It was good forgetting about the house, about Joe, but school wasn’t much easier than home. Pupatee’s English was now much improved, but he could still barely read or write and the teachers didn’t have time to give him the help he needed.
At first he did not understand many of the customs and games. The girls teased him and the boys picked him last in games of football. But one day, Pupatee was given a chance to prove himself at school. He was playing marbles in the playground with Flego, a boy he had become friendly with, when the school bully, Dave, and his gang came over and began to push Flego around about some argument that had happened before Pupatee’s arrival. When one of Dave’s shoves pushed Flego over, Pupatee rushed over to his friend and picked him up.
‘Hey bwoy, go away!’ Pupatee screamed at the bully.
‘What, you want some too?’
Dave came forward, but Pupatee’s childhood fishing and swimming and climbing trees in Jamaica had strengthened him, and the beatings Joe administered had made him resilient, and unafraid of someone as small as Dave. Dave hit out at Pupatee, but then Pupatee threw a punch into his opponent’s belly which felled him. He lay gasping on the ground while Pupatee stood over him.
That earned Pupatee a reputation, and whenever a fight started up in the playground, he was seldom far away. He usually won. He had found a way to impress the other boys and make a name for himself. It did not occur to him that he had learned this talent from Joe, from the very beatings he himself so hated and feared.
Not all Pupatee’s time with boys his own age was spent fighting, though. Out of school, he hung around with the local gang led by Jimmy and Lass. Jimmy was the life and soul of the streets around Selborne Road. He had the blond hair and blue eyes that the girls liked, and a winning combination of mischievousness and vulnerability. He was always the first to come up with something fun to do, the first with a joke.
His father drove a coal truck and Jimmy would often help him, coming home after a session shovelling coal almost as black as Pupatee. ‘Yeah, man,’ Jimmy would say while putting his arm on Pupatee’s shoulders. ‘Dis is my brother, who just come from Jamaica, man.’ And when Jimmy had cleaned himself up, he would pull the same stunt. ‘As you can see, ladies and gents,’ he would declare, ‘I’m a bit paler than my brother today, because I’m a bit ill.’ Although most of the boys were white like Jimmy, black kids like Lass and Pupatee were treated as equals. In Jimmy’s gang, colour counted for nothing.
Gang life revolved around bicycles, and Pupatee was the only one without his own. After school and at weekends and in the holidays, Jimmy and Lass and the others would get on their bikes and pedal off to Ruskin Park or some steep hill they wanted to try out, and Pupatee would be left behind. He soon longed for a bike even more than he longed for his home in Jamaica. Life with Mama and Pops and Carl was a distant dream now, but a bicycle was real.
One half-term, when Jimmy and the gang had gone off elsewhere, Pupatee was walking down the street where an African family whose kids went to the same primary school as him were packing their belongings into a big removal van. He stopped to talk to them and the boys told him they were going back to Africa. Pupatee pretended to listen, but what really interested him was the brand new, shiny push-bike in the van. He said goodbye and walked off, but he kept looking behind him, and as soon as the coast was clear he ran back, jumped into the van and took the bike.
All that day, Pupatee taught himself to ride. He fell off a hundred times and kept smashing the bike, and by the end of the day it looked twenty years old. The wheels were buckled and the paint was scratched, but Pupatee wasn’t bothered; he couldn’t take it home anyway. He parked it somewhere it could easily be seen, hoping that someone else would take it. Then he went home where he found Miss Utel cooking. They were chatting happily in the kitchen when there was a knock at the front door. Pupatee went to answer it and his eyes almost popped out of his head with shock. It was the father of the African family.
‘What did you do with my son’s bike?’ the man said. ‘Somebody saw you steal it so there’s no point denying it.’
Miss Utel had come to the door. ‘Can I help you please,’ she said stiffly.
‘I want my son’s bike,’ the man repeated. ‘Somebody saw this boy steal it and somebody else saw him ride it around.’
‘We don’t know anything about your bike,’ Miss Utel said. ‘You will have to come back later when his brother is home.’
‘That bike cost a lot of money, madam.’
‘Come back after six, to see his brother.’
With that, the man reluctantly left, vowing to return at six. Miss Utel grabbed Pupatee. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘you know your brother will half kill you if these people come back and tell him all this, so if you know where the bike is, go give it back quick. You have time.’
Pupatee dashed out to find the bike. But when he reached the spot where he had left it, the bike was gone. He had walked sadly home, certain of a beating now.
Joe walked in not long after Pupatee. Miss Utel softened him up by giving him his dinner and stroking his head and smiling and joking with him. When she thought the time was right, she told him about the bike. Joe threw his tray with all the food aside and dived straight at Pupatee, knocking him to the ground and then pulling him up and punching and kicking him. In the middle of all this, the African man turned up again.
While Joe went to the door, Pupatee fled down into the cellar. He had taken enough and he felt he couldn’t go on with these beatings. Down in the cellar he knew there was some rat poison. He emptied half the box of poison into a cup and added water and then drank it down as quickly as he could. He waited for death more happily than he ever waited for one of Joe’s beatings. But that poison could not have been strong enough, for death didn’t come. It was not his time. And when he crawled to bed that night Pupatee was black and blue from Joe’s beating.
Sometimes Pupatee’s friends took pity on him, and went to places on foot so he could come too; sometimes he managed to borrow a bike and explore further afield with them. Jimmy and the others liked having Pupatee around. He was growing bigger and stronger every day, and if anyone crossed the boys, Pupatee would fight their cause. With every skirmish he won he liked fighting more and more. He watched The Saint, Dangerman and The Man from Uncle on television, and practised hitting and kicking the way the men did in those shows.
One time he and the gang all went down to an adventure playground in Peckham Park. The main attraction was a sliding handle on a rope slung between a platform and the ground. Pupatee had just climbed up to the top of the platform when a white boy slid the handle fast back up the rope and it hit Pupatee smack in the face. He was so surprised he nearly fell off the platform, but he managed to hang on with one hand while rubbing his face with the other. He looked down and saw the boy in stitches.
‘Wha you done dat for?’ Pupatee screamed.
‘You should have caught it,’ the boy laughed back.
That was it. Pupatee couldn’t slide down fast enough and when he hit the ground he confronted the boy. Before they could come to blows, one of the keepers broke them up and threw them both out. They left, followed by the other boys, who wanted to see what would happen. They walked out on to the grass away from the keepers, and it was agreed that Pupatee and the white boy would fight alone. Pupatee was fuming and threw the first blow. The boy came in close and swung at him but Pupatee ducked and then flung himself around his opponent’s middle. They wrestled to the ground, trying to get the best of each other.
The other boy soon began to tire, but Pupatee was still strong. With one hand he held the boy down and with the other he fired a blow to his face. He heard the other’s breath escape and saw his eyes and nose suddenly gush red. He was just about to throw a final punch when Jimmy stepped in. Jimmy was