he said
Sylvester’s now grey, balding, bearded, and is never seen in anything other than a threadbare Chinese worker’s suit
which he claims is an original from eBay
whereas Curwen wears a retro donkey jacket and denim dungarees
two young men sat at the table next to them, awkward and incongruous with their office haircuts, smooth cheeks, crisp suits, polished shoes
Amma and Sylvester exchanged looks, they hated the interlopers who were colonizing the neighbourhood, who patronized the chi-chi eateries and bars that now replaced a stretch of the indoor market previously known for stalls selling parrot fish, yam, ackee, Scotch bonnet peppers, African materials, weaves, Dutch pots, giant Nigerian land snails and pickled green eggs from China
these upmarket places also employed security guards to keep the locals out
because while their clientele loved slumming it in SW2 or SW9
they couldn’t hide the fact that SW1 and SW3 were in their DNA
Sylvester was very active in the Keep Brixton Real Campaign
he’d lost none of his revolutionary zeal
which wasn’t necessarily a good thing
Amma sipped her seventh coffee of the day, this one laced with Drambuie, while Sylvester slugged beer from a bottle, the only way a revolutionary should drink it, according to him
he still ran his socialist theatre company, The 97%, which toured to fringe venues and ‘hard-to-reach communities’, which she should also still be doing
Amma, you should be taking your plays to community centres and libraries, not to the middle-class bastards at the National
she replied that the last time she took a show to a library, the audience was mainly made up of homeless people who were sleeping at best, snoring at worst
it was about fifteen years ago, she vowed never to again
social inclusion is more important than success, or should it be called sick-cess? Sylvester replied, and Amma couldn’t convince him she was right to move on to bigger things as he kept knocking back the beers she paid for (well, you must be earning a lot now you’ve hit the big time)
she argued it was her right to be directing at the National and it was the theatre’s job to make sure they attracted audiences beyond the middle-class day-trippers from the Home Counties, reminding him this included his parents, a retired banker and homemaker from Berkshire, who came to London for its culture, parents who supported him, even when he came out as a teenager
he’d once let slip while drunk that he got a monthly allowance
(she was far too nice to ever remind him of this)
the thing is, she said, while troublemaking on the periphery’s all well and good, we also have to make a difference inside the mainstream, we all pay taxes that fund these theatres, right?
Sylvester offered up the smug expression of a tax-dodging outlaw
at least I do now, she said, and you should
he sat back, his eyes watery from the beers, silently judging her, she knew that look, the drink was about to bring out a viciousness otherwise absent from her good friend
admit it, Ams, you’ve dropped your principles for ambition and you’re now establishment with a capital E, he said, you’re a turncoat
she stood up, gathered up her African print patchwork bag and left the premises
a little further down the high street she looked back and saw him leaning against the wall of the Ritzy rolling up a cigarette
still rolling up
you stay there, Sylvie.
4
Amma walked to her house in the dark, still grateful she’d become a homeowner so late in life, at a time when she was practically homeless
first of all Jack Staniforth died and his son Jonathan, who’d been chomping at the bit for years at his father’s simply scandalous decision not to financially capitalize on the King’s Cross regeneration scheme that would one day run trains direct from London to Paris
gave the Citizens of Freedomia three months’ notice
devastated, Amma nonetheless had to admit she’d had a spectacularly good run as she’d never paid a single copper penny in rent in what had become one of the most expensive cities on the planet
she cried when she left her former office with its jogging sized dimensions and windows overlooking the trains that rolled into the station from the north of England
she couldn’t afford commercial rents and wasn’t eligible for subsidized housing
Amma sofa surfed until she was offered someone’s spare room
she’d come full circle
then her mother died, devoured from the inside by the ruthless, ravenous, carnivorous disease that started off with one organ before moving on to destroy the others
Amma saw it as symptomatic and symbolic of her mother’s oppression
Mum never found herself, she told friends, she accepted her subservient position in the marriage and rotted from the inside
she could barely look at her father at the funeral
not long after, he too died of heart failure in his sleep; Amma believed he’d willed it upon himself because he couldn’t live without her mother, who’d propped him up since his early days in England
she surprised herself at the strength of her grief
she then regretted never telling him she loved him, he was her father, a good man, of course she loved him, she knew that now he was gone, he was a patriarch but her mother was right when she said, he’s of his time and culture, Amma
my father was devastated at having to flee Ghana so abruptly, she eulogized at his memorial, attended by his elderly socialist comrades
it must have been so traumatic, to lose his home, his family, his friends, his culture, his first language, and to come to a country that didn’t want him
once he had children, he wanted us educated in England and that was it
my father believed in the higher purpose of left-wing politics and actively worked to make the world a better place
she didn’t tell them she’d taken her father for granted and carried her blinkered, self-righteous perspective of him from childhood through to his death, when in fact he’d done nothing wrong except fail to live up to her feminist expectations of him
she had been a selfish, stupid brat, now it was too late
he’d told her he loved her, every year on her birthday when her mother was alive, when he signed the card she bought and sent for him
her successful older brothers kindly gave her the greatest share of the family home in Peckham
which paid for a substantial deposit on a small terraced house with a box garden in Railton Road, Brixton
a place to call her own.
5
Yazz
was born nineteen years ago in a birthing pool in Amma’s candle-lit living room
surrounded by incense, the music of lapping waves, a doula and midwife, Shirley and Roland – her great friend, who’d agreed to father her child when the death of her parents triggered an unprecedented and all-consuming broodiness
luckily for her, Roland, five years into his partnership with Kenny, had also been thinking about fatherhood
he took Yazz every other weekend, as agreed, which Amma regretted when she found herself missing her newborn instead of feeling deliriously free from Friday afternoons to Sunday evenings
Yazz was the miracle she never thought she wanted, and having a child really did complete her, something she rarely confided because it somehow seemed anti-feminist
Yazz was going to be her countercultural experiment