Pupatee watched a group of children across the street playing with the snow, scooping it up and throwing it at each other. A skinny white boy with yellow hair slipped some down the back of a girl and made her scream. A moment later the children were all ducking and sliding and laughing, having the time of their lives. In the distance Pupatee heard a train rattle by.
He walked on alone, marvelling at the sights of this new world. The people were various colours, black and white and yellow. The streets were filled with cars and lined with huge buildings. It was all so tall and enclosed. Pupatee stepped gingerly along, his feet unsure beneath him in his tightly laced new shoes. Cars slid down the roads, where the white snow had turned to a grey slush. People in thick coats walked hurriedly along. He passed the Odeon picture house and a huge walled building that was King’s College Hospital. A little further along, white people in long coats were queuing up at a window, buying food wrapped in newspaper. The smell of frying oil made him realise he was hungry, so he turned the corner and headed back in the direction of his brother’s house.
As he approached Selborne Road, he saw the kids had stopped playing with the snow. Some of the faces had changed, but he recognised the skinny boy with blond hair and blue eyes. He was dressed in blue jeans and black boots, and he had a blue and red anorak with a fur-lined hood hanging down behind. A white scarf was wrapped twice round his neck with its ends dangling below his waist. Pupatee felt very underdressed. The boy’s shoulders were hunched and he was hugging himself against the cold. As Pupatee walked by, the boy looked at him and shouted out, ‘Ha, I think I seen you somewhere before, mate. Was it Africa?’ At this, all the other children burst out laughing. Pupatee stood there puzzled. He barely understood the words and he certainly didn’t get the joke. He was so cold his blood seemed to be turning to ice in his veins.
‘What’s your name, mate?’ the skinny boy asked, his voice softening as if he felt bad for making fun of him. Pupatee understood this question. ‘Pupatee,’ he replied.
This set the whole gang laughing again. When they had calmed down, the only black boy among them said, ‘That’s an old man’s name. How old are you, Pupatee? About seventy-five?’ They were all in stitches now, while Pupatee stood there, frozen with misery and shock. ‘Pupatee,’ the black boy said. ‘Pupatee, bet you are the good-looking one in your family.’
Pupatee understood enough of this to feel the shame begin to burn inside him. While they carried on laughing, he turned down his face. When he found the door, he ran inside and washed his face so Miss Utel, Joe’s wife, would not know Pupatee had been crying.
Miss Utel was in the kitchen. She was short and had shiny dark skin, and when she flashed her smile her single gold tooth would twinkle. Her black hair was bunched on top of her head, streaked with a single block of grey. She wore a thick white woolly pullover and a black knee-length skirt with a big button at the waist. She always wore blue slippers in the house. Pupatee liked her.
‘You hungry, Pupatee?’ she called out.
‘Yes,’ he answered, when he had finished washing. Strange smells were wafting up from the stove where Miss Utel was cooking. They certainly didn’t smell like ackee and saltfish and Mama’s hot chocolate, and when Miss Utel put the plate down in front of him Pupatee couldn’t identify what was on it. The only thing Pupatee recognised was the egg. The rest were like strangers to him: sausages, fish fingers and baked beans. But he was famished, and he loved eating. He would get used to bland English food, but he would never stop thinking about fried fish and plantain and allspice, and mangoes that tasted like sunshine.
Brother Joe had gone to work early. Joe and Miss Utel had five children, Johnny, Terry, Tracy, Lena and a baby girl still in arms named Jasmine. The older kids had gone off to school.
‘Me ah go school too?’ Pupatee asked Miss Utel. He felt comfortable alone with her and less strange, but he was anxious not to be left out.
‘No, Pupatee. You don’t start school until we sort it out with the head teacher,’ she explained. ‘And you must get accustomed to the way they speak in England, because they don’t rate the patois. Pupatee, are you listening to me?’
‘Yes, Miss Utel, but me no understand one word yet.’
‘Oh dear me.’ She laughed. ‘Try to talk like everyone else in England. You understand that?’
‘Me understand little ah it no much,’ he said, confused by this new language.
While Pupatee ate his food, Miss Utel tried to simplify it for him. ‘Look, Pupatee, patois is broken English,’ she said.
‘How dem broke it, Miss Utel?’
She laughed again. ‘Cho me we mek de kids show you later.’ This time, Pupatee laughed too, as he realised she could talk Jamaican. ‘You understand dat, no?’
Pupatee nodded, happier.
‘You ah fe learn fe chat English,’ she said.
‘But me no want talk English, man!’
‘If you brother Joe hear you seh dat him beat you, you see, man?’
‘How Pupatee talk English?’ The words almost flew out of his mouth. He had already felt Joe’s beating in Jamaica.
‘Well, if you no hear wha someone seh, instead you say “wha”, you say “pardon”, or “beg your pardon”, not “wha you seh”.’
‘Oh, me see wha you mean.’
‘And when you see wha someone mean or you hear wha dem seh, you seh, “Pupatee understand” or “fair enough”.’
‘Fear enough,’ Pupatee managed to say.
‘Yes, that’s good. I’d better go back to English talk now or when your brother comes home I will say to him, “See you dinner yah!” and he will kill me in this house tonight.’
There was much to learn in England. Pupatee had already discovered the miracle of lights and light switches. In Jamaica, he had seldom seen electric lights except from afar, twinkling in the dark night. But now he was staying in a house full of lights which he could turn on and off. Then there was the television. He had played at school with a Viewmaster, a plastic box that displayed slides, but television was something else. When it came on that first afternoon he stared in amazement. He tried speaking to the people inside, but they didn’t seem to hear him. Unworried, he sat down to watch. It seemed only a minute later that his nephews and nieces piled home from school, laughing and shouting. Pupatee stood up and vacated his chair so Johnny and Terry, who were older than him, could claim their places in front of the television.
‘Have you all said good evening to your Uncle Pupatee?’ Miss Utel scolded them. ‘Good evening,’ they chorused, and everyone laughed. Pupatee joined in and none of them could stop. For the first time Pupatee almost felt at home. Miss Utel was kind and his nephews and nieces were friendly enough. He hadn’t chosen to leave the sun of Jamaica for this new, cold, white land. But he was ready to make the most of it.
For the first few days, Pupatee did not see much of his brother. Joe worked as a driver for British Rail and when he came home after work, still in his grey uniform and cap, he would unloosen his tie and put his feet up, and Miss Utel would bring him his dinner. By the time he was finished and ready for a few beers and some television, the children were going to bed.
Pupatee slept in a room with Johnny and Terry. On his second or third night, he wet his bed. He was nine years old, and he felt ashamed, so he washed his pyjamas himself and hung them out on the line to dry, as he would have done in Jamaica. That night, he had undressed before he realised his pyjamas were still outside. He ran naked downstairs and out into the garden to fetch them. They were still