingale but me’d still end up changing more sheets and emptying more bed pans than all dem white nurses ‘pon the ward.” Mum was forever telling me how important education was. She told me people would be more impressed by my brains than my face, my hair or my name. But from what I saw at school my intelligence and hard work didn’t count for much. Being popular went hand-in-hand with being pretty, which meant having a slim figure, silky hair and white skin. As far as I could tell, black beauty also rested largely on hair and skin-tone. Like Mum, I had good hair, but we both had mid-brown rather than light skin. Mum would be thirty-six in October, an old woman compared to Al-the-a. Connie continued strolling along beside me, right up until we arrived at my gate. “Rawtid! This is a proper ol’ time English house!” he said, tilting his head back. “You have chimney and everyt’ing. Is here you live? You ever see any duppy?” “It’s not haunted silly! Anyway, whereabouts d’you live?” Connie pushed his hands into his coat pockets and shifted from one foot to the other. “Pilgrims Court,” he mumbled. “You’re joking! But that’s back on the Estate. You’ve gone in completely the opposite direction.” Connie shrugged. “Will you be alright going back on your own? I mean, it’ll be dark by the time you get there.” Connie was silent. “Do you actually know the way back from here?” Connie looked down at his plimsolls and shook his head.