Match Making by Johnny Barclay
“Just one more shove should do the trick. Thanks, Amy. Now I can see the waves breaking.”
Out on a limb we are in West Kirby – Irish sea in front, Birkenhead and Liverpool behind – a reward for surviving so long. A rest home, I ask you! It’s all hustle and bustle – activity a substitute for achievement, and day after day I stare out to sea at Anglesey and beyond to the Atlantic.
Home was on the outskirts of Kingston, the other side of the ocean. Opportunities in those days for darker skinned Jamaicans were scarce as the threat of war receded and murder rates went up. Trading in sugar, coffee and cocoa held centre stage but for us, Maurice and Ethel and me, young Molly Brown, it was rolling and filling tobacco leaves that kept the wolf from the door.
By the 1950s with me now a teenager we were running out of steam. Amidst the heat and hurricanes and a shortage of food, we had reached the end of our tether, and so in March 1955 we sailed across the Atlantic on the S.S. Ormonde, bound for Liverpool.
Life was just as tough. The crumbling and decaying back-to-back housing in Toxteth was no better than the slums of Kingston. Dad found work on the docks, back- breaking stuff compared to rolling leaves. I settled in at Littlewoods and became a dab hand at the pools, and Mum made friends with a Singer sewing machine, left hand smoothing the material while right hand turned the handle; co-ordination her strong point.
We weren’t the only immigrants in Toxteth and did our best to play our part. The work was a help and, with wartime austerity receding and the Swinging Sixties just around the corner, social life began to pick up.
Night clubs became popular and, of course, everyone went to The Cavern. It was the thing to do, very ‘with-it’. I would wave at Billy Fury – he was a Toxteth boy – but he didn’t wave back. The Beatles began to make a name for themselves – lots of Twist and Shout – much dancing and high jinks too. I would get dragged on to the floor a few years later when Herman’s Hermits sang “Mrs Brown, you’ve got a lovely daughter”.
People laughed of course but even then, if not exactly shunned, I was still viewed with suspicion. It may have been my eyes that put the boys off. They peered out in different directions, making me look wild and watchful, and I had a problem with snogging on the dance floor. It was all the rage then, but I was never a member of that club. All too often I was torn by the conflict of desire and obligation. ‘Fitting in’ became my goal; blending in and belonging. I craved to live in a world where colour and culture were no barrier.
And so here I am now on the Wirrall – Mrs Brown’s lovely daughter, gazing out to sea in a westerly direction. That’s where I belong.
Simon says:
To call writing ‘simple’ is not always a criticism. In Dick Francis’s novels both the style and the action are simple and therein lies much of their strength. This piece shares some of that quality of simplicity. Starting with dialogue, as in this case, is often a good idea. It brings the reader straight into the action and immediately poses questions that need answering. Who is speaking? Who are they speaking to? Where are they speaking? What are they speaking about? We get the answer to the location question first. We’re in a rest home where, day after day, the narrator stares ‘out to sea at Anglesey and beyond to the Atlantic.’ Then we find out more about the narrator’s Jamaican background and get her name, Molly Brown. We also get a fix on the time, the 1950s. The flow of information is well controlled. Life in Liverpool as an immigrant, and the casual racism that entailed, is lightly touched in, and the excitement of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ is well evoked. I get the feeling that that time was probably the high spot of Molly’s life – her moment in the metaphorical sun. And whether she achieved her goal of ‘fitting in’… is left intriguingly open. We leave her, appropriately, looking out to sea… perhaps towards the homeland she left so long ago…?