King.
Towards Shadwell she slows again. A coster is selling Scotch Bonnet peppers. Peppers! Bernadette has never seen them in London: their strangeness jars her pleasantly. It’s like finding a flock of parrots wheeling around Trafalgar Square.
The coster is a small island man. She asks the price of the peppers – too dear for such withered things, and who will buy them, here? – just to linger by their blaze of colour. It makes her think of how different her daughter’s nourishment will be – of how pale and scant it is, even now – and of the markets back home, too: but then she chides herself. Bernadette, she thinks, your home isn’t there any more. It’s here, fair old London Town.
She thinks of soursop. A hot, hot day, and the sweet-sour juice of June plum. Scallions and sorrel and the red rags of the ice sellers. The grater cake her nursemaid bought her, year after year, from the Green Island Grand Market on Christmas Eve. The first time Mama took her beyond the western parishes, all the way to Kingston; the markets she saw there. Redemption Ground and Queen’s – which the poor folk called Chigger Foot – and Jubilee – which they called Solas – and Coronation – which they called Duppy – oh my gosh, all the names for everything! And all the small-time higglers, selling anything under the sun, higglering and higglering all the way up Orange Street.
Duppy Market, though . . . she never liked that name. Coronation is much better. Duppy was what they called it, still, because they went and built it on a graveyard.
She doesn’t want to think of duppies. They’ll turn her thoughts onto Neville. The things Neville says on his bad days. Instead she narrows her eyes and thinks of Redemption Ground, willing the memories to flood her again. A hot, hot, hot day . . .
But it’s hot here, too, in Watney Street. What’s the difference, really, between Watney and Redemption? The noise is the noise and the dust is the dust. What is there for her to be missing, here? The markets are the same. Ackee and June plum she’ll always crave; but the crowds of people of all types, and the neediness, the gaudiness, the rituals and the higgling – whatever they want to call it here – those things are all the same in Solas Market or Petticoat Lane or Whitechapel Waste or Chigger Foot. And the sweet-talk and the dazzle, that make even common things seem otherworldly and foreign.
The market is the crossroads: wherever you go, it’s the same. Any place you wash up on God’s earth. Yes, thinks Bernadette, and that’s why I like it. Because in the market everything is lately come. Everything is foreign, and so nothing is foreign. No one is out of place here. They come up weary from the docks, and when they see this place, they know they’re nearing home again.
East of the pepper stall the wastes are parked up with cars. A man stands on the roof of one, shouting at the passing trade. He doesn’t have a coster’s voice but he’s building up a crowd. He has papers in his hand. He shakes them as he shouts and they flicker in the sun.
‘Excuse me; what is it he’s selling?’ Bernadette asks the man beside her, but he runs his tongue under his lips, as if he means to hawk.
‘Foreign muck,’ he says, under cover of his moustache, and then suddenly raises his voice to roar at the man on the car, ‘You ought to be locked up!’
The man on the car turns to them. He’s in shirtsleeves but the car is hot: the sweat is running down his cheeks. His eyes search for his adversary and find only Bernadette.
‘You say so, do you? Then name my crime. Name the punishment for free speech in a free country. I’ll tell you what I’ve learned, freely. I’ve read the writings of great men, and I say it’s the high hats need the locking up! If someone wants blaming it’s them! I say we’ve had enough, you and I, of unearned privilege. Yes, and empty promises –’
She has her hand to her chest. She can feel her
Towards Shadwell she slows again. A coster is selling Scotch Bonnet peppers. Peppers! Bernadette has never seen them in London: their strangeness jars her pleasantly. It’s like finding a flock of parrots wheeling around Trafalgar Square.
The coster is a small island man. She asks the price of the peppers – too dear for such withered things, and who will buy them, here? – just to linger by their blaze of colour. It makes her think of how different her daughter’s nourishment will be – of how pale and scant it is, even now – and of the markets back home, too: but then she chides herself. Bernadette, she thinks, your home isn’t there any more. It’s here, fair old London Town.
She thinks of soursop. A hot, hot day, and the sweet-sour juice of June plum. Scallions and sorrel and the red rags of the ice sellers. The grater cake her nursemaid bought her, year after year, from the Green Island Grand Market on Christmas Eve. The first time Mama took her beyond the western parishes, all the way to Kingston; the markets she saw there. Redemption Ground and Queen’s – which the poor folk called Chigger Foot – and Jubilee – which they called Solas – and Coronation – which they called Duppy – oh my gosh, all the names for everything! And all the small-time higglers, selling anything under the sun, higglering and higglering all the way up Orange Street.
Duppy Market, though . . . she never liked that name. Coronation is much better. Duppy was what they called it, still, because they went and built it on a graveyard.
She doesn’t want to think of duppies. They’ll turn her thoughts onto Neville. The things Neville says on his bad days. Instead she narrows her eyes and thinks of Redemption Ground, willing the memories to flood her again. A hot, hot, hot day . . .
But it’s hot here, too, in Watney Street. What’s the difference, really, between Watney and Redemption? The noise is the noise and the dust is the dust. What is there for her to be missing, here? The markets are the same. Ackee and June plum she’ll always crave; but the crowds of people of all types, and the neediness, the gaudiness, the rituals and the higgling – whatever they want to call it here – those things are all the same in Solas Market or Petticoat Lane or Whitechapel Waste or Chigger Foot. And the sweet-talk and the dazzle, that make even common things seem otherworldly and foreign.
The market is the crossroads: wherever you go, it’s the same. Any place you wash up on God’s earth. Yes, thinks Bernadette, and that’s why I like it. Because in the market everything is lately come. Everything is foreign, and so nothing is foreign. No one is out of place here. They come up weary from the docks, and when they see this place, they know they’re nearing home again.
East of the pepper stall the wastes are parked up with cars. A man stands on the roof of one, shouting at the passing trade. He doesn’t have a coster’s voice but he’s building up a crowd. He has papers in his hand. He shakes them as he shouts and they flicker in the sun.
‘Excuse me; what is it he’s selling?’ Bernadette asks the man beside her, but he runs his tongue under his lips, as if he means to hawk.
‘Foreign muck,’ he says, under cover of his moustache, and then suddenly raises his voice to roar at the man on the car, ‘You ought to be locked up!’
The man on the car turns to them. He’s in shirtsleeves but the car is hot: the sweat is running down his cheeks. His eyes search for his adversary and find only Bernadette.
‘You say so, do you? Then name my crime. Name the punishment for free speech in a free country. I’ll tell you what I’ve learned, freely. I’ve read the writings of great men, and I say it’s the high hats need the locking up! If someone wants blaming it’s them! I say we’ve had enough, you and I, of unearned privilege. Yes, and empty promises –’
She has her hand to her chest. She can feel her
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